Forest 3

~~*~~

She was in space again.

She had the body of a human girl again but instead of her body being made from light, she had a solid existence with flesh and bone. She could see the color of her hair, the smoothness of her skin, and the tininess of her feet. This wasn't the body she made into a meat suit but her own, her true human vessel. She admired her figure as her shirt hugged her small figure.

She sat up on the couch while still inspecting her body. The pseudo-god was on the other side of the 'room' doing something with his back turned. Looking at the ground, it wasn't totally transparent anymore and the gravity was at a stable level. The pseudo-god must've wanted her to feel more comfortable. He turned around with a tray of tea with two cups.

"I feel we got off with the wrong impression of each other. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable before," the pseudo-god in the nice suit said. He walked over with the tray in one hand and snapped his fingers with the other to bring forth a small table and sofa next to her.

Again, he was acting like a pretentious bastard, she thought.

"Yes, no kidding. You were very creepy. What do you want, pseudo-god?" The pseudo-god wore an arrogant smile as he sat next to her and placed the tray on the table between them.

As he poured them both a cup of tea, the pseudo-god questioned, "Pseudo-god?"

"I think the name suits you," she said sternly. The man chuckled at her serious expression as she inched away from him.

"I am a god. But you can just call me by my name, Zephon."

"Okay, Zephon. What do you want from me? You said before we'll talk once I made a decision." She asked as she accepted the tea from him.

"You're so eager to get straight to the point but I thought we could just talk, get to know one another. I am very interested in learning your tale. Although you may not know, transgender people do not exist on Theia," he said as he raised his cup from his plate. They both drank together. Theia, obviously the name of the planet but why no transgender people? There should be some, statistically speaking.

"The tea's good. Sweet, how I like it. You seem to know so much about me already."

"I like my tea sweet too," Zephon said.

She noticed that he took on a more cautious tone when talking to her this time.

"You see, I'm a god just not the God. I'm more of a caretaker of this world and it's my business to correct things that go awry. This was why I researched you from the caretaker of your world."

"So, you're saying my reincarnation was a mistake?"

"Yes. Human beings aren't meant to be reincarnated to different worlds. Which is why I offered to have you sent back to your old world."

Although her suspension of disbelief was strong, she wasn't stupid. If this was his only motivation, he won't have acted so arrogantly before. Was this because of Black? Did he fear her because of him? Whatever was the case, he was playing her. He knew about Black and allowed her to suffer.

"Why was I reborn as a slime?"

"That was just chance," Zephon said plainly. That answer irritated her and she glared at him. "It was an unfortunate accident."

"Yes, very unfortunate," she said sarcastically. "You knew how being a monster would affect me and you made me go through that!"

"It was to teach you the severity of your situation. As you know, a slime has no solid identity. I warned you. Wasn't that what you wanted? To decide for yourself?"

She was upset but he had a point. However, she noted how he didn't mention anything about the Network or how it related to Black. Since he didn't mention it, she assumed Zephon didn't want her to know which alarmed her. She switched the topic.

"You said your job is correcting mistakes. Is being transgender a mistake you correct?" No matter what Zephon was saying was true or false, she wanted to hear what he had to say.

"No, it simply doesn't exist on Theia."

The safe and bureaucratic answer. That was disappointing.

"Cayden…" He gently called for her while in mid-thought as if comforting her.

"Don't call me that!"

She interjected and yelled with irritation.

"I hate that name..."

"Can you tell me what happened?" He pretended to be concerned. The pseudo-god was trying too hard to get to her good side. However, if she was to ever discuss her previous life, it would be with someone open and accepting of her situation. This could be the only time she'd ever discuss this ever again and it wasn't like he didn't know already. She sighed.

"At first, I thought I was losing my mind. A boy like me wasn't supposed to have these thoughts. But I just realized how futile my existence was in my old world. I had accepted a choice of how I wanted to live. When I came out to my parents, they were furious. My younger sister was confused and made fun of me. My older brother ignored me."

Zephon had a face full of pity as she searched him for a reaction.

"I didn't kill myself if that was what you thought."

"Oh. I apologize for those thoughts then. I'm sorry about what you went through," he said in sympathy. She ignored his pity and moved on.

"Once I woke up in this world, I thought it was over. I thought I was freed but it was the same."

"That could only mean that it was a part of you."

"But tell me, you would know more than I do. Were these feelings a part of me from when I was born? Or were they become a part of me after?"

"I'm not sure. Humans are complicated like that and there's no sense in the chicken or egg first argument."

"You don't know? You really are a pseudo-god," she mocked. Trying not to look offended, the pseudo-god brought back the conversation.

"This brings us back to the offer I'm giving you. I've seen you work very hard and I know your monstrous thoughts and body dysphoria are getting to you. I have given you time to think it through. I can bring you back to your world. You'll be reincarnated as a girl but you won't keep your memories. How about it?"

He was taking advantage of her weaknesses. The problem with her body dysphoria and Black. He was pressing her in the most despicable way possible.

"No," she answered immediately. She sipped more of her tea, enjoying the favor.

"Well, that's great to hear. Let's get…. Wait, what?" He stared at her in disbelief.

"I'll be watching over you.' That was a good touch," she said confrontationally, she made a clear challenge to the pseudo-god. "I don't believe you. You mean to say that you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart?"

"This is my job description, after all," he said irritably.

"You know nothing about me at all. What I obtain in life is through my own effort, to have something like this handed to me is against everything I am."

"So, that's your answer, huh?" Zephon was disheartened by her words. He went through all the effort but didn't get anywhere with her. She might have hurt his pride. Good, she thought.

"But I have to say, if my circumstances were different—I might have taken you up on your offer but now, I'm going to live this life to the fullest," she enthralled him.

"I'm not sure I entirely understand, you're a slime. What could you possibly do?"

"A lot more than you apparently know. Thank you for the tea, now send me back," she said as she put her cup down. Zephon looked away as he reflected on something in his mind.

"I apologize. I underestimated you. You're a strong person," Zephon said.

"Thanks, I guess," she responded, not knowing how to take the compliment.

"What I meant was that I'll be watching over your soul, not everything you've been doing so please don't think I've lied to you. I wanted to chat with you because I thought you finally accepted your gender. I thought I could help you the only way I knew how." By being a pretentious god? However, since he was offering, there was one thing she wanted an answer on.

"I see. Then, can I ask you about one thing?"

"Shoot."

"I had a vision about a spaceship before I was reborn to this world, right after I died. Do you know anything about it?"

"It sounds familiar, was the ship in a battle of some kind?"

It seemed she was finally making progress in finding the reason for her reincarnation. She only needed to be skeptical of what he says and not trust his word alone. "Yes."

"Interesting. When we next talk, I'll have something for you on that. My offer will still be on the table then."

"Okay, thanks, Zephon." He snapped his fingers and the girl was gone instantly. With a blank expression, he reflected on the girl's motivations and character. She declined him so that meant she had a way to obtain a stable body in this world. People who reincarnated into slimes usually lose their sanity because of their loss of identity.

However, this girl survived nearly two months and was still going strong. Also, she declined him, showing her sense of purpose and will to live despite her circumstances. She was strong, he repeated to himself. Finishing his tea, he placed his cup on the table.

In a fit of rage, he got up and flipped the table, spilling the tea and smashing the china on the floor and sending the debris across the non-existent boundaries of the room.

Looking around, no one else was there with him but the empty void of space and the celestial bodies of the sky. Zephon didn't want to be seen acting that way. And with a snap of his fingers, the dream ended.

***

The slime woke up after an unknown amount of time in a daze. She was still in her baby wolf form. It was morning and something was gnawing on her foot.

It was a zombie.

Her suspension of disbelief was still strong. She didn't even bat an eye at the reanimated corpse of one of the soldiers she killed. Its face was dry, its flesh was falling away, and its irises and pupils faded. Telling by the decomposition of the zombie, it must have been at least a week since she passed out from mana exhaustion. She looked into the corpse and saw a small life-crystal embedded into its skull.

The zombie soldier lifted her small wolf body as it attempted to bite her foot off. The pain from the biting seemed to be overshadowed by the pain from her cracked life-crystal. The zombie got what it wanted. Her right hind leg was ripped clean off.

She was amazed at how she could've maintained her form while in so much pain. One gnawed off leg was nothing to her. She quickly regenerated the foot and twisted her body to whip the undead in the head with her tail. She concentrated her mana into the blow and crushed its head along with its life-crystal.

The zombie dropped her to the ground. She could barely move. The pain was less than it was previously but it was still agonizing. Seeing the soul of the zombie fade, she was reminded of Jun. She hurried and looked inside her storage space in her slime.

There, she found Jun's body and the 'light-of-life' she collected was stored within a crystal. Mana crystals couldn't be stored so she had to keep a hold of it in her slime. The new life-crystal she created shined brightly with the soul of her fallen friend.

The slime girl became aware of her own emotions in the past few weeks with her friend. It was a part of her humanity she long thought was gone even before she came to this world. Human emotions were powerful. Emotions were something she never experienced much of and with such intensity as a boy. She wanted her friend back…

With the immediate threat taken care of, she wanted to assess what she spoke about from the pseudo-god. Zephon had said a few noteworthy things that she had to consider.

The pseudo-god couldn't see everything she did so he must not have known about her meat suits. His goal was to get her out of this world but he couldn't do it against her will so he began to coax her. His reasoning was sound, going back would be preferred in terms of quality of life and survival, but he was missing the point.

She wanted to live her life the way she wished, not as one directed her to. This was the hand she was dealt, so there was little point in correcting the god's 'mistake.' God's mistakes were just futile attempts to control the universe. Her life was hers alone.

Zephon's motives could be linked to what Black was inside her. Since he didn't mention the Network or its influence on her, it was safe to deduce that he was purposefully excluding that information. There was no doubt that Zephon had some control of the Network since he could enter and alter her dreams and offered to send her soul back to her own world.

If Black's words were to be believed, she was part of her which was compatible with her monster body and had grown from the Network's information. This seemed complicated.

The Network was a sea of souls and also a sea of information within those souls. Black seemed to know what was in there. This led to Black assisting her twice by performing actions she shouldn't have knowledge of. If she knew so much, why was she hiding it and preventing her from accessing the Network information proper?

A chill went down her spine.

Ignorance was bliss. The moment she opened herself fully to the Network would be the day she would die and Black would take over.

She was scared. She was scared of what she might become. But she had to keep moving forward and believe that whatever happened from now on would be for the best. Whether a monster or a human, whatever she was becoming, she would be herself.

Right now, she took her first step to a new life… only to double-down in pain from her cracked crystal.

Can I even walk in this condition?!