The sun had set by the time I made it back to the inn, with [Clock] telling me that I should already be in bed. A quick check with [Soul Perception] told me that my four room-mates were still awake, so I didn't need to worry about sneaking, at least.

"Hey, look who's back," called Vyre. "That's a silver you owe me."

"What? You were betting on whether I was going to come back? I wasn't about to get eaten by a slime."

"Oh? Not even a little bit? I heard..."

What exactly Bluvre had heard I never had a chance to find out, thanks to the boot that smacked him in the face. "Ouch, who was that?!"

"Ignore the idiot," said Vyre. "He was betting you'd end up spending the night in the dungeon."

I got changed and climbed into bed with a sigh, ignoring the needling. Yasmin, or rather Liv now, having decided she liked the name from one of the shows I described to her, certainly had a Reputation. Or several thereof. And tomorrow I'd have to face my group, who had all seen me being dragged off. Hopefully, they would refrain from making any weird assumptions.

Alas, when the morning came I couldn't even get into the arena, due to the three metre tall Dru'hazzak blocking the doorway, one pair of arms crossed, and looking only marginally less grumpy than yesterday.

"Should I expect another interruption today?" he asked.

"She didn't say so, but I wouldn't like to make predictions," I answered truthfully. Applying human logic to that slime seemed like a losing proposition.

He sighed in response. "Fine. We'll stay on the lookout. Are you still intact?"

"Umm... yes? We only talked..." 'Intact' was an odd way of putting it. I guess he meant mentally as well as physically.

"You're luckier than some of her victims then."

"Calling me a victim is a bit harsh. She's just... a very strong personality."

Dru'hazzak snorted, stood aside to let me into the room, then followed me through. Great, now I've got some high-level guild person stalking me... Once inside, I caught more than a few people glancing at me with knowing looks. Dammit, they're all making weird assumptions! I knew this would happen! I kinda wanted to shout out that they were all wrong, but then the other visitors who weren't familiar with the slime would want to know exactly what they were wrong about.

Blushing a shade of red deeper than I'd managed since the first time I had to go outdoors in my leather bodysuit, I took my position among the competitors, waiting to see who I'd be fighting today.

"Next up, Peter and Rose."

It seemed that today's match would be against our group's fairy. I'd refrained from checking her level or class, and was going in effectively blind. Not everyone had appraisal skills, so that much made little difference, but everyone else had been watching the previous day's matches and would at least have some idea of what to expect. Of course, since I hadn't used magic, no-one would know I was a mage either, even if they managed to appraise me. They'd need to somehow sneak an [Analysis] through my [Secrecy] to see my class history or skill set, and [Secrecy] would have alerted me if anyone had tried. We might both be in for some surprises.

I took my position, both of us wielding staves, and noted that her wings were not visible to [Mana Perception]. As far as I could tell, they weren't physically there at all, and only existed as a part of her soul. It was an interesting feature, but still came under the heading of humans-with-extra-bits, in my opinion. Even the demons were mostly humanoid. There didn't seem to be any truly alien races, even here in Synklisi. Well, aside from Liv, but even she went around pretending to be humanoid.

The referee called out match start, and my [Soul Perception] picked up her usage of a skill, moments before my [Mana Perception] picked up a burst of mana from her hands. I couldn't see anything there, but made sure to dodge it anyway, which given the telltale phut against the barrier behind me had obviously been the correct move. She activated a different skill, sending blades of mana at me, cunningly arranged to enclose me and cut off any escape. I dodged the first couple, playing along with her strategy, and felt a heavy wind as the blades passed me by. Was this air affinity magic?

Once it looked like I had nowhere left to dodge, I exercised [Greater Mana Control] and diverted the last blade upwards, ducking as it flew over my head. That didn't seem to phase her in the slightest, so I decided it was time to start my counterattack. I swung with [Far Reach], but she didn't react at all, not even trying to dodge.

She didn't need to. No wonder she hadn't batted an eyelid at me deflecting her spell; she could do exactly the same thing. My [Far Reach] attacked empty air a couple of metres away from where I'd aimed. I suppose that mana control skills really have grown in popularity over the past few years.

She didn't shut off her own mana control once she was done defending against me, though, instead trying to take control of all the mana in the surroundings. I resisted as best as I could, expecting her to do something like Kari's flame tornado. She twisted the mana, and converted it all to water affinity, and instantly water started flooding the arena. It seemed to be contained by the barrier, which was nice for the spectators but not for me; if I let the water level rise, it would drastically limit my mobility.

Not that it caused Rose any problems; her wings lit up, both to [Mana Perception] and literally, consisting of a yellow outline filled with glowing geometric shapes, the whole arrangement seeming to hang in the air behind her, unattached to anything. She gently floated into the air above the impromptu swimming pool, then activated another skill, starting to build up another load of mana. I recognised it as ice affinity. Presumably she was aiming to freeze the pool of water. Never mind limiting my mobility, that move would completely trap me in place!

Reacting as fast as I could, I shoved one hand into the pool and activated [Item Box], draining the whole thing instantly, but more was still pouring in and my [Item Box] was almost full. I kicked off the ground with [Far Step], just as she launched her spell, aiming to bring myself right in front of her. She tried to force me off course, and I resisted as best I could, ending up very nearly where I'd intended.

Her magic struck the pool, which, thanks to my water theft, was barely a centimetre deep, and the whole arena instantly froze over. She dodged backwards to get out of my path, her aerial mobility unfortunately far greater than I'd guessed from her gentle rise, before using her wind spells once more. I threw out my stolen water in front of me, which formed an effective shield against the wind before falling back to the ground, getting Rose rather wet in the process but not hampering her ability to fly.

I was worried about the water hampering my mobility, but I had none whatsoever in mid-air, and would shortly be landing on a sheet of ice. I made repeated [Far Reach] swings to keep Rose busy, but I really couldn't think of any way out of this one. She was still producing more water. As soon as I landed, she'd try to freeze it again, and I wasn't going to have good footing on the ice that was already there. Even if I did manage to dodge again, I couldn't keep it up indefinitely. Her ability to fly while rendering the ground unviable was nasty.

She was already above me by this point, with me falling back towards the ice, but I twisted and threw my staff at her anyway, invoking [Rapid Shot] to give it an extra push. Unsurprisingly, she dodged it, before timing another ice bolt just as I impacted the water. I did my best with [Greater Mana Control] to prevent the water around me freezing, but that left me unable to deflect the next batch of wind blades. The referee called the match for her.

ding

Skill [Soul Perception] advanced to level 6

I wasn't doing very well in my task of advancing [Apprentice Fighter]. Also, I'd just landed back-first into quite a lot of water, and was now unpleasantly soaked. Thanks to all the ice, the water was cold. Again, why can't I have wings? Is there a skill for that?

"Are you hurt?" asked Rose, hovering over the water in front of me.

"Nah, I'm fine, thanks," I answered. "Or will be once I dry out. I took the wrong weapon. Should have grabbed a bow if you can fly and negate my ranged magic."

"I doubt you could have got an arrow through my [Wind Shield] without any supporting skills," she said as we walked back outside the ring. I had the proficiency and [Piercing Shot], which might have been enough, but it was still a valid point. She'd still have been up in the air. There seemed to be a mild rock-paper-scissors vibe to these fights; her combination of flight and mana control was a hard counter for my abilities, my [Distortion] would be a hard counter against a [Ranger], while a [Ranger] wouldn't have struggled to shoot her out of the air.

I was wondering what they were planning to do with all the water, but there seemed to be drains around the edge, and it flowed away in less than a minute once the barrier was released. It was a shame the drains weren't on the inside of the barrier... "Anyway, did you enjoy yesterday?" she asked suddenly.

I peered at her, searching for any hint of an odd inflection in the word 'enjoy'. There didn't seem to be one. Was that really just an innocent question, then? "It was... interesting," I answered, not feeling safe to commit to a yes or a no without knowing for sure if she was making an innuendo. "She is certainly unique."

"Yes, that she is. I visit her every week to get my skin done. I keep telling her that she needs to move to the surface and drop the whole dungeon boss thing, but she seems oddly attached to the place."

Her skin done? Does that have any relation to what Erryn was saying about the bath? At this point, I kinda just want to leave well enough alone and forget that slime existed. And I guess I see Erryn's point now, when she was talking about names. I'm already thinking of that slime as 'that slime' instead of Blobby or Yasmin or Liv.

"Speaking of which, her visiting the surface is rare," she continued. "When she said you had been taking her mother's attention..."

Ah, I'd forgotten she said that out loud in a crowded room. It's a miracle no-one had brought it up already. And she'd mentioned the other world too... If I was holding out any hope that people outside Dawnhold wouldn't link me to the ongoing technological revolution, that scuppered it.

"Yes, they were interested in the memories I'd been born with. Liv just wanted to hear stories about my old world."

And of course, admitting that made everyone else interested too... I'd wanted to explore the city a bit once the day's matches were over, but found myself instead getting dragged back to the guild's tavern with the whole group of competitors and half the spectators, where I once again regaled them with tales of Earth.

Not that it was a complete loss; getting to know members of other races was a reward on its own. On top of that, one of the things I was interested in was the food they had here, and sharing a table with six different races meant I got to see a fair amount of variety. This tavern had a far more extensive menu than Dawnhold's guild, partially from the melting pot of cultures, and partially from the deeper, more varied dungeon.

Of course, while they had the advantage of the dungeon, they had the disadvantage of being a sizeable city with no farmland. There wasn't, to the best of my knowledge, such a thing as wheat or potato monsters. Vegetarian ingredients needed to be imported, and were priced higher than back home. Conversely, the selection of monster based dishes was... scary.

And I did have to call it 'monster based dishes' rather than 'meat', because some of the options definitely would not qualify otherwise. Xi'Zanno, one of the demons, was crunching up monster cores, which I didn't even realise were edible. The other demon wasn't eating anything, despite drinking beer directly from a barrel, and was kind enough to explain that demons could subsist off mana, and a monster core to them was basically the equivalent of me eating a sugar cube. To a human, it would be like eating a rock. Probably best I don't try that, then.

The dwarf and my fellow humans were all eating normal looking meals, albeit made from ingredients I hadn't even heard of. The elf had a bowl of fruit, which seemed suitably elvish. Recir was chewing through large blocks of various monster meats on a skewer, which wasn't too bad, and again matched my mental image of how wolfkin should behave. At least it was cooked. What Rose was eating was not. Utterly destroying all of my inbuilt ideas of how a fairy should act, she was ravenously chewing on a raw, giant spider leg, crunching up the chitin and squirting juices out everywhere.

Okay, maybe today was a complete loss after all... I'd suddenly found myself with no appetite whatsoever. Maybe I'd have better luck tomorrow?