The air nipped at his skin like a thousand needles.

Ellis rushed forward. Through the corner of his left eye, he saw a flesh-pink dot. The dot rapidly expanded, until it took up the entirety of his left peripheral vision.

Before the moment of impact, Ellis twisted his body. He spun on his heels, and instantaneously changed directions.

BOOM!

The earth trembled, but he was barely aware of it. A thick, log-like tail slammed against the ground. Ellis had managed to dodge by a hair’s breadth, but he was not out of the woodwork yet.

Even more tails rained down all around him. Without wasting a single second, he continued forward.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

Rapid explosions dotted his surroundings. As the tails kept missing their mark, dust and debris soon blanketed the air, obscuring his vision.

Ellis narrowed his eyes. He could feel it, the instinctive feeling of danger rapidly approaching him, but without his vision, he had no way of dodging.

Just then, a gust of wind swept through the land. In an instant, the dust cleared and Ellis used this opportunity to rush onward.

Two tails whizzed past his head. He ducked and barely avoided. Another one crashed down in front of him, but Ellis once again kicked his heels and changed directions.

Slowly but surely, he was closing the distance between him and the monster’s main body.

When he got within one hundred meters of the creature, the number of tails that attacked him suddenly jumped to the hundreds. Each second became a dangerous battle where one wrong move equated to death.

Of course, he was not talking about his own death. Unless the acid got on his face, then he could probably recover from anything that the beast decides to throw at him. No, he was not protecting himself, but rather, he was protecting the reliable partner perched on his shoulders.

“Now’s a good a time as any,” Ellis mumbled underneath his breath.

“Kyu!” An affirmative cry whispered in his ears.

The next second, he felt the temperature rapidly increasing around him.

Ena’s tails glowed with a fiery sheen. She opened her mouth and from her jaws spurted out a great wave of fire. Since the last time he had seen it, Ena’s fire had improved by a considerable margin. Right now, it took on a shade of scorching white.

The flaming ball of heat was barely the size of a baseball. It flew through the air faster than a sniper’s bullet. The moment it hit the creature’s body, an orange glow filled the entirety of his vision.

BOOOM!

The fireball exploded. In response, the flesh-colored serpent let out a mournful cry that resembled the sound of sloshing water.

“It worked…” He couldn’t help but smile at the scene before him.

Much to his fortune, fire magic really did work on a slime. With this, the once closed doors that barred off his victory slowly started opening.

“Good job, Ena. A few more and we should—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the calamity-class monster quickly retaliated. One of its tails rapidly expanded like an inflated balloon before it came swinging towards them.

Ellis hurriedly flattened himself against the ground. He felt a rush of air pass over his head. When he stood back up, to his surprise, he noticed that his shoulder was now empty. Ena was gone.

Where the hell did she go?

He looked around and soon found Ena floating a couple of dozen meters above the ground. Her little legs were trembling like willow leaves. She angrily barked at him.

Unbeknownst to him, when Ellis instinctively dodged the attack, he had completely overlooked his little companion. Luckily, Ena had reacted just in time. She used her wind magic and propelled herself upward, barely avoiding the bloated tail.

If it hadn’t been for her rapid response, then who knows what might have happened.

“Kyu! Kyu, kyu, kyu!” she let out a string of aggrieved barking.

Ellis awkwardly scratched his head. All he could do was accept her complaints. After all, it was entirely his fault. For a guy whose only job was to protect, he really was quite bad at it. Just as he was about to apologize, his shoulders slightly tensed.

Without hesitation, he grabbed onto the scruff of Ena’s neck and quickly jumped back. Half a second later, more than a dozen tails assaulted the spot where he previously stood. They pierced through the air and penetrated the ground like sharpened javelins.

Ellis did not stop there. As more and more tails rained down from the sky, he continually weaved in and out, dodging everything by the back of his teeth. This time, he made sure to firmly secure Ena. He hugged her close to his chest.

At the same time, Ena did not just sit idly. She fired off more concentrated fireballs. The moment they met their mark, they exploded and turned the surrounding areas asunder.

After about thirty seconds of combat, Ellis couldn’t help but raise his brow at such a scene.

He discreetly glanced down at the little fox in his hands. “You’ve gotten stronger.”

“Kyu!” Ena squirmed her head from out of his grasps and raised her nose high in the air. A somewhat familiar, somewhat pompous expression blanketed her face. Even though she couldn’t speak, Ellis immediately understood her thoughts.

Just then, he tilted his back forward and narrowly avoided an oncoming tail. Unfortunately, although he dodged the first one, he was not prepared for the second. Something suddenly grabbed him from underneath.

As he was pulled forward, he felt a prickling sensation on his left ankle. Gritting his teeth, he watched from his peripheral as more and more tails closed in on him. His field of view rapidly shrunk as fleshy pink covered his surroundings.

At that moment, he resolved himself.

His steely hand clamped down in his left thigh. In one swift motion, he snapped his leg and ripped it right out of its socket.

The momentum from the first tail sent him flying. Fortunately, it also helped him avoid the onslaught that had almost narrowly enveloped him.

Ellis hurtled through the air for a few hundred meters before he eventually landed in the river.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

SPLASH!

Both Ena and Ellis surfaced a few seconds later. He shook his head and let out a wet sigh. He could feel his leg rapidly regenerating, but that did not make him even the slightest bit happy. He stared out into the distance. The slime turned around towards them. Without hesitation, it slithered their way. This time, it was not as sluggish as before.

Ellis frowned. Fighting that thing underwater was definitely not a good idea.

“Ena, quick, give me a foothold!” Ellis shouted.

Ena let out a bark before she hopped onto his head.

A moment later, the water churned. Wave after wave coalesced around him. It lifted him up off the river. Beneath his feet, he felt something resembling firm gelatin. The river’s surface had solidified.

His leg was still in the middle of healing, but Ellis did not wait any longer. With his one good foot, he jumped in the air. His minuscule figure rapidly soared to a height of over fifty meters before he began to stall. Just as he was losing momentum, the air beneath his feet suddenly felt a lot more tangible.

Another foothold, he realized.

He kicked off again. Like that, he hopped through the air like a frenzied rabbit. All the while, he dodged the oncoming tails that rocketed towards him like surface-to-air missiles.

Ena also retaliated. In between creating footholds for him, she tirelessly threw down more fireballs at the creature. Thanks to its size, the fireballs easily hit their mark. Unfortunately, it served to only further enrage the monster.

It’s not working… Ellis frowned.

The issue wasn’t with Ena’s magic, but rather, with the creature itself. Like Ellis, it too had an insane healing factor. Every time a piece of it was blown off, it would simply just regenerate. No, it was more than that. It was supplementing its body with river water. Ellis caught sight of about a dozen tails that kept the thing connected to the river.

As long as it was by the river, then this thing would be nearly unkillable.

“Damn it…” He grimaced. Although it was unlikely, he couldn’t help but ask, “Ena, you think you can create something big enough to one-shot that damn thing?”

Ena’s expression soured. She hurriedly shook her head and stared at him like an idiot. It was as if she was saying, ‘do you know what you’re saying? Is there something wrong with your head!?’

Ellis breathed out a sigh.

He silently thought about it for a few minutes, before he recalled back to what Grisella had told him.

There’s more than one way to kill a slime…

His expressions quickly regained its cool. With a new goal in mind, he once again asked his little partner, “then, the only thing we can do now is find its core. Ena, you think you can find it?”

“Kyu?” In response, Ena tilted her head.

Ellis quickly explained, “there’s something inside that thing’s body. If we can find it, we can destroy it. And if we can destroy it, then we can kill this thing. You’re good at finding things, right?” He briefly recalled back to all the times Ena had found suitable targets (monsters) for them.

“Use that space magic of yours. Don’t pretend like you don’t have it.”

After a few seconds of silence, Ena nodded her head.

Her tails slowly started to shimmer with a dull purple glow. At the same time, Ellis rapidly plummeted to the ground.

“Wait, wait— you forgot to create a foothold!” Unfortunately, his words fell on deaf ears. Ellis landed feet first into the ground. The earth cracked beneath his body while a light layer of dust bloomed in the air.

He let out a strained cough.

Ellis stared vexingly at his little companion. “So, you can’t use space magic at the same time as other magic, huh?”

For a moment, Ena stopped glowing. She nodded in response.

Is it an issue with mastery? Maybe space magic is just naturally more difficult than other types of magic… As all sorts of thoughts buzzed through his head, Ellis shook his head in disappointment. “That’s going to be a bit troubling…”

He silently thought for a moment. Eventually, he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, fine. I’ll think of a way to distract it. You just stay on my shoulders and focus on finding the core.”

Just as he spoke, pink tails slammed down all around him. Every missed attack broke the very earth beneath his feet. It resulted in very uneven footholds.

Ellis moved. He waltzed between cracked earth to cracked earth, narrowly avoiding each attack. All the while, his head churned.

He occasionally punched and kicked at it, but as expected, his efforts were all in vain. The only thing he got in return were melting hands and liquified feet. As the second slowly ticked by, the intensity of the bombardment only grew worse.

“Damn it, all I’ve got going for me is this stupid strength.” He grumbled to himself. Normally, he was quite satisfied with his particularly straight-forward set of skills. Unfortunately, being strong did him no favors today.

Right now, short of juggling boulders and tossing chunks of earth, there really was nothing else he could do with his strength.

Wait a minute, that might just work!

He suddenly looked at the ground. Because of the creature’s continuous attacks, the ground had been thoroughly fragmented. It was like looking at a messy puzzle of stone and solidified dirt. To his delight, these chunks of earth were large, with some rivaling the size of a small house.

Ellis stopped dodging for a moment and bent down. He stabbed his hands in between the cracks and lifted. He picked up a slab of vertical earth that resembled the shape of a school bus. With his previously ‘useless’ strength, he was able to lift it up as easily as lifting an empty cardboard box.

Without hesitation, he winded his waist back and threw the slab towards the creature.

BOOOOM!

A deafening thud reverberated through the air. Ellis had thrown it with such force that the impact caused the creature’s gelatinous body to scatter and fragment.

Ellis let out a smile. His stupid idea worked.

The theory was simple. He utilized the concept of displacement.

By applying enough force with an object of sufficient size, he was able to successfully displace the creature’s liquid-like body. Because of the scale of his attack, it would take the creature a fair bit of time to reform itself.

It was a feat he could not replicate with his own two hands.

The difference lay in size. A good example would be between dropping a pebble into the ocean and dropping a boulder into the ocean. One clearly produced bigger waves than the other. And like with the ocean, it would take a few seconds for the creature to return to normal.

While this method may not be able to kill it, it would still work as a suitable distraction.

Ellis continually threw large chunks of solidified earth.

The Slime was clearly affected. Flesh like liquid splattered through the air. Its main body continually fluctuated in size. Sometimes large, sometimes small. At some point, its skin began bubbling. It made a sloshing sound, which Ellis interpreted to frustration.

Ten or so tails suddenly bloated up like a balloon. They more than tripled in size, before they came hurtling towards him like giant pink-colored clubs.

Ellis quickly reacted. He fiercely stomped on the ground. A chunk of earth flipped upward. The chunk was immediately destroyed by the combined assault of the creature’s tails, but by that point, it was already too late.

In that split instant, Ellis was now over a hundred meters away from his original position. He once again stomped on the ground. Another chunk of earth flipped upward. This time, Ellis grabbed hold of the chunk and charged forward.

He used the chunk like a shield and ran straight towards the creature’s main body. Numerous tails tried to stop him, but his forward momentum was too great. In a blink of an eye, the distance between the two had rapidly shrunk.

Ellis slammed the chunk of earth into its amorphous form.

There was no overly loud bang or a sonorous boom. Instead, it sounded more like a pebble in the water.

Pink liquid and pellets of dirt flew through the air.

Ellis jumped back, just as a few remnant tails attempted to counterattack.

He took a few steps forward and watched closely as its body quickly regenerated. For a moment, he thought he had caught sight of something red and circular within its body.

Unfortunately, the creature’s body reformed a bit too quickly. In the span of twenty seconds, it was now back to its original size.

“You about done over there?” Ellis shouted towards his little companion as beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. “I’m kind of running out of things to throw here.”

That wasn’t an exaggerated statement. Ellis really was running out of things to throw. He had nearly excavated the entire campsite. All that was left was a giant, ugly crater in the ground.

After a few seconds of painful silence, Ena let out an affirmative bark.

“You found it?” His expression immediately brightened. “Then tell me, quick!”

A beat later, he suddenly felt a weird sensation wash over him. He instinctively understood. It was Ena’s magic.

His vision had slightly changed.

Now, he could see a glowing red dot inside the creature’s body. The red dot frantically moved like a spaztic junkie.

“It’s that thing, huh?” he couldn’t help but smile. Let’s finally put an end to this frustrating battle.

“First, I need a weapon… let’s see… a spear should probably work.” As if on cue, Ena pulled out his broken spear from out of her spatial pouch and handed it to him.

Ellis nodded. “Good job partner. Now, leave the rest to me.”

With that, he sprinted forward.

Pink suddenly dotted his vision. It was a sight he had grown familiar with, so he did not even hesitate. Numerous tails attempted to stop his advance, but unfortunately, Ellis moved with the grace of a swallow and the flexibility of an eel.

One hundred, fifty, thirty… when he reached the ten-meter mark, Ellis abruptly came to a stop. He twisted his waist and cocked his hand back. In one swift motion, he threw the spear like a javelin.

WOOSH!

It rocketed through the air.

As if sensing the impending doom, over a hundred tails went off to block it, while a hundred more surrounded the main body. Despite their efforts, the spear was virtually unstoppable. It pierced through everything like a pencil on paper.

THWIP!

The spear’s black tip easily sank into the creature’s flesh.

In true Hollywood fashion, the moment the spear hit its target, the core cracked. The creature’s gelatinous body exploded like an overstuffed water balloon.

Like that, Ellis successfully slew his first Calamity-Class threat.