For just a few seconds I felt a twisting sensation but it passed almost as quickly as it came.

Then my surroundings were different. I felt a weight fill my soul and with it… my body was back as I stared at my hands that had returned to me. The floating feeling from being a ghost was washed away.

I take a deep breath of fresh air. It’s cleaner than anything I’ve ever known.

I looked in every direction. Before me was a large dark cave, with the robot from before standing by it with its usual glowing smile. To my left was a wild and open plains filled with small trees every so often.

To the right what seemed to be a giant paved road stretching onwards beyond the distance my eyes could track. Behind me was a smaller road with a sign that reads “This way to Verte Village.”

I take another good look at my body. Everything seems the same. I touch my face and feel everything, my eyes, nose, ears and lips. I was even wearing my daily business suit but without blood staining it.

Simple black outer jacket, white dress shirt and a blue tie as well as the heavy black leather shoes that were mandatory. It was just me as I had always been. No more and no less. Not a speck different.

“Sir Hibiki. Please allow me to give you the most basic of details.”

The courteous robot beckoned me over and I found my feet walking towards it.

“Good. Sir, please proceed into this cave. I have attained you a weapon.”

The machine handed me a sword and I picked it up with both hands, one resting on the flat of the blade and the other on the hilt.

It was a slightly curved iron blade with a simple hilt and handle with a tiny tassel at the very end.

“Is this a dao?” I started inspecting the blade from various angles. It didn’t look particularly shiny or impressive.

“Affirmative. It may be cheaply purchased in the neighbouring village. If you need a new one I highly suggest this product. It is cheap and durable, though it lacks power it is efficient for prolonged conflicts. Now, please follow me.”

Unit 08 walked into the cave with its two legs, a small burst of steam leaving the exhaust pipes of its body with each step accompanied by a clanging sound as its feet made contact with the earth.

The insides of the cave were oddly enough lit with torches on the walls.

People clearly have been here before and did some work mapping it out, though there didn’t seem to be any signs of it being occupied recently. The whole situation was not quite settling into me yet. I was following a metal man down a dark cave in a whole other world after dying.

Yet I knew it was true. My senses were clear and distinct. This was no dream.

Then 08 came to a complete stop. It gestured for me to move forward alone by stretching out its left hand while bowing. I take a step forward and then…zap.

The unusual sound made me turn my head back to see a blue wall of some unknown energy seperate the machine and I. The keys of its smile were all glowing at once yet again.

“Good luck, meatbag.”

The sudden change of voice, the tone which was filled with joy and shiver excitement broke my mind for a single second as doubt began to crawl across my body.

From the corner of my eyes something leaps out towards me. I turn around but it’s too late, it’s already on me.

I hear it. The sizzling sound of something burning tickles my ears and a weight around the mass of a puppy drops onto my left arm.

I place my eyes on the perpetrator. It’s a blue circular substance.

About the size of a basketball made of goo with a singular apple sized red core within the centre of the amoeba like being.

It was slightly see through and I saw my suit sleeve below it begin to bubble and fizz away.

It’s acid! This is a slime! Not the cute kind either! The old school western rpg variant!

I begin to panic, grit my teeth and shake my left arm frantically up and down as if I was a baby bird trying to take flight for the first time. It’s not budging and the sound of my clothes being melted intensifies. I can see the fibres and strings now, in just a bit longer it’d turn to nothing and then it’ll reach my skin! If that happens then it’ll erode my flesh and I’ll… die?

Again? So soon? Death by freaking slime in the first fight!?

Then I remember the other weight on my right arm, the sword I was carrying.

Was it even going to work on a ball of living acid? No, that didn’t matter!

I lifted my right hand and the blade, aimed and sliced at the red core!

The bloody orb split cleanly in two, forming two floating halves in the middle of the jelly like creature attacking me. The living blue marble suddenly falls off my arm, as if it changed from a solid to a liquid and began to spill over the rock floor. Slight waves of smoke singe out of the spots the slimes remains splattered on. The two halves of the core fall over and make a heavy thud as they hit the ground.

I start panting as I regain my breath. I stare at the sword that freed me.

The blade has a few signs of wear and tear on it now despite being whole before.

Then I heard a clapping sound behind me. I look at the machine that brought me into a death trap and swing the sword at the blue wall. It bounces off the transparent energy.

“Wow, you didn’t die straight away! Almost all of you meatbags with nothing going on for them just get eaten here. Good going kid.”

I’m pissed, confused and disorientated. My heart is pumping full of fear but slowly converting it into fierce rage. “Behind you flesh wrap!” I curse as I do as the machine says, I’m on this robot’s strings now. A puppet of a puppet. Then fear grips me. It’s not one slime. It’s a wave of them.

My eyes lock on them and quickly count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , … dammit seven of them!?

They all leap at once at varying heights. For a brief second they were above me, shaped like a cascade of missiles. Then they fall on me. My head. My arms. My legs. My stomach and back.

A burning sensation encompasses my head while the other parts of my body are thinly shielded by my clothes, but at this rate that wouldn’t last much longer. I can’t breathe!

I hear mechanical laughter echo through the corridor! Fucking ass…!

I try to move my right arm to strike again but… it’s heavy! The slime on it is holding me down and restricting my movements. Still, I could barely move it upwards as my body was being assaulted.

The biting feeling nibbling at my head felt like someone was scrubbing my body with rocks!

This time I stab at the core with the dao. The red centre cracks like candy exposed to a hammer.

It falls apart like the one before and I could breathe again.

The one on my left arm, gotta take it out first! It’s a pain in the neck to move this heavy arm, it’s just like a heavy setting on a running machine but for a single limb… but I can manage.

I slice like I did before. The cut wasn’t as clean as the first time but it got the job done.

The slime core splits and fractures. The blue mass practically dissolves.

I toss the dao from my right hand to my left and aim at the one on my right arm that was being a pain in the neck. I slash again. It falls. I put my sword back in my dominant hand and aim for the one on my stomach.

A swing and it perishes like the rest. I do the same to the ones clinging on my legs. The final one on my back though… a tinge of pain trickles across my spine. It’s bitten through my clothes and is tearing into my flesh.

I try to reach the thing but I can’t tell where the core is and I’m just wildly swinging at it.

The pain is intensifying just a little more with each second. I click my tongue as frustration in my body is getting bigger. I do the only thing I can think of. I ram my back against the blue energy wall.

An electrical shock sings across my body. I drop my sword, bite my lip and shove my back even further into the wall of energy until… plop. The slime falls apart like the rest and a heavy red object falls and rolls across the ground.

I collapse from exhaustion. The floor is filled with scattered pieces of blue jelly and red jewel like pieces.

“Well done skin scraps! It was quite entertaining! Seeing you go crazy when the goo ball was on your face, man I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time! Really hope you don’t bite it too hard or too soon. Those cores can be sold for some chump change. That’s all you need to know. Peace sucker!”

The blue wall began to fall down. I stand up and grab my sword. I charge at the mechanical mess and swing. It phases right through it! “Nice try ballsack! Hahahaaha!”

The living scrap disappears from my sight as if he was never there in the first place.

A blue screen with a silver border and yellow text lights up in front of my eyes.

LEVEL UP.