Slime Immortal.

Chapter 27 The Petrified Man
The sky is grey.

The cold raindrops hit the thin windows of the cheap hotel in Iron Boot Town, making a dull and annoying sound.

In the unsounded room, the air was filled with the smell of cheap tobacco and damp wood...

And endless quarrels.

"You really have to go? That...that swamp full of monsters?!"

Laura's voice rose with anger and fear. She hugged the two frightened children tightly. The boy hid behind his mother's skirt and the girl sobbed softly.

"Arno Belmont! Look at you! Look at us! You are a descendant of knights, not a lowly peddler! And you are not meant to be fed to lizards!"

Arno had his back to her, stuffing the last few pieces of rough warm clothing into a badly worn leather backpack, his movements somewhat unnoticeably stiff.

"Lola, the 'Knight's Descendants' can't fill their stomachs, let alone pay for the tuition at Thor Arcane Academy."

His voice was low and filled with suppressed fatigue, and he didn't look back at her.

"Adventurers in Ironshoe Town say that the Lizardmen along the Reed River are in desperate need of grain and salt after the spring, and the price... is three times what it is in the kingdom. One trip, just this one, will be enough to keep you safe for a few years."

"Safe? How can we be safe if you're dead?!"

Laura rushed to him, her long golden hair a little messy, her blue eyes filled with tears, no longer the admiration of the past, but deep disappointment and confusion.

"You could have found a respectable job! Even guarding the city gates! Why here? Why now? Those demihumans... they're barbaric, filthy, and untrustworthy! Everyone in the kingdom knows it!"

Arno turned around suddenly, and his light brown eyes flashed with pain and stubbornness under his dark chestnut hair.

"Respectable? The copper coins for guarding the city gate are not even enough for rent! Laura, be realistic! I need money! A lot of money! So that you and the children don't have to worry about others' opinions in the future!"

The lingering, unconscious tone of command in his voice stung Laura.

"Look at people's faces? We are looking at your crazy face right now!"

Laura picked up her little daughter and pulled up her son, her voice cold and resolute.

"Okay, go! Go to your swamp and deal with those monsters! Trade your 'noble' life in Belmont for dirty gold coins! Children, let's go! Go back to Grandma Havenstone's house! Let your father be his...big businessman!"

She uttered the last few words almost through gritted teeth.

"Lola! Wait!" Arno stretched out his hand to stop her.

"boom--!"

The door was slammed shut, and the loud noise caused dust to fall from the wall.

Arno's outstretched hand froze in mid-air. Listening to his wife's suppressed crying and the child's confused questions quickly fading away outside the door, he seemed to have been drained of all his strength. He leaned his back against the cold wall and slowly slid down to sit on the dirty floor.

He lowered his head and raised his right hand tremblingly.

In the dim light of the oil lamp, he saw that the skin at the joints of his little finger and ring finger was an unnatural grayish-white color, like inferior marble, and felt stiff and numb.

This is not dirt, it is the erosion of petrification.

It was like a demon lurking in his blood, gnawing away at his life bit by bit, and also gnawing away at his dignity as a husband, a father, and even as a "human being."

He clenched his fists tightly, and his stiff knuckles felt a pricking pain.

"…for you…I must go…"

He whispered hoarsely to the empty, cold room, to the demonic spreading speckle.

A suffocating feeling of darkness and dampness came over me.

The picture suddenly shattered!

"Uh...ho..."

Arno Belmonte suddenly opened his eyes, gasped, and a roar like a broken bellows came from his throat.

The blinding white light instantly made him burst into tears, and he subconsciously raised his hands to block them.

"Damn sunshine!"

He cursed in his heart, feeling that the light was like countless needles piercing his sore eyeballs.

Every time I woke up from that nightmare of broken separation, it was accompanied by this disgusting physical reaction and deeper mental exhaustion.

This nightmare, along with that damned curse within him, harassed him more and more frequently, like a maggot clinging to his bone. He felt the familiar stiffness in his knuckles.

He turned his wrist with difficulty, and the grayish-white spots were clearly visible at the base of his fingers, like an ugly brand.

The "glory" of the Belmont family - petrification.

A slow and cruel death sentence that first deprives the freedom of movement, then freezes the breath, and finally turns a person into a silent tombstone.

The "statues" in his family history, covered with white cloth and with strange postures, were his deepest fear in childhood.

And now, this fear is happening to him.

He, Arno Belmont, once a knight's squire, a devout believer in the god Cardos, a warrior who wielded a sword to guard the border... but now he was like a lowly thief, huddled in the rotten leaves and cold mud of the swamp forest, emitting the stench of mud and fear.

All this was done to abandon the "noble glory" that had long been worthless, and like the worst peddler, he bet all his belongings and the little life he had left, trying to cross the dangerous reed river bank to trade with those green-skinned and scaly subhumans.

Just so that he could leave enough money for Laura and the children to survive before he completely turned into stone, so that they could stay away from poverty and the children might have the opportunity to receive a decent education instead of bearing the double shame of being a bankrupt noble and a descendant of a "stone man".

"What a... irony..."

He pulled the corners of his mouth in self-mockery, moving the dried mud on his face, then struggled to sit up, leaning his back against a huge dead tree that exuded a rotten smell.

Looking around, the dense treetops blocked most of the sky, casting mottled and strange light and shadows.

The air was so humid that you could squeeze water out of it, mixed with the faint sweet and fishy smell of rotting plants, fermenting mud, and some kind of animal corpse, which was nauseating.

Silence, a voyeuristic silence enveloped everything, with only the occasional short and sharp chirping of unknown insects.

Even though they managed to escape from the fight with the Lizardman tribe, they were lost and could only flee here in a panic.

The once respectable businessman's coat was torn and tattered, covered in mud and dark brown stains.

The expensive leather boots were stuck in the mud and one of them was missing.

He felt around his waist; the purse containing his hopes was still there, but there were only a few cold silver coins and a few copper coins inside.

As for the pack animals loaded with grain and salt?

Long gone.

Those damned, demon-worshipping grey-scale bastards!

They were like evil spirits crawling out from the depths of a swamp, incredibly strong, with gray scales so hard that they could deflect swords!
The veteran adventurers he hired from Ironshoe Town, who boasted so much on a daily basis, were torn to pieces like paper by the sharp claws of those corrupted monsters!

The shrill screams, the muffled sound of bones breaking, the touch of warm blood splashing on the face... and those turbid, crazy, and irrational dark red eyes!

Fear coiled around his heart like an icy snake.

How did he escape? I can't remember.

I only remember that before the captain of the guard died, he pushed him and yelled, "Run!"

Then, relying on his remaining warrior instincts, he crawled into the even more deadly jungle.

Heavy rain... yes, that damn heavy rain that lasted for two days and seemed to be drowning the whole world!
The rain was icy cold, washing away the blood stains on his body, bringing with it a biting chill and excruciating pain that nearly paralyzed him—every time the petrification occurred on a rainstorm with active magic, the erosion would be accelerated.

He trudged through the mud and despair like a zombie, and finally collapsed here exhausted, without being discovered and eaten by the monsters in the forest.

Perhaps those monsters also find a "thing" that exudes the smell of death and stone unattractive?
Two days... He was lost like a headless fly in this damn swamp forest full of green-skinned barbarians and unknown dangers for two days!

"Kardos, above..."

Arno panted, trying to muster a bit of warrior's courage.

He fumbled around and pulled out a dagger that was barely intact from the lining of his tattered coat.

The touch of cold metal brings a slight sense of security.

He must find a way out, find the way back to Iron Boot Town, or... find any chance of survival.

For Lola's sake, for the children's sake, he couldn't die here and become a pile of unclaimed bones in the swamp... or stones.

He spat out the fishy taste of mud in his mouth in disgust and was struggling to stand up when he heard the mournful cry of prey being shot in the dark forest.

It's those damn scaly beasts again!
Arno cursed, but was extremely frightened in his heart. He frantically looked for a direction, chose to leave his fate to the god of luck, and plunged into the dark forest.

(End of this chapter)