[Slimy Slime] Chapter 58: Simple but Complex

I wasn’t a very shy slime but… the current situation was a bit…

“Are you comfortable King Slime?”

“Y-Yes. Uh, I’m… sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

I had overworked my body. That was saying a lot considering my whole body was made out of slime! I was pretty sure I might be just a tad, little bit, ‘dead’ if I wasn’t a slime. I could see the future now. My city, bravely marching on even after my death, becoming amazing. Sandra becoming the queen, Krrrgg following her faithfully in honor of my sacrifice. A small statue of me marking me as the first king as Tilia’s grand child ask’s “Who’s that?” a hundred years down the line…

No way! I wanted to live! No valiant sacrifices for this slime!

But still… with my body so overextended to the point even my slime was sore… I couldn’t move. Couldn’t ‘walk’. Definitely couldn’t summon a hand. Even the thought nearly sent me catatonic. Now normally, I probably should’ve just stayed on my pillow in my cave but now was no time for bed rest! I’d been out for a whole day and we were still being attacked! I could rest when I was dead.

All of that meant… I needed to be carried. Krrrgg was working hard, Michael was taking care of Tilia who’d only gotten more upset at the sounds, and smell, of battle, and I didn’t exactly ‘trust’ any of the other goblins or even Hob-Goblins quite enough to carry me around. Not without being weird about it. That left only one person…

“I’m surprised your slime isn’t burning my arms.” Sandra said.

“Do you think I’d let you carry me if it would?! I’m simply ‘turning it off’. I can control if I melt things, the same you can control if you crush a flower in your hand or not, you know?”

“Ah.”

So embarrassing! Forced to be carried in a woman’s arms like this… I didn’t exactly seem like a King right now… more like a big plushie or a pet…

I probably wouldn’t mind as much if every single goblin wasn’t staring at me… At least it definitely seemed that way. The migraine wasn’t helping much either. It felt like I’d put my head into a blender… one filled with sharks.

“To the top of the wall right?”

“Of course, I have to know what you made.”

“I already told you but… well… seeing it is different.”

It was so strange being carried. Not only was it a lot slower than I was used to, but the vantage point was completely different. Even the feeling was different. I could feel through my hands and felt my own body held every time. Now all I could feel was warm arms underneath me. Worse, being carried like this made me feel… really small. I mean, I was small, but usually I could at least ignore it!

I didn’t like this. I didn’t feel like King Slime, slime of 1000 fists, ruler of Slimetopia!! I felt an [Acid Slime], Generation 1 monster, barely a threat. I would probably be out of commission for a while and I’d literally have to rely on others while I recovered. Thank god for one my rarely noticed skills.

[Enhanced Healing - Increase your natural healing and recovery by 400%]

I was pretty sure this fell safely in the ‘Recovery’ part of that. So what would normally take a month, would only take around a week. Not let’s just hope ‘soul strain’ didn’t last a whole year…

Sandra had been moving this whole time and it was incredibly strange to watch her walk up stairs and feel every bump. But we persevered. I got the top and-

“Wow.”

“It is… incredible.”

There was a match patch of clearing that hadn’t been there last time I checked. And it, and the forest, was absolutely filled with rushing goblins, both mindless and barely breaking free of it. All rushing headlong towards our wall. But there was something new in the way. Something that stretched across the entire wall and was long enough that I was positive I shouldn’t been able to summon it with the mana we had. Blueprints or something must work differently…

It was a massive funnel. Simple. But not. I wasn’t able to summon traps with my [Dungeon Core] ever since I used them as weapons but apparently blueprints worked differently. I had no idea what happened in the giant house of hell but every Goblin that swarmed in, did not leave.

“How on earth does it work?”

“The sewer system. It destroys all matter right? And that was the problem, too many bodies. The… uhh… building kills them. And then drops their bodies down into a series of tubes that deposit them into the sewer. There’s actually a…”

And that was where she lost me. I felt like I had solid chance of understanding her until she started to talk about pneumatic tubes and magical pathways and multi stone worked saws and eventually I had to stop her.

“There is absolutely no chance we had the mana for that… and how did you even learn how to do any of that?! I thought you stayed in the village your whole life.”

Sandra frowned. “Do you not know?”

“Know what?”

Sandra stared out into blank space, before swiping at it, and suddenly, a lot of things made less and more sense.

[Dungeon Architect]

“Huh?!” I said, quite intelligently.

“When the fighting began, I got a class change option. I’ve heard of variants before but… those usually happen to the priest class when their given the blessing of a god or some rare circumstance. The knowledge of the dungeon just seemed to appear in my mind. I told you but…”

But the fighting had been too intense. I barely remembered those three days.

“As for the mana… well, it ate all the bodies.”

I blinked at that.

“All the bodies?”

“You really didn’t notice? I thought you were doing it!”

I saw our people clearing the bodies out, punched them away, but… but had I also been eating them with the dungeon? I could. I knew I could. But the thought hadn’t even occurred to me… or had it? Had I made that decision early and the dungeon just couldn’t eat that many bodies that fast?

It seemed that the dungeon was even less simple than I realized. I didn’t know how to feel. Sandra had created a hell house that protected us, which was great. Even now, it continued to do its grisly work. But… I was also watching hundreds and hundreds of goblins march and run straight to their doom. To their death. I imagined, for a brief moment, if they were all human. Hundreds of humans mind controlled, walking into a meat grinder.

It was horrible. But after three days of nearly being overrun, I knew it was necessary.

“And don’t worry about the hearts.” Sandra said, a little morbidly.

“What?”

“The hearts. For stats. I was able to modify the sewer. It doesn’t decompose them. We already have one of the [Hob-Goblins] collecting them.”

I blinked my slimy eyes. I hadn’t even been thinking of them at all. I didn’t envy that job at all. Having to go down in the sewer and collect the hearts… where everyone’s crap and hundreds of dead bodies was going, fishing out hearts of goblins… it’s not like the sewer was designed for any of that. It wasn’t a trap, it was waste removal. That poor Hob-Goblin was going to need to get therapy and maybe a medal. Oh! After this war is over, I have to give out medals! That’ll be amazing! I can do a whole speech and everything. I should plan it out. That’s going to be awesome.

“We’ll get you as many as you need, as soon as possible.”

“...what?”

“For your stats?” Sandra said, confused.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Right. I needed those. I was going to… right. No. There were… I felt sick. I felt sick in a way I didn’t know I could feel. The previous killing was survival but this… this was worse than just profiting. All of this death was literally going to empower me. Make me more of a… of a person, in a horrible, fucked up way. Get me closer to being a God.

“...I don’t want them. Give them to Krrrgg and the [Hob-Goblins].”

“Slimy…”

“The regular goblins too. More [Hob-Goblins] would be amazing. We would have been a lot better of. It’s probably even better than-”

“King Slime. You can’t do this. You have to get stronger.”

My non-existent heart clenched. I had never felt its absence so strongly before.

“...it isn’t right.”

“I know.”

“I… I don’t want to kill thousands just to get a little stronger. All of them could have been like Krrrgg. Could have been like the [Hob-Goblins] or even the villagers. They talk Sandra. They talk and they laugh and they cry… they might not be inherently ‘good’ but they are people. You’re asking me to eat… the hearts of hundreds of people.” I stared out across the killing field, my eyes dissipating from my body till I was just a featureless slime. “Maybe even thousands.”

Sandra pulled me closer, into a hug.

“I hate war. I hate mind control. I hate this so much. I wanna go back to my cave.”

****

Sandra kept me company, talked to me, but eventually she left. But she didn’t leave me alone. She swapped with Michael.

“How are you?” Michael asked.

“Terrible. You?”

“Terrified. We nearly lost didn’t we?”

“Yeah. Sandra saved us all.”

Michael frowned.

“I was on the wall. I saw what you did. It wasn’t just Sandra. You two kept us alive while I just…” He trailed off, but the pain in his eyes was very real.

“Hey, don’t think of it like that. You’re a [Lumberjack]. You’re suppose to be cutting down trees. Without you, we’d have never seen them coming till they were beating on the walls. We wouldn’t have even had room to fight. You did your job perfectly and after all this is over, you can cut trees to hearts content. I even figured out what to do with all that lumber recently.”

“You did?” That perked Michael up.

“Yup. I’ve been exploring my dungeon tab some more and this [Dungeon Architect] is a real boon. We can incorporate materials into stuff now. Well, as long as it’s the right ‘areas’. Basically, warehouses. It’ll save a ton of mana if we want to build anything out of wood. Like, almost all of it. A city needs workers even more than warriors Michael. I learned that from a few vid- I mean, I picked them up over time.” I said sagely.

Michael nodded, a small smile on his face. Before a frown replaced it.

“You going to be okay?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Physically? I’ll get better. Mentally? …eventually, I’ll get better. But I can’t let this go. It’s almost like I was fighting an army of child soldiers Michael. And now, now a few hundred feet away, they’re being slaughtered in a fucking god damn meat grinder. I had Sandra tell me exactly how they were dying in there Michael. Simple means brutal. It’s not pretty. They never even got a chance to be a real person.”

I stared up at the ceiling, my emotions in turmoil.

“I have to kill that [Goblin Chief].”

Michael put a hand on my head.

“King Slime… I believe in you. I thought my wife was insane when we realized we could actually leave… and she wanted to stay. We could’ve gone to the capital, been safe there. But would we have? A random mugger with a few levels in [Fighter] and we’d be dead. A [Thief] while we weren’t paying attention and we could lose Tilia. Even with this Goblin Horde… I’ve never felt safer. I know you’ll keep me and my family safe, no matte what. So… I believe in you.”

If I had a throat, I’d be struggling to swallow. I… I…

“That means a lot Michael. Thank you.”

There was a knock on my door and my mood immediately became complicated. I knew what was on the other side. Delivery. Order? Goblin hearts en mass.

For Michael and his family, for my city, even for the Goblin’s being slaughtered… I had to get stronger.

It was time to reach an entirely new level of power.