The water surges upwards around me. Twisting and turning until it forms a hissing serpent.

Standing like a skyscraper within this cavern, a cobra made of gel that stares down at me with two red eyes. Slime cores that are as big as beach balls and shimmered like rubies.

“A king cobra? Well, I guess I know what type of slime this is.”

The cobra slime stood there. Staring me down menacingly. This thing might kill me but I don’t feel the fear I thought I would. It’ll attack the moment I move. I know it. My instincts are telling me that despite its evolved state, a slime is a slime. Knowing that I feel strong.

I have control of this situation. For once, I feel like I’m in complete control.

Can I kill this thing? One strike? I need to pierce through both cores at the same time.

They are bigger and no doubt made of sterner stuff than a normal core.

Maybe I can end this by pushing both cores out of slime's head with force?

What if I sever the head from the neck? It’ll probably regenerate but it won’t be instantaneous.

I’ll have a moment where the size of my enemy will be significantly smaller. I could rain a barrage of blows with far less risk.

I could also try to burn this area until its liquid body loses strength.

However, if it’s significantly more resistant to heat than its minions are… on top of that its massive size doesn’t make it very viable… but weakening it even a little could help with preventing its regeneration. So the best way to do this would be…

I draw my sword and begin to channel my mana into the atoms of the metal blade.

Then I let it vibrate viciously. It fills with lightning struggling to be set free.

When I kill this thing, I will be liberated of this place and my weakness.

I begin to spin a ball of flame in my left palm. I have to bolster its intensity to the max.

All the dissatisfaction I felt in my life up until now, every injustice and bout of fury.

Put it all here. Condensed into a deadly poison that will burn away my foe.

I’ll raise the temperature of the room and cause a bath of steam to weaken it and cut off the head of the snake at the same time. Here goes everything!

“Fireball: Meteoric Devastation!”

I smash the sphere into my surroundings as if I was dunking a basketball.

Every inch of the area is engulfed in hellish fire and reacts instantly with the pools of water.

Smoke devours the world around me until all I can see is white.

That doesn’t matter though. I know where you are.

This time I aim directly where I know the neck and head meet even with my sight obscured.

“The End Of The Storm.” My sword evaporates from the magical force of the attack I unleash.

A masterful bolt of lightning surges through the air, cutting apart the smoke for a single blink of the monster I intended to slay and strikes the beast, evaporating what it touches.

Dead on the centre of my target. The smoke returns to cloud my eyes but…

THUD. I know where it landed from not just the sound being carried on the wind but the vibrations of the earth hugging my feet. The moisture of the Slime King radiates through all of this. The heat of its rage screams at me.

I can listen to the heartbeat of the world around me.

I only felt this connection after purging most of my negativity.

Nature was knocking on my door but I couldn’t hear her over my madness.

Finally, I let her in. I summon a gust of wind to propel me to where I need to be.

Landing right next to the severed head, I see small pieces of slime begin to accumulate to reform the beast but some of the particles are vaporised by the heat blazing off the ground like a hotplate. I made a fist with my right hand that was now devoid of a weapon.

It’s time to put that Armouring skill into good use.

Stubborn as steel. The weight of gravity. Tragedy and disaster manifested into a force of unforgiving nature. My arm begins to feel heavy. Like I was looking into a place where men cannot return from. Darkness that leads to the centre of the world where a single massive and writhing beast named life was screaming to assert itself.

I bring down the hammer and my fist coated in shadow buries itself into the gel and digs through until it cracks and shatters the first core and penetrates deeper into the second core and turns it into shards and dust upon contact. The slime surrounding it loses shape and collapses into a pool of blue that quickly turns into vapour.

“Dammit. I hit a little too hard. Who knows how much these cores are worth!”

I want to curse at my own power. I put way too much into it…

...Wait. This is wrong. I feel dread surround me as the steam begins to fade away.

I didn’t gain a level from killing this thing. I should at least have got something.

There’s no way it was lower than level 40. Meaning that the fight isn’t over-!

There’s a second far larger and more ferocious rumbling from the pools of water.

Seven new cobras sprouted forth hissing a sound that I could swear was akin to the laughter of mockery.

Then in the middle of the seven kings, a bulb-like pod rose as if it were a throne for the centre of this cavern, within it were countless cores of varying size and lustre. The kings were connected to the pod as if they were appendages. Merely limbs. Tentacles of the Kraken.

The walls of the cave suddenly began to excrete water that solidified into jelly and formed orbs of slime that began to coalesce into smaller normal sized snakes that surrounded the exit.

This thing sacrificed a finger as bait.

To see what I was capable of and then prey upon me when I was vulnerable.

Shit. I decide to use my most worthless skill.

I scan it for information. It gives me nothing but a name.

SLIME EMPIRE.