‘Sam!’ S exclaims using telepathy. Her voice interrupting the constant rumbling of the wooden wheels colliding with the jumps of the uneven terrain, the sputters of chat amongst the others in the carriage, and the occasional beats of hooves thudding on harder ground than the wheels; only to be muffled but the rickety wheels of the carriage once more.

My eyes, which had closed by habit in the hard wooden/steel carriage, were opened by her interruption. This caused me to groan as a once again forced myself awake…

Looking at her, to my left, she explains, ‘We’re almost there… Are you okay?’

“Fine…” I mumble back, still getting weird looks from Mask and Charles who were sitting opposite us like I was mad for doing so.

Looking outside of the windows, a range of mountains cut into the backdrop, getting closer and closer although still hiding their bases behind a couple hills we still had to pass over. In the sunlight of day, the grassy hills all encompassing the terrain insight flowed like waves in the wind, with the curtains of our carriage doing the same.

“Guys… let’s work out part positions, shall we?” To the question initiated by Charles, everyone including me nodded. He continues, “Okay… uh, is Miss S the only one who can vanguard?”

“I can summon vanguards… Let’s make the under-levelled three do it all though,” Jacq states, rather uninterested.

“Alright… What is your weapon Sam?” Charles asks, but I don’t answer, instead summon my bow which I promptly unsummon. Shrugging he continues asking questions, “If need be, I trust Miss Jacqueline to beat anything we face… Oh, Mask, can you at least handle things one on one?”

“Depends on who…”

Charles discusses more specifics about our formation, but it’s pretty redundant. In the end, he only realizes that what he said was correct, using up all the remaining time getting to the mountain tediously confirming it.

-

We get out of the carriage drawn by rather neat looking skeletal horses. Whilst we walk away, the carriage and remains of the horses vanish into an abyss of red fire. The ground afterwards was perfectly intact, not even remotely singed by the fire.

Looking around, the scenery is a rocky mountain-side with a steep, nearly 90 degree, surface surrounding the mountain’s base; there was an exception to this however, that being a cave dug into the same surface. This cave had an entrance the width of five people and the height higher than that of a giant. The top of the mountain was white, but currently a black cloud was visibly hiding the peak. Around us was rocky terrain with a couple trees dotted around, and even when I used my tracking skill, no signs of life apart from us were visible except in a forest about five hundred metres behind us.

In the time that took, the others were pretty much inside the cave… So I casually walked behind them.

The inside of the cave was narrower than the entrance, quickly getting to the width where only two of us could go shoulder to shoulder. Even though our composition had Charles- having summoned holy armour and a holy weapon- and S at the front, thankfully nothing happened whilst we were walking down the winding, thin path and we got to a large opening rather quickly.

When I finally got inside the large room, I could see the fight already happening. S, backed up by Charles, fought off ten or so small slimes; most of which were already just liquid with shattered cores.

Once the anti-climactic battle was over, Charles and Mask grabbed bottles and proceeded to scoop up the remaining slime as S grabbed all the silver, slime core bits she could, then headed my way.

Without being needed to be told, the pieces disappeared from her hands, same with the bottles of slime Charles and Mask had fastened close, all of which being placed into my storage.

Acknowledging that done, everyone moved on into another thin, winding path which lead to a staircase.

At the end of the staircase, was a peculiar room. The odd thing about it was how the roof, about two stories high, was coated in small blue, green and red slimes with a larger yellow slime in the middle. Yet no one but me seemed to notice as they walked in to the chest on a raised platform in the centre of the room.

Instead of telling the others about the trap, I quickly lock onto the large slime, open up a portal and put my hands through it… With enough force, my hands return with a large and intact magic core which I promptly put in my storage. The splatters from the large yellow slime falling to the floor alerted the rest of the group, and the fight ensued from there with me not even having entered the room, therefore I got ignored by all the slimes.

Even though I had dealt with the large slime, the at least one-hundred small ones which remained posed a rather big problem…

Well, it was a problem until Jacqueline actually started helping in the fight and overwhelmed the slimes with skeleton summons and dark magic, evaporating almost all of them in the process. Of course, this did mean that there were barely any resources from them which survived, barely adding up to a bottle of slime and about three and a bit slime cores, but everyone was unharmed and I didn’t need to do anything else, so there was some solace in that.

“What happened to the…” Charles thinks aloud. Soon met with similar questions from Mask and their line of confusion lead to some rather start conclusions.

‘Sam, what did you do?’ S asks, being one of the only two people who would’ve known it was me. The other one ignores the comotion, clearly not caring in the slightest.

I shrug at the accusation. And so, after a while of questioning without an answer, I collect the remaining drops and open the chest… which turned out to be empty.

We continue on through yet another tunnel, which lead into yet another trap room to which I was going to treat the same way. But I stopped when the others realized it as well… Instead, I took some cores from some of the smaller slimes in the corner, hoping not to be realized. Taking nine or ten intact slime cores in the process.

‘Why are you doing that in secret?’ S asks, catching me before triggering the trap with Charles and Jacq.

Again, I shrug and hope no one sees the exchange. Thankfully they don’t even notice the slimes I killed. Though this is mainly due to how many got destroyed by the numerous black, teardrop shaped projectiles coming from Jacq which exploded everything in the area with a black fog on contact.

This time, regardless of the fact the large slime core was harvested before Jacq’s magic started, we got about the same amount of cores and only two more bottle of slime. This was bad efficiency knowing single small slime was as about thirty centimetres in diameter having enough slime each to fill a small sized bottle and a large slime was one metre in diameter with enough slime to fill at least ten of the same.

After this, they collect the remaining core parts then, once I had collected them, they walked towards the chest, which actually had a weapon in this time… I didn’t have time to check it before Charles, the person who opened the chest and received it, literally threw it my way point first and it ended up in storage before striking me.

“It’s probably cursed, better let Grey look at it…” he stated, thinking he’d need a reason to be so sudden.

“How long is this dungeon anyway?” Jacq asks, yawning probably from boredom.

“We’re halfway,” Mask bluntly states, putting his hand to the wall as he said it.

Grimacing at the news, Jacq begrudgingly continues following us as we enter yet another narrow tunnel. This time, however, there was some action in the front although I couldn’t see what it was...

It’s over in about a minute, then we continue down some steps and end up in another large room. This time, there was four large slimes already on the floor and a roof filled with smaller slimes.

Taking the time to remove as many small slimes secretively as I can, I end up with around twenty more intact cores. Additionally, due to the amount of big slimes, we got twenty bottles of slime from them alone and this time Jacq just used her skeletons rather than her darkness magic, leading to no imploding resources… In the end, we got enough core bits to make at least fifty small cores and two large cores, additionally we got five bottles to add to the twenty from the big slimes. Although it did take around half an hour to actually get them all and place them in my storage, which made everyone both more bored and more tired…

-

Going off into another tunnel, we ended up bumping into a large slime which could barely move in the tunnel, making killing and harvesting it easy and efficient. We got seven more bottles of its slime, then ran out of small bottles so had to use one of the medium sized ones from my void storage.

By this point, we were all coated in slime of various colours, with even me- who was mainly in the background- having to swish the viscous liquid out of my hair and eyes…

After two more similar fights in the narrow tunnel, we ended up in one more room. This one was far bigger than the others. Whereas I’d estimate the others to be thirty metres by twenty, I’d estimate this to be nearly one-hundred by one-hundred metres. And at the center, a slime with a crown on about the size of ten large ones bounced towards us on our arrival.

Every bounce caused slimes on the ceiling to fall with rocks, filling the room up rather quickly with slimes and debris. Although this was a larger fight, Jacq didn’t use both her magic and her summons, only using the latter. Though the amount and tiers of these summons were not mere skeletons with simple swords and shields like before, instead they were gigantic skeletons equipped in steel armour and wielding broad-swords of the same material.

Due to this change alone, it was a complete one-way massacre… The skeletons minced the small slimes regardless of them actually being made of liquid, killing tens of them with each swing, although to say S and Charles didn’t do as much would be a lie, since those two slaughtered just as many small slimes themselves as all the skeletons together.

Eventually, the minions were destroyed. The price for which being that the royal slime cracked the armour, bones and skulls of most of the twenty giant skeletons Jacq summoned. With the tables turned, the royal slime become more erratic, no longer having to pay attention not to murder its own kin. Since we were mainly around the entrance guarded by the skeletons, most of its bounces only lead it into the stalactites on the roof. Each collision causing it to bleed off noticeable amounts of slime each time.

Still, every bounce shook the room, caused the same stalactites to fall to the floor and, if hit, they would crush those underneath to a pulp. Due to this, S and Charles left most of the fighting to Jacq’s skeletons and Mask, who could easily keep up with the slime without breaking a sweat. So staying with me and Jacqueline herself in the tunnel during the rest of the fight.

The six remaining skeletons turned to five with one barrage of attacks, then into three from another, not really getting any hits in. Eventually, with everyone apart from Mask near me, I put a mental tracker on the royal slime and tried to remove the core by hand in the same way I did before. I tugged with all my strength, putting every part of my body into it...

But it didn’t work, I couldn’t make it budge slightly, so the fight continued.

I didn’t give up however, nudging S on the shoulder then asking her to help, we tried with the two of us, but came up with the same result… Then Jacqueline, who got bored of seeing her now two remaining skeletons fail to get any serious hits in, went over to us and tried it herself without getting Charles involved on my request, but it still didn’t work.

With mana fatigue settling in, I gave up trying that scam, instead waiting with the rest of them to whittle down the royal slime…

-

An hour later, the royal slime had bled enough to where it wasn’t an instant kill, although Jacqueline had to waste another wave of summons to it. Instead of fighting it for that long, Mask, between fighting, rested with the rest of us every now and them for a time adding up to approximately half of the hour. Apart from that, he spent most of his time using the largest bottles I had to grab the royal slime that spilled from the boss. Filling three of these in the process.

Now Charles and S went into the fight. However, it still wasn’t that easy…

Due to how much weight it had lost, it lost some power but gained speed in the process and bounced for far longer from every attack it made. The royal slime was also still about the size of two large slimes, yet regardless of how much they tried to hit it, they just couldn’t due to its speed.

Even Mask began struggling to keep up with it, although this was mainly because he wasn’t prioritizing to hit the boss. I could also still keep track of it with my archery skills.

“Miss Jacqueline, want to try again?” I ask, to which she responded by coming over to me in the tunnel.

Putting her hands in once again, she tugged as hard as she could. Her face went red as she put everything she had into pulling…

In the fight, Charles, S and Mask set up a three-pronged attack…

Like they had set up, the royal slime targeted Charles for a bouncing attack. He met it with his blade, which although harming him, also caused a large physical cut in the royal slime’s membrane, making it bleed off large quantities of slime and finally reveal its core.

And, with good timing, S also made an equally large attack. This resulting in the slime pinned in place.

Then Mask attacked the slime’s revealed core with a leaping stealth attack…

The slime’s core literally vanished in the wake of the attack. But as Jacqueline handed me the intact golden slime core the size of a large slime from earlier, Mask and the other two became greatly confused to the lack of core shards…

S soon snapped out of it, realizing what probably happened… Looking over to me shrugging back once more.

There was still slime and cores from the smaller slimes to collect, additionally, Jacq unsummoned her remaining skeletons and collected the bones of the fallen ones… This took around an hour to complete due to the sheer scale of the fight. In total, we ended up with 6 large bottles of royal slime, pieces of small slime-core which added up to around five more cores and ten medium bottles of mixed slime.

After which we proceeded down the remaining tunnel, ending up in a room with five chests and shockingly zero slimes…

Two chests had weapons, one being a bluish knife and the other being a dark, wooden staff. The two other chests had armours, one being chainmail and the other being a bluish material. In the final chest had a thick, pristine book in. All were passed to me for storage incase they were cursed.

There was also a portal on the wall behind the podium with chest on. After looting everything, we headed through it and got spat out by the cave’s entrance, even though the cave entrance had been sealed up.

Summoning the carriage with a freaky fire ritual, Jacqueline, followed by the rest of us, got in and went back.