But for a Slime

Chapter Four

Joe headed out into the forest, going back towards where he had found the slime before. He headed into the forest following the trail and had reached where he had come onto the road. Stopping, he considered the depths of the forest then glanced down the road. As he made plans, he thought of going back into the woods but reconsidered as he had only seen the single slime in the twenty to thirty minutes it had taken him to circumvent the town. Given that a town was settled here, it was likely that it would be a safe location and he figured finding monsters would require deeper explorations into the woods.

He continued on into the depths of the woods, sticking to the road and carefully peering into the depths of the forest on each side. After traveling for almost thirty minutes, he stopped in a bit of stunned shock when he saw two slimes in his line of sight. One was on the actual road and another he could see another hundred meters or so beyond at the forests edge. He wondered if the screams of the one he attacked would draw the other. He could only hope it would not or that he could kill the first fast enough.

Remembering what his arrow had done to the slime an hour ago, he stepped into the forest, found several twigs, and slipped them into his harness. He also searched for and found a large thick stick about a meter long and about as thick as two or three fingers. He was back on the road in only a few moments and pulled out his dagger. As soon as it settled in his palm, it began to buck in his hand the same way as his bow, spear, and shield. His grip firmed and he pressed it against the stick, sharpening the end into a point. He continued sharpening the stake while walking towards the slime. When he got within about thirty meters to the slime, it immediately turned towards him and moved quickly.

Joe slipped his dagger away and held the stake in front of him. He slowed cautiously and began to move forward carefully. The slime closed quickly, then leapt at him with startling speed. The attack caught him by such surprise that he had few options to protect himself but to throw himself to the ground. He rolled to the back and side coming all the way over in a reverse somersault while still holding the sharpened stake. He stabilized on his hands and knees and saw that the slime had leapt past him a good ten meters. Seriously? This… this …. This is bad! These guys are dangerous.

Joe leapt forward quickly, but the slime was faster, and leapt at him again with the same extreme speed and power. This time he leaned back and brought the stake up as it leapt at him and slammed into the stake, embedding itself on the stake. Joe swung it over his head and then leaned over and to slam the stake into the ground, pinning it to the ground the same way he had with the arrow before. The slime had screamed its alien cry as usual and found itself pinned to the ground and began hobbling its way off the stake. Bringing out his spear, he pressed it into the slime, then carefully scooped the gem out with the flat of his blade like spooning out the last marshmallow from a bowl of breakfast cereal. As soon as the gem popped out, the entire body of the slime collapsed into a puddle and the gem tumbled down the road. He leapt towards it and found a few specks of ooze still on it quickly traveling to each other and combining. He pulled out a twig and picked up the gem, quickly brushing off the ooze. Soon, he felt his status change, still an incredibly strange feeling, and knew it was dead. He dropped the gem into the satchel next to the first he had captured.

The entire fight had taken only a few minutes, but had left him flooded with adrenaline and a tense vibration echoed through his body. This fight was even more intense than the first. The arrow hobbling the first slime had made the fight too simple, and he hadn’t expected how agile and fast the enemy would be. Joe looked down the road and headed for the next slime. This fight was much faster, now that he knew the slimes capabilities. He used the same technique, pinning the slime to the ground before spooning out the gem and wiping off the last of the ooze.

Even as he finished the second fight, he saw another slime slightly off to the left and continued his extermination of the slimes. There seemed to be a chain of slimes and he meandered down the road and off into the forest. As he went deeper into the forest, he began marking the trees to give him his direction in returning. About the time he was planning to head back to the village, he felt a strange sensation, slightly different and stronger than his normal status update feeling. He stopped and decided to look at his status. This had been different.

Status

Current Job

Available Jobs

Current Skills

Available Skills

Log

Joe McConnell

Status

Physical Resistances

Resistances

HP

2

Physical:

Wind

.2

MP

2

Piercing

0

Water

.2

Attack

2

Crushing

0

Ice

.2

Defense

2

Slashing

0

Magic

2

Magic Defense

2

Strength

2

Dexterity

2

Agility

2

Commoner

2

IQ

2

Wisdom

2

Learning

2

Luck

0

It seemed that his job had risen a level. And each stat had gone up a single point. His status showed the same as the current stats page with the exception of the parenthetical data showing his Earth data. Joe began to despair as he considered the difficulty, then brightened slightly. It’s still doable. One day per level. I’ll be done in about three and half… four months? Deciding that the day was about done anyway, he turned around to head back to the road. After about thirty minutes of travel, he came upon a slime, and decided he might as well take it out. He soon found another line of slimes heading back towards the road and chose to make the trek back to the road a bit more productive. He slew another set of slimes, taking about an hour to get back to the road, his last slime killed on the road itself. He saw another coming up from the south, but decided that he really needed to get back home. The sun was only just above the horizon, maybe twenty or thirty minutes left before it set.

Joe’s trudge back to the village and the inn left him discouraged, but he released the discouragement and returned to his good cheer. The return to the inn that evening was a bit strange as it was quite crowded and although the people minded their own business and enjoyed their meals, it felt like he was the center of attention. He ate his lunch in silent solitude before accosting the innkeeper for a bath. It took several minutes to explain and as always, her responses had that strange several second delay, as if it took time for her mind to process what she was seeing. After she finally understood, she drew large angry negative-seeming signs with her arms, waving them angrily and unhappily.

Joe became insistent, and she finally huffed and walked out of the inn and pointed him towards the stream. He blinked at her in stunned surprise but she seemed insistent. Finally, he shrugged and went towards the stream. Guess I don’t really have a choice, but I really don’t want to go to bed with slime guts and sweat for companionship.

As he headed to the stream, he saw the blacksmith and decided to try to pantomime a giant spoonish slime killing machine. Boy, this oughta be good! He sighed and squared his shoulders before heading in. The blacksmith saw him and came towards him, wiping his hands and nodding before offering a greeting, still totally incomprehensible.

“Well, hello to you to!” Joe, because of his frequent worldwide travels, had learned to pick up the basics of a language rather quickly, and guessed that the man had offered a greeting. He bowed his head slightly to offer a polite body movement that would hopefully translate well here and then tried to copy his word, duplicating the sound.

“Kai Sou Ren Gack Bhe.”

The blacksmith crunched his eyes up in confusion then smiled widely in a subtle guffaw.

“Sorry, man. I have no idea what you said.” Joe offered an exaggerated shrug, an apologetic smile, and an arms wide pose of “well-what-can-you-do” accentuated by his shrug.

The blacksmith offered a small smirk in agreement to the humor and then asked in a rumbling voice something similar to what he had before, although slightly simpler. Joe’s eyes jumped and he replied with a jovial tone.

“Ah, I guess that wasn’t hello. That was something like how can I help you. Right. What can you do for me? Well. I want a giant spoon to kill slimes with,” Joe smiled with a shrug and a tilt of the head before deciding that words were rather useless. He reached over his head and pulled out his spear.

The blacksmith stepped back slightly and Joe back up and spread his hands wide, “Woah.. woah.. Sorry for scaring you. Just trying to show you what I want!”

The blacksmith glanced back and forth between the spear and Joe’s stance and slowly relaxed before stepping forward carefully. Joe nodded and smiled in what he hoped was a nonthreatening way and then looked around before he found a piece of scrap iron he could use and grabbed it to begin drawing in the dirt out front of the smithy. He drew a long shaft and pointed to his spear, outlining the spears shaft using both hands to draw the distance, hoping the blacksmith would understand it as a measurement.

He repeated it and pointed to the shaft he had drawn in the dirt. The blacksmith nodded carefully, seeming still uncertain. Then Joe drew a wide flat triangular shovel blade for the head. Then pointed to the head of his spear, again, encompassing the head between his two hands and back to drawing of the spear head, drawing a line representing its length. The blacksmith quickly nodded this time, easily understanding what Joe was trying to say. Joe then pointed out the ‘spoon-spear’ head’s width, then showed his spear head and moved his hand out about double the current width of his spear.

The blacksmith quickly got it and interrupted Joe’s description and took the three measurements that he had described, the first two quite easy because the blacksmith just had to measure the spear. For the third measurement, the blacksmith pointed Joe to the spear head and asked him in the local guttural language to do something. Joe painted an exaggerated confused look on his face and the blacksmith put his hands on the outside of the spear head, obviously asking for the width. Joe quickly nodded and leaned the spear up against the building side them then held his hand out to about half way between double and triple the blade width. The Blacksmith quickly measured with his rope before nodding in acceptance and stepping away. He gestured back to the drawing and Joe nodded again before squatting to draw again.

He circled the ‘spoon-spear’ head then drew an ‘exploded’ view of the head, drawing both a top down and a side view of the head. He drew a typical shallow spoon bowl that tapered to a pointed tip and the blacksmith looked at him with some confusion, nodding his head. He cocked his head before stumping across the road way to a house opposite the blacksmith. Joe blinked at his leaving, uncertain what that meant.

“So, are you going to do it man or did I accidentally offend your wife’s honor and the goddess of smithery because of some taboo offensive spoon thing? Come on guy, I really need this. Don’t leave me hanging. Really don’t wanna have my spear eaten away by whatever those slime things are doing. Can’t you help …”

Joe stuttered to a stop when the blacksmith walked out of the house and came towards him, holding up a spoon in his hand and pointing back and forth between the drawing and the spoon. Joe nodded eagerly, throwing out every positive pantomime he could think of, from beaming smile, thumbs up, and nodding head. The blacksmith cocked his head, but seemed confused. Joe nodded his head again strongly, then pointed to his spear and stretched his hands from the size of the spoon to the size of his spear and turned back to him with a giant smile on his face.

The blacksmith nodded in agreement, but seemed confused, and quite bemused. Joe smiled and laughed a little, but then took the spoon, stretching the shaft and the head length equal to his spear, but then when he described the spoon bowl width, he tried to show it as quite a narrow spoon bowl relative to the shaft. He didn’t want too wide of a spoon bowl width. He then described having the spoon sieved, with holes cut out in its bowl. He made sure to show the size of the holes to be smaller than a typical core of a slime. After several more moments of back and forth pantomiming and drawing, the blacksmithing seemed to understand and accept Joe’s request.

The blacksmith then nodded his head and reached out his hand, beckoning him forwards. Joe walked forward, but stopped as the blacksmith didn’t move. The blacksmith beckoned again, then held out his hand some more. Joe still wasn’t sure what the blacksmith wanted, and the blacksmith sighed with some frustration and reached into a pouch at his side and dropped in some various coins. He saw some strange coins, mostly copper in color, or similar, like tin or bronze, although he thought he saw a bland sliver or nickel color. The blacksmith then pointed to a copperish coin then held up four fingers.

“Right, four coppers. But… well… I don’t have any coppers…” Joe offered and shrugged, apologetic smile on his face, but then he reached into his side pouch. I hope these stupid slime gems are worth something!

He pulled out the slime gem and offered it to the blacksmith. His eyes grew incredibly round, and then he began to wave his hands in rejection vigorously. Are these dangerous? Why does he seem so scared? What… Joe stared at the blacksmith then back at his gem, then sighed. He shrugged his shoulders and pointed at the gem, then pointed at his pocket and shook his head and waved his hands to represent he had nothing else. Again, the blacksmith rejected vigorously, and Joe finally decided to see if he could ask about the value of the gem. He pointed to the coins, then pointed to the gem, then shrugged his shoulders, hoping the blacksmith could understand. The blacksmith took a bit to understand, then Joe noticed a flicker of greed seem to shine in the depths of the blacksmith’s eyes before they flickered to look at the spear on the wall and then all the equipment scattered over his body. The blacksmith immediately seemed to squelch that greedy look and even bowed, seeming in apology before he looked at the coins in his hand. He shook his head then looked up and down the main road before stepping into his smithy. He shooed out his apprentices out back of the smithy, looked quickly up and down the roadway before quickly opening his pouch and pulling out a silver and a gold looking coin.

He then proceeded to give Joe a badly understood lesson in economics. Suffice it to say, there were many levels of coins. He laid out four coins, including the one he had pointed to that he said he needed four of for payment, then added another three coins: brass, iron, and steel; followed by an obvious silver then gold coin. Altogether, he laid out nine coins in a line. After the gold coin, he drew seven more coins, two more circles, four hexes, and last an octagon, then shrugged his shoulders apologetically. How do you shrug apologetically? It seems… shut up and listen.