Chapter 14: Rhett Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing

“Okay, status report, I’m wearing a fancy rock on my head, a pouch of frisbees, a palette swap mask, some nice boots, and a tasty herb…” he muttered, backing away as the slime inched forwards, more like a like a slug than the bouncy, elastic motion he would have expected.

The creature’s yellow color shone and shimmered, and two black pits floated in the middle of its square body, while on top, a large, almost perfect simulacra of a straw jutted out, bending just before the end of it at a sharp angle.

The blobby antennae turned to and fro, like a radar disk, and the creature seemed intent on this encounter, despite the mindless, soulless look in its eyespots.

He could run. Just around the corner was a whole camp of Beach Elves and Scrappy Teens with attitude.

A flush grew on his face. The Juicebox Gelly was bigger than him, yes, but still barely the size of a chihuahua.

Unlike in videogames, here in real life, he wouldn’t be able to just tab out of the shame of giving up…

“...Meh,” he finally decided, turning tail and running like hell.

The minute he did, however, the Juicebox Gelly’s straw bloated disgustingly, and a spew of noxious liquid fired out of the rubbery hose, nearly splattering him with the thick sludge!

“Yipe!” he squealed, falling onto his back as he narrowly avoided the drenching. Up close, the smell was horrific, like rotten fruit and bone.

The entirety of the Gelly spewed out of its straw, to the last drop, and in moments, the projectile reformed, turning back into the eerie rectangle, a new straw sprouting from its head, as the old one wriggled like a snake on the ground.

“Okay, slime teleport, didn’t expect that one,” he murmured fearfully, returning to his old tactic of very slowly backing away, his escape route now blocked, unless he was willing to make a mad dash all the way around the creature, just to try again.

He reached under his pigrock hat, pulling out a gnarled orb with a little pignose jutting out of it.

The Gelly wobbled, as if aware of him arming himself. Squeezing down, its edges smoothening as it bloated into an oversized pancake, he swallowed, preparing for another jet of slime.

Instead, he fumbled the stone pignut, when instead of spewing liquid at him, the slime’s straw began spraying a mist of toxic gas behind it!

The rotten fruit smell was overwhelming, as with the force of the jet, the curling-stone-shaped sludge flew at him, propelling itself with its own miasma!

The pignut he had dropped by mistake landed on the ground, and in a panic, he stomped it with his boot, cracking it and releasing the soundburst within.

The slime lacked ears, not even reacting as it narrowly avoided the rat, whose exploding nut managed to send him narrowly flipping into the air over the slime.

With a “whoof” of pain, Rhett smacked into the ground, heart pounding as it tried to slide around for another pass at him.

“O-okay, rocket j-jumping. Makes sense,” he groused. He felt his thin leather barrier shatter when this had happened, and in his panic, it felt almost like it had helped with the improvised maneuver.

Whether or not the shield had given him Glorious, Girly flight would have to wait.

“Okay, no more free passes, that’s fine, okay,” he jabbered, his boots depleted for the moment.

With shaking hands, he reached into the pouch and under his hat, pulling out a stone disk and a stone nut.

“Come on, human ingenuity, you got this, you ruined the evolutionary arms race, you can kill a kids drink gone bad,” he hyped himself up, placing the oversized nut on the ground, and covering it with the disk.

The slime wouldn’t crush the stone nut on its own, it was too soft. The disk, however, would put a lot of pressure on it, if something heavy ran over it.

He hoped.

“Okay… Here goes nothing…”

The Gelly’s long arc finally turned to face him, and by now, its speed was far, far too unfair for such a low-level enemy, the slippery liquid lubricant and gaseous propulsion letting it slide over the ground like a roomba of doom.

He backed away, putting his improvised landmine between him and it. “Come on, come on come on,” he whined, tensing and getting ready.

The moment it reached his trap, he leapt out of the way, in case it failed.

It did not.

With a loud squeal, the short-range burst of sonic force sent the disk flying into the air like a manhole into space, the Gelly turning into so many chunks as it flew up along with it!

“Yes! …No!” he cried, as the pieces still weren’t dead! Instead, the two black eyespots remained intact, and the force-resistant slime proved resistant to the force, pulling itself together in midair.

His eyes widened, and he turned tail and ran as it fell, picking up speed and aiming…

“No no no no no no no,” he whimpered, actually falling to all fours as his mad scramble tripped him and left him in a full flight of panic.

He heard the hiss, the splort, and looked back as the mass of rotten fruit juice crashed into him.

“NOOOOO!” he cried, covering his face with his arms as he prepared to feel himself melting…

Melting… Burning… Maybe a bit wet at least? Hello?

He opened an eye, and saw something else.

The slime was actively dying, dissolving on contact with his body. It leapt away with a shriek, and prowled around, glaring at him.

“U-uh, I-I,” he stammered as it leapt on him again, his body still stuck in full on freeze.

Again, the slime let out a burble of agony, as its body dissolved instead of his.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

As clever as it was in combat, it was too dumb to run, and as Rhett sat on his ass stunned, it slowly killed itself on his somehow-destructive form.

The eyespots were two separate Gellies now, not enough slime to encase both of them properly.

They leapt, and cautiously, he reached out and let them land in his paws.

Immediately, as soon as the two orbs were in his hands, the remaining slime disappeared in an instant, leaving two gleaming crystals in his palms.

His thoughts were blank, and briefly, he considered this might be one of those death-hallucination thingies he had heard about. He didn’t get one of those the first time, though, so he didn’t think he would get one this time, either.

Instead, he noted something else of interest.

His clothes were perfectly spotless. His clothes were spotless, without a hint of rotten gunk on them, including his chrome apron…

“...Oh. That makes sense,” his voice was small as he answered.

Like a toddler who found pills on the ground and cheerfully toddled them over to their grandparents, Rhett returned to the campsite with the crystals to see what he had earned.

–

“Aw, sick,” Smacks grimaced, spotting the spoils of war and instinctively covering his nose.

“We usually have to throw those outside the city, even though they’re great for necromancy” Murdoom commented, eyeing the crystals critically.

“Yeah, that’s because necromancy is banned, fool,” Grabby glared.

After a moment’s confusion, Blue’s father, Frenzied-Dancer-Who-Wields-The-Porcine-Whip, had a comment of his own, plucking a piece of fire-roasted jerky from the campfire.

“It is unnaturally clean, for what it is,” he concluded.

Rhett frowned. “Okay, but what is it? A Monster Core? Slime Gem?” he asked.

“It’s a kind of Calcium Oxylate. Kidney Stones,” the tall elf answered.

Rhett nearly threw the shimmering pearls on the ground, flinching in disgust. “What? That’s disgusting!” he exclaimed. They were, however, so very shiny…

“Normally, yes. Don’t worry, though. It didn’t come out of a person,” he promised. “Gellies are just mana-charged rotten liquids. The bacteria in them hate free-carbons, and treat it like a clam would an irritant. Coating it in their own cells, the bacteria self-immolate, crystalizing around any carbon that is too pure,” Frenzy explained, as much to the teens as to Rhett.

“How do you know all this?” Rhett asked curiously. This place didn’t seem big on chemistry, after all.

“Well, I’m a doctor, for one. Not like we aren’t all doctors, with skills like ours,” he noted a moment later, waving to the other Beach Elves (and self-proclaimed Drow).

“We all have some level of fascination with anything that could be considered Flesh,” he concluded.

“But to really answer your question, I’m a Doctor. A Paragon of Flesh,” he answered.

The way he said it, Rhett felt the strong, ominous sensation that he shouldn’t dismiss the man’s claim of being a doctor, and that whatever misconceptions people here might have had about scientific pursuits, he hadn’t seen for himself what their medicine looked like.

The detail of Frenzy’s explanation hinted at a deeper understanding than he might have guessed.

“And the reason those stones are barred from the town is typically just because they are unhygienic. Though, being pure calcium, instead of a mixture of calcium and calcium carbonate…”

Rhett twinged onto something. “If they’re bacteria, why would them burning up leave pure calcium behind?” he asked, curious about the chemistry behind that.

“What? Bacteria are made of calcium. As they are a form of natural undead, they exist as purely calcium-based organisms,” he answered.

“Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to worry about diseases from them,” he concluded, tearing off a piece of jerky and scratching his chin as he adjusted his seat on the log.

“But like I was saying, since it is mostly pure calcium, with only a core of carbonates, their mana likely leans more towards the Hardness aspect of necromancy, rather than its Undeath nature. Of course, when they’re covered in rotten gunk, most people don’t care about the difference,” he shrugged.

“Your apron must be keeping it from becoming filthy. It’s fascinating,” the doctor answered. “I’d love to have your help sometime, if you can do that on command,” he asked.

Rhett let the question hang, palming the shiny blackened crystals. “So I won’t be able to take these into town?” he asked.

The elf pursed his lips, swishing them left to right as he hummed. “Well… What the Mayor doesn’t smell won’t hurt him,” Frenzy concluded. “If you want to risk digging ditches, I certainly won’t ‘snitch’,” he said, much to the laughter of the other teens.

“Terrible man,” his wife answered, bringing out another load of jerky. “A perfectly good Ranger in the making, and you’re tempting him to necromancy of all things,” she scoffed, setting the basket of thin, woven bones down, letting everyone grab bits of jerky from it to heat over the fire.

“Why is necromancy banned?” Rhett wondered aloud.

“Well, the kids are half right. It’s banned in town,” Frenzy explained for him. “So is blacksmithing, papermaking, and leather tanning.”

“It isn’t wholesome. All that racket, and the smell,” his wife’s nose wrinkled. “And necromancy’s the worst of the lot!” she barked, waggling a finger at Rhett. “There’s no freshening up a skeleton once you animate it, little man. They’ll stink with rose bones and a potpourri skull,” she warned.

Frenzy just laughed. “She’s just upset about the liquor.”

His answer got the woman to begin smacking him on the head furiously. “Don’t you tell those boys about that! I remember your menace of a gang, stumbling around hopped up on whatever you put in your little femur bottles!” she roared, only making him laugh harder as he defended himself.

“Yeast is a bacteria,” he answered between smacks. “Bread, Liquor, even Cheese. Fermentation is where the real money is in the art,” he said, waggling his brows as he tried to tempt Rhett to the dark side.

“We haven’t had anyone play with fermenting in this town in years,” he noted as if his butterfrozen smile weren’t right there on his lips. His wife squawking with fury, she moved on to two hands worth of husband-punishing power.

Rhett laughed awkwardly, “I’ll uh, I’ll avoid making a mess,” he promised, getting a curt nod from the Elf woman.

“Good. You’re a good young man, Rhett. As for you hoodlums, don’t think I haven’t noticed you!” she turned her attention to the four boys, who were beginning to eye the splintered ruins.

“I don’t want you gallivanting off to look for trouble, Rhett might have gotten lucky, but for all we know, there’s Spriggans, Nightslaked Gellies, or worse down there!” she erupted.

“Come on, the elders are almost done checking for collapses, we’re totally old enough to help with the repairs!” Smacks begged.

“ ‘Help with the repairs’, as if you four aren’t jonesing to run down the first hole you find in search of some pigspit-begotten dungeon,” she huffed.

“If you’re that antsy, you should join the loggers in Wildwood. Plenty of adventure there,” she crossed her arms sternly.

The boys all groaned at this. “What’s wrong with Wildwood?” Rhett asked curiously.

“It’s boring!” Smacks exclaimed. “Nothing but tall trees and weird animals, and those all get made into jerky, so it’s not even cool for the meals,” he grumbled.

“The loggers get to cook some of it out there while they’re working, you know. The only reason you didn’t get any when you were two was because your immune system wasn’t strong enough,” Frenzy noted.

This did perk up the group slightly, though Blue glanced away awkwardly. “I don’t have anything that can cut through trees yet,” he muttered.

His father hummed. “Well… If you do want to help with the logging, I might be willing to teach you a trick or two,” he answered, Blue jerking up and pulling up his blindfold to better scrutinize the other Elf.

“Figure out Seeping your fingernails, and I’ll teach you a fun trick for cutting things,” he smiled.

Pointing over at one of the trees near the edge of the campsite, Frenzy’s eyes narrowed, and the finger he pointed at it rippled, before erupting like a geyser, a pale yellow spike spewing through the wood in a burst of splinters.

Left behind was a notch taken out of his fingernail, which he blew on like a pistol.

“There’s a lot of ‘Bodies of Water’ in the world, kids. Your appendix is the strongest thing you’ll ever inherit, with a bit of imagination,” he smiled at their open-mouthed expressions.

Rhett couldn’t help but wonder, if not shapeshifting…

Just what did a Ratling’s Appendix even do?