The staircase down started off neat, with sharp, square edges, even steps and flat surfaces. There were even a few more torches burning black. That soon ended, though, and surfaces changed from stone slabs to natural rock, the steps uneven, damp, slippery and treacherous, and the light faded to nothing. Well, 'light' was the wrong word, but 'dark' was ambiguous and confusing. The inverted light cast by the black torches and blighted moss had run out, leaving me in the more regular sort of darkness, and even my new yellow eyes were blind. I pulled out my fox-kin torch and continued down with care.

The air was stale and humid, but it lacked the stench of rot of the catacombs, and the blight dwindled to nothing along with the unphysical darkness, leaving my maxed out disease nullification to swiftly dispose of my lingering infection. What was keeping it out of here? Was it because the plain stone passage had nothing for it to feed off? Or was it simply because whoever had built this place had decreed that floor three was the undead floor, and floor four had a different theme?

One of the last things Mru'walyn said had stuck with me. He called this world fake. He didn't want to kill me; he wanted me not to complete my quest. I'd commented on how stupid and unphysical this place was back on the first floor, and had even contemplated that it may have been built specifically for me. I'd not read too much into it, because I'd been applying Earth logic, and with this place being obviously magical, I had no guarantee how much that made sense. But what if I was right? And what if Mru'walyn had worked it out too?

If this world was created just for me, what would happen when I left? Would it cease to exist? Would completing my quest and saving the world I was summoned to doom this one? How messed up would that be...

I'd like to claim that I had a job to do and ignore it, but wasn't I supposed to be a hero? Accidentally blighting the fox-kin settlement after they put so much effort into hunting me wasn't something I felt guilty about. Perhaps I should, but it really hadn't been on purpose, and I'd only done what I'd deemed necessary to protect myself. It helped that with the benefit of hindsight, my decision had proven correct; given Mru'walyn's ulterior motives for getting me down there, it was obvious that if I'd cooperated with them, I'd have ended up memory-wiped.

But that didn't mean I didn't care about the few left behind. There were fox-kin I liked, although Mru'walyn had implied they'd all given tacit approval for his crusade, so perhaps I might have to reconsider. But even putting them aside, there was the spider queen and dupliKatie. Heck, there was even the gluttonous tree.

All that brooding had taken enough time for me to reach the bottom of the staircase, coming out in a natural-looking passage much like the first floor. There was no moss here, but there were occasional glowing crystals jutting out of the walls. They were too sparse for navigation, so I kept my torch out as I moved cautiously through the empty passage towards whatever lay ahead.

Something impacted my head, causing me to jerk backward, but whatever it was moved with me. I felt it descend down my face, coating my skin and covering my eyes, nose and mouth in under a second. My vision briefly distorted, as if I was looking out through a pool of water, before my eyes started to sting and my vision blurred. I slammed them shut, and tore at whatever the thing on my head was, but my hands went straight through it, as if I was trying to grasp a handful of liquid.

Was this... a slime? From the brief look I'd had, it had been completely transparent. How was I supposed to get it off? I scraped my face along a wall, but it just flowed out of the way. Bashing my head against the same wall resulted in an equally lacklustre effect. I desperately tried to scoop bits of it off, but it just flowed around my hands, leaving my efforts completely ineffectual. Seriously, was I going to be suffocated by a slime? Slimes were supposed to be beginner enemies!

And then things got worse as it invaded my nose, irritating and burning the flesh inside. It made its way down my throat and then forced my mouth open from within. More poured in, burning my mouth and oesophagus. My body reacted by trying to sneeze, cough and gag all at the same time, which achieved little but to empty my lungs of air and blow a stream of bubbles through the slime, some of which took the opportunity to invade my trachea, causing a nasty choking sensation as it poured into my lungs.

Corrosion nullification advanced to level 30

New skill gained: Suffocation tolerance

Most living things need air, and where there's a need, you can be sure something will be there to take advantage. Whether by smothering, crushing, drowning, or indirect routes like air-born poisons, predators will never skimp on innovation when hunting their prey. This skill will permit you to hold your breath a little longer.

I opened my eyes back in the catacombs' shrine room, which was blissfully fox-kin free. That had been embarrassing. I'd just died to a slime. What was the correct thing to do in that situation? Other than the obvious of not letting it land on my head in the first place. My experiences with the spiders had taught me to keep an eye above me, but I hadn't expected a transparent enemy, and it hadn't made any noise or responded to sense presence either. It had been a legitimately impressive ambush.

I'd got suffocation tolerance from it. That was interesting, because I'd been drowned by my pet murder tree on many occasions without gaining it. Did that come under the heading of something that would normally be racially restricted?

The slime had been corrosive too. My corrosion nullification had done a good job of protecting me, with even my eyesight not being immediately destroyed, but once the slime invaded my lungs, even my high levelled skill hadn't been able to stop it. Pain immunity meant that it didn't hurt, but that didn't mean the experience of having my lungs dissolved was pleasant. That had been overkill; I'd been suffocating anyway. What sort of prey did it normally catch, that needed that combination?

My equipment was in good condition, at least. I was worried about the state of my helmet, but both the spider silk and centipede chitin had resisted the slime's corrosion well. Even though I hadn't stashed it before my death, it hadn't been damaged significantly during the time it took me to respawn. I'd dropped my torch, though. I still had one moss covered shield that hadn't been blighted. I'd have to use that until I could recover it.

Still, that wasn't my main problem. Even thinking up ways to deal with the slime wasn't my main problem.

"Wow? Back already?" the newly crowned zombie queen mocked as I passed back through her throne room. "It can't be much more than an hour since you left. Did you trip and fall down the stairs or something?"

Yup, there was my main problem, still sitting on the throne where I'd left her. Oh well, might as well get the pain over and done with.

"A slime fell on my head."

Yup, there it is. I ignored her as she burst into riotous laughter and made my way back to the stairs.

"Hey, wait up!" she called. "You've got to give me more detail than that."

"There's not much more to say. Transparent slime sitting on the ceiling. Couldn't see it, couldn't hear it, couldn't sense it. It dropped on me as I walked past, swam up my nose and dissolved my lungs."

"Ow, nasty. You should befriend it. Could be a good replacement for our pet tree."

"Actually, I have a mining skill now. I should see if I can dig the tree out at some point."

I returned down the stairs, wondering how to deal with the slimes. Attacking the liquid part of the slime had achieved nothing. I hadn't seen a core, but I didn't exactly get a chance to examine it closely. It might have some sort of solid weak spot for me to attack. If not... It had been a while since I'd wanted fireballs, but this situation would qualify.

In the absence of any good ideas, I'd need to find one before it dropped on me, get a good look at it and hit it with appraisal, and hope that I could pick up a clue from that. Or walk around with a shield held permanently above my head.

I crept along the passage, this time being far more cautious. Now I knew that just because I couldn't see or sense an enemy, it didn't mean it wasn't there. I made it as far as my previous corpse, now naked and mostly dissolved. My resistance skills presumably stopped functioning when I died, or I couldn't imagine it having made that much progress in the time I'd been gone. Still, it hadn't completely finished consuming me, which meant it was still there, wrapped around my old legs, which were visibly melting as I watched.

Limus acidus

Despite sharing the slow movement of all limus species, this particular subtype is an efficient ambush predator, utilising its transparent appearance to drop on prey unawares. It uses its corrosive body to smother and digest its targets.

Nothing there that I didn't already know.

The slime completely ignored me as I got closer to inspect it. I still couldn't see a core, or any point of weakness. Or any inhomogeneity at all, for that matter. My previous instance's legs were encased in what looked like nothing more than a smooth bubble of water, and it was only the way it completely defied gravity that indicated it was something else.

Despite the transparency, it was strongly refracting light, but while that was obvious with it wrapped around my legs, it wasn't enough to make it stand out while attached to the ceiling, where the rock behind it didn't have any features that were noticeable when distorted.

What other information could I glean? There wasn't enough of it; despite having eaten a significant portion of my body, it barely seemed larger now than when it was wrapped around my head. Interesting, but I didn't see how it would help. Unless it implied that it had divided? I was already on guard against more of them, so it wouldn't matter if it had.

Maybe I should just ignore them? As long as they didn't drop on me, it didn't seem like they were much of a threat. And even if I did miss one, they didn't have anything that threatened me through my respawn cheat. But ignoring them meant admitting defeat, and I really didn't want to admit defeat to a slime. There had to be some way to kill the things.

My previous body was pale, and there was no blood around despite the damage, so it must have eaten it all. Given how vigorously it was still going, I could deduce that it was immune to my poisonous bodily fluids. Or perhaps they lost their effect after death? I could experiment by letting it eat off an arm, but it may well just move up to my head or otherwise be uncooperative, so best to shelve that plan.

Could I catch it in a web? It was fluid enough to flow up my nose, so a coarse net wouldn't work, but something more like my water bags might. I hadn't tested my own silk for corrosion resistance, but I already had bags made from the queen's webs. They should hold it. But what then? That didn't exactly help me kill it.

What would happen if I dumped one of these into the murder tree's pool? That would be an interesting fight, as they tried to dissolve each other, but probably a boring one to watch.

Bereft of any ideas, it was time to try some weapons, starting with ones I didn't mind losing. I pulled out a beetle horn and stabbed at the slime. It completely ignored me, the horn doing no noticeable harm and passing through the slime's body without resistance. I tried again with a spider claw, and then my sword of paralysis, hoping that the slime wouldn't corrode it, but again, nothing happened.

One last thing to try, then. I stood back and held out my arm at as great a distance as possible and pulled a large, heavy chunk of centipede shell out of my item box, jumping backwards as gravity dropped it right on top of the slime, in case it splattered. It didn't splatter. There was a wet slapping noise, the shield bounced a little, then tilted over and slid off, while the slime continued its meal undisturbed.

Not that I had a clear view of the situation, because I had apparently jumped backward directly under another waiting slime. With a metaphorical sigh, on account of the way I couldn't do a real one through my blocked airways, I stored all my equipment and made a few half-hearted efforts to get the bloody thing off while I waited for yet another death.

Suffocation tolerance advanced to level 2

...I hate slimes.