Chapter 5: Stick to the Plan (Or Just Get Stuck)

The only sounds for a few frantic minutes were the slapping of our boots on wet stone and the wet, percussive thwacks of violence.

Zane was a man possessed. He led the charge, a compact, one-handed mace in his grip. When a cluster of Sewer-Slimes oozed into the narrow tunnel ahead, blocking our path, he didn’t break stride. He just roared, a raw, guttural sound, and brought the mace down in a wide, sweeping arc.

SPLAT-CHOMP-SQUISH.

It wasn’t elegant. It was demolition. The slimes didn’t so much die as explode into gelatinous shrapnel. Zane charged through the gooey aftermath without a second glance, a man on a singular, desperate mission.

Beside him, Kaela was a study in lethal efficiency. As Zane cleared the path, she’d spot a slime clinging to the ceiling or slinking from a side pipe. Her hand would flash, a dagger would spin through the damp air with a soft thwick, and the slime would drop, pinned. She never stopped moving, retrieving her blades as she passed with a fluid, practiced motion.

And me? I was in the back, doing my part.

My hands were outstretched, palms facing the dissolving carnage left in their wake. As each slime corpse unraveled into green motes, I was there, a spectral vacuum cleaner. The faint, cold trickle of their halved souls siphoned into me, one after another.

[Soul Theft: Sewer-Slime (E-Rank)]

[Ability Acquired: Minor Corrosion Resistance]

[Integration Progress: 63%... 64%... 65%...]

It was a pathetic harvest. The percentage crawled up with agonizing slowness. Half of a half of a useless ability. But I’d forgotten to mention the other side effect—the real cheat, hidden beneath the flashy skill names.

Stealing souls, even diluted ones, did something else. It fed a stat. A base, foundational power that wasn’t listed on any screen because, thankfully, this world wasn’t some tacky LitRPG with floating menus. But I could feel it. A slight, imperceptible thickening in my limbs, a minute sharpening of my senses. Each soul stolen was a drop in the bucket of my raw, physical potential. It was why my “Three Times Grip Strength” felt more like four times lately. It was slow, invisible level-grinding. The ultimate lazy power-up.

I was too busy internally celebrating my microscopic, stat-padding victory to properly brace for the scene that greeted us when we finally burst into a wider, cavern-like chamber.

“LINDIS!” Zane bellowed, skidding to a halt. “I’m here! Where are—?”

His voice died in his throat. His eyes slowly widened, the color draining from his face.

The chamber was a spawning pit. The walls weren’t stone; they were a quivering, pulsating mass of slime biomass. And in the center of the room, surrounded by a seething, bubbling hundred of individual Sewer-Slimes, was Lindis.

She was on her back, unconscious or just dazed. Her long axe lay several feet away, its haft slick with goo. The slimes weren’t attacking her violently; they were… consuming. Slowly. Deliberately. A group of them were engulfing her boots, the leather visibly dissolving. Another cluster was working on her thigh-highs. Her clothes were in tatters, dissolving into nothingness at an alarming rate.

My brain, ever helpful, provided commentary: Well, I can say the same is happening to her clothes. I can see… white. A lot of white. Someone get this girl a cloak, stat. I’m still a virgin, you know. This is not the peep show I signed up for.

Zane snapped.

With a wordless roar of pure rage and terror, he charged. Not a tactical advance. A suicide run straight into the heart of the slime swarm.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed. “He’s cooked. Or dissolved. Or worse—both!”

Zane didn’t care. He planted his feet, raised his mace high, and I saw his entire body tense. Veins stood out on his neck. This wasn’t just a swing. He was activating an ability.

The air around the mace warped, condensing with visible force. With a final, explosive grunt, he brought it down not on a single slime, but on the ground in front of Lindis.

WHUMP-CRACK-BOOM!

It was like a localized air cannon detonating. The shockwave wasn’t fire or lightning; it was pure, concussive force. A dozen slimes in a five-foot radius simply vaporized into fine mist. The ground shook. Lindis’s body was jolted, but she remained mercifully unconscious.

High Risk, High Reward. The classic D-Rank powerhouse move. One devastating blow to clear the area.

The problem was the risk. The slime biomass on the walls shivered. The hundred slimes in the chamber didn’t look diminished; they looked aggravated. As one, their focus shifted from their dissolving meal to the noisy, violent interruption.

Zane had seconds. He tried to swing again, to clear more, but the recoil from his own ability had left him wide open. A slime launched itself from the wall toward his unguarded side.

My body moved before my brain could protest. Three Times Grip Strength yanked a charging slime off its trajectory mid-air and slammed it into the ground with a sickening crunch-splat. Another one was already leaping for the unconscious Lindis. I dove, grabbing its cold, gelatinous body and hurling it against the far wall.

It splattered, but two more latched onto my shoulders, their acidic bodies immediately starting to sizzle against my jacket. Minor Corrosion Resistance kicked in, turning a skin-melting burn into a really bad sunburn sensation. “Get off, you damn—!”

An arrow, not a dagger this time, punched through the core of the slime on my left shoulder. Bullseye. Kaela, from across the chamber, bow now in hand, giving me a tight nod. Her own situation was deteriorating. Slimes were closing in on her, and her throwing daggers were spent. Her leathers were smoking where they’d been grazed.

“HRRGGHH!!” Zane was swinging his mace in wild, exhausting arcs, but he was being pushed back step by step, a tide of green, mindless hunger advancing on him. I was being pushed back too. Kaela was now trapped against a wall, a slime dissolving the strap of her top. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. This was escalating from a rescue mission to a very specific genre of anime really fast.

Damn it, I thought, the acid sting on my shoulders mixing with a cold, creeping dread in my gut. Is this it? The end of my Tuesday? Dying half-naked in a sewer, next to people I don’t know, covered in goo? I refuse.

---

SURPRISE!

Did you miss me? Probably not. You were likely enjoying your day, blissfully unaware that our favorite underpowered janitor was about to become monster chow. My bad.

Look, I know the schedule. I have the spreadsheet. "Post Chapter 5 on Thursday," it says. But the muse, she is a fickle and sadistic creature. She grabbed me by the hair, dragged me to the keyboard, and whispered: "What if... they were all extra screwed?"

So here we are. A surprise double-drop. A bonus helping of existential dread and acidic slimes. Consider it a gift. Or a cry for help. Depends on your perspective.

I just couldn't leave you all hanging on that cliffhanger where Ethan was calmly vacuuming up soul-motes while his new "acquaintances" were moments away from being dissolved out of their clothes. That's just rude.

Now, the floor is yours. Are you Team "Let Them Cook" (let the slimes have their weird, dissolving banquet)? Or Team "Janitor Saves The Day (Somehow)"?

Sound off below. Your collective panic fuels the next chapter.

P.S. Regular schedule will resume... eventually. Probably. No promises. The muse has a key to my house.