Sloughing the pond scum off her skin with the loveleeches, Mellie stood up and looked at their new company. The Elven man was standing on his porch began to approach the group brandishing a sword, coming to evaluate the situation. They must have looked like swamp monsters emerging from the depths, but the man greeted them in a friendly manner.
"Hello!" the man said, "We don't get visitors to these parts. Especially not human ones. I'm Fred and this is my home. What do I owe the pleasure of your company?" he directed his line of questioning to Mary, the only elf in the group.
"We're traveling to Resfelt from a misguided portal. If you could give us more accurate directions we shall be on our way." Mary said, respectfully.
He smiled, delighted, "Yes, yes. Resfelt is that way, but come in and grab a hot drink and a warm meal. My wife is a cook lvl 36! And she just made a wonderfully seasoned pork roast!"
The group accepted his generous offer and followed him into his cabin. It was a smallish place with a few rooms but it was homey and practical. Gathering around the table, the group sat down and Fred began dividing up the roast that had been sitting on his counter covered by a cloth. Digging into their meat and what tasted like potatoes, the group devoured the meal greedily while complimenting the chef, who was apparently in the forest harvesting crops. A decent meal was a hard thing to find when trekking through a forest. The man then distributed some ale.
"I don't get visitors around these parts. I'd be happy to let you stay the night here. But, I have to clear out some monsters in the morning. Nighttime is creeping in and these woods are heavy with wraiths. They say the souls of suicides become wraiths, and there was a death cult that ended their lives deep within these woods. So drink up, and maybe you can help me in the morning." explained the man as he poured the group a round of whiskeys.
Sleepiness crept up on the group as they turned off thier poison resistance for the night. They all staggered off to bed as the sun tucked itself into the night. Curling under the blankets of the hay mattress in the log cabin, Mellie let sleep claim her. Their host watched on as his company drifted off to sleep.
"Five beds?" Questioned Jackson as he grew groggy from the
"Yes, sometimes I bring the family out here for some relaxation time. Depends on the monster population around. I usually clear them out before the family gets here but I haven't gotten to them yet." he explained, solidifying their desire to stay. A bed, a warm meal and a roof over their heads wasn't something unwelcome to them. One by one they each stumbled off to bed, crashing into their mattresses and diving under the blankets.
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As Jacksons breathing finally slowed with the rest of the sleeping group, Fred walked over to the door and opened it. Four slimes moved through the door and began making their way to the humans sleeping in the beds. Fred's family began to creep up the arms and legs of their soon to be new forms. Smiling in the newly acquired form of an Elven hunter, the man watched as his family began processing their new humanlike shapes.
Startling awake, Mellie felt her hand being pulled. Realizing something was wrong, Mellie decided to get rid of her haze and turned on poison resistance. A Slime lvl 2 was pulling the skin and DNA off of her hand. The creature seemed to be forming its own fingers as it ate hers. Mellie cheese slapped the thing across the room, only to see other slimes surrounding her friends. Mellie screamed "WAKE UP WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" to her friends, as Fred rushed her.
The baby slime became a sandwich as the rest of the group became aware of their surroundings. Jackson's slime was stabbed through its core with a knife in his beltloop after her used his poision resistance. Mary accidentally caught herself on fire after casting flames on the slime attacking her. Henry was completely engulfed in the slime struggling to get his way out. His skin was being eaten and he looked like he was fighting to breathe. Mellie stabbed Fred through his rather gooey flesh and the blade went right through his gooey flesh, not damaging him in the slightest. With rage in his eyes he began attacking Mellie by spitting acid. His chin fizzled where the acid dribbed out. The stench of cooked rotten and sour flesh permeated the cabin. It only intensified as Mary cast a fireball at Fred, bursting him into flames like a bottle of booze. Jackson reached Henry and stabbed the slime core that was situated at his feet, and pulled him from his bed, dragging him out the cabin door, while feeding him some bleekmoss to help aid his healing.
It took about three hours for Henry's skin to go from third degree burns to second. Walking for him was difficult as when his skin touched itself it was horrifying pain. Sitting by the pond, they treated him slowly with bleekmoss, and then with a topical algae they found growing next to them. Mellie handed Henry a sandwich and Jackson gave him some new clothes, since his were eaten by the slime. After applying the algae they slowly coaxed Henry's skin into Jacksons much larger clothes.
Slime Algae - An algae that grows around slime nests. Aids skin cell regeneration when applied topically.
Taking some algae with them for their slime burns and Henrys everything, the group continued their journey in the direction the man had pointed earlier. They assumed that he didn't have a reason to lie about where the town was since he didn't plan on letting them live through the night. It was known that slimes could take the shape of the creature they devoured but actually identifying slime that had a humanoid form was as rare as seeing a dragon. But in Mellie's world, rare was just a Tuesday. As the cabin went up in flames, they sat around the pond regenerating their burned skin.