"The opposite of aimlessness is death."

That night, Elaine had a dream. No it wasn’t about her aspirations in life or what kind of man she liked— it was more like a vision, a recollection.

A boy and two girls, barely out of their teenage years in appearance, fought monsters on all sides; their movements were flawless, coordinated, mutual... the way they moved betrayed the amount of time they had spent between life and death together. Though the monsters came at them in dense waves, they managed to avoid being overwhelmed by balancing their actions, from killing to body disposal. It was a dance. That was all she could describe it as. It was an epic, beautiful battle, but one that didn’t seem to have an end in sight.

Abruptly, the scene changed to them standing atop a burning castle. Though the walls burned and collapsed around them, their faces had full smiles. But most of all, they looked relieved, like a titanic weight had been lifted from their shoulders. They stood together, their hands holding each others’. They faced the rising sun as it slowly crested over the mountains. As the light grew brighter and brighter, Elaine’s vision was eventually distorted and, eventually, disappeared.

And that was where her dream ended.

Strange. It definitely wasn’t her memories. The scenario wasn’t anything she’d like being in as well. Maybe it was from a game she had played in the past? Probably. Games had all sorts of scenarios, especially if you counted those Japanese ones... A nightmare? Definitely not. But the dream made her feel energetic, as if she had lived through those moments herself. She almost felt happy to meet the new day.

“Anyway, that was it. Weird dream, huh?”

“Not at all. It’s quite common. The last ‘Demon King Subjugation’ occurred only roughly twenty-five years ago. Then the one before that was, to my knowledge, more than a hundred years before.”

“... So that same trope is in this world eh?”

“What was that?”

“It was nothing.”

Elaine had never thought that the first thing she would be doing on a morning was to fish while talking to a snake. She didn’t like snakes, it was important to note.

Things have developed in a strange direction.

The fish were quite willing to be caught that day. Maybe it was because there were a lot of corpses floating on the water for them to feed on. Good for her; she was hungry and she hadn’t had fish for... two days. Almost four days in terms of hours back in her world. Her mother made seafood-based meals almost every day so having to go for more than twenty-four hours without any was an offense to her biology.

“Don’t you think you’ve caught enough fish?”

“No. We can never have enough fish. And we need rice.”

“... What is ‘rice’?”

“What?!”

It was the shock of her life.

They had been hard at work since early in the morning. They had spent most of the waking hours burying corpses a distance from the lake. It would have been an impossible feat if Ss’zsl didn’t know magic to move the earth. It was necessary, as she had learned that bodies that weren’t completely consumed or buried tended to become undead after a period of time.

Undead! They existed in that world! Maybe all those hours playing Minecraft would come in handy.

“Yikes.”

They had to do it especially because no scavengers will come at least that day. Apparently because the lake had become the target of a large-scale assault by dungeon monsters, the forest animals would avoid it for a period of time including the scavengers. Monsters and beasts are different creatures and they were at odds with each other as much as humans were to the former. Actually, monsters were the natural enemies of everything else in this world it seemed. When she asked what exactly monsters were, all Ss’zsl could reply with was that they were ‘creatures who feed on magic.’

With her friend’s inability to make use of its other... uhh... bodies, she was left with labor duty. In other words, she had to do the lifting – lifting of rotted corpses. Anyway they had managed to bury about twenty bodies until Elaine couldn’t feel her knees. Ss’zsl’s wasn’t better off as the repeated use of magic almost made him faint twice. She didn’t know how many they could have done if she was more fit or if Ss’zsl had full use of its body but whatever.

“What do you mean you don’t have rice?!”

“Mind if you describe what this ‘rice’ looks like?”

“It’s like large, white... seeds? Yeah it looks like white grains and when you boil it, it becomes fluffy and delicious.”

“Hmm I don’t think I know what this ‘rice’ is. We do have wheat though.”

“That’s not the same!”

She gets unusually fired up when it came to rice.

Eventually they ran out of bait and moved on to cooking. Though it was mostly for Elaine, since Ss’zsl could eat the fish raw by virtue of it being a snake, the latter assisted with creating a campfire regardless. Elaine learned that there was even a proper way to identify usable firewood in that world, which was quite enlightening and... shocking.

“Don’t use those branches with blue streaks on the bark. Those release poisonous gas when burned.”

“What?!”

“Don’t use those reddish ones either, they become hot enough to melt the ground.”

“...”

Apparently, some of the pinecone-looking things also explode when exposed to heat.

Cooking itself was as straightforward as it comes. At least even in that world the method to cook wasn’t any different from hers. All she had to do was skewer the fish with a long twig and then stick it near the fire. It was exactly like a camping trip, only much more... adventurous.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but may I ask why you’re still half-naked? Is this a new human trend?”

“I can’t help it! And no, it’s not! I think?”

Understandably, everybody she had met questioned her lack of proper clothing.

“... Do you have something I could wear by any chance?”

How could it? She’d never seen it wear anything. Why would a snake-person wear clothes anyway?

“Hmm. I think I may have some cloth back at the den.”

“Huh? Really?!”

“Yes, though it’s not exactly clothes for a human. But you might find a way to wear it in the meantime.”

At that point anything would have been fine as long as she could just get warm. It was a miracle that she hadn’t suffered dangerous shivers yet – that or it was thanks to almost always being in the right place in the right time.

Eager to put something over herself, she rushed to finish breakfast so they could go back to the den. She brought a basket with seven of the smaller ones she had caught so the other snakes that made Ss’zsl’s body could have something to eat.

The sight of them weakly try to swallow the food broke her heart.

She remembered the night before. A lot of its snakes had back then. She had made a careful count of how many Ss’zsl had before they went to the lake. Out of the twenty-six, nineteen died, which included the snakes that weren’t able to make it back by themselves, to those that had died along the way, to the ones that expired under her care. There were undoubtedly more if she would count the ones that had died by the lake prior to their second meeting. If she had just let it run off to wherever it was going to go, how many would have survived? Would any survive at all?

It got her thinking.

“Here it is, Miss Elaine.”

“Hey, Ss’zsl.”

“What is it?”

“... I’m glad you’re still alive.”

“Yes... Indeed.”

.

After they buried ten more bodies Ss’zsl finally collapsed from the exhaustion. Despite being tired herself, Elaine somehow didn’t feel sleepy. With nothing else to do she decided to just idle by the lake and have her feet take a nice dip.

Most of the bodies that were floating had already been taken care of by whatever carnivorous fish that lived within. How she wasn’t on the breakfast menu the day when she took a dip before was anybody’s guess. Anyway, she wondered why the scavengers in the lake were active but not the ones from the woods. If what Ss’zsl had said was true then maybe it did not apply to those that lived within the lake itself? They can’t get out of the water anyway, not without growing a pair of legs.

Then again, this was a different world, so maybe some of them could.

“Finally a bit warmer, but still pretty off.”

She’d been lent a large sheet of cloth that had slots for a belt around it. After some curious handling, she managed to fit it on her body in a way that made her look, at the very most, like a woman of Greece. Well she looked more like an ascetic monk really. Whatever. At least it was much, much better than walking around with only her underwear on.

Without anything to do, Elaine busied herself planning what she could. She kept her hands occupied by flipping her coin repeatedly. She had become so used to it that she did not need to look at it to know where it would fall.

“I need to find where Alice went... with her dragon.”

She found herself extremely worried about the little girl who claimed she was – and wasn’t a half-fairy. Maybe it was because of her expressions of deep loneliness that sometimes slipped from her lively, childish face. Maybe it was because she just liked the girl.

Or maybe she just wanted to get back at her for cheating.

Yeah that was definitely it.

“I wonder what game we should play for my revenge match.”

It was nice to finally have a purpose. Worrying about her survival was important but a goal was something to work for, something to look forward to.

But how and where should she start looking for her?

“Right. The dragon.”

Where the dragon goes, Alice goes. And there was no way for a gleaming, golden dragon to go anywhere without attracting attention. As long as they did not walk to... wherever they went, then surely someone must have seen them.

“I need to ask Ss’zsl later.”

All the earlier enthusiasm suddenly disappeared.

She took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The smell of rot entered in full force and assaulted her rose. She retched in disgust. Her hands reached down to look for the towel she had borrowed when it touched something else.

It was bouncy, and kind of felt like a beach ball. It was also rather damp. Weird feeling, that.

“Huh?”

She opened her teary eye and saw—

“A slime?”

Featureless and strangely adorable, head-sized emerald green slime was idling near her feet. Without any eyes she had trouble judging whether or not it was looking at her but she had a feeling that it was. Why?

Wait, aren’t slimes ‘monsters’?

“Erm... are you... going to eat me?”

The slime rolled to the side. It almost looked like it was questioning her. Elaine had no response. After all she doubted the slime could understand her. In most RPGs, slimes were the lowest forms of mobs. They were weak and were often either ignored completely or farmed for easy experience.

Even she, unarmed as she was, could probably pop the little guy easily.

She entertained the idea of killing it to see if she would gain ‘exp’ like those other isekai fantasies she’d read, but quickly gave up. It didn’t seem right somehow and seeing how cute it was definitely put a damper on her mood. So what could she do?

“Hey little one, what are you doing here?”

Ss’zsl could talk so maybe the little ball of whatever it was could as well. The slime stopped and leaned forward, which caused Elaine to expect something to happen... until it just bounced a couple of times without a word.

Right. Slimes were often depicted as stupid too.

Hey, what if...

“Have you seen a big dragon?”

Yeah, she had nothing else to do. It didn’t seem hostile so why not?

Without any way to express itself, the slime bounced twice again. Then it went off towards the woods like a runaway basketball.

“Could it be...?”

She could only hope. Following the path it took, she entered the forest once again. It didn’t take her long to catch up to the slime as it was...

“... What are you doing?”

... eating some mushrooms.

.

“A slime, you say?”

“Yeah a green one. Kind of like emerald in color.”

“Ah, an acid slime. Careful with those, they can melt flesh in seconds.”

“Jesus!”

“Who’s that? Anyway, what happened in the end?”

“It gave me a mushroom.”

“And what did you do?”

“I ate it.”

“...”