Crap, Jake thought as he placed his back against the wall. He tried his best to look through the foam towards the direction of the water, but he couldn’t even see his feet below him, let alone what lay beyond the edge of the counter.

As the underwater slime approached the foam cloud, silent to ears, Jake assumed that it already knew where he was. The slimes were obviously using a sense other than sight to navigate.

On top of that, the slime king had known where he was after he killed one of its subjects, so they probably had some telepathic communication ability. The glowing white slime core floating in the cloud above him was probably sending his coordinates to the others.

With one arm held up, guarding his face, Jake waited and listened. He couldn’t expect himself to react fast enough upon hearing the sound of the slime torpedoing out of the water, but he had more than enough speed to fight back. As long as it didn’t swallow his face or both his arms at the wrong angle, he thought he’d be able to handle it no matter what.

The slime did not go for the head. When it shot out of the water, it slammed straight into his gut. Its impact knocked the air out of Jake’s lungs as it glued itself along with one of Jake’s arms and his torso to the wall.

Jake coughed multiple times trying to catch his breath, but that was proving hard with the gel currently forming in his mouth as the core floating in the foam above kept coming closer. At this point, he could feel a full layer of gel formed on his skin like it was sweat.

The slime pinning him against the wall expanded itself upwards, swallowing Jake’s chest and Jake raised the arm he still had free to keep it from taking it as well.

He summoned a can of the mist type bug spray to his hand, then started showering the slime with it. The slime receded a bit and after a few seconds, Jake felt a sharp jerk before the slime started vibrating on top of him. Lucky him, the slime had been paralyzed by the poison.

With no intention to waste his chance, Jake swapped out the mist type bug spray for the wasp spray with the twenty foot range and fired it off at the slime core floating in the foam.

The foam clouds around him bubbled and churned. There was a sound like a washing machine draining in his ears. If any of that was something to go off of, Jake had scored a direct hit.

The light faded as it retreated deeper into the foam until it disappeared. Though he was still covered in the slime it had already caked him in, Jake could feel the pressure in the air soften. He doubted a new layer would be forming on top of what he already had.

After using his canned poison to drill to the core of the slime keeping him stuck to the wall, he continued on. The floating slime core didn’t return and Jake was able to make it to the other side of the first foam cloud.

He was still only halfway to the dispenser. His journey through the cloud had only been about a hundred feet and there was still another foam cloud blocking his way.

The dispenser unleashed another slime into the cloudy white waters of the sink’s lake. Jake used his Inventory skill to dry the bottoms of his work boots, so he could be sure that he wouldn’t slip when he tried to dodge out of the way.

Instead of coming straight at him and his ready cans of bug spray, however, Jake saw the slime jump into the foam cloud up ahead. Something to look forward to… he thought.

With one hand on the wall and one hand holding a can out in front of him, entered the foam cloud fully expecting the slime king’s subjects to surprise him. For a time there was silence as he proceeded through the cloud.

He got to move forward for so long that it started to seem like he’d get through this undisturbed. That or the slime would jump out at him when he’d already made it to the otherside.

Still within the cloud, Jake heard the gasping sound that the slimes made in the basement. It was the same gasping sound they’d made when they were getting ready to launch themselves at him. He heard that gasping sound three times in less than the span of a second.

Jake ducked. The first slime went flying over his head and the second slammed straight into the wall. The third one, however, dropped down right onto the worst spot possible, his back.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As soon as it landed on him, the third slime swallowed his arms from his shoulders down to his elbows, then forced them against his torso. Jake could barely move his arms around like he was a T-rex with the kind of grip it had on them.

With what maneuverability he had left in his lower arms, Jake ported a can of bug spray into each of his hands and jammed them into the slime near his elbows. The slime was as eager to slurp them up as anything else he had thrown into any other slime’s way that day.

Porting his hunting knife into his left hand, he folded his arm, stabbing into the can on his right side. The can popped and released enough poison to dissolve the part of the slime around his elbow. His right arm wasn’t fully freed, but he had far more control over it now.

Before he could repeat the same trick for his left side, the slime pulled his left arm further in with a strong jerk. The counters were caked heavy in a layer of slime and Jake almost tripped over from the sudden force. He didn’t, but he did drop his hunting knife. It was the only knife he had had the foresight to bring with him.

Oh boy… Jake thought. This was about to get a lot harder.

Against an enemy that was at the angle that was hardest for him to attack, he’d dropped the tool that enabled his easiest way to fight back. There was no way he could expect himself to retrieve it either. He couldn’t see his own feet through the foam, let alone his knife.

Jake resolved himself. The next minute was going to be tough. He ported a can of the stream type spray into his right hand, then swung it behind his back, trying to carve his left arm beneath his elbow out of the slime. It was a success, but as expected, the slime sucked in his lower right arm as soon as he’d managed to free the left.

He kept spraying, porting another can of bug spray into his left hand, then swinging it back to join his right. He was going to dig through the slime and kill it blind with his hands tied behind his back.

The only problem was that he had to aim at its core blind. He’d hit eventually with time, but he didn’t have that. There were two more enemies waiting to pounce on him in the foam of war and if either one of them caught on to him and restrained him, it was probably game over.

He vacuumed the gel beneath his boots and around them into his Inventory so he’d better have footing. It was almost on the level of being a requirement for what was about to come. He’d suck up the entire cloud if he had enough mana, but he was far from that level at the moment.

Through the foam he heard the slimes breathe in and from there, the show began.

It was all a mess. The gel slimes were clean incarnate, but that wasn’t stopping them from fighting dirty. Jake slid on his knees back and forth gambling on the time and direction he needed to dodge in.

He had to be careful with how much force he used in any direction. If he slid too close to the wall, the slime on his back would grab onto it and he’d be stuck. If he slid too hard towards the water, he’d fall into the sink’s lake on accident and once the slime’s had him down there, they wouldn’t be letting him back up.

Falling forward wasn’t an option either. With both his arms tied behind his back, there’d be no way for him to get back up until the slime on his back had died.

One, two, and three times Jake gambled and won as he chose the right direction—or just didn’t choose the wrong direction—to dodge in. But he could only get lucky for so long and when the slimes’ lunges fell out of sync with each other, luck couldn’t cut it anymore.

One of the slime’s flew by him as the other came slamming into his chest not a second later. Jake fell onto his back, now sandwiched between two monsters adamant on crushing the life out of him with their cleaning product.

Except, he wasn’t. The slime on Jake’s back was splattered into oblivion as he hit the counter hard on top of it. He hadn’t hit the slime’s core directly with his bug spray, but the slime had been whittled down enough and was spread so thin that it didn’t have enough left in it to take that impact.

Feeling the returned freedom in his arms, Jake pulled them out from behind him and tore through the slime on top of him with twin streams of poison.

As the slime on top of him dissipated into funeral gel, something plopped down on top of him. It was his hunting knife. The slime must have picked it up while it was hopping all over the place. With a thought, he made the knife disappear back in his Inventory, then got back up onto his feet.

Through the layers of foam, Jake could hear the last slime getting ready to charge again. He held out his arms with spray cans in hand in the direction he’d felt it going when it passed him. If it was eager to get to whatever afterlife its slime brethren were waiting for it in, he’d send it there with rush shipping.

The slime jumped, but instead of feeling the impact of it on his arms, he heard the sound of it splashing into the waters of the sink.

“Hmph,” Jake grunted. If it wanted to play the coward that was fine too he supposed.

He made his way back to the wall and continued on his way out of the foam cloud. Not a minute later, gliding his feet over the slime coating the counter in the cloud, he emerged from the soapy nightmare on the other side. The only things standing between him and the dispenser was the running faucet and a clear strip of counter.

He vacuumed the slime off the bottoms of his boots with his Inventory skill, then charged towards his goal. The slime lurking in the waters was on the back of his mind, but he wasn’t worried. If he could handle three of them with both hands tied behind his back, then he was confident he’d be able to handle the last one, however it came at him.