"I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!"
Kaelen yelled this while Aiden held onto his arms, and Jax held onto Aiden.
Kaelen's legs were sunk up to the knees inside the body of a brown-colored slime.
The situation was already bad enough.
What made it worse was that Aiden did not want to admit that even being near the slime was causing a warm fuzziness to run through him. It was almost like being drunk.
Jax and Kaelen seemed to be feeling it too.
In a weird way, it was kind of fun to see what kind of drunk everyone was.
Jax was a hippie kind of drunk, using the word "like" far too much.
What a funny word.
Like.
Kaelen was a sad drunk. He kept crying and saying he was going to be eaten.
Which was fair, considering he was currently being eaten.
But he also needed to stop screaming. It was a tight enough space already, and Aiden's ears were starting to hurt.
A pulse of pain shot through Aiden's head as Will yelled,
"Quit spacing out. It is getting annoying snapping you back from your weird tangents. Kaelen is being eaten, remember?"
"Oh yeah," Aiden said, trying to focus. "Right. We were supposed to not let that happen, right?"
He tried to snap himself back to the present.
Unfortunately, there were just so many funny little things to think about. So many thoughts to go on and on and—
Will slapped him again.
Jax and Aiden yanked harder.
Kaelen's feet finally emerged from the slime with a wet, horrible sound.
Above them, the hatch stood open. Liora and Thalia could be heard talking outside, but Selene stood by the hatch and looked down with obvious worry.
"A-are you sure they don't need help?" Selene called. "Kaelen is getting eaten."
"If those perverts want to suggest a quest where clothes get eaten, then they can handle it themselves," Liora called back, sounding annoyed. "Besides, they seem to be having a fun time."
Aiden wondered why she was annoyed.
Was it because they had chosen this quest?
But if that was the case, why were Kaelen and Aiden being punished? Jax had picked the quest, and—
Will slapped him again.
As if the force of the mental slap had knocked him backward, Aiden and Jax finally pulled Kaelen from the fermented depths of the slime.
Kaelen flopped onto the ground on top of Aiden, still sobbing as snot ran down his face.
"Sniff. I thought I was a goner. Thank you for saving me. Sniff."
"If you get snot on me, I am throwing you back!" Aiden yelled, trying to push the suddenly clingy Kaelen away.
Jax walked up beside them.
Kaelen and Aiden were wearing nothing but underwear due to the slime's fabric-corroding nature.
Jax, who did not need clothes in the same way, was technically bare as well. And despite the fact that he had not been wearing pants before, the lack of his jacket and wrappings made the nudity somehow stand out more.
"Like, don't worry, guys," Jax said. "I like totally got this. I'm gonna, like, punch it to death."
Then he rushed forward.
Party Leader Jax has struck Feral Ale Slime (E).
Feral Ale Slime's ability Gelatinous Form (E) has activated.
Feral Ale Slime is immune to bludgeoning damage.
Jax stood there.
Aiden and Kaelen stared at him.
The slime did not seem impressed.
Instead, it opened up and swallowed Jax leaving only the waste down exposed.
Kaelen and Aiden scrambled to grab him.
"Sniff. Spit him out. We need him. Sniff."
Kaelen said this through snot and tears as they pulled at Jax's feet.
Jax remained stuck.
Aiden grabbed his spear and thrust it into the slime, trying to make the creature let go.
You have used item Basic Spear (E).
Feral Ale Slime's ability Gelatinous Form (E) has activated.
Feral Ale Slime is immune to piercing damage.
Item Basic Spear has been destroyed by acidity.
"Gods fu—"
Aiden started to yell.
Then Kaelen freed Jax, and the sudden force sent both of them slamming into Aiden.
They all toppled into a pile again.
So they could not use Kaelen's fire because the entire room was flammable.
Jax could not hurt it with punches.
Aiden's spear could not do anything and had just melted.
How did people normally hunt slimes? Gelatinous Form seemed like a skill that would generally be poss—
Will slapped him again.
With his focus somewhat resharpened, Aiden turned to look around the room.
Then he felt something grab his leg.
He looked down.
A beer-colored tendril from the slime had wrapped around his ankle.
Slowly, Aiden turned to Jax and Kaelen.
They met his eyes.
Both gave him solemn looks.
Then they saluted.
Aiden flipped them off in return.
The tendril went taut.
Aiden was launched straight into the core body of the slime.
Jax, Kaelen, and Aiden practically kicked open the door to their room at the Wanderer's Light Inn hours later.
Their heads throbbed from the hangover they had all suddenly and rapidly developed after Kaelen and Jax defeated the slime while Aiden was still inside it.
Jax wore only his jacket.
Kaelen and Aiden wore cheap pants that had been thrown down to them after the fight. Their clothes had melted away completely, leaving them in their birthday suits by the time it was over.
They were all exhausted and hungover.
But more than that, Aiden felt betrayed.
He had helped them out of the slime.
Why had they left him in the damn thing?
This anger was definitely not because Jax was fine with nudity due to his fur keeping him decent, while Kaelen, despite worrying about it, looked completely fine. Even walking the short way back to the inn had caused every girl and even some guys on the street to stop and stare at him.
One girl had even started drooling.
It was definitely not that.
"It's kind of pathetic to lie to yourself when your thoughts can argue back, dude," Will said in his head.
"Yeah, well…" Aiden muttered. "Shut up."
His hungover state made that feel like an adequate and well-constructed retort.
Aiden walked to the bathroom and let the faucet drain a bit of his mana to wash his face. Then he looked at himself in the mirror.
The trip over had not been hard.
They had woken up and driven to Coalhill.
Liora and Thalia had threatened Jax with being strung up by his family jewels as a form of sterilization if he tried to argue that any of the girls should do the slime quest.
The guys, fearing the consequences, agreed.
So they had stripped down to their briefs and challenged the slime.
It only took ten minutes.
Then Selene tossed down two pairs of pants and Jax's jacket, and they returned to the inn.
The girls were grabbing food to bring back and handling the paperwork portion of the quest.
Aiden looked over his System screen.
They had only gotten 1,250 XP from the Feral Ale Slime.
While he was happy to not be getting melted or slammed against walls anymore, the humiliation of what they had gone through was almost just as bad.
Almost.
Aiden stepped out of the bathroom and saw Kaelen lying down on the bed.
Despite everything they had endured, Kaelen looked pristine. Like he had just taken a shower and sprawled across the bed as if waiting for some author to wander by and write an entire series of smut novels about him being shirtless for some girl who could make Mary Sue look like a side character.
Aiden would like to say that at least Jax looked terrible, but Jax was basically always hungover, so he looked normal-ish.
If not for the smell of alcohol that was probably going to be etched forever into the fabric of the room, Aiden could almost pretend this had been a regular traumatizing day.
Not today's specific kind of traumatizing.
Aiden walked over to the window and opened it so the smell could start to dissipate.
Then there was a knock at the door.
He walked over and opened it.
Selene stood there.
For a moment, she looked him up and down without saying anything.
Aiden looked her over as well.
Something seemed strange.
"What happened to her arm?" Will asked, directing Aiden's attention.
Aiden looked at Selene's left arm.
It looked normal.
The usual purple muscles and vents were gone. Her arm looked human enough now, almost delicate.
Selene noticed him staring.
"I-it's one of my skills," she said. "Hidden Monstrosity. It lets me hide any active mutations while I'm not using them, but because of my condition, it only lasts for a limited amount of time. It drains my Mutation. S-since you all did the fighting today, I have enough to hold it for a few hours."
"That's awesome," Aiden said. "Does it feel different, or…?"
Selene shook her head.
"N-no. But that's not why I stopped by."
She looked down, her face slowly turning red.
"I-I noticed your spear was destroyed in the fight, and since you seemed to like spears as a weapon, I figured we could go shopping."
Selene started speaking louder and faster as she continued, her eyes fixed firmly on the floor.
Aiden was surprised by the thoughtfulness.
He smiled.
"That would actually be awesome. Thank you."
Selene nodded.
Then she looked at him and asked,
"D-do you need a minute to get dressed, or…?"
What does she mean get d—
Aiden looked down.
He was still wearing nothing but the cheap pants they had tossed down to him.
His face turned bright red.
In as stable a voice as he could manage, he said,
"Just give me like five minutes."
Selene nodded.
Aiden slowly shut the door.
When he turned around, Kaelen and Jax were both wearing identical shit-eating grins.
In perfect unison, they said,
"Pervert."
Okay.
So he was killing both of them.
The question was where to hide the bo—
Will slapped him again.