Two days after his first slime screening, Damon stood in front of the guild quest board with renewed determination.
The screening had been a success with twenty-three viewers, genuine laughter, and five copper in fees. But more importantly, he'd proven his editing concept worked. Now he needed to prove he could create better content from the ground up.
Jax had agreed to lend him the Ruin Ball for actual quest recording. One condition: Damon had to show him how editing worked in practice.
The F-rank quest section hadn't changed:
Collect 10 Moonleaf Herbs - 5 copper
Deliver Package to Miller's Farm - 3 copper
Exterminate Slimes Near East Gate - 5 copper (repeatable)
Hunt 3 Rabbits for Butcher - 4 copper
"So?" Jax asked, leaning against the wall with arms crossed. "What's the mighty content creator's next quest? Something dramatic?"
"Slimes," Damon said, pointing at the extermination posting.
Jax blinked. "You just made slime content two days ago."
"Exactly. Now I'm gonna make better slime content." Damon pulled the posting down. "It's repeatable. If I mess up the first recording, I try again without wasting money on a new quest."
"That's actually smart," Jax admitted.
Luna looked up from her paperwork as Damon approached. Over the past week she'd warmed to him slightly, or at least stopped giving him the 'you're going to die horribly' look.
She stamped his form without hesitation. "The eastern meadows have blue slimes. Not aggressive unless you get too close. Five copper per five slime cores."
"How many are out there?"
"Dozens. They respawn regularly." She handed him the stamped form. "Try not to get eaten. I hate the paperwork."
Outside the guild, Jax was checking the Ruin Ball's charge. "You know, most people do their first real quest without worrying about recording it."
"I'm not most people." Damon activated his Creator's Eye system. "This isn't about completing the quest. It's about proving I understand this medium better than anyone in Thornhaven."
"No pressure," Jax muttered.
They walked toward the eastern gate. Damon's mind was already mapping structure: opening with quest introduction and slime explanation, rising action through the hunt itself with real combat, educational segment covering slime ecology and techniques, climax with defeating the creatures, and closing with honest reflection. Basic documentary structure that would be revolutionary here.
The eastern meadows were exactly as Luna described. Rolling grasslands stretched toward forest patches, a stream cutting through the middle, with scattered blue gelatinous blobs wobbling across the grass.
"Alright," Damon said, pulling out the Ruin Ball. "Let's do this professionally. Jax, you're helping with the intro."
"I am?"
"You're the experienced adventurer. Explain what we're doing and why. Give it educational value."
Jax looked uncomfortable. "I'm not good at talking to cameras."
"You're good at talking. Pretend the Ruin Ball is a person."
Damon activated the recording function. His mana drained slightly as the device began capturing. He pointed it at Jax, who froze.
"Uh... hi?" Jax said, staring blankly. "I'm Jax, and this is... slime hunting?"
Damon lowered the Ball. "More natural. Forget you're being recorded. Explain slimes like you're teaching a rookie."
"But you ARE a rookie."
"Exactly. So teach me."
Jax took a breath and tried again, this time better. He explained that blue slimes were the weakest monster type, that they attacked by engulfing prey, that their cores were valuable for alchemy. The delivery was stiff and wooden, but the content was usable.
"Good enough," Damon said. "Now let's find one."
They approached a lone slime oozing near the stream. Up close, it was bigger than expected, about the size of a large dog with a translucent blue body and glowing core pulsing inside.
"You want me to demonstrate?" Jax offered.
"No. You film. I fight." Damon handed over the Ball. "Keep me in frame and stay steady."
He'd watched enough tutorials to know the theory: slimes were slow, cores were the weak point, and a solid hit to the core killed them instantly. He grabbed a stick from the ground and approached confidently.
The slime didn't react until he was five feet away. Then it wobbled with surprising menace.
"Wait for it to lunge!" Jax called.
Damon nodded, raised his stick, and waited. The slime compressed itself, winding up. He prepared to dodge and counter-strike.
Then the creature launched forward, moving far faster than anything that jiggly had any right to move.
Damon yelped, swung wildly, and missed completely. His foot caught a rock and he went down hard, landing flat on his back. The slime crashed into the spot where he'd been standing.
Behind the Ball, Jax was trying desperately not to laugh and failing.
"Not. A. Word," Damon gasped, scrambling upright.
"Oh, this is gold," Jax wheezed. "The mighty content creator, defeated by a slime."
"I said not a word!"
The slime launched again. This time Damon dove sideways, rolled poorly, and came up covered in grass stains and dirt. At least he wasn't flattened.
"Okay, new strategy," he panted. "Less confidence, more caution."
He circled the slime carefully. His Creator's Eye fed him information on attack patterns, timing windows, optimal strike angles. But knowing and doing were entirely different things.
The slime compressed again. Damon waited for the exact launch moment, stepped aside, and swung at the core's position.
He missed, the stick passing harmlessly through the outer membrane.
"You have to hit the core!" Jax reminded him.
Three more attempts. Three more failures. He was improving at dodging since the pattern was predictable once understood, but landing a clean hit proved far harder than expected.
On his sixth attempt, exhausted and frustrated, Damon finally connected. The stick struck the glowing core dead center.
The slime made a wet squelching sound and exploded, coating him in blue goo that smelled like stagnant pond water mixed with gym socks.
[BLUE SLIME DEFEATED]
[EXP GAINED: 5]
[ITEM ACQUIRED: SLIME CORE x1]
Damon stood dripping, breathing hard, looking absolutely miserable.
Jax lowered the Ball, face red from suppressed laughter. "That was beautiful. Please tell me we got all of that."
"We better have," Damon said, wiping slime from his face. "Because I'm not doing that again until I review the footage."
They spent another hour hunting four more slimes. Damon's technique improved marginally. By the fifth kill he only needed three attempts instead of six, but each one still resulted in fresh goo coating.
Luna processed their quest completion while obviously trying not to comment on his appearance. "Five slime cores. Quest complete. Five copper."
[QUEST COMPLETE: SLIME EXTERMINATION]
[REWARD: 5 COPPER]
[CURRENT FUNDS: 27 COPPER]
"Now comes the real work," Damon said.
Back at The Rusty Tankard, he claimed a corner table and activated his Creator's Eye editing interface. Jax watched with fascination as Damon reviewed the raw footage, then watched his face fall.
The camera work was terrible. Jax had tried, but he'd never filmed anything before, and it showed: framing was off, focus kept drifting, and half the action happened outside frame entirely. Audio was muddy with wind noise and Jax's barely-contained laughter drowning everything else out.
[FOOTAGE QUALITY: POOR]
[TECHNICAL EXECUTION: AMATEUR]
[ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: UNINTENTIONAL COMEDY]
[EDUCATIONAL VALUE: MINIMAL]
[ESTIMATED AUDIENCE RETENTION: 23%]
Twenty-three percent retention, and in his old life, anything below fifty was considered failure.
"This is a disaster," Damon muttered.
"What do you mean?" Jax leaned over. "We got the whole thing!"
"We got footage. That's not the same as good footage." Damon scrubbed through the timeline, wincing at every shaky pan and missed shot. "This needs serious editing to be watchable."
"So edit it."
"I will. But..." He paused as something clicked. "Maybe this is exactly what we need."
"Huh?"
"Everyone here is used to raw, unedited footage. If I polish this too much, audiences won't connect with it." Damon started making notes rapidly. "But if I lean into the disaster and make it a comedy piece about how hard even the easiest quest actually is, that could work."
"You're gonna make yourself look like an idiot on purpose?"
"I'm gonna make myself relatable. There's a difference." Damon grinned despite the slime still drying in his hair. "Tomorrow we do this again. This time I commentate while I hunt and play up the struggle honestly."
"You want to make it worse?"
"I want to make it authentic, funny, and real." He looked at the footage one more time, seeing potential instead of failure. "This isn't a disaster. It's a learning opportunity."
And maybe, if he was lucky, the foundation for something great.