"-So this here is the church?" Todd asks mostly rhetorically.

  We've been lead to a small, innocuous building, eerily similar to all of the other red houses around. It was right next to the wizard's house, so it was hardly a walk at all.

  "It reminds me of my barn," I mumble, looking up the rather high ceiling. As much as this place was called a church, it really seems more like a small barn, with storage thrown in for good measure. There aren't any chairs or anything to sit on, so the only slightly religious thing would be the altar. Well, I call it an altar, but it's really just a table with a bunch of strange things on top of it, with an open coffin in front of it.

  "I suppose so, fiend. As impious as it sounds, this is actually a repurposed barn. But, it has all the necessary parts for it to be a church. We didn't have much of a choice. Mister wouldn't let us cut down any more trees, but according to the new rules, what with you returners and the nearby dungeon, we had to set it all up," the mini-wizard explains, walking up the altar. "You've got the coffin, the perfectly spherical orb that Mister helped make, it's made of stone but it does its job, I think, and then we have the thing made of silver. You're lucky Aunt Pia had an old silver spoon left from her father, that's for sure!"

  Even when he explained all the objects, I still don't really understand what they're all supposed to do. Then again, I don't need to understand it to make use of it. I turn back to Todd, my unease growing by the second.

  "-You're really sure about this?" I ask, wringing my hands. He smiles, that relaxed, uncaring smirk of his.

  "Yeah man! This is as safe as it gets, y'know? We'll do all that stuff what with the wizard guy once you've evolved, yeah?" Todd answers.

  "...I'm still not sure why you're helping me," I only meant to mumble it, but it came out as an actual query. Todd makes a dumb face, like that of an otter in disgrace, before speaking.

  "-It's interesting? Like, as I said, I'm not here to win or get really buff or nothing, I just want to have fun! Girls just wanna have fun, heh!"

  "-You're a girl-?"

  "It's a figure of speech, geez! But, if you're ready, then you can just-,"

  -Heat.

  He didn't even notice it happening. Within a second at most, his eyes glaze over, and he simply drops like a sack of hammers. But he doesn't hit the floor. No, he falls over, but he hits the ground not as a cold dead body, but as a puffy cloud of back smoke, instantly billowing out and becoming exactly nothing. Or, not exactly nothing, since he leaves a fair few of his things behind. But otherwise, he just poofed out of existence, like a bad magic trick, leaving a cloud of black-mold dust behind.

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  "-do it whenever you feel like it-, wait, where,," Todd says, and I whip my head around to notice he's actually in the coffin, sitting up as if to get out of bed. He looks exceptionally confused. For a moment, he just examines his surroundings, his head cocking up and down and here and there to get a look at his surroundings before turning to look at me. "D-, dude?! The fuck did you do-??"

  "Hold on, let me read... Alright, okay, if it makes you feel better, it seems to have worked," I say in an attempt to reassure him, but it doesn't seem to work much.

  "Yeah, sure, great, but may I know what you did to kill me in like, an instant??" he asks as he steps out of the coffin with uneasy steps, revealing that he has lost his pants. I can't really tell how he's feeling by the sound of his voice. He sounds like the perfect combination of scared, interested and awed.

  "I,, in short, I fried your brain. Don't think much about it."

  He squints at me, before nodding a bit solemnly. Here our conversation takes a bit of a pause as he picks his clothes up off the ground, putting the pants back on and strapping the sword around his waist.

  "-There! But, so, uh, you can evolve now??" he asks, his eyes turning starry for some odd reason.

  "-Yes. According to the blue boxes, at least."

  "So, what are you waiting for?? Let's do it!"

  I glance at him, and turn back to the blue boxes. If I were to guess, I'm still a bit rattled over how similar this all was to the, the goblin. Same way of going, same spell, and I got almost exactly the same messages afterwards. It just... I'm still not really okay with what I did. But that is behind me now! I haven't been forgiven, but confessing was all I wanted anyways!

  I shake off the thoughts.

  "I sure hope nothing has changed since last time, that would be mighty odd. Okay, so... 'Yes'."

  "-You see anything?"

  "Yeah, uh, give me a moment-,,"