Chapter 54

The residents of Euroa departed the next morning, heading back to their town. Their large party could now fight off any spitters that made the mistake of getting too close but given how many had died the previous day Mike did not expect them to be challenged at all. If they were forced to fight, then the group had eight hundred thousand energy worth of poison resistant gear to blunt the spitter’s most potent weapon. Part of Adrian had wanted to scoop that gear up and sell it back to the trader, but the money wasn’t material to him and it would save lives here.

“Avenel?”

Kiyoko did not answer, just guiding the horse on a line that would skip the town.

Well, if it got them home sooner. Why not?

“My turn,” Felicity told them. “Our opponents are eco slimes. They’re susceptible to magic attacks. Just spank them with magic. For the archers, we’ve purchased—”

Adrian coughed.

“Adrian purchased the archers reusable magic arrows.”

“I don’t like slimes,” Adrian told everyone. “We ran into some in Albury.”

“I agree,” Jules said, her voice harsh, “they’re evil.”

“These eco slimes are nothing like the rock slimes,” Kiyoko called out behind her.

“What do you mean?” Adrian asked.

The horse abruptly broke out into a trot.

Step.

Adrian was right next to her. Kiyoko kicked, and the horse upped its speed to a quick canter. He could keep up, but it was clear she did not want to talk and wanted to keep the mysterious oracle thing happening. With no other choice, Adrian dropped back to be level with the others.

Mike smirked at him as he did so. “Completely different physiology. Anything you think you learnt from the rock slimes, forget it. It’s not relevant.”

“How sure are you that there’s not going to be anything unexpected?” Adrian inquired.

“Almost certain,” Felicity assured him. “Now physically, they are slimy.”

Adrian looked in surprise at Jules. If they were slimy, it sounded like Mike was probably right.

Felicity smiled at his confusion. “They’re almost impossible to harm with physical attacks. The fastest they can is a slow jog, so they’re not going to chase any of us down. They’re also super weak against pretty much every type of magic attack.”

“Weaknesses?” Adrian asked.

Felicity looked at him strangely. “I’ve already said it. Magic, any magic.”

“Strengths,” Jules said interrupted, sounding slightly anxious.

“What on earth did the rock slimes do to you?” Galan asked.

Adrian and Jules looked at each other, and Adrian indicated that Jules should answer.

“Almost killed us, maimed a friend, and destroyed some legendary objects.”

Galan recoiled at that list. “Ouch.”

“Back to the question on strengths,” Felicity said professionally. “Their strongest skill is resistance to physical attacks. In that respect, they’re worse than cockroaches. They also regenerate. You leave a toilet rolled-sized piece, it will restore itself.”

“How big are they?”

Felicity shrugged. “It varies on their age. Usually, once they get larger than a bus, they split into small parts.”

“Smart?”

“Nope.”

They kept walking. Adrian glanced at Felicity. “And you want us to kill them all.”

She blushed. “I did, but I figure Wangaratta can send some fighters now to clear them up if they need to be eliminated. We can therefore just punch through?”

“And that will be hard.”

“They are like slower, harder to kill and less valuable hoopers.”

“That also eat your equipment,” Kiyoko called back.

What? He wasn’t used to being snuck up on. He looked up to check on her, and she was positioned just on the edge of his sensing range. Playing tricks or maybe warning him that he needed to stop relying on the domain and instead keep his eyes moving for the threats that he knew were out there. After all, both his Thief and Ambusher’s knowledge championed that level of vigilance.

“So, more annoying than the hoppers,” Jules summarised.

They walked for close to half a day before they saw the domain of the eco slimes.

Adrian’s heart fell.

He had wondered why Felicity had championed eliminating them, now he understood. Everything for thousands and probably tens of thousands of acres was dead. Not a single blade of grass or a defiant tree had survived. There was just dead ground with a layer of green upon it.

“They can do photosynthesis,” he guessed looking at them. Every inch of the dead land was covered by the creatures.

“Yes, but mainly they mana miners,” Felicity told him. “They spread out and suck mana out of the air. While they use the sun’s energy that’s only a small part of their daily food intake. At least, this early in an event.”

“Their feeding ultimately creates imbalances and extra mana storms,” Kiyoko said quietly.

“There are records of worlds with multiple island continents where one was taken over by eco slimes. Mana storms were happening twenty thousand years later, instead of dying away after the first century of the event. And the slimes are common on broken worlds. It’s why so much stuff from broken worlds ends up in new events. Because they still have mana storms.”

“When we get closer,” Felicity told them. “They will pull themselves into the battle forms.”

“So what?” Jules asked. “We just walk in a straight line for Seymour.”

“Yep.”

They walked closer and when they were about a hundred metres away, the slimes reacted. For a pool of sticky mess, they were very perceptive. The group watched as they started drawing together, transitioning from a puddle to a blob.

Eco Slimes

Environmentally destructive, resistant to physical attack but susceptible to all magic attacks excluding spatial, gravity, air and force. Will attempt to kill opponents quickly by flooding airways with its body to suffocate its opponent. Alternatively, it can secrete a strong acid to dissolve away prey.

Adrian’s eyes then glanced between different sized lumps. The bigger ones were just that. They moved at the same slow speed as the rest of the slimes and did not have any special attacks.

Felicity kept walking, so he rushed to get to the front. She had an arrow in her bow and unleashed it. The arrow flew and skewered a smaller slime. It glowed and the entire slime melted away under the power.

They kept walking. Galan fired on one of the bigger ones. His arrow destroyed a volume equivalent to a forty-four-gallon drum. Then the arrow kept going into the mass of the thing. The internal forces of the creature shattered the arrow.

“I told you not to waste arrows on anything larger than a cow,” Felicity complained.

“I know. I just wanted to confirm.”

“Well, don’t. Let the magic users kill them.”

Adrian changed course to stride towards one of the bigger ones, and he saw Jules grin and target the slime Galan had shot. Charlotte wisely went for a mid-size off to the side.

Once Adrian got closer, his domain split the air above his target. Heat assaulted one side and ice the other.

The slime corroded like a salt pile washed away by a glass of fresh water. Adrian stopped and assessed what had happened. His mana was still effectively full. “They’re super weak.”

“Look at your mana control,” Felicity answered. “Don’t you use twenty times less mana than most people for the same spell? And then isn’t your regeneration ten times faster than most?”

“Point,” He agreed quietly. “What’s usually required to fight them?”

“To eliminate an infestation this size you need level thirties and the numbers to have rotating strike teams. It’ll still be slow going. Initially, they’ll receive reasonable experience, but slayer titles get in the way quickly. A level thirty might get three levels off them and after that they’re working for free. No useable loot either.”

They had stopped walking. As Felicity had promised, the slimes were rolling towards them. Mighty masses of them coming to overwhelm them with numbers.

He used his fire and ice domain to kill the big ones. Charlotte and Beatrice wiped out the mid-sized while the archers took out small ones. Felicity and Galan were continually collecting their used arrows and stabbing them into the ground behind them.

“Recharging,” Galan told him, when the younger man caught his surprised look.

Lightning exploded over a medium-sized slime, and then Jules smacked the crumbling body in annoyance. “Give me something to hit!” A smaller slime came at her, her club smashed into it and energy rippled through the slime as it collapsed into a pool of liquid. “How long to punch through?”

“Five hours today and maybe slightly longer tomorrow.”

“No!!” Jules blurred forward and slammed her club into a large slime. It tried to wobble forward to surround her, but Jules dodged back. “Really that long?” Lightning crackled over the giant slime that was about to swallow her. Its structural integrity failed instantly and splashed out in a wall of liquid. Their susceptibility to magic was not just a line in their description.

Kiyoko waved at the mass of approaching slimes. They were sliding toward them from every direction. “Fight to dark. Retreat, have a meal and then first thing tomorrow punch through.”

“This sucks.” Jules sounded sad, and then she started singing. Adrian immediately felt the energy coming up through the ground and infusing him.

“You’re just grumpy because you are losing,” Galan yelled out. Everyone laughed.

“I’m beating you,” she snapped back. Thankfully, she didn’t continue the argument and returned to singing. Adrian did not mind the fighting that much. They pressed forward steadily because they were killing the monsters faster than they were gathering. The repetition was almost soothing, and it felt nice to continually use his magic.

“Time,” Kiyoko called finally.

Adrian stepped back and banished his helmet before wiping the sweat off his brow. When he looked around, it did not appear they were making any progress, but logically that was deceiving. The eco slimes had been slaughtered, it was just that they were descending on their location from miles away. “What percentage did we kill?”

‎ “Around thirty,” Kiyoko answered.

Adrian winced at that number. “What? So after tomorrow, we would have defeated half of them?”

“Not our problem,” Kiyoko reminded him. “While they’re shitty experience for high-level fighters, you can use them pretty effectively to upgrade non-combat classes.”

“But if you do that their experience will be shared with the minders.”

“No, they won’t need minders. You let the lowbies just do hit-and-run tactics. Unless they’re stupid, they can always outrun the slimes once their magic runs out. You can arm them like,” she waved at the rangers, “but with crossbows or buy a mage’s staff to give them ranged magic damage.”

“Oh? The slimes can be used as a resource?” he asked curiously.

“Yes, provided you keep on top of them.”

Adrian watched the slimes carefully. They moved at a slow jogging pace. He could see it. Arm the non-combatants with some sort of ranged magic and then let them go to town on the slimes. Have a group focus on one opponent, kill it and then run. Repeat it a thousand times and the experience would rapidly escalate.

They retreated and then set up a camp. Eating Felicity’s burned spitter legs, he missed having camp followers who could cook.

For the first time in a long while, he let himself have a proper sleep without using aids to reduce the period asleep. In the morning, he woke to take the last watch, and he felt exactly the same as every other morning. Adrian had been expecting ‘ natural sleep’ to make a difference. He had been expecting to discover that the aids that shortened sleep cycles would be a fake and that natural sleep was better. There was no such relationship. If anything, he felt more irritable than normal.

For breakfast, Galan produced a steaming stew from his bag of holding. It did not look appetising and was heavily spiced. Unfortunately, the earth herbs didn’t quite match with the aniseed flavour of the meat. With a standard beef, pig, or lamb base, the stew would have been far more appetising.

Buff of Rigwat Stew

Magic control +4 and mana pool +30 for seven hours.

“Did you know about the buff?”

Galan looked at him incredulously. “Do you think everyone is stupid or something?”

“Sorry, mouth speaking before brain… umm. I wasn’t sure your identification was strong enough to tell without eating.”

“The cooks label the buffs when they sell them,” Galan said with a laugh. “How else would they do it? When I use identification on it, the only information it gives is stew.”

“I get rigwart stew,” Adrian admitted. “Without the buff details, which is why I asked. I guess in hindsight it was obvious that they would label it.”

Kiyoko mounted her horse. “Kids. Let’s go have some fun.” She was clearly bored with their conversation about food labelling. She had a point.

The slimes seemed fractionally less dense than the previous day, but it was difficult to tell.

“Okay all,” Kiyoko yelled from atop of her horse. “Hit the one spot hard. We want to push in half a kilometre and then retreat. Move a kilometre north and then repeat. We’ll keep doing that till they break.”

They followed her instructions. The eco slimes would try to surround them and cut off their retreat, but Kiyoko always seemed to have them withdrawing before the ones behind them became too dense to push through easily.

They kept going with the sun beating down from overhead. It was late autumn and if they were not fighting slimes, it would have been a lovely day. One of those rare warm days in the part of the year when you only expected it to be miserable. As it was hot and sweaty.

Kiyoko rode in front of them, drawing close enough so she could talk. “This is it. We’re going to punch through this time. Adrian, Beatrice and Jules don’t hold back. The most intense fighting will be in the first few minutes.”

She spun the animal, and it took off at a canter. “Keep up,” she screamed back at them. They started running. Adrian right behind the mutated horse, his minimal horse sense screamed at him that he would get kicked but the more practical part of him recognised that Kiyoko’s mount had for a long time been removed from the pre-event animal that his instincts warned against. As he ran, his powers eliminated threats that approached them. They were moving so fast that despite his massive control and mana pool his reserves burnt down quickly.

Fifty, forty, thirty and then twenty percent. Despite himself, he got worried.

“It’s about to get easier,” Kiyoko yelled, probably picking up on his mounting panic.

He flash froze two massive slimes that were about to roll over them and then four small and mediums that were directly in their way got burnt away. Mana was down to ten percent.

“Don’t slow down,” Kiyoko warned them.

Adrian looked ahead, and the slimes were not as dense in front of them. The attacks they had done earlier had concentrated the slimes, and they were skirting the edge between two denser sections. Effectively running in a pocket where there were almost none of the creatures.

Behind him with his domain, he saw Joanne trip and fall, crashing onto the dead ground.

Step, step.

He was next to her before she finished her first swear word.

A small slime sliding towards them got struck with ice and disintegrated. He pulled her up and started running once more with the woman in his arm.

Buff of Strength.

The tiny physical struggle to carry her vanished, and it was only awkward.

“You keep sweeping me off my feet. If you weren’t married…” she joked.

“Just being a gentleman. Do you think you can go on my shoulders?”

She nodded.

Jules looked back at Joanne’s curse and plucked up Omala as a preventive measure.

Adrian sprinted forward, catching the group as he passed Beatrice before he picked her up, too.

“Charlotte?” he asked.

“Hit me.”

Buff of Strength, Buff of Growth.

Charlotte grew, and grinning like a Cheshire cat she gathered up Mike. The look on Mike’s face was absolutely hilarious. Even Kiyoko cracked a smile when she looked back at the two of them.

With all the non-physical classes being carried, they could ratchet up their pace to a sprint.

Kiyoko’s horse transitioned from a slow canter to a gallop. It was a fraction of the speed that the horse could manage, but it forced them all to lengthen their strides further. While the weight of the two women was negligible, their volume made running awkward. Wind and enhanced agility kept him upright. It also helped that the ground was completely bare of anything living, so there were no unexpected roots to trip him.

Mana potions went into his mouth, and he used magic when needed to eliminate slimes that were in their way. The route Kiyoko had chosen was mostly clear, and she had them moving so quickly that there was no instinctive swarming to worry about.

Adrian looked back.

Joanne almost fell because of the abrupt movement and her hands gripped his hair. After a moment, she righted herself. “Hey!” She smacked him on the head. “Give a girl a warning.”

There was no retreat. The hole they had blasted through was already closed.

They kept running and his mana pool had recharged to twenty-five percent. It would have been more by the time they reached the safety of grass under their feet, but he had needed to keep the growth buff up on Charlotte.

He saw the way Joanne was looking at him. He pointedly fiddled with his ring to draw her attention.

She snorted. “Don’t be stupid, you’re not my type. I was just trying to work out how someone with your frame could do that.”

“Magic.”

“Obviously.”

“How does it feel?” Kiyoko asked him, suddenly interrupting the two of them.

“What?”

“To be here.”

“What outside, Seymour?”

The oracle laughed. “No, having only one more challenge before you get home.”

‎