Kalina watched the empty sky for a few more seconds. The air up there wasn’t safe either.

The forest started about two hundred meters past the last burned house. Everything between the tree line and the village was scorched flat which Eren explained was actually safer now because the dragon’s fire had scared all the dangerous creatures away from this area.

"The whole forest is afraid to come close so the outer ring is basically a dead zone." He led her across the ash field toward a line of low bushes where something small and blue was moving.

It was a slime. About the size of a small dog and translucent blue with no eyes or face or anything recognizable. It moved by sliding across the ground with a wet sound that made Kalina’s skin crawl.

Three more slimes were oozing between the rocks nearby and behind them two rabbits with fur that shimmered like it had been dipped in liquid moonlight sat watching everything with an intensity that felt too smart for rabbits.

"These started showing up again this week." Eren pointed at the bushes. "The fire cleared the area but low level stuff always comes back first. Slimes, magical rabbits, small things."

He pulled a short knife from his belt and held it out to her.

Kalina looked at the knife, then at the slime, then back at the knife.

"You want me to kill that."

"One stab to the center. They have a core inside them like a small stone. Hit that and it’s done."

It wasn’t simple at all. Kalina had never killed anything in her life. She’d never even been camping. The closest she’d gotten to nature was a villa in Bodrum with a landscaped garden and a chef who handled the fish. She’d once refused to touch a dead pigeon that landed on her office balcony and made Eren clean it up back when he was still her employee.

He cleaned up my dead pigeon. Now he wants me to murder a piece of sentient jelly.

The slime made a soft "myu" sound and wiggled in place. It was disgusting but in a way that was almost cute like a ball of living jelly that didn’t know it was supposed to be scary.

I manage a sixty person sales division. I can stab a piece of jelly.

But her hand wouldn’t move. She could hear the insects and the distant hammering from the village and Eren breathing next to her. The evening air smelled like ash and damp soil and something sweet from the magical rabbits that she couldn’t place.

"Kalina?"

"I know." She gripped the knife harder. "I know I need to do it. Give me a second."

She took a breath and turned to Eren and bit his forearm. Hard. He jerked back and grabbed his arm.

"What the- that’s twice!"

"Courage." She grabbed the knife properly and walked toward the slime and closed her left eye and drove the blade straight into its center.

The slime popped with a wet sound and collapsed into a flat puddle of blue liquid around a small cracked stone. The core.

The forest went quiet. The insects stopped. Even the magical rabbits froze in place. Then something happened inside her head. Not a visual thing like the blue screens Eren described. More like a whisper at the very edge of her hearing, a voice that said something in a language she didn’t speak. It lasted half a second and then was gone and the forest sounds came back all at once.

She turned to Eren with wide eyes.

"What was that?"

He was rubbing the bite mark on his arm with an annoyed expression. "You can’t see the system screens unless you touch the Totem in the village center. But the system just registered you as a living creature in Evon. You’re in the system now."

"What level am I?"

"Probably not even close to Level 1 from a single slime. You’d need a bunch more kills." He tilted his head and looked at her with something she recognized from years on the sales floor. The look a person got when they realized the asset they were holding was worth more than their original estimate.

"But you felt it," he added quietly. "That means the system accepted you."

She looked at the dead slime on the ground, then at the knife, then at the three remaining slimes that had slid about two meters away like they were pretending they hadn’t seen anything.

I just killed my first monster with one eye closed and a mouthful of my boyfriend’s arm skin. My Italian grandmother would be so confused right now.

She wiped the blade on the grass and gave it back to Eren. Her hand was shaking but only slightly.

They walked back toward the village center as the sky turned deep purple. The Koen vines on the houses glowed brighter in the growing dark and the stone paths between the buildings looked like they were lit by hundreds of warm living candles growing out of the walls. Some of the houses had vines so thick that their entire front walls were covered in soft amber light.

An old elf with a leaf cigarette hanging from his lips nodded at Eren from a porch and said something slow and melodic in a language Kalina couldn’t understand. Another elf - a woman with silver hair braided down to her waist - waved from an open window where she was hanging dried herbs. They all wore very little clothing, some of them barely more than a cloth wrap around the waist and a loose open front cover.

Why do none of these people wear proper clothes? Is fabric expensive here or do they just not care?

"How many people live here?" she asked.

"About a hundred and twenty total. Most of them are on Earth right now learning Turkish and English with the system’s help." He pointed at a building with warm light and the smell of cooked meat coming through the windows.

"That one is Selena’s restaurant. An elf half cafe- half restaurant, I guess. They don’t have money so it is a bit weird to me."

Oh, so you don’t see any problem about dragons and magical plants but see the only normal thing in this fantasy world as weird?

Is he..actually stupid?

Have you lost your mind at some point?

Maybe some creature hit his head.

Eren pointed down a side street and interrupted Kalina’s inner voice like he could sense she was thinking something rude about him.

"And there’s a bakery run by Lyra a few streets down. She grinds local plants into different quality flours and makes things you wouldn’t believe." He rubbed his jaw and paused for a second too long. "They’re two of my consu- girlfriends and future mother of my kids."

Kalina’s stride didn’t change. "Two of. What do you mean two of... I thought you had a wife already?"

"I have six concubines." He said it the way he used to tell her the his phone was broken. "Four of them are on Earth with Emily. Selena and Lyra stayed here to handle food for the elves who came back."

"And Emily is your wife."

"Emily is my wife! The six are concubines. It’s not an elf tradition by the way but they can only get pregnant with my seed and I couldn’t tolarate them to be with anyone else if we will get kids. So.. They all chose it.- to be one gladly." He scratched his jaw again. "All six-seven with Emily are already pregnant including the ones you will see today."

It kind of made sense and it was scary to her.

She processed this by keeping her face completely neutral while her brain ran at triple speed. Six pregnant elf women. A pregnant wife as the seventh. And now her and maybe even Rosa. Are there more?

Wtf..?

But she’d seen the elf women they’d passed on the walk. They were attractive in a natural and slightly alien way but none of them had her height, her build, her bone structure. Kalina was unique here and she knew exactly what unique meant in a negotiation.

Maybe I can be his favorite. How hot can this Emily or a elf baker Lyra could be huh?

The thought came with something ugly underneath it and she didn’t like it. She’d spent five years making this man’s professional life miserable because she couldn’t stand watching him date Rosa. She’d called him at midnights over nothing or push his work hours set with hers.

She’d made him redo a sale presentation eleven times in one day one time.

Kalina done everything she could to squeeze Rosa out of his life and now she was already running calculations on how to outcompete a bunch of pregnant elves for the same man.

I earn him much more than anyone else!

She wasn’t proud of any of it. But she also wasn’t going to stop.

Everything was fair in this because, Love was War!

"I also need your help." Eren stopped walking and turned to face her with a serious expression she hadn’t seen before.

"As you already know, I have half a million dollars in cash and I need to buy land. Real big ass land."

Kalina raised her eyebrow with the implication of his words and understood the plans of this changed man.

"It should be big enough for two hundred elves to live on. And I need false IDs for all of them or some kind of legal solution you can figure out."

Kalina almost laughed. Land deals and identity documents were practically breakfast for someone with her connections. Her father’s network alone could handle half of it and her uncles and aunts had contacts in every municipal office in İstanbul or in all around the Turkey.

But she didn’t say that yet because a woman who showed her full hand on the first deal was a woman who would lose leverage.

"We’ll talk about it." She adjusted her sweater and noticed two figures walking toward them from the direction of the restaurant.

The first one was nearly as tall as Kalina herself. Long straight green hair that fell past her waist, a body that curved in ways human genetics didn’t produce and hips so wide they swayed with every step like a pendulum.

She wore a loose open-front tunic that hung off one shoulder and barely covered the inner half of her chest. Her legs were long and bare from mid-thigh down and she walked with the kind of relaxed confidence that came from being the most beautiful woman in any room for decades. Maybe centuries.

Okay. She’s gorgeous. That’s annoying.

The second one looked young, maybe eighteen or nineteen, short with wavy blonde hair that bounced against her collarbones. And she had...

Kalina stopped walking with wide eyes..

The blonde elf’s chest was swinging with every step she took and swinging was the only word for it because whatever was happening under her thin front cloth wasn’t being contained by it in any possible way.

Her breasts were enormous - not just large but genuinely the biggest Kalina had ever seen on a frame that small!

She looked like a little girl maybe 18 but that body was too much!

"They" bounced heavily with every step even though the girl was just walking at a normal pace and the sheer fabric draped over them left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The dark pink of her nipples pressed against the cloth and each bounce pulled the fabric tight then released it in a way that made Kalina’s brain short-circuit.

"..."

Both elves broke into a jog when they spotted Eren. The tall one reached him first and wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth with a slow deliberate kiss that lingered three seconds longer than a greeting should. Her hand slid down his bare chest and rested on his stomach.

The blonde one arrived half a second later and pressed her entire body against his other side. Those ridiculous breasts squished flat against his arm and spread outward in a way that defied physics.

She tilted her face up and Eren leaned down and kissed her too - on the mouth, softly, while the blonde elf made a small pleased sound and dug her fingers into his waist.

They were three way French-Kissing right in the broad daylight!!

Girls were speaking to Eren in rapid elvish and she didn’t understand it. But both of them touching him with the casual intimacy of women who had been sharing this man’s bed for months was crystal clear.

Kalina watched the blonde elf’s chest reshape itself against Eren’s bicep like two water balloons fighting for space while the tall one nibbled his earlobe and whispered something that made him laugh. Something inside Kalina’s head that had never broken before finally cracked.

"Elves is an Ethereal and Mystic Race." they said..

And she screamed without holding her inner anger anymore.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE AND WHY ARE YOU NAKED SHOWING THOSE GIANT THINGS?!?"

The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Both elves froze and looked at her while Eren looked at her with his stupid grinning face. Even a passing old elf with a walking stick looked at her.

Kalina pressed both hands over her mouth.

In thirty years of high society dinners and board meetings and family gatherings with Italian grandmothers who would’ve fainted at such language, Kalina Ferraro had never once cursed out loud until now.

It was a first for her.

And all because of these two vixens!

Kalina was annoyed at the entire elf race, and their fashion choices in an instance!!

Stupid elves..