It took me a moment to find the exit button, and my view returned to normal after hitting the button.

“I saw it! I saw it with my own eyes!”

The hardened looking warrior woman from earlier now had a fearful expression on her face. Beside her was the man she was talking to earlier.

“Mother of god, that thing…”

The two were hysterically trying to speak while hyperventilating. An officer walked over.

“What’s going on?” he asked curtly.

“Ryan.. his body… it was torn in half!”

The officer looked around, confused.

“What do you mean torn in half? Where is the body?”

The man was gesticulating in panic, pointing towards the direction of the rock he walked towards earlier, several meters in the distance.

“There, but don’t go…”

“Don’t go? Why not? Chin up and answer me, soldier.”

“Monster…”

“You saw a monster?”

“A swamp monster! We have to run, run now—“

SMACK.

The officer smacked the man across the face with his back hand.

“Listen here, soldier. You don’t give orders out here, I do. Now spit out what you saw, and this time speak coherently.”

The man wheezed for breath, then started talking.

“So Abigail and I noticed Ryan’s been missing since he went to take a leak about an hour ago. He wasn’t in his tent, and I got worried and went to check up on him.”

He pointed towards the right.

“That way… we saw his footprints in the dirt and followed them to the swamps. That’s when we found his body mangled, with his insides just all over the place…”

The man gagged for a second, then continued his story.

“I was going to get a closer look, but that’s when that THING came out.”

Scratching his chin, the officer continued the interrogation.

“A monster, you say? What did it look like?”

The man shuddered, and the warrior woman answered for him.

“Big. It was very big. I’m not sure how to describe its appearance… it was like a massive gelatinous blob of congealed mud, and it was rolling towards us.”

Hearing this, the officer frowned.

“Come with me.”

The officer lead them towards the commander’s tent.

Yeah, I had a bad feeling about this. I went to Books’ tent and shook him awake.

“Mmmm whazzat?”

“Get up, Books. Someone’s been killed.”

Books rubbed his eyes and sat up.

“Huh? Who’s been killed?”

“Apparently a soldier got ripped in half by a monster.”

I briefly filled him in on what I saw. Before I could finish, several officers were calling for a regiment meeting. It took about ten minutes for everyone to file in, and some soldiers had to be dragged half-awake to the meeting by their comrades.

After confirming that everyone was present, the commander began to speak.

“We will continue traveling tonight. Pack up and get ready in twenty.”

Most of the soldiers were confused—this was the first day we were expected to travel after nightfall.

“Sir, is there any reason—“

The commander cut him off, barking an order.

“No question! Pack your stuff and haul ass! Go! Anyone not here in twenty minutes gets left behind! Get moving you maggots!”

Just like that, a frenzy of packing began. Never have I seen an entire campsite get dismantled so quickly before. The biggest driving factor behind the frenzied speed the soldiers were working at was the lack of information given by the commander. In everyone’s eyes, that was a red flag that something was seriously wrong, and that we needed to hurry.

In about eight minutes time, the campsite was virtually scraped clear, and soldiers were boarding the carriages under the supervision of the officers. Lanterns were hung on the carriages in the front so that the horses would be able to navigate in the pitch black.

“Depart!”

The moment the last doors closed, the carriages began to move.

Here we were, traveling again at midnight. Our carriage was just Books and I this time, so I summoned Meat Shield to keep us company.

“Know anything about this place, Meat Shield?”

“Hm…. feed me a pork jelly bean and I’ll tell you~”

…

The cat curled up into a ball and pretended to snooze, but I saw her sneakily peek out of one eye.

I groaned and opened up my inventory, tossing her a jelly bean. Did you know, those things were considered a special pet delicacy and costed ten silver a dozen at the pet shop? What a rip off. The only reason I ever considered buying them was because this stupid cat’s nonstop whining at the shop.

After chewing on the delicious pork belly jean, the black cat stretched and began talking.

“I don’t know much about this place~”

…

“You stupid cat!”

“Nyang~”

I grabbed Meat Shield and shook her vigorously, trying to shake off the stupid look of satisfaction she had on her face from the delicious treat.

Books stifled a laugh while spectating the charade.

Suddenly, I felt a sinking sensation. In the literal sense, as in the carriage was sinking into the ground.

“Holy shit! What’s going on?” Books yelped, hanging onto the side of the carriage. I felt the ground moving underneath and popped my head out of the carriage to see what was going on.

Even in the best of times, the traversable ground of the Boglands was more or less several horizontal feet of dry dirt, and mud underneath that layer of dry dirt. And from what I was seeing, that layer of mud underneath the ground was now flowing.

Unsettling was an understatement when describing the way the very ground was bubbling and twisting before my eyes. Something was sucking the mud away from the ground under us.

“What the fuck is this?” someone shouted from a carriage in front of us.

I turned around and looked. The lanterns from the carriages illuminated the night, revealing a mound of mud the size of a truck that continued to grow in size until I had to look up to see the top. A gap appeared in the middle of the mound, forming the shape of a mouth and eyes.

The monster slid forward like a giant slime and engulfed one of the horses in the front, tipping the carriage it was pulling over. The carriage sank into the mud before the soldiers inside could get out, until all that was left was a single hand reaching out from the mud, before that too was swallowed.

“Keep going! Do not turn back!”

The commander’s gruff voice cut through the chaos, and the carriages continued to move.

All I could think of was the month long death penalty. An entire month if I fucked up here.

I activated dimension room as a loud crunch came from outside, where the slime monster was devouring an entire carriage.

“Let’s dip,” I said to Books.

“No, not yet,” he replied. “Think about it, if we leave now, it’s only going to get worse and we might never be able to get out of here. It’s better to stay with the other soldiers, since if a few of us get picked off it buys time for the rest to escape.”

He was right. What Books was talking about was what I would call, gazelle theory. In the African plains, gazelles tend to flock and graze together, knowing that their individual chances of survival against lion attacks actually increased when grouped together.

I closed the portal that led to the dimension room. For a moment I considered putting on full armor, but plate armor really didn’t seem to be the right call against a slime monster that attacked by engulfing its prey.

“Aghhhhhhh!!”

Books, Meat Shield, and I all looked out of the carriage and saw that yet another carriage was now being dragged into the ground by the massive slime. Two of the soldiers managed to get out of the carriage in time, but one of them, a female archer, tripped and fell to the ground.

“Kyaaaaah!”

An appendage of the slime broke off and latched onto her body as she screamed. With a crunch, the slime tore the female archer in half.

“Faster!” the commander shouted. “We must go faster!”

I pulled back my sleeve and prepared to cast magic at the slime that was eating the female archer a few meters away.

“Thunderbolt!”

Thud.

The bolt of lightning smacked into the slime and fizzled out of existence. Yeah, electric type attacks probably weren’t going to do much against a mud monster.

All I could do was sit and watch helplessly as the slime continued on its rampage. The other soldier that managed to get away was sprinting towards the carriages, and the slime began to chase. A potion appeared in Books’ right hand.

“Spoon, this is bad. My [Potioneering] skill just activated. That means we’re considered in combat.”

“Forget it Books, there’s not much we can do.”

Wait, there was one thing I could do.

Was I going to fight the slime in close quarters?

No.

Jump out and help the soldier being chased?

No.

Cast thunderbolt at the slime?

Nope, didn’t work last time.

Then, what was I going to do?

I was going to stream it.

I opened the Eclipse interface and navigated to the live stream functionality, then began broadcasting with my location set to publicly displayed.

Just like before, the viewer count immediately jumped to five viewers, since players were very interested at what was happening in the Boglands. But instead of going down to zero, it increased to seven, with people starting to use the chat function.

wtf?

lol is this cgi

xdddd u gon die

slime????

???

wat

17 viewers.

The massive slime caught up to the sobbing warrior who was trying to run away, and spread its slime around his feet so he could no longer run. A giant mouth formed from the amoebous blob and closed around the warrior.

CRUNCH.

PogChamp

PogChamp

PogChamp

Jesus

LOLLLLLLLL

weakkk

SLIMED

Within a minute, I was up to 102 viewers.

The giant slime continued to grow larger as it digested the soldiers and horses it ate. Bits and pieces of wooden frame from the carriages were still within the blob, and I could make out the shapes of various different bones floating within the slime’s body.

My viewer count skyrocketed faster than my heart rate was increasing, which was saying a lot because my heart rate currently sounded like a broken metronome ticking away at mach speed. Although there were so many carriages that it was statistically unlikely for our carriage to be hit next, just seeing the gruesome way the soldiers were dying was horrifying.

2,704 viewers.