The walk to the slime pit did not take long. We went down a tunnel next to the inside wall and walked until we reached an open cave. There are two small green humanoids wearing rags, holding a spear and torch. They are looking further into the cave. Goblins. Past them looked to be a large open area lit up with standing torches around a pit. Inside the cave there are slimes of different colours everywhere with a handful of goblins standing around. One of goblins kick a slime, sending it into the large pit against the back wall.

The pit takes up about three thirds of the cave and slimes can be seen slowly moving up a slope into the main room.

We are about five meters away from the two nearest goblins and they still have not turned around. Miko gestures to me and whispers, “This is a good time to raise your identify spell. Try it out on one of the goblins.”

Following her advice, I focus on the one on the right and cast the spell.

[Slime Tamer]

Health: ??? / 100%

Class: ???

Level: 3

Race: Goblin

+1 to Identify spell rank

The goblin’s body twitches, and a health bar appears above its head. The goblin then walks over to his companion and punches them in the face.

The goblin that was just hit drops his torch and jumps on his attacker.

I look towards the others “What…”

Yui chuckles as she unsheathes her sword. “Goblins are stupid.” She did not bother to whisper the words and at the sound of her voice the two goblins look over towards us. The goblin I had identified was under the two and it’s health was down by twenty percent. The goblins struggle against each other but before they can make it to their feet, Yui cuts them down with a single swing of her sword.

Yui turns to me and sheaths her sword “We will take care of the goblins so you should just focus on the slimes until you get a level.”

Miko walks up to some shabby looking tables against the cave wall and pulls one across to where the goblin corpses lay. “We can use this to dismantle the rabbits while we are here.” Miko grabs the corpses of the goblins and throws them towards the pit.

“Good idea.” Yui pulls a stool out from her inventory, sits down at the table, and pulls out a pile of dead rabbits.

Miko follows suit and pulls out her own stool. She also pulls out her mug of drink from the waiting hall and has a gulp before placing it on the table.

Richard walks up next to me and points his finger towards a goblin. A beam of bright golden light emits from his finger that sears straight through the goblin. He does the same thing to three other goblins, gives me a small smile, and pulls out his own mug while joining the others at the table.

Looking at the three of them acting so casually inside the tower makes me laugh. This is a definite improvement from my experience in the tower.

I look around the cave and can see the slimes moving over the dead goblin’s corpses. The bodies slowly dissolving under the slimes ability to eat anything. I pick out a lone slime away from the corpses and cast Identify on it.

[Blue Slime]

Health: ??? / 100%

Class: Monster

Level: 2

Race: Slime

A health bar appears above the slime, and it starts to slowly roll itself towards me, leaving a wet trail behind itself.

Time to try out my improvised spell. I summon a spear into my right hand and stretch my arm back. I take a moment to get a feel for the weight and then launch the spear towards my target. The spear whistles as it moves through the small space and hits the slime. The spear impales the slime and buries itself halfway into the ground. The health bar of the slime dropped by a quarter and the slime slowly climbs up the shaft of the spear.

I scratch the back of my head “Huh, I was expecting a better result.”

“Try a different weapon.” Said Yui from the table.

“Yeah, Piercing and slashing weapons suck against slimes” adds Miko.

“Piercing weapons normally do almost no damage. Interestingly, yours must still have an impact because they are made from mana.” Richard said, probably writing it down at the same time.

Well, if spears are ineffective and I don’t really want to be throwing swords, that leaves hammers. I picture in my mind a small one-handed hammer with a short half that I can use to throw easily. I go to cast summon weapon and nothing appears in my hand. Strange. I try a second time and again, nothing happens. It can’t be an issue with mana since I still have over half left.

Realization hits me, and I check my skills list.

Skills

Appraise Item (0)

Axe One-handed (5)

Axe Two-handed (5)

Counter (22)

Dodge (10)

Parry (10)

Polearms (5)

Shield (5)

Small Blades (5)

Spear (5)

Sword One-handed (27)

Sword Two-handed (5)

Unarmed (12)

I need to have a skill of at least one in a weapon before I can summon it and I never picked up a bloody hammer back at the guild hall. “Damnit!” I yell out and look at the slime as it drops off the end of the spear and land on the ground. I take a step towards it and in kick it as hard as I can.

The slime explodes from the impact with my foot and bits of slime sprays everywhere…

Experience gained

Satisfying. I look down and see that I have bits of slime stuck to my robe. I pat myself on the chest and the bits of slime fall to the floor.

“Are you sure your class is not berserker or something?” Said Miko from the table.

I look over and see the group staring at me.

“I forgot to gain a rank in hammers or maces.” I say in way of explanation.

“and that made you angry enough to kick a slime into the next dimension?”

“I was uh, aggressively meditating. You know, like bringing the internal conflict to the external and then…” I gesture to the floor where the slime was. “Make it disappear?”

Miko laughs while saying, “You are so full of shit!”

Yui stands up from the table “Miko!”

“What? We are away from the guild. You don’t have to be so wound up here.”

Yui walks over to the other table against the wall and kicks out, breaking off one of the table legs. She walks over to me and glares at Miko. She stops in front of me and offers out the table leg. Looking at me she says, “You never got to practice with a mace before we uh” She points to her cheek. “Here. Use this, you will gain blunt weapons skill if you kill a few slimes with it.”

I look down at the improvised weapon.

[Table leg]

Quality: Crude

Weight: 3 kg

Value: 0c – 0.5c

+1 to Appraise Item

I look up to Yui and give her a smile. “Thank you. Nice kick.”

“Aggressive meditation.” Yui lets out a long breath “I can feel the stress melting away.” She smiles towards me, claps me on the shoulder, and walks back to the table.

Yui sits down and looks towards Miko, “Perhaps when we get back, we can practice this meditation together.”

Miko grins. “You can beat on my shield for as long as you need.”

Turning back to the slime filled room I look for my next target. I really don’t want to use a physical weapon however I would basically be missing out on a spell if I don’t get a skill point with it. Better to use it now and get rid of it as soon as possible than hanging on to the improvised weapon to practice with later.

Movement from the pit caught my eye and a green slime landed on the edge. The slime then bounced towards where the dead goblins were. I send an identification spell towards it.

[Green Slime]

Health: ??? / 100%

Class: Monster

Level: 2

Race: Slime

No difference from the blue slime. I wonder why this one is bouncing, maybe it’s the colour difference.

The slime starts bouncing towards me. Once it was three meters away from me it launched itself towards my chest. I step to the side and watch as the slime sails past me. The slime spreads out over the ground as it lands and takes a second to pull itself back in to a blobby ball shape. The slime bounce-jumps towards me again but this time I bring the table leg up into a swing and hit it squarely at centre mass. The slime explodes, sending green bits of gel all over the table and trio.

Skill gained: Blunt One-handed (1)

Experience gained

All three of them look towards me and Yui says, “I did not give you that so you could rain slime guts on us.”

“Yeah, and can you stop making them explode? We want the slime cores for trade with chef Powin.” Adds Miko.

“Sorry about that.” I scratch the back on my neck “I’m still getting used to my body here.”

It took a few more kills adjusting my strength to where I could slay a slime without making it explode. The next few hours are spent killing slimes and the occasional goblin that appeared. I knew that creatures spawned inside the towers, but I never saw it happen before. A surreal flash of shadow and its there. If you can say shadows flash. A blink of shadow? Pulse? Anyway, they just pop up from nowhere and appear confused for a few seconds before noticing me and attacking. I had to take short breaks to let my mana regenerate and used that time to talk with the group. Turns out that slimes only bounce when they are hungry. I gained two levels, a point in intelligence, increased identify, appraisal, and few other skills. I ended up clearing almost half the mass of slimes from the pit before Yui decided we should trade in the loot. Slimes only dropped cores but the goblins had some coins and rusty weapons. Miko wanted the rusty weapons for scrap metal.

I still felt I could keep going but could see that the others were getting bored of just watching me.

We were about to walk out of the cave when there was the sound of a man yelling from above us. Turning around, I see refuse and the body of a dwarf fall into the pit. Slimes splash against the wall from the impact but only a few make it out of the pit. We run over to the edge and look down. Inside the dwarf is swinging their hammer around while desperately wading to the ramp. Miko and Yui jump down and help clear a path while Richard sends an orb to the dwarf. I learned that they are healing orbs and will heal the target if they drop below 100 percent health. I cast some hammer-bolts into the pit, helping to clear the path up.

We pull the dwarf up the ramp and sit them against the wall. The dwarf has the same insignia on their pauldron as the others we met outside. The dwarf is breathing heavily and slaps away a slime that had clung to their leg. Richard kicks it back into the slime pit.

“Thank ye for the assist.” Chuckling the dwarf continues “Glad you left something for me to land on!”

“You are lucky, a minute later and we would not be here.” Said Richard as he casts another healing orb.

A rattling noise comes from above the pit and a rope ladder appears, unrolling itself. A second later, three dwarves shimmy down the ladder, land in the pit, and wade and slayed their way to the ramp.

A dwarf with a shield strapped to his back trips over a spent hammerbolt and cries out, “By the Forge fire! why are there so many weapons laying around?”

“Aye, looks like Thor’s playground. Oh! Having a nice sit down are we, Burin?” Said the one holding an axe.

“Fuck you, Old-Prick. If ye didn’t jump back into me, I would nay have fallen!” Replied Burin, the dwarf under Richard’s care.

“What you call me, boy?” Old-Prick takes a step towards the sitting dwarf. A hand lands on his shoulder from behind, stopping him.

“Enough o’ that Olwirck, I saw ye bump the lad.” Torva Flatpick steps forward and kneels down next to her injured party member.

“All in one piece there, Burin?”

“Aye cap, just a little drop.”

“Yes, one that left you in the red.” Added Richard as he finishes casting a third healing orb. “Good thing you have so much health, Dwarves are not the most aerodynamic.”

Burin gives a deep chuckle “Aye, built like a brick and fall like one too. Thank ye, healer. I am in your debt.” Looking to the rest of us he continues “All of ye.” He pulls out some folded paper and hands it to Richard. “Take this. A map dropped by the fort captain. Should lead ye to something good.”

Burin looks towards the rope ladder. “We taking the ladder up, cap?”

Torva grabs him by the arm and helps him get to his feet. “Nay lad, I could use some fresh air. Let’s take long way back.”

Torva pushes her group towards the tunnel exit and steps close to us. “I’m glad you were here. As thanks let me give you some information.” She lowers her voice to a whisper “My clan received news of a dwarf being summoned yesterday, in the undercity tower.”

“Wait.” Richard leans closer to Torva. “Reigner was summoned yesterday. I have never heard of two people being summoned on the same day.”

“Aye, but that’s not all.” The dwarf glances towards her team before continuing. “They say that this dwarf is telling all kinds of strange stories.”

“Strange how?” asked Yui.

“Stories that he was a hero over level three hundred before arriving and now he is back to zero.”

“That is crazy, it’s a well-known fact that Hiro holds the highest level of two hundred.” Said Miko.

“Aye, he was taken by the Shovel Knights and so I doubt we will hear anything more.” Torva looks towards me. “Don’t know if there is a connection but I thought you should know as you arrived on the same day.”

Torva said her farewells and walks towards the exit tunnel.

I watch her go and take a breath.

There was a dwarf in my support group named Grafoki, the group were all above level three hundred while I was closer to five hundred. However, Grafoki was a cleric, a lazy one at that, and would only spend mana when bribed or threatened. It’s not hard to believe that there are other worlds with Heros climbing and conquering towers. Perhaps this ex-hero is the same as me and wanted a class change.

“Who are the Shovel Knights?” Miko asks.

“Bunch of lunatics” said Richard, as he watches the back of Torva exit the cave. “You remember the group that tried to attack the undercity tower a few years ago?”

“Those crazy cultists?”

“That’s them. They believe they can take over a tower and rule the world. Or was it, destroy the world? I’ll have to check the library once we get back.”

Yui places her hands on her lower back and stretches. I look away from her athletic form and I’m reminded that I need to buy some clothes. I have a small pile of copper now from my time here. The goblins had between five to twenty copper coins on them each time I slayed and looted one.

“I’ll let grandfather know. Now, let’s get out of here and celebrate our first day together.” Yui said while walking to the exit.

Miko follows her chanting. “Meat! Meat! Meat! Time for meat!”