With a grunt of effort, I slammed my mace into the ground from an overhead swing. Little chips of rock flew in every direction, pinging off my armor and embedding themselves into the large slime creature. Sadly, the most damage I had done to the slime had been from the stray chips, the four other holes surrounding me a testament to the ability of the creature to dodge.

Unlike the last three slimes of this size, this one came with a new trick. After the first miss, the creature surprised me by slamming a hard horn-shaped object into my breastplate, the spine shooting out of the slime at high speed. Backing up and resetting I waited until the slime hit me in the breastplate again before lunging forward and slamming my shield edge on into the slime. The weird plastic like creature resisted for a moment then ripped along the section I had cleaved my shield into. This had been the first with the spine so I wasn’t surprised to feel the new extra resistance. The fact that both parts tried to attack me moments after I pulled back my shield was a surprise, but with its injury induced sluggishness, the mace solved the problem soon after.

“Ok, it looks like we need to start using magic from here out,” said my annoyingly casual mage.

Even as I understood the plan to get a feel for our respective capabilities, I couldn’t help but feel grumpy sweating inside my armor as I worked hard to kill creatures that he could kill with just a bit of effort. This was proven to me as we continued on with him assisting. Walking towards a new creature he would stop, glare in concentration at the large slime and then a finger sized bolt of arctic frost would slam into the large ooze, slowing the monster so severely that I could return to my casual walk and bash routine.

“Um…uh…just…just a second, please.”

This timid request came from our Porter as she was attempting to chip the ice surrounding the core of one of the large slimes that had just been killed. Motioning Meddy away Rendrick paused and cupped his right hand in the air as if he was gathering water in a rainstorm, muttering for a few seconds he then overturned his softly red glowing hand and poured out the liquid fire over the slime.

I had been lead to believe that he was only a frost mage and that he hadn’t yet ‘purified a source’ for fire yet, whatever that meant. This would throw away a bit more of my idiot act but I needed to understand what was going on, the rules of magic here were probably going to be something that could get me killed if I failed to understand them.

“How you make fire? Thought frost mage. No have fire source?” I asked, trying for a broken but still understandable question.

The look of guilt on his face was clear, apparently, he had done something he shouldn’t have. What it was I couldn’t guess. Shrugging away the look he stomped over to another of the sludgy slimes and stomped at the creatures remains until the core was free. I assisted with the last one as Meddy started pulling the core from the now bubbling slime that Rendrick had used liquid fire on. I just watched and waited as I was sure Rendrick would eventually answer. My patience was rewarded as he stopped his kicking of the corpse and sighed then turned to me and answered.

“Any mage can use any type of magic. The more you understand that type of magic the easier it is. I had to convert my, well ‘pure’ magic into a liquid flame type. There are more types of magic than there are stars in the sky, the less you understand about the type you are using and the further it is from any source you have purified, the more expensive the conversion from pure mana to the type you want becomes.”

Looking a bit sheepish he continued as he rocked back and forth on his feet, the image of a young child being caught with his fingers in the cookie jar.

“That spell cost me a bit more than half of my mana. Master never let me cast a spell too far from frost, said it was a bad idea to play to your weaknesses in a dangerous situation.”

Now I understood what was going on. He had been playing around, experimenting, and asking about it reminded him that he wasn’t just out on a lark, he was in a place that could result in death if he made a mistake. The danger wasn’t that extreme yet, but in a dungeon that could change suddenly. I had already experienced more than one painful lesson proving that.

My hand involuntarily went to the glass jar at the small of my back tied to my belt in a leather pouch. I knew I would be using my slime in a painful training, but I was still dreading it. I could feel the cold sweat drying on my head from just the thought. Shaking away the thought I turned back to watching the darkness as I waited for Meddy to finish collecting the slime cores. I knew that they were useful in some kind of enchanting process and that in the future Rendrick would use them to enhance our gear, but it hadn’t been made clear to me how that worked.

Shortly we moved out again wandering through the dimly lit caves. The air was dry and unlike a normal cave, the air smelled clean and not stuffy in the slightest. I vaguely wondered how that was done even as I slowly cast my sight to the wall, floor, and ceiling as I walked. I had no plans to miss an obvious attack vector like the ceiling and my diligence was soon rewarded as I watched a light brown slime slink along the ceiling just out of reach, it’s body closely blending in with its perch. I wasn’t sure how smart these creatures were, or if the dungeon itself was directing them, but I feigned ignorance even as I took a tighter grip on my shield and mace.

When the slime was a few feet ahead it started to bunch itself much as the horned slimes had before it. When it lunged at my head, I was ready and swatted the pseudopod out of the air. The impact ripped the slime from the ceiling and spun it into a very odd landing against a wall of the tunnel. As much as these creatures seemed to be uniform, they obviously had a ‘right side up’ since the slime was trying to flow around and right itself. This gave me enough time to stride forward and slam a few well-placed smacks against the moving liquid threat.

When the slime died and slumped into the now familiar puddle on death I was waiting for the now expected rush of animus but this was far beyond the normal sensation. Comparing this to the standard feeling of animus was like comparing lovemaking to a kiss. I braced myself as the wave slowly washed over my body until I felt I could get a hold of myself.

“Did you make a breakthrough? I was wondering when that was coming. Make your changes and I’ll keep an eye out,” Rendrick said then turned to watch the dark tunnel, even Meddy took up station in the rear watching for trouble.

When I checked my status it was difficult to keep my eyes from bulging out.

Status Name: Gur-dun Race: Tel-duth Forest Troll Attunement: Earth Health: 97% Stamina: 89% Mana: 100% Strength: 18 (+) Dexterity: 13 Agility: 15 Vitality: 30 (+++) Endurance: 24 (++) Resistance: 14 Intelligence: 15 Wisdom: 12 Control: 17 Traits [Endless Hunger]

[Resistant Skin] Skills [Troll Regeneration] (Beginner 33)

[Improved Metabolism] (Novice 76)

[Carpentry - Weapon] (Novice 24)

[1 Handed Blunt] (Beginner 5)

[2 Handed Blunt] (Novice 89)

[Shield] (Novice 45)

[Light Armor] (Novice 65)

[Heavy Armor] (Novice 88)

[Intimidation] (Novice 45)

Each of my stat’s had increased, especially the stats I had been leaning on during training, but the stat’s that had the plus marks next to them increased far more than any of the others. Changing where those marks rested would change the focus for each breakthrough. I had a feeling that my resistance stat would increase significantly after I start my painful slime training. Resistance was not just around resistance to magic, but resistance to any type of status affliction, pain and fear included.

Once I returned my focus from the internal status window I watched Rendrick nod and gesture me forward again, “watch out, dungeons like to hit people after breakthroughs, people get cocky,” I could see that.

That first breakthrough came within the first hour of hunting within the dungeon. We fought through for the rest of the day with the difficulty remaining roughly as it had been, mostly larger horned slimes with the occasional small slime mixed in, a few hidden as puddles like the one which had injured me before. While I had been expecting another breakthrough to happen at any time, as the day wound on and neither Rendrick or Meddy said anything, I started to get the picture that it was a slow and tedious process with each breakthrough taking much longer than the last. When we stopped for the night we tucked ourselves into a small dead end cave, most of the room taken up with the red glowing heat stone Meddy pulled from a pack.

Pulling out my sleep pad I trudged to the entrance corridor and silently took first watch. My plan was to wait till my teammates were asleep to begin my slime training. Soon enough the smell of well-cooked meat wafted down the hallway, the light stones we stuck to the corridor walls ceiling and floor letting us know that no enemies were coming for our meal. Meddy cut off a large chunk of meat, it appeared to be some kind of goat, the skin crips and bubbly from the close proximity to the glowing gem. Hair covering her face she made her way to me and held the wooden plate with food out towards me to the extent of her arms.

“Thanks, Meddy, smells good.”

You would think that I had growled and snapped at the poor girl the way she moved away from me. I doubted my ‘dumb primitive’ act would be something I could keep up with that kind of fear around. Eventually, I would be driven to calm the girl, my protective instincts not allowing for anything else. I knew it was a dumb thing to do, the longer I could find things out while being discounted the better, but I just felt like flinching myself every time she flinched in fear.

Sighing, I returned to eating my meat, the food filling my empty belly. I wasn’t exactly tired, the fights today far less challenging then Telor’s training. But I was dusty, sweaty, and fatigued from the mental strain of watching every direction for hours waiting to be attacked. Strangely the fights themselves being so easy just made the strain worse, I kept expecting something more dangerous to pop out and attack.

After our meal and a judicious use of a pan of heated water to clean the eating supplies, Meddy and Rendrick settled down to sleep, the heated stone being reduced to a light glow of warmth. The light from the hallway bright and shining into the dead-end cave while I stared at the jar containing the light blue slime. Eventually, I couldn’t pretend to myself that I was still waiting for my team to settle down rather than avoiding my plan.

Pulling the odd ceramic lid from the top of the jar, the leather strap that wrapped around the lid and buttoned around the base was difficult to pull off with my less than dexterous troll hands. Carefully I looked into the jar watching as the slime only barely sloshed around, it’s time stoppered in the jar apparently either hurting it our causing it to go into some kind of torpor. Placing my hand over the mouth of the container I tipped the jar over into the cup of my hand.

Moments after landing on my hand the slime started to squirm and move around, apparently, the slime had been hungry and the taste of my flesh was something it deeply enjoyed. It was only a few seconds but when I tipped the jar back over I could see a perfectly circular spot of pinkish meat in the center of my hand, the green skin was completely eaten away. Capping the jar I continued watching the hallway while I made every effort to keep from yelling. Within a half an hour my hand had a circle of slightly darker green skin. While the darker color would make it easier to be sure I had converted all of an area, the throbbing pain which seemed to continue endlessly in a perfect mark in my hand indicated that it was probably unneeded. The pain would mark the way just as well.

Wordlessly I reached for the jar again.