18

O(I)O(I)

Saitama looked at the two transparent girls floating off the floors of his shabby apartment floor, remarked "Why haven't you two moved on to the afterlife?"

They both looked puzzled. Eilho was the one to answer first.

"We don't know. Sauve assumed she was still here because she felt guilty about me turning into a snake and I wasn't dead-my soul was."

"Don't worry about us though." Sauve assured him. "We just stay with you and everything—"

Saitama didn't know what just happened. One moment he was having a conversation he wasn't a fan of with two ghost girls and the next minute he was back in his apartment, and Genos was sitting in front of him mimicking his posture.

"Master!" He exclaimed.

Although it vexed him hearing it every time this time he felt relieved to hear it. For the first time in weeks—or just the night because he really couldn't tell if what he just experienced was a dream, Saitama smiled.

"Genos. I just had the weirdest isekai style manga dream. It was generic, slow, and overall confusing but in the end...at least I made two little girls find peace."

"Master Saitama...that wasn't a dream." The bald hero's eyes perked up when Genos mentioned that. "What's more...we have a visitor."

When he used the term "visitor" he expected to see someone like King or Fubuki in his relaxation room. Instead, he approached a completely different person. He could tell she was an elf just by those prominent ears of her-and the fact he really did spend weeks in a fantasy world.

Unlike in most stories where the elves had bright, tanned, or mocha skin this one was grungier, more muscular, had violet banged hair, eyes that were like looking at an owl from how they were green with a little ring of yellow between the sclera's and her irises, wore a black long-sleeved shirt with fingerless motorcycle white gloves and a purple skirt. Her elbows were covered in what looked like knee guards only green and blue, her midriff was imbued with three red tally marks adjacent to the ring of her bellybutton, and she wore a tiara in the filigree of gold with a green emerald embedded in a perfectly shaped rectangular slot.

In her hand there was steam roiling from a tea cup he hardly used. She took a sip of it, didn't even react to what was probably hot water, then turned her attention to Saitama.

"So your the 'Master' I heard so much about." She stared at him for a long minute before she smiled. "Nice to meet you. Do you have any milk?"

O(I)O(I)

In a late evening, during the same night Saitama returned home, a small army of two dozen goblins trekked through the forest with the vampire they used as a harbinger of death.

It was the vampire's decision for them to come out here and until they were standing over the body of a rotting minotaur, they still didn't question his orders.

"Well," he said. "Are any of you going to start eating this purple flesh?"

Some were oppressed with his decision to make them eat it while others roared with excitement before jumping in and chomped on the minotaur in a ravenous frenzy.

The vampire took delight watching them tear its flesh off with their jagged teeth, but more so the miasma they emanated as their aura's; something only he could see.

While the miasma glowered with every bite, his eyes deviated to the remaining lesser goblins not indulging in the flesh of their kill.

"What's the matter? Afraid of having a bite of this tasty morsel?"

Who should talk to him, shuddering for a fleeting moment gazing at his face, was none other than the leader himself.

"Minotaur meat may strengthen those who eat it, but it also make's whoever eats it lose empathy and their gentleness. It's not lucrative for all of us."

The vampire stared at the leader, listened to his reason, smiled.

"And here I thought goblins lived by eating the living and dead like vultures. As for the rest of you..."

A high-pitch roar escaped the vampires' lips and reverberated in the goblin's heads. They stopped eating, listened.

"Save some for your discriminate new recruits."

O(I)O(I)

The harpy's mopped around in their nests; downtrodden and flapping their wings weakly so they only hovered for a few seconds. It was only two days ago they returned from their hunting to find their queen and many other of their kin slaughtered by an known person, probably a human adventurer.

Without any other harpy's left alive who witnessed this attack and no special powers that would help them track him/her down, the harpy's spent their time flapping around with no objective other than to be thankful they weren't part of the carnage.

Among them was a young harpy. She had banged green hair, gray eyes, her chest covered in white and black fur other while her neck was unblemished white, and her talons were black with only a small red circle on her middle right claw.

She felt a strange feeling on her quills she'd only feel if someone was approaching their nest.

"We have to migrate out of here!" She shouted. "Quickly, siste-"

Just then, a volley of fast projectiles launched in their direction-and splattered on the torso of a short haired harpy with coiffed red hair. It wasn't weapons that launched right into them; it was meat. The harpy's looked down to see a slab of meat just lying before their eyes. The very sight of it made a few sisters salivate before diving down to get to it in a frenzy.

While they were clawing one another trying to get a tasty morsel of meat, a vampiric creature sauntered his way into their nest.

His skin was pale white with sickly yellow talons on his fingers, oscillating red eyes, sparkly short black hair, and he was cladded in a black robe. One of the harpy's eating had to stifle down her meat chunks trying not to roar.

"Greetings you lucky creatures," he said in a loathsomely voice of vinegar. "My name is Omnsi and like you I have lost my entire clan. It might be presumptuous what I'm about to say...so at least finish your meat so you don't listen to it famished."

O(I)O(I)

Demi-humans were treated as slaves in any town or village where they were the minority and humans were the majority of the plain. In the city of Fergol, demi-humans live with over a thousand different species in harmony...except for the few who don't get their share of food at the end of the night—no place is really perfect.

A demi-human with whiskers and large teeth that could chew a tree down was lifting heavy boxes from a market with a sweet sign and nice painted walls but inside it was as nefarious as any store owned by an overweight human who never paid his workers a fair wage; had to always use a whip just to look mean and superior to his demi-human slaves.

The beaver demi-human was forced to wear a metal collar around his neck the whole time he lifted boxes with twenty tons of merchandise on the court. He couldn't get ten seconds to catch his breath after sliding the boxes inside, he was always whipped just for being a second slow.

The worst thing about him whipping his back was his masters' lopsided smile. This smile was unabashed sadism.

The demi-human did this job so many times with the same sadistic human he coined the nickname "Horsewhip".

"Work faster!"

His whip made a crackling sound that would still make Horsewhip shudder—if a miracle didn't happen. He felt no pain. He believed his lazy slave owner just had too much inhibitors tonight, but when he turned around—feeling his bones in his neck snap back together in a pleasant way—he saw a looming figure sparkling and holding his slave owner by the wrist.

The man full of pride with a whip met his end when the glittery figure stuck his fangs into the masters' nape, then rotated his fangs so two long crimson lines were in his neck.

Horsewhip was too squeamish to watch. He covered his eyes, listening to the slurping sounds he could only imagine was his slave owner being drained. After cowering through the whole horrid moment, making no attempts to the man that tortured him, opened his eyes to see an unripe green crab apple.

The apple was held by the vampire with his fangs encoated with blood.

"His blood was foul," the vampire said. "He had nothing powerful inside him, he just felt powerful with a weapon in his hand. Join me, help me slaughter your oppressors when they least suspect it, and not only will I dine on much tastier blood..." the small crab apple blossomed into a big red apple with a leaf attached to its stem. "You and your demi-human kin will have everything you could ever dream of."

Horsewhip knew the vampire didn't have any interest in him or his kind but he was starving, malnourished and he couldn't resist the enticing look of that red apple, so he snatched it faster than even the nightcrawler could react and munched furiously on it.

The vampire had a smug expression on his face. He was now a malevolent but not unemphatic master of every demi-human in this town of snobbish nobles.

O(I)O(I)

Saitama stroked his chin thinking about what to do with the elf slurping down a nice cup of tea.

Genos was next to him acting very impatient which was a quirk he inherited from Saitama's "teachings".

"What are we going to do with her?"

Saitama finally stopped staring and started to act. "Whose the only female hero we know?"

"Hellish Blizzard Fubuki? You know where we can find her?"

"No...but the best part of living in a city of heroes is you never have to go far to see one whose miffed to see you; especially her."