Looking down at the second floor, and the massive pile of slimes there, Avery has a horrible thought.

“How many of those slimes did you kill on your way down to the gem and back?”

“Probably about fifteen or so, I’d guess. Why?”

“Well, I think that when they moved in here, these slimes might have designated the enclosed area as a nest.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Slimes out in the open can’t do anything, and just multiply, but when you get a mass of them in a single place and keep them enclosed together, they start to try to defend the area.”

“From what I felt, all they do is bump into you.”

“That’s how it starts! If the bumping doesn’t work, they start to evolve.”

“So what does that have to do with me killing them?”

“The more slimes are killed in a given area, the more dangerous they become. For a small nest, it doesn’t get too bad, but there’s enough down there to qualify as a medium nest for sure. The really dangerous things will show up if you just go down and start stabbing them.”

“I don’t exactly have a wide variety of tools at my disposal here. I have a stick.”

“In that case, just be aware that the dangerous slimes are color coded. Anything that’s not green is probably dangerous.”

Your Lesser Slime has Combined with your Lesser Slime to form Slime. The new monster has been added to your Spawn menu.

“Oh no, make that the green too. If they’re big, they’re also dangerous. Don’t let them run into each other!”

“Sounds like staying up here isn’t an option anyway. They’re ‘evolving’ without my input, so I may as well go down there and see what’s going on.”

Avery considers making a spear with some of the mana she just got from the evolution, but decides that trying to make anything that would be on the ground on the second floor while it’s covered in slimes would just result in the item being eaten. Most dungeons were able to have treasures in them without having them eaten by monsters though. Not the best, since it was a common observation that if you killed a wolf you could usually find coins in its stomach, but valuable treasures would usually be found in boxes which the monsters within didn’t open.

“Hey the yellow ones explode on you. Don’t touch them.”

“Too late.”

“Same with the orange ones if you see any. They’re more dangerous actually.”

“What about that blue oh my ow everything pain.”

“I guess you really are a monster, if that thing hasn’t killed you yet.”

Avery looks away from the second floor to her body up on the first. The last casting of the ritual was far less powerful than her previous attempts, and she was pretty sure she knew the reason why. What little mana she had when using the spell was what transfered to her body, and that was what remained of her soul. Since her soul was so small and weak, it wasn’t able to sustain the spell for as long as she had been back before messing with everything. Nervously, she checks her status again.

Dungeon Statistics Age 10 Weight 5073 Structure Points 173/173 Mana Points 406/5600 Structure Regeneration 0 Mana Regeneration -227 Power 8 Intelligence 15 Finesse 12 Wisdom 8 Hardness 15 Charisma 6 Menu Options Build Spawn Demolish Map

That was good, the mana regeneration was slowly going back up from the negative two hundred and thirty. Never mind, there it went again.

“Hey, you have to go after the tiny purple one that burst from the big one you stab, otherwise they grow to full size within twenty seconds, and that's bad for my mana regeneration.”

“Do you want to come down here and deal with this?”

“Yes!”

“Well too bad, you're a disembodied ghost who can't do anything when near living creatures.”

“You are incredibly irritating.”

“Okay.”

Avery checks her notifications, dismisses the ones about being able to spawn blue, purple, and yellow slimes, and waits for another popup to appear. She doesn't have to wait long.

Your Lesser Slime has Evolved into Orange Slime. The new monster has been added to your Spawn menu.

“Orange incoming. Remember, move, then pop it.”

“Oh, so that’s what I’m doing wrong. I have to not get hit. Never would have guessed that, thanks for the advice.”

“You don’t have to be rude about it.”

“Pretty sure I do.”

Avery had already lost eight mana from just the drain, and since she was running low on soul even before this massive pile of goop had climbed out of the canyon to ruin her night building her way out of this mess was off the table. What little healing her body had managed to do while she was out was not worth this aggravation. The slimes were one thing, and the slow death from the energy of her soul being drained to power the creatures was another, but the constant sass was probably the worst bit.

As much as she hated to think it, Avery might actually have to thank this monster for retrieving her core. Judging by the reduction in mass and maximum mana, those statistics were related and the slimes had been eating her gem while she was embodied. Why they didn't start on her actual flesh was a mystery, but it was theoretically possible the creatures were drawn to the core's influx of mana. A while ago, the notification had mentioned that Contracting would be available after the end of the tutorial, but maybe that only applied on her end. If monsters that were able to make their way down to the core without being stopped by the puzzles or existing guards could have a contact initiate automatically, it would serve as an incentive for the dungeon to be deadly enough to keep the masses of slimes away, while still allowing for powerful monsters to take advantage of a dungeon’s upkeep for them to live without needing the massive amounts of sustenance required for running said monster's inbuilt abilities.

Now, if Avery had any kind of control over these mindless pests, their presence could be considered symbiotic, as she would be able to direct the things to carve out corridors and rooms to generate more mana, which in turn would allow more slimes to be sustained. Unfortunately, they were instead just contentedly staying put, not even going about typical slime nest behaviors like melting stone with orange slimes to generate tunnels reinforced by yellow slime innards. No, it took an invader coming into their nest to get them to even start generating anything out of the basic lesser slimes. Avery was pretty sure that kind of negligent apathy was treasonous in some way. If they couldn’t make up for how much mana they were draining somehow, they were useless to her.

The death of a (Lesser Slime: 3) has provided you with 23 mana.

Just one moment there. It was subtle, but that pop-up was different. Avery was getting less mana from the slimes now. Checking through the recent notifications, she finds one that came in at the same time as the most recent lesser slime mana drop.

Your mastery of the (Lesser Slime) grows. With every death, it becomes more powerful, and you can spawn them more easily. Level: 3/25 Progress: 30/60

Alright, there were diminishing returns on monsters. Got it. Once they leveled up, the amount of mana gotten from them dying would decrease at regular intervals. It was good that she found this out now, it would be pretty terrible to bring out a bunch of slimes, get like ten killed, then take a loss of one mana per every other slime destroyed in that spawning batch. That was one thing this infestation was good for, though it didn’t excuse their trespass.

“You know, if you could aim at all you might be dangerous.”

“I've got like four mitigating circumstances for that, not the least of which being this blue slime stabbing me repeatedly. Where did the teeth come from in the first place?”

“That's a fairly interesting question, particularly since there aren't ever any remaining in the puddle once you've popped it. The theory is that the slime precipitates harder solvents out of its solution while attacking, which are then manipulated by imitated muscular fibers to dig through whatever it managed to latch onto.”

Avery kind of wondered if the slime would get tired at any point, if it wasn't being sustained by her mana at least. The one that had grabbed onto the invader had been ‘chewing’ continuously this whole time, and showed no sign of stopping.

“Speaking of which, you should probably get that thing off of you.”

“I would love to, but my current priority is to keep from having more of these things on me. Do not have time to try and line my spear up the wrong way and stab myself. Tiny jabs aren't cutting it like with the other ones, and it'll take some effort to get an actual stab in. Tail is only so long, you know.”

“It's kinda impressive that you can poke things three meters away. You don't need to do that though. As the saying goes, passed down to every adventurer, 'spin to win’. None of these variants, other than the yellow, are particularly sticky. Spin fast enough and they'll just fly off.”

“That sounds somewhat suspect, but I'll give it a shot.”

Speaking of stickiness, that spear the invader was using was a bit… less than stellar in quality. Considering that there would be a number of orange slimes and that she needed a functional spear to be around to steadily increase her mana regeneration, Avery begrudgingly spends the mana to create a spear on the top floor. It costs a precious two mana, but the stone version of a spear will probably be a bit more resilient than the wooden stick they’re currently using.

“It’s not working, and getting bumped while I’m not paying attention isn’t helping matters.”

“Head back to the first floor then. Also, you’re spinning way too slow, you’re barely breaking two rotations per second. Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up. Maybe try planting your spear and using it for leverage? I think about five rotations per second would be enough to dislodge one of the small purple ones, so four or so should be enough for the far more massive blue one. They aren’t even as permeable as the regular slimes, so they should be even less attached. Call it three. You can do a fifty percent increase, right?”

“Probably not.”

“Try just rapid changes in direction then. Left right, left right. Shake your body as hard as you can.”

“I saw one of the blue ones tear through some of the green ones while it was trying to kill me. I’m gonna try and get another one to destroy this one.”

“No wait that’s a terrible idea for several reasons-”

Your Blue Slime has Combined with your Blue Slime to form Greater Blue Slime. The new monster has been added to your Spawn menu.

“And now you’re dead. Great.”

Avery looks over the two severed halves of the invader, the top half still holding onto her core and the terrible spear, then inspects the Greater Blue Slime.

Monster Statistics Name N/A Race Blue Slime, Greater Soul Power 1 Health Points 1/1 Mana Points 0/0 Strength 15 Intelligence 1 Dexterity 4 Constitution - Special Qualities Special Features Keretin Defense Tooth Blast Controlled Mitosis Blue Infection Mana Gain from Dungeon Presence -1

That thing might actually be worth keeping around. Actually no, if it managed to get out… But it wouldn’t. The slime would have to figure out how to get out of the second floor, up through the hole in the pit, out of the pit, then through the door she was probably going to have to make now to keep the slimes from killing everyone. At least the upgraded slimes didn’t take up more mana regeneration than the lesser ones, and that horror of spinning teeth and blue slime was still killing anything it came near. So far, the slimes hadn’t come close enough for Avery to have to worry about them devouring her core, so she may as well go about with tasks other than supervising without being able to affect results.

First off, there was the piece of onyx next to her body to demolish.