Chapter 12: Rewarding Loyalty
Squeaking, I sat in my cleaning pit, ignoring my quest objective as I usually did and worked on purifying my discolored cleaning slimes that had been hard at work scrubbing my domain.
With my purify spam, and Slimey’s skill as a super elite cleaning slime, “bathing” the other slimes and curing them of their mutated status became less of a hassle and more of an autonomous thing. I even sent Slimey out to purify wild slimes, helping to try and spread the gospel of cleanliness to the heathens living in the darkness beyond my domain.
Of course I still participated, spamming Purify to do my best to level it up, even getting it to level 8, pretty high and costing less mana to use, now if only I could clean the thing I wanted to clean the most right now....
I turned my attention to the single eyesore in my domain, (Aside from the sewage of course) the blighted Krocotaur.
Dave was getting stronker each day, its body filling out but still… disgusting, with pustules, and infected wounds, its maw occasionally drooling ick. Purify cleansed poisons, curses, and diseases, but it didn’t seem to do anything to whatever was making Dave “blighted.”
Hmmm. Maybe when I level the skill to level- What?!
At the edge of my domain, I felt a presence, an intruder, one that tore me from my daily bathing ritual to focus my attention on the singular thing I hadn’t seen in hundreds of years.
A human.
Before I knew it, I was atop Slimey, the super slime now ten feet tall and ROUND, bouncing off the walls at swift speeds to deliver me to my objective.
BUT WAIT! STOP!
I ordered Slimey to a crawl, taking a moment to calm my excitement as I realized how bad it would look if a monster just showed up out of the darkness.
I’ll just calmly approach it, don’t want to startle it! Nice and calm! NICE AND CALM!
Ah who am I kidding!? GO! GO! PICK UP SPEED! I sent to Slimey, my gooy cleaning friend shooting across the now pristine sewer floors to deliver me to my destination.
For the first time in hundreds of years, there was a human! A person! AN ACTUAL-! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand they’re dead…
Great.
Sitting atop my shiney blue Slimey, I made my way to the human who collapsed, her body convulsing for a moment before it stopped as it dropped a glowing rock of some sort that was like a star to my senses.
QUICK! CHECK FOR A PULSE!
Slimy didn’t move, the words lost on the slime.
Ah! Wrap around its neck and tell me if its pulses! I tried instead, my blue goo friend holding onto me tightly as a part of it quickly wrapped around the neck of the lifeless body and began dissolving the tissue with a sizzling sound.
NONONONONO! BAD! BAD! BAD SLIME! STOP! STWP!!!”
Slimey quickly retreated, dropping the woman’s face that lifelessly smacked against the floor.
Well… if she wasn’t dead before…
I observed the blonde-haired woman in ruined nun attire, Slimey moving me to and fro to inspect the cleric from her black stained feet poking from her shoes, to the slashes on her back and abdomen that were clearly infected. Who was she? Why was she here? How did she get here? Was there a way out the way she came from? What killed her?
I didn’t know, and upon closer inspection I could see that her wounds were covered in pus and ick that was so alike Dave’s it began to make me wonder.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Were they inflicted with the same disease? Was she blighted? And what was this thing she wore on her mouth?
Question after question struck my rubber duck mind until an image of a man wearing forest pattern clothes carrying a black staff appeared in my mind, his arm having a symbol of USMC.
Ah! Wait! Uhhhhh. AHA! A GAS MASK! THATS WHAT THOSE THINGS ARE CALLED!
But why did she need one?
Summoning Dave, the Krokotaur helped to gingerly move the corpse to the inner sanctum of my domain and assisted me in picking the woman’s pockets after hundreds of corrective commands.
Of course Dave kept trying to eat her, but fortunately Slimey was there to reluctantly stop him on my command.
Actually, now that I think about it, Slimey has been sulking a bit lately since finding the woman. Not quite sure why but the ten foot tall super slime appeared lethargic as I focused all my attention on the corpse giving off a holy vibe and the items she held on her.
Outside of the gas mask affixed by a tube to some kind of box on a belt, the woman had scarcely anything in way of possessions.
A leather bag with bits of moldy bread crumbs.
A glowing stone that constantly gave off light, no doubt to act as a torch considering all the fumes in the air.
A drawing or map of some sort made of leather that was hard to read thanks to the blood on it.
Her clothes, and finally, an oddly familiar pendant shaped in the form of a… cat?
All in all, after my through investigation, it was a safe assumption to conclude that I knew nothing at all and this cute woman was still a myster-
And then it hit me, the pendant, the cat! ADAM! THE GOD WHO SENT ME TO THIS HOVEL! THIS WAS ONE OF HIS DISCIPLES!
My body let out an involuntary squeak, one filled with rage as all of my minions collectively flinched, reacting to the hatred brewing from within that had laid so long dormant!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!!!
Was this his agent? Sent here to find me? To finish the job? Or was this a messenger finally here to apologize for RUINING MY LIFE!
It took about an hour or so before my bottled up emotions finally stopped and I ceased my ranting. I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is.
I opened up my menu screen, taking a moment to distract myself and observe the quest that I had been putting off until my domain was purified.
[Create Mana Core!]
[If you are the brain, the Mana Core is the heartbeat of all Dungeons!]
[WARNING! CRAFTING A MANA CORE WILL ATTRACT RIVALS!]
Yeeeeaaaaah I don’t think Ima do that right this second. The last thing I need right now is a thousand monsters descending on me and chewing up my sexy rubber bits.
Now calm, I finally turned back to the corpse at hand. Or, flipper? Beak.
I spent days not quite sure what to do with the body. An interesting idea occured in my mind to try and raise the woman up as a zombie, to spit in Adam’s face, buuuuut priests and clerics have that whole annoying blessing from god or whatever preventing them from coming back as undead.
So… that idea is off the table. Oh hey! Humans do have five fingers!
Sitting there I contemplated my options as Dave drooled over the body and Slimey visibly shook in anger, the two monsters towering above my other slimes that gathered around the corpse.
Every slime was jiggling, each monster oozing out the desire to dissolve, viewing the pus and open sores on the woman’s body like a cancer that needed to be destroyed.
And of course, they were right. Such filth didn’t belong in my clean utopia and every moment that passed was another that it was rotting away.
Ok, so everyone wants a piece of the body. But I rather not have human juice splattering all over my pristine walls. Sorry Dave, but you’ll have to sit this one out.
Looking to appease Slimey and reward it for its constant and faithful service, I turned the body over to the super slime, the blue cleaning ooze shaking off it’s sulking behavior to pounce on the body much to the dismay of Dave.
Sorry Dave, but you destroyed three dozen pylons! Consider this your punishment!
Dave sulked off as Slimey absorbed the corpse into its blue body, dissolving the woman in a process that was actually time consuming.
Slimey vibrated with delight, the amorphous cleaning blob compressing and decompressing rapidly, a sign of happiness I’d come to learn that slimes emitted.
THANK! THANK! THANK! Slimey sent, it’s mind akin to a child thanking its parent for a christmas gift.
I turned my attention elsewhere, focusing on the cleaning process of my domain as well as preparing a few scouts to begin exploring the upper plane, something I had been wanting to do before this unexpected visitor showed up.
Now though, if I was getting visitors, it would only be proper that I get the lay of the land, set up an actual welcoming for intruders. After all, I had been human once, and I recalled the greed involved with smashing dungeon cores, something I had become!
No no no. There would be no dungeon smashing here! If Adam had the audacity to send his minions to me, then it would only be proper to vanquish them!
Suddenly, an explosion of light, a basking glow that turned my attention away from my introspection towards Slimey as a notification hit my screen.