Chapter 212: Chapter 212

Somewhere to belong -

 

I kick off of the next wall, doing my best to not ever touch the disgusting goo that covers the floor. Doing my best to avoid the lurching bodies and the outstretched hands that rise up from the slime to reach for me, my mud-stained, wet, tattered cape billowing behind me as I propel myself further. As I watch as the secretions collect and I listen as the humming grows louder, as the encroacher encroaches. I watch as mindless, frenzied bodies fall into each other like crashing waves of an ocean beneath a violent storm. As they ravage.

 

I land on the other side of the mass of slime-girls and tentacles, a puddle of goo splashing as my boots crash into the oddly damp, spongy rock.

 

Somewhere to belong is something we’re all searching for on some level.

 

  I spare a glance behind me, watching the waves of goo crash from side to side as the bodies of the slime-girls are smashed into a thousand droplets by furious, raging fists. The wizard and the priestess are useless on this floor, so only the monk and the hero can do the work here. I tilt my head. I don’t think they like it here. A tentacle rushes towards the monk from the side, she ducks down and grabs it along its length with both hands before biting it in half.

 

Yikes.

 

  I turn back forward and keep running, before she does that to me. Especially in public. It’d be so embarrassing! I place my hands on my cheeks and then stop, turning my head to the left to look at the slime-girl standing next to me, who is copying my pose with her hands on her cheeks as well as we both stare in the same direction.

 

“Hey!” I shout at her. “Get your own complexes!”

 

“Hey!” she shouts at me, in a wet, quivering voice that sounds like a hand slapping against an open jar of jelly. “Get your own complexes!”

 

I narrow my eyes and so does she a second later.

 

“Thook-thook.”

 

“Thook-thook,” she repeats with that strange, underwater voice of hers. Unbelievable. Not having time for this, I decide to just ignore her and run away. I have to be the responsible one here, after all. We can’t all live in debauchery and carnal inclinations, nothing would ever get done.

 

‘Water’ splashes as I run.

 

  Because if you give in to senseless hedonism, well, how will you get where you want to go, guy? If you fall for the distractions of the flesh because you’re a disgusting, meaty animal, how will you ever find someplace to belong? What? No, eyeyoume, we’re not going to jump into the slime-girl swarm. I don’t even have meat, I’m a skeleton. How would that even work? I sigh, you’ve been hanging around guy for too long. Guy, stop being a bad influence on eyeyoume, you creep.

 

Water splashes next to me and I turn to look at the aquamarine slime-girl who is keeping up with my pace. Not bad, but… I look at the protrusion of goo flapping wildly behind her, a cape made out of slime.

 

  Grumbling, I turn back forward, trying my best to ignore her. There’s someplace in this world I need to get to. I don’t know if it's on the apex of the world, or if it's on floor sixty-eight, or if it's somewhere I’ve never even heard of. But somewhere in this world, there is a place I belong. There’s a place like that for all of us. Something wet touches my wrist.

 

“It might not exist as a fact of the universe, but it’s something you have to make yourself,” says the slime-girl.

 

“Hey! I was going to say that!” I snap at her. I’m starting to get a little agitated now.

 

She repeats, her voice bubbling and her goo-cape billowing behind her. “Hey! I was going to say that!”

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  What a jerk. Narrowing my eyes, I lean forward, press my boots down and I leap in order to gain some distance and to get away from the copy-cat ‘running’ at my side. She’s really just sliding along the slick floors and moving her arms like she’s running. I fly forward, finally having a chance to be alone with my thoughts again. Where was I?

 

Oh yeah.

 

It’s not like the whole ‘soul-mate’ deal, that there’s just somebody magically out there for you in the universe. I don’t believe in soul-mates. It’s too easy. The concept of a soul-mate implies that you deserve something just because you exist. That you deserve happiness.

 

Well you don’t.

 

I’m sorry to break it to you, but you don’t deserve happiness. Why would you? Because you exist? Wow. Great. Big deal.

 

I leap, bouncing off of the next wall as I see a mound of ‘hungry’ faces and tendrils moving towards me.

 

All of us exist, guy. That’s not a reason to deserve anything. No. If you want someone to love you, you should have to earn that love through truth of character and by at least trying to be a person worthy of being loved, even if you never quite manage.

 

I land and keep running.

 

  If you want to be happy, you should have to earn it. Because what would it mean if it was just given to you? If someone gave you happiness for free, love for free, a place to belong, for free. Then none of those things would have any value. They’d be hollow. It might be fun for the first few weeks, but after that? Your eyes would grow restless, your leg would twitch as your foot taps the ground. It would be -

 

“Empty,” says a wet voice and I nod in agreement. It would be empty.

 

Wait a second.

 

  I stop, looking behind me for the aquamarine slime-girl, but she’s nowhere to be seen. I guess I’m just imagining things again. Turning forward, I keep running, happy that I’m almost free of the slime-girl floor, having passed it without an ‘incident’. Sorry dungeon-master, but I’m at work right now and I want to keep it professional. So it’s for the best, that I keep moving on my own, since there-

 

“There’s no-one here but me.”

 

I stop. I’m sure I heard her this time. Looking around, I see nothing however.

 

My eyes fall lower and I see the aquamarine body, the bright slime filling the inside of my armor. A pair of curious, soapy yellow eyes looking up to me from inside of me.

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” she screams.

 

 

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