Chapter 59: Thanksgiving.

It’s heavy, there’s a lot of it, and it’s tricky to cook.

It’s a lean meat with a distinctive smell that people either love or hate.

When you try to deep-fry it whole, it often ends up starting a fire.

Turkey.

Am I being too harsh?

I’m just talking about when you try to cook it whole, like you see in foreign movies.

If you spread out the body and legs like you do with old-fashioned fried chicken, it’s much easier.

It’s even easier if you break it down before cooking.

The breast meat is healthy and tasty.

And since the comparison is always with chicken, it’s bound to lose points. Chicken is cheaper, fattier, and easier to cook, so turkey just can’t compete.

Thud.

Still, turkey has a presence that chicken can never match.

After removing the feathers and guts, it weighs 10 kilograms.

That’s a size a chicken could never reach.

What’s the fun in chopping this up into little pieces to cook?

After feeding the slime onions, lemons, potatoes, and so on, I stuffed them all into the turkey.

Put a cleaned duck inside the slime.

Put slime inside the duck.

Put a cleaned chicken inside the slime.

Put slime inside the chicken.

Put eggs inside the slime.

Cover the whole turkey in slime and put it in the oven, and that’s it.

Today’s video is a bit plain, and if I post it, someone might try stuffing <Insole Slime> into a turkey and baking it. <Insole Slime> is fine, but someone might even try using the <Mosquito> series.

You think nobody would do that?

There are people who make circuits out of <Insole Slime> and eat it, so why wouldn’t someone try putting the <Mosquito> series in a turkey? Maybe they thought it would be good for smoking it or something.

Besides, the main viewers of this video are Americans.

People who live in a country where you need to slap a warning label on cosplay costumes saying, ‘Wearing this does not make you a superhero. Do not jump from high places.’

This time, let’s just upload a Mukbang.

Nom nom nom.

That was delicious.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Well then, bye~.

***

An American firefighter took a dish out of the microwave: stuffing made with chopped bread, sausage, apple, onion, turkey meat, and cheese on top.

Firefighters work on Thanksgiving, too.

Since he couldn’t go home tomorrow, he bought this food to get into the Thanksgiving spirit.

Sitting at the table, he scooped food into his mouth with a spoon and opened WTube.

Just then, SLimelove uploaded a new video.

SLimelove is the creator of the fire suit that her colleagues call Super Slime.

She’s someone to be truly grateful for.

Thanks to that Super Slime, they were able to save even more people.

Among those saved were himself and his colleagues.

Not only did she save their lives, but she also gave them pride.

Watching firefighters transform in Super Slime captured the eyes of not just children, but adults too.

Then a superhero comic starring transforming firefighters came out, and it was a big hit.

As a result.

Firefighter overtook doctor to reclaim the number two dream job spot after several years.

Except for Hunter, the unshakable number one, it’s basically the top spot.

Inquiries about how to become a firefighter, as well as school invitations and fire station tours, have all increased a lot.

And that’s not all.

Hobbies have become more plentiful, too.

These days, American football is as fierce as ancient gladiator battles.

Now that all teams wear <slime>, injuries are less common, so the players act without hesitation.

The sheer force of the collisions is enough to make your skin crawl just watching.

Wild, powerful tactics come out nonstop, making the outcome impossible to predict. Underdog victories happen often, so every game is a nail-biter.

Right now, America is going wild for these bloodless battles in the stadiums.

If it’s like this already, what will happen when the Super Bowl comes?

Thanks to <slime>, both job satisfaction and personal happiness are at an all-time high.

Just seeing SLimelove put the firefighter in a good mood.

He played the video with a smile.

But his smile faded when he saw the food on screen.

He checked the video title a beat too late.

And then he screamed.

“No! Slime. No!”

Of all things, turkey!

It’s nice that the slime respects our culture.

But!

This is a country where people bring a drum out to the yard, fill it with oil, heat it up, and throw a frozen turkey in whole!

Unmoved by the firefighter’s scream, Penguin Slime tore a strip from the turkey breast.

Instead of tossing food or making a fuss, it calmly lifted a piece of meat high and dropped it right into its mouth.

Crunch crunch.

Munch munch.

From the sounds alone, you can tell the skin is crunchy and the inside is moist.

Watching it sway side to side, happily eating, made his mouth water.

Gulp.

The firefighter swallowed at the sound of it swallowing.

‘Why does it eat so deliciously!’

The desire to eat a whole, perfectly cooked turkey like that-not just chopped-up pieces-started to well up inside him.

No.

No one else should get this idea.

Turkey is a very difficult ingredient to cook properly. Especially making it look that appetizing when cooked whole is extremely hard.

If you try it on a whim without proper preparation, you’ll fail or cause an accident.

If only the video had been posted on Thanksgiving Day itself, the stores would have been closed and people couldn’t have bought turkeys!

Why did it have to go up the day before!

The turkey meat kept disappearing, and what was hidden inside started to appear.

‘Turducken!’

A dish where you put a duck inside a turkey, and a chicken inside the duck.

If cooked properly, it’s a dish that can satisfy the tastes of the whole family.

And the turducken in the video looked incredibly appetizing.

‘Why is it eating so calmly today of all days!’

It was nice that it respected the culture without goofing around, but that just made it worse.

He focused on the food more than usual.

The more he focused on the food, the more he wanted to eat it.

The duck disappeared quickly, and a perfectly roasted chicken appeared underneath.

How do you even make it look that tasty?

After finishing all the meat, the slime used the bones to spell out a short message.

[Happy Thanksgiving]

The firefighter leaned back in his chair and started running hope calculations in his head.

‘If it’s turducken instead of a traditional roast turkey, maybe I won’t try to make it myself?’

Tossing a turkey into oil seems easy enough, but doesn’t that look a lot harder?

The psychological barrier is a bit higher.

Aren’t there probably more people than you’d think doing stupid things?

—

‘No way.’

The firefighter fired the extinguisher at the blazing turkey and the oil drum.

***

[<Slime> abuse. Is it really okay?]

“The current rampant abuse of <Slime>. Is it really okay to just let this go? Our production team has recreated the current state of <Slime> abuse based on the reports we’ve received.”

—

Ssshh. Gulp gulp.

“Ah!”

Crack open a can of cold beer and take a swig.

Crunch.

Bite into some greasy fried chicken.

Gulp.

Wash down the grease with beer.

This is the life.

In the past, eating chicken and beer meant you had to worry about gout, but these days, that’s not a concern. Just eat <Poison Jelsl> once and all the uric acid in your body is swept away.

After word spread that Poison Jelsl was effective for gout, chimaek sales slowly crept up, and now there are even articles saying they’ve doubled compared to a month ago.

No need to worry about belly fat either. Eat <Pure Jelsl> and all the unnecessary sugar and fat are flushed from your blood.

Late-night snacking is fine too.

Heartburn? <Gargle Slime> takes care of that.

—

“Hey. Are you saying you can’t drink the booze I give you?”

“Boss. Aren’t you being a bit too hard on him?”

“These days, it’s fine to drink this much! If you pass out, just eat some <Poison Jelsl> and <Pure Jelsl>!”

“Let’s go for round five! Round five!”

“Aren’t you overdoing it?”

“It’s fine! Just eat some <Poison Jelsl> and <Pure Jelsl>!”

—

Breakfast is pancakes loaded with sugar, drenched in maple syrup, and topped with a big pat of butter.

Pour plenty of syrup into the coffee you drink with it.

On the way to work, buy a sweet caramel macchiato to take up with you.

Grab some snacks in the break room and toss them in your mouth as you work.

Lunch break.

Since it’s gotten chilly lately, lunch is a bowl of spicy kalguksu noodles.

Buy a vanilla latte to take up with you.

I nibbled on this and that while working, but that was just snacks. There was still plenty of room for dinner.

Today, I’m craving something spicy, so seasoned fried chicken and beer.

After eating well, I stop by the convenience store on the way home and buy some jerky.

Munch on that while watching a drama, and then finish off with a bowl of ramen before bed.

It’s fine.

Dental health is taken care of with <Gargle Slime>.

Blood vessel health is covered with <Pure Jelsl> and <Poison Jelsl>.

—

They’ve got guts.

Attacking <Slime> in this social climate.

Even if they exaggerated to make it more sensational, it probably reflects how people live these days.

This is why I’m hesitating to launch the alchemy potions in earnest.

Even though <Slime> wasn’t originally made to be used as a medicine, it still changed people’s lives this much.

What on earth would happen if I made even stronger alchemy potions and the range of things people could undo grew wider?

It’s scary.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but the comments are pretty aggressive.

-Here, have some attention.

-Total exaggeration. No one actually acts like that.

-Snacks are enough with <Pure Jelsl>, okay? Once you start eating <Pure Jelsl>, sugar is way too sweet and cloying to even eat.

-Round five, lol. These days, bosses are too busy working out to even go to company dinners.

└Manager Kim. Are you free this weekend?

└Company dinner vs hiking.

└Just kill me instead….

-There really are way more dads out with their kids on weekends these days

└For real. No matter where you go, there are so many people it’s uncomfortable.

└Don’t go to amusement parks. You’ll just wait in line all day and have to leave.

└If you go to the zoo, all you see are penguins.

└You mean aquariums.

└<Raincoat Slime>.

└Ah lololol.

The comments do make me feel a little better, but I don’t know how much I can really trust them.

From what I can see, the video looks pretty plausible. I feel like there actually could be people acting like that.

Should I try to hold back a little more?

“…Let’s not waver.”

I can’t personally stop every single person willing to risk their life on a disease lottery.

I have to give up on some things.

You can’t take care of everything.

More than that, what really bothers me is the talk about kids having nowhere to play.

I’m confident I can make a great place for them to play.

I’m confident I can make a place people never want to leave once they come in.

And it just so happens I’m about to get my hands on land that’s 300,000 pyeong.

Build a waste processing facility underground and set up Slime Land on top.

Of course, I can’t move forward with this plan as things are now.

“Welcome to Slime Land, full of death and tentacles!”

That’s how it would end up.

But what if I somehow succeed in reviving the land?

If I just lay the groundwork well while taking over that landfill, couldn’t I totally build an amusement park?

But that’s not really my area of expertise.

I have no idea how to lay the foundation so no one can interfere later and I can do whatever I want.

I also don’t really know what laws apply when letting guests into the alchemy testing ground.

I wish I had someone I could trust with this….

[The level of your Store+ skill has increased to 28.]

[The level of your Trait: Slime☆☆ has increased to 25.]

[A new skill has been created.]

Huh?

A new skill?

Huh?

I was supposed to get a skill at level 25….

I didn’t get it?

Wait, what?

Is there a bug in my status window?

When I split Gongdori at level 15, and then hit level 15 again, I got the [Convert] skill.

When I hit level 20 for the first time, I coughed up my first curse, and when I reached level 20 again, I got the [Multiply] skill.

If you choose [Special Divide] at the level where you get a skill selection, you’ll automatically get a new skill when you reach that level again.

If you hit that level for a third time, instead of a new skill, your skill level increases.

The level at which I split Gongsooni was 25.

By the rules, I should have gotten a new skill when I leveled back up to 25.

The rules for getting skills are ones I figured out by induction, so I could be wrong.

There’s no manual anywhere in the status window.

Or maybe the system read my situation and responded appropriately?

The level of [Trait: Slime☆☆] is determined by the average of my skill levels. Even if I get a new skill, my trait level doesn’t drop, but it takes much longer to raise it to the next level.

Back at level 25, I was obsessed with raising my trait level as soon as possible.

If I had gotten a new skill then, the speed at which my trait level rose would have slowed down a lot.

Was it really consideration?

Depending on what skill I get this time, I’ll know if it was consideration or a bug.

“Status window.”

[Trait: Slime☆☆ Lv. 25

Skill:

–

Accelerate Lv. 1.]

[Accelerate Lv. 1.

-All actions become faster.]

A simple yet powerful skill.

It was also exactly the skill I needed for the massive construction project ahead.

It was consideration!

Sorry, status window!

I thought it was a bug!

***

Ash opened the package that had arrived.

Inside was a slime with tentacles all tangled together.

With a bit of observation, the structure became clear.

If you cut the flow of energy twisted like thread in a few places, the tentacles can’t get energy and unravel.

Ash was carefully unraveling it in order when he stopped.

He’d found a flaw in the design.

If you just extract energy from one spot, the slime collapses-no need to follow the order.

‘If it’s a mistake, I’m disappointed, and if it’s not, maybe I overestimated Alchemy Slime.’

Ash extracted the energy without hesitation.

Pop!

“Jjin~ bboomboomboomboom.”

With a sound that seemed to mock him, the slime burst.

A single sheet of paper fluttered up and drifted down.

[You just activated my trap card.]

Another tentacle slime, hidden inside the tentacle slime, swelled up.

“Jjin~bboom!”

“Fxck!!!”

Ash, baring his teeth in a fierce expression, started dismantling the slime again.

He had to dismantle it as quickly as possible and get ready to send a reply.

Ash himself wasn’t aware, but his eyes were sparkling with excitement.

Like a kid who’s found a rival for the first time.