Wearing raincoats, the four of them crossed the passage. Freddy used his talent to hide from the humans in the passage facility.
Robert developed a way to learn where Freddy was. Silent messages could still reach the Taulusian, even if his talent was active. Robert would send a short single-bark message, then use prescience with a five-second window. Freddy, once he received the message, would think of turning his talent off without leaving his current spot. If he thought strongly enough, it would give Robert a notion of where Freddy was.
They walked half a mile away from the passage before Noah asked them to stop. "Welcome, to the first realm in our journey! The gravity slime caves," Noah said, with a grandiose wave of his hand.
Amanda sputtered and whined. Noah looked at their environment cautiously.
This whole realm was a series of humongous caves, dotted by fragile glowing crystals and beds of bioluminescent lichen. You could fit a castle inside these caves and a whole city street in each tunnel. Sparse vegetation, mushrooms ranging from one inch in height to several yards tall, stunted trees of alien design kept the whole realm from looking like a giant worm bore through dull rock. Plumes of steam rose from geysers, vanishing moments later. The air wasn't stale. The wind shifted from a gentle breeze to a strong gust at random intervals.
But despite that, the weirdest things in these caverns were the rivers. Right in the middle of each tunnel, a river of water flowed, a tube of liquid with sediment in the middle. It churned and ran, droplets splashing out of the rivers and raining on the ground. Yes, the water flowed suspended in the air. Yes, it continuously splashed droplets on the caves.
Fish swam in the water. But they could only be called fish because of how far humans had bastardized the word. If a cuttlefish was a fish, if a starfish was a fish, if a boneless shark was a fish, if a crayfish was a fish, and if a sturgeon was also a fish, then whatever the things in the water were, they were fish. The creatures looked like some deranged Life Arch had fused together parts of several aquatic animals. No two were alike and it felt like all of them were staring at the humans as if they were dinner.
And it was not the most fantastical thing about the caves. It was the fact there was no up or down to them. The crystals, lichen, trees, mushrooms, geysers, they existed all around the caves, up what Robert considered walls and into the other side of the river, what would be the roof.
"What happens if I walk that way?" Robert pointed to the side.
"You'll learn why they call this place the gravity caves," Noah replied with a finger pointing up. "One hint: Don't jump too high. You don't want to fall into the river. Unless you have a way to jump out of the water all the way back here."
"What about small jumps?" Amanda asked.
"Small jumps are fine. It's the jumps above five feet that may land you in trouble," Noah replied. He took a rock from the ground and threw it up a few times, increasing the strength of the throw gradually. When he threw the stone high enough it cleared around fifteen feet above the ground, it didn't fall back down. Instead, it accelerated as if in free fall and landed in the river, splashing water all around. He dashed to the side as a bucket's worth of water splashed where he stood.
"Disturbing the river comes with consequences," he continued, pointing at the water. "You don't want one of those critters coming back with the water. Next lesson. Do not connect land and water." Noah took a spool of thin rope and tied each end to a rock, one small, and one big. "Before I toss this rock at the water, I want the three of you to run toward that rock formation over there," he pointed at the target. "One, two, three, go!"
Robert, Freddy, and Amanda ran the hundred feet separating them and the rock formation. Once they reached the target, they turned and looked at Noah, who tossed the smaller rock at the river and started to run with impressive speed.
The tethered rock struck the river and the thin rope straightened at once. Water started to run down the rope, giving the impression it dug a furrow next to the river. The torrent only increased in volume, splashing the cavern floor around the big rock, and flooding the area. The water ran in both directions up and down the tunnel, and also up the walls. Soon the flood became a tube and this tube started to move toward them.
"Let's move. I didn't expect the rope to resist this long. And by move, I mean, run!" Noah said and led them away from it.
They ran a quarter mile up the tunnels when the rope finally snapped under the strain of the realm's weird gravity.
"And now you'll know why they call it the gravity slime caves," Noah said. "Prepare to fight!"
The water that flooded the tunnels stopped and congealed. It started writhing and agglomerating into blobs, revealing the aquatic creatures that came down with it.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Robert immediately remembered the angry Academy staff, shouting at Noah for throwing his students at flaming monkeys. Or was it throwing flaming monkeys at his students? Regardless, they now had hundreds of slimes crawling toward them, along with some nasty river monstrosities.
"We need to budget our Essence!" Robert shouted, then changed into barking and yipping. "Freddy, stand by and pay attention to Amanda. If she gets more than two enemies near her, I want you to blow them away."
Freddy outright refused to fight or learn any offensive spells. The only combatworthy Air spell he agreed to learned was Wind Push. I did exactly what it said in the name, it used a strong gust of wind to push a creature away. It couldn't be used to pull it closer.
The closest slimes sensed them and started to approach. They would shoot a leg forward, sticking to the ground and then pulling their whole bodies. Their erratic movement was hard to track. Robert drew his replacement sword, a replica of the one dissolved by the Void cultist. Amanda had a crate of weapons sent from the Samson HQ, including four copies of that Water sword for each of them. Amanda held her sword with both hands. Robert cast haste on both of them.
The first slime reached Robert, who stood closer to the flood than Amanda. It shot a pseudopod at Robert, who dodged and slashed, cutting the appendage with ease. It lost cohesion and splashed behind him in a shower of gelatinous blobs. He had to keep the slime from touching these blobs or it would regain control of that mass. So long his attacks were fast enough, the anti-corrosion rune on his sword would keep the metal from being corroded by the slime.
It was one way to kill a slime with slashing attacks. Reducing its volume increased the odds of finding the core. But the attacks needed to actually split the slime and not just cut into it as it could still control any part of its body that was connected to the core. The extremely sharp sword was very useful for that purpose. But this tactic had its downside. It required concentration and stamina, as the attacks necessary to expose the core were numerous and Robert had to dodge the slime's attacks.
All of Robert's attacks needed to be vertical. Cutting the slime horizontally would only make the two parts fall on each other, rejoining the moment they touched. Unless the horizontal attack touched the core, that was.
He chopped the first slime and even swatted the main mass with the flat of his blade to keep it from touching the severed parts. Another thing he learned about these slimes was that they never shot the core inside the pseudopods. Any appendage it created for locomotion or to attack would never contain the core. It always stayed with the main body mass.
On the thirteenth cut, he saw a spherical bulge form on the otherwise amorphous creature. He risked a stab and was rewarded with the feeling of something solid offering some resistance until it cracked. He felt a small rush of Ether and then the slime lost cohesion. It just splashed down, inert.
He checked on Amanda, who was still struggling with the slime she was facing against. Since she was okay, he moved to engage another slime.
Some slimes fell from the ceiling – actually the section of the cavern diametrically opposed to them – and were dragged back into the river. The moment they touched the water, they became fluid and rejoined the river. It made Robert think. Was this river actually made of water?
It gave Robert an idea. He swapped his sword for a shovel and scooped the next slime. In a fluid motion, he tossed the creature upward, where it also rejoined the river. The prolonged contact and lack of protective enchantments allowed the slime's acid to damage the shovel, making the strategy a costly one, unless he had a crate of shovels instead of one with weapons. Not to mention that slimes he tossed back to the river wouldn't give him any essence. Back to slashing, it seemed.
"Freddy, see if you can launch these slimes upward with your wind!" Robert (literally) barked.
A scaly fish with what seemed like a scorpion stinger coming out of its forehead scuttled on insect legs toward Robert. Not wanting to deal with the creature for longer than he needed, Robert cast slow on it and dodged the stinger. He threw a left jab at the creature and cast void punch. A small hemisphere of the creature's scales and skin was blown to pieces and then projected away from Robert's hand. The spell blew a hole in the creature's mid-section, causing it to writhe and bleed. Robert's sword came down and severed the forehead scorpion tail.
Two slimes flew up in a dust devil and "fell" back into the river, thanks to Freddy. Robert moved in a sweeping pattern, cutting down three slimes. He tried to keep the area around Amanda relatively clear of slimes. But each kill also made the constant bloated feeling coming from his star increase like a throbbing migraine. He didn't know how long he could postpone his ascension.
Absorbing Ether from his kills was something Robert never felt with the Mollusks. It was another clue to their sapient status, as he later learned that mortal humans also didn't grant Ether on death.
Creatures in this Ether universe were either sentient or animals – the two classes that didn't have Ether in their bodies, or they were part of the two that did have Ether, Archs and monsters. The difference between the latter two was that Archs had a variety of powers while monsters of the same species all had roughly the same powers, except when it was a true deviant.
The reverse recognition squid was an Arch Mollusk, and not a deviant as he believed initially. Samson happily kept the misunderstanding going and made no efforts to clarify. The same hypocrisy applied to the Taulusian monkey-shaped breeders and their lies. That the hound-shaped people were irrational and about the covenant the Taulusians were allegedly under. All these lies made Robert equally angry and frustrated.
The distraction of his inner thoughts allowed a slime to jump up and latch onto Robert's right arm. The raincoat they wore was resistant to corrosion but only for light touches. Any exposure longer than five seconds would ruin the protection.
Slightly panicking, Robert used his talent, taking the slime with him to the liminal void. There, he used drain essence on it. As the curse held easily, the slime started to writhe and latched with even more fervor onto its prey. It threatened to cover Robert's face, an attack which triggered a strong reaction from him.
He headbutted the incoming slime, shouting: "Mind Blackout!"