Charles fumbles at robust controls with thickly gloved hands, lamenting his circumstances in life for the thousandth time. When one joins the Staves, they imagine things like “visceral monster slaying” and “action-packed conflict” are sure to populate their future more than things like “routine maintenance”, but for Charles that hasn’t been the case. In an organization like the Staves of Man, being exceptionally talented at the technical stuff means you’re a rare commodity that will be assigned to the location with the most technical stuff in the kingdom.

As recompense for scoring highly on the technical section of the Graduation Gauntlet, Charles was stationed in the Depleted Lands, an anomalous disaster zone where the largest animate creatures - Gilo Rats - grow to the size of small dogs. The region’s lack of natural Vim makes it inhospitable to nearly all species, and the simple yet deadly sword at Charles’ side hasn’t seen use outside the training yard at the Tree since he arrived. Lulled into a sullen, angry apathy after months of having his yearning for battle stymied, he neglected even to bring a partner along for this latest stroll through the gray, droll wasteland he now calls home. Sometimes a man needs to stew in his misery all by his lonesome.

With a few more tedious adjustments, the Vim Reader at his fingers is re-tuned, ready to receive fresh data after the recent minor fluctuations in the extremely thin Vimscape. Though they had to be adjusted every month or so to get the crispest readings, Charles noted that he found himself out here only a week after he adjusted it the last time.

This is peculiar because of the particular nature of the Depleted Lands - that they are Depleted almost entirely of Vim, an innate worldly energy. So little Vim is present here that a man without Charles’ thick gloves, goggles, heavy clothing, and special training would die a horrible death, as Vim is drawn out of their body like thermal energy into cold water, until they are spitting up blood as their tissues decompose in real time.

A region so boring, it’ll literally suck the life out of you. Charles chuckles at his own thought. The portion of his personhood that is talented at and interested in technical things does wonder at what could be causing these more frequent fluctuations - but that portion is long overexposed and exhausted, taking the front of his mind at most times without reprieve, and right now he can’t bring himself to truly care.

He can’t help but think that if the situation were flipped and he were to spend all these months fighting and learning rather than studying and tinkering, he would have a far more beautiful life. A man needs opposition. A Stave needs adventure.

I’ll wither away here, and after my physical performance begins to drag, I’ll really never get reassigned…

The next Vim Reader is a short walk away. The net of Readers is kept fairly tight to account for the more minute fluctuations in Vimscape. More often than not, these fluctuations are the births and deaths of Edo Worms.

Yet as Charles crests a short hill of gray, decayed dirt, he immediately notices something is wrong. He hustles over, breath fogging in his leather, glass, and metal mask.

“Definitely not an Edo Worm…”

The Vim Readers are constructions of pale crystal and gray rock painted blue, reaching up to a man’s torso at the crystal’s peak and stuck down in the earth with a spike that makes their total height equivalent to a grown man’s.

Charles considers this as he ponders the Reader, which has been uproot from the earth as if it were simply pushed forwards until the back end erupted, like a lever. Displaced earth dusts the stabilizing spike, and the whole scene is covered in a strange shiny film.

Charles leans down and swipes a sample with one of the tabs he keeps in his field bag. Some sort of mucus, or gelatin, perhaps? Charles is beset by confusion, reconciling what he already knows with this new reality. Perhaps some perfectly nourished Gilo Rats, pushing the limits of their size to be the equivalents of larger dogs, had banded together to unearth the Vim Reader in search of a buried corpse or something, and covered the scene in saliva as they devoured it? They must’ve been thorough, but Charles supposes it could be possible, and even the cause of the recent fluctuations. Perhaps it was some sort of freakishly large Edo Worm…

Charles has memorized each and every creature, animate or not, that inhabits the Depleted Lands. There are only a few dozen, and fewer still could have done this… Charles places a gloved hand where his beard would be if he were unmasked, scanning his surroundings for more clues as he runs through more possibilities.

The Stave's search is interrupted by a squishy sound behind him. He whips around, heart racing immediately, hand on the hilt of his sword, and then pauses. A fist-sized gelatinous blob has stealthily rolled onto the carpet of mucus behind him, probably from the hill he just crested himself.

“Just a slime,” he breathes to himself. “You’re too excited, Charles,” he scolds, attempting to refocus.

Slimes are one of the many useless, harmless, vaguely irregular species of wildlife that squabble away for survival in the Depleted Lands. They possess strange material properties and an extraordinarily long lifespan, but display almost zero complex instincts or behavior besides the tireless, plodding, plopping pursuit of more grass to roll over and absorb. Since they don't seem to have internal organs besides their irregular core, that observation tracks. Very simple creatures. He's seen wild specimens as large as a cat, but from what the Staves know, they don't get much bigger. It would explain the mucus though...

“Did you make this mess?” he asks the slime. It just plops its plump little gelatinous body another few inches forwards. Charming. Unbothered by the rodent-tier creature, Charles resumes his pondering. Maybe the slimes cleaned up what was left of the Gilo Rats’ feast…

He should probably return to the Tree, so he can get some help in getting this Reader set up right again. But maybe if he just grits his teeth and lifts with his legs…

As he’s in position to begin his first attempt to lift the Vim Reader, another squelching sound rings out, deeper and more consistent. The difference makes him twist to look once more.

The slime that crests the hill behind him is neither fist-sized nor cat-sized. It is 4 feet tall, and several bulbous structures differentiate its internal organs from its smaller brother. On two opposing sides of the featureless blob, goopy protuberances extend out and downwards from the main body. They slink and shake with each shimmy forward that the slime takes, but sometimes the light and their transient form coincide at the right form to reveal a more defined representation of what they approximate - muscled humanoid arms.

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Charles releases his grip on the Vim Reader and begins to flee in the direction opposite of the approaching slime, towards the next Vim Reader. He has to remember his training, make a plan. When faced with an unfamiliar, possibly hostile creature alone…

The slime is audible in its pursuit of him, its sound more sporadic and squelchy, as if it were hopping or splashing across the barren terrain.

Stave procedure tells him to flee, bring this intelligence back to base, and fight another day. That would be the smart thing to do.

But hasn’t it been so long since he felt this thrill?

The warrior halts mid-stride, twisting around as he brings a hand on the hilt of his sword. The slime is mid-hop, compressing downwards with its blob and arms to slink upwards a moment later. With its vibrant mass and the addition of limbs, it travels far faster than the fist-sized slime ever could. In another two jumps, it will reach Charles.

The sullen apathy that normally clouds his mind is gone. He is a contiguous unit, a mind, body, and spirit united as one for the singular purpose of combat. His blade is unsheathed as the Slime is midway through its second to last jump, and he has assumed the classic defensive stance of the Staves by the moment it lands.

His kinesthetic senses are dialed in as he notes the angle of its’ landing and the trajectory of its rebound, spotting the way it compresses itself more on one side, giving its flight a distinct twist - one where its right arm is poised to whip around with its total momentum for a big overhand, right where he stands.

Charles steps to the side, and the slimy limb impacts the ground, solidifying into the defined visage of a humanoid arm as it begins to compress, deliberate and controlled. Charles' blade whips out a breath later, severing the limb in one stroke at the shoulder - but rather than falling to the ground in a goopy heap, the slime spins in midair, reorientated and accelerated by its micro-pushup.

A green blur zips across his vision and he’s sent sprawling, pain pulsing through his skull. On the ground, his vision is obscured by something, with only vague gray light with blotches of green being discernible. He turns his head and his murky world shifts, and he identifies that his helmet has been twisted around part of the way to the back of his head. He gets back on two feet as he wrenches it back into place, swaying slightly. His mask is splattered with specks of slimy goo.

He dropped his sword on the way down. He picks it up as quickly as he can, affixing his attention to his enemy, trying to understand.

The slime is rolling over the mass of goop that must have been its right arm, swiftly absorbing and reincorporating it to reform its limb. As Charles regains his bearings, his enemy is already reformed.

If it can assimilate lost limbs that quickly, perhaps losing that arm was its plan all along. If I hadn't cut it off, it might have used it as a solid platform to perform another flip at me, and cutting it off when I did just allowed it to use it a springy platform to redirect its follow-up attack... It set me up to lose, whatever decision I made. Just how smart is this thing? Maybe one of those new organs is some sort of brain.

Charles’ guard is smoothly reformed, no worse for the pain radiating from the side of his skull. He still can’t leave. Every further observation he can make will be a boon for the Staves back at the Tree… or at least that’s the excuse he would give, if questioned for his insistence at continuing this dangerous encounter.

The slime continues its offensive. It slinks at him with an impressive leap, and this time he simply prioritizes getting away, unwilling to commit to an attack until he has a better bearing of his foe. The slime again lands on its down-swinging forelimb, this time continuing the movement uninterrupted to compress its arm down like a spring before pushing the whole mass up and outwards towards Charles with a nasty spin. The warrior scrambles away, calm, resolute, in his element. His eyes are peeled and his mind is coolly racing.

Those organs might be the key to its resilience and stamina. If I can dash enough of them with one clean cut, I could cripple or outright kill it… With the length of my blade and the strength of my swing, I’ll be able to cut through a decent portion of its mass to strike them, but they’re sloshing around as it moves. I’ll have to anticipate their motion within the greater whole, and strike when they’re the least protected.

Charles maintains his strategy, dodging dynamic attacks with increasing exertion as the slime doggedly adjusts its techniques to account for his agility. His focus never leaves the slime, and the world falls away, discarded to better focus on the movement of the bulbous organs that, following the biology of its smaller brethren, mean the difference between a living slime and a dead one.

A fifth attack misses Charles by only a hair, but he has its number now. He twirls on the spot, bringing his blade down in an arc towards the slime, which is compressing down to the earth for the beginning of its next combo. The slime leaps again, but Charles’ bastard sword is already outstretched, and the collision will be blade-first, unavoidable. For a moment, Charles can see that he has already won.

The slime rejects his prediction by altering its behavior with a trap of its own. In the small moments before its torso reaches Charles’ simple bastard blade, it absorbs its two arms back into itself, increasing its overall circumference. The internal organs, previously able to be dashed to bits by the very tip of Charles’ swing, are suddenly insulated by a few crucial inches of goop. Charles’ swing is bogged down halfway, and he’s wrenched to the ground as the slime descends.

The warrior has lost his breath, and there’s a strange tingling at his fingers. He twists, strangely limited in his motion, to see that his sword is still stuck in the slimes’ bloat, and that bloat has enveloped his sword hand. Maintaining his composure, Charles places his off-hand on his sword forearm and pulls with his whole body. The goop squelches as it sucks at his retreating fingers, but he’s going to free himself.

Charles finally allows his assuredness to lapse as a new goopy arm pops out of the central mass and claps onto his off-hand. He might have been overestimating himself. He gives it another strong tug, and his sword-hand is free of the central blob - but only because the mass sucking at his fingers has formed into the slimes’ new second hand, grasping him tightly.

Grappled in two places, Charles the Stave is stuck like a fly. He scrambles backwards on his side, pushing earth with his legs, but the slime simply rolls forwards, reeling him in, not allowing him another inch of space. His desperation grows, and he makes a mistake all on his own - an attempted kick simply loses him the use of one of his legs, like he should’ve known it would.

Though he knows it must be the end, a part of his ego still tries to defend his actions. If he had followed procedure and ran when he should’ve, he could have led it back to the Tree. Perhaps if his deployment hadn’t been so dreadfully boring, he wouldn’t have acted this way. His commanding officer shouldn’t have let him reset the Readers without a partner.

The process of being digested by a slime wearing several layers of thick protective gear is quite lengthy, more than long enough for his flimsy denials of fault to crumble. Nearly fully enveloped, with slime still mostly causing a mild tingling as it saturates his thick clothes, there are several moments where Charles the Stave is aware of the full extent of his folly, that responsibility belongs to him alone. It is a sobering, terrifying thought.

Then his oxygen tank is eaten through and he cannot breathe, and the slime is fully exposed to his flesh and is eating away at all of him at once.

Consumed by pure panic and pain, his identity is forgotten and his last thoughts devolve into the panicked raving of a dying animal.