Chapter 3: Tutorial Slimes and Tax Evasion

The next morning, Noah Bell learned that being a chosen hero came with many of the same workplace hazards as being a logistics analyst, except the coffee was worse and everyone expected him to carry a sword.

The sword in question lay across the breakfast table like an accusation.

It was silver, jeweled, and entirely too shiny for anything that might be used outdoors. The scabbard had little golden wings on it. The hilt had been wrapped in white leather so pristine Noah suspected it had never been touched by a person with functioning sweat glands. A ruby the size of a grape gleamed from the pommel, catching the light from the palace’s stained-glass windows and throwing red flecks across the cream-colored tablecloth.

Noah stared at it over a plate of sausages, eggs, and something that looked like toast but had the density of roofing tile.

“So,” he said carefully, “is this ceremonial?”

Across from him, Minister Veyr smiled the smile of a man who had never once answered a question honestly when evasion would do. His robes were the color of expensive wine, embroidered with golden laurels and little suns. The collar alone probably cost more than Noah’s old monthly rent.

“In the sense that all holy relics bear ceremony, yes.”

Noah looked down at the sword again.

“That’s not what I asked.”

To Noah’s left, Sir Alric of the Dawn Shield—blond, broad-shouldered, jawline engineered by divine favoritism—laughed as if Noah had made a charming joke. “Fear not, Hero. The Blade of First Radiance will sing in your hand once battle is joined.”

“Does it come with a manual?”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

Noah reached for his tea and discovered that someone had sweetened it until it resembled liquid frosting. He took a sip anyway. His body had survived vending machine impact, death, dimensional transfer, and a royal banquet. It could survive sugar.

The palace dining hall glittered around him with the kind of wealth designed to make visitors feel underdressed and vaguely sinful. Sunlight poured through glass scenes of saints spearing demons, saints blessing kings, saints apparently filing paperwork while angels hovered nearby holding stamps. Long tables stretched across polished marble. Servants moved silently between them, refilling cups and replacing plates before anyone had the chance to consider hunger as a concept.

At the far end, a gaggle of nobles kept pretending not to stare at him.

Noah was getting used to the stares. Yesterday, after his so-called Divine Spreadsheet had exposed that nearly eight percent of the army payroll belonged to dead soldiers, fictional soldiers, or one suspiciously well-compensated mule named Captain Bartholomew, the court’s attitude toward him had split cleanly in two.

The soldiers looked at him like he had personally invented payday.

The ministers looked at him like he had kicked down the door of their pantry and found the good biscuits.

“His Majesty,” Minister Veyr said, folding his hands, “is most eager to formally present you to the people as Aurelia’s divinely chosen champion. Naturally, before that moment, certain… expectations must be satisfied.”

“Of course.” Noah nodded. “Brand alignment.”

Veyr blinked. “Pardon?”

“Nothing. Continue.”

“The people must see that you are not merely blessed in wisdom, but capable in battle. Therefore, a simple proving quest has been arranged.”

Noah felt the toast settle in his stomach like bad news. “Define simple.”

Sir Alric’s grin brightened. “Slimes.”

“Slimes,” Noah repeated.

“A cluster of low-level monsters has been troubling the western hamlets,” Alric said. “They are weak creatures. Barely monsters at all. Excellent for one’s first battle.”

Noah’s gaze slid to the sword. “Do they have bones?”

“No.”

“Organs?”

“Not as such.”

“Central nervous system?”

“Hero, they are blobs.”

“Right. So stabbing them with a sword…”

Alric hesitated for the first time.

Minister Veyr’s smile sharpened. “It is symbolic.”

“Symbolic stabbing.”

“Precisely.”

Noah closed his eyes for half a second. In his old life, he had once been asked to reduce shipping delays by optimizing a warehouse whose forklifts had three functioning tires between them. He had thought that was the pinnacle of managerial nonsense. Eldoria, however, had brought him symbolic stabbing before breakfast.

A soft cough sounded from behind his chair.

Noah turned and found Marianne, the palace maid assigned to “heroic comfort,” standing with a fresh pot of tea. She was a petite woman with dark hair tucked beneath a white cap and an expression so professionally neutral it deserved an award.

“My lord hero,” she murmured, “if it pleases you, the western hamlets suffered three dissolved fence posts and one frightened goat.”

Minister Veyr’s eyes flicked toward her. “Maid.”

Marianne lowered her gaze. “Forgive me, Your Excellency. I thought the hero might wish to know the scale of the threat.”

Noah liked her immediately.

“Thank you,” he said. “Was the goat harmed?”

“Emotionally, my lord.”

“Understandable.”

Alric rose, armor clinking. “We ride within the hour. A small escort will accompany you. The quest will be swift, glorious, and safe.”

Those were three words Noah distrusted individually. Together, they sounded like a lawsuit.

Minister Veyr lifted a crystal goblet. “To the hero’s first victory.”

The nearby nobles echoed the toast. “To victory.”

Noah looked at the untouched sword, the syrup-tea, and the courtiers whose smiles did not reach their eyes.

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go meet the blobs.”

DIVINE SPREADSHEET
New Objective Detected: Prove Combat Capability
Suggested Method: Reduce Hostile Slime Count
Alternative Method: Identify Root Cause of Slime Aggression
Projected Stabbing Efficiency: 12%
Projected Talking Efficiency: Unknown
Would you like to create a table?

Noah stared at the glowing blue rectangle that had appeared in the air above his plate.

I would like to create a resignation letter.

The ride west took them beyond Aurelia’s golden heart, past marble avenues and fountains where enchanted water shaped itself into lions, angels, and one extremely dramatic swan. The palace hill receded behind them, its towers shining in the morning sun like sharpened teeth.

Noah rode a white horse named Valor, who had been chosen, according to Alric, for his noble temperament.

Valor hated Noah.

The horse communicated this through frequent sighing, aggressive tail flicks, and a gait specifically designed to convert Noah’s spine into loose change. The jeweled sword slapped awkwardly against his hip with every step. Someone had also insisted he wear a cloak. It was white, heavy, and embroidered with Aurelia’s sunburst, which meant every puddle, branch, and passing insect immediately treated it as a challenge.

Sir Alric rode at the front, radiant in polished mail, his blond hair moving in the breeze as if it had negotiated its own wind contract. Four soldiers followed—real ones, judging by the way they relaxed when Noah greeted them and stiffened whenever Minister Veyr’s liveried observer looked their way.

The observer’s name was Clerk Remiel. He was narrow, pale, and carried a stack of parchment in a leather tube strapped to his back like ammunition.

“My function,” Remiel had told Noah, “is to record the hero’s deeds for official court use.”

“So if I fall off the horse, you write that down?”

Remiel had considered. “If it contributes to the arc of triumph.”

“Great.”

The city thinned into farmland. Golden wheat rippled beneath a bright blue sky. Windmills turned lazily on distant hills. Children stopped chasing chickens to point at Noah’s cloak. Farmers bowed as the riders passed, but their eyes lingered not on Noah’s holy sword, nor on Alric’s shining armor, but on the soldiers’ saddlebags.

Noah recognized that look. He had seen it in warehouses during budget cuts, in office break rooms after layoffs, in drivers waiting to hear if overtime had been approved.

Calculation. Anxiety. Hunger made polite.

At a crossroads, they passed a tax marker: a stone pillar carved with the royal sun and a list of tolls. Someone had scratched a crude little crown-wearing pig beneath it.

Noah glanced at one of the soldiers riding beside him, a freckled woman with a scar across her chin.

“Popular policy?” he asked quietly.

She snorted before she could stop herself. Then she remembered who he was and stared straight ahead. “Wouldn’t know, my lord.”

“Right. Total mystery.”

Alric slowed as the road dipped into lowland. The smell changed first. Palace gardens smelled of roses and magic-clean stone. The countryside had smelled of hay and horse sweat. But the western marsh road smelled green and damp, full of mud, reeds, stagnant water, and the faint rotten-egg tang of disturbed bog.

Only there was very little marsh.

The land opened into a broad flat basin where reeds should have swayed and pools should have reflected the sky. Instead, the ground lay scraped raw. Ditches cut across it in rigid lines. Half-built stone embankments jutted from the mud. Piles of uprooted reeds had been left to dry like corpses. Men in work clothes moved around with shovels near a newly built channel, though they stopped the moment they saw the royal escort.

Noah sat straighter despite Valor’s attempt to shift him into a ditch.

“I thought we were going to a marsh.”

“We are,” Alric said.

Noah looked at the dry, wounded basin. “Was it stolen?”

Clerk Remiel made a tiny choking noise.

Alric frowned. “The Crown authorized drainage improvements to expand productive farmland. A wise investment. More wheat, fewer mosquitoes.”

“And the slimes?”

“A regrettable nuisance.”

At the edge of the nearest hamlet, “nuisance” announced itself by oozing across the road.

The slime was roughly the size of a laundry basket and translucent green. Sunlight passed through its body, revealing suspended bubbles, bits of reed, and what looked suspiciously like a turnip. It moved with a wet shlorping sound, compressing and stretching over the dirt. Two darker spots floated near its front like eyes, though they might have been pebbles.

Behind it, three smaller slimes wobbled in a loose formation.

A goat stood atop a fence nearby, trembling with theatrical intensity.

“There!” cried Alric, drawing his sword. It made a beautiful ringing sound. “Hero, behold your foe.”

The slime paused.

Noah paused.

The soldiers shifted with the cautious boredom of people who had been ordered to treat jelly as an enemy combatant.

“It’s kind of cute,” Noah said.

“Do not be deceived,” Alric warned. “Slimes dissolve organic matter.”

“So do interns, given enough time.”

“Hero?”

“Nothing.”

Alric gestured grandly. “Draw the holy blade and strike.”

Noah put one hand on the hilt. The ruby winked up at him. He imagined himself sliding off Valor, swinging at the slime, missing, and being remembered forever in Remiel’s official account as The Hero Who Was Outmaneuvered By Pudding.

The slime made a noise.

It was not a roar. It was more like a bubble passing through thick soup.

“Blorp.”

The smaller slimes answered.

“Bloop.”

“Blemp.”

“Plip.”

Noah removed his hand from the sword.

“Quick question,” he said. “Has anyone tried talking to them?”

Alric stared. “They are slimes.”

“That’s not a no.”

“They do not possess language.”

“Do we know that, or is that just convenient?”

The freckled soldier coughed into her fist. Clerk Remiel’s quill scratched nervously.

Alric lowered his sword a fraction. “Hero, with respect, monsters are not citizens filing petitions.”

“In my limited experience,” Noah said, looking pointedly at the drained marsh, “most things become a problem after someone ignores where they live.”

He dismounted. It was not graceful. Valor took immediate advantage of his vulnerable position to step on the edge of his cloak. Noah staggered, caught himself, and pretended that had been part of the plan.

The slime wobbled backward.

Noah raised both hands, palms out. “Hey. Hi. I’m Noah. Not here to stab you unless you attempt murder, and even then I’d prefer to start with mediation.”

“Blorp,” said the slime.

DIVINE SPREADSHEET
Entity: Marsh Slime
Threat Level: Low
Moisture Content: 91.4%
Acidic Surface Enzyme: Mild
Stress Indicators: Elevated
Communication Potential: Present
Recommended Data Collection: Observe movement patterns, sound frequency, environmental triggers

Noah’s eyes widened. Communication potential.

“You can understand them?” Alric demanded.

“Not exactly.” Noah stepped closer. The slime shivered, its surface rippling. “But I can measure them.”

He crouched in the road. Mud soaked immediately into one knee of his borrowed hero trousers. Somewhere behind him, Remiel whispered a prayer for the dignity of the kingdom.

“Okay,” Noah murmured. “Let’s build a dataset.”

The blue grid unfolded in his vision, invisible to everyone else and yet more familiar than anything in Eldoria. Columns shimmered into being.

Specimen | Size | Color | Vocalization | Movement Direction | Proximity to Ditch | Reaction to Human | Reaction to Water

Noah picked up a pebble and tossed it gently—not at the slime, but toward a puddle near the roadside. The leading slime lurched after it, then stopped at the puddle and spread slightly, soaking up moisture with a soft sighing sound.

“Blorrrrp.”

The smaller slimes hurried after it, piling into the puddle until they resembled a stack of melting gelatin desserts.

“They’re dehydrated,” Noah said.

Alric looked offended. “They attacked a hamlet.”

“They dissolved fence posts because the posts were damp.”

The goat bleated from the fence.

“And traumatized livestock,” Alric added.

“The goat can file a claim.”

Noah stood and turned toward the workers by the drainage channel. They had been trying not to watch and failing. One man with a sunburned neck and muddy boots held a shovel like he might need it as a legal defense.

“You,” Noah called. “Who’s in charge here?”

The workers looked at one another with the universal terror of employees deciding who would be sacrificed to management. Finally, the sunburned man pointed toward the hamlet.

“Reeve Calder, my lord. In the storehouse.”

“Great. Let’s talk to Reeve Calder.”

Alric sheathed his sword with visible effort. “Hero, the quest is to subdue the slimes.”

“I’m working on it.”

“By interrogating civil servants?”

“Sir Alric, in my world, that’s how most monsters were created.”

The hamlet of Westmere huddled around a muddy square with thatched roofs, wattle fences, and a stone well wearing a wreath of wilted flowers. People peered from doorways as the royal escort entered. A little boy holding a wooden sword stared at Noah’s cloak with awe until he saw the mud on it, then with confusion.

The storehouse stood beside the square, broader than the cottages and freshly repaired. Its front doors had been painted with the royal sun. A smaller sign beneath read:

AUTHORIZED MARSHLAND RECLAMATION OFFICE
By Order of His Majesty’s Ministry of Prosperity
Unauthorized Mud Is Prohibited

Noah read the sign twice.

“Unauthorized mud,” he said.

The freckled soldier muttered, “Very dangerous stuff, mud.”

Clerk Remiel glared at her.

Reeve Calder emerged before they could knock. He was a round man in a green vest strained over his belly, with thinning hair plastered across his scalp and a smile that arrived half a second before his eyes decided whether to join it.

“Sir Alric! What an honor. And the Blessed Hero himself.” Calder bowed so low his chain of office swung forward and nearly hit him in the nose. “Westmere is saved.”

“Not yet,” Noah said. “I have questions.”

Calder’s smile stiffened. “Of course. Anything for the Crown.”

“The marsh was drained recently?”

“Improved,” Calder said quickly. “Reclaimed. Transformed from useless bog into fertile land. His Majesty’s wisdom made manifest in topsoil.”

“Who lived in the bog?”

“No one.”

Noah glanced toward the road, where the slimes had begun inching after them at a respectful distance, leaving wet trails in the dust.

“Try again.”

Calder’s eyes flicked to the slimes. His upper lip beaded with sweat. “Monsters do not possess land rights.”

“That also wasn’t what I asked.”

Alric shifted uneasily. “Hero, perhaps we should discuss—”

Noah lifted a hand. Something in his chest had gone tight. It was not heroic wrath. It was the dull, familiar rage of someone who had spent years watching bad decisions become emergencies that frontline workers were then blamed for.

He opened Divine Spreadsheet.

Numbers bloomed across the air, pulling from what he could see: acreage, ditch length, soil moisture, slime movement, fence damage, worker count, storehouse volume. The skill tugged at his awareness, asking for more inputs. Noah fed it questions.

LAND USE AUDIT: WESTMERE MARSH
Former Wetland Area: 312 acres
Current Usable Drained Land: 41 acres
Projected Crop Viability: Poor (soil acidity too high)
Drainage Maintenance Cost: High
Slime Habitat Loss: 86%
Slime-Hamlet Contact Increase: 430%
Fence Post Damage Cost: 6 silver, 3 copper
Royal Reclamation Grant Disbursed: 2,000 gold
Visible Infrastructure Value: 317 gold

Noah went very still.

“Two thousand gold,” he said softly.

Calder blinked. “My lord?”

“The reclamation grant. Two thousand gold was disbursed. I see about three hundred gold worth of work, and that’s if I’m very generous about the ditch quality.”

The square fell silent.

A chicken clucked once, realized the mood, and hurried away.

Clerk Remiel’s face had gone the color of paper. “Hero, official grant values are not—”

“Public?” Noah asked.

“Convenient,” Remiel whispered.

Calder’s smile collapsed into something flatter and more dangerous. “My lord hero has been in our world one day. Perhaps divine sight is not suited to the complexities of rural administration.”

Noah smiled back. He had smiled this way at vendors who claimed a missing shipment had been delivered to a warehouse that had burned down three months earlier.

“I love complexities.”

He turned toward the storehouse. “May I?”

“This is a restricted office.”

“Sir Alric?” Noah asked.

Alric looked between Noah, Calder, Remiel, the watching villagers, and the slimes now gathering at the edge of the square like damp spectators.

Honor fought politics on his handsome face. Honor, being louder and less subtle, won.

“Open the storehouse,” Alric said.

Calder’s jaw tightened. “As you command.”

Inside, the storehouse smelled of grain dust, damp wood, and panic. Sacks of seed were stacked against one wall. Tools hung from pegs. A locked chest sat beneath a desk cluttered with ledgers, wax seals, and an expensive-looking bottle of amber liquor.

Noah went straight to the ledgers.

“I’m just going to take a quick look.”

Calder lunged. “Those are confidential records!”

The freckled soldier stepped between them, hand on her sword. “Careful, Reeve.”

Noah flipped open the first ledger.

The numbers were beautiful.

Not honest. Not even close. But beautiful in the way a crime scene could be beautiful to a detective with exactly the right flashlight.

Rows of expenditures marched down the pages in neat ink: labor fees, stone transport, blessing permits, ditch inspections, anti-slime wards, emergency goat compensation. Many entries repeated in suspiciously round amounts. Several vendors had names like Western Marsh Solutions, Prosperity Channel Group, and Calder & Nephews Agricultural Enhancement Cooperative.