Even a Slime Can Be a Nightmare
When people hear the word slime, they tend to picture a pushover monster for beginners to farm.
But that only holds when the slime is a certain size.
Face one the size of a building, and that notion vanishes without a trace.
"Ugh!"
No sooner had Do-yun rolled frantically across the ground than the slime came crashing down where he had been standing.
Kuuuung.
A massive boom rolled out across the clearing, yet no cloud of dust rose with it.
The slime's body absorbed everything it touched.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Having barely escaped the blast radius, Do-yun glanced back and spat a curse. He had never expected a slime to leap out of the pond.
"I'd only ever heard about this kind of thing as a rumor."
Do-yun brushed the dirt from his clothes and glared at the slime.
The dark energy pouring from mana stones did not stop at mutating plants and animals. In areas where the contamination ran deep, even inanimate matter sometimes transformed into self-aware monsters.
Slimes were one of the creatures born that way.
A monster that forms when liquid gathers around a mana stone.
The phenomenon was not exactly common. Even when erosion grew severe, it usually stopped at polluting the surroundings. But finding the reason this slime was special was not hard.
"I never thought two mana stones would fall into the pond."
The filthy water that made up the slime's body. Floating within it were not one mana stone, but two.
No wonder the pond water looked especially filthy.
As that thought crossed Do-yun's mind, the slime finished preparing its next attack. It compressed part of its body and fired a jet of water straight at him.
"Oh, shit!"
Do-yun flung himself sideways in shock. The stream shot out at a speed that looked almost childish, but one glance at what happened when it hit wiped the humor clean away.
Crrrack.
The tree that had stood where Do-yun had been twisted violently. A space once lush with greenery transformed in real time into a zone of death. He did not even want to imagine what would happen if that stuff touched his body.
"Would you quit shooting already!"
And the jets showed no sign of stopping. With a sickened look at the relentless streams chasing him, Do-yun dove behind a large boulder.
Sizzle.
An ominous sound was already coming from the rock, but he could at least buy a moment to breathe before it melted completely.
The matchup is terrible.
Taking down the slime itself would not be that hard. An ordinary warrior would struggle just to get close, but Do-yun had Shadow Step—a teleportation skill. If he closed the distance and blasted it with Bash, he could shatter the slime's form entirely.
But what comes after is the problem.
Unloading attacks was fine. What happened next was the issue. Every droplet that splashed during the assault was a threat. What if he accidentally got doused with a full bucket of that water? Do-yun might take irreparable damage and go down right there.
"Tsk."
Clicking his tongue lightly, Do-yun spotted a stone lying on the ground. If close combat was off the table, ranged attacks were all that remained. Looking at the fist-sized rock, he recalled what had happened on the fifth floor.
I smashed a golem's core with something like that.
Conveniently, golems and slimes worked in similar ways. The core embedded in a golem's body. The mana stones drifting inside a slime. The only difference was whether the power source sat on the outside or the inside. Destroy the mana stones, and a slime would lose its form and collapse just the same.
Taht.
Do-yun snatched up a nearby stone. He burst from behind the boulder and hurled it at the slime.
Bash (F)
The stone's speed was terrifying with the skill behind it. But the rock flying with such ferocity produced a disappointingly hollow impact.
Pong.
Far from damaging a mana stone, the rock barely sank halfway into the slime's body before losing all force. The water composing the slime was closer to acid; an ordinary stone corroded in an instant and left no trace.
"Figures that wouldn't work."
Do-yun smacked his lips in disappointment. It was just a plain rock with no special treatment. Hoping for more would have been a lie, but expecting too much from a regular stone was greedy.
"Ah, fine. Let's just do this."
Do-yun sighed and drew his sword. Every clever trick he had come up with had failed. All that remained was a head-on fight.
Scorching Sword (C)
The moment he ignited flames along the blade for full power, Do-yun could not help sensing something wrong.
Whoosh.
The black jet of water the slime had sent flying at him as he left cover—as it drew near, it turned into a clear, transparent stream.
"What?"
A pure jet of water with no trace of contamination. And it was not just the appearance that had changed. Unlike before, when the transparent water hit the ground, it did not alter the surroundings at all. As it behaved like ordinary water, Do-yun's gaze naturally drifted to the flames burning at his sword tip.
Is this because of that?
The change had begun the moment he used Scorching Sword. He glanced around on a hunch—and was stunned. The slime's body, which had been pitch-black enough to swallow light, had somehow turned a pale gray.
Does Scorching Sword's influence reach that far?
It was a sight he had not seen while fighting other challengers on the seventh floor. Speechless, Do-yun looked down at his sword.
"Come to think of it, I never used Scorching Sword on the eighth floor."
Muttering softly, Do-yun pictured a certain man's face. The Emperor of the Empire, Astoria. In his mindscape, the man had clearly created Sun Swordsmanship to fight the monsters pouring from the gates. A sword style forged solely to burn away evil. It made sense that it would show its true worth against monsters rather than people.
"That changes things."
A smile naturally touched Do-yun's lips. Unfortunately, he could not purify the slime in a single stroke. Unlike the jets that had left the slime's body, the water composing the body itself was under the mana stones' powerful influence.
"I wasn't hoping for that much anyway."
But for Do-yun, who had braced for a grueling fight, the situation felt like a gift from heaven.
Gloop.
Sensing Do-yun charging forward, the slime's body writhed. Realizing the contamination-spreading method no longer worked, it began changing form. But Do-yun's sword swung first.
Thuck.
The burning blade plunged into the slime's body with a terrible sound. Even submerged in water, the flame at the tip did not die. Instead, the heat pouring from the sword slowly evaporated the slime's moisture.
Sizzle.
Thick steam filled his vision. But even blinded, Do-yun's sword never stopped. Absolute Sight was showing him where the mana stones were.
"There you are!"
He thrust his sword roughly through the water, but felt nothing. The slime, sensing danger, had quickly shifted the mana stones' positions. A feat only a slime that freely controlled the liquid of its body could pull off.
At least a golem's core stays fixed in place.
Do-yun gritted his teeth and slashed this way and that, but each time the slime moved the mana stones to the opposite side. Halfway through, it even dangled a mana stone like bait, as if mocking him.
"You're pushing it."
Yet Do-yun stayed calm under the slime's taunting. He was not the only one being led around.
Afterglow (B)
A blade of mana erupted from midair and tore through the slime's interior. And that swing drove straight into the mana stone that had just moved to dodge Do-yun's sword.
Mana Stone destroyed.
Acquired 56p.
The moment the system window appeared, Do-yun stepped back.
Shhhisss.
When the steam settled, the slime looked pitiful. Its color was far paler than before, and it had shrunk to half its size. But Do-yun could not simply look pleased. Scorching Sword's brutal mana drain was starting to weigh on him.
Ten seconds left.
Even after diligently raising his mana stat, he could not maintain a C-rank skill for a full minute. Using other skills in between cut that time even shorter. He needed to finish this within ten seconds at least.
The moment Do-yun gripped his sword for the finishing blow—
Glurp.
The slime vaulted straight into the sky. Do-yun looked for cover against a falling attack—then realized too late as the slime came down far away. It had not jumped to attack. It was running.
"Hey—why are you running?!"
Just as Do-yun scrambled to give chase, the tattoo on his forearm began to glow on its own. A jet of water formed in midair and shot toward the slime. Do-yun could only gape at the sight.
Water Spirit Engraving
The tattoo on his forearm was none other than the dwelling place of a water spirit. What good was a water attack against a slime made of water? He was about to scowl at the useless "help" when—
Bubble-bubble.
Bubbles began rising from the slime where the water had struck. Looking at the slime as if it could no longer control its own body, he understood.
"Ah."
The only liquid a slime could control was liquid contaminated by mana stones. It needed time to claim newly introduced water as its own. Do-yun did not miss the golden opportunity. He swung his sword in a flash.
Bash (F)
And toward the now-sluggish slime, Do-yun's sword came screaming in with tremendous force.
BOOOOM!
With a sound like a balloon bursting, the slime's body exploded. Then a series of notifications appeared before Do-yun's eyes.
Contaminated Slime defeated!
Acquired 84p.
Mana Stone destroyed.
Acquired 53p.
Do-yun roughly wiped the moisture from his face and sheathed his sword. Born from two mana stones combined, the points the slime provided were quite generous.
"Thanks for the help."
Do-yun slowly stroked the tattoo on his forearm. He had privately treated the spirit as nothing more than a mana-stone detector. He never expected it to help in combat. His reason for not factoring the spirit's aid into his plans was simple.
As an attack method, its firepower is just too weak.
It only worked this time because the enemy was a special case like a slime. Otherwise the water spirit's attack would not have done any real damage.
From here on, though, things will be different.
Do-yun strode forward. He finally stopped at the large hollow that had held the pond's water. Earlier he had half given up because it was full of filthy water, but now that all the pond water had become the slime, the situation had changed.
"There it is."
On the bottom of the dried-up pond, exposed enough to show the dirt, a single conch shell sat embedded. At a glance it looked like a meaningless object, but Do-yun knew what potential that shell held.
That's the material that can evolve a spirit.
It was time to turn the spirits he had only been using for mana-stone detection into something actually useful.