Chapter 8:

That Time I Got Reincarnated as Somebody's Dinner

For like the third time that day I broke into a full on run except, this time, I was just a little bit faster. Not sure if it was just my imagination but it felt like I got back to Stephen in half the time. Surely a few stat points didn't make that big of a difference? I wasn’t much of a Runner normally so I wasn't sure. Something to worry about later. Right now, I had a Sam N. Fillet to save. And an Unkind Sir that was risking his stat points to do the same. It was enough to bring a tear to your eye.

"Thank god!" Stephen yelled when he saw me. His hair was frazzled and he was three times as swamp soaked. "Your stat gains better be fucking worth it dude, I swear to God."

"Oh, it is!" I grinned at him, positively beaming.

He fired off some more shotgun blasts, doing some chip damage that pissed the monster off more than damaged it. It let out a guttural roar and tentacles sprouted from its face, like wiggling living whiskers.

"Time to move!" Stephen grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of the way just in time. The whiskers hit where we stood not a second before.

We retreated farther away and he looked above my head for the first time. "Level 8? I mean, that's good, but I'm Level 6 and barely doing shit!"

"I got some extra points for killing a lot of slimes."

"You used them already?? That's even worse!" He groaned.

"I used them. Just not for combat Stats."

He threw his arms up in the air. "What the fuck, man, I've been keeping this thing busy for no reason!"

I didn't respond. Would be much easier just to show him.

I touched a part of my Stat screen and shared it with Stephen. "This is the Stat I increased." I had to hold my breath to stop from laughing.

He looked at the Stat. Back to me. Again.

"Are you insane? Are you completely DUMB? "Enlargement??" You know what that's used for right??"

You bet I did! "Penis enlargement!" The giggles spilled out.

"How in the absolute living FUCK does that—"

I equipped a fork. I held it out between us, right in his face. He could barely process what it was.

"Have you completely lost it, Darcy??"

The monster roared and this time I dragged Stephen out of the way. The tendrils hit with a wet whap, swamp water splashing into his eye. I held him steady, still holding out the fork.

"I had one point from my Starter Skill, right? I put two more into it. Do you know what that means?"

"That you wasted two points? Most people only need one point to get a meaty seven inch dong."

"Yes, so what do you think Level 3 enlargement is going to look like? Stand back." I stepped in between him and the monster.

I held the fork up to my face, staring at the Slime King through the prongs. Please, God, let this work, I prayed. If it didn't I would look like a complete idiot. I closed my eyes and inhaled, preparing myself.

"Enlarge!!" I shouted as I swung the fork down to the side. As I completed the motion, the once normal sized fork grew to a more sword-like girth.

Behind me Stephen said, "Okay, now you have a big fork, fantastic! How does that help us??"

Without answering I charged across the swamp, still holding the fork out to my side. In any other scenario with any other weapon, I would have probably looked badass. The swamp water flying all around, the monster roaring, my weapon glistening in what little sun could escape the overcast sky.

But it was all ruined by the fork. Instead of an action hero, I looked like a complete lunatic. Even Sam didn't seem to believe in me. He stared at me running toward him, floating upside down, drained of all hope.

Stephen not believing was bad enough, but Sam, too??

As I cleared the rest of the distance with a baseball slide, the King Slime's whiskers flying harmlessly overhead, I spun to my right and brought the fork around back handed. It hit with a wet WHACK, not the kind of sound I was expecting. And, to my horror, the monster's body held against my attack, keeping it suspended in the air for an agonizingly long time.

In reality, only two seconds passed, as the Interverse processed what I was trying to do. Words flew into my vision, they would either be our savior or bring this whole half assed plan screeching to full on collision.

[ You hit the King Slime with a fork! Is the King Slime a food? Deciding... ]

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Not even a millisecond passed.

[ King Slime is a food! Damage will be based on your Eating Stat.

| Eating: 200 ]

A massive shit eating grin spread across my face. It freaked the hell out of Sam, whose eyes doubled in size. And when my attack resumed its trajectory and cleaved out a chunk of the monster's gooey (and totally edible) flesh, I thought his eyes were going to explode out of their sockets.

The King Slime roared in pain as a fifth of his health bar was shaved off. He started to thrash about so I fell back a few steps. His whiskers came at me again. I was done dodging. I took another back handed swing of the fork and sliced all the whiskers in half.

The monster bit its lip, holding back screaming. It internalized its anger and used the one thing it had a great deal of: teeth. It opened its gaping maw, Sam rushing back further into its body from some unforeseen defense mechanism.

I held my ground. The teeth lurched down at me as I brought my fork up again, this time holding it two handed. To my dismay, the fork bounced off of the teeth harmlessly and it fell down into the muck. I was completely defenseless.

I ducked and rolled as fast as I could, but it wasn't enough. I dodged the brunt of the attack but the far left side of the teeth still got me and bit off a layer of my shoulder.

My health plummeted.

[ HP: 50/150 ]

In one bite, not even a full on one, it took out over 100 hit points. One more attack like that and I was gone and I seriously doubt Stephen would waste his precious Stat points to copy what I did. And then poor Sam N. Fillet would be digested in no time at all.

I looked up at Sam, who had swam back toward the front of the monster (who, by the way, was looking all smug after damaging me). The hope that had been taken from him was back in full force, burning bright. He started to say something, over and over, shaking his little fists up in time as he chanted.

My lip reading wasn't the best, non-existent, actually. But apparently, a +1 in the Stat was enough to know that he was chanting, "Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss!!"

A bullet whizzed overhead and nailed King Slime between the eyes. He flinched and a whisker reached up to rub at the spot. Stephen was moving again, his eye in his rifle's scope.

"Keep moving! I'll distract him, you keep doing... whatever the hell you're doing to it!"

I grinned. The boys believed in me. I jumped to my feet and ran, circling around the Slime. I would have liked to have been able to get in real close or jump super high and come down on him from above—but I had none of the physical Stats necessary to pull any of that fancy stuff off. I could swing the fork wherever there weren't teeth. So swing I did.

My next attack did considerably less than the first since it was without the huge wind up. If that one was my full 200 damage, this one was about a 50. But as long as I kept swinging, that would add up fast.

I kept up my onslaught, circling the slimes hulking mass, and shaving off 50 HP with every flick of my fork. Its whiskers came for me, but Stephen fired at its face and they would rush to bat at where the bullet hit. We managed to do a few laps like that before the monster finally had enough. It roared and jumped straight up.

I couldn't believe how high it went, maybe twenty feet straight up, from just one hop. I could only admire the thing's jumping prowess for a little while as it cleared Stephen's head and came straight for the real damage dealer: me.

"Look out!" Stephen yelled and stuck his hand out, like he was willing a Force push into existence. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to possess that Skill so I was on my own.

I decided to do something a little dumb and very risky. As I ran I swung the fork up against the slime and dragged it across as I tried to escape. As it came down it punctured deeper than it would have if I used only my strength. The monster screamed in pain, tendrils flipping all around underneath it, trying to whack me aside. But I just kept going, using both hands to continue my long drag along the bottom.

But I was running out of time. Every second I spent attacking it like that, the less time i had before it finally completed its jump and crushed me to death. I decided it was time to bail, but the fork was lodged too deep into the monster, I couldn't get enough leverage to pry it back out. So I was stuck, running forward, still cutting it, still doing damage, but my window of escape shrank the longer I stayed.

I tried to run faster but the fork made it awkward to move so I was screwed there, too. Screwed all the way around. Unless...

I kept up my attack until the literal last possible moment, then I did the only move I could think of: I shrank the fork. It shrank just as fast as it grew and once again fit in my palm. As soon as my arms were free I jumped as far as I could and tucked and rolled.

The King Slime slammed down onto the ground. But not onto me. I made it out, rolling once and letting the shockwave of swamp carry me further out of harm's way.

The Slime looked all around, hoping to find me squashed. He might have been celebrating until my head popped up out of the swamp again. He roared the loudest yet and shook his body all around. Poor Sam spun out of control inside.

It was time to get the poor guy out.

I tightened my grip on the fork and mentally activated the enlargement again. Except, nothing happened. A message appeared in my vision:

[ Time remaining at full Enlargement: 2 seconds. ]

What the fuck, there was a time limit on it?? I had somehow missed that information in all the action. Or it had just failed to tell me for some reason. Two seconds...

I glanced at the King Slime’s health.

[ King Slime | Level 13

HP: [####———————————-]

So little left... but still far too much for our guns to finish the job. I had to use the fork. With only two seconds to use and no way of making it through the thrashing whiskers with normal means, I saw only one course of action left.

I re-equipped Wordy, the good and faithful. Without him, I never would have discovered that the slime was edible. It would be up to him again to save our dumbasses.

I put my eye to the scope. The flurry of words attacked my eyeballs. I did my best to ignore it and focus on only what I needed: the sight line that would get me through the whiskers and at the monster's big ugly face.

Even Wordy didn't have the best course of action. The whiskers were such a flurry that the line went on and off. But he threw up a bunch more jargon and, while I didn’t understand all of it, I gathered there was a pattern. So I repositioned and watched closely and eventually, I found it. After every ten seconds, the whiskers would stop spinning one way and switch directions, leaving about a two second window where all the tendrils were mostly in the same spot.

Two seconds? Perfect.

I fell into the groove, making sure I was right and preparing for the next opportunity. I counted down the seconds and held the fork back and then let it fly. Right as it slid from my fingers I enlarged it to its full and Deadly size. The timer started as it flew right through the mass of whiskers, shaving off the tips of the ones that got too close.

The monster noticed at that point but it was too late. The fork pierced its body as cleanly as if it were a spear.

Its HP bar popped like a boil. In fact, that described the whole scene. As the fork hit and continued to tear through the slimy flesh, it ruptured it and the monster exploded in a shower of slime. Sam was free. But the force of the rupture sent him high up into the sky.