My attacks on the massive slime were enough to get its attention, and not in a good way. Where before, I had been forced to dodge a missile every so often, now almost a dozen pseudopods were throwing shit at me, some of them literally flinging parts of the slime in my direction. Those parts didn’t possess any life of their own, but from the way they impacted the asphalt around me, I could see that they were highly corrosive and possibly toxic. Their scent certainly indicated that I wanted nothing to do with them, for more than one reason.

The constant barrage was enough to pressure me into conjuring shields of Ice the hard way, wasting large amounts of Astral Power by using Ice Magic to manifest them, instead of conjuring them via rune mastery but I simply didn’t have the time. Even with the shields, I was feeling the pressure, especially when I noticed that the slime projectiles were destructive enough to corrode my Ice.

With the brutal onslaught, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and used Draconic Leap once more, taking to the air to dodge the latest attacks before landing on the roof of the office building and taking cover. Not a moment too soon, I could already hear the sounds of destruction as multiple missiles aimed in my general direction crashed into the building, though it wasn’t enough to bring the house down just yet. The slime was trying but I had a bit of time.

Time I used wisely, conjuring up a pair of shields made from Hard Ice, strong enough to withstand quite a bit of punishment, before recreating the same formation I had used earlier, the one for freezingly cold water. With the way the pseudopods were waving about, I could estimate the position of the slime, even without seeing it, allowing me to launch cold water in an arc, hopefully impacting the slime on the other side. Some of the water ended up as spray, turning to snow if it hit some of the dust in the air, but hopefully, the slime took the majority of the damage. The frantic waving of the pseudopods certainly indicated success.

“Watch out, mum!” Luna’s frantic shout of warning was enough to get me moving, I was not about to my daughter's words in the slightest and instead, I stopped channelling magic into the formation and leapt off the building. Not a moment too soon, I hadn’t landed on the ground just yet when the slime demonstrated that it, too, could estimate positions based on gathered data, tracing the arc of water back to the formation and launching a barrage of attacks at that position.

Its attacks were enough to make the roof cave in, multiple parts of the other building had hit where I had been moments earlier, alongside some larger pieces of slime, making it quite obvious that it wanted me dead. A feeling I thoroughly reciprocated, this thing shouldn’t be allowed to exist, let alone continue to grow.

Regardless, trying to make a stand in the limited area of the treatment plant would be stupid, there was more than enough open space in the fields around it, giving us freedom to move and avoid the thing as much as possible. Trying to fight such a monster up close was nothing short of suicide, it was simply too specialised to compete in its area of specialisation. Granted, it had some moves I wouldn’t have expected from a slime, regardless of size, but now that we had seen its ability to attack from a distance, we could take measures to avoid them.

By the time I reached the gate, Luna was already there with Silva, both of them waiting for me, while Lia with Alex on her shoulder was quickly approaching. The slime was further away, its attempts to kill me by throwing rubble meant it hadn’t been able to move from its position next to the rubble, so we had some time.

Again, I started to form a runic formation, this time going for pure Ice Magic, hoping that my greater ability with it would make up for possibly lesser effectiveness on my target. The intent behind the attack was still the same, freezing the slime, taking away its mobility and ultimately destroying it. If Water was too concentrated to affect something of its size, I needed to make the attack more diffuse, widening the area I was freezing so it would be affected all at once.

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The obvious solution was one of my favourite runes, the rune of Mist. For once, I didn’t even try to include a Blood or Darkness component in the magic, merely a combination of Mist and Chill Runes, maximising the amount of Astral Power that went into the two concepts, with a particular focus on the second.

The effect was quite fascinating and physically completely impossible. The mist billowing from my formation wasn’t just cold, it was so cold that the air around it started to freeze from the contact, creating strange snow-like flakes that fell into the grass, only to melt away into steam soon after. The temperature difference between the conjured mist and the air around it was insane and only the control I held over my mist prevented it from immediately mixing with the air around to reach thermal equilibrium.

As I conjured more and more mist while keeping what I had contained, I waited for the slime to show its pseudopods and luckily, I didn’t have to wait for long. Otherwise, I might have lost concentration and the mist would have disappeared into the warm summer night, chilling a large volume by a degree or two, instead of creating a super-cooled volume where I wanted it to be. The moment I saw the office building break as the slime broke through it, I sent the mist billowing forward, even as the slime started to throw stuff at us again. But by now, I didn’t need to conjure more mist, so I could easily abandon the formation and use what I had conjured before while we retreated further, Lia quickly closing the gate behind us.

The thrown rubble had some fairly peculiar effects on the gate. It wasn’t as strangely elastic as the rest of the fence, but it was solid enough to block the projectiles, causing some fairly serious noise as they crashed. My own attack seemed to have quite a bit more success, causing multiple pseudopods to freeze solid and even break when the slime tried to move them, the Ice not budging to its manipulations. For a moment, I considered using my own Ice Magic on them, but given the distance involved, and the fact that the pseudopods used to be part of the slime, I doubted I’d get any sort of efficiency out of such a move.

Instead, I prepared for the next round, from what I could tell the mist had wounded the think quite severely, though I doubted it was about to die, the attack hadn’t been strong enough to kill something of its size.

We all moved away from the gate, Lia and Alex launching a few more of their harassing attacks to keep the slime interested. It briefly tried to retaliate with thrown rubble, but we could move closer to the fence and take cover behind it. When the rubble hit the fence, the effect was just like earlier, when I had tested it and discovered the ridiculous elasticity. It was a sight to see a piece of brick wall, multiple metres in size, crash into the fence, stretching it for over almost two metres before bouncing back, the wall mostly disintegrating from the conflicting forces. I was surprised the thing had managed to throw it in as intact a form as it had, but the destruction on the bounce made up for that.

Now, with its primary ranged attack out of commission, the slime started to move in our direction, picking up a surprising amount of speed by pushing itself with its pseudopods. I decided to conjure more mist, letting it build up as much as possible before sending it against the slime. Luna was a little behind me, taking shelter with Silva protecting her, while she empowered me with her Divine abilities. It was an interesting effect, one that I’d love to study at some point, but Hecate was fairly stingy in that regard. She helped, but only if Her help was needed, not because we wanted it.

I felt a wide grin stretch my lips when the slime crashed into the fence, trying and failing to destroy the fence, before simply wiggling through it. The slime was easily capable of fitting itself through the gaps but to do so, it had to divide itself up into smaller parts and that was the very moment I struck. By dividing itself so it could fit through the fence, it greatly increased its surface area, making itself far more vulnerable to freezing attacks.

Once it was as divided as I thought it would be, I struck, sending the freezing mist into the area and causing a sudden cold snap.