With all of our preparations done, we decide to tackle the roaming boss first. I keep an eye on it as we make our way to a room relatively close to the current position of the meandering Gluttony Slime. We slay all the weaker slimes up to and in the room, then begin erecting walls and pillars of ice to make defensive positions. Esofy and Chyzu give out spell cloths from the storage devices and do a last-minute check on everything.

"Tulalo, got everything ready?" Esofy asks.

"Yes, I just need to channel this spell, right? I'll be using a lot of my mana, so I won't be able to do any other big attacks or last very long if this fight gets drawn out."

"Aly, you have everything you need?" Esofy addresses me.

I start channeling my spear. "I'll try not to accidentally kill this one," I say with a confident smile and assume my spear master role, shifting my clone's illusory armor to fit the aesthetic. I'll never be as good as Esofy; [Acting] can partially mitigate my lack of training but it won’t actually make me good at spear combat, it's pretty much bringing me up to what my past life’s history might consider as ‘militia levels’. Not to mention [Acting] doesn't do anything about my stat distribution, so even if it did make me technically good at combat I wouldn’t have the stats to back it up.

"Chyzu?"

Chyzu gives a thumbs up.

"Kadona?"

"I am ready," Kadona readies the spell cloth.

"Uloru?"

Uloru gives her hammer a few test swings. "Just hit it after it's frozen, right?"

"You need to tighten your cloak; you could trip," Kadona says to her.

I made everyone acid-resistant, skin-tight suits to prepare for this fight, but Uloru's mental-resistance cloak is loose and dragging on the floor.

"Klora?" Esofy asks after Uloru corrects her clothes.

Klora plucks her bowstring a couple of times and knocks an arrow.

"Tana?"

"Ready!" Tana raises the backup spell cloth in case we need the extra power.

"Jowaru?"

Jowaru lifts her battle axe, "Use my metal as a last resort shield, right?"

"I'd prefer if we don't smash the core to pieces, we might be able to make something amazing out of it," I say.

"We hit it with all we have, we’re not strong enough to think about holding back. That said, it is our goal to get the best materials we can, so that we can go even deeper in this place." Esofy nods in my direction, "Go get its attention."

I leave another clone behind me, piloted by my second mind that is charging up another spear. My first clone is running through the halls, invisible, passing the weaker slimes unnoticed and charging down the roaming mass of slime. I reveal the clone just as the spear hits and the boss immediately envelopes both the clone and spear. I notice that the spear’s mana is burning out faster than usual.

"It's eating mana!" I tell the others with my second clone. Through my first clone, which has almost been fully eaten by the Gluttony Slime, I summon a Familiar that leads the boss back to the group. Despite being partly eaten, my spear attack still burned through what looks like thirty percent of its vitality.

A squelching sound can be heard as the boss approaches and enters the room. Immediately, Kadona blasts the slime with the charged ice cloth, freezing about half of it. Tana, catching the Gluttony Slime in a crossfire, uses his spell cloth as well, although he is clearly panicking slightly and so his angle has some overlap with already-frozen parts, leaving about a fifth unfrozen.

Uloru jumps and, with a yell, smashes the slime with her massive hammer, revealing the core. I leap forward with my beauty spear and stab it at the same time as Tulalo's water blasts the core and washes away the remaining slime. The core drops to the ground, empty of vitality.

"It's dead," Uloru announces, her [Life Sense] letting her know that it died; not that she needed to say, the notification informed us of that.

Ting! Your party has killed a Gluttony Slime (Grand), level 305 Predatory Hunter (Grand), extra experience has been rewarded for being under-leveled.

A treasure chest appears next to the core of the boss. By now, I have learned that the treasure chests have mediocre loot and that the crafting prospects of the monster materials are way better. I suppose it makes sense, it's a lot harder to keep the materials intact while defeating the monsters.

"I didn't even get to do anything!" Irela complains. "You didn't even ask if I was ready!"

"You were asleep during the planning, and we didn't want to wake you," Tulalo says.

"We rest to refill our mana here; then we move on." Esofy says.

Irela pouts, folding her arms under her bosom.

"I reached my next class evolution! Level two hundred! Ohh! Major-tier!" Chyzu excitedly jumps up and down and attempts to hug me, falling through my clone in the process.

"I reached level two hundred too; well, I got it when we defeated the Hive Slime, but there have been too many things going on since then," Kadona says.

"I am very close to two hundred, at one ninety-eight right now." Jowaru says.

"One ninety-five," Esofy says and opens the treasure chest.

A white fist-sized orb that boosts ice manipulation, something that my Aydomr pearl does, and a true steel black helmet, enchanted to see in the dark.

RNG sucks! Loot boxes sucks! What's with these drops, they are all so bad! I suppose I could use the orb and my pearl to make something useful at the very least.

Looking at the Gluttony Slime's materials, I hope for something better.

Core of Mana Devouring: The core of a Gluttony Slime; can absorb spells and mana.

Battery 5000

Not bad. Absorb and store mana for later use.

I am reminded of my sisters’ Kyhosa and its ‘absorb and discharge’ function. I probably won't lay claim to this one.

Acidic Slime: This slime is full of a potent acid able to eat through almost anything.

This could be used as a weapon. Throw flasks of this at an enemy and watch them melt into a puddle.

As we rest, Kadona and Chyzu evolve their classes. I watch their mana signatures warp and become blurry as the changes take place.

They give us an overview of their improved and new abilities. Chyzu's water jet became more powerful, a quick test showing that it can now easily carve through the stone walls at close range. She can widen the water jet too; she pressure washes an area of the floor clean of slime as part of the experiments. Her skill that she used to turn the arena’s sand to mud back during the tournament became [Liquefaction], a skill that can easily make quicksand. It doesn't work in the ruins because the floor is solid stone, but it should work with soil, sand and other loose ground. She also gained a water whip ability that can restrain others; the range our tests find it to have is surprising considering that it’s a completely new skill that showed up to fill the empty skill slot left by merging of two others.

Kadona, in contrast, simply tells us that her ability to swing her weapon improved and that her attempts to decapitate the Alpha Wolf paid off. I find it strange, as it was Uloru who chopped the thing’s head off, but maybe it was the effort that mattered?

In addition to the class evolution of Kadona and Chyzu, Tana announces that he obtained a new active class skill, an ability to drain vitality from others with a touch. He’s almost like a vitality vampire now, one that uses fire.

Once we’re all familiar with what’s changed for Chyzu and Kadona, we go to where I killed the Blast Slime, so that we can retrieve its material. We have to take a longer route, however, as the most direct path has a large trap that we can't disarm or avoid.

Blast Core: The core of a Blast Slime. Increases the power of any explosion-type abilities.

This could be really good for my [Fairy Explosion], but I can't just call dibs on everything we loot. I already have a claim on the wolf fangs and the Mind Core. The core that I hope we’ll get from the Mana Slime will probably be amazing, so I want to see what it can do before making any new claims.

Blast Slime: This slime is highly volatile and can be ignited with a flame.

I wonder if this can be used in place of gunpowder? Even if it can, we lack the quantity to really do anything with it. Still, this might imply that some industry can be fueled by monster farms.

After collecting the Blast Slime’s materials and spending some more time running through tunnels, we tackle the Fortress Slime. I charge up my spear, noticing that this boss has fully recovered from my last attack. The group dons their force-dispersal gambeson armor to help defend against the attacks; it should block all physical damage, in theory.

Force-dispersal armor, at least the way I made it, works by distributing incoming force evenly over the entire structure of the material, rendering the wearer effectively immune to forces below a certain threshold and requiring an attack powerful enough to overwhelm the collective durability of the entire armor. As such, the more material there is – the bulkier the armor is – the better the defenses work, although this is offset by, obviously, the agility and dexterity reduction from wearing thick, bulky armor. In addition, the enchantment that spreads incoming force is limited to the speed of sound travelling through the material, meaning that some amount of damage will always remain at the impact point, reducing the overall durability of the whole thing slightly with every attack sustained. My solution to this was to make multiple, disconnected layers but, since there’s an upper limit on how bulky I make it, that leaves each layer relatively weak individually.

The slime quickly takes notice of the others and starts jutting out slimy spikes at them, pulling the spikes back into its mass and extruding more in a rapid cycle. Jowaru takes the brunt of the attacks, grunting and being pushed against the wall before even taking two steps into the room. Her metal shield is continually battered and dented and reformed by her [Metal Manipulation]. Tana sprays his vitality-draining flame over the spikes as they strike Jowaru's shield, covering the boss in flames when it pulls them back.

I turn my clone invisible, rush into the room and stab the boss with a fully charged spear, burning about a sixth of its vitality. The Fortress Slime wiggles in a fury and juts out spikes everywhere, lessening the onslaught against Jowaru.

I wait in a corner with another charged spear while the group slowly whittles the boss's health down; they’re peeking around the corner of the archway to launch single attacks as Jowaru’s shield takes hit after hit. Irela’s attacks just bounce off the metal slime, so she helps with defensive duty.

Esofy tentatively steps into the room and dodges a metal spike by a hairsbreadth. She swings her sword to cut one of the slime spikes, but a metallic clang rings out and her attacks result in little or no damage. Esofy tries a few times, before giving up switching to giving orders instead.

"Tulalo, charge your spell and hit it as hard as you can. Tana, keep your flame on it; it seems to be working. Chyzu, get up close – if you can do that safely – and try to cut the spikes with your water jet."

As the group continues their battle, I spot the Gold Slime wandering nearby! I leave the room and run it down, overkilling the poor thing with my charged spear. A treasure chest appears next to the remains, a beautiful thing made with gold essence gems and ‘true gold’ – gold saturated with gold essence. I simply wanted the materials, eager to study a gold essence attuned monster; I wasn't expecting a treasure chest to appear like they did when killing bosses.

As I can't gather the materials with my clone I return to the group. Klora is just standing there, not knowing what to do; her attacks have been just as useless as Esofy’s. Uloru and Kadona are discussing ways to try and peirce or cut through the metallic slime.

Still, even with only Tana actually attacking, the group has managed to whittle down the boss's vitality by what seems to be three percent in about ten minutes; a slow, yet steady pace. I wave to Klora to get her attention.

"Come with me. I found something that you can do," I lead Klora over to the Gold Slime to collect the materials, examining them as she picks them up.

Gold Core: Crystalline gold essence. Glows when near gold, glows brighter with more gold nearby.

Gold Slime: A slime filled with gold essence. Infuses metals.

So with the gold slime, we can make true gold or gold steel or whatever, and the core is a metal detector that only detects gold.

I was hoping for something a bit cooler and more esoteric. Gold has some interesting properties; it’s a good conductor of electricity and heat – although I don’t know if the same is true for mana saturated gold as that can give it different properties – it’s denser than lead despite not being very hard, it's inert so it doesn't corrode and it is one of the few ‘heavy’ metals that don't poison people. Sure, the metal itself has value; the Runalymo don’t use it as currency, but it’s often a great choice for jewellery – but there has to be a better trait that the material could have assumed? That’s without assuming that the traits and skills the monster had influenced the material... or maybe they did? Perhaps naturally occurring Gold Slimes live in gold mines and use some skill to sniff out gold to… eat?

Slightly disappointing corpse examination complete, we open the gilded chest. Surely such a grand chest has something good in it, right, even if it’s relatively small? Inside sits a small black oval that fits in Klora’s palm and a black starry orb, much like the dungeon waystones.

Dungeon Waystone Key (Major): Attunes to dungeon waystone and allows teleportation to that location; can bring anyone who is touching the user.

This. This! This is what we've been wanting all along! With this, we can teleport to each of the waystones on the ruin floors and the dens and the dungeon entrance; this is huge!

Dungeon Waystone (Major): A waystone to anchor a teleportation location of the dungeon waystone key.

This find was easily worth all the trash chests before. Can this work outside the dungeon? If anything, it gives us a way to teleport right into the main camp. We need to find more of these Gold Slimes pronto!

We run back to the group in high spirits, Klora holding the chest and the goods inside. The group is still battling the boss. Fuck it, if they haven't found a way to kill it by now, then I will! To start with, they are being overly cautious; they did take a few hits, but the armor did its job. Now they need to be a little bit bolder and use more powerful attacks, otherwise we'll be here all day.

"You guys have only lowered its vitality by a tenth," I complain as I start charging my spear. "Piercing-type skills probably work best against monsters like these." Not to mention that Tana's vitality-draining flames have been doing most of the work.

Once the spear is fully charged, I charge down the boss and stab into it again while casting an invisibility spell on Esofy, Kadona, and Uloru, all of whom couldn't do much against the fluid metal.

"Focus your attacks! Uloru, drive Kadona's sword into it! I’ll take some of the boss’s focus away from you, trust in your abilities to dodge its attacks! Alysara, give us a speed boost!" As if my eagerness breathed some life into the stagnant battle, Esofy gives out more orders, adapting to the situation.

Kadona rushes in without hesitation and stabs her giant sword at the metal slime, making a small dent. Not even a second later, Uloru slams her hammer onto the sword’s pommel, driving it in like a nail. It is a good effort, but the slime is shifting rapidly, so the sword will miss the core.

Both Kadona and Uloru take some hits, their armor taking the brunt of the force, while Esofy just dodges the strikes aimed at her. I notice with my [Sense Mana] that the mana silk cloth tears in some places.

I strike the slime again, using the last of my mana and eliciting a dozen strikes upon my immaterial clone. I shouldn't have used a full charge on the Gold Slime; I got distracted and didn't realize just how bad of a match-up this boss is against most of our group. Kadona is on the defensive while Uloru slams her hammer down onto the sword again, driving it further in; clearly nobody else has noticed that the core has shifted. Uloru is struck again and I hear some tearing from her armor as the first layer is torn to shreds, the accumulated damage exceeding what it can endure.

"Physical attacks aren't working, should we retreat?" I suggest.

"No," Esofy says, narrowly dodging a spike covered in Tana’s flame, "I may not be able to hurt it, but I can take some heat off Jowaru, and this is leveling up my [Battle Movements]." The skill she’s talking about is a variant of [Agile Movements], just like my [Graceful Movements].

"Same," Kadona pants, taking a grazing hit. Tana's flames aren't spreading to her, either by his direct control or some sort of friend or foe property of the flames.

"I still have two layers of my armor, I can continue," Uloru says, mimicking her master’s determination.

"Ready!" Tulalo finally calls out that her spell is charged and immediately shoots a powerful jet of water, cutting the slime almost in two and revealing the core. Unfortunately nobody is in a position to strike and the damage is quickly covered up as if it had never happened. Our one window of opportunity is wasted due to our inexperience and lack of proper teamwork, problems we'll need to reflect on and rectify.

Thirty minutes pass and in that time the warriors have to retreat, either having too much damage stacked up on their or simply getting too tired from dodging all the attacks. Uloru is on her last layer of armour and Kadona lost her first, while Esofy has somehow avoided getting hit at all and is only tired. However, Tana's flames have now drained most of the boss's vitality and my mana has recovered enough for another charged spear. My clone leaps forward with one last attack and delivers the finishing blow to the Fortress Slime.

"I hate to admit it,” Esofy pants as she half-sits, half-collapses on the floor, “but our skills didn't measure up well against this one."

"We made many mistakes, but we found something amazing! A teleportation stone that can warp us back to the main camp!" I say and gesture to Klora to show them the waystone and waystone key. We can reflect on the battle later, this is much more interesting.

“While that is a good find, we can look at it later, first we need to discuss what went wrong in this fight.” Esofy looks upset with me.

“Yeah! Running off like that is not good, let alone taking someone else with you. What if something happened and you two weren’t here?!” Irela says with clear annoyance. My excitement drains away and I droop my ears and tails, realizing my mistake.

This sparks a long discussion over what could have been improved. Our teamwork, timing, staying vigilant and not getting distracted, following orders and knowing when and when not to give them. The way I jumped the gun and forced Esofy into action was a bad thing as it could have gotten someone hurt. While it would have taken longer, letting Tana’s flames slowly kill the monster was the safest approach. And, more to the point, Esofy is the leader, not me, so I shouldn’t have been giving orders at all.

I didn’t realise it before, but now that I’m trying to look at it from the perspectives of the others I start realizing my own problems. Their lives are on the line; they are in the thick of the fighting whereas I’m... not. I see the world from a third person perspective – even when looking at myself – and, while that’s great for just seeing everything, I only now realise how it’s been affecting my perception of reality – particularly danger and risk.

I use my clones to fight remotely so it’s hard for me to relate to how it’s like for the others. I might be so disconnected from all of this that I am not realizing the severity of things... but I am too scared to throw myself into danger like everyone else. In this, at least, even if my abilities are tailored for it, I am a coward. My self-reflection keeps me mostly silent for the rest of the discussion.

Once the after-action discussion is over we then move our focus to the treasure, which cheers me up a bit.

"Isn't that waystone what was back at the entrance?" Irela asks. Peaking over Klora's shoulder.

"I spotted some on each floor, and in the dens as well, so we can just teleport where we need to go," I say "we got this from a Gold Slime so if any one of us spots one, we need to kill it to hopefully get more!" Teleportation technology— Can it even be called technology if it's magic? Manalogy? Anyway, this could be the key to discovering ways to make teleportation devices, I just need opportunities to study how it works.

"Can this waystone work outside the dungeon?" Uloru questions, Kadona nodding approval of her student asking the important question.

"I don't know, but it's worth a try!" I say cheerfully, already looking to [Analyze] the Fortress Slime materials.

Fortress Core: Obtained from a Fortress Slime, this core improves all-metal manipulation abilities.

Metal Slime: This slime is rich in metals.

Jowaru lets Irela claim the core while she takes the slime for more metal to manipulate. Personally, I think Jowaru just didn't want to argue with Irela over who should get the more valuable slime core, but it’s results that matter.

We take a long rest to recover mana… and just to recover in general, physically and mentally, from the drawn-out fight, then we set out towards the next target.

The next boss we encounter, after working through rooms and halls of slimes and traps, is the Everwinter Slime. On the way, we got a lucky treasure chest from a random slime, but it had mediocre loot. Still, this shows that sometimes treasure may just randomly appear after killing a monster. We all don our very thick fire silk armor and step into the boss room, invisible. As I expected, the boss immediately freezes the room with a wave of ice mana and conjures a concentrated blizzard.

Chyzu and Tulalo instantly become useless with their water spells, so they stay at the back. Tana douses the slime in flames while the warriors slash and smash at the slime. Icicles shoot out in retaliation, but Jowaru and Irela block them with floating shields of metal. Klora looses her arrows, and Esofy deflects icicles flying at the two water mages with a flourish of her blades. Realizing that they are only a hindrance standing in the back doing nothing, Chyzu leaves the room to get herself out of harm’s way while Tulalo helps Tana with healing.

I hit the slime with a charged beauty spear. The Everwinter Slime emits an angry purring sound after being hit and retaliates with a pulse of mana. The blizzard’s rage becomes ever colder and more furious, ice spears forming and flying out towards random targets. Klora is hit with an ice spear and Tana rushes to heal her, but another ice spear flies toward him. Jowaru steps in front of Tana and blocks the attack with her shield, but has to jerk her head to the side to dodge the spear as it pierces half its length straight through the metal. Even when blocked they can kill, apparently, although if Jowaru had angled her shield the ice spear would have been deflected instead of piercing.

Tana's vitality-draining flames have now fully enveloped the slime, damaging it steadily. However, I notice that its vitality is being drained slower than normal; I don't recognize any resistance skills in the slime's mana signature but it could just be a skill I am unfamiliar with.

Kadona blocks several more conjured ice spears with the flat of her huge sword, but when she tries to move forward finds herself unable to move, her legs encased in ice.

"It's doing the same thing as the Aydomr!" Esofy’s yell holds a harsh edge of incipient panic, clearly she’s flashing back to that awful day. However, what's different this time is that there aren't claws of death coming to break people in half, only the constant conjuration of spears.

I use [Mana Manipulation], fighting against the Everwinter Slime for control… and losing! I put both my minds to the task, only managing to force the entrapment to recede slightly. Even with my full focus, freeing the others will take too long, so I switch to charging another beauty spear as quickly as I can.

More ice spears are conjured and launched. One of them pierces Uloru’s abdomen, her armor doing far less than it should to stop the attack, then another hits Tulalo. Both scream in pain and fear as they struggle against the ice encasing their legs, even as their bleeding wounds freeze over in the intense cold. I jump forward and ram my charged spear into the slime, but to my surprise its vitality has gone up since last time I looked, even with Tana’s flames! How? The flames should have reduced its health by a lot.

Looking more closely I realize that it's not just cooling everything down, but also draining the heat from the surroundings to heal itself! Fire mana is turning into vitality and being drawn to the slime., so Tana's flames are healing it as much as they’re draining its vitality and our fire silk armor is basically just feeding it free healing.

I closely observe the group's armor, noticing that they’ve all lost at least half their defences, not only weakening the armor physically but also making the group more susceptible to the cold. I charge another spear, wincing as Kadona, and then Esofy, take hits. I try to nudge the spears with [Mana Manipulation], of course, but the boss has some sort of skill preventing me from doing so, or it just has that much more wisdom than I do.

The boss has some sort of sensing skill, probably [Heat Sense], so making illusions of the others won't work. I'll just have to overwhelm it with powerful attacks.

I summon exploding fairies and order them to blow up near the ice spears to knock them off course. It takes a few seconds for me to get the timing right, but once I do so no further injuries are being incurred. I then summon Familiars to heal the injured with [Grace of Wholeness].

I summon another clone next to my current one and have my primary mind pilot it. I charge two beauty spears, watching the fairies zoom around to intercept the endlessly forming ice spears – and now also balls of unstable ice mana, indicative of an exploding attack, which are a new and unwelcome addition to the fight. Esofy is hit again; she manages to reduce it to a grazing blow by leaning to the left, but I can see the rising panic in her eyes. The ice entrapment is slowly encasing her, spreading upwards from her feet, limiting her movements more and more.

I drain all of my remaining mana into the spears, my clones actually starting to flicker for a few moments as I almost forget about [Create Twin]’s upkeep cost, and then I stab both spears into the slime core. The sheer amount of damage is too much for its healing and the cold gel drips off the core as life escapes it.

We’ve won, but… I once again failed to gather proper intel, turning what could have been an easy fight into another nightmare.

The group is visibly shaken, especially Esofy, who seems to be reliving the Aydomr fight, although half of her shivering might be from the conjured blizzard.

"I'm not sure if I want to keep fighting ice monsters," Chyzu says bitterly as I free everyone. Esofy remains silent. I can tell that she is trying to fight off her trauma by attempting to get her breathing under control.

"It was just like fighting against Alysara. I just couldn't do anything..." Uloru mutters to Kadona, shivering.

Kadona pats Uloru's head. "We're still alive; it just means we need a skill to prevent things like this." Kadona then turns her head toward me. "Once this is over, can you help us train a skill to protect our freedom of movement? Even if we must swap out a skill, it's far better to have it so that this never happens again."

I look toward Esofy as if to make eye contact. Esofy may be going through a hard time, but she moved past it once before. "I'll help train everybody who needs it," I say with a nod.

"I'm not sure if I'm being very useful, the last few fights I've barely contributed," Klora says, looking down sadly.

"It's because we want to salvage the monster parts, Physical attacks sometimes aren't the best for that, and the slime just isn't good for your weapon and your Bond. But who knows, maybe deeper in there might be something that only you can do?" Chyzu tries to cheer Klora up.

As the group recovers I set one of my minds to [Analyzing] the materials.

Everwinter Core: This core can conjure a small ice storm in a localized area.

Ice Slime: This slime freezes anyone who ingests it, slowly killing them.

So it's a poison that kills via hypothermia.

As per usual, the treasure chest doesn't have very good things, except for one.

Bracelet of storage: This bracelet has been enchanted to provide a large dimensional storage space.

This one is high quality and has the equivalent of three slots of storage, just over three square meters more of loot available for us to bring back.

With my [Mana Manipulation] I banish most of the ice mana from the room and conjure flames to provide a soothing and comfortable warmth. Next I use a water spell to recreate the humidity levels of the Nexus, the spell isn't true water but is fine to mimic it for an hour or so. I hope to create a familiar atmosphere to help everyone through the ordeal.

While we rest, Esofy and Jowaru – and also maybe Irela, although I’m not sure and she’s not saying anything – are evolving their classes. I check my level gains while everyone else is doing their thing.

Ting! Your Bond has obtained levels 299-309!

Ting! Your Class, Fairy Summoner, has obtained level 161-180! 300 status points awarded.

Really great experience considering we are in a party; although there are no skill gains as I haven't been using them much, I've just been using my charge spear, which isn't using any class skills. My max class level is currently two hundred eleven, meaning I need to temporarily drop [Fairy Rush] so that I don't go past level two hundred and suffer an experience gain penalty for passing the level milestone. I want to get my bond to level five hundred faster.

Ting! You have lost the Fairy Rush class skill!

I'll regain the skill later, when I am ready for it, or maybe I'll get something better.

As we work our way over to the Speed Slime, we make a detour and attune the waystone key to this floor's waystone. Upon reaching the room that the Speed Slime is on, I sneak up to it and wait for the signal. The plan is to hit this boss as hard and fast as we can, so I wait for Tulalo to finish charging up her spell. When she finishes she steps out from around the corner, blasting the slime with a powerful jet of water; at the same time, I stab the slime with my attack. The slime around the monster's core is blown off - its small size working against it - to reveal the naked core. With no slime the boss can't move, but it is quickly drawing the slime back to regain its gelatinous body. Chyzu dashes into the room and starts spraying the goo with her powerful water jets to prevent the core from regaining it.

Tana follows and sprays the core with a flame to drain its vitality as the warriors dash in, Irela erects a dome around the slime core, and we wait for the flames to do their job. Just like a skeleton without flesh and muscles, the core is helpless to do anything; a plan well executed – and a much needed easy victory for the others, after the harrowing experience of the Everwinter Slime. I am thankful I didn't experience the fear of being trapped and helpless like that, and I hope that never happens to me in the future.

"That was anticlimactic," Irela says once we receive the killing message.

"Barely worth any exp, I didn't even gain a level." Jowaru nods in agreement.

"We level up more with challenge and danger. Beating this boss so easily, while is a feat and thus worth some exp, didn't have the more valuable danger and stakes to consider," Esofy says, kneeling down to inspect the monster materials. The light in her eyes is slowly returning but, from the amount of fear essence – and another type of essence I am unfamiliar with – I can tell that she wants nothing more than to go home and relax in a safe environment. I don't know how she does it, honestly, being able to continue while hiding her true feelings.

Both Kadona and Uloru seem to have bounced back, their mental tenacity surprising me again. I wonder what sets them apart from everyone else? Tana too, if anything he looks even more determined.

Do they see the overwhelming power and only seek to overcome it? I should ask them how they’ve dealt with these recent experiences, sometime.

Sizing Core: This slime core is capable of increasing or decreasing the size and volume of things by up to five times the normal size; the mass remains unchanged.

"I would love to have that. I could have a much heavier hammer made and still keep the size I am used to." Uloru lays claim to the core with anticipation, her eyes glazing over as she imagines her new weapon.

I've been wondering about that, actually. Both her hammer and Kadona's buster sword have to weigh at least as much as they do, yet they swing them around like twigs. Even if the weight is lessened, the mass remains the same, so they should still have trouble swinging around the massive things.

There is obviously some sort of skill that lets them ignore weapon mass, and a quick look at their mana signature shows that they share a few general skills and even class skills. Which one exactly is responsible for their weapon wielding capabilities, I don't know.

Speed Slime: This slime contains a large amount of speed essence, imparting it to whatever it is applied to or ingested.

It could be made into a speed potion or perhaps to make a projectile move very fast.

The treasure chest actually has good items this time. A huge shield that draws in spells and projectiles, which is given to Jowaru immediately, and a circlet that transforms water spells into ice spells and ice spells into water spells. Chyzu and Tulalo will have to fight over that, but it gives us more versatility.

After resting, we walk to the last boss of the floor, the Mana Slime. It immediately launches its attacks at us, and it seems to have remembered me as it starts off with dark spells. It’s a good thing I left one clone outside, just in case. Unfortunately for it, Jowaru's new shield has us all protected, spells curving mid-flight as they are drawn towards it.

In response to its attack failing, the Mana Slime sends out a burst of lightning in all directions, shocking the group continuously until Irela erects a faraday cage around the slime. I use this opportunity to attack with my charged spear and Tulalo releases her charged attack, a hydrating spell this time that seeps into the slime and dilutes it. Chyzu uses her circlet to blast the slime with ice spells, while Klora uses a charged spell cloth I made, freezing the slime solid. Despite this, the slime is still conjuring spells and thawing itself with a fire spell.

Acting quickly, Uloru and Kadona smash the frozen slime, but they take a burst of flames at close range. The flames wash over the entire room, but Chyzu manages to make a water barrier over herself and Tulalo. Klora is badly burned, while Tana looks unharmed and Jowaru is covering Irela.

Following up quickly is a burst of dark mana that dispels my clone. I shift my second mind to the other clone waiting in the hall, summon yet another one to replace this one as the backup, and charge my next attack while sending in fairies from around the corner to strike the Mana Slime.

The now melted slime rejoins the rest of the mass, making Tulalo and Ulorus’ efforts meaningless. Klora conjures walls of earth to be used as cover for the group. The slime continues with its burst-type spells, alternating between elements: light, earth, ice, fire, lightning, wind. I dash in and discharge my attack into the boss again, but this time I notice how its mana refills completely by absorbing my attack!

Chyzu, Tulalo, and Tanas’ spells are all being absorbed now, only effective the first time. It still hasn't healed itself, but we must do what it is doing and alternate our spells after using it.

"It's absorbing our spells!" I call as I charge up a dark spell. It won't get bonuses like beauty essence does, but my Kyhosa still applies to elemental spells. Tana is healing Klora's burns, and Irela is launching steel balls to try and smash the slime.

Klora and Uloru run forward with Jowaru in front of them and Esofy a step behind. The Mana Slime counterattacks with a multitude of different spells; lightning flashes, ice shatters, wind blades break all are blocked by Jowaru’s new shield. The warriors reach the slime, despite its attempts to intercept them with powerful bursts of spells. Uloru smashes the slime with her hammer hard enough to spray it across the walls, Kadona and Jowaru slash at the moving core but both miss, and Esofy stabs at it, landing a glancing hit.

I run forward with the last of my mana in a dark mana spear, but the Mana Slime suddenly explodes in dark mana, throwing everyone back and dispelling my clone, which in turn dispels my charged spell. The dust takes a few seconds to settle enough that we can see, at which point the seemingly-unharmed slime switches its attack to the opposite element, shooting beams of light everywhere which burn into the walls and strike Tulalo and Irela. Tulalo begins to heal herself while Tana runs to Irela's aid. With most of my mana used up in my last failed attack, I have my final clone remain in the hallway.

With us mages unable to do any damage, that only leaves one avenue of attack. The warriors stand up and charge in again in the same formation as last time they ran. Uloru jumps and slams her hammer down, splashing slime all over the room, Kadona swings her sword, but the slime moves its core out of the way just in time. Klora takes a shot but that is dodged as well. Jowaru's axe hits the core but lacks the power to defeat it, although a successful stab from Esofy manages to chip it.

Tana finishes healing Irela and with a quick burst of speed dashes under the slime and, instead of using his weapons, thrust his hand into the slime and grabs the core. Vitality is drawn from the slime to Tana and the slime retaliates with a burst of wind. Everyone else is thrown back but Tana, being under the monster, stands resolute until the last of its vitality is gone and the Mana Slime falls apart.

Tana is bathed in slime as it sloughs off the core. He, along with the rest of the group, slumps to the ground, exhausted.

"That was another tough one!" Chyzu complains.

I [Analyze] the materials with one mind and make sure everyone is alright with the other.

Mana Core: The core of a Mana Slime. Produces mana.

It seems to produce about five hundred mana per hour, not much but very useful for utility. Especially for the airships, we need more of these.

Mana Slime: A slime rich in preserved mana.

This too has many uses: mana potion ingredient, fuel for airships, fuel for spells.

A treasure chest appears, containing a spear with thirty thousand points of mana battery, and three health potions. The spear is given to Tulalo, mostly for her to draw more mana from.

And with that, after a rest, we make our way to the final room. Perhaps there is a way for us to get past the wall of hardened slime.

The level of the mobs near the floor boss's room is upwards of level one-eighty and one ninety, now strong enough to provide a decent challenge with enough of them. We have to conquer each room slowly so as to not bite off more than we can chew but it isn’t too long before we arrive at the boss room. When we get there, however, it isn't empty. Now there's a gargantuan slime in the middle of it, a massive blob of absolute blackness, like a void.

Void Slime (Heroic) Level 400 Space Manipulator (Grand)