Chapter 52: Deep Cleaning.

It’s the time when it starts to get seriously cold.

The season when you start living with windows and doors tightly shut.

If you don’t want to live in a dusty house all winter, it’s best to do a deep cleaning.

The housewife lured the kids with pocket money to head to their parents’ home.

With rising prices, the kids growing up, and each having their own income, it’s gotten harder to lure them.

But this time, surprisingly, they followed along willingly.

Seeing them pull out their smartphones, the purpose was obvious.

They’re probably planning to film the deep cleaning and upload it to WTube.

That was actually a good thing.

If they’re showing off to viewers, they’ll work harder.

With a <Pack Slime> on the face and a <Towel Slime> in hand, cleaning begins.

“Look at how shiny it is. Don’t I clean really well? You say it’s just the item’s power?”

The son, who usually pouts and cleans half-heartedly, chatters away in a cheerful voice while cleaning.

“Cleaning is fun.”

Cleaning is fun when it’s easy.

Since the results are visible, it’s easy to feel a sense of accomplishment.

“Crazy, you say? That’s too harsh. If you wipe the top of the bookshelf with a rag or tissue, the dust clumps up and rolls around. The dust clump sticks to the floor and won’t come off, leaving black dust marks, and it’s annoying to keep finding a clean side of the rag to flip over, and while flipping, the dust clump falls to the ground.

But with a <Towel Slime>, just one swipe and it shines, so it feels refreshing, like playing a hack-and-slash game. Oh, and this isn’t a hidden advertisement!

What? You’re saying I’m too low-tier to get an ad contract? You’re even saying I should pay for using the word? That’s too harsh. My current viewers… Sorry, I’ll admit it. I’m not at the level for Yeonseul-nim to give me an ad contract.”

Thirty minutes after the son said cleaning was easy.

“Ugh…”

Why is deep cleaning called deep cleaning?

Because it involves cleaning areas you don’t normally clean.

Areas you don’t normally clean?

Under heavy objects or places piled up with all sorts of stuff.

To clean them, you have to move things around.

“Ugh…”

And in such places, traces of life are bound to be found.

Usually, it’s bugs that you don’t know when or where they came from or why they died.

But if it’s a townhouse with a fairly large park nearby and a rooftop garden.

“Uwaaah!”

Something alive. Something with a hard body, incredibly fast running speed, exceptional adaptability, and even wings that make you think even a nuclear bomb couldn’t kill it, might pop out.

A legendary scene was born.

A video of peeling off a cockroach stuck to the face along with a <Pack Slime> and crushing it with a hand.

A video to tease the son with endlessly whenever he broadcasts.

***

Tilting my head to the side, a bullet grazes past my ear.

There’s a sniper in the house.

Bang!!!

A loud explosion echoes a moment later.

That sound is fake.

The real sniper is somewhere else, and that sound is made by another <Slime>.

When I tried to clean up the <Slime> rolling around the house by casually eating it, suddenly the <Slime>s started attacking me.

These things. They don’t even recognize their creator.

I’ll [Decompose] and [Absorb] them all and turn them into <Towel Slime>s.

A bullet comes flying.

Blocking it with my hand, the impact creates ripples on the surface of my arm.

I dodged reflexively earlier, but with just this level of power, they can’t take me down, right?

Boing.

“Huh?”

The floor suddenly bounces up, and my body is flung into the air.

Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing.

Wall, ceiling, floor, wall, ceiling.

My body bounces and crashes everywhere, as if I’ve entered a room full of springs.

Then, I plop into a barrel full of sticky Slime.

Snap.

Hearing something snap, I look up to see a Slime ceiling falling from above.

Boom.

The Slime ceiling becomes a lid, trapping me in the barrel.

The temperature of the Slime surrounding me drops rapidly.

Are they trying to freeze me?

Not a chance.

I [Absorb] the surrounding Slime and break through the barrel.

As if waiting for me, all sorts of Slime like <Explosive Web Slime>, <Net Slime>, and <Sticky Slime> come flying at me all at once.

For a brief moment, my feet are stuck.

As if to finish me off, a bullet hits my temple.

“Nice try.”

But the firepower was lacking.

Even if my head gets blown off, I don’t think I’d die.

Swallowing the bullet lodged in my head.

Thud.

Suddenly, a stake sprouts from my chest.

Not made of Slime, but purely of metal.

Crackle!

A high-voltage current, as if to surpass the limits of my [Convert] skill, pierces through my body.

A shock like being struck by lightning.

But it’s not enough to burn me, now that I’m a 2-star Slime.

The stake lodged in my chest melts away.

I thought I was filming ‘Home Alone,’ but this is way too murderous.

If a thief got caught breaking in, this would be charged as manslaughter.

What on earth did they set up in this house?

Are they assuming a Demon King is invading or something?

“Did they assume that? Maybe they did.”

Perhaps my subconscious, wary of me becoming abnormal, prepared a means of suicide.

It’s hard to call this a coincidence; no matter how you look at it, this is a design to kill Slime.

The <Slime>s I tossed aside carelessly created such a linked trap.

It’s like the probability of a monkey typing out Hamlet on a typewriter.

But maybe because it’s subconscious.

It’s sloppy.

This level isn’t enough to kill me.

The effect is insufficient, and I’ve overcome the curse, so I don’t need this anymore.

Let’s clean it up.

Well, the experience of bouncing around everywhere was fun, though.

If I ensure safety properly, maybe I could make a fun amusement ride?

Even if I made it, there’s no place to set it up.

I neatly cleaned up the <Slime>s I had thrown around carelessly.

The house cleaning isn’t over yet.

I’ve only dealt with the most dangerous items; there are still many things to handle ahead.

I headed to the place where the delivery boxes are stacked.

“Wow….”

An example of what happens when an incredibly wealthy person succumbs to severe shopping addiction was right there.

Unopened delivery boxes filled an entire room.

The room was over 10 pyeong with high ceilings, and physically, 90% of it was filled.

Just how many items did I buy?

I can’t even remember what I bought.

If my income wasn’t in the billions per day, I’d be juggling credit cards right now.

-Luxury bags, luxury clothes, luxury watches, and all sorts of luxury goods.

These things aren’t worth their price.

My experience points system doesn’t account for design fees. Maybe a small tech bonus is included.

It’s a relief I only bought items I could order online and get quickly. If I had bought items costing billions like this, even I would’ve been in danger.

-Various precious metals.

This is also a waste of money.

Diamonds, huh. Whether designed by humans or by the Earth, my experience points system doesn’t value them highly. As long as it’s made of just carbon, there’s hardly any difference between diamonds and graphite.

At least luxury goods and precious metals can be sold.

There are plenty of useless items too.

-Dancing balloon doll (tube man).

The kind that dances back and forth in front of a newly opened store.

Seriously, why did I buy this? It’s just plastic. There’s a bit of metal in the blower part, but it’s mostly plastic.

Did I feel some kind of kinship with it because it’s empty inside?

-Mascot suit (penguin).

Compared to my Slime mask, the quality is terribly bad.

Did I want to become another version of myself, neither SLimelove nor Alchemy Slime?

-External hard drive.

One, two, three… a hundred 22TB drives. I can store 2 petabytes of data!

Even if I connected it directly to my head, memories wouldn’t be stored, so what was I planning to save?

As I sorted through the items, I also found paintings.

“….”

I’m not exactly an art expert, but this is really bad.

It looks like a piece thrown together after hearing that modern art makes money.

How does the ink used to write the explanation on paper look more abundant than the paint used on the canvas?

Another painting.

This one looks like it was printed with a printer and then painted over. Oh, they didn’t even hide that fact. Since they didn’t hide it, does that make it art too?

A sculpture.

Is this something that was dropped on the ground and hastily glued back together to sell because there was no time?

Other art pieces came out too, but they’re all more or less the same.

Feeling like I got scammed, I looked for the receipt.

Ah, so this is the price.

Let’s just get rid of it all.

The time spent fighting with the thick-skinned people who sell this kind of stuff feels wasteful.

Even if I add up all the costs, it doesn’t amount to what I earn in 5 minutes of work.

By the way, how much money do I have left right now?

“Wow….”

I’ve surpassed a hundred billion.

My bank account balance is 12 digits.

Could I buy 8 houses for our Emergency Rations with this?

If it’s the old version, not the upgraded Slime.

Right now, I couldn’t even buy one house.

Keeping this money sleeping here feels like a sin.

Stagnant money rots its surroundings.

I should use it somewhere.

Ah, right.

There’s one item I want to buy.

James Theodore’s <Pandora>.

If I can buy it, I absolutely must.

Due to tax issues, there’s a high chance it’ll come up at auction.

I wonder if I have enough money.

“Delivery sorting done!”

Next is sorting out the food.

Fruit boxes and snack containers are stacked like towers everywhere.

Just how much did I eat?

I glanced at the money spent on food ingredients.

Wow~.

The money spent on food over the past three months is in the tens of millions? If I had tried harder, I could’ve hit a hundred million.

If I add the money spent on monster materials for eating, it’s in the billions.

If it weren’t for the [Divide] and [Store] skills, my sleek Slime body would’ve turned into a jelly lump with arms shorter than its torso.

I went around every corner and finished cleaning the house.

I’ve returned to the state I was in before being consumed by the curse.

The house that felt so empty before now feels neat.

Damn curse.

Now that the housework is done, it’s time to handle external affairs.

First, Alchemy Slime’s business.

Recently, I’ve increased the variety of sales items and steadily boosted sales volume.

These past few days, I’ve really worked like crazy.

I did promise to increase the amount of goods sent to America.

I can’t just suddenly say, “I can’t do it!” after expanding the workload so much.

That would be too irresponsible.

Fortunately, just like when I spit out the <Curse Fragment> before, my body got a bit cleaned up, making skill usage easier.

I can maintain the current production volume without burden.

I can also easily upgrade Gongsooni and Gongdori to 2-star.

I’m confident I can handle everything based on the increased production volume.

As long as Alchemy Slime doesn’t do anything unnecessary and just maintains the current situation, it’ll be fine.

The problem isn’t with Alchemy Slime but with SLimelove.

“I don’t want to see it….”

To describe my current feelings.

It’s like having records of my middle school emo phase uploaded to WTube.

With 5 million subscribers plus regular viewers chewing up and enjoying my dark history, and I have to walk into that place myself.

Just kill me.

No, let’s kill SLimelove.

I’ll blow up the channel.

Earlier, I didn’t like SLimelove’s tone.

Who are you calling hideous!

If I entered the World Miss Slime Contest, I’d be the undisputed number one!

“Ugh…. I have to log in, don’t I.”

Blowing up the entire channel isn’t something to decide on impulse.

But I need to delete some videos.

Especially the Halloween video.

That video shouldn’t exist. It really shouldn’t!

<Blanket Slime>

-Fluffy Slime. Kick me! I’ll take it!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

That’s seriously the level of a poem written by a human whose middle school emo phase has seeped into their very bones, scribbled at dawn in a fit of inspiration.

It shouldn’t exist in this world.

<Towel Slime> was bitten in the mouth.

Just looking at the thumbnail might make me want to bite my tongue and die.

“….”

Oh my. Over 20 million people have seen my dark history? It hasn’t even been two weeks since I uploaded the video, and everyone’s so diligent.

Where is the WTube data center located? I should attack there, find the IP addresses, and track down each person one by one.

If I visit 100 people a day, that’s about 548 years.

It’s going to be a very long journey.

<Mouse Hole Slime>

-A cozy Slime that blocks others’ watching eyes. Please don’t look for me.

Riiing.

I said don’t look for me.

[Counselor Park Taeyang]

“Hello. This is Alchemy Slime. What can I do for you?”

-Are you okay?

“Huh? Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”

-Didn’t you create a terrifying curse!

Ah, right.

I thought for a moment that Counselor Park Taeyang had noticed I was inside the <Mouse Hole Slime>.

“I’m fine.”

-That’s a relief.

-How on earth did you end up creating such a curse?

Didn’t I explain? No, I didn’t. I just hurriedly asked for the curse response team to be sent.

Since I didn’t contact them even after some time passed, they must have called me.

How should I explain this?

-You haven’t fallen into some strange religion, have you?

“A strange religion? That’s out of nowhere.”

-Well…. Didn’t you upload a weird video during Halloween?

-America is in turmoil right now because of a doomsday cult, and voices of concern are rising since you uploaded such a video.

So that’s how it’s connected?

No, more importantly.

That video….

You saw it.