For a moment, I considered charging into the pool room. There were easily a dozen pseudopods coming out of the treatment pool, all of them long enough to reach every corner, nook and cranny of the room, they could even get to the struts directly under the roof, making it so nothing could escape their grasp. If we actually went it, we’d get struck, it was almost inevitable. And something I wanted to avoid, both due to the material the pseudopods were made of and because they were able to cause serious injury, simply due to their weight.

So, instead of charging in, I called for a retreat, pulling Lia back into the changing room and allowing the door to swing closed, right before it got splintered by the strike of a pseudopod. We all managed to get out of the way, though Luna and I got a few small cuts from splinters. Luckily, it wasn’t anything serious, though it stung a bit, making Luna curse softly. Neither of us would be hindered and I could already see that Luna was channelling a bit of Life Magic, healing herself, while I did the same with Blood Magic. No need to leave wounds open in an area filled with disease and decay, that was just asking for an infection to set it.

Once we were decently far from the door, far enough that the pseudopods would have to stretch quite far to reach us, I decided that what had worked outside could work here, too, and conjured freezingly cold water again. I didn’t pay half as much attention to the details of the formation and despite the far quicker creation, the slime was visibly creeping out of the pool by the time I managed to set it up.

The conjured water splashed against the monster, not carrying enough force to act as a water-cutter, but enough cold to freeze on impact, immobilising the area around the impact point. It didn’t do much, not with a patch maybe a square metre in size on an enemy that was about fifty times that, but it was a start. Not a big one, as the slime demonstrated a moment later, but a start nonetheless.

When the slime pushed itself forward, moving with surprising speed, we were forced to retreat further and while I managed to channel yet another blast of freezing water into the bulky creature, I only slowed it down by a fraction, the attack far from sufficient to deter the creature.

We ran out of the building with the sounds of crumbling masonry or something like that following behind us, the slime clearly demolishing the building in its attempts to chase after us. Once we had a bit of distance, I reached out to as much of the tainted Ice in the one pool I had cracked, spending a surprising amount of Astral Power to take control of it. Once the Ice floated from the pool, I started to launch the largest chunks at the front of the building we had just exited, trying to destroy as much of it as possible so it would collapse on the slime. The slime’s manner of exiting helped a great deal, the front might have caved in even without my help, but with a few car-sized chunks of Ice crashing into it, the question was moot. Sadly, the slime wasn’t too impressed with the roof collapsing above it and while the mass slowed the thing down, it wasn’t pinned or anything. We gained a bit of time, but not endless amounts of it.

“Plans?” I asked, trying to come up with a good way to destroy it myself. Ice was my first instinct, maybe something similar to the move I had used to freeze the pools out here, but the volume of the slime made that difficult. It would take a long time for me to freeze to body, simply due to its large mass compared to the limited point of impact. Maybe if I started to shift the spray, trying to coat its outside in a block of Ice, but the thing's strength made that difficult. If nothing else, the slime was incredibly strong, that much I could easily see from its casual dismantling of the building.

Moments later, just as Alex was holding a few of their bombs up, I was further treated to a demonstration of the thing's strength, when a sizeable chunk of the destroyed roof was launched towards us with bone-breaking force. Just a glancing blow from the thing would have broken bones and a direct hit could easily kill. Once again, we all dodged but the slime was smart enough to continue a barrage with half of its pseudopods, more debris flying in our direction while its main body was creeping towards us.

“We can try to cut the pods, especially if you manage to freeze the connections,” Lia suggested, while Luna looked around, likely trying to find anything alive that she could manipulate with her magic. Sadly, the entire area was fairly dead, with only a few desolate patches of grass, moss and lichen clinging to life.

“The fence would slow it down,” she suggested when her search came up empty and I had to consider for a second while dodging out of the way of yet another projectile from the slime. It might work, especially if the thing had some sort of core in there, but it also might split the slime into a few dozen smaller enemies, which might be faster. Easier to freeze, too, but I wasn’t too enthused with the idea. Still, it had enough potential to retreat towards the gate.

“Move towards the gate, try slowing it down from afar,” I told the others, shouting to cover the distance our different dodges had opened up between us. No need to cluster against an enemy with ranged attacks that covered large volumes of space, it would make things only easier for the slime.

Alex launched a pair of vials at the slime using their sling, the vials crashing on impact and spreading their payloads. One instantly caught on fire, burning a bright white for a few moments before the flames consumed the original fuel and petered out. If nothing else, the slime was clearly inflammable, and despite the visible distortion in the air caused by the heat, it didn’t look like the attack had made much of an impact.

The other vial hissed and a few small puffs of smoke were rising from the impact area but again, I couldn’t see any huge effect, making me think that this, too, had been a bit of a dud. Still, it was a hit and that, in combination with a few attempts to use Darkness Magic to confuse the creature, was enough to catch the thing's attention. Maybe the Darkness Magic had done something, maybe the slime was too simple in the first place, I wasn’t sure bit it was now moving towards Lia and her passenger, giving Luna and me some extra room.

Nearby, I noticed that the silvery parts of Luna’s eyes had lit up brightly and moments later, I could feel a faint connection, one familiar enough for me to accept it. An application of Hecate’s divine magic and thanks to it, I could now see a little more, recognising areas where the power within the creature was concentrated, allowing me to make educated guesses about the thing's weak points. Sadly, it didn’t look like Luna would be able to do much more, not without using vines or something similar, opening herself up to retaliation if the thing could grip them. Most likely, Lia’s reluctance to use her chain hook came from a similar place, no need to give the monster more ways of dragging you into its deadly embrace.

Lastly, Silva had shifted into her humanoid form and was lobbing more rocks, though she stayed between the thing and Luna, ready to deflect any missile my munchkin might not be able to dodge. A good idea, one that I fully supported, even as I made another note to find some sort of useful ranged option for her.

The information from Luna helped me a great deal and I was taking full advantage of it. Where I would have had to try and freeze the thing in its entirety, I could now see where surgical blasts of power would weaken it, especially if I managed to match the right elements to its weak points. I needed Overflow to channel enough Astral Power to produce ranged blasts from some of my lesser-used elements, twisting wind into blades was easy but turning a combination of Water and Earth, both in their purely Astral forms, into a beam of desiccation? That was almost enough to send me to my knees with effort, channelling that much Astral Power was physically challenging and I’d get a headache soon. But the effect was well worth it, causing the front part of the slime to dry out and start cracking from the force produced by the hind portion, allowing us to get even more distance. Progress, of a sort. It might take a bit, both of time and space, but I now felt fairly confident that we could destroy the thing.