Darkness.
That was the first thing Kai noticed—a heavy, suffocating blackness pressing in from all sides.
The second was sound. Victory fanfare, bright and cheerful, rang in his skull. He knew that melody. It was the jingle that played when a party cleared a boss fight in Eternal Realms Online.
The third was pain.
"—what the hell?!"
Blades pierced his body from every angle. Rusty swords, dull daggers, even a broom handle jammed straight into his core. Fireballs detonated on his slime-flesh, splattering parts of him across the mud.
And worse—the laughter.
"Lmao, it's so squishy!"
"Hit it harder! I think it drops starter potions."
"Bro, record this—first clear of the Slime King!"
Kai's vision cleared, and his heart sank. He wasn't in his dingy apartment. He wasn't inside his VR pod. He wasn't even human.
Above his vision floated a label:
[Tutorial Boss: Slime King (Lv. 5)]
"What the actual f—" His voice came out as a wobbling gurgle.
The players didn't care. They cheered as his HP hit zero. His vision went black.
—Respawn.
Kai blinked. He was whole again, sitting in the center of a swampy cavern, crowned by dripping stalactites.
And then a sword skewered him through the eye.
"Bro, he respawned already?!"
"Kill it again, free loot!"
—Respawn.
This time, a toddler with a wooden practice sword toddled forward and poked him. His HP plummeted to zero.
"You've gotta be kidding me."
—Respawn.
He bounced forward desperately, trying to spit acid, only for the green blob to miss completely and dissolve a mushroom. A rabbit—an actual dungeon rabbit—hopped onto his body, kicked once, and sent his HP bar crashing down.
The party roared with laughter.
—Respawn.
Again. Again. Again.
Every ten minutes he came back, only to be slaughtered by laughing newbies. Fireballs roasted him alive. Spears skewered him like a kebab. Someone even bashed him to death with a frying pan. The humiliation was relentless.
At first, Kai thought he could endure. Maybe this was a bug. Maybe he'd wake up in his VR pod any second. But the pain was too real. The respawns too vivid.
And worst of all—he remembered every single death.
Hours passed. Days, maybe. He lost track. All he knew was pain, laughter, and endless humiliation.
And then, everything changed.
A new group of five players entered, giggling as they waded through the mud. They wore mismatched gear: wooden shields, hand-me-down leather, one guy dual-wielding butter knives.
"Alright, free XP run!"
"First clear gets us starter gear."
"Bet I can solo him with just my fists."
They charged with confidence born from knowing this was supposed to be easy. The Tutorial Boss wasn't a threat. He was a training dummy.
But then one of them slipped.
His boot skidded across slick mud. He flailed, arms pinwheeling, and fell forward.
Kai twitched instinctively, raising a slime spike to brace himself.
The player fell face-first onto it.
A wet shlk.
The adventurer's HP bar hit zero instantly. His body shattered into fading polygons.
The laughter stopped.
Everyone froze. Even Kai.
A crimson system message appeared in his vision:
[You have killed a player.]
[Unique Error: Devour Glitch triggered.]
[Do you wish to consume their stats, skills, and gear?]
Kai's thoughts short-circuited.
That wasn't supposed to happen. Tutorial bosses didn't kill players—they were designed to be farmed for XP. He was a joke mob, a loot piñata. This… this was impossible.
But the message didn't vanish.
[Consume? Yes/No]
Kai trembled. He remembered his life before this. Dropping out of university. Dead-end jobs. Escaping into Eternal Realms Online because it was the only place he felt in control.
And the last image burned into his memory—his little sister, pale and fragile in a hospital bed. Her weak voice whispering:
"Don't lose again, okay?"
His slime body quivered.
If this was real… if he was really here… then maybe this was his second chance.
Kai grinned.
"Consume."
The body dissolved into him.
Power flooded his core.
A strange heat rippled through Kai's slime body, not the burning agony of fireballs but something richer—heady, like tasting sunlight after years underground.
His form thickened, less jelly and more muscle in liquid form. For a fleeting moment, he swore he could feel fingers again, phantom echoes of his human self gripping the hilt of the sword now suspended inside him.
The memory of combat techniques wasn't just downloaded data; it fit, sliding into his mind like puzzle pieces long missing.
He flexed—if a slime could be said to flex—and the cavern quivered with the wet snap of new strength. The fear in the surviving players' eyes was the sweetest flavor he'd ever known.
All those endless deaths, the jeers, the frying pan humiliation—they boiled down into this moment. And oh, how it tasted like revenge.
It wasn't just experience points. It was everything. Strength filled his gelatinous body, solidifying his form. Agility sharpened his reflexes.
Knowledge—how to swing a blade, how to dodge—merged into his mind. Even the rusty sword itself appeared, floating inside his slime-flesh.
The rush was intoxicating. For the first time since waking here, he didn't feel helpless. He felt… alive.
[Devour Successful: +2 STR, +1 VIT. Item Acquired: Rusted Sword (internalized).]
[Corruption +1]
"Hah… hahaha!" His laugh bubbled like boiling tar. "So that's how it is."
The surviving players stumbled back, panicked.
"He—he killed Jack!"
"That's not possible! Tutorial bosses can't do that!"
"Run!"
Kai rose higher, slime spikes jutting outward like jagged spears. His voice echoed through the cavern—not a gurgle this time, but words, distorted and laced with static.
"You first," he hissed. "Then your loot."
He lunged.
The first player swung wildly, sword flashing. Kai's body split around the blade, letting it pass harmlessly through. The newbie barely had time to gasp before a slime spike rammed through his chest.
[Devour Successful: +1 STR. Item Acquired: Leather Scrap (+2 VIT).]
[Corruption +1]
Another player tried to cast Fireball, but Kai spat acid mid-chant. The spell fizzled as her robes corroded, and her screams filled the chamber.
[Devour Successful: +1 INT, +1 WIS. Skill Acquired: Fireball Lv.1.]
[Corruption +1]
The last two bolted for the exit.
Kai slithered faster, dragging one into quicksand and skewering the other. Their deaths fed him again.
[Devour Successful: +1 DEX. Devour Successful: +1 WIS.]
[Corruption +1]
Kai shuddered with pleasure as the stats surged through him. The dungeon seemed smaller now, the ceiling lower, the stalactites mere decoration rather than looming spears.
The last echoes of the players' screams still rang, sharp and delicious in his mind.
His core pulsed with a rhythm he recognized: not the system's beat, not the world's code—his own heartbeat, steady and strong for the first time since his human death.
He caught himself trembling. Not with fear this time, but anticipation.
If I can devour one… why not ten? A hundred? His gaze drifted to the tunnel where players would inevitably spawn, chattering, laughing, expecting an easy win. They would walk into his jaws willingly.
The notifications rolled across his vision like victory banners. His body tingled with growth. His mind sharpened with stolen knowledge.
For the first time, Kai wasn't prey.
He was the predator.
And he was hungry.
The dungeon chamber fell silent, broken only by the faint drip of slime acid. Kai stood tall—or as tall as a blob could—surveying the corpses dissolving into light.
A slow, satisfied grin spread across his gooey face.
"This… this changes everything."
Somewhere deep in the code, the system shuddered. For a split second, the world around him flickered—glitched geometry, static text: [ERROR: ENTITY FLAG MISMATCH]
[Corruption +4]
Kai didn't care. He only cared about the power coursing through him, the fear in the players' eyes before they died, and the fact that for once, he wasn't the one being farmed.
No.
From now on, the players were his loot.
Kai's gelatinous body rippled as he began to laugh again, low at first, then rising into a distorted cackle that echoed through the cavern walls. The sound didn't belong in the tutorial dungeon. It wasn't coded in. And that was the point.
"Let them come," he whispered, his words bubbling with static. "Every newbie, every adventurer, every so-called hero. I'll take it all."
For the first time, the Slime King wasn't just a boss. He was a glitch—an error that fed, learned, and grew. And unlike every bug the developers had patched before, this one had a will of its own.
And the tutorial boss… had just become the biggest nightmare in Eternal Realms Online.
________________________________________
[STATUS — Kai]
Race: Tutorial Boss — Slime King (Bugged)
Level: 5 EXP: 62%
HP: 120/120 MP: 40/40
Corruption: 7
Evolution Progress: 3%
ATTRIBUTES:
STR 5 → 8
DEX 4 → 5
VIT 8 → 9
INT 3 → 4
WIS 2 → 4
LCK 1
TITLES:
Tutorial Boss • Bugged Entity • First Blood
TRAITS:
Boss Entity (Instance-bound) — Respawns in 10m at Mud Pits throne.
Acidic Body — Contact deals minor acid dmg; corrodes common items.
Amorphous — Squeeze/flow; partial split; weapon penetration reduced.
UNIQUE:
Devour Glitch [Unique][Corrupted]
Consume a slain player/creature to absorb a portion of stats, skills, and one random item. Chance to desync flags and cause system anomalies. No hard cap. Higher targets increase corruption.
SKILLS:
Slime Spike (Racial) — Create hardened spike; scales with STR.
Acid Spit (Racial) — Short-range cone; corrodes gear.
Split (Minor) — Divide body briefly; halves stats per part; short CD.
Absorb — Pull loose items/fluids into body; store "internalized."
Fireball Lv.1 (Stolen) — 10 MP; small explosion; friendly fire on.
RESISTANCES:
Slash +25% • Pierce +10% • Blunt -10% • Fire -30% • Poison Immune
EQUIPMENT / INVENTORY:
Internalized: Rusted Sword (D) [corroding], Tattered Leather Patch (+2 VIT) [soaked] Newbie Coins ×13 • Cracked Health Potion ×1 [unstable]
KILL LOG (Recent):
Lv3 Fighter → +2 STR, +1 VIT, Rusted Sword
Lv3 Mage → +1 INT, +1 WIS, Skill: Fireball
Lv2 Rogue → +1 DEX
Lv2 Cleric → +1 WIS
Lv2 Peasant → +1 STR
SYSTEM ANOMALIES (Recorded)
[ERROR] ENTITY FLAG MISMATCH
[WARN] Loot destination invalid for Boss Entity → overriding to "Internalized"
[INFO] Devour Glitch recognized as nonstandard. Monitoring…