The stick connected with a wet smack.
The slime didn't die.
It did, however, get very angry.
Rook had exactly half a second to feel good about his swing before the slime launched itself at his chest like a small, furious, gelatinous cannonball. It hit him square in the sternum and he went down hard, crashing into the grass and leaves with a graceless thud that knocked the wind clean out of him in an instant, like a noob.
"Ow—"
The slime was on top of him now, and this close he could feel that it wasn't just wobbly and weird — it was hot. Not warm. Hot. Like pressing his skin against a pan that had been sitting on a stove. He could feel it starting to burn through his t-shirt.
His HP bar flickered at the edge of his vision.
⚠ STATUS UPDATE
HP: 88 / 100
Status: None
[Burn damage detected — contact with acidic slime body]
"IT'S ACIDIC?!" Rook shoved the slime off him with both hands, ignoring the stinging burn on his palms, and scrambled backward on all fours until his back hit a tree trunk. He held up both hands. Red patches bloomed across both palms where the slime had touched him. Not deep — more like a bad sunburn — but real. Genuinely, actually real.
Twelve HP. One small blue blob had taken twelve HP off him in three seconds.
The slime righted itself, wobbled, and started moving toward him again with the slow, inevitable patience of something that had absolutely nowhere else to be.
Rook stared at it.
"Okay," he said, pressing his back against the tree and forcing himself to breathe slowly. "Okay. Think. You've played a thousand games. You've read about exactly this scenario. What do you do against an enemy you can't punch directly?"
The slime blorped.
"You don't punch it directly," he answered himself. "You use tools. You use the environment. You use your—" he grabbed the fallen branch off the ground beside him and looked at it. Long. Solid. Reach. "—your range advantage."
The slime was three feet away now.
Rook planted his feet, held the branch out in front of him like a spear rather than a club, and jabbed. The tip connected with the slime and he felt resistance — like poking something dense and jelly-like — and then the slime wobbled hard to the side. He jabbed again before it could recover. Then again. He was keeping distance between them, poking fast, not letting it get close enough to jump.
[Damage Dealt: 4]
[Damage Dealt: 4]
[Damage Dealt: 5 — Weak Point Hit!]
"Weak point?" He squinted. There it was — the two dark spots on the slime's body, slightly more solid-looking than the rest of it. The eyes, or whatever they were. He aimed for them.
The slime lurched sideways trying to dodge. It was slow, but not completely brainless. Rook moved with it, circling, keeping the branch tip aimed at the dark spots. Jab. Jab. The slime made a sound now — a high, wet squealing noise that made his skin crawl — and launched itself at him again.
This time he was ready.
He sidestepped — barely, clumsily, nearly tripping over his own feet — and the slime sailed past him and hit the tree trunk with a wet splat. It stuck there for a moment, dazed, and Rook brought the branch down on it from above with both hands and all his weight behind it.
Crack.
[Damage Dealt: 18 — Critical Hit!]
[GREEN SLIME DEFEATED]
⬆ EXP GAINED: +25
[Item Drop: Slime Jelly x2]
[Item Drop: Slime Core x1]
The slime dissolved. That was the only word for it — it didn't fall over or explode, it simply came apart, the blue goo evaporating into small motes of light that faded into the air. On the ground where it had been sat two small lumps of bluish jelly and one small crystalline marble, glowing faintly.
Rook stood over them, breathing hard, sweating, both palms still stinging.
He had just barely beaten a Level 1 slime. A single slime. At equal level. And he was missing twelve HP and had two burned hands to show for it.
He sat down on the ground right there.
"That," he announced to the empty forest, "was way harder than it should have been shown in the game and anime."
The items floated gently and then disappeared — absorbed into his Inventory automatically. He opened the panel and checked.
🎒 INVENTORY
[Slime Jelly x2] — A viscous byproduct of a defeated slime. Mildly acidic when raw. Possible uses unknown.
[Slime Core x1] — The solidified core of a slime. Low-quality crafting material. Value: Low.
[Fallen Branch x1] — A sturdy stick. It's a stick.
He almost laughed at the description for the branch. The system had a sense of humor apparently. He pulled up the Slime Jelly description again and stared at "possible uses unknown." In every LitRPG he'd ever read, slime drops were always useful for something — potions, crafting, cooking even. He had no Herbalism or Appraisal skill yet, so the system wasn't going to tell him more than that, it seems.
He looked at the blue jelly sitting in his Inventory window. Then, slowly, with the expression of a man making a decision he already regretted, he reached into the Inventory, pulled one out, and sniffed it.
It smelled faintly sweet. Acidic underneath, but sweet on top.
He touched the tip of his tongue to it.
Not terrible.
He took a small bite.
It tasted like sour candy that had been left in a gym bag. Disgusting. But the moment it hit his stomach something warm spread through him and his HP bar ticked upward.
[Slime Jelly consumed]
[HP restored: +8]
HP: 96 / 100
"It's a potion," he said, staring at the remaining jelly in his hand with new respect. "Disgusting, acidic, gym-bag-flavored potion. But a potion." He stored the second one carefully. Emergency use only. Hopefully.
He stood up, dusted off his sweatpants, and looked around the forest. The fight had probably taken five minutes total and he was already tired and slightly burned. He needed to get a lot better at this very quickly.
The EXP bar at the edge of his vision showed 25 out of 100.
One slime down. A long way to go.
Somewhere off to his left he heard another soft blorp.
Then another.
He turned around. Through the trees, three more slimes were drifting toward him in that slow, inevitable way, drawn perhaps by the noise of the fight, or the scent of whatever slimes sensed.
Rook looked at his branch, then his burned palms, and at last the three slimes coming slowly toward him.
He took a slow breath and told himself, "You can do it."
"Okay," he said. "Okay. Keep distance. Aim for the dark spots. Don't let them touch you." He raised the branch. "This is just grinding. I've done ten thousand hours of grinding. I can grind slimes in the real world too."
He picked the closest one and moved toward it before it could reach him — aggressive, controlled, taking the initiative this time instead of defending.
The second fight lasted two minutes.
The third lasted one and a half.
By the fourth he'd stopped flinching when they launched themselves at him.
When the last slime dissolved into motes of light, Rook checked his status. His HP was down to 71 — the fights had cost him, but less each time as he figured out the rhythm. His Inventory now had five Slime Jellies and three Slime Cores.
And the EXP bar read—
⬆ LEVEL UP!
Rook has reached Level 2!
All stats increased by 1.
[1 Stat Point Available — open Status to allocate]
Current Status:
Level: 2
HP: 142 / 142 (increased with VIT)
STR: 6 | AGI: 6 | INT: 6 | VIT: 6
The notification hit him like a physical thing — a warm rush from his head down to his feet, a tingling in his muscles that faded quickly but left him feeling genuinely, measurably better. Stronger. He flexed his hand. The burn on his palm still hurt but somehow felt slightly less serious.
So leveling up really did heal you a little. Good to know.
He pulled up the stat allocation screen and stared at his one free point for a long moment. Every gamer instinct he had fired at once — don't waste it, think long term, what's your build? He hadn't chosen a class yet, didn't know what the endgame looked like, had no idea what stats mattered most in this world. He had no walkthrough or any idea about this world.
He put it into AGI.
Staying alive meant not getting hit. Not getting hit meant being faster. Simple logic.
[AGI increased to 7]
He closed the panel and looked up at the forest. The light filtering through the leaves was shifting — afternoon moving toward evening. He'd been conscious for maybe three hours total, spent most of it getting beaten up by gelatinous blobs, and he still had no shelter, no real food, no shoes, and no idea where he was.
But he was Level 2.
He was alive.
And there was a small, stubborn, thoroughly unreasonable part of him that was having the time of his life.
"Okay," Rook said, picking up his branch and heading deeper into the trees toward the sound of running water he'd noticed earlier. First priority: find the stream. Water meant survival. Water also meant he could wash the slime off his hands before they got worse and to avoid any infections.
He paused, turned back, and looked at the little scattering of light-motes still fading where the last slime had been.
"Thanks for the EXP," he told them.
Then he walked into the forest, alone and grinning, to figure out how to survive the night.