ALL NOVEL Chapter 4: I didn’t care
For one whole year, I was addicted to one particular MMO. I’d log in just after waking up, play till I had to shit (I pissed in a bottle so there was no need to get up for that) and then when I was done, I’d sleep again. My meals consisted purely of caffeine, soda, and liquid food I could put in the minifridge next to my pc. Back then I’d moved in back with my parents just after quitting college, so I had nothing to do anyway. They probably didn’t know what to do with me. Yet, they never said a thing. Not when I didn’t come out of the room, and definitely not when I didn’t eat anything. I guess, they were done with me.
I only went out once or maybe twice a month to buy more food and that was about it. By the end of the year, I was half my weight and I suppose it was around that time the cancer had started developing which I wouldn’t know for a couple more years.
But that particular year taught me a few things. No matter how much I grinded, I could never win against people with actual talent and money. Skills, talent, money. The holy trinity of success. Even if I had the skill, what then? I didn’t have money to buy premium weapons, and I didn’t have any talent, not even for video games. I was just average. Yet, through sheer perseverance and 4 hours of daily sleep, I was top ten in my server… for a day.
And yet… why? Why did I feel so good? Why did all that crap feel so damn good? Damn it!
I couldn’t stop my fucking slimy body from literally consuming every single darn thing around me. Goblins? Gone! Rocks? Gone! The floor? Also gone!
Heck, I might have even consumed a few bosses at this point!
How did it all start? Well…
So, I started consuming the rocks and stuff till the bedrock and expertly absorbed the goblins. I didn’t get anything new from the first few encounters and I thought that would be that. But eventually, as I continued, I realized, the room I first came in from was actually part of the second floor along with the other two rooms. One of them led up, while the other room had loads of Manatite crystals (Which these morons farmed, so maybe keeping them alive was a better bet) which I voraciously absorbed. My mana stat improved greatly and I gained some new abilities; mimic, produce, craft, repair (minor).
That was fine and all but I still had to explore the whole floor below, so I did that. I bounced around for prey, yet whenever I saw a goblin, it just ran away. Most goblins here were women and children but as I caught up with them and absorbed them along with the surrounding stuff, I kept on getting bigger. At first it wasn’t noticeable but by the time I absorbed the sixth goblin, I was already twice as large. My senses improved and it was even harder to filter the noise, which was why I started massacring them indiscriminately- ahem… I mean I started absorbing them left to right. Around this time, I found out, the earlier hobgoblin was their boss and was just trying to protect his family and stuff. Did I feel any different?
Nope.
I just absorbed them all including their weapons, clothes, homes. Everything. Even the dust. By the end, I was about six times larger than I was before and now I could barely see my slimy golden body; I bet I was at least 3 feet tall now and 4 feet wide. I could move a lot better too. I could no longer bounce like usual though, which was a bummer.
While absorbing the goblins, some things became clearer. Namely, I wasn’t just absorbing them, I was also absorbing some of their memories. And according to them, this was the third floor of this mini dungeon which literally sprung up four months ago; the slime room was special and apparently those things were dangerous to everything here. There were two more floors up ahead and in time a fourth floor would emerge. The second floor had giant serpents which worked together with the goblins to protect both the first and second floor so they could live peacefully and invade the nearest village in the coming months after they’d successfully trained all their young.
They were eventually going to murder and devour the whole village. And no, that wasn’t why I didn’t feel bad about absorbing them. Rather… I just didn’t feel bad. It was like I was squashing bugs. Annoying little shits. Of course, it wasn’t like I didn’t feel anything at all. It was more like I didn’t care.
Is this because of the system? Or because… I don’t see them as people?
I mean, these things were monsters no matter how I thought about it. And I didn’t even want to go into the stuff they did to the previous villages. Actually, I kind of didn’t care about that either. It was almost like I didn’t care about anything other than myself anymore.
And that brought me back to my present situation. Having destroyed the third floor, I moved onto the second floor to find a lot of large (Ostrich like) eggs and female serpents the size of large anacondas. Before they noticed me, I’d devoured half of their eggs. They hissed and came for me, trying to save their young. I was of course waiting for that and jumped up, and then dropped on them like a net slowly dissolving them as they struggled to break free.
Hrsss!!!
[Ceril egg absorbed X10]
[Ceril Serpent absorbed x19]
[Poison resistance acquired]
[Speed stat increased]
[You have leveled up!]
I finished the whole floor without losing a single HP. I didn’t get inflicted with poison either. Absorbing the eggs first gave me a lot of resistance anyway.
There were some rooms here and there. I checked around and sadly they only had more eggs and shivering young snakes. Hey, I didn’t know some reptiles could shiver… can they though? Who cared?
I just devoured them all!
Sadly, this floor didn’t have any Manatite reserves. On to the next one!
The third floor (Or rather the first?) was a little different though. Everything in this floor was going to give their lives away to keep me from coming down to the second and third floor. However, I wasn’t going down, rather, I was going up. basically, most of them were near the very entrance of the dungeon, not the exit.
Heh he he, this’ll be fun.