This slime sat in the water, surrounded by decaying plant matter and bugs. It was much larger than Slimy and tinted a scummy brownish-green. The pond probably offered up a lot of great nutrition. It seemed that slimes were scavengers, consumers of the dead.

  Kai was unable to carry the new slime. It was slippery and had no real shape, so it shot from his hands when he tried to pick it up. He had to return to the dungeon and carry the chest all the way to the pond. There, he managed to push the slime into the chest, along with some pond water and decaying stuff and all the tiny organisms living there. That made the chest, which was large enough to be a bathtub to Kai, very heavy. It took two full days of back-breaking work to drag the chest all the way back to the dungeon.

  Sore everywhere, Kai left the chest in the first room and went to the Admin console. As before, he used the system to place the second slime, which he named Pondscum, into the pit to help Slimy eat the wood collector’s corpse. Slimy was a great little guy, but he was small and couldn’t eat very fast. Even days after he’d started down there, the place smelled worse than ever from all the decaying flesh waiting to be digested. Hopefully, Pondscum would help with that, or the process would take months.

  Kai made Pondscum another official creature of the dungeon. He also set both creatures to passive so they wouldn’t attack each other or any other official dungeon resident. He didn’t know if slimes got along or were territorial, so this seemed safest.

  Maybe he’d even get lucky, and they’d make lots of little baby slimes!

  After all that hard work, Kai was sore and tired. He ate his fill of bread and jerky and guzzled some water. Then he slept. It hurt so much to move the next morning that he was strongly tempted to be lazy and just stay in bed all day, his bed being a mat of grass in the corner of the Admin Area. But he knew that was the wrong thing to do.

  He groaned aloud, “Can’t lay around all day. If I’m going to hit level one hundred before I die, I need to push myself. Be tough!” That was his new mantra. Wincing, he levered himself out of bed and got to breakfast. He checked on the status of both slimes, glad to see that both were ecstatic now. Poking his head out the Admin door, he found that the place still reeked. It was going to be a while for that corpse to get cleaned up.

  Out in the forest again, Kai wandered with less zeal than he’d had earlier. He was just too tired to stay focused. It was interesting to note that he was becoming familiar with the locale and comfortable in this area. He had begun to recognize the nearby trees and rocks. The outline of the hill over the dungeon and the cave entrance felt a bit like home in a weird way. He knew which direction the road was and where that pond lay.

  He shook his head. Who could have ever imagined that this would be his life and this place his home? He looked at his clawed hands and saw his clawed feet as he walked through the forest underbrush. He was a gremlin. An actual monster. It would have been a neat experience for a day, but he wished he had his human body back.

  Passing under the dappled shade of a particularly tall oak, he looked around without really looking, lost in thought. He pictured a few friends from back home. He’d probably never see them again. Honestly, or maybe he was just being negative, but he doubted anyone would lose sleep over his disappearance. People nowadays called each other friends but weren’t blood brothers or anything. You hung out and did stuff together sometimes, laughed and did stupid things, maybe played sports or video games or whatever. But it’s not like he was that close to any of the guys. They didn’t hug or talk about important things and share stuff, like about their feelings or whatever. That wasn’t ‘manly’. They didn’t see each other all that often. They only got together maybe once a month.

  And it was all guys that he hung with. If he stopped to think about it, none of his female friends were friends on their own. They were girlfriends of a guy friend or coworkers. Actually, none of his coworkers were really friends, just friendly. He couldn’t imagine ever hanging out with any of the women he knew unless it was in a group. Well, they did say that men and women couldn’t be friends because lust or romance inevitably screwed things up. Maybe they were right. Or maybe Kai wasn’t very good at being friends. Well, he was a loser.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  No. He wasn’t going to think that way anymore. He forced the ugly thought away.

  Kai stepped out from under the tree, still rambling across the forest, now entering an open section with the clear blue sky above. A shadow flickered around him but he paid it no mind. The forest was alive, leaves and grass swishing whenever a light breeze came along. Birds and insects fluttered by. It was nice. Peaceful.

  More than anyone, he did miss his mom. She was his only real family. He didn’t know any of his cousins or anything. His sister didn’t seem to want anything to do with him, though she’d never said why, just shown zero interest in being family with him after she’d become a teenager, especially after getting married and having kids. Did she see her brother as a burden? Think she didn’t need family? Or secretly hate him for some reason? He didn’t know, and because of the distance she’d created, he wouldn’t really miss her. But Kai was going to miss his mom. He felt really crappy that she probably thought he was dead right now. He cursed whatever entity had done this to him and, by extension, caused his mother pain. He’d been making that curse a lot.

  You know what he also missed, but didn’t really miss? His phone. Habitually, he kept reaching for it, but it was never there. He felt like he was going through withdrawal. That made him resent the phone, and the tech companies behind it. If the little piece of tech was going to do this too him, he was probably better off without it. Being able to contact people anywhere, anytime, was convenient, but no longer twitching with need every time an alert chimed, no more doom scrolling on social media, no more addictive ‘games’ that were little more than dopamine delivery vehicles to keep you hooked to your device. With all this walking and doing things with his hands, he felt like he was actually participating in his own life in a way he couldn’t remember doing in a long time.

  Some sixth sense caused a tingle to race up the back of Kai's neck. Gremlin reflexes kicked in, and he instinctively threw himself to the side in fright, rolling through the grass.

  Something huge slammed into the ground next to him. Dirt and grass exploded outwards, peppering him like shrapnel.

  Kai scrambled up, already running before his feet were under him, absolutely filled with terror. Movement came at him, and he ducked. A huge tail with a spiked ball at the end flew at his face, then over him. The spikes barely missed his green skin. Kai raced forward, clawing his way through grass as tall as he was as something heavy pounded after him, hissing and crashing through the vegetation behind. Kai darted to his right like prey trying to throw off a predator. He realized that he was exactly that: prey. A frightened glance over his shoulder confirmed it.

  A wyvern’s golden eyes were dead set on him. The beast was cousin to dragons. Its shorter snout was heavier, shorter, and more square, but it was just as filled with huge teeth and a long, slathering, forked tongue. The wyvern propelled itself forward with thick, avian legs and three-fingered talons on each wing since it lacked arms. The far larger creature was gaining fast!

  Kai ducked under a low-hanging oak branch, putting the tree between him and the wyvern. The wyvern was forced to go around, gaining Kai precious seconds. He made for the next closest tree. The only chance he had was to keep them between him and the vast creature intent on eating him. Like a scared rabbit, he dodged and darted in random directions as he made a beeline for the only safe place around: his home.

  The wyvern was not a ground-dwelling creature. It had doubtless hoped to have nailed its prey in the initial drop from the sky. Chasing Kai through the forest wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t giving up. Because of its vast size and Kai's smallness, it kept up, talons slashing and mouth snapping, always hot on Kai's heels.

  Kai had never been so scared in his life. He ran with everything he had. There was no thought of bodily pain or tiredness; adrenalin flooded his body in a desperate attempt to fuel his escape. He saw the hill in front of him and knew the cave would be at the bottom. He sobbed with relief, tears of terror flowing as he ran. He didn’t want to die. Darn this world! Darn big-ass wyverns! Darn everyone! He screamed, “Ahhh!”

  The wyvern gathered itself and pounced, launching itself into the air above Kai. It let out a triumphant hiss.

  Kai slammed on the brakes, letting the wyvern fly by, then reversed direction back the other way. But only for a few paces. Then he turned left around a tree and bolted for the hill again.

  He saw the cave!

  The wyvern growled, frustrated that it had missed yet again. Huge taloned feet raked deep grooves in the forest floor as it tried to correct course.

  Kai ran and ran straight for the cave. He was getting closer. But the wyvern was right on his ass.

  The wyvern screeched so loud it seemed to shake the whole forest. Then it launched itself again, wings outstretched, covering Kai in shadows and doom.