But for a Slime

Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

Joe awoke in the middle of the night, tensed immediately, then grit his teeth in annoyance even as a few tears slipped his eyes. Innocent eyes above a bloody neck stared up at him, the memory vivd in his mind before it slowly faded. He found peace in the waking, but when he glanced around and realized where he was, his eyes bent down, unbidden, and found two stumps staring back up at him. Joe grimaced, even as a different set of tears scrawled at the edges of his eyelids. This sucks! Bad bad bad bad bad bad! The rather panicked and slightly insane mantra beginning to chant through his mind until he finally pulled himself under control, eyes closed and with a deep breath. It'll come… its happened so much before… and you've survived. But even as his thoughts struggled to return a semblance of calm, his fear had adrenaline racing through his system, his heart yammering away at way too high of a speed.

It took him a few moments to calm even as his thoughts rapidly focused on any sound that might reveal the soon to come torturers. The soft breeze of the night and the quite shrill calls of night insects continued unabated and after awhile, he was slowly able to calm and take his focus from his sense of hearing.

When he finally had his focus retrieved from hearing, he almost immediately noticed the soft tint of blue calling to him from the edge of his sight, and frowned in surprise. A notice? Pretty strange! When did this happen? That's not... Despite the oddity of having a popup already calling to him on awakening, Joe wasn't really worried simply because the system had been relatively passive throughout all the time he'd been here. So, it was with a sense of more curiosity than anything else that he willed the status window to flip up before him. And shortly after, his calm shattered.