A low, gurgling moan escaped from somewhere in Sean's chest cavity like a bubble of gas. With enough imagination, it might have passed for his intended response:

"Hunnhh?!"

The eye-in-a-jar floated for a moment, then blinked at him slowly – as if surprised.

"You uh, don't have working lungs there, big guy. And I'm not fluent in meatsack, anyway. Use the bond. Just think at me and I’ll understand you. Think: “Yes, Gel. Of course you can have my other eye, I couldn’t imagine giving it to anyone besides you.”"

For a voice projected inside his own head, the slime’s tone held an unusual amount of sass.

Ignoring the somewhat patronizing tone, Sean tried to do as the eye had suggested. To his surprise, part of his mind apparently recognized his intent immediately, translating it into an image of the slime in his mind. He could feel a connection through that image, and Sean found he was able to project his thoughts through it. With only a little effort, speaking through that connection was as simple as if he were speaking aloud.

Sean had only one question for this strange… thing. Slime. Eye. Whatever it is was.

“What in the abyssal hell is going on here?”

The eyeball tilted in what was almost certainly an attempt to cock a non-existent eyebrow.

“You were uh, just about to give me your other eye, I think. It was crazy neighborly of you that first time, but I’ll need the full set if I’m going to be of much help to either of us.”

“Give me back my eye!” Sean mentally yelled at the jar, resisting the irrational urge to shake it.

“Okay, first of all? You can’t take gifts back after you give them. That’s just bad manners. Besides, it’s not like you’re even using it. You don’t need eyes, big guy.”

“Wha–Of course I need my eyes!”

“Uh…huh.” The slime’s voice sounded supremely unconvinced, but then it brightened. “I’m sensing you’re new around here, so how about this: You take a quick lap around the room, take a good look around, and we’ll see – together – just how much you don’t need that other peeper. How about that?”

Sean’s skepticism rose, and he was about to fire back a retort when he realized that doing so would have him literally arguing with a jar of talking liquid. Seeing as his lost eye had already vanished, it wasn’t like he’d be losing much by cooperating.

“Alright.” Sean agreed, though he couldn’t resist asking. “If I do need it though, you’ll give it back?”

“Absolutely.” The slime agreed, its eye – his eye – bobbing up and down as if nodding. “Any eyes you still need are yours, not a problem.”

Sean nodded, feeling an unsteady weight on his head move dangerously forward as he did. Then he did as the jar had suggested, and took a short walk around the corpse-pyramid. As he walked, Sean tried to focus his vision on everything in the room. Doing so immediately brought a disturbing revelation: he still had sight out of the socket he had lost an eye in.

The thought should have driven a shiver down his spine, but it didn’t. So, Sean decided to just keep moving and test out what he had.

At first, it felt like he was trying to view the world with different prescription lenses on each eye. That was a bit of a headache, and Sean still couldn’t get his other eyelid to cooperate – but if he concentrated, he could close off the vision in one eye. It wasn’t quite the same as blinking, which he apparently didn’t need to do anymore, but it did get the job done.

One eye was clearly worse off than the other in the vision department. Everything was blurry out of that eye, fishbowl-style, just like the world had been earlier. The other eye – or socket, rather – was… fine. More than fine. He had perfect vision out of it down here, and even though the sights were particularly gruesome – Sean could pick out each individual nightmarish detail with a granularity he’d never had before.

Which would have been great, had the rest of his body been upgraded to the same degree. Instead, Sean was having a ridiculous amount of difficulty just trying to move around. His feet flopped around with each step, slapping into the green ichor with a splash. Trying to stay steady down here was an exercise in frustration, and Sean slipped more than once – something that scared the jar in his hand each time. While he didn’t fall, it was increasingly a near thing not doing so.

Why do I feel so weak? Sean wondered, trying to navigate around a pile of discarded limbs without bumping them with his broken toe.

His arms felt like they were weighed down with soggy lead. His neck strained every time he tried to move his head, and the weight in his chest had never left. Nor had he been able to take a breath yet, but Sean was chalking that one up to ‘magic’ and trying not to worry about it. The more he moved around, the more an inescapable, if uncomfortable, conclusion settled in his mind.

Sean stopped and looked over at the pile of endless corpses, then at his own unfeeling, pale skin. He looked at the jar in his hand again.

“Am I a… zombie?” Sean asked, trying to keep his apprehension out of his voice.

“Nope!” The slime’s voice in his head responded cheerfully.

Sean started to feel relieved, but then the slime continued. “You are a skeleton, my mostly-ambulatory friend. A rather fleshy one, sure, but a skeleton nevertheless.”

Sean froze, and if he could have narrowed his eyes at the jar in that moment, he would have.

“I’m a what?!”

Sean distinctly heard an exasperated sigh sound in his head as the floating eye bobbed up and down a bit. Then its gaze seemed to unfocus a bit as if it were looking through him.

“Yup. Says it right here on your status: ‘Sentient Skeleton’. Guess whoever made you didn’t go super hard on the whole ‘sentient’ part, huh? No worries. I am more than happy to be the brains of our little operation here. Oh! Speaking of, that reminds me.”

The eye peered up at him, pressing itself up against the edge of the glass jar to do so. It whispered into Sean’s mind as if the slime were standing right next to his ear.

“Feed me your brains.”

Sean shuddered and put the jar back down on the floor. He took one slow, deliberate step back, making sure not to slip on the disgusting muck that was the covered floor. Accepting how creepy that had just been, he let the moment pass, staring down at the slime/eye in a jar and considering his options.

It wasn’t long before the slime started talking again.

“Are you… thinking? Is that what thinking looks like for you? All one wobbly, droopy human eye on one side while the other is all cool, red, and flamey? It’s a great look, don’t get me wrong, it just looks a little… uneven. How about I eat the other one and we fix that up for you? Also, and this is just to satisfy my own curiosity here, but how do you even see with that thing in the way?”

“Are you done?” Sean thought back after the tide of questions had ebbed.

“Almost. How did you get down here, anyway? Bancroft only throws his failures out. Failures don’t usually last this long, and yet you’re still moving. How are you still moving?”

That last question came across as genuine curiosity, so Sean gave it some consideration. This slime – who had called itself Gel, now that Sean thought about it – had piqued his curiosity with that last statement.

“What do you mean his failures don’t last that long?” Sean asked cautiously. “Am I going to fall apart or something?”

Gel’s response came back as quick and nonchalant as if the slime were answering a question about the weather.

“Necromancers don’t usually waste mana on summons they don’t want. If Bancroft is done with you already, then you’ve probably only got a day or two before you crumble like the rest of these boneheads did.”

“WHAT!?” Sean couldn’t help himself from yelling, and he took a step back towards Gel’s jar. “You mean I’m going to die tomorrow!?”

Gel’s eye bobbed up and down in what the slime probably intended to be a reassuring fashion.

“Reelaaax, pinky. You’ve got me! And tomorrow is at least twenty-four hours away! Ish. That’s plenty of time for you to give me all that extra flesh you’re not using, for us to become best friends forever, and then we can go murder Bancroft’s smarmy little face off! It’ll be great. What’dya say?”

“...Pinky?”

“Have you seen your skin? You’re literally rotting away as we speak, my somehow-still-fleshy friend. And not like, slowly, either. You should definitely let me eat you before all of that deliciousness goes to waste.”

Sean couldn’t help himself after hearing his own flesh referred to as ‘deliciousness’. He facepalmed. Then he rubbed his furrowed brow with the same sausage-like hand. It wasn’t as much of a relief as he’d hoped, as Sean could barely even feel the pressure on his skull… but the motion itself was still reassuring.

At least it was reassuring, until his other eye popped out of his skull and onto his hand. Sean stared down at it. His vision sharpened considerably now that it was gone. As if he’d been wearing half of someone else’s glasses this entire time and had finally decided to take them off.

Okay… Sean thought slowly, still feeling the lingering cold logic from before running through him and deadening any panic at the sight. Apparently I really don’t need my eyes anymore. That’s… hmm.

The wheels in Sean’s mind began spinning as he started putting the various pieces of his strange situation together. He was starting to feel like the situation had gotten entirely out of hand, and now it was time to take back control. Only to do that, Sean needed more information.

“Are yo–” Gel piped up in his mind, but Sean cut the slime off before it could keep talking.

“I’ll give you my other eye.” Sean announced, and just as the slime began to cheer in his mind he added firmly. “But, in return, I want you to answer some of my questions first.”

“Sure!” Gel replied eagerly. Maybe a bit too eagerly. “Answering questions and eating people are two of my favorite things to do actually, so this is a great plan. I love it. What is it you want to know, Pinky?”

“It’s Sean. Now, you mentioned my ‘status’ earlier. What exactly is that?”

Gel’s eye partially covered itself as if he were trying to raise an eyebrow again, only this time in an exaggerated fashion. The slime’s next words came out slowly, as if explaining the patently obvious.

“Your... status? Wow, uh... okay. Here, instead of me explaining it just… just think the word ‘status’ in your head. Like you’re talking to me, just… not at me. And plop that peeper in here while you’re at it, if you don’t mind.”

“What about the rest of my questions?” Sean asked with feigned suspicion, though he already felt like he could trust Gel for some reason.

“I’ll answer them all, I am a slime of my word! Just, you know, a hungry one. Besides–” Gel’s eyeball swirled around his jar. “--it’s not like I was going anywhere, anyway.”

Shrugging and figuring he had little left to lose at this point, Sean did as he was asked. With a simple turn of his hand and a small plop, he relinquished his other eye to the sentient fluid-in-a-jar and focused on saying the word ‘status’ in his mind.

Congratulations! Your second ocular sacrifice has been accepted and consumed. Your bonding process to Sentient Gel Slime, Level 2, has advanced by a considerable degree. Continue the process to unlock further benefits.

Uh-huh… Sean thought intelligently. That makes two things now trying to convince me to just feed myself to the slime.

If Sean could have sighed, he would have. Wonderful.

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Before a third voice or another otherworldly text-prompt could chime in with their opinion on the situation, Sean focused on saying the word ‘status’ in his mind like Gel had asked him to.

Almost immediately, a silver-grey prompt appeared in Sean’s field of vision. There were no accompanying sounds as there had been earlier, and the color had changed, but it was otherwise the same floating text as before. His ‘status’ was even formatted, its layout exactly the same as any number of video-game character screens Sean had seen before.

Name: Sean O’Connor

Race: Skeleton (Sentient)

Level: 1

Health: 6/6

Mana: 3/3

Attributes: Physical (1), Mental (3), Recovery (2)

Abilities:

  - Passive Abilities:

    - Pulse Sense

    - Mental Link

  - Active Abilities

    - Slash

Traits: Undead, Flesh-Bound, Summoned Creature

“Oh.” Sean stated, intelligently. “Well, that’s… convenient.”

Then, to himself, Sean added. Kinda bare bones on the explanations, though. I wonder if I can get more out of this later.

Before Sean could explore that thought, Gel consumed and then manifested a second eye. The other orb looked identical to the first, but there was a hint of glee evident even in each as they began whirling around one another. Sean’s old eyes pressed up against the glass of the jar a dozen different ways, as if Gel couldn’t decide what to look at first.

“Woah-ho-ho-hoo! Two eyes are way better than one! No wonder all those meatbag humans walk around with a spare, this is great!”

“Uh-huh.” Sean uh-huh’d. He wasn’t intentionally trying to dampen the slime’s excitement, but he had just been one of those meatbag humans. A fact that he wasn’t entirely over yet, despite his best efforts.

“Anything I should know about these attributes, or are they basically self-explanatory?” Sean asked, after giving Gel a moment or two to zip his new eyes around his jar.

“Pretty much.” Gel responded, his wide orbs glued towards what looked to be a hallway and his tone flippant. “Physical encompasses everything physical, ditto for mental, and recovery is… well, how well you recover from things. It also affects how much of a beating you can take without really feeling the beating, if you get my meaning.”

Oddly enough, Sean did. He felt encouraged at the quick explanation, as it implied understanding this strange system governing his new life would be simpler than he had first feared.

“Basically, the three are a broad measure of how good you are at each.” Gel’s jar wobbled in what Sean felt was the slime equivalent of a shrug. “You ask easy questions for someone trading parts for them.”

Sean almost corrected the slime, as he’d technically only traded a single eye for questions… but decided that doing so would be unproductive. Instead, Sean boiled down what he had seen from his status page.

“So, essentially, I’m a slightly-sturdy skeleton that sucks at melee combat, but if I can get some magic spells or something, I’ll be on the right track?”

Gel’s eyes slowly unglued themselves from the side of his jar and refocused back on Sean. “Ehh… Sure? You’re not really a caster, though. I’m not sure why your mental attribute is higher. Normally skeletons are weak in both.”

Which made sense, but there was still something itching at Sean’s mind.

“If I’m really a skeleton, why do I still have all of… this.” Sean gestured vaguely at the clearly non-skeletal flesh and blood that made up his bleeding, yet obviously still intact, physical form. “Why do I still have my body?”

“No idea. But I can tell you that you look succulent.” Gel’s eyes roamed over Sean in a way that made him feel distinctly like a choice ham being weighed at a butcher’s shop. “How much more are you willing to part with now by the way? Because I happen to know a great place for all that extra meat hanging off you.”

“... in your jar?” Sean guessed.

Gel’s new eyeballs did a sort of somersault as he howled with glee. “In my jar! See, I knew you would come around eventually. Now cut off some more, and let’s have at it. Better yet, pour me out of here and I’ll consume you myself!”

“I’m not cutting parts of myself off to feed you, Gel. What do you even get out of eating me, anyway?” Morbid as their discussion was, Sean found himself curious what sort of boon the slime was getting out of him. Literally.

“Wait, you don’t know? Did you really hand over both of your eyes just to see what would happen? Because if so, I whole-heartedly approve and suggest you continue that line of thinking moving forward. Starting with the rest of you. Your heart would make a great next course actually, if you’re accepting suggestions.”

“Now you want my heart?”

“I want all of you, Pinky. All the fleshy, delicious parts anyway. You can keep your bones of course. I promise not to eat anything you actually need to live. Cross your soon-to-be-eaten heart.”

Sean was about to retort about how that was a key thing everyone needed to live, but then realized he was talking via some kind of telepathy to a jar of sentient slime. Also, if he really was a skeleton now, as the prompt had said, then it was entirely possible Sean didn’t need his heart.

Still, though. No reason to give it all up easily. Sean’s organs may not have a whole lot of function left now that he was part of the walking dead, but they were still his organs. They’d seen him through a lot.

“Seriously. What do you get out of eating my organs?” Sean asked. “And more importantly, what do I get out of giving them to you?”

Gel seemed to mull that over for a second, his eyes juggling over one another in the jar. “You uh, didn’t read the whole card after we bonded there, did you? Check out my status – just think about it again, and that should work. My success is your success, here. Parasites can’t move around without a host.”

Frowning hard at what that last comment seemed to suggest, Sean did just that. A silver-grey prompt appeared in his vision almost immediately.

Name: Gel

Race: Sentient Gel Slime

Level: 2

Health: 3/3

Mana: 5/5

Attributes: Physical (0), Mental (4), Recovery (2)

Abilities:

  - Passive Abilities

    - Flesh Bonding

    - Mental Link

  - Active Abilities

    - Mimicry

    - Absorb (Flesh)

Traits: Slime, Parasite(Physical), Flesh-Bound

Several silent moments passed as Sean read through Gel’s status several times. The first thing that struck him was how weak Gel was. If this world was anything like the games he had played back home, then Gel would be practically useless to him in combat. Not only was the slime currently confined to a jar, but if he wasn’t lying then the slime literally couldn’t move without him. Not to mention his physical stat was zero. Unless Sean missed his guess, that wasn’t good. Judging by Gel’s health, it would also only take one or two hits to kill Sean’s only ‘friend’ in this new world.

Not that he had any real frame of reference for what any of these numbers meant yet. Which reminded Sean that he still hadn’t tried to get more information out of these prompts. Focusing his attention on the ability most likely to be what Gel was referring to, Sean found that additional information popped up almost immediately.

Flesh Bonding: Creates a bond by consuming the flesh of a sentient creature. Grants the ability to share gained experience, mana, and health with it as if both were one entity, commensurate to the total flesh consumed. Grants both entities the ‘mental link’ ability.

“So, if you eat more of me… then we’ll both grow stronger, together?” Sean mused, half to himself and half to Gel as he read. “And we’ll be able to share… hmmm.”

It felt all kinds of odd to be talking about this, but Sean wasn’t squeamish. Even less so, recently, but the idea was just too weird… to say out loud. Or think out loud. Whatever.

“Yup! There’s not a single downside.” Gel replied cheerfully. “Not to mention all the tasty upsides. Well, insides. Your insides, in case that wasn’t clear.”

“Except if you’re lying, at which point I die when you eat my heart.” Sean responded, though at this point even he hardly believed that would happen.

I’m a skeleton now. Sean reminded himself. The thought wasn’t as alien as it should have been. Quite the opposite, it felt comforting. Normal. Even… natural.

What the hell is wrong with me?

“Did someone hurt you, Pinky? Is that where these trust issues are coming from? ‘Cause if they did you just drop me on them and I’ll eat them, too. Just for you. Well, mostly for me I suppose, but still partially for you.”

“I don’t have trust issues! How does not wanting you to eat my heart equate to trust issues?” Sean shook his head, unable to believe the directions the conversation – and this day – had taken him.

“Look, we’re getting off track here.” Sean began, but then he froze.

The sound of scratching on stone echoed down from one of the two hallways leading out of the room. The one Gel had been staring down earlier. Sean might have ignored the sound entirely if it hadn’t also been accompanied by a rhythmic thumping sensation emanating from the same direction. A sound that arrested all of Sean’s mental focus and attention.

What is that? Sean wondered, entranced.

But there was only one thing the measured thumps could be, and the hint had been right there on Sean’s own status page: His passive ability.

Pulse sense. Sean thought, listening to the faintly approaching heartbeat as if it were the only sound in the world. So that’s how it works… It sounds so… real.

“What track?” Gel asked, clearly confused as to the sudden change in conversation.

Instead of responding, Sean put up a hand up to the jar for silence. Then he peered down the hallway to see what was coming. A rather large rat, easily the size and muddy color of a fat racoon, was sniffing around the piles of ichor, slowly making its way down the hall. Its beady eyes flicked rapidly from place to place before settling on Sean.

Its teeth bared instantly. The rat charged forward and leapt directly at him, its oversized mouth wide open as it went for his neck.

Sean did the only thing he could think of in this situation: He threw his right arm between the rat and his throat, trying to knock it out of the air. His arm managed to catch the rat right in its head, but the nimble creature twisted in mid-air, sinking teeth way too big for its rodent mouth down hard into Sean’s forearm.

Sean almost screamed, expecting massive pain or a fountain of blood, or –

– anything except for the dark red prompt that flashed in the top-right corner of his vision.

You have been bitten by Giant Rat for 0 damage (2 total, minus 2 due to armor).

“Hey, that’s mine!” Gel shouted in a quickly ignored section of Sean’s mind.

If he’d still had eyes, Sean would have blinked in surprise. Instead he felt a shiver race through his body, one that swallowed his shock at being attacked. It consumed his fear, his confusion, and even his own drive to protect himself as Sean felt his awareness slipping away.

This was nothing like the dulling of emotion Sean had felt before. He didn’t have the words for it.

Before he could think of any, an ice-black chill spread through Sean’s conscious mind. It narrowed his focus, highlighting this new foe in his vision as if it were the only thing that existed in this world. A faint red glow emanated from within the rat’s body, one that pulsed in time with the creature’s tiny heart, and Sean’s entire being lasered in on it.

Calmly, methodically, Sean extended the fingers of his left hand open like a claw as he aimed at the prey now savaging his other arm. Then he slashed across the rat’s face with all of his might.

This time, blood did go everywhere. It spurted into the air as Sean’s fingers gouged deeply into the creature’s face and burst the gel of its eyes open with thumb and forefinger. The rat cried out, but Sean ignored it. Just as he ignored the vibrant, blood-red prompt that appeared in an unobstructed corner of his vision.

You have used the ability ‘Slash’ on Giant Rat for 4 damage (4 total, 1 base unarmed + 1 from the ‘Slash’ ability multiplied 200% due to a critical strike!). You have blinded your target.

The heartbeat inside his prey quickened as more squeals of pain issued forth, but that was alright. Its pulsating inner prize was his goal, and Sean would silence the creature soon. His prey snarled at him, twisting as it released its bite and tried to flail away, but Sean wasn’t about to let something that had dared to attack him escape. His bloodied right arm twisted with it, dislodging an inch-thick chunk of flesh, but still managing to catch the rat by its scruff.

It struggled, but the rat’s strength was fading by the second… and now there was no escape.

Sean’s left arm tore into the creature once more, this time without bothering to add the extra boost in strength from his ability. He didn’t need it. His arm dug deeply into its belly, close to his frantically-beating target, but not close enough. Another squeal, much weaker than the last, fought for Sean’s attention just as another blood-red prompt appeared.

Sean ignored them both. Then, taking careful aim at the heart Sean knew was his by right… he struck out again.

Again, another red prompt appeared… only this time it was accompanied by a golden one.

You have defeated a Giant Rat! You have gained 10 experience points.

… which Sean promptly ignored.

His left arm lashed out again, without his ability backing it this time, raking the rat across its hide and finally managing to tear out its heart. Sean stared down at the small organ in his hand as the faint glow that had been surrounding it – that had called to him – began to fade. With it, Sean felt some of the pitch-black cold blanketing his mind begin to recede.

Not all of it, but enough for something to get through.

“Uh, Pinky? I think you got him.” Came Gel’s quiet voice in Sean’s mind.

The intrusive thought barely registered. It sounded to Sean like a person talking from the other end of an apartment, or through a wall. Muffled, and probably not worth paying attention to.

What was worth paying attention to however, was a very simple fact: Sean had been attacked.

… and there was only one response to an attack.

Violence.

“... Sean?” Gel’s voice had gained a worried edge, but the skeleton had already stopped listening to him.

Another strike tore the creature’s body open even wider, spilling hot blood across the already slick floor in a wide spray. More strikes rained down, and only when the body finally stopped swinging in place did Sean feel the world slide fully back into focus.

He looked from the rat’s body to the tiny, squashed heart in his left hand for a long moment before dropping both to the ground. Checking himself over, Sean noticed absently that his right arm had indeed been heavily savaged in the fight. There wasn’t much blood to show for it, despite the many open wounds, but it was clearly in bad shape.

As for his left arm...

Sharp white bone protruded from the tips of each of his blood-drenched fingers. From the last knuckle down to the tips, there was no flesh or nails remaining on any of them.

For the first time, Sean felt a bit of the chill in the room he was in finally register to his senses.

None of his injuries actually hurt, so Sean returned over to where Gel’s jar was – the fight having apparently taken him several feet away – and sat down in front of it. Staring into what used to be his own two eyes floating in clear liquid, Sean said nothing. He felt nothing. And he thought of nothing.

The silence that followed filled every square inch of the ichor pit like a thick, choking fog.

Until Gel’s voice pierced into Sean’s mind. Respectful, but determined.

“You uh, going to eat that?”