The flute song echoed across the river like a slow lullaby.

The group heard the campsite long before they actually saw it. First Bugsy noticed notes playing in the air as they walked up the stream, and Basil’s newly enhanced senses soon picked them up afterwards. The cold wind carried the song through the autumn leaves under the evening sun. The music was relaxing, almost soothing.

“Reminds me of that time I tried yoga,” Basil said as he walked along the river, a bag on his back and his halberd in hand. Shellgirl swam beneath the surface by snapping open her carapace back and forth.

“How did it end?” Vasi asked, following him with Bugsy. Basil had left the rest of the team at the house to protect it from attacks.

“In great frustration.”

“I expected as much.”

“What’s yoga, Boss?” Bugsy asked.

“A waste of time.” Basil couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes without going mad. “What’s that smell?”

There was a foul stench in the air, similar to a pig’s pen. Even the sweet scent of autumn flowers carried by the wind couldn’t cover it up.

“Oh, that’s the orcs!” Shellgirl said before jumping out of the water and onto the shore. “We’re close, Partner.”

As she predicted, the group reached a small camp at the spot where the marsh’s streams merged with the greater river of L’Adour. A tarp of clothes stretched across many large trees and cast a large shadow over a clearing. Piles of stones were set up around the site and a warm campfire.

Basil readied his halberd to strike. Shellgirl had vouched for her fellow monsters’ peacefulness, but it didn’t cost anything to stay on his guard.

A musician was sitting on a fallen tree and playing a flute song to a small audience of monsters; and to Basil’s surprise, he looked very much human. The man was of Indian descent and quite handsome, with light brown skin and curled raven hair falling on his shoulders. He wore exotic Indian golden pants and some kind of shirt leaving most of his chest exposed. More importantly, he went barefoot and looked no older than twenty.

Basil immediately recognized the man for what he was.

“Oh, God.” Basil shuddered in fear. “A hippie.”

If the musician greeted Basil with namaste, the jokes would flow.

Whoever the man was, he had gathered a strange audience. The monsters closest to him were a white-feathered bird the size of a horse that combined the body of a hawk with a lion’s crimson mane, and a magnificent, three-headed golden cobra. The rest were a trio of gray-skinned humanoids who Basil assumed were orcs, a walking skeleton in tattered clothes… and goblins.

Basil immediately saw red when he noticed two of them in the small crowd. The first was normal-sized, with pallid white skin and pitch-black eyes. A blue scrub-covered his mouth and a hooded robe the rest of its tiny body. He kept scalpels and a bonesaw attached to a belt, and a bag full of ice within arm’s reach. The other goblin was almost as tall as Basil himself, with boar tusks and hooves for feet. War paint covered his brownish skin.

Cafaimal (Autopsy Gremlin) Level 10 [Humanoid/Fairy] Party: Cut & Deep Benoit (Hobgoblin) Level 10 [Giant/Humanoid] Party: Cut & Deep

Wild goblins could undergo metamorphosis? If so, Basil was glad to have slaughtered every member of Ogremoche’s band. One of them might have come back for vengeance later as a far more powerful entity.

Wait, could these two be survivors from the water station dungeon?

The two evolved goblins tensed up upon sensing his suspicious gaze on their back and froze like rabbits finding themselves cornered by a fox. The autopsy gremlin, Cafaimal, raised a trembling hand at Basil’s face.

“T-that’s him, Benoit!” he shouted at his terrified teammate. “The Ogre of the Barthes! Goblin-Eater!”

Basil’s jaw clenched. “Shellgirl, didn’t you correct them about my species?”

“Correct them about what?” she replied in confusion. “You tried to feed me goblins the night we met.”

“And they tasted good too, Boss!” Bugsy said with enthusiasm.

His response only terrified the two walking dishes further. What, Basil ate goblins a few dozen times and that was all people remembered about him? Couldn’t they tell tales of his epic dragonslaying deed instead?

The musician sensed the tension in the air and ended his song. He lowered his silver flute and opened his deep black eyes at Basil. They felt both full of wisdom and innocence all at once, as if the man was older than his outside appearance would suggest.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.” The musician offered Basil’s group a sharp nod. His attitude contrasted with the snake and bird close to him, who observed the newcomers with wariness. “It has been many moons since I last saw a fellow human. Namaste, friends.”

He dared, Basil thought. “Sorry, namaste home tonight.”

“Namastawhat, Boss?” Bugsy asked.

“It means hello in the ancient New Age Yoga society,” Basil joked. “If you want to sound spiritual, Bugsy, say namaste.”

The musician laughed heartily; a sound so pure Basil almost felt ashamed for his terrible answer. “Well-played,” the stranger said with a polite bow. “My name is Kalki. A pleasure to meet a fellow Tamer.”

A Tamer? Well, that explained his comfort with monsters. It felt so odd to Basil to meet another one like him.

“Goblin-Eater?” one of the orcs, a teenage girl from her facial features, whistled at Basil. “He’s almost as brawny as you are, Ma!”

The System-summoned orcs both matched and differed from the fantasy stereotypes of their species. They were muscular humanoids taller than a human with wolfish ears, pelts for clothes, and ashen-gray skin. Their broad shoulders, brawny hips, pale red eyes, and protruding canines made them look like barbarian savages.

The group of three present at the gathering was almost certainly a family unit. The adults were both two heads taller than Basil. The male was bald and wielded a stone tower shield nearly two meters in length; the female orc’s long white hair flowed out of a horned metal helmet, and she wielded a hammer. Both were covered in scars, although the woman was the most muscular of the two by far.

The girl that whistled at Basil was clearly the couple’s daughter and nearly as tall as he was. She looked around sixteen, an oversized hat threatening to fall off her long white hair. Her weapon was a rusty iron mace, and unlike the rest of her family, she favored tattered black jeans, a shirt, and leather boots over pelts. If not for her appearance, Basil could have mistaken her for a human delinquant.

As for their smell… The stench coming from the orcs was almost unbearable. Vasi took steps back to stay away from the orcs in disgust, and even Basil, who wasn’t the cleanest person in the world, thought a garbage fill smelled nicer than these three. No wonder they were so fond of soap.

Orcdad Level 16 [Giant/Humanoid] Faction: Clan Orclan. Orcmom Level 18 [Giant/Humanoid] Faction: Clan Orclan. Orcine Level 13 [Humanoid] Faction: Clan Orclan.

Basil wondered if they hid an Orcgrandpa and Orcgrandma in their genealogical tree. From their party’s name, they took the laziest approach possible for names. Orcdaddy would have sounded far better too.

A pity they didn’t join my party, Basil thought. I would have given inspired names. Like Raphaël Andreas Corpus, or Danielle Francine von Levinksi. Names with history and power!

“Another human?” Vasi whispered to Shellgirl, her gaze set on Kalki. “I didn’t know you brought one to this gathering.”

“I didn’t. I’ve no idea who this is.” The merchant pouted with crossed arms. “I wanted to show off my human partner for bragging rights, but that stranger stole my thunder!”

“My apologies,” Kalki replied with a sheepish smile. “I walked upon your camp by chance. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“No harm done,” Vasi reassured him with a bright, flirty smile. “Your song was lovely, by the way.”

“It was crap,” said the youngest orc, Orcine, before spitting on the grass. “War drums rule!”

“Orcine!” Her mother slapped her on the back of head with enough force to knock her daughter face-first on the ground. “Learn respect, or I’ll teach it to you!”

“Ma!” The young orc protested. “Not in public!”

Her mother’s face might as well have been made of stone. “You shame a stranger in public, you get shamed in public.”

“It’s alright,” Kalki said, clearly embarrassed by the strong reaction. “Everyone is entitled to their own musical tastes.”

“Personally, I prefer Japanese rock,” Basil said.

“My daughter’s right though, good drums would make it better,” the male orc, Orcdad, added with a grunt. “You should teach your bird to sing too.”

“Birds can’t sing,” Orcine mumbled under her breath as she rose up.

“Can’t agree more,” Basil replied, half-praying that his next rooster would know better than to scream in the morning. He noticed that the goblins still looked at him with terrified eyes. “What?”

“Y-You’re going to eat us?” asked the smallest of the two, Cafaimal.

“That depends.” Basil licked his lips. “Do you self-identify as edible?”

The evolved goblins looked back at him with mortified eyes.

“Relax, I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” Basil waved a hand at them. “I’m not going to eat you on sight just because you’re goblins. That would be racist.”

The duo let out sighs of relief.

“But just to be sure, I’ve sworn a blood oath to drive goblins out of the Barthes after Ogremoche’s band hung a man right in front of my garden.” Basil squinted suspiciously at the evolved goblins, watching sweat falling down their forehead. “You were not part of that group, right? I hate loose ends.”

“No, we didn’t come from that dungeon!” Benoit protested. “We spawned from another beyond the southern mountains!”

“A-and we aren’t goblins anymore anyway!” Cafaimal pointed out with two thumbs up. “So we count outside your oath, right?”

“Mmm… good point.” Basil made a mental note to add monsters’ evolutionary transformations to his next blood oath to close future loopholes. “Don’t attack us, be good neighbors, and I won’t have you over for dinner. You leave me alone, I leave you alone.”

His grudge against goblins started and ended with Ogremoche’s group. If the rest of their kind proved accommodating and friendly, they wouldn’t fear anything from Basil. Since Shellgirl vouched for these two, he would give them the benefit of the doubt.

“Don’t worry guys, my partner accepts bribes.” Shellgirl clapped heartily. “Anyway, thanks for coming to the first Marshmarket! Let the merchandise flow! We’ve got soap, toilet paper, meat…”

“If you’ve got a spare liver like last time, I can trade it for a gargoyle’s heart or a wyvern’s lung.” Realizing he wouldn't end up as Basil’s dinner, Cafaimal opened his bag of ice to reveal the two organs. The lung was purple and thorny, the heart gray and stony… and it somehow kept beating on its own. “I’ll implant them for free.”

“You can have more than one heart?” Bugsy asked with interest. “Awesome! Do you have wings too? Can you give me wings to fly with? That would be amazing!”

“Know what? I don’t have the goods tonight, but I’ll perform the surgery next time for your pancreas and one of your kidneys!”

“I wouldn’t try, Bugsy,” Vasi said mirthfully. “I’ve heard rumors that the last person he implanted an organ in died from it.”

“Of course not, he died from disease!” the gremlin protested. “And I have a witness who can prove it!”

“I saw it all!” His hobgoblin colleague raised a hand. “The heart-transplant customer died from a blood infection! It was completely unrelated!”

Basil glanced at the gremlin’s scalpel and bonesaw. Brown spots marked the improperly cleaned blades. Unrelated his ass! Zachariel would have had an apoplexy at the sight of their shoddy work!

“Bugsy, we don’t accept comfort surgery under my roof,” Basil warned his centimagma. “Also, your blood is made of lava and would probably burn the wings anyway.”

“Aww…” Bugsy lowered his antennae in disappointment. “But they would look so good on me…”

As Shellgirl argued with the back-alley doctors over organs and Vasi haggled over the price of potions with the orcs, Basil relaxed somewhat. The paranoid hermit in him had half-expected an ambush of some kind, but it appeared all the monsters present were the traders they advertised themselves as. He might actually get along with his neighbors.

It was the other human among them that intrigued Basil the most. Kalki’s level remained hidden from his sight, alongside those of the hawk and serpent that followed him around. Basil assumed that the three of them formed a party.

“Where do you come from?” Basil asked Kalki. “First time I’ve seen an Indian outside of Paris.”

“Indian?” Kalki scratched his cheek with a thoughtful look. “The word sounds familiar to me…”

“You don’t know what an Indian is?” His fellow human’s confusion left Basil somewhat concerned for his health. “Unless… unless you suffer from amnesia?”

“Amnesiac?” Bugsy asked. “Like the Amnesia Ailment?”

“Is it one now?” Basil wondered if the System considered cancer and Alzheimer's ailments too. “Yes, it means a loss of memory. Usually due to trauma or substance abuse.”

“I remember precious little of my former life,” Kalki confirmed Basil’s worry. “My name, the shadow of my home and family, my songs…”

“How did it happen?” Basil asked. A shame. He would have loved to question him about Hindu deities and potentially elucidate the Trimurti System’s mysteries.

“I do not remember.” Kalki smiled sheepishly. “I woke up in the southern mountains with my companions’ eggs, the vague feeling that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a terrible headache.”

“We didn’t stay in the eggs for long,” the hawk monster said with a bellowing voice as powerful as the wind. The many-headed serpent hissed shyly in support. “The name’s Garud by the way. The quiet snake lady is Shesha. We form quite the music band, don’t you think?”

Basil examined Kalki closely. Amnesia usually resulted from assault, though a spell or System-related effect might also cause memory loss.

Maybe he took LSD or drugs. Kalki reminded Basil of New Age self-help hacks he had the misfortune of encountering in his university days. Or… could the three of them have come from another world? Vasi confirmed humans exist on her own, so that man could have teleported to Earth through an Incursion and lost his memory along the way. It would explain his foreign clothes.

Basil understood too little about Incursions to confirm this theory. He promised to dig further into it.

“Garud and Shesha have been my trusted companions since I woke up,” Kalki said, his eyes full of concern. “But my girlfriend Padma is missing. I’m looking for her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Basil replied, and he meant it from the bottom of his heart. The faces of the Elissalde sisters after the death of Major Grange still weighed on his mind. Basil himself often wondered how his estranged mother fared in his native Bulgaria. “Maybe I can help find her. What does she look like?”

Kalki blushed slightly. “I don’t know.”

Basil frowned. “You don’t know?”

“I remember that I have forgotten her and I know I will recognize her when I meet her. If that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t,” Basil replied bluntly. The man’s tale felt sketchy to him, but Kalki sounded so innocent that he was probably telling the truth… or what he believed to be the truth. “You should go to Bordeaux. It’s the last human stronghold in the region and the army evacuated survivors to it.”

“Bordeaux?” A map of France appeared in Kalki’s hands. He must have stored it in his inventory. “This city in the northwest?”

Basil checked the map and confirmed. “Yes, that spot up the Garonne river. It’s a two-hours drive if nothing dangerous attacks you on the road. If you’re willing to wait, the army should send a squad to recover petrified people in nearby Dax. They can escort you to safety.”

“Why drive when you can soar through the skies?” Garud scoffed and showed his mighty wings. “No foe can reach us above the clouds!”

“We will fly away at dawn,” Kalki said before offering Basil a thankful nod. “Thank you, my friend. I will stop in this city next.”

“If you need food or drink, I’ve got some extra meat and water,” Basil proposed. “I know of an empty water station nearby or a full city if you need a roof and heating.”

Basil neglected to mention his home for several reasons. Although Kalki sounded somewhat friendly, he remained a stranger. The System wouldn’t reveal his classes either, which put Basil on edge. Even if Kalki didn’t cause trouble, revealing the house’s location might backfire on him later.

“Boss, didn’t you say we needed food for the winter?” Bugsy asked. “Why are you giving it away?”

“Because I believe in hospitality.” Basil simply couldn’t close his door to a fellow human in need when they crossed his path. He had learned that from the Old Man. “One day, we might rely on the kindness of strangers.”

That, and Kalki appeared trustworthy for a reason Basil couldn’t put his finger on. The Indian radiated candidness and earnest friendliness. Basil considered himself a pretty good judge of character and nothing in Kalki’s behavior seemed fake. If anything, he reminded Basil of an innocent child lost in the world.

The kind who would play a concert for monsters he encountered along the road. Yet another reason not to invite him in the house; he might reveal its location to others out of naïveté.

“My troupe has food, but I would gladly rest in a dwelling.” Kalki joined his hands and gave Basil a deep bow. “I will return your kindness.”

“You could start by telling me which Tamer Perks you unlocked,” Basil said, half as a test and half to feed his curiosity. He would give Kalki the wide berth if he lied about his abilities. “Not knowing what Perks levels will bring causes me many headaches. I can never tell what's the best class to invest in.”

“I face the same problem,” Kalki replied with a grin. “I will not pretend I know everything about the class, but I will gladly share what I learned.”

As it turned out, Kalki had taken thirteen levels in Tamer. He did not lie about the Perks that they shared, which reassured Basil. According to Kalki, level 9 unlocked a unique technique healing all monsters in the Tamer’s party; level 13 strengthened it further by granting them temporary immunity to Ailments. But it was level 11 that interested Basil the most.

“You can teleport back to your Lair at will?” Basil asked, his eyes wide open.

“I could if I kept one,” Kalki replied with a warm grin. “We stay on the road all the time. I mostly use the Perk’s secondary feature, which lets me summon my friends to my position.”

His bird chuckled. “Like that time with the bugs. Almost got him before Shesha and I arrived.”

“Yes, well…” Kalki coughed. “I do seem to attract trouble.”

The level 11 Tamer Perk wasn’t all that useful for a nomad, but for a sedentary man like Basil? It was potentially invaluable. He never dared to forage beyond the marsh for fear of leaving his house abandoned for days. With that power, Basil could potentially drive away to a distant region at dawn, scavenge supplies all day long, and teleport back home for the night.

“Honestly, I was half-expecting a Perk forcing two Tamers into a monster battle for money,” Basil mused. “Like Pokemon.”

“A battle?” The joke proposal horrified Kalki. “Why? Friends don’t fight each other, and certainly not for money. Gold brings neither happiness nor peace.”

Basil heard Shellgirl choke at his words, but they made him appreciate Kalki more. Now I remember why I was so interested in New Age stuff once. Though he looks like the real deal rather than a closet marketer. His Charisma must be through the roof too.

“Hey, Dragonslayer.” The orc family approached Basil, with the matriarch taking the lead. “Shellgirl says you’re looking to buy food for the winter?”

Dragonslayer. It sounded better than Goblin-Eater.

“Got some to trade?” Basil asked.

“We’ve got extra fireboar ham, thunderbird legs, and unicorn steak.” From Orcmom’s offer, Basil could reasonably assess that her family were dedicated carnivores. “We’ll exchange them for healing potions and brawny powder.”

“Brawny powder?” Basil asked. Shellgirl, what did you tell them? “You mean protein powder?”

“Yeah, brawny powder,” Orcmom pointed at her daughter. “The runt is too scrawny to hunt well.”

“I’m not,” her daughter mumbled. “I wanna go home and regain my classes!”

“Do you have access to classes?” Basil asked with a frown. Their behavior and family dynamics made more sense now. The orc family had crossed over into Earth the same way Megabug and Vasi did. But as far as he knew, monsters couldn’t take Player classes.

“We did!” Orcine gritted her teeth. “When we crossed over, we lost ‘em all! All my busted Mercenary Perks vanished! This place is junk!”

“No swearing in public!” Orcmom slapped her daughter in the back of the head, although not hard enough to throw her to the ground again. Kalki winced at the sight, though Basil shrugged. He’d seen worse parental discipline. “Our class levels transformed into monster ones. Lost some Perks, and gained new ones. It was a trade-off.“

“Robbery,” her daughter mumbled. “For me, it was robbery.”

“Yeah, and the pointy-ear that attacked me used an Archer-only Perk,” her husband grumbled. “Damn double standards.”

“Does it mean I could gain classes like the Boss if I crossed into another world?” Bugsy asked. “I want to cast spells too!”

The System immediately tried to limit a wizard centipede’s limitless potential.

Compatible Systems may have small but important differences. Conversions happen on a case to case basis, but it is unlikely for a giant centipede to become a Player species.

“Bug racist,” Basil said.

Dismaker Labs wishes you a happy (humanocentrist) apocalypse!

Humanocentrist? Wait, did Dismaker Labs intentionally exclude all non-humans from becoming Players? How could that fit with the orc’s tale of elves with classes?

“Can you tell me more about these elves?” Basil asked the orcs. “I might hunt them down myself.”

“To eat them?” Orcdad asked. “You should. Elves eat so much grass and fruits, their flesh is full of vitamins.”

“Iron too,” Orcmom added. “They kinda taste like spinach too.”

Basil almost asked for elf-cooking tips, before realizing it leaned in a bit too close to cannibalism. He had to draw a line somewhere.

Bugsy, who didn’t share his moral quandaries, salivated at the thought of eating elves. “Great, we could cook them with the rooster Mr. Plato strangled. It would cheer him up.”

“By the way, gotta ask.” Orcmom leaned in to whisper in Basil’s ear. “How do they taste? Goblins?”

“Good, but better with potatoes and pepper sauce,” Basil replied with a conspiratorial tone. “I suggest stuffing them with apples before sending them to the oven.”

“Nice tip. Never dared to eat a goblin, but I don’t wanna die without trying. Not that I would eat a neighbor…” The orc matriarch glanced at Cafaimal and Benoit with barely restrained hunger. “Such a shame…”

In the end, no goblin was sacrificed on the altar of culinary curiosity. Basil traded the unicorn steaks for a few healing potions, exchanged non-questionable cooking tips with the orcs, and refused an expensive offer for his kidney from the autopsy gremlin.

According to Orcdad, the elves attacked him while he was hunting thunderbirds in the west. From his description, he had walked a good four hours west, all the way to the marshes of Orx and beyond. The area where the ambush took place sounded a lot like an old reptilarium Basil once visited.

He wondered what happened to its scaled inhabitants after the apocalypse. Did they escape, die, or mutate into monsters? Whatever the case, Orcdad indicated many bird monsters nested in the Orx marshes. Basil could both investigate his new neighbors and potentially tame an Avian monster to breed with the hens all at once.

As the meeting came to an end, only a small matter remained to settle.

“Basil, this is Le Vendu,” Shellgirl introduced Basil to the skeleton merchant. “Le Vendu, this is Basil. He was super-duper interested in your Boss’ multiversal business.”

“Our master below created us with the unique ability to travel between our assigned universe and his shop,” the skeleton explained. Ghostly candle lights appeared in his empty eye-sockets. Basil wondered if he could snuff them out with his breath. “We’re low-level enough that few level barriers trouble us.”

Which implied most worlds had one. “I’m looking for information about Incursions and how worlds fit together,” Basil explained. “Perhaps I could exchange letters with your superior?”

“You could do better than that,” the skeleton replied. “Anyone with a voucher also counts as a ‘possession’ when I use my Perk.”

“So he can transport us directly to his Boss,” Shellgirl summed up. “Neat, huh? That way you can ask your questions directly at the top!”

“With potentially no way to come back,” Basil pointed out. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the proposal at all. “No offense to your patron, but he could welcome us with an ambush for all I know.”

“Understandable,” the skeleton replied, taking it in stride.

“I’ll take him up on his offer of a temporary world transfer,” Vasi said. “I need specific grimoires for Samhain and this ‘Walter Tye’ apparently has them in stock. I’ll test the waters for you, handsome. If I return, it’s a safe proposal.”

“And if you don’t?” Basil asked with a smile. “I’ll avenge your death?”

“Nothing so dramatic, though you’re welcome to try,” she replied with a smile. “I would be thankful if you could burn the books under my bed though. Some pages would make a priest go blind.”

“Deal.”