The Hobgoblin and Dominus Fortitudinis both charged to meet me. The hobgoblin positioned his hammer over his shoulder to deliver a crushing downward blow, and the Dominus Fortitudinis extended its two front hands outwards to clap me between them. I continued forward, jumping high over the hobgoblin. The hobgoblin threw his hammer up at me, prompting me to phase out a boulder and kick against it to dodge mid-air. The hammer continued on, smashing against the ceiling and bringing rubble down.

Before the Hobgoblin could retrieve his hammer, the Dominus Fortitudinis ran past him, prompting the voice-addled hobgoblin to switch targets. His lightning aura expanded outwards, enveloping the Dominus Fortitudinis as he reached out to grab hold of the passing monster and send a crackle of electricity rippling across its surface. The Dominus Fortitudinis sweeped its closest arm across the ground, smashing against the hobgoblin and sending him flying through a watchtower in the distance.

Losing naught a moment, the hobgoblin sent out a whip of electricity towards the hammer embedded in the ceiling, and pulled himself towards it. He pulled the hammer out of the ceiling mid-flight, using his remaining momentum to send him flying back at the Dominus Fortitudinis, then turned as he lengthened the lightning whip, circling the hammer around him in an expanding arc towards the Dominus Fortitudinis.

The Dominus Fortitudinis reached out and grabbed the hammer mid-air, crushing it in its grip, then yanked the hammer to the opposite side, pulling the lightning rope and hobgoblin with it. The Hobgoblin shouted, dissipating the lightning whip connected to the hammer as he generated a second whip in his other hand, reaching towards and connecting to a metal hut to stop and reverse his momentum. The hobgoblin generated another whip in each hand, lashing wildly at the Dominus Fortitudinis while keeping his distance.

The two monsters were locked in a battle now, both choosing to target the stronger foe rather than me, which gave me time to think.

I was planning on having the whole goblin village pelting spells at the Dominus Fortitudinis to wear down its mana reserves, as part of the tried and true Primary Raid Stratagem. But the hobgoblin’s berserk state threw a big wrench in that plan. Even if I were to gather other nearby monsters with a barbearian form, there are way too few monsters capable of non-physical attacks for that to work. The goblins were the only option, and now all but a few are gone. Even that ridiculously strong time-aligned goblin is nowhere to be found, either dead or vanished.

This was my only chance, and it’s gone. I’m completely out of mana crystals, have way fewer reinforcements than planned, and am woefully outmatched. The only saving grace is that the hobgoblin king is well equipped to fight the Dominus Fortitudinis, and a far better fighter than anticipated. But it’s not enough.

Still, I can’t just give up. Not when I’m this close. Think, Sylas. What weaknesses does the Dominus Fortitudinis have? What can I exploit?

* * *

The Dominus Fortitudinis leaped, breaking tents, buildings, and stone floor alike to launch itself across the village in an instant. The hobgoblin ran its lightning across its own leg muscles and strengthened himself to the limit before springing out of the way, dodging the Dominus Fortitudinis by a few feet.

The moment the Dominus Fortitudinis landed, a small mass of water pelted its body, and was immediately absorbed into it.

“It worked!” I croaked. The oil toad is built for spitting tar or oil, rather than water, but it can do both.

Slimes automatically absorb any liquid substance they come in contact with, and the Dominus Fortitudinis is no different. This won’t kill the slime, but it does dilute the slime, making it slower, weaker, and easier to damage. Now that I know it will work, It’s time to get aggressive.

I shifted into a bird, flying over towards the two monsters’ fight as fast as I could. The Dominus Fortitudinis kept leaping after the hobgoblin, who dodged out of the way each time with slimmer and slimmer margins. By the time I reached the two, the Dominus Fortitudinis had cornered the hobgoblin against his castle walls.

The Dominus Fortitudinis raised its front hands to strike the hobgoblin, but turned at the last moment and extended its fist up at me.

I emptied my entire mana reserves, flooding the area with water from the Polypus terrarium. The fist came into contact with the giant mass of water and quickly absorbed its mass, but powered through to crush me against the village cave’s ceiling.

* * *

I peered out of the portal, only to find that the Dominus Fortitudinis had left a layer of webbing before retracting its fist, trapping my corpse between it and the rock ceiling above.

I can escape, but I’ll need to regenerate my mana to shift a few times. I need to get out as soon as possible to assist the hobgoblin. I haven’t done enough yet.

I don’t have the time to wait for the neutral mana to replenish my reserves. It’d take an hour just to get enough mana to shift between the forms I need to use. I don’t have any mana crystals left, so I’ll have to eat the mana back. There’s a few goblins outside of my subspace that I’ll have to eat anyways, but I can’t reach them from here. What else can I use? Geistig mentioned that the fastest way to regenerate mana without crystals was to eat something of your alignment, so Polypus it is. If I’m draining their tank’s water, there’s not going to be enough room for all of them by the end of this anyways.

I moved over to the polypus tank, used my control over my subspace to compress one of the E rank Polypus’s forms, and ate it whole. Within a minute, I had the mana I needed.

I shifted into Scolopendra form, only to find myself missing most of its sections. The rest could still be felt outside of the subspace, apparently left un-destroyed by the Dominus Fortitudinis in the pursuit of my main body. This merits investigation, but for now I’ll just settle for taking advantage of the opportunity before me.

I concentrated on the section closest to the goblin village, and shifted over to rock-worm form in its place.

* * *

I arrived back at the village only a few minutes after I had died. In that time, the tide had almost turned back in the hobgoblin’s favor. He had melted off literal tons of slime, killing its cells with his lightning. But in turn, his movements had become even more sluggish, and every breath he took was a pant. His aura sounded closer to a crackle than the thunder it had been, and only reached out a few inches past his skin, rather than the several meters it had been.

He’s winning now, but he’s almost out of mana. There’s no way to finish the Dominus Fortitudinis off without him, and he’s only made a small dent in the Dominus Fortitudinis’s total size / mana reserves. I can’t replenish his mana, either.

So that’s it. There’s no way to win this fight. It’s over.

Attack

I should run.

Fight

Give up while I still can.

Kill

But the battle has been going on for too long already

Consume

And I can’t resist the voice anymore.

I tore into the closest goblin corpse to top off my mana, left a few sections of my Scolopendra form nearby, then charged at the Dominus Fortitudinis as the hobgoblin started casting a spell..

He clasped his hands together, and condensed what remained of his aura between them. As his aura shrank, blinding-white pillars formed between his hands, screeching with a sound not unlike a bird’s chirping. The pillars grew in number, echoing across the village cavern until it grew loud enough to shatter glass, and casting a shadow in the shape of his hands across the floor and ceiling.

The hobgoblin sprinted forward, and the Dominus Fortitudinis held its ground, intent on taking the blow head-on. I reached the Dominus Fortitudinis, but it did not turn to face me, instead growing a new arm out of its backside to swat away the barely-relevant intruder.

Within the span of a second, everything connected. I phased out every last drop of oil and tar available in my subspace, injecting it throughout the slime through its arm, then transformed into a water slime to brace for impact. The hobgoblin extended a single arm with the spell in hand, piercing it into the Dominus Fortitudinis as lightning arced away from where it impacted, exploding a hole and blowing bits of slime with each arc.

The oil quickly diffused throughout the slime, reaching the hobgoblin’s spell. Streams of light emitted through the Dominus Fortitudinis as its body expanded. Then the arm made contact with me, and everything went dark.

* * *

I left my subspace the moment I arrived in it, taking oil toad form as I left. A huge area of the floor was covered in small bits of silver slime, all slowly moving towards a growing mound of slime and a pillar of smoke in the center of its radius where the Dominus Fortitudinis had stood. And just beside it was the hobgoblin, his entire front side blackened with char.

Quickly springing into action, I began mopping up the floor with my toad tongue in an effort to get as much of the slime into my stomach and subspace before the Dominus Fortitudinis finished Coalescing. Without the Dominus Fortitudinis dead, I can’t revive it in my subspace, but I might still be able to do something with the slime I gather considering it still has mana in it.

The taste was awful. Viscous and moist, with more soot and rubble than slime. Even the mana felt awful, the remnants of spent oil mana from dozens of other toads instinctively repulsive to the toad who’s form I’m taking. Some of the globs of slime even have bits of space mana in them… Wait, hold on.

I looked down at the slime I was about to eat. It wasn’t moving, which suggested it wasn’t living slime. It would make sense for the bits of dead slime from the form I took to have my space mana in them. But this slime is silver. If that’s the case, then that would mean that this mound of slime is…

That’s it! This fight isn’t over yet.