After the gurgling puddle incident, Finn and the gang were on the move again—putting distance between themselves and whatever the hell that last mess was, heading deeper into the cavern.
Finn, meanwhile, was not okay.
In fact, he was slowly descending into madness.
From watching Chestelle get absolutely bodied by a slime monster... to watching her sit up and giggle like it was all a prank—it was like reality itself had decided to mock him personally.
He could still taste the bile from earlier. That wasn’t metaphorical.
It felt like everything around him had become some unholy fever dream. A game show designed to ruin his mental health.
And yet, even as they ventured farther, something else began gnawing at him.
There was something wrong with this cave.
Yes, the Midwife had mentioned levels—sections of the cavern, each with increasing danger. But this current area? It didn’t feel like Level Two.
It felt like Level Three Point Oh My God Kill Me Now.
That humanoid slime creature? Way too advanced for what should’ve been a mid-tier zone. Worse yet, the Trip God hadn’t even recognized it as alive.
And if the divine jack-in-the-box in Finn’s soul couldn’t see it... what the hell was it?
’I could really go for a coffee...’ Finn thought bitterly.
The farther they walked, the more lively the cave became—not in a good way. The glow from the walls was growing stronger, more slime coated the surfaces, and the air felt denser... stickier.
And then there were the skeletal bodies. Adventurers, or what remained of them—slashed open armor, melted, dissolved. A trail of dead dreams and poor life choices.
Meaning these bodies must’ve been here for a while or the slime had completely dissolved their bodies.
Eventually, the group came upon a narrow tunnel. A soft, wet gurgle echoed beside them.
A slime river slithered along the wall, bubbling faintly, almost like it breathed.
"Do you think that’s drinkable?" Chestelle asked, crouching down with childlike curiosity.
Finn’s head snapped toward her.
"I don’t know, why don’t you try it—WAIT. Don’t actually try it just because I said that!"
Finn clutched his chest.
"Phew... that was close." He exhaled deeply, muttering to himself. "I really need to be careful with my words around her. She takes everything literally."
Luckily—for once—he didn’t have to carry Majestria.
After her divine slime beatdown and mysterious post-battle shower, she had proudly declared that Finn was "too dirty" for her to ride now.
Whatever that meant. He didn’t care. No goddess on his back meant one less migraine in his spine.
And Lickthorn, bless her weird swampy soul, was finally starting to recover from her earlier emotional breakdown. Something about not being attacked by the slime monster had sent her into some kind of existential spiral. Classic.
Regardless, the group pressed onward—toward what they hoped was the final level of the slime cave.
One more place to go for Slime Melo.
Then they could finally get the hell out of this disgusting, cursed hole in the ground.
They eventually stepped into a wide, open chamber—finally reaching the end of the tunnel’s steep incline.
And to everyone’s surprise?
It was... kind of pretty.
Well, slime cave pretty. Still disgusting. But in a weird, neon-gross kind of way.
Just as the Midwife had described, this final level was absolutely drenched in slime—way more than before. The glowing gunk coated everything, illuminating the room in a dim, pulsating light, like biological LED strips set to "murder dungeon."
The narrow slime river that had followed them down the tunnel now emptied into a larger pool, nearly the size of a public bath. Slime poured down the cave walls like sticky waterfalls, oozing in slow motion, clinging and slithering but never falling completely.
Even the ground wasn’t spared—cracks split the stone floor like spiderwebs, with thin slime streams running through them like veins.
It felt unreal. Like they had wandered into a fever dream designed by someone with a fetish for goo.
Finn stepped forward cautiously, eyes scanning everything—and that’s when he noticed them.
The humanoid slime monsters.
Just like the one they’d fought back on the second level.
But this time... there were more.
Thankfully, all of them were already dead. Slain. Sliced to bits and scattered across the chamber floor like wet, glistening mannequins.
Most likely taken out by the adventurers who’d entered the cave earlier.
’Makes things easier for us,’ Finn thought, genuinely relieved. One had nearly ended their entire party. If they’d had to fight a whole group of them?
Yeah. GG, no respawn.
But just as he allowed himself to breathe...
A single thought slammed into Finn’s brain.
A thought so obvious, so critical, that it made his eye twitch from how late it arrived.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
’What the hell does Slime Melo even look like?!’
The only hope Finn had left was either Lickthorn or Majestria.
Majestria might know... but relying on her was like asking a cat for tax advice. And Lickthorn? She might know too—but probably for weird, uncomfortable reasons that would haunt Finn in his dreams.
Still, desperate times.
He turned to Lickthorn, who was currently crouched beside one of the slain humanoid slime monsters, poking at its jiggly remains like a child at a jelly buffet.
"Lickthorn..." Finn asked cautiously, "Do you know what Slime Melo actually looks like?"
She looked over her shoulder, then stood up, casually wiping goo off her hands—somehow onto nothing. Where did it go?
"Yeah," she said. "They grow on flobrouts."
"...What the hell’s a flobrout?"
"They’re like flowers," she explained, matter-of-factly, "but not. They’ve got stems, but instead of petals they grow these weird dark blue beans on the end. Those are the Slime Melos."
"Oh. Wow. How... disturbingly specific," Finn muttered. "And how exactly will we know we’ve found one?"
"You’ll know when you see it," she said cryptically, walking off like some wet slime oracle.
Finn stared at her, unblinking.
"...Why does that make it worse?"