Chapter 23

The healer became sick without drink. He profusely sweated, hallucinated, and was unable to move on his own. Our heroes did not realize how necessary he was until our hero cooked breakfast. Raw in parts, bland in others, the mage became ill after ingesting it. She too had to be carried to the river of slime.

The living slime is all of one quantity. It only consists plasma, which possesses digestive acids, and the eggs themselves contained no DNA but were programmed to copy the host’s DNA perfectly. The living slime thus is a single-purposed and selfish creature, whose sole purpose involved no play and only reproduction.

Our hero brought out a knife to cut the slime and gather their gelatinous material to eat. The soldier, whom our heroes believed deceased, upon seeing a sharp edge, threw himself onto the knife, dying for the sake of his comrades and his honor.

Our heroes decided to use the soldier’s body as a raft, and though this river was difficult to paddle through with makeshift paddles they made substantial progress. They saw a mighty Cerberus at the other side of the river. The sight of this fearsome beast caused our hero to faint and fall into the slime.

The slime immediately rushed into every entrance of his; they filled the canals of his ear; they ran into the room of his lungs; they avoided the bowels; they poured into the urethra and coursed through the testes. He fainted from the pain.

The businesswoman and the minotaur fished our hero out of the river. Upon him surfacing, they found him a bigger man, particularly in the abdominal region. Our hero touched his swollen belly with his hands and felt a kick. He was pregnant with a child.

However, he was incorrect. He was pregnant with hundreds of children. They were growing very quickly and his stomach bulged, nearly unable to contain them. He hardly noticed the pain, however, from the nausea and a newfound desire for pickles and peanut butter.

The businesswoman and the minotaur deliberated quickly. The minotaur raised the knife; our hero shrank from it. This was a wise decision from our hero as, despite his acquired intelligence, the minotaur was no surgeon.

They reasoned birth could come out of the mouth, the urethra or the anus. Our hero did not think children coming out of his member was a good idea.

Our heroes patted our hero's stomach rigorously, ensuring he had the proper circulation. Our hero made a retching sound, then burped; one baby came out. He groaned, and wind was heard; a second baby came out. Through this process, of the businesswoman guiding lumps to the mouth, and the minotaur through the anus, alternating them, a great many children were born, cooing and crying.

The minotaur, who had acquired a brain not long ago, concluded he could not be compelled to have children with the mage. The businesswoman was almost there in terms of belief as well, and in terms of throwing up.

The children were near identical to him: they shared his eyes and hair color and possessed the same face. These traits did not endear them to our hero, and in fact he felt disappointed they were predisposed to grow up just like him, in consideration of the fact that he had been put into a position of giving birth to a hundred babies. To his fortune, the businesswoman and the minotaur, both of wide-ranging philosophies, reasoned that they were slime and not human children, and thus it did not matter how they reflected on him and what happened to them. He felt these arguments were compelling.

Upon reaching the other end of the bank our heroes fed the Cerberus infants until it slumbered. They then made infant sandwiches and infant soup to eat. Seeing there were still too many remaining, they had the infants pull sleds and trigger traps involving boulders and flaming spikes. When they were bored, they played kickball and tetherball.