“Wake up!”

I shifted around, turning my back to the noise that had disturbed me.

“Wake up you blasted idiot!” Someone hissed before I got a rough shove against my shoulder.

“Huu?” I asked as I looked around and tried to piece things together. It took awhile for the memories to return and for the sleep to wear off. I had gotten first watch, which meant I got to listen to Amaryllis’ cute whistling snores again while hugging my knees in the near-dark.

She had told me not to play with any magic because it attracted monsters, so I had basically spent a few hours all alone in the dark with nothing to do. No lights to read by and just the sky to watch. At least so far from any civilised places the skies had been truly spectacular. It was easy to look up to them and just... drift away.

Then Amaryllis had relieved me and I got to go to sleep on her surprisingly soft mattress in a tent that I was pretty sure was enchanted to make a person sleep really well. Or maybe I was just really tired.

“Wake up you moron!”

Thunder boomed.

The ground skipped out from under me.

I screwed my eyes shut and let out a squeak as any hints of sleepiness fled.

The flash faded away as suddenly as it had come and we were left in the dark once more. “My night vision is shot,” Amaryllis said.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I scrambled to my feet, bumped against the walls of the tent, then stumbled out into the spot we had chosen to camp in. It was still completely dark out, without even the barest hint of sunlight on the horizon.

“Get your gear; leave the tent,” Amaryllis said. “Slimes!”

“Slimes?” I asked. Some part of me, still mostly asleep, wanted to flop down and go right back to napping, but an electric buzz startled me and I looked up to see Amaryllis, both wings glowing with static sparks and hair-feathers standing on end.

She flung an arm out, her little knife held at the end, and a long forking jolt of lightning shot out and into the marshes.

I stared at the creature it hit.

The thing was big and bulbous, wobbly, and most of all, dirty. It was as if someone had taken the biggest ice-cream scoop in the world to a bowl of jello, then rolled the ball in some mud and twigs.

An unemotional Marsh Slime, level 8.

Electric shocks ran across its body and it seemed to wilt on the spot. Then another rolled out of the woods, and another came after it.

I rushed to the tent, grabbed my backpack to fling it on, picked up Orange, plopped my hat on, and grabbed my spear. An afterthought had the rune-light at the front come on to illuminate our surroundings.

“Oh no,” I said.

“We need to make a run for it,” Amaryllis said. “There are too many to kill.”

“You were going to kill them?” I asked as I watched the dozens of slimes that had surrounded us as I slept. I couldn’t blame Amaryllis for not noticing them sooner, other than that gurgling sound they made while moving they were hard to spot against the marshy ground. “What if they’re nice?”

“Nice? They’re slimes!”

“They could be nice slimes?”

“All they do is eat things. They don’t even have brains! World smite me, you could pass for one of them.” Amaryllis’ arm shot out and another bolt of sizzling electricity shot out and splattered a tiny, basketball-sized slime that had bounced towards them. “Follow the road north!” she said before running off the little cliff we were on.

I followed, leaping off the ground with a burst of stamina that had me overshooting Amaryllis and landing on the path. A flash of my light on the road ahead revealed that it wasn’t quite cleared, with a few slimes blubbering about, but not so many that we couldn’t avoid them.

The path towards Green Hold, on the other hand, had far fewer.

“South?” I called out, pointing to the easier path.

“No, North,” Amaryllis said as she landed and immediately started running that way.

I followed, stumbling a bit as I got used to the weight of my pack, but I caught up with a few quick bounces. We avoided the bigger slimes, both of us taking to the air to pass over them even as they sent out little slimy tendrils to try and catch us.

I thought we were in the clear when I heard a ‘whump’ and Amaryllis disappeared from my side.

My feet dug into the dirt road with a scrape as I stopped and whipped around.

Amaryllis was on the ground, electrified hand slapping at a large gooey tentacle wrapped around her face and neck. A huge, bulbous slime gooped out of the nearest tree, still hanging onto Amaryllis as it moved towards her.

I ran at her. First trying to pull her away from the monster, but when that didn’t work I slapped a hand against the slime, then winced as it felt as if I had stuck my hand in a pot of hot water. It prickled against my skin and I caught a faint burning odour in the air. “Clean!” I screamed as I fired the quickest cleaning spell I could muster.

The tentacle burst apart into motes of light and Amaryllis stumbled onto her knees, gasping.

“Here,” I said as I pulled out the trifecta potion I had in my bandoller and pushed it into her hands.

The slime grabbed me, a long limb slithering around my waist.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said.

Mister Menu flashed before me.

Cleaning
Rank C - 100%
The ability to Clean. You are exceptionally good at tidying up and washing off. Effectiveness of cleaning is marginally increased. You may now use mana to clean things you touch.
Eligible for rank up!
Rank B costs two (2) Class Points

“Yes!” I said.

It was a long overdue upgrade, and I still had two more class points to spend. Really, I should have done it a while ago but there had never been a reason until now.

Cleaning
Rank B -00%
The ability to Clean. You are exceptionally good at tidying up and washing off. Effectiveness of cleaning is marginally increased. You may now use mana to clean things you see.

Things I could see? I brought my arm up and aimed it at the slime. “Clean!” I’d come up with cooler attack names later.

I felt my mana rushing into my hand, then it formed into a tight ball, hundreds of swirling strands of interwoven magic, like a three dimensional kaliedeoscope. The ball burst forwards and slammed into the slime with a dull thud, like a potato canon smacking a brick wall.

The slime exploded.

I stumbled back, gasping as the bits of slime still on me faded away. That had cost a chunk of mana but it had certainly been worth it.

Congratulations! You have caused Marsh Slime, Level 9, to get washed! Bonus Exp was granted for splattering a monster above your level!

I sighed, but my relief was cut off as more gurgles came from the forest around us. “Come on, we need to go,” I said as I crouched down next to Amaryllis.

“I’m fine,” she said before pushing me off. She got to her feet on her own and shook her head. “It merely caught me by surprise.”

“It happens,” I said. “You’ll have to show me those spells of yours some time, they were awesome!”

“Yes well, that spell, that was a cleaning spell?”

“Yup! I’ve got it to Rank B! Um, I mean, journeyman.”

“It was adequate,” Amaryllis said, which set me to beaming. She huffed and turned away. “Let’s keep moving. Marsh slimes are mostly nocturnal. There are still some hours of night left.”

We did just that, first jogging along then slowing down to a steady walk after we both stumbled one to many times on the puddle-covered and uneven road. I got to practice my new and improved cleaning spell a few times too. It seemed as if it came with a sort of ingrained knowledge on how to fire it, either as a ball-like projectile or a bigger cone. The latter took a lot of mana, but it was fun to use. Like a flame thrower but for cleanliness.

Firing big bursts of cleaning magic at the littler slimes that tried to jump at us was a fair bit of fun, and even Amaryllis joined in, blasting them out of the air with well-aimed shocks and crackling electrical whips.

The sky started to lighten to a paler blue and the marshes changed, the slimes receding away and into the swampy waters while birdsong filled the air and all sorts of animals came awake. “We made it,” I said as I stumbled to a stop.

I was running on a couple of hours of sleep and had been walking and using magic for the past couple of hours. My batteries were all spent.

“We have,” Amaryllis said. “There are some rocks over there. We can take a break. Eat.”

I followed her pointing finger to find a big hill with a few stones jutting out of it. It was just off the road a little ways. “Alright,” I said, too tired to voice any other opinions. “You don’t have your pack though. But, we can share the food I have.”

She snorted and shook her head as she took off.

I checked my notifications, making sure to do so quietly because the last thing I wanted was for Amaryllis to think I was the sort of crazy person that talked to her system menu.

Congratulations! You have committed minor genocide! Your kill tally amounts to:
Marsh Slime, Level 1 x 4
Marsh Slime, Level 2 x 2
Marsh Slime, Level 3 x 3
Marsh Slime, Level 4 x 1
Marsh Slime, Level 5 x 1
For refusing to spare the children you have been granted Bonus Exp!

“Ah,” I said. “Ah... ah-ah. Ah!”

Amaryllis stared at me, pausing halfway up the hill. “Did your last two braincells bounce apart?”

“I... ah,” I explained. Then, because words were failing me, I made gestures.

“If you need to piss just go behind a bush.” She sniffed. “It’s not exactly luxurious, but this place is already a swamp.”

“Ah!” I tried again. There was a sting in my eyes as tears gathered.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Cute skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!
Rank C costs one (1) Class Point

“Ahhhh!”

“And you’ve lost your mind,” Amaryllis said. She dragged me the rest of the way up the hill, then pushed me down onto a rock. “You sit there and... keep doing... whatever.”

“Ah,” I squeaked back.

“Right... and thanks. You know, for back there. I’ll pay you back for the trifecta potion.”

She moved off to the centre of the hill and I saw her bringing her feathery arm over her head to mask her face from the sunlight.

“Th-the slimes,” I said. “Were they sapient? Sentient? Do they have little slime homes and little slime families?”

“What? No. They’re made from concentrations of ambient mana. It takes a particular kind of mana to make them. Then they roll around and stick to anything magical they run across, including people. They’re a nuisance.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

It still took a while, and maybe a dab at my eyes, to really calm myself down. Knowing that the slimes weren’t people made it... better. Not okay, but better.

“We can see the fort from here,” Amaryllis said. “It’s actually quite close. I think the scale on my map is off.”

I sniffled, then fired a cleaning spell at my face, which tingled and made me sneeze, but at least it cleared my nose up. “Um. We were sent to map out the fort’s location. Where did you buy the map?”

“It’s from the Golden Nest Bank. They’re a Nesting Kingdom institution, can’t blame them for being wrong about misplacing such an ugly building.”

I climbed up the hill so that I was next to her and took in the distant form of Fort Frogger. It was a large squarish building some ways away, with a single stubby tower and dull grey walls around it, most of them looked cracked and broken even from afar.

And between us and the fort was a good couple of kilometers of swampland.

It wasn’t going to be fun getting there.