Joe came forward quickly, bringing his spear to bear on the creature while holding the spear as firmly as possible even as it shifted in his grasp like a snake. The spear was definitely a thrusting weapon, but it did have a sharpened blade for about a quarter of a meter of the length which did give him a small slashing blade which he brought down on the jello monster, slicing into it. Again, the alien scream echoed around him and he pulled the spear back to stab. The screams continued to echo around him, becoming weaker with time. Each stab and slice hit the creature, but Joe’s frustration continued to climb as he realized that he hadn’t struck true yet. Every strike seemed to slide off his intended target, sliding away from where he hoped to strike. He finally stopped trying to play with his shield and was surprised to see it almost leap from his arm after he had released his grip on the shield bar, the shield enarmes slipping from his arm. His left hand gripped the spear above his right hand and he slipped his right further down the shaft as he turned his body sideways, left foot forward.
With the addition of another hand, the spear steadied, under greater control, but was much less versatile and narrowed his options. He stepped forward and plunged the spear deeply into the jello monster, slicing just to the side of the floating gem. Cursing, he pulled the spear directly up to slice directly through the body, slicing it almost in half. He quickly reversed the trajectory and sliced back down, cutting the body in half. Immediately, the empty right half of the creature seemed to collapse into a liquid ooze that spread across the forest floor. The left half wobbled, but Joe had no idea if it was in pain or not, except for the eerie cry that resounded with each attack he struck. The creature slid out a pseudopod which touched the collapsed ooze and it immediately began to reform, the liquid sucked up through the straw-like pseudopod back into the body and returning its size back to what it once was, then continued its wobbly journey off his arrow shaft.
Joe blinked several times in stunned surprise.
“Well…. Just great! Just… what? Really?”
His spear struck again, once again aiming for the floating gem. It seemed like the only option he had, nothing else did anything. But each time his spear plunged into the gooey mass, he always seemed to miss it, the spear bucking in his hands in rebellion of his control. Grimacing with frustration, he stepped back to disengage for a second. Stabbing it did nothing. He looked closely around the jiggling mass and notice that liquid splashes of its body seemed to be spread across the forest floor in a small ring around it. Despite Joe’s violent attacks, the thrusts pierced its body and did not add much force to dispersing its liquid. It seemed that most of it was actually lost when he pulled his spear out, dripping from the blade and being flung from the tip as he whipped it around for another strike. Even as he watched, the ooze began sending out tendrils that arched across to its various body parts, sucking them back into its body. Ooh…
Epiphany struck him and he quickly spun the spear in his hands until the flat of the blade was turned towards the jello and swung as hard as possible. The flat of the spear slapped into the side of the monster and splattered it everywhere. He leapt back, dodging it as much as possible and noticed with surprise that it was dead, it’s body now a collapsed puddle on the ground.
“Huh. Well… that was anticlimactic?” Joe muttered to himself as he meandered around the body, poking it several times with his spear, but sensing nothing to reveal that it was still alive. He stood back up, looking around the clearing a bit and then stepped back in shock as he saw a tiny tendril of jello ooze out slowly from some underbrush back towards the splattered mess at his feet. As it moved, small offshoots would spring off and greedily suck up the small splashes nearby.
“Nuh uh… Not going to happen!”
Joe leapt forward towards the tendril and used it to find the original. As soon as he found it, he saw the gem floating in a small pile of jello no larger than his fist, and he immediately sliced off the tendril that was heading for the largest pool of its liquid body. The tendril immediately fell to the ground as a line of liquid, and another, smaller tendril immediately began to form, thrusting out towards the mass of liquid. Joe continued to cut the tendril while simultaneously slicing off more of its body. Finally, he stepped forward and smacked at the gem again, and this time the butt of his spear was able to strike true, and the gem flew from the body which dropped to into a puddle. He stepped up to the gem which had tumbled a good ways cross the forest floor and saw that there was still some ooze stuck to it. He swung his spear to clean it off as much as possible before leaning it against a tree and picking up the gem. As soon as he touched it, the ooze immediately began to slime its way across the surface towards his hand. Hmm… I don’t think it would be a good idea to let it touch me!
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He kept moving his hands around while he considered his options, and then he bent to pick up a dead leaf. He held the gem once more and layered the leaf flat against it between his finger and the ooze. It raced across the gem to get to his finger, but as soon as it came to the leaf, it stopped, not climbing on to it. Come on. Come on you little bugger. Climb on it so I can flick you off! But soon, Joe realized that it was eating the leaf and the ooze was growing in size. Joe grimaced and flicked the leaf towards the ooze and was able to take a big chunk of its ooze body away. The small bit left over began racing for his hand once more. Joe sighed in frustration, then began flinging the gem in large arcs, but the ooze seemed impossible to remove. Well, centripetal force isn’t going to work! Joe continued to dance the gem with his fingers to keep the last of it away from him and he knelt quickly to pick up a small twig as he began using it to flick off the ooze bit by bit. After another several minutes of work, he was able to finally clear off the last bit of ooze and he suddenly felt an update to his status. What? How di… How do you feel an update?
Joe blinked down at the crystalline clear gem in his hand and then decided to open up his status. When he looked at his status, he found nothing new. Feeling slightly uncertain, he ticked through the various tabs, and noticed only a small change on his Current Job tab. The black line had a small hint of color to it that had grown about maybe one percent or so. Huh… well… that’s not too bad. Kill a hundred of these and I can get my job to two. But… I gotta find them? Joe sighed at the thought of wasting so much time searching through the forest for more. He clicked to the log page and notice a new entry stating that he had killed a ‘slime’ and gained one experience. A slime. Of course it’s called a slime… really? Ugh… So maybe I need 100 experience to get to a new level? Kinda matches if it’s designed.
Joe returned to his shield, arrow, and half-deer. Slinging it up over a branch, he slit the deer’s throat to drain the blood then spent some time cleaning his equipment before stowing it away and towing the deer towards the road. No longer needing to stay silent for the hunt, he stumped quickly through the woods until he reached the road. He slowed carefully and looked both ways to make sure no one was on the road before he turned towards the village and sauntered into town, acting like he was planning to be there all along.
He came into the town and strode down the main street until he found what looked like an inn or saloon. He stepped into the inn and walked to the bar where he found a plump matron who was quite short, coming up to only a little over four and half feet tall. He walked up to the matron and laid the deer over the bar. She looked up at him, then back at the deer. She seemed to freeze for several moments, staring at him and the deer in almost a mocking slow motion before throwing her arm out in anger and a flurry of words tinged in anger. He blinked several times then sighed in frustration.
“Well, crap. Of course I don’t know the language… just great! I’m sorry, lady. I have no idea what you’re saying, but I want to trade. The deer for a place to stay.”
It was her turn to blink in surprised consternation. It took her about ten or so seconds before shouting out slightly more angrily. The two devolved into a shouting match of pointing and pantomime, trying to understand each other, although her responses always seemed to be delayed by a good ten or so seconds. Huh… why does it take so long for her to figure things out? She soon began to realize that he was attempting to barter, and her anger quickly evolved into excited greed as she understood what he was looking for. The two took quite a bit longer to hammer out a deal that both seemed to understand and both seemed happy with. The small deer seemed to have gotten him two weeks of room and board. He smiled and tried to mime getting extensions with more hunting, but she didn’t seem to understand and he dropped it. He waited and mimed confusion and she quickly warbled back a comment probably along the lines of “let me show you your room” as she led him to the back of the main room and up the stairs. She led him up to the third floor and a small corner room which she unlocked with a key. Handing him the key, she turned to leave and left him in the small room. He looked around his room and checked it for security, which turned out to be pretty bad but given what he had available, he had no other options. He dropped his bag on the bed, made sure the window was locked, then left the room and locked the door behind him. It was time to put some effort into developing his jobs.
* * *
Gossip roared through the town as dozens of eyes followed the great warrior into and back out of town along the back way. Surprised excitement titillated the town gossips while the militia was excited to have such a powerful individual who was willing to once again clean out the monsters in the eastern woods. The last time adventurers had been here was almost a year ago, and the militia actually feared that the monsters would soon be encroaching on the town from the deep woods.