“For the record I’m choosing to trust you Dunnie even though you're clearly got some angle I can’t see yet. However if you screw me over I’m gonna say mean things about you in whatever hell I end up in.”
“Duly noted.” The skeleton dead panned.
“So what now? Gonna drag me off to some secret altar to perform a dark blood ritual to chain my very soul to the dungeon?” Getting in one last ribbing.
“Nah.” Dunnie waved their hand and text floated up into my vision.
[Integrate unbound soul with the Dungeon? Yes/No]
[Warning: this is an unprecedented action. Results for accepting unknown]
“Unprecedented huh?” I said, arching an eyebrow.
The reaper just shrugged. “Everybody loves a talking sword.”
All it took was a thought. I chose [yes] and everything went black.
~~~~~
I came to my senses in an enormous cavern. Dizzy and disoriented, I saw more text spring into my vision. I did my best to focus on it.
[Respawn complete]
[View status? yes/no]
I was feeling very strange and hoped the status the dungeon was offering to show me what shed some light on things. I groggily agreed to its prompting and was treated to more text.
[Rowanoak the Dauntless]
[Monster type: Green Slime]
[Level: 1 ] [Hp: 3/3] [Mp: 2/2]
[Title: Deceased Adventurer]
[Perks: Bound Soul, Heroic Legacy, Delver’s insight, Dungeon Babble, Ooze Body, Weak Acid]
[Drawbacks: Outcast’s Brand, Combustible]
[Dungeon points: 0 ]
Ok, I was a Slime. My thoughts were growing less sluggish. Not great. But I’d work with what I had. Swearing would accomplish nothing. I swore anyway. I felt my entire body jiggle.
As my mind continued to clear little by little, the strangeness just kept Intensifying.
The first thing I noticed was I could taste the stone of the floor and hints of things I couldn’t identify in the air. Second, my sight was not at all like I was used to. I could clearly see what I focused my attention on and while increasingly blurry further from the focal point my peripheral vision seemed to wrap around me entirely. I had no idea how that worked for a creature that I knew didn’t have eyes. I was just gonna have to chalk it up to magical bullshit. I had known mages who would gnash their teeth at my preferred explanation for this sort of mystery. They would immediately form a dozen theories all while they’d decried my disregard for the wonders of natural philosophy. But none of them were here so it was just gonna stick with magical bullshit.
I tried to take a deep breath to calm my nerves. I jiggled. Seemed like that was going to be a theme.
I turned my attention back to my surroundings. I realized I needed to reassess my evaluation of the chamber as enormous. I had seen countless slimes as an adventurer so I knew the odds were I was actually a shapeless blob no bigger than a house cat. My old body could have likely reached up and put a hand on the ceiling. The change of perspective was another thing I was going to have to get used to.
The chamber was an uneven dome with Slime sized passages dotting the perimeter. A column dominated the center of the space. It was the same rough stone as the chamber but with twisting veins of crystal running up its length. When I focused on it I was greeted with more text from the dungeon. This time however instead of being directly in my field of view it hung in front of the column like a sign post.
[ Mob Spawn Point ]
[ Monster Types: Chromatic Slime ]
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
[ Set as respawn location yes/no ? ]
I chose [yes] just to see what would happen and the text flashed in front of my vision this time.
[ Error: Incompatible Title. Respawn location not set. ]
‘Well I’m sure that’s not going to cause issues… “ I jiggled to nobody in particular.
Before I could ponder things further the crystal in the column began to glow, pulsing with an inner light. I instinctively moved away from it worried I’d broken it somehow and a sudden and irrational expectation it was going to explode right in my little slime face. Instead a luminous magic circle full of symbols and patterns unlike any I’d ever seen inscribed itself on to the ground. When the diagram was complete the whole thing started to spin, the patterns within shifting and turning independently like a clockwork. The light from the crystal and circle both grew brighter. A Yellow Slime materialized in the circle coming out of the floor like it was being raised through the trapdoor in a stage show.
I guessed I just learned what a Spawn Point was. Though that did leave me with a
new problem. Namely that I was now sharing the chamber with another monster.
I pulled up my blobby self into a Posture of Readiness as best as I could. I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t want to make the first move and start what might be an unnecessary fight. Was there some kind of spawn point etiquette for these situations?
The Yellow Slime rolled back and forth a couple times then stretched up and down. It reminded me of someone loosening up after a long cart ride.
I decided to try diplomacy.
“Greetings fellow slime. Seems like a fine day to do…slime things?”
The statement manifested as a series of jiggles with a couple wobbles thrown in for good measure.
I was totally and completely ignored. After a few more stretches and rolls it just blorped its way down one of the passages.
After thinking about what happened I figured either normal non-former adventurer slimes were actually mindless or that Slime in particular was just rude. Or maybe I was the rude one interrupting their pre-dungeon warm up?
At this point I think I was starting to crack under the utter weirdness of it all.
Having the chamber to myself again I tried out the Yellow Slime’s moves. Stretching and rolling a few times. I did feel a bit more pliable after so maybe they were on to something there.
My mind turned back to the status the Dungeon had shown me. I hadn’t been able to make much sense out of it, but so far it was the only real source of information I’ve found. I wished I could examine it again and than...
[View status yes/no?]
“Ah, convenient.” I wobbled out loud to myself before mentally hitting [yes].
[Rowanoak the Dauntless]
[Monster type: Green Slime]
[Level: 1 ] [Hp: 3/3] [Mp: 2/2]
[Title: Deceased Adventurer]
[Perks: Bound Soul, Heroic Legacy, Delver’s insight, Dungeon Babble, Ooz Body, Weak Acid]
[Drawbacks: Outcast’s Brand, Combustible]
[Dungeon points: 0 ]
Wanting to see the Status had brought up the prompt. Maybe there were other ways to poke at this thing to get more out of it? I thought with all my might.
“SHOW ME YOUR SECRETS!”
Nothing happened. What followed was several minutes of mental gymnastics with similar results.
I was interrupted by a Purple Slime spawning and tried diplomacy again. This one didn’t even bother with a warm-up (the fool) and just glerpped it’s way down the nearest passage.
Getting nowhere with my status I ignored it till it blinked away.
I steeled my resolve and decided to try one of the tunnels for myself. I made my way around the perimeter till I found a passage with air that tasted kinda interesting than slurped forth to adventure.
~~~~~
I’d been making my way down the tunnel for a while with nothing of interest happening. Just a twist here and a turn there. Now and then there was an opening in the ceiling. However I hadn’t been able to figure out climbing as a Slime. It was probably something involving suction but the trick of it was beyond me for the moment. So I just kept heading further in. There was an increasingly noticeable downward slope. As it started getting worryingly steep I was just considering backtracking to the spawn point when I felt rumbling. It was followed by a torrent of water.
I was swept away onward and downward the ever steepening passage till I was just falling. I was just starting to wonder if slimes could drown when I dropped out into open air, landing with a splash a second later. The liquid I landed in tasted… well let’s just say it tasted a lot and leave it at that.
I assumed my Posture of Readiness and took stock of my new surroundings.
Vine choked brick walls. Random protruding pipes. A river of muck. Slimes everywhere.
A sewer dungeon. Well actually Dunnie said the Dungeon was all one big place. So this was just a sewer in the Dungeon? I was still getting my head around that idea. Instead of trying to come up with a whole new nomenclature for where adventurers delve and fight monsters for loot I just drew a line in my head between a dungeon and the capital D, Dungeon.
I was distracted from my musings by movement in the distance.
I heard a shout. It was a word. A word I’d heard shouted more times than I could count.
“FIREBALL!”
I barely had the time to jiggle out a curse before the explosion hit, settling an age-old tavern debate among adventurers: Do slimes even feel pain? Yes. Yes, they do.