The Approaching Tentacle Threat
“Ugh….”
In the nurse’s office, Lua huddled under the desk, face buried between her knees, and let out a low groan.
It was all because of the mess she had made at that dinner in the shopping mall last time.
I must have lost my mind.
Petting Himari, Juju, and Sua without restraint—going so far as skinship that could only be called affection. If only she could forget it. Instead, every mortifying second of her own behavior was burned into her memory. Days had passed, and the shame still refused to fade. So Lua had been deliberately avoiding all three of them.
After doing something like that, how am I supposed to look them in the face…
Hiding until everyone forgot was the best plan. Fortunately, she had already stocked the underside of the desk with everything she needed to survive the day: Scotch candy, convenience-store sandwiches for meals, her phone, and even a pillow. Perfect.
“Haa… what a life….”
She muttered the words and settled onto the pillow—
—Clack!
“Teach!”
Barely thirty seconds after she had sworn to avoid them, Juju walked into the nurse’s office.
“Huh? Not here?”
“Hup…!”
Lua clamped both hands over her mouth and played dead. Juju’s footsteps drew slowly closer.
“Hmm… I really thought you’d be here… You didn’t even show up for morning training today….”
—Tap. Tap.
Not here, not here…!
“Hmm.”
Juju stopped right in front of the desk.
“Guess you’re really not here after all….”
Just when Lua thought she had given up—
—Rattle!
“?!”
The thing she had been leaning against suddenly vanished.
Juju had lifted the entire desk clean off the floor.
“Eek!”
“Hehe. I knew you were under there the whole time. Come on out already.”
The raw strength of a tank who traded punches with monsters was nothing to take lightly. Lua had never imagined she would be found like this.
“H-how did you know….”
“Sua unnie tipped me off before I came. Said there was a good chance you’d be here.”
Her behavioral patterns had been completely read. Lua’s defeat was absolute.
“Uuuu….”
In the end, Lua crawled out from under the desk like a caterpillar. Juju set the desk back down and brushed the dust from Lua’s white coat.
“Why were you hiding?”
“Th-that’s….”
“Is it because of what happened back then?”
Juju narrowed her eyes and smiled like she already knew everything. Lua’s face went red all over again.
“It’s fine! You were super cute!”
Juju gave Lua’s cheek a light squeeze. The soft give of it must have felt nice, because she kept kneading it for quite a while.
“Th-that’s exactly the kind of thing I was hiding from….”
“Hehe.”
Without warning, Juju slid one arm behind Lua’s back and the other under her knees and scooped her up—the classic princess carry. With their faces suddenly so close, Lua turned her head away in automatic embarrassment.
“Kyaa!”
“Come on, we’ve gotta go. They said class can’t start until we bring you, so hurry up and bring her, they said.”
“Safety officer duty again?”
“Yep.”
“I can walk by myself!”
“Nope! They said to get you there fast!”
And so Lua left the nurse’s office still cradled in Juju’s arms.
Somehow… she feels bolder than before….
The class that supposedly needed Lua was a monster studies session for the first- and second-year advanced classes and the special class, held in the gymnasium.
Today’s special feature was a close-up observation of a monster captured from an overflowed gate. The danger level was fairly high, which only made the students more excited.
Lua’s job was simple enough: wear a “safety officer” armband and keep watch over the class in case of emergency.
“…All right. That covers the theory. Let’s move on to the part you’ve all been waiting for.”
The monster studies teacher was a former researcher. Not an ex-hunter—just an ordinary person who had spent his career in a lab—and he looked every bit as frail as that background suggested.
When he approached a rattling iron cage draped in a white cloth, a current of tension ran through the students gathered around it.
“This is a C-class monster: the Tentacle Slime.”
—Whoosh!
He pulled the cloth away, and the creature inside the cage was revealed. A massive green slime big enough to swallow one or two people whole, with grotesque tentacle stalks sprouting from its body. It thrashed against the bars as if the cage were too cramped.
Ah. I’ve seen this a lot in a certain genre of fan works….
Looking at the slime brought the memory back. This class existed as a loading-screen illustration—students, the slime in its cage, the teacher explaining. Because of how it looked, the thing had only appeared in a single official illustration, yet it showed up constantly in adult fan creations.
Seeing it in person was oddly fascinating. Lua stood still and studied the slime from every angle.
“Teacher.”
That was when Himari, mixed in among the students, came over to her. Weapons were permitted for emergencies, so a sword hung at her hip.
“Ah, y-yeah….”
“It’s all right.”
“Hm?”
Without warning, Himari took Lua’s hand and held it tight. Warmth passed from palm to palm.
“I’m here. You don’t need to be afraid.”
“…Th-thanks.”
Apparently Himari had read her stillness as fear.
It’s warm.
She had no intention of rejecting Himari’s consideration, so Lua didn’t bother correcting her and simply let it be.
“The Tentacle Slime’s behavioral pattern is….”
The teacher’s explanation continued. Lua stifled a small yawn and glanced around. Juju, gauntlets already on, had drifted over nearby as well.
“It targets the weakest person in a party. That usually means the healer, which makes things rather troublesome.”
“…….”
“As you can see, it takes little damage from close-range physical attacks and is vulnerable to a mage’s long-range attack skills. Therefore, when clearing swamp-ecology gates, hunters in the mage position are effectively required to equip attack skills, and….”
Listening to the teacher, a thought suddenly surfaced.
Come to think of it, I still need to fill the mage position.
It was the last open slot in Lua’s party. She had a few candidates in mind, but none of them felt quite right when it came time to choose. She needed someone who could provide proper support tailored to Juju’s and Himari’s attack styles.
And someone with a rotten personality like Lee Hwiseong is definitely out.
“Hey! Teacher! Look over there! The slime’s tentacles are—!”
Finishing the party roster wouldn’t be the end of it, either. They would still need practice and training until their coordination clicked.
Midterms for the first semester were already over, which meant roughly a quarter of the time allotted to Lua had already slipped away.
“Something feels off.”
“That’s the lock!”
She had decided Juju and Himari would start training first, but getting a mage on board as soon as possible would be better. Syncing with three people whose chemistry was already complete would be harder than building that chemistry together from the start.
“Uh—uhh! It’s open!”
“Teach, is this actually okay?”
—Whoosh!
“Kyaaaa!”
A student’s scream snapped Lua back to reality.
“Huh?”
She lifted her head—and saw a single tentacle of the slime flying straight toward her.
Her blood ran cold.
“Teacher!”
But the tip of the tentacle never reached her. Himari shoved Lua aside, and the two of them tumbled across the floor together.
—CRASH!
The tentacle smashed into the gymnasium floor and recoiled.
Huh?
Lua’s heart plummeted into her stomach.
There was no event like this.
And that attack was only the beginning.
“I-it’s out!”
“I knew something felt wrong from the start!”
The slime that had forced the lock open came writhing out of the cage.
“Ah! Ah—everyone, back away!”
The teacher who had been giving the lecture panicked and retreated to the edge of the gymnasium.
At the same time, another teacher wearing a “safety officer” armband just like Lua’s stepped forward—a woman who filled the mage position.
“All right, all right. This is exactly why safety officers are here. Everyone, please stay calm.”
She drew a staff—the very symbol of a mage—and activated a skill with full confidence.
“Lightning Bolt.”
—Crackle-zap!
Forks of lightning dropped from the air and struck the slime dead-on. The students who saw it let out a collective breath of relief. A Felix Academy teacher handling a single C-class monster should have been nothing.
But something strange happened.
Something no one present—not even Lua—could understand.
—Squish.
The slime hit by Lightning Bolt did not shatter or scatter. It was completely unharmed.
Worse, it held the crackling strands of lightning inside its squishy body.
“Huh?”
The safety-officer teacher stared, eyes wide, as if she could not believe what she was seeing.
That was her mistake.
—Whoosh!
A swinging tentacle slammed into her and hurled her body all the way into the gymnasium wall. It wasn’t just physical force—the lightning she had poured into it rode along with the blow.
“Kyaaaa!”
The moment the teacher they had trusted went down, the gymnasium dissolved into chaos.
Students stampeded for the exits while the slime flailed its tentacles wildly in every direction.
A few tried to fight back with attack skills, but every skill was simply absorbed.
“Teacher!”
Himari scooped Lua up the way Juju had earlier and sprinted for the doorway.
That is not a C-class slime.
From Himari’s arms, Lua glared at the creature. No low-tier monster absorbed attacks and turned them right back around.
B-class at the very least.
Whether the teacher who brought it had made a mistake, or the people who captured it had, someone had swapped the slime. That much was certain.
Diagnosis (Lv.2) has been activated.
Target's Current State:Considerable rage, Electric Charge (8 remaining)
Eight remaining meant it could still deliver lightning-charged attacks eight more times. Lua opened her mouth to shout the information—
“O-out of the way!”
“Kh!”
A large second-year boy barreled past Himari as she ran for the exit. The impact knocked Lua from her arms, and Himari went sprawling hard.
“Ow!”
Lua tumbled across the floor as well, of course.
“T-Teacher…!”
Himari tried to rush back to her, but fighting upstream against a tide of students fleeing for their lives was nearly impossible. Juju was in the same position.
—Whoosh!
The slime always went for the weak first.
A single lightning-charged tentacle shot out, aimed dead at Lua.
I’m going to die…!
“Hngh!”
On pure instinct, Lua threw both arms over her head and curled into a ball. She clenched her teeth against the pain she expected—
—but the pain never came.
“……?”
She slowly opened her eyes and looked up. A girl’s back filled her vision. The girl had stepped in front of her and blocked the tentacle.
—Crackle….
“Ow… that actually stings a bit….”
The slime’s lightning punched through the barrier she had raised and reached her body, but she did not give ground.
She only glanced back at Lua behind her.
“Unnie, are you okay?”
“Sua…!”
