I Siphon the Dead to Become the Strongest

I don’t know if I can surpass the original monster’s own power. I’ve never cared enough to try. My ambition starts and ends with “something to clean, something to eat, a place to sleep, and… video games.” A place to sleep and video games. Obviously.

I was pondering the profound philosophical implications of stacking a thousand minor conveniences when I heard the wet shlorp behind me.

Instinct, born of a thousand low-stakes encounters, made me start to turn. But I was too slow, too lost in thought. A second Sewer-Slime I’d missed, or one that had reformed, was lunging for my back.

A blur of motion. A sharp, clean shing sound that cut through the dripping silence of the sewer.

The slime didn’t splatter. It was bisected with such surgical precision that for a second, the two halves hovered in the air before collapsing into twin puddles.

Standing between the halves, her boots not even slightly damp, was the woman from the street. Her short, yellowish hair seemed to almost glow in the sickly green bioluminescence. Those cool gray eyes were fixed on me.

“You should be more careful,” she said, her voice echoing slightly in the cavernous pipe. “Wasn’t that your whole business model? Staying out of trouble?”

She flicked her wrist. The sword in her hand—and holy shit, what a sword—dissipated. Not vanished, but dissolved from the tip down into wisps of crimson smoke that coiled around her gauntlet before fading. It had been a blade of dark metal, but the crossguard and hilt were sculpted to look like overlapping dragon scales, glowing with a deep, inner ember. It was so badass it hurt to look at. The kind of weapon that had a name and a tragic backstory.

My brain, in its infinite wisdom, processed several things at once:

She saved me from a mildly embarrassing slime-back-hug.

She had a sword that could probably cut a car in half and she made it disappear.

Looking at her now, in the tactical leathers, the way the armor molded to her torso… she had more defined abs than I did. And I had Three Times Grip Strength. It was an injustice.

“Yeah. Um. Thanks,” I managed, my voice sounding thinner than I’d like. Did she see? Did she see the green energy stream into my hand? Was I about to be outed as a soul-sucking freak and reported to the Association’s weird-power division?

I shook my head, panic giving way to a more practical confusion. “What are you doing here?” I gestured at her, then at the dismal surroundings. “This is E-Rank slime duty. You look like you hunt… I don’t know, lava dragons for fun.”

She almost smiled. Just a slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Observation.”

“Of what? My impeccable slime-whacking form?”

“Of the gate.” She nodded upwards, though there was only dripping stone. “This E-Rank gate is… anomalous. The energy signature spikes and drops erratically every few hours. It shouldn’t. Not for simple biological waste manifestations like Sewer-Slimes.”

I blinked. “So you’re… gate-checking?”

She looked at me, her head tilting slightly. “Call it a hunch. And hunches in our line of work are often the only warning you get.” Her eyes scanned the tunnel ahead, where the green glow seemed to pulse a little brighter. “Be more vigilant than you have been, Ethan. Careless is not a sustainable business model.”

With that, she turned and walked deeper into the sewer, away from the exit, her form swallowed by the shadows and the ever-present drip-drip-drip of the gate.

I stood there for a good minute after the mysterious, abs-flaunting woman vanished into the gloom. The philosophical gears in my head, lubricated by cynicism and cheap coffee, started turning.

Maybe life’s like a sewer-slime, I thought, staring at the last puddle dissolving at my feet. It’s mostly unpleasant goo, but if you look hard enough, you might find a half-digested candy wrapper of wisdom. And occasionally, someone with a magic sword shows up to remind you that you’re standing in poop.

Deep. I should write that down. Probably sell it as a self-help book for disgruntled E-Rankers.

I shook off the profound thought and assessed my situation. I was about halfway through the main tunnel, the exit a comforting thought behind me. The green, pulsing light ahead seemed… thicker. But my personal quota was feeling satisfied.

“Alright, that’s probably enough,” I muttered to the dripping walls. “Let’s call it eighty slimes. A good day’s work. Time to clock out, collect my pittance, and go home to see if Mia actually finished her homework.”