Chapter 1: About That Time I Woke Up as a Slime.

It’s blinding.

Even when I squeeze my eyes shut and cover them with my hand, it’s still blinding.

Forcing my eyes open, I saw the ceiling.

My vision had a bluish tint.

Isn’t your vision usually yellowish when you’re sleep-deprived?

What kind of messed-up food turns your vision blue?

“Water…”

I got out of bed and headed to the fridge.

“Whoops.”

My body staggered.

Maybe because my legs felt weak today, the floor felt oddly squishy.

My head wasn’t working properly either.

Felt like a combo of sleep deprivation, dehydration, and low energy.

I grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and drank the purified water I’d filled earlier.

As the refreshing water entered my body, I started to feel a bit more awake.

I slowly retraced my memories.

Vacation had started right after finals ended.

I’d been putting off games, comics, anime, and novels for studying. After much deliberation, I decided to start with games. I played until dawn, hit a grindy section, and ended up dozing off and crawling into bed half-asleep.

All I had yesterday was breakfast, and I didn’t even drink water properly, so no wonder my brain’s on strike.

If I don’t refuel soon, it might go on a permanent strike.

Rice in the freezer… nope, none.

No side dishes in the fridge either.

Oh, right. I skipped cooking because I was too lazy.

The only edible stuff was instant noodles and canned food in the cupboard.

My stomach was totally empty, and dumping ramen into it didn’t seem like the best idea.

Ugh, whatever. Let’s empty the bladder first and think later.

When I opened the bathroom door, the mirror greeted me. My gaze, on its way to the toilet, stopped and returned to the mirror.

Without realizing it, I reached out toward the mirror.

“What the hell is this.”

In the mirror, I saw myself with a translucent head.

Then I noticed my hand had turned into something like blue jelly.

“Is this a dream?”

Instead of heading to the toilet, I went back to bed and lay down.

Peeing in a dream is dangerous.

I’m too old to be wetting the bed.

I pulled the blanket over my head to block out the light that still seeped through my eyelids.

This is a dream.

It has to be a dream.

The blanket against my skin felt oddly cool, but it’s a dream.

Waking up as a jelly person? That can’t happen.

***

An unfamiliar ceiling.

A bluish ceiling seen through my translucent wrist-I’d never seen anything like it.

Damn it.

I woke up and turned into a slime. How does that make any sense?

Well, it must make sense, since this is my reality now.

“Status window.”

[Trait: Slime Lv. 1

Skills:

Decompose Lv. 1.

Absorb Lv. 2.

Analyze Lv. 1.

Divide Lv. 1.

Control Lv. 1.]

I hoped it wouldn’t show up, but the status window appeared.

The appearance of the status window meant I had awakened.

“Why.”

When other people awaken, they can use magic, gain superhuman strength, and see things others can’t.

“Why.”

They use that power to raid dungeons, fight monsters, and gain wealth and fame.

They start their own businesses with awakened skills and make money.

So why.

Why.

“Why am I a slime?!”

I had completely shed my humanity and become a monster.

This is so unfair.

What the hell did I do?

All I did was sleep, and now I’m a monster?

“What did I do wrong?”

Awakening usually happens in extreme situations-like a car accident, a monster attack, or the death of a loved one.

I just went to sleep and woke up, that’s it.

Did I stop breathing in my sleep or something?

Was I on the brink of death or what?

Oh, right. I didn’t eat properly.

Is that such a huge crime? It’s not like I starved to death.

And why a slime, of all things? There are monsters like werewolves and vampires that still look human most of the time.

Why turn me into a creature that no one could ever mistake for anything but a monster?

If I had a skill like ‘Transform’, maybe.

I have five skills, but not one of them is ‘Transform’. I can’t even turn back into a human.

What the hell am I supposed to do like this?

“Information. Yeah. Maybe there’s information out there.”

Maybe this kind of thing is more common than I thought, and I just never paid attention. Maybe there’s an alchemical potion that can easily turn me back.

While the computer was booting up, I put on long sleeves, long pants, gloves, a hat, and a mask.

I made sure not a bit of skin was showing.

Nothing good would come from anyone seeing me like this.

I locked the windows tight and pulled the blinds.

“Please, let there be something.”

I scoured the internet.

And three hours later.

The tower of hope I built on waves of information was completely washed away.

No matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find any info about someone awakening as a slime.

Not just slimes-there was no info about anyone turning into a monster.

I searched in Korean, in English, used translation tools to dig through foreign news sites, even checked academic papers.

But nothing.

“I’m gonna lose it.”

This is the worst.

There are only two possibilities.

Either I’m the first.

Or there are lots of people who awakened as monsters, but no one knows about them.

Both possibilities are only slightly different, but equally hopeless.

If it’s the former, it means I’m an extremely rare research subject. And in that case, there’s almost no chance I’ll be treated as a human being. No one’s going to care about the rights of a human who turned into a slime. I’m not even sure I can be defined as human anymore.

The latter is also a problem.

Because it would mean people who awakened as monsters disappeared without a trace.

“What am I supposed to do….”

No matter how I look at it, I can’t picture a positive future.

Everything I built up over more than 20 years has crumbled.

What the hell can I even do in this state?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Tears fell.

The fallen tears hardened into droplet shapes.

<Plain Water Slime>

-Tasteless, odorless slime.

[The level of the skill Divide has increased to 2.]

[The level of the skill Analyze has increased to 2.]

“Hahaha. What is this.”

Just like in a game, item descriptions and notifications popped up in my vision.

Am I dreaming because I fell asleep while playing a game?

I hope this is a dream.

Even when I pinch my cheek, it doesn’t hurt at all.

But I don’t know if that’s because it’s a dream, or because my body turned into slime.

“Should I just die?”

If I’m going to get dragged to some secret lab and end up in a state where I can’t live or die, I’d rather cross the Jordan River now.

Physically, this body doesn’t seem like it can die easily.

Which means the experiments would just drag on longer.

Is even suicide difficult now?

No, wait.

My body is mostly water.

Like a snail, maybe I’ll melt and die if I consume a large amount of salt.

Even if I don’t melt like a snail, consuming too much salt is deadly for any living being.

Everything has a median lethal dose.

A quantity where 50% of people would die if they consumed that much.

Based on my body weight, eating about 250g of salt would give me a 50% chance of dying.

I grabbed the salt shaker and tilted my head back.

I shook the salt out forcefully.

Thud.

The lid came off and dropped straight into my mouth.

Gulp.

I swallowed it reflexively.

Startled, I ran to the bathroom, bent over the toilet, and stuck my fingers in my mouth.

But the gag reflex didn’t kick in.

I took off my shirt and looked in the mirror.

I could see the salt shaker lid melting in real time inside my body.

[The level of the skill Decompose has increased to 2.]

In just a few seconds, the lid completely dissolved and vanished.

I stared blankly at the sight.

Then was suddenly overwhelmed with embarrassment.

“Like hell I’m dying.”

I swallowed a bit of plastic and freaked out, sprinting to the bathroom trying to throw it up.

If I really wanted to die, I should’ve kept eating the salt, lid or not.

Honestly, it’s hard to die from eating salt. It’s painful, and you’d probably throw it all up before it works.

In the end, it was just a self-harming act to relieve stress.

I want to live.

But I hate the idea of being dragged to a lab and turned into an experiment even more.

So I can’t let anyone find out.

No one can know I’ve become a slime.

Thankfully, summer break started yesterday after my last final exam. I don’t need to go outside for now.

I don’t really have any friends I hang out with, so I don’t have any immediate plans either.

I live alone, and I’m the kind of bad son who only visits home during holidays, so there’s little risk of my family finding out.

But there’s a time limit.

Summer break ends in September. And being a bad son who only visits during holidays means I have to go home when the holidays come.

Let’s say I drop out since I can’t go to school like this.

The problem is going home.

Wearing clothes that completely cover my skin in the middle of summer is way too suspicious.

Let’s say I ignore everyone’s stares and go home dressed like it’s the middle of winter.

Even then, staying like that indoors would be weird.

Should I reveal to my family that I’ve become a slime?

I thought about it briefly and came to a quick conclusion.

I can’t tell my family either.

Becoming a slime isn’t much different from being diagnosed with a terminal, incurable illness.

And an unsolvable problem is a poison that eats away at your mind.

No news is good news, and ignorance is bliss.

It’s better if they never find out what I’ve become.

But there’s a limit to how long I can avoid meeting them.

Once Chuseok comes, I’ll have to go home.

I’ve got about three months left.

By then, I need to be able to show myself in front of my family.

Is there a way?

There is hope.

“Status window.”

[Trait: Slime Lv. 1

Skills:

Decompose Lv. 2.

Absorb Lv. 2.

Analyze Lv. 2.

Divide Lv. 2.

Control Lv. 1.]

Eating something seems to raise my skill levels. I don’t know how to level up the Control skill, but the others should keep rising as I keep eating.

Most game systems follow a certain rule.

Level is everything.

If your level goes up, most problems get solved.

Trait levels usually rise by hunting monsters, but I’ve heard they can also rise when skill levels go up.

And when a trait level increases, you sometimes gain new skills.

[Transform], [Camouflage], [Mimicry].

Anything is fine.

Within three months, I’ll raise my level as much as I can and get a skill that lets me take on human form.

“To level up, I need to eat.”

But there’s not much food at home.

Still, I can just order online and have it delivered, so it’s not a big deal.

“Money… I’ve got enough, more or less.”

My family is pretty well off.

We’re doing well enough that I can live on my own and attend college without worrying about tuition or living expenses, even though I don’t have a part-time job.

Especially since my dad gives me extra money to hang out with friends, and I haven’t spent any of it, so my bank account has built up quite a bit.

“Will this be enough?”

Will I be able to raise my level enough with this money to get the [Transform] skill?

First, let’s eat some salt and see how much my level increases.

If nothing else, I have plenty of salt.

I’ve always had a bit of rhinitis, so I used salt water to rinse out my nose.

I heard refined salt is better than sea salt, so I bought some online-five 1kg packs to save on shipping. Since I don’t even make pickles, more than 4kg are still left.

I grabbed a spoon and started chewing on the salt.

If I had a human body, it would’ve been way too salty to eat.

But maybe because I’ve become a slime, I kept eating the salt without any disgust or revulsion.

The salty taste had a strange bitterness to it.

[Decompose skill has increased to level 3.]

[Absorb skill has increased to level 3.]

[Trait: Slime has increased to level 2.]

[You have consumed more than a certain amount of salt. Experience gained is reduced.]

[Trait: Slime Lv. 2

Skills:

Decompose Lv. 3.

Absorb Lv. 3.

Analyze Lv. 2.

Divide Lv. 2.

Control Lv. 1.]

The trait level went up.

Good. I wasn’t wrong.

I kept eating salt without stopping.

[Decompose skill has increased to level 4.]

[Absorb skill has increased to level 4.]

[You have consumed more than a certain amount of salt. Experience gained is reduced.]

The skill level hit 3 before I even ate 1kg of salt.

But it only reached level 4 after I ate all 4kg of it.

I guess the higher the level, the more experience it takes to go up.

Still, the reduction in experience gain seems to have had a bigger impact.

I need to eat a wide variety of foods.

“Will the money I have now be enough?”

I started to worry again.

What gives the most quantity for the lowest price?

As I browsed the shopping mall, deep in thought-

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

I heard the sound of someone pressing the passcode at the front door.

Someone was trying to open the door.

My hair stood on end in terror.

Who?

Why?

Don’t tell me I’ve been found out?

How?

Beep-beep-beep.

I heard the sound of the lock disengaging.