Chapter 9: "Let's Talk About Loot (and Monster Guts)"
—In which we contemplate becoming magical organ harvesters. Yay friendship.
Okay. So there was no treasure.
Zip. Nada. Not even a shiny copper coin or a health potion in a suspiciously glowing bottle labeled "Drink Me, Totally Safe."
I don't know about you, but when you just finish battling a bunch of living armor suits and everyone survives with their limbs attached, you expect some loot. A sword that shoots fire. A scroll of infinite pizza. Something.
Instead? We got moss.
Gross, shady-looking moss growing over the tall stone windows at the end of the room. The only thing not covered in moss was the actual door leading to the next area.
So, being the responsible adventurers we are, we split up to loot the battlefield like we were at a medieval yard sale. Alex and I poked through the shattered armor remains for usable weapons—none. Turns out if you have to shred an enemy to kill it, the armor doesn't stay in "gift shop condition."
Meanwhile, Diana, already rocking her full edgy darkness queen mode (glowing purple eyes, floating hair, etc.), drifted toward one of the mossy windows like she heard it whisper a dark secret.
Which, honestly? Would've been less creepy than what actually happened.
One second she's inspecting the window.
The next, a slimy green tentacle of moldy death lashed out of the moss with a hiss like a snake gargling soup.
"Diana, LOOK OUT!"
I didn't scream it so much as yelp it like someone stepped on a LEGO. Fortunately, Diana's danger reflexes were apparently set to "automatic slaughter," because before I even blinked, her shadows lashed outward and sliced the pseudopod clean off.
It flopped to the ground like a boneless fish finger, sizzling.
Then the wall shivered.
"Uh, guys?" I called, pointing with my staff. "The moss is alive. And I don't mean Disney cute forest spirit alive—I mean evil goo with too many eyes alive!"
Alex dropped the chunk of armor he was holding. "You mean the moss that's all over every window?!"
"Yup!"
The moss pulsed.
Then it moved.
Out of the stone frames slithered about six oozing monsters, each the size of a trash can full of nightmares. They looked like melting green meatballs with eyeballs trapped inside like olives. The leathery film on their skin kept bursting open with little plops, spilling glowing goo, and then sealing back up like—ugh, no, I can't. It was gross. Very gross.
"Alkiliths," Diana muttered. "Demons of corruption and decay. Poison types."
"Cool, cool," I said. "Just what I needed today. A surprise boss fight with gooey tentacle slugs."
Felix backed away fast. "I'm staying out of this. One slap from those things and I'm soup."
And honestly? I didn't blame him.
Alex was already dashing in, slashing at the nearest one.
His blade phased through the creature like he'd tried to karate chop pudding.
The alkilith quivered and struck back with three pseudopods, sizzling with acid. Alex ducked, flipped, and retaliated with a burst of energy arcs. Boom. The green goo monster burst like a popped zit—again, ew—and dissolved into slime.
"One down!" he shouted.
"Five to go!" I called, because I like to be helpful and state the obvious under pressure.
Diana didn't wait either. Her shadowy clawed hands stretched out, and with a snarl, she summoned her darkness maw—a huge gaping void that opened beneath two of the alkiliths.
They didn't even scream. They just disappeared, slurped up like cosmic spaghetti.
"Three left!" I counted, because apparently that was my role now: battle math guy.
One of the alkiliths oozed toward me at unnatural speed, lashing out with acid-coated limbs.
I jumped, barely dodging. It grazed my boot, and hissssssss—there went half my laces.
I backpedaled hard, flinging magic missiles that I shaped into spinning neon javelins.
The creature screeched as one missile drilled through its center. Then I launched two more, wrapping the thing in a magical explosion. It popped like a balloon full of swamp water.
"Gross!" I gagged. "Why do they smell like gym socks dipped in vinegar?!"
Two more came at us, but Diana intercepted one with a flurry of slicing shadow tentacles.
Alex hit the other with a cross-shaped wave of glowing blue energy that carved it into chunks midair.
Silence.
Then just the drip… drip… drip of demon goop hitting the floor.
We stood there, catching our breath, surrounded by ooze splatters and sizzling acid holes. Felix popped back into view, hands raised like a referee.
"I didn't die!" he announced cheerfully.
"Congrats," I said, wiping slime off my cheek. "I think some of it winked at me before it exploded."
Diana's shadows retracted. "That was disgusting."
Alex wiped his blade off on one of the fallen armor cloaks. "Worse than the armors?"
"Way worse," I said. "At least the armors didn't smell."
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After the slime-splosion extravaganza, we took a moment to breathe. And by breathe, I mean cough through the acidic fog that still hung in the air like someone had lit a fart made of moldy onions.
"Right," I said, looking around the battlefield. "Time to loot the place like a bunch of responsible adventurers with questionable morals."
Diana raised an eyebrow at me, shadows still lazily curling around her fingers. "You mean gather the splintered bits of walking tin cans and the weapons they were pretending to know how to use?"
"Yes, exactly that."
Alex nodded, already crouched over one of the shattered armored bodies like a kid taking apart a toaster to see how it worked. "Some of these swords are still in good condition. Not enchanted, but solid craftsmanship. We could melt the metal later for something magical."
"Or forge a battleaxe shaped like a duck," I added helpfully.
They both gave me a look.
"What? I'm just saying, if we're gonna be magic blacksmiths someday, we should aim for style."
Diana rolled her eyes but was smiling. "Chris, focus."
"Right. Loot now, duck-shaped weapons later."
I summoned my inventory screen with a flick of my fingers—glowy blue panel, very satisfying—and started stashing the good stuff. Broken pieces of enchanted armor, random weapons, the creepy mace that one knight had swung like he was playing baseball with our heads. The best part? Game Storage didn't care if the item was slimy, cursed, or still twitching. It just absorbed it into pixel space with a little ding.
"Everything's in," I announced. "Maybe we can get Diana a better dagger. Or make a shadow-infused shovel."
Diana didn't dignify that with a response.
Felix stood at the edge of the room, silent like always, eyes scanning everything. He didn't like talking unless he had something really important to say. Which was fine. Every party needed a stoic shadowy support guy who could go invisible and silently judge you when you said dumb stuff.
Meanwhile, the three of us started the real conversation—the one that every RPG party eventually has but nobody wants to admit to:
Looting body parts.
"So," Alex began, rubbing the back of his neck. "We, uh... might need to start harvesting things."
"Things?" I asked, even though I knew exactly what he meant.
"Monster bits. Organs. Poison sacs. Magic eyeballs. You know, crafting materials."
"Ugh, you mean like alchemy stuff?" Diana grimaced. "Please don't tell me we're going full fantasy taxidermy."
"I mean," I said, thinking way too hard about it, "those alkiliths probably had some magical components. That glowing goo might be toxic and useful. Two for one."
"Do you want to carry the goo?" Diana asked flatly.
"No. Absolutely not. I'm already storing ten swords, six shields, and like... three dismembered helmets. My inventory smells like a haunted forge."
Felix, without a word, handed me a small glowing vial. Green. Bubbling. Ooze.
"…Where did you even get this?" I asked.
He gave a small shrug.
I swear, the guy was a ninja. Or a raccoon. Possibly both.
"Anyway," Diana said, turning back toward the sealed stone door at the end of the room, "the real question is: What's next?"
That shut us up for a second.
We all looked at the door. The mossy walls, the flickering torches, the sinister way the door was definitely waiting to unleash something nasty the moment we touched it.
"Think it's a boss room?" I asked.
"Maybe a miniboss," Alex guessed. "These slime things felt like a warm-up."
"That was a warm-up?!" I said. "I dodged so much my knees are filing complaints."
"I mean, we've cleared two fights now. This place is ramping up. Classic dungeon design."
Felix nodded quietly. Great. Even the silent guy agreed we were in a video game designed by a sadistic architect.
"I just hope it's not another ooze," Diana muttered.
"I just hope it has a couch," I muttered back.
"Would be nice to rest," Alex said. "Or maybe find a save point."
There was a pause.
Then we all laughed.
Even Felix cracked a grin.
No save points. No pause buttons. Just us, monster guts, and whatever was behind that door.
"Okay," I said, stepping forward, staff in hand. "Next round of nightmare bingo, here we come."
And with that, we approached the door—ready, armed, slightly traumatized, and still without any anime.
Pray for us.
---------------------------------
The door hissed open like some ancient vault welcoming us into luxury. I was honestly expecting another battlefield covered in acid slime or, you know, sentient cobwebs. But instead? A hallway.
A shiny, normal hallway.
Marble floors, polished to a level that made my scuffed boots look like betrayal. Rich velvet banners with gold embroidery fluttered gently, like they had AC. It looked less like a dungeon and more like the lobby of an evil wizard's high-end resort.
And we weren't alone.
"Whoa," I said, spotting a few other teams gathered near the far end. They looked just like us—scratched up, tired, but still buzzing with adrenaline and confused confidence.
Diana elbowed me gently. "We should talk to them. Compare experiences. Information is currency now."
"Right," I said, smoothing down my slightly burned cloak. "Time to make some new best friends-slash-traumatized allies."
We approached the nearest group. Three people. One guy with glowing tattoos on his arms, a girl with silver hair and a frankly terrifying amount of daggers, and a guy wearing a hoodie that still said 'I paused my game to be here' like this was some cosmic prank. Which, honestly? Fair.
"Hey," I said, giving a wave. "You guys just cleared the slime room too?"
Tattoo guy shook his head. "Nope. We had a... different flavor of nightmare. Jovocs."
"Jovo-whats?"
"Jovocs," the dagger girl said grimly. "Like if a zombie gnome and a garbage disposal had a baby and that baby grew up on resentment and kerosene."
I blinked. "That's... vivid."
She didn't laugh.
"Their blood hurts you when they get hurt," Hoodie Guy added helpfully. "Self-destruct sympathy pain demons. Total jerks."
"Sounds delightful," Diana said flatly.
"We had Alkiliths," I offered. "Slimey moss monsters with eyeballs and anger issues. Look like decorations until they slap you with acid."
"Oh!" Tattoo guy said, snapping his fingers. "We ran into those last room in the south wing. Our mage tried to freeze one. It just laughed and turned into goo again."
"Relatable."
Dagger Girl looked intrigued. "Anything else or was it just a single monster room?"
"Animated suits of armor that wouldn't stay down until we reduced them to puzzle pieces," Diana replied.
"So," Hoodie Guy said, leaning against the wall, "anyone else feel like we're just NPCs in some magical Hunger Games run by maniac wizards?"
"Yep," Diana said without hesitation.
"We've all been here, what? Few hours? Got powers, got levels, now we're fighting for survival in a place called the Infinite Palace." Tattoo Guy shook his head. "This is some next-level isekai nonsense."
Felix, standing behind me, raised one finger.
"He says we're in a game," I translated. "But it's real. And we should act accordingly."
There was a long silence.
Then Hoodie Guy said, "Dang. He doesn't talk much, but when he does, it hits."
"So the Mage Association," I said, "you guys think they're like the shadow government? Or just some apocalyptic game devs with too much time?"
"Both?" Dagger Girl shrugged. "They dropped us in here with magic and instructions to survive. That's either a global crisis or a tutorial. I don't like either."
I sighed. "Same. At this point, I'm just hoping the next room has loot and maybe a coffee machine."
Hoodie Guy grinned. "If we find a Starbucks, I'm looting the whole thing."
We chatted a little more. Compared level-ups, shared spell effects, and trauma bonded over how stupidly fast some enemies were. It felt like a break. A real one. Like we were just nerds on a Discord server complaining about dungeon design and monster mechanics.
Only this Discord server had acid, murder-slimes, and magical blood demons.