“I would love to visit your village,” Samsara said. “Right, Ramona?”

  “Yes, I would love to visit your village,” I lied. I didn’t really care about their village at all, but that wouldn’t be something my kind personality would say. “Thank you for taking us here by the way. We really needed that shower.”

  I could feel embarrassment rising up from Samsara, like a kettle left on high heat. If visiting this village would distract her, then maybe I should be grateful.

  “You’re welcome,” Aisling smiled. “You don’t have any of those blue spots on you anymore.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. I pointed toward Aisling’s shell. “It looks like you are all healed up now, too.”

  “The meat was really good,” Aisling replied.

  “Really good,” Nara echoed.

  “And that’s why we wanted to take you near our village,” Aisling said.

  “I’m glad we could help you out!” Samsara practically squealed.

  Aisling nodded. “Let’s start heading towards the village.”

  “Doesn’t it feel good to help others out?” Samsara asked me.

  “Well, I can feel your excitement for helping others,” I said. “Does that count?”

  “I’ll count that as a good answer from you,” She smugly said.

  Goodbye, Ms. Waterfall. I’ll miss you. And so we began slowly tailing Aisling and Nara. The sound of rushing water dissipated as we traveled across the forest. The morning sunlight breached the canopy. Samsara was full of bubbly joy.

  Eventually, we exited the forest and arrived at the entrance of a valley surrounded by mountains. A river cut through its center like a silver vein. It seemed that the valley curved around, but it wasn’t possible to tell how far it went from over here. Each of the mountains had cracks inside of them. That was unusual.

  Aisling and Nara stopped in front of us.

  “What is it?” I asked. Did they sense any danger?

  “We’ve arrived,” Aisling said. “I will let the elders know.”

  “Arrived?” Samsara asked. “I don’t see any buildings or people here.”

  “That’s because you are still outside,” Nara said as Aisling left her. Nara pointed to the air, which caused both of us to raise our brows. “Those outside cannot see the actual village inside. It protects us against other monster girls, Kaiju girls, and the Monster Purifiers.”

  What was she talking about? This girl wasn’t making any sense. How would we not be able to see the village from here? On the other hand, I think that was the most I had ever seen Nara talk. Maybe she was enthusiastic to talk about her village. Or she was just bullshitting us.

  “Well, I don’t think they would lie about it,” Samsara said.

  “Unless this is some sort of prank,” I internally grunted.

  “We could go inside to check,” Samsara said, slithering forward. As she entered the valley, our vision swam. Each mountain on the valley had a wooden home with wooden stilts rested upon the mountain stone. Smoke rose from their rooftops. I could make out the figures of monster girls near the homes. There was such a variety of them. Reptile girls like alligator and lizard girls. Mammal girls like cat girls and dog girls. Bird girls like eagle girls and owl girls. There were many more that I couldn’t immediately identify. And all of them cowered in fear, staring at us.

  Except, they weren’t. At least from my point of view. Because my eyes couldn’t see any of them. What the heck was all this? And how was an illusion this powerful being made?

  I stepped forward to be right next to Samsara, and my vision suddenly was in sync with hers. No longer were the homes and monster girls in a state of both being visible and not visible.

  “This is so weird,” Samsara said. “You all are able to camouflage a whole village?”

  Nara nodded with a smile. “Do you want to guess how many homes I built?” Ah, I see now, she was enthusiastic because she had played a large part in building this place.

  “Ten homes?” Samsara guessed generously. She tilted her head.

  “Whoa!” Nara exclaimed. “You guessed right! Every year since I was 10, I’ve built a home.” Fantastic, I felt like a loser. All I did was become a garbage collector in my 10 years since I was 10.

  “Don’t say that,” Samsara said. I felt the same feeling of inadequacy from her. “You make me feel like an even bigger loser. The only thing I did was hide in my apartment.”

  “Hey, I’m not calling you a loser,” I said. “You had a valid excuse not to have a job. But I didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s never too late to start building homes,” Samsara said. “We could start now. And since we’re so big, we could probably build ten in a year rather than ten in ten years.”

  “You want us to be homebuilders?” I internally scoffed.

  “Well, what else are we going to do?” Samsara asked.

  “Probably something far away from here,” I said. “These monster girls look terrified.”

  “Wait, why do all the monster girls seem scared of us?” Samsara asked Nara.

  “They probably think you’re scary Kaiju girls,” Nara said. “Once they see how helpful you are, I’m sure they will be less scared of you.”

  I decided to sit cross-legged at the entrance of the valley. My intention was to make myself look as non-threatening as possible. Even though Aisling and Nara may be comfortable around me, the other monster girls of this village probably wouldn’t be. Of course, I couldn’t shrink back to my relatively short height of 1.55 meters, but I could make myself look less imposing.

  If only I had perfect control over my appearance. At least this was better than when I had to wear a full set of black clothes when going out. Plus, there was the additional dark blue garbage collector’s vest I had to put on when I worked. Meanwhile, the only thing I was doing here was sitting down.

  Samsara lowered herself to my level. “You put a lot of thought into this. At least way more than I would have.”

  “I’m just applying my experience in human society over here,” I said. Coincidentally, I had gone from being a monster girl trying to blend in a human world to being a Kaiju girl trying to blend in a monster girl world. Actually, I probably blended in better when I was just a monster girl.

  My mind wandered to another topic. Mainly, what kind of crap was making this village invisible from the outside?

  “Hey,” I called out to Nara. “How is your village being kept invisible?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” Nara shrugged. She looked towards the center of the village. “Our elders said we’re not allowed to know.”

  The elders, huh?

  Coincidentally, a pair of monster girls came down walking by the river next to Aisling. One of them appeared to be a fox girl. Her mutations had turned her more on the monstrous side, as she was fully covered in orange fur and had a full-on fox snout with sharp teeth for a mouth. She was wearing a set of black robes with golden lines going down the center. The other woman wore the same clothing. I couldn’t tell what kind of monster girl she was; perhaps her physical changes were hidden by her clothing. She had gray hair and extremely pale skin. I could see bags beneath her eyes. These must be the elders.

  The two monster girls' eyes became wide open as they saw us. They halted nearly a hundred meters in front of us.

  “You brought a Kaiju here?!” the fox girl shouted. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Clearly, the answer to that is yes,” the other monster girl elder said.

  “No, none of you were listening to what I was saying,” Aisling shook her head. She pointed at us. “Look, they are just sitting there, harmlessly. If they wanted to attack us, they could have.”

  “They are just tricking us,” the fox girl said. I could see her orange tail trailing from behind their back.

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  “Do they think we are deaf?” Samsara asked.

  “No, they probably don’t think our hearing is good,” I replied.

  Also, this was incredibly ironic. One would figure that leaving human society would mean I wouldn’t have to hear gossip about monster girls. Yet, here I was listening to gossip about Kaiju girls from monster girls. I guess rumors and gossip are consistent amongst both humans and monster girls.

  Anger started to simmer in my mind. Insulting both Samsara and I? I hated it. But just like when I was a regular monster girl, I continued to put on a smile. The desire to ball my fists rose inside of me, but I kept my hands flat on my legs.

  “Wait, you mentioned that you lived like this when we were normal-sized?” Samsara asked. I also felt anger building up within her.

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to bother you with what other humans thought of us,” I said.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t hurt or kill them,” she said.

  “Would’ve been caught. Then you’d be alone. That wouldn’t be worth it.”

  “Thanks for not leaving me,” Samsara said. “But I seriously can’t bear them talking about us that way.”

  “We could eat them,” I internally smirked.

  “But then that would make Aisling and Nara sad,” Samsara complained. Did that mean if I made them happy, it would be fine to eat them? I could feel Samsara sigh in disappointment. What? It was just a thought experiment.

  “Then let’s go with our ‘kind’ personalities,” I told her.

  We both waved at the trio of monster girls as they stood quite a distance from us.

  “Hello!” Samsara tried to smile. I could feel it straining her. I smiled as well, but it wasn’t as difficult for me. All my real-world experience paid off. This was no different from me smiling when humans talked about exterminating monster girls. Although I doubt these monster girls could kill us.

  Aisling waved back at us.

  “Why did you even bring them here?” the fox girl shook her head, ignoring us. Rude.

  “They can help out our village,” Aisling said, folding her arms. “They saved us from a horde of feral vulture girls and gave us their meat. I think I’ve repeated this like a dozen times Halinka.”

  “And like I said, not following our rules is going to get both you and everyone else killed,” Halinka said as she stomped her right foot. Cracks appeared where she stomped. “Irene has been missing for over two days ever since she violated our curfew. She is the 10th monster girl to go missing!”

  “Who’s Irene?” I asked.

  “They can hear us?” Halinka asked, her fox ears drooping downwards. I would have found it cute if she hadn’t been insulting us for the past five minutes.

  “Apparently so,” Aisling crossed her arms.

  “Still, you have brought potentially deceptive and ravenous beasts to our home,” Halinka said.

  “Please ask them to leave,” The other monster girl said. “They are ruining the safety of this village by being here. We will discuss your punishment later.”

  The anger inside of Samsara reached a boiling point as she heard a mention of a punishment. Our “kind” personalities weren’t working on them.

  Time for a meaner one then. My hair tentacles went out and grabbed Halinka and the other monster girl. They yelped as I grabbed them.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Look, we don’t appreciate you insulting us, and Samsara over here doesn’t like it that you are threatening to punish Aisling and Nara.”

  Both of them gulped in fear.

  “We’re not going to attack this village,” I said. “But we are people like you. And if you really have a problem with us, you’ll tell us directly rather than acting as if we are some mindless creature you gossip about nearly a hundred meters away. Understood?”

  Halinka and the other monster girl elder nodded slowly while trembling.

  “Good,” I said, lowering them to the ground and releasing them. I imagined throwing them to the ground, but that might just kill them. Which I personally wasn’t opposed to, but maybe they could be made to worship us later.

  “Look, I know you don’t like us,” Samsara started off. “But we’ll try to find Irene for you.” I was taken back a bit by Samsara suggesting this. Mainly because we never met this Irene before in our life. Why should we do anything for this Irene? And if she truly has gone missing, what are the chances that we’d find her? We could be wasting our time if she got killed by a swarm of monster girls. Actually, we could eat those monster girls, so it wouldn’t be a waste of time. I guessed it wasn’t such a bad idea. We were bound to gain something from it if we went back into the wilds.

  “You… would help find… her?” Halinka stammered. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Samsara replied. “We already saved Aisling and Nara.”

  “Oh, then good luck, then,” Halinka said, straining a smile. Her fox ears were still dropped downwards. “Right, Eivor?”

  “Yes… yes…” The other monster girl, apparently called Eivor, stammered. “Good luck. We wish you the best. Aisling, you are no longer punished.”

  “And Nara,” Samsara called out.

  “And Nara,” Eivor repeated. The two of them sprinted back down the valley. I internally giggled. Well, that went better than expected.

  “Thanks for talking sense into them,” Aisling said. “They wouldn’t listen to me at all. Besides, Irene's going missing has nothing to do with finding a friendly Kaiju.”

  “Yeah, those rules seem kind of stupid,” Samsara nodded.

  “Oh, and it’s a new day,” Aisling said, her eyes widening. “We should worship you.”

  Aisling and Nara knelt and spoke the same short prayer as yesterday.

  Warmth spread throughout our Cores. And then it spread to the rest of our body. We both let out a contented sigh. This felt so good, addicting even. [Tracking], I saw that our mana had increased by 220. And that was with only two people worshiping us.

  “You may rise,” I told them, also standing up. They stood up as well.

  “Hey, before we go find Irene for you all, we have something we want to teach you,” Samsara said, slithering closer to them. Nara took a step back, but Aisling stood still.

  “What are you going to teach us?” Aisling asked, looking up at Samsara’s massive form.

  “Magic,” Samsara said. “I will need to touch your heads. Is that fine?”

  Aisling nodded. “Sure.”

  “Sure…” Nara stammered after looking at Aisling. She went back to being scared of us.

  “We’ll just have to talk about her village later,” Samsara told me as she reached out with her clawed index finger towards Aisling. She activated [Enlighten] and thought about the [Blood Spike] [Incantation]. The tip of Samsara’s clawed finger connected with Aisling’s forehead. The tip was nearly as large as her forehead. Aisling stumbled back and fell on the ground.

  “What was that?” Aisling asked, standing back up. She put her hands on her temples. “My head feels a bit dizzy.” Samsara relayed to her what Devotio told us about magic.

  “Are you ready for me to give another [Incantation]?” Samsara asked.

  “Yes, just give me a few seconds to prepare myself,” Aisling said, rubbing her forehead. “Okay, I’m ready now.”

  Samsara touched Aisling again, this time [Enlightening] her with [Blood Spike Launch].

  “Do you want to try the spells out?” Samsara asked.

  Aisling nodded, and I saw her hold out her hand. She winced as a hardened red spike emerged from her hand. I was a bit confused why it was red when ours were blue, but then I remembered that Kaiju blood is blue while regular monster girls had red blood.

  Aisling pointed down at the ground. The one-meter spike launched off her hand and embedded itself into the stone ground, leaving cracks.

  “This is so cool!” Aisling said, giving us a thumbs up. “Nara, you have to try this!”

  “Are you ready, Nara?” Samsara asked.

  Nara simply nodded in response. Even though she was quiet, her face seemed full of determination. She stepped forward as Samsara’s clawed finger descended. I saw Nara shiver as Samsara [Enlightened] her with [Blood Spike]. But unlike Aisling, she didn’t fall back. Samsara kept her clawed tip on Nara’s dark green forehead and [Enlightened] her with [Blood Spike Launch].

  She stepped back and looked towards her tail. A crystalline red spike formed on its tip. Nara aimed her tail up and away from us, and the spike went flying through the air. It landed several meters away from us.

  Samsara clapped her hands. “Now both of you can protect yourselves if you ever get into danger again.”

  “Plus, we’ll need you to come with us to find Irene,” I said. “You know the layout of the land, and we don’t. It would be terrible if you died, so make sure to use [Blood Spike].” I didn’t want to miss out on the feeling of being worshiped. It felt so much better as a Demiurge.

  “Don’t worry,” Aisling said, turning to face me. “You went through all the effort to save us, I won’t let you down by dying after you gifted us these spells.”

  Samsara gave her a smile. I made sure to copy her.

  “I’ll need to speak with one of the guards first to find out what direction she went,” Aisling said, walking away. “I’ll be right back.”

  After what felt like an eternity, Aisling came walking back. Did these people not have phones? What a pain.

  “I don’t see any cars or vehicles at all,” Samsara said. “Plus, the roads near the houses look like they are made out of wood rather than being paved with concrete.”

  “Maybe we should have volunteered to ask the guard ourselves,” I said. “Aisling is painfully slow with her tiny legs.”

  “I think they are still too scared of us,” Samsara said. “Hopefully, we can make them less scared.”

  “It will be quicker this way if I carry both of you,” I said, my tentacles picking them up by the torso. Another tentacle went to restrain Samsara’s hair snake. I didn’t want the snake to eat my worshipers. Aisling and Nara both squeaked. “And the longer Irene stays missing, the harder it gets to find her. So we should get going as quickly as possible.” Of course, there was no guarantee that we would find Irene. But I didn’t want to walk sluggishly behind them. Better to make them just ride with us.

  “Oh, okay,” Aisling said, dangling in mid-air in front of me. “That makes sense. Could you give us a heads up next time, though?” Nope.

  “Do you know where Irene last went?” I asked, ignoring her question.

  “Yeah, the lookout on the night shift said that she followed the river in that direction.” Aisling pointed in the direction away from the valley.

  I was about to break into a sprint when I nearly forgot something important.

  “What does Irene look like?” I asked, tilting my head.

  “She’s a falcon girl,” Nara pointed out. Her tail wiggled in the air, she dangled to the side of me.

  “She also wore a brown tunic and skirt the night she went out,” Aisling said. “It matches her brown feathers.”

  Got it. Brown feathers. Brown tunic. Brown skirt.

  “Ready?” I asked Samsara.

  “Sure,” Samsara asked. “Should we also ask Aisling and Nara if they are ready?”

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I said, beginning to jog near the edge of the river. The wind breezed against me. Aisling let out a cheer as she felt us go fast, while Nara remained quiet. They should be thankful they got a free Kaiju girl ride.

  The stone turned into grass as we left the valley, but the river continued. This was a different river from the one that came from the waterfall, since it didn’t seem to lead back to the forest.

  Something weird appeared up ahead. As we got closer, I realized what it was. Black smoke.