Once again, Ai tries to contact me.
So stubborn. Should I take it just once?
…I don’t wanna. If I end up going to that company again, it’s going to be a weight on my mind for sure.
Maintaining the status quo is the right option.
But someone else contacted me. My mother, who’s back home.
She called me yesterday, because I guess she suddenly remembered.
Hello? Mom?
Yes, it’s me. No, it’s not one of those it’s me scams! It’s me, Haruto!
Hm, so? Why did you call me?
Hn? You wanted to hear my voice? What are you talking about? I saw you last month.
Next time? Hm, I’m still busy, so I don’t know when I’ll go there.
Yes yes, I will if I have the time.
I’ll send stuff, so if you want something, tell me on LIN○.
Later.
As you can probably tell from that call, I haven’t told my parents I quit my job. It’s not like I don’t want to worry them or anything like that, it’s that when I came to Tokyo, I promised I’d move back home if I ever quit my job, so I don’t want them to know I’m unemployed.
Not to mention my current shape. They’d make fun of me for sure.
I won’t go there until I lose weight, I strongly vow to myself.
◇ ◇ ◇
The fourteenth floor of the dungeon.
I intend to call it early today and go back. I need to buy the stuff I’ll send to my parents. No dilly-dallying today.
And yet, I found a treasure chest.
Let’s get one thing straight right away. Not opening it isn’t an option.
Still, considering that harem party triggered a transport trap when they opened one, I’m apprehensive.
If another one triggers, I might not be able to leave early. If there’s a trap that attracts monsters like that one I activated before, it’s going to be a lot of trouble fighting them.
Kuh, why today?
I approach it, slowly open it, and see a pair of boots.
They’re long black boots that hide the shins, and are made of something very light. They feel like they would fit any size, but I’ll try them on later.
I exhale.
The moment I grab the boots, I sense an intense pressure behind me.
It’s a trap. A monster trap.
However, this time it’s only one powerful monster.
It’s a poison slime that’s so big, I have to look up at it.
Its light purple color is now a deep purple, making its poison seem more intense. But that’s not all, I can’t tell where its core is, and I can feel this is not going to be simple.
And then, many tentacles stretch from its body.
They wriggle around, and when they contract, they all attack me at once.
I step back to avoid the tentacles that keep coming, and cut down the final two.
The giant poison slime jumps, and positions itself above me to crush me.
I make use of Physical Strengthening to accelerate quickly and dodge it, but I’m immobilized for a moment by the shock when it falls. And then there’s a rain of poison.
It’d be one thing if it was normal poison, but this one gives me a bad feeling, so I use Earth Magic to create footing that lets me escape from the area being stricken with poison.
Where the poison falls, it melts it into smoke that emits an intense poisonous fume.
Strong acid. It wasn’t just poison. Isn’t combining it with acid against the rules?
I push back this bad feeling, and hold up my greatsword again.
◇ ◇ ◇
Yep. I’m super tired.
I haven’t had such a tough opponent since the adult goblin.
I cut and cut, but it kept regenerating. Even piercing it with magic didn’t seem to do much damage.
Monster abilities aren’t supposed to be infinite, so I kept cutting it as it got smaller, but it regenerated somewhere else.
Even when I gave up and tried to leave, I found the door was gone for some reason. This again, I thought as I got annoyed.
I faced the reality that I had to crush the core, and jumped inside the poison slime, looking for the core as it melted me.
I could’ve used Healing Magic, but I couldn’t use that and Physical Strengthening at the same time, so I took a lot of damage from the acid.
All my equipment got melted except for the agility bracelet and greatsword of fortitude, and I got naked thanks to this desperate attack. My fat body was on full display as I swam through the poison slime and bared the pain.
The poison slime knew what I was up to, because it started to violently rotate its body, trying to keep me away from the core.
My flesh was melting as time passed, and my fat body was visibly being scraped. I also took internal damage, lost my hair, and my vision worsened.
As the pain made my consciousness blurry, I realized I forgot something.
It would’ve been easy to locate the core with Trace.
I immediately used it to search, and saw it was constantly on the move, going as far away from me as possible.
I used Physical Strengthening to its fullest, and flung the core away as hard as I could.
The poison slime split, and I ran to the core to break it with my greatsword.
It trembled, then disappeared as it melted.
I cast Healing Magic and drank a potion after the battle. I used Trace on my body before, so by picturing it and activating the skill, I managed to restore it back to my fat self.
…This was a failure.
I should’ve pictured my slim body.
Oh well. At least I get to make it back safely.
I almost lost my life because I couldn’t think on the spot. Asking for more would be selfish.
I put the big purple slime ball in my Storage Space, take the glass ball near me, and see it disappear.
ーーー
Haruto Tanaka (24)
Level: 14
Skills: Earth Magic, Trace, Healing Magic, Spatial Grasp, Toughness, Magic Energy Control, Physical Strengthening, Poison Resistance, Storage Space, See Through, Parallel Thinking
Equipment: Agility bracelet, greatsword of fortitude, divine bird boots
Status: Fat (All abilities boosted)
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