A damaged shield

There at the edge of your senses as you perceive what could only be something akin to a shield. Not a great one mind you, as this one appears to be a set of splintered boards haphazardly strapped together, but a shield none the less. It must have been discarded by adventurer's after it became too damaged for them to use, or after they got something better to use. One man's trash is another slime's treasure! Worlds like these revolve around equipment as much as the characters, and you seem to have found your first piece...

Wait. Your a slime. Will you even be able to use such a thing. It isn't like you haven't seen slimes use equipment before, but all the times you can think about are more cutesy representations of a fantasy world. You aren't sure if you want to be able to be able to equip it if it would me you are in a world like that. However, you need something. You have just started this new life as a slime and it will not be long until some a-hole adventurer comes to kill you in their effort to grind some levels.

With a sigh you bound over to the shield, landing beside it. With effort you wiggle yourself against its edge and begin attempting to lift it. the thing is taller than you and heavy to your current form. Still, somehow you manage to just barely prop it up thinking to yourself, "Well doesn't seem to have and auto equip feature. How am I going to make this..."

*A breeze hits the flat of the shield*

The **** of the wind compounds the weight of the wood and you feel yourself being pressed down, squished. You feel like a water balloon about to be burst under someone's foot. Your fears come to life, and you are filled with panic and the boards weight become to great for you and you feel your edges spit, the surface tension that was maintaining your form tears and you feel yourself pop. Your fear subsides though when your world doesn't go black yet again but instead you feel yourself wrapping around, almost as if hugging, the thing that crushed you. The sensation is strange, as your body envelopes the wooden construct, every fiber, every splinter you feel and thusly perceive every micrometer of its. In moments you feel yourself whole again, your outer edges coming together once more, but now with the shield firmly within your being... completely immobilizing you.

Great. At least before you could try to bounce for safety, but now you are just an engorged slime with visible I'll be it cruddy loot.

It is as these thoughts begin in your head that a new sensation takes. Literally bubbling up within you. Like Hydrogen peroxide on a fresh wound you feel a sting, as like an Alka-Seltzer the shield begins releasing a torrent of fizzing bubbles.

Was the shield a trap? Poisoned as an anti-slime thing like you might set out for cockroaches?

Too late now you didn't even know you could swallow the thing let alone thinking you might be able to spit it back out. No, this is your fate now. With the feeling of bubbles within you are sure you expand until you pop, and that will be that...

But you aren't expanding. In fact, you feel yourself condensing again, back to the size you were without the shield in you. Its dissolving! You feel joy for a moment. Wait, its dissolving! Joy is replaced with panic. Its your first piece of loot, how are you meant to use it if it dissolves to nothingness inside you? And, its gone. Panic is quenched with discontent, as you feel a sensation akin to a burp and realize that you are your original shape with no shield within you, though perhaps you might be ever so slightly larger.

*Ding*

Wait! You heard a chime! That means something happened. Did you level up? Dang-it without being able to properly see you can't see any stats so you are just stuck guessing on what that chime might have meant. Regardless, you have come a short while from where you started, and are beginning to wonder if you should continues following the pond's shore looking for a river to follow, or if you should venture into the fields opposite it.