Sean finished off the last of their deer by piling the rest of its meat onto the frying pan pyramid-style. It was a technique that he had seen on the very first season of Mark Ruben’s Mighty Meals, and he had none of the additional tools that were necessary to fully ‘cook’ the resulting egyptian monument to all things aggressively non-vegan. Luckily for him, that particular fact didn’t matter for two reasons:
Reason One: The ‘amateur magichef’ title Sean was working towards appeared to advance whenever he tried out a new technique or cooking style. Thus the simple act of campfire-grilling the meat-pyramid had, itself, earned him a few more precious points towards achieving it. Without using any of their limited inventory of spices, even.
Reason Two: Gel could not possibly have cared less about consuming ‘raw’ meat. The insatiable slime even had a preference for that sort of food as it was, by definition, as ‘fresh’ as inhumanely possible. Which meant that any parts of the steaks Sean left in a state guaranteed to have had Mordon Gamsey slapping him upside the head and calling him a ‘donkey’... Gel took as marvelous, purposefully-made additions to the final dish.
“Alright, there you are.” Sean said in his best Mordon Gamsey impression, carefully removing his beloved, magical frying pan over to a patch of dirt away from the fire he had prepared for this purpose. “One stone shoulder deer-amid, served up hot. Just like Gam-Gam used to make.”
“Sean, I… I don’t know what to say. It’s… the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my or anyone else’s life.” Gel declared soberly… right before shoveling entire fistfuls of the meat-strosity directly into his mass. Moments later, in between deeply satisfied and completely fake ‘chewing’ sounds, he added. “Whoever this Gam-Gam is, she knows exactly how to treat a slime. I hope she’s in your memories, I can’t wait to meet her.”
“You still haven’t digested any of those yet, huh?” Sean asked, as he began the process of cleaning off his pan with some of the deerskin they had left while trying to maintain his seated balance as his right arm dove both in and out of his chest without his direction. It was harder than one might think. “How long does that take anyway?”
“They’re already digested.” Gel mumbled. “I just haven’t gotten time to view them yet, is all. We’ve been pretty busy.”
“That we have.” Sean acknowledged. Another prompt came up, informing him that Gel had absorbed enough mana from the mostly-cooked deer meat to earn them another point each.
“That makes a total of 3 points of mana after cooking half of the carcass.” Sean noted to his friend. “Which, added to the one point we got from the parts we didn’t cook, means we essentially doubled the amount of mana we were able to get from a single kill. Assuming it didn’t spend whatever it had running… not like it put up much of a fight, was just hard to catch.”
“Sounds like you’re going to be doing a lot of cooking for us.” Gel said, before finishing off the last bit of the meat-pyramid and letting out an expansive, pleased sigh. “Well, for me at least. Hey, we should try to cook up one of those angry badgers. I’ll bet they taste great roasted.”
“Hard pass.” Sean said, putting his now perfectly clean pan back on the grass to cool a bit more. He had cooked half a damn deer with the thing, and not five passes with his makeshift skin-sponge later it was nearly spotless. Not a fleck of gristle on it.
Gods I love this thing. Sean thought, before resuming their conversation. “The first thing we need: is more ingredients. Seasoning that many steaks one solitary herb at a time was painful.”
“Really?” Gel asked curiously, before the slime apparently checked Sean’s status. “How? You didn’t take any damage. Was the pan hot, or–”
“I didn’t mean it literally.” Sean said, waving the concern away. “Steak usually gets more consideration where I’m from. If you thought what I did with what little we were testing out just now was good, then wait until I get some real options and I’ll really blow your socks off.”
“Why would– where do the socks come in?” Gel asked, clearly puzzled. “Ohhh, you mean feet. You’re going to add feet to the steak. Or did you mean you’re going to make steak out of feet? I was excited and thought I was following, but now I’m just lost.”
Sean tried not to convey his mental sigh, but he wasn’t sure if he succeeded.
“It’s just an expression.” He told the slime. “I meant when we get a hold of some more ingredients, I should be able to make you better food. Maybe even some that gives us both one of those buffs you were talking about before, if we can find the right stuff.”
“You figured out how to do that already? I’m impressed. Stephani’s memories made it sound so difficult, and you’ve already cracked her secrets wide open!”
“Haven’t cracked anything open just yet.” Sean admitted. “But if we keep at it, it shouldn’t take me too long. Couple of days, tops.”
“Oh, we’re keeping at it.” Gel enthused with a slightly-heavier-than-before wobble in his chest. “Those steaks were top shelf stuff! Maybe one shelf below me, but still that’s pretty close.”
“Speaking of shelves.” Sean reached over and pulled the satchel closer to them, though he was careful not to bring it anywhere near the fire. “Any idea what the rest of those potions were? The ones we took from Bancroft, I mean.”
“Please tell me you’re not about to start pulling unknown potions out next to an open fire in the middle of a wild forest.” Gel said. “Because if you are, at least leave the chartreuse one in there.”
“Yeah, speaking of…” Sean fished their potion bag out of the satchel, placed it on their lap, and began to untie the dark string keeping it closed. “You never said why you were so hot and bothered about taking that one anyway. What’s it do?”
“It explodes.” Gel explained, holding Sean’s right arm and hand between himself and the bag in a defensive gesture that looked like the slime was afraid it might go off at any second. “The second that thing’s lid pops off or the glass breaks, it’ll – remember the angry badger? The really angry one, with the beams?”
“Obviously.”
“It’ll do what that thing did to those houses, only right now it’s currently in your lap. I’ll let your imagination run free on the possibilities.”
Sean could feel Gel pushed up against his spine away from his ribs, and he had to admit a little confusion at the reaction. They’d been running around, jumping down pits, hell they’d even been in active combat against multiple opponents – all while carrying this very same satchel. Gel hadn’t had this kind of reaction then. So why now?
“What’s your deal with this thing?” Sean asked, pulling that particular potion out – carefully – with his good hand. “If it hasn’t blown by now, it’s not going to from just me touching it.”
Gel seemed to relax a little inside his chest at that, and his right hand lowered a bit as the slime took a closer look at the vial in question.
“That’s… fair, I suppose.” Gel admitted. “I’d still rather you put it back until we need it.”
“Could it have taken out that shroud?” Sean asked, curious to know just how potent this little mixture was. It seemed rather innocuous to him, but if his chemistry teacher back in college had been right it was the compounds you didn’t take seriously that killed you. “How big of an explosion are we talking?”
“In that small room?” Gel didn’t even have to think about his response. “It would have, yeah. Us, too. The skeletons. The roof. Probably the walls–”
“Alright, alright. Point made. Big-boom-pot goes back in the bag.” Sean muttered good-naturedly before reaching into the bag to grab another one for closer inspection. “What about the rest of these? Any memories you have that can tell us what they are?”
“Pull that cerulean one out again. The one almost dropped before.”
Sean dutifully grabbed the deep-blue one – receiving the same shiver from before the moment his finger touched the glass.
“Hmm… I can’t be sure.” Gel began. “But this looks like an icefall potion.”
“I’m guessing that creates a bunch of ice?” Sean asked, deadpan.
“And then it falls down.” Gel explained, as if ice fell upwards.
“Does ice normally do something else here, or am I missing something?” Sean wondered, holding the vial up to peer inside. He thought he saw swirling frost in the center, like an iceberg the rest of the liquid was floating around, but he couldn’t be sure. “What makes it an icefall potion? Does it create the ice… in the air, or something?
“If it’s what I think it is, it’s supposed to create a block of ice in a large radius immediately surrounding the potion… whenever and wherever it breaks. Or when you open the cap, if you felt like freezing us both solid for whatever reason.”
Sean couldn’t help but wonder if they would survive that. He didn’t need to breathe… but Gel did. However that worked. The slime didn’t have lungs unless he decided he wanted them around for dramatic effect.
Maybe if he wasn’t completely frozen? Sean tabled asking his friend just how much mass the slime would need to survive for now. Or he could survive on one of my arms, or something.
While that possibility opened up some rather creative uses for the icefall potion down the line, Sean had no real desire right now to wait for the morning sun to thaw them free. He put the icefall potion back in and grabbed the next one.
In the end, Gel was only able to identify two more of their potions. The other four they had been able to grab: a silver-mist filled bottle with white lightning crackling through it, a tiny vial filled with an inky-black vortex that seemed to push against its own glass, a potion that looked like it was filled with a hundred bleeding, grasping hands, and one that was just… bright purple. Sean didn’t actually have the words to describe the luminescent radiance of that last one. He had grabbed it originally because it was the only potion he had seen with a color that looked halfway neon.
I’ll bet Gel has a word to describe this one. Sean thought, though he didn’t ask what it was.
The other two potions they’d absconded with that the slime knew about – less the mana potion they had ‘acquired’ from Dry Run – were no less interesting than the first pair. The first was something called a “Feather Up” potion, which Gel assured him would grant them the ability to fly though the slime carefully avoided saying exactly how it would do so. The second one, amusingly enough, was a potion called: “Rock Skin”.
“Will this actually give me skin again? Just the rock version?” Sean asked doubtfully, holding the vial up to the sky to examine the liquid that resembled pebbles jammed inside gravy more than anything else. He turned it, as if that would help him discern its effects. It looked, well, like mud.
“Try it and find out.” Gel suggested. “Just make sure you don’t get any on me. Rocks taste bad enough already without having to wear them.”
“Salt is made from rocks, you know.” Sean pointed out, putting the last vial back into their potion bag. He wondered how he would get the potion down without getting any on Gel. Treat it like a lotion, maybe?
“Well, now that makes perfect sense!” Gel declared, a bit of his earlier outrage coloring his tone. “If you knew it came from rocks, why didn’t you tell me first?!”
“You wanted to try all the spices!” Sean protested, trying and failing to keep his own mock outrage (and amusement) from his mental voice.
The singular ‘spice’ they had tried that Gel had abhorred – though, still eaten – was the steak Sean had sprinkled some type of fancy, reddish rock salt over. The slime’s amorphous, liquid body had, predictably, not responded well to salt. It had begun to dry out and even sizzle a little bit. Sean had felt bad for his friend, as he had honestly not given a single thought to the potential of the desiccating table ingredient hurting the slime. It had only been a sprinkle, after all. However Gel had, apparently, not quite forgiven him yet.
“Not the bad ones! Who eats rocks!? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and I have a memory of a grown man shouting at his shovel!” Gel went from a mix of incredulous anger to an incredulous confusion. “Why can’t all of these so-called ‘enlightened’ bipedal fleshbags just eat meat like normal creatures do? Who ruins perfectly good food with the spiteful stones of hate they find in the ground? Madness. It’s no wonder–”
Gel continued his ranting about the utter absurdity of salt as an ingredient, desirable commodity, and valuable trading resource for – according to the new countdown clock in Sean’s vision - the better part of the next half hour. For his part, Sean just let the slime wind himself down. He also made a mental note for the future to avoid any variation of ‘salt’ in the dishes he made for Gel.
That’s gonna.. Hu-uh. Sean thought. That’s going to be hard. Salt is in fucking everything. Maybe if I hide it or bake it in? Stir it into a sauce or…
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Sean’s own mental musings continued as he packed up their supplies, doused their fire from the nearby creek using an obscenely large white leaf with brown tips, and began moving in what he felt like was a relatively safe direction away from Dry Run. His pulse sense couldn’t detect anything nearby apart from birds and what he was pretty sure was the odd squirrel, but he left those alone. The first would just fly away and the second was easily capable of flitting about the trees. What he needed, preferably, was another large source of meat.
Picking the set of tracks along his given path that his instincts told him were most likely to lead to their next big meal, Sean headed further into the forest. Just as Gel was finally done raving about the inanity of salt as a condiment, Sean inquired about something he was surprised had taken him this long to ask.
“What nodes did you pick, Gel? You leveled up a few times too, right?”
The slime, who had taken to pulling himself up Sean’s rib cage and then dripping back down to keep himself amused whenever they went long stretches with nothing new to eat, changed tacks almost instantly.
“Sure did! Three whole times, all at once. Wait till you see what I picked!” Gel gestured expansively at the sky with Sean’s own hand, the sudden movement pulling him off-balance and out of step. “I went with–”
A beam of bright light slammed into the dark brown tree right in front of them, hot enough to singe the leaves of the vine-like shrubbery that had started climbing up its trunk. It bore a solid, hand-sized hole directly through the tree, passing right where they would have been if Gel hadn’t started gesturing out of nowhere. Gel still howled in surprised pain as a switch flicked in Sean’s long-dormant military training. The large skeleton dropped to the ground in a prone position an instant later, and went still as the grave.
“The hell was that!?” Sean asked Gel through their mental connection, his orbs whirling in his skull as he focused every ounce of his spare attention on his upgraded pulse sense. A sense which had still not reported anything but birds nearby – all of whom were rapidly taking to the air. “Who’s shooting at us?!”
“I don’t know, I can’t see anything!” Gel shouted back, and Sean had to admit that was a silly question given that his friend was now facing the grass and dirt beneath him.
The sudden burst of the beam had given Sean flashbacks of the time he had seen artillery shells take out a tree. Which, given that it now sounded like the whole damn tree sounded like it had just snapped in half, was apparently not all that far off. He hadn’t even thought about what to do next, he’d just reacted. No point hiding if they can blast through our cover.
Wood snapped, splintered, and then crashed down all around them. Sean used the opening provided by that cacophony to low crawl (such as he could with one arm) just enough to lay his head to where it could see around the tree. Then he ceased moving once again.
“Don’t move.” Sean told Gel. “Whoever it is, maybe they’ll think they got us.”
“Without a prompt telling them they did?” Gel shot back. “Who could possibly be that stupid?”
Sean didn’t acknowledge that very obvious point, instead trying another tack. “Maybe we’re not worth chasing then, if they know they missed. We should stay down and see if we can see who it is, first.”
“Alright but if they get close enough, I call dibs on first taste!”
“Deal.”
Sean peered through a partial break in the shrubbery, straining to see more without actually moving. He didn’t know what kind of other senses were out there. His own pulse sense hinted at the possibility of all kinds of ‘super’-style hearing or vision types, and Sean was hoping whoever was after them didn’t have movement-based vision.
After a few tense seconds, Sean got his first sight of their attackers. What he saw changed his conceptions of this new world in an instant. His first real-life view of another sapient species.
Make that three of them, not counting the humans of course.
“Attackers” also felt like an exaggeration, now that he saw them. Most looked only mildly interested in what was going on, and several weren’t even facing in his direction. They were all riding in or walking beside a sturdy-looking wagon, and the driver hadn’t bothered to turn his head at all. Nor did he apparently need a beast to pull it, as the wagon was moving entirely of its own accord.
The driver was also a turtle, or maybe a tortoise? Sean had absolutely no idea how to tell gender on whichever it was, much less a turtle-variant that appeared to be humanoid (at least to a point). The slow-moving reptilian creature reminded him rather powerfully of the old kung-fu master in Kung-Fu Mamba, only not as ancient and with his (her?) legs half-wrapped in a brown cloth blanket. Its leathery neck emerged out of a giant blue-and-green shell, and there was a lantern with a fire mote hanging off it that dangled off to the right of its face.
Beside the wagon walked a pair of short, furry guards with almost comically oversized ears. They looked like half-racoon half-human hybrids, only nowhere near as silly as that sounded. Both wore sand-colored leather armor and a pair of sheathed shortswords at their belt. Their small eyes darted around the forest, though Sean was relieved to see neither seemed interested in observing his hiding place.
Inside the cart was a rough-looking actual human with gold-hued plate armor who's still-outstretched hand made it obvious he was the one who had fired the tree-destroying blast. He had a cloak with an ostentatious golden tower serving as its brooch, and sat down grumbling shortly after. Sean couldn’t make out the words, and likely wouldn’t have understood them if he had, but the man seemed annoyed for some reason.
His companion, another human clearly more muscular than the first, also sat on the wagon’s bench in plate armor. He also sported an enormous, two-handed sword with an intricate hilt at his back. The blade seemed impractically large, like something you’d see worn by the equivalent of truck-nutz owners at a renaissance fair or purchased by an anime fan who truly believed in their weeb-ninja heart that they could actually use that despite reality and practicality clearly proving they could not.
The final member of the bandwagon was, in Sean’s opinion, the most impressive (or perhaps ‘otherworldly’) of the six. A majestic and scholarly owl the size of a fat merchant, and dressed rather like one, perched atop the front of the wagon. There were books and scrolls in the pack at his back, and this one also wore golden-hued armor – though his was leather. Sean supposed that made sense as the man-sized creature’s enormous, arm-like wings likely wouldn’t be comfortable in platemail.
Are all groups as varied as these guys? Sean wondered, noting four different races here before getting his thoughts back on the track that actually mattered. Why aren’t they attacking again?
Sean asked Gel the same question, but the slime didn’t know. After a minute of tense silence, the owl-man seemed satisfied and made a dismissive gesture. The wagon full of odd newcomers shared a few more words as he watched, clearly starting to relax – until the man with the large sword issued a command and both of the men leapt out onto the ground. The bird-man glowed with a soft yellow light, stretched his wings, and then leapt high into the air out of view. The turtle somehow put his wagon into reverse, and the rest of the newcomers, rather obviously, geared for battle.
Sean might have already started sprinting away, if it weren’t for the fact that none of them were facing them. The pair of humans who had stayed behind stared in the direction the wagon had been facing as if their worst nightmare was on its way. A moment or two later, and the big man leapt forward with his blade, moving so fast Sean was momentarily stunned as to where in the hell he had gone.
If they’re fighting something, we can probably get away before they notice us. Sean thought, but his curiosity had him inching towards the fight, not away from it. He crawled into the bushes ahead of them and then sat up so that both he and Gel could have a better view… and an instant later was glad that he had decided to stay.
“Holy shit…” Sean whispered to Gel, despite not needing to be quite inside their heads. “Can everyone around here fight like that?”
“No…” Gel responded gravely. “.. and those look like Gold Spire paladins, which is not good for us.”
“Gold Spire?” Sean asked, but the slime just sighed.
“We are so smooshed.”
About sixty seconds later, which Sean knew felt like forever in actual combat, the pair were still watching the ongoing, desperate battle.
The fight playing out in the forest before them looked like something directed by Michael Hay, with special guest stars from the earliest episodes of Dragon Ball Knee. The ones from before everyone got yellow hair and all the human characters became footnotes. It was a level of power that was still clearly beyond him… but as Sean watched the battle continue, his inner excitement grew. He could reach this level. He could fight monsters like this.
Provided we live long enough.
He’d been forced to abandon the bushes in order to get a better view, and was now mostly hiding behind a tree not too far from the one that had crashed. One that kept him out of view of both the turtle who had retreated with its furry protectors, and from being immediately obvious to those engaged in the brightly flashing melee. Though Sean had a feeling even if he had stepped out into the open clearing, nobody would notice him. There was just too much going on.
The edges of the battle were marked by intermittent whirls of mini-tornados that formed just above the trees before being hurled from the sky towards a target Sean hadn’t yet caught a true glimpse of. Fallen or torn branches, an abundance of leaves, clumps of dirt and mounds of grass flew in every direction, and the wind whipped at even Sean’s form – though it didn’t so much as budge him. Beams of that same bright light as before shot out occasionally, and Sean got the distinct feeling that the wielder didn’t seem to care much for ‘collateral damage’. None shot towards the wagon in the rear, but there were now at least a dozen felled trees alongside newly charred lines around the forest.
Echoing booms of the sort caused by metal clashing against metal at high speed came every few seconds. They had been intermittent in the beginning, but the floating owl had glowed several times at the start of the fight before it had started throwing small tornadoes around. After that, the clashes and resultant booms had started to speed up. At first glance, it looked like the group Gel had called paladins were headed towards a decisive victory.
But Sean was starting to get a feel for battles now, and he could feel that assumption was flawed. Only hours before, he had been outnumbered and outmatched by a swarm of foes – and he knew what fights like that looked like from his time back on Earth. The weaker party had to dart around, retreat, and hope that a combination of their wits and the terrain would allow them to come out on top – or at least to escape.
Whatever the paladins were fighting wasn’t trying to escape. The battle’s epicenter hadn’t changed. Not once. Which meant that whatever they were fighting didn’t feel like it had to prevent itself from being cornered as Sean had when he’d run all over Dry Run.
It’s toying with them. Sean realized. Or at least, it’s not afraid.
“What are they fighting?” He asked Gel, hoping the slime had managed to catch a glimpse of it so they wouldn’t have to move closer to satisfy his curiosity. “Any ideas?”
“None that are good for us.” Gel responded instantly. “I recommend that we leave while we still can, I don’t know what you know about paladins but let me assure you: they do not like the undead. You remember a minute or two ago? When they almost blasted us to pieces just for existing?”
“We’re not on their radar right now.” Sean said dismissively. “I want to know what is, and why they can’t seem to kill it.”
“What if it tries to come kill us?” Gel asked. “And what’s a radar?”
“That seems unlikely.” Sean responded , ignoring the slime’s second question. “We haven’t done anything to it.”
“We didn’t do anything to that badger, either.“ Gel pointed out as another clash between the two primary combatants’ swords rumbled through the trees. “And those deer didn’t do anything to us, but we still ate them.”
“I just want to take a look, see if we can figure out what it is, and then we’ll leave.” Sean promised. “Besides, if it’s that dangerous then we’ll need to know so we can figure out how to avoid it.”
Gel groaned in his mind, but the slime made no further complaints as Sean stalked silently forward. At least, until they made it close enough to see what the paladins were fighting.
A massive, hulking figure with the most absurdly twisted, grotesque musculature Sean had ever seen was trading blows with the fighter-type paladin – who seemed like he had grown another foot or so since Sean had seen him last. The two were roughly the same height, but the paladin was clearly getting the worst of it. Wounds inflicted on the undead – because it was clearly undead – monstrosity seemed to do essentially nothing, whereas the paladin needed to be healed after every few exchanges.
“Alright, what is it?” Sean asked, wondering if the ridiculously oversized growth on the undead figure’s shoulder was on purpose or not. The look of it reminded him of Mumbles back in Bancroft’s cellars, but even that man hadn’t been this tall. “Christ but that thing can fight. If they couldn’t heal they’d already be dead.”
The thought made Sean wish he could heal. Magical healing felt absurdly convenient to someone who couldn’t recover a single point of damage without literally evolving into a new form. The note of urgency in Gel’s response brought his mind back from the fantasy of finding an undead-themed version of whatever spell the paladins were using to keep their friend alive.
“No idea, and we need to leave.” Gel said, his arm already on the tree as if to push off it and propel them further away.
“Why? You don’t want to see how this ends?” Sean was genuinely curious, even if he knew that was clearly the right thing to do here. Looking away from the combat was hard for him for some reason, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. So he tried joking with his friend as he watched for at least a few more seconds. “You don’t want to eat any of them if it wins? Paladins aren’t ‘tasty’?”
“I think I’m… good. On the brains of sentients for a while.” Gel said, in a tone that made clear the slime was just coming to this conclusion right now. “Not forever, mind you – and we’re still going to eat the rest! … But not the brains. The memories are a bit… a bit much.”
“I get it, bud.” Sean said, quickly. The slime’s stark tone contrast bringing him back down from the high of watching the fight. The battle rush. An emotion that his undead body hadn’t stifled. That fact was probably worth examining later. “No humanoid brains for a bit. Too easy.”
A second or two later, Sean prompted Gel by repeating his earlier question just as the undead monstrosity literally punched his human opponent into one of the silver trees. “Why do we need to leave, again?”
The question, in light of what they were now watching, felt like more of a joke than his earlier one. Sean had managed to fight a few of the skeletons at his own level with Gel’s help, but he was a long way away from surviving a round against whatever the hell this was.
“Because I don’t know what that is.” Gel explained quickly. “I can name most, if not all, of the undead Bancroft threw against Dry Run thanks to the villager’s memories or that idiot’s own ramblings. But I don’t know what that is. Which means it’s either something he held in reserve…”
“Or…?” Sean could guess, but he didn’t know how necromancy worked here. He honestly didn’t know what the other options were. Apart from… “It’s not Bancroft’s?”
“That’s one possibility.” Gel acknowledged. “More likely though, is this is something he couldn’t summon while the rest of his horde was out. A horde that has been significantly reduced thanks to us, actually.”
Sean watched the undead monstrosity casually take one of the owl-man’s mini-tornados directly to its chest and strike its own blade a foot into the ground. The wind around it howled, and the undead moved not an inch.
“So it’s one of his heavy-hitters.” Sean had to admit, that was probably the least surprising fact he had heard so far. He imagined if the undead were handed a homerun bat, it would be grand-slamming its opponents right now.
“Exactly. Now, can you think of any reason why one of Bancroft’s heavy-hitters would be way out here after more of his minions were slain? Way out past the border of his territory?”
As if the monstrous undead had heard Gel’s very words, its dark eyes locked on Sean’s own orbs. A chill that had nothing to do with the howling wind ran down the slime warrior’s spine.
“Aw come on, again?!”