CHAPTER 103: THE CITY BENEATH THE SLIME

Finn staggered back, bile already rising in his throat. The moment his eyes registered the thing inside, he doubled over and vomited hard, the splash smearing across the otherwise clean floor.

It was grotesque—wrong—like something that had crawled straight out of an eldritch nightmare and decided to settle here.

The "body" in the center of the room had once been a person. Now it was a half-melted, bloated carcass fused with faintly glowing blue slime. The skin was shredded in ribbons, exposing patches of translucent, quivering tissue beneath. In other spots, the slime had eaten away the flesh entirely, leaving slick bone glinting in the dim light.

The stomach cavity had ruptured open, and from the gaping wound oozed dozens of tiny, malformed slime fetuses—sickly, translucent blobs with flickers of human and bird-like features. They crawled out sluggishly, writhing in the viscous pool beneath their host.

From the corpse’s back jutted a pair of birdlike talons—twisted, twitching spasmodically as if whatever parasite once inhabited this thing was still trying to escape. The whole scene was a revolting cycle of decay and creation, the slime endlessly devouring and rebuilding the flesh in a parody of life.

Finn’s skin crawled—literally. Or maybe it was just his imagination, but the sensation made him stumble back again, clutching his stomach.

He gagged violently, then vomited again. "What the actual fuck..." He leaned against the wall for support, staring at the ground because looking again might kill him.

Seraphina stood frozen, her face pale, eyes wide—not puking, but visibly shaken.

"Oh God... what the hell happened to that person?" Finn muttered, trying to collect himself.

Without a word, Seraphina stepped forward toward the corpse. She pressed her middle and index fingers to her forehead, then her lips, then her heart. Closing her eyes and bowing her head slightly, she spoke softly:

"O Goddess of all that is divine, have mercy on this one’s forgotten soul. Let their body rest, and may they not be lost to the void."

Finn just stared at her.

I want to marry her, was the first coherent thought that crossed his mind.

She turned to him. "We should leave this place. Let this body be undisturbed."

"Yeah," Finn muttered. "I’m... good with that."

They stepped out into the open air, Finn breathing a little easier—though his stomach still felt like it had been through war.

"What was that prayer you did back there?" he asked once they were away from the stench. "And the gesture?"

"Oh, that. It’s something we’re taught in the Church. A way to bless the fallen." She reached for his wrist before he could react, guiding his middle and index fingers to his forehead. "First, you touch your mind to the Goddess..." Then she moved them to his lips. "Then you speak of the Goddess..." Finally, to his heart. "And you beat for the Goddess."

Finn just stood there, a little dazed, a little flustered, and trying not to look as awkward as he felt.

"...Neat," he said.

It reminded him of praying back on Earth, though the meaning here was sharper, more personal.

Then one thought popped into his head—a cold, uncomfortable one.

’Does Majestria know who this goddess is? Or... worse... is she the goddess? God, I hope not.’

But whatever the truth was, one thing was clear—they needed to get the hell out of there. What they’d seen in that building had carved itself onto Finn’s ever-growing list of emotional scars this crazy world kept handing him.

Unfortunately, that was the last building. Nothing useful had been found, just evidence of a lost civilization buried deep underground. And the eerie silence told its own story: those people were gone.

Something had driven them away—maybe the same thing that had turned that poor soul in the last building into that grotesque slime horror.

Finn’s gut told him that was just the start of whatever nightmare unfolded here.

And for Finn? Slimes officially joined his personal hate list. Right up there with goblins and all their slimy cousins.

He was done. No more slime, no more "cute" blobs. They could keep their goo.

Finn was never, ever touching slime again.

Not consensually at least.

***

They soon left the rundown cluster behind and ventured deeper into the cave, entering another narrow tunnel that opened up to more of those weird, abandoned buildings.

Finn couldn’t help but think this place was like some twisted ant colony—an entire underground society built and then... just left behind.

The usual chaos awaited inside each building: scattered belongings, half-finished meals, torn clothing—but still, not a single body. Except that one horrible corpse they’d seen earlier.

It was unsettling. Why just one? How had that poor soul ended up like that? Had they accepted their fate, or had something else caught them?

As they moved through the tunnel, a faint, strange light flickered from the side of the wall.

Curiosity getting the better of them, Finn and Seraphina crept toward it like cats stalking prey.

The air grew cooler, the silence thicker. Each step felt heavier, as if the slime fragments on the walls were watching, waiting.

Finn’s heart hammered in his chest—not from fear exactly, but from something else. Hope? Maybe. A flicker of something brighter than slime and decay.

They’d been wandering this eerie place for what felt like forever, exhausted and drained—but whatever lay ahead promised something different.

As they rounded the corner slowly, breath held tight.

What they saw filled them with an unexpected mix of awe and cautious optimism.

It was yet another cave chamber, but from where they stood, it overlooked an entire city—or at least, what looked like one.

A glowing, light-blue river snaked through the middle, its soft luminescence casting an eerie glow on everything around it. A delicate stone bridge arched gracefully over the water, a clear passage for anyone walking across.

The buildings were familiar—like the ones they’d seen earlier—but with different shapes and sizes this time. Same rough structure, clay walls and strange centipede-like roofs, but more varied and somehow... more alive.

The whole scene was oddly beautiful, like something out of a dream or a nightmare painted by someone with a very strange sense of aesthetics.

Finn stared at it, his mind racing.

Was there anyone down there?