The God-Tier Commoner

The Quest for Pants part 2

The fight changed completely. These slimes were faster and tougher. Lex’s rusty dagger clanged against the bone sword. The slime with the shield bashed him in the leg, making him stumble. He slashed at the axe-wielder, but his dagger just got stuck in its gelatinous body.

He yanked it free, the blade now chipped and bent. He was wounded—a cut on his shoulder from the sword, a bruise on his arm from the axe handle. He was losing. Tears of frustration and pain mixed with the slime on his face. The cool, collected Alexei “Lex” Darling was gone. In his place was a muddy, crying, desperate man fighting for his right to wear pants.

With a final, screaming lunge, he drove his broken dagger into the core of the last red slime. It dissolved into a red puddle.

Lex collapsed to his knees, utterly spent. He was a disaster zone of minor injuries and slime.

Then, a beautiful sound chimed in his head. Ding-ding-ding!

+10 Exp!

+15 Mana!

Level Up!

Congratulations! You are now Level 1!

5% health and Mana restored!

Stat Points Available: 5

The blue panel shimmered happily. “Well done, User Lex! As a reward for your first level up, please choose one bonus item!”

Two pictures appeared on the panel. On the left was a single, ordinary safety pin. On the right was a simple, thick red rubber band.

Lex blinked. “What is this? You said weapons! This can’t even kill a fly! Where’s the magic sword? The cool armor?”

“The reward quality is scaled to your current level and performance,” the System replied cheerfully. “Please choose.”

Lex wanted to scream. He stared at the two useless options. “Fine! I’ll take the rubber band! At least I can flick it at… at my own balls in despair or something!”

“Selection confirmed: [Mighty] Rubber Band. This is a single-use item.”

There was a small flash of light. In Lex’s outstretched, grimy hand, a thick, red rubber band appeared. It looked completely normal.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. He was Level 1. He had a rubber band. And he still felt terrible. But at least the pants-threatening quest was complete. He could limp home now.

He tried to stand. His legs protested. He shuffled through the forest, using trees for support. He just had to get back to the inn and sleep for a week.

A deep, familiar shadow fell over him.

He froze. Very slowly, he turned his head.

The Jiggle King was back. It loomed at the edge of the clearing, its white eyes fixed on him. It looked at the puddles of red slime, then back at Lex. A new, deeper anger seemed to boil within its blue form.

“What?” Lex cried, his voice cracking. “I didn’t kill any of your kids this time! I learned! See? No blue!”

The Jiggle King began to vibrate, a sign Lex was learning meant trouble. In a panic, Lex fumbled for his map. He had to check something. His eyes darted to the bottom, past the warning about the blue slimes.

There, in smudged, faint ink he could have sworn wasn’t there before, was a new line:

“P.S. Don’t kill the Red Slimes. They are the Jiggle King’s bodyguards. He gets personally offended.”

Lex was speechless. “Nah. No way. This map is insane. I swear that writing wasn’t there the last time I checked!” It was like the world itself was playing a cruel joke on him.

The Jiggle King charged. It was faster than anything that big had a right to be.

Desperate, Lex threw his broken dagger. It sailed through the air and stuck right in the slime’s center. The Jiggle King didn’t even flinch. Its body shimmered, and there was a crunching, grinding sound. It spat the dagger back out. It was now a perfect, shiny ball of metal.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Lex whispered.

He turned to run, but his injured legs gave out. He tripped and fell hard onto the forest floor. He rolled onto his back. The Jiggle King towered over him, blocking out the sky. It reared back, ready to slam down and flatten him into a Lex-pancake.

This was it. He was going to die, covered in slime, in a forest, with a rubber band in his hand.

The rubber band.

It was his only item. A single-use, Level 1 reward. What did [Mighty] even mean?

With no other hope, acting purely on instinct, Lex did the only thing he could think of. He stretched the thick rubber band between his thumb and forefinger, aimed right at the center of the looming blue mass, and let it fly.

FWWWWWIP-

The sound was wrong. It wasn’t a little flick. It was a sharp, tearing scream of air, like a laser beam.

The red rubber band shot forward. It hit the Jiggle King in its muscular chest.

For a split second, nothing happened.

Then, light. A silent, expanding sphere of pure white energy erupted from the point of impact. It swallowed the Jiggle King whole. There was no sound, only a sudden, immense pressure in the air.

Then, the sound did come. It was a deep, earth-shaking KABOOOOOOOM!

The shockwave hit Lex like a wall, flattening him to the ground. The light faded. Where the Jiggle King had stood, there was nothing. No slime, no puddle. Just a perfectly smooth, glassy crater in the dirt, twenty feet across. Every tree behind where the slime had been was simply gone, vaporized in a straight line deep into the forest. A clean tunnel of destruction had been carved through the woods.

High above, the cloud from the explosion formed a perfect mushroom shape.

In the city plaza, miles away, the hunters stopped laughing. They felt the ground tremble and looked toward the forest, confused and alarmed.

Back in the clearing, Lex slowly pushed himself up on his elbows. He was coated from head to toe in a fine, blue, powdered slime-rain. He stared at the devastation. He looked at the tiny, mark left on his finger.

His mouth opened and closed. No words came out. Finally, a whisper escaped his blue-stained lips.

“That was from a rubber band? What the—“