Chapter 25: Getting Slimed

Chapter 25: Getting Slimed

Like an overfilled water balloon, the slime exploded, sending out waves of ooze in every direction. Unlike normal muck, our clothes were not impervious to it at all. Except for my socks that was. Not only did the knee-high socks protect my legs from the gooey muck but the glowing blue aura also protected my shoes.

“Eew!” Leslie shrieked, trying to hide behind me after getting plastered with the stuff.

The other creepy crawlies also fled, leaving us alone in a puddle of what looked like blue paint. The other slimes scattered but more out of fear of being stomped than anything to do with the vermin around us.

Leslie pouted while scooping slime off her tunic that somehow managed to soak into the enchanted armor. For the first time, she sounded annoyed. “Did you have to do that? I warned you how messy these things are. I was going to say we need to kill them from a distance. They don’t do much damage but they make such a mess when you squish them like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to clean myself too. “I guess I was overexcited.”

Suggestion: Place soiled clothes in an Arcane Circle to remove magic stains.

It was the same circle as before, only this time it wasn’t telling me to sew it into the clothes. I wondered what difference it would make.

Info: Imbuing the magic resistance buff from an outside source will only provide temporary benefits.

Your Research skill has increased: +1 (8)

I nodded wisely as my skill handed me the solution. “I think I know a way to get this stuff out of our clothes.”

“I’m all ears,” she grumbled, having abandoned mopping herself up.

“We need to make an Arcane Circle,” I announced. “Kind of like what we did with our socks but different.”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “It just couldn’t be something simple, could it? Let’s get this over with then. Go ahead and stomp four more.”

“But I thought you just said…” I started to say when she cut me off.

“We can’t exactly get any more soaked in this stuff,” she said, backing away while pointing me to the nearest slime. “Besides, you got a surefire way of cleaning us right up, right?”

I wasn’t sure I believed her on either front but I decided to do as she said. The Slimes didn’t trust me after that and I didn’t blame them. They had to have been traumatized by me just as much as I was by getting slimed.

I chased the first one around for a while before I figured out a way to corner it. While slimes were reasonably agile creatures, they didn’t appear to be too bright. At least not the low-level ones. By chasing them toward a wall, the slime would be limited in the direction it could run. It never thought about running away from the wall, even when I chased it all the way into a corner.

After the first one, the rest were easy to kill just by repeating what I’d learned. It wasn’t until I went after the fourth one that I realized I forgot to collect any ooze.

I turned back to Leslie and asked, “Do you have anything we can use to collect some Slime ooze?”

She held up a vial already filled with the thick blue liquid. “I collected some that splattered on me. Don’t worry about it being dirty. You usually have to scrape it up off the floor, and I assure you I’m much cleaner than a dungeon.”

While I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat sauce that was scraped off of a girl, I decided she had a point. Eating off the floor was never a good idea. Not unless you picked it up within five seconds of dropping it, of course. It was a rule.

After I stomped out the last of the slimes, I made my way back to Leslie who was standing by the double doors. I didn’t blame her one bit for being ready to leave. Adventuring was very dirty business indeed.

The guards both started chuckling the instant they saw us. The one who let us in said, “Did neither of you know what happens when you smash a Slime?”

Leslie sighed. “I did but he killed it too fast.”

“It looks like you made him pay for it,” the other said, his expression unreadable through the bucket helm.

“Do you have a place we can go clean up?” Leslie asked.

The guard pointed to a door next to a sign with a toilet and a shower head. “There is a shower over there, but Slime ooze won’t wash off with water. You’re going to have to send those clothes off to a mage to be dispelled.”

“Don’t worry,” Leslie said with a mysterious grin on her face. “My friend says he knows how to clean them.”

“Sure,” the other guard replied, not sounding convinced at all. “You get to that then.”

We walked to the shower room while the guards placed bets on whether or not I would succeed. Inside the shower room was rather basic. A toilet sat against a wall in the same area as a shower head which hung over a drain in the middle of the room. A variety of cheap-looking soaps lined a shelf on the wall. The only other thing in the room was a filthy-looking sink. Apparently, a lot of adventurers used the sink to freshen up after a dungeon run.

Leslie looked at the shower longingly. “Do you mind waiting outside while I…”

She trailed off. I knew she wanted to rinse the ooze off but what good would that do her if her clothes were still dirty? She seemed to come to the conclusion at the same time I did.

“Um, how do you plan on getting this stuff out of our clothes?” She asked, peeling the slimy sleeve of her shirt away from her skin.

“I just need to make an Arcane Circle on the floor,” I announced, looking around for a good spot to do it. “You wouldn’t happen to have something to write with, would you?”

She gave me a helpless look and I realized we were in trouble. I sighed and walked over to the shelf with all of the shower supplies. There were a variety of things but what caught my eye was liquid soap. I picked it up and walked back to Leslie.

She frowned when she saw what I was holding. “That kind of thing won’t work on Slime.”

I shook my head and dipped my finger in the soap and set to work finger painting. It wasn’t easy making an Arcane Circle out of soap. I made more mistakes than Miss Spencer did and fixing them was a pain in the butt. For the first few errors, I had to lick my finger and mop up the soap that strayed from the line. Leslie brought me a cup of water from the sink for the last few. My tongue thanked her.

“Here goes nothing,” I announced when I got it as good as I was going to.

Deciding to be the guinea pig, I took off my slime-ridden shirt and carefully set it in the middle of the circle. Desperate to be clean I didn’t bother with mana link and pressed my hand to it and supplied the ritual with mana. The ooze vaporized in a cloud of blue steam before fading to nothing, leaving my shirt cleaner than it was the day I got it.

“Next are the pants,” I announced, stripping my pants off and plopping them in the circle.

It didn’t dawn on me what I’d done until I saw Leslie’s face. She was blushing profusely as she averted her eyes.

“Oops, sorry, bad habit,” I replied, far too used to seeing half-naked kids running around in the orphanage where there was virtually no privacy.

I activated the circle a second time before taking my clean pants out of the circle. The problem was, I was still dirty. Could the ritual be applied to my body?

Info: Monster viscera does not adhere to human flesh. A hot shower with soap should suffice.

I looked up at Leslie, who was suddenly very interested in a floor tile on the other side of the room.

“Um, do you mind if I use the shower real quick before I put my clothes back on?” I asked nervously.

She turned to gape at me before realizing I was half-naked and looking away again. “What about me? I want to be clean too.”

“I know,” I replied, looking at that floor tile myself as I was unable to meet her eyes. “But you’ll need to take them off for me to clean them. I was thinking about making the circle outside and you can stay in here and take a shower while I wash your clothes.”

“Oh!” She replied, suddenly grinning. “I like that idea. Yeah, you should take a shower first. But hurry, this feels icky.”

“I’m on it!” I announced, moving aside so she could leave.

Leslie wasted no time exiting and closing the door. After she was gone, I locked it before stripping off my underwear, socks, and shoes. From there it was just a matter of taking a quick shower. I scrubbed as I’d never scrubbed before, making sure to get the slime guts off of every inch of my body, including behind the ears where Miss Havasu always complained we boys never cleaned.

Once I was satisfied I dried off and put on my clothes before going to get Leslie.

“Okay, it’s all yours,” I announced, feeling good after a nice hot shower.”

Leslie hurried past me closing the door. I was surprised when she handed her clothes back to me because she didn’t just hand me her clothes. Her underwear was in the pile as well. I guessed she wanted to be thorough.

Cleaning girls’ clothes also wasn’t new to me. Every time I was assigned to the laundry detail, I had to wash a whole bunch of them. I carefully drew the Arcane Circle on the floor once again before getting to work on Leslie’s clothes.

She must have been taking a long shower because she didn’t bug me at all while I worked. It was interesting watching the slime evaporate every time I performed the ritual. Several adventures came over to see what I was doing. One of them yelled at me for blocking the only bathroom but most of them were genuinely curious about what I was doing.

Just as I was finishing up the last of Leslie’s clothing, a familiar-looking woman approached me. “Excuse me, Son. What is that magic you’re doing?”

“I’m just washing clothes,” I explained.

She smiled. “Do you think you might do a favor for one of my recruits? The first floor was a mess today and she went and slipped in a slime puddle.”

The realization that I was probably at fault made my ears burn. The woman wore a light tracksuit and had auburn hair that flowed down the middle of her back in a braid. I didn’t see any kind of discernible weapons on her. Several other women in various types of armor lingered across the hall, each casting furtive glances at me. I couldn’t help but wonder who the woman was.

Leila Kirk

Class: Paper Tank

Level: 77

Age: 92

Weight: 165 Lbs

Height 6’4

It was her. The adventurer from the guild. The leader of Leila’s Lackeys. I imagined Leslie swooning at her when she came out of the bathroom.

“Uh, sure,” I replied after an awkward moment of gawking. “How can I help?”

Leila turned and motioned for one of the girls to come forward. She was about Leslie’s age with shoulder-length brown hair and thick padded armor that was stained blue, making her look like a blueberry. She slowly broke off from the group and approached us. While she was nowhere near as dirty as Leslie or I were, she did look like she’d fallen in the ooze and possibly rolled around a bit for good measure.

I got up and knocked on the door, and Leslie replied. “Give me a few more minutes. I’m almost done.”

“Um,” I said, trying to find the right words. “We got visitors out here.”