NOVEL NEXT Chapter 13: Slimy Awakening
Taki jolted awake, not thrown to the ground but into a vortex of excruciating pain. He clutched at his chest, gasping and groaning in pain.
It burned. It seared. A white and blinding pain jolted through his heart and spread through his body like wildfire. He didn't crawl; he clawed at the ground, desperate for escape. His vision swam, flashes of blinding white bleeding out the edges of the room. "Bluesy..." he choked, but the word died as another wave of torment crashed over him. "Bluesy, h-" More pain. He rolled on the floor and lay on his back, trying to get the pain to at least weaken. Nothing. It kept flaring, so much he was becoming nauseous from the pain.
But his body was moving before he could understand what was going on. He lifted himself from the ground, stood up, and...
His tail moved involuntarily. He could barely understand what was going on, so controlling his body wasn't really in his mind. The spiked tail of his Black Devil body pierced right through his chest, impaling his heart in the air.
It was black and reflective, the tissue made out of the same scales he now had proudly learned to love in his body.
But the pain was gone.
His tail retracted, and his heart fell to the ground. Not with a splash - but with a thud.
He stared at his own beating heart that now lay on the floor with disbelief. His heart was still beating. But it was changing shape. The heart seemed to slowly contract itself, with each heartbeat pulling it closer and closer into a different shape. With horrifying fascination, Taki watched the heart shrink and contort. Beat… squeeze… beat… squeeze...
Until it was just a pulsating, spherical black orb. As black as the night under the Azure trees, as dark as the deepest caves in the tallest mountains.
He instinctively patted his chest. Nothing. Or rather, everything. His chest was still there as if he hadn't just speared his own heart seconds before. He sighed, the heaviest sigh he had let out for as long as he could remember.
'I-... I can't...'
He sat near the heart and stared at it for a long time. It felt like a long time. His thoughts spiraled, his mind still recovering from the pain and confusion of the body. But as much as they seemed to spiral, run, and leap from one end of his brain to the other, it led nowhere.
'Deep breaths, deep breaths, just like father had taught me. Fuck. Just keep your head high, breathe, drink water, and move on.'
He lifted himself from the ground and walked near the orb. He picked it up.
The sensation of holding your own life in your hands is supposed to be weird, right? It wasn't. It felt as natural and intimate as an item you hold dear to your heart. The orb pulsed with energy and had a pleasant warmth to it. He brought it near the throne and placed it on one of the handstands.
Memory returned, a spear of clarity cutting through the lingering fog. The phone… creating the core… and a message.
He picked up his dungeon phone.
The screen had a single message.
[Congratulations on acquiring your new dungeon. You have successfully converted your life force into the dungeon core. Now you can use the zDungeon TM systems to improve your dungeon's accountability, management, summoning, spawning, trapping, and upgrading! Feel free to explore this Phone's functions.]
[The zDungeon cooperative greatly appreciates the acquisition of your new dungeon. We bid you good luck and wish you many human-slaying raids!]
Taki stared at the phone screen. It felt like this world was phasing him less and less, and he was getting increasingly worried about his sanity.
He tapped the little X on the corner of the text box, revealing the Phone's main menu.
[Dungeon App Store], [Calculator], [Contacts], [Summoning Contracts], [Notes], [Dungeon Shop], [RH Management], and some other apps that were on the next screen. The phone's icons, its apps, were disturbingly normal, remnants of a world now lost to him.
'Huh. This is more like a normal phone than I thought it would be. Let's see... Contacts, right? Should be empty..'
He tapped on the Contacts app with a nice little phone icon with horns.
The contacts opened into a neat, organized screen with several empty sections. [Factions], [Enemies], [Dungeon Lords], [Allies], [Misc], and one that caught his eye.
[Employees], that was filled with contact information for Green Slimes 1-79 and a familiar name.
[Name: Bluesy - Race: Blue Slime - Role: King's Secretary. - Location: Azure Kingdom | Status: Currently talking to a representative from the IRS.]
'I-...'
Taki dropped the phone with a gasp. His mind spun, fragments of overheard conversations and half-remembered nightmares coalescing into a terrifying reality. 'IRS…? But… that means…' He whirled around, his yellow eyes scanning the room frantically. He had to find Bluesy, get to the bottom of this. Taxes? Forms? Regulations? What madness was going on?
He picked up his Phone and instinctively shoved it into his pocket, and surprisingly to him, the Phone seemed to disappear. Of course, Taki was dealing with the current situation so terribly that he didn't even notice it.
He walked to the door, hoping to find where Bluesy was, when he was interrupted by the door opening and revealing his favorite Slime so far.
And a Vampire.