Chapter 6. Every Rose…

Catherine cursed inside her mind from atop the ceiling. She had jumped and dodged multiple magical frozen beams from Rose. One single misstep and she could be frozen solid.

The silver lining in this situation was, mana that was required to use magic was not infinite. Rose would run out eventually but for now it was a game of cat and mouse until one of them caught the other.

After dodging and sticking to a wall, Catherine spewed out several sharp needles from her body directed at Rose who simply dodged and froze them. “Target can split their body in several different ways to attack.” Rose said, sending another beam of ice towards the slime, who nimbly dodged out of the way. “Very nimble, able to dodge…” Between her sentence she fired another beam, and when the slime jumped to avoid she shot another beam to were it was going to land.

Catherine acted fast, stretching her body to another wall and pulling herself towards it to avoid the blow “Able to dodge in zero gravity, fast reaction time. “Rose continued, not letting up in her assault. Catherine was growing more annoyed dodging and then jumping again, leaving a bit of herself behind as she repeated the process, sacrificing bits of herself to be frozen.

Catherine then waited, and when Rose attacked again she launched her separate pieces at her. Rose clicked her tongue, dodging out of the way, redirecting her beam to freeze the incoming blobs losing track of the main body she glanced around “Specializes in ambush tactics…” out of the corner of her eye she spotted movement, ducking to avoid the needles flying towards her eyes then went wide once she say the thin layer of liquid near her feet.

Jumping and flying towards the wall just in time to avoid several spikes and tentacles spewing from the floor, only to be frozen in place. “Smart enough to strategize…” she looked towards the direction that the spikes came flying from, to see a growing blob of slime on the wall opposite of her. “Able to regenerate? Has some kind of storage…”

A mouth formed on the surface of the slime “What are you doing?” The slime asked.

“of course, has ability to shape shift, limits unknown…” Rose stated, ignoring the question and attacking, focusing another beam of ice that was swiftly avoided by the slime, landing on top of it’s frozen spikes. “Answer me bitch, what are you up to?”

Rose chuckled “Vulgar” she rolled her eyes. “Reminds me, target showed signs of knowing information they should have had no prior knowledge about, how far does that extend? From the victim’s memories?” She pondered.

The slime got pissed, splitting up its body into 5 different parts that jumped to different locations, 4 of which launched their attacks, spewing needles towards Rose while the rest waited for her to move. To their surprise, Rose didn’t move, instead she created a wall of freezing wind that froze and blew away the needles.

“How far does that extend?” She asked “From what it seems, recent knowledge, things recently thought about, important memories… nothing too deep. no obvious signs of mind reading either?” She chuckled.

The mouth formed again “The fuck you playing at?!” it asked, 3 of its bodies attacking fruitlessly.

Rose chuckled, watching all the projectiles fly towards her only to be frozen and drop to the ground “Well, I mean you knew enough about Catherine to fool her lover, you even knew about her racial characteristics and took advantage of it.” She smiled innocently “but you seem ignorant to a few things only she and Dolan would know… Probably because she hadn’t thought about it recently or it wasn’t that important to her in the moment? You have not ‘eaten’ Dolan yet either so, would explain your actions now.” She shrugged.

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The slime stopped its attacks, sitting still “What do you mean?”

Rose tilted her head “Why, attacking me after your plan failed of course, what else?” The freezing air around Rose started to slowly expand, filling the room.

The slime jumped back, its bodies remaining split launching attacks that just ended up being frozen and discarded.

“It really was a good plan though, for this crew. “Rose said, complimenting the creature “Must of taken Catherine by surprise to manage to kill her, then spiking everyone’s drinks? I’ll admit I am lucky I didn’t drink.”

The parts of the slime conjoined again, quickly running out of room to maneuver in the room as the freezing air filled it. The slime jiggled, splitting off a fist sized ball from itself. It then extended two tentacles, picking up the peace before chucking the thing at Rose.

Rose raised an eyebrow, seeing the ball hit the freezing air, freezing solid and then dropping to the ground. “Oh, that’s interesting! Can mimic gravity? Wonder how many troops you fooled with this?” She chuckled, seeing movement within the frozen ball “Even more so… different density?” She asked herself.

“Hrm?” She looked closer, seeing something float inside the ball “what is…” Her eyes went wide when the ball lit up, quickly she dodged away from the ball as it exploded, the freezing air around her shrinking as she lost focus. She shot up “What the heck was tha- oh” She snapped towards the slime, to see it had taken the shape of a young women holding a bow aimed towards her. “Fucking Jiji…”

“Eat shit.” The slime said, letting the arrow fly towards Rose, colliding with the wall behind her as she dodged out of the way, the arrow exploding as it hit the wall, crystals quickly forming.

Rose laughed nervously “Clearly has a storage and can even use Jiji’s skill.” She said, the freezing wind once again starting to expand, this time at a much faster pace, even as she dodged the arrows.

Catherine clicked her tongue, quickly running out of arrows she split herself, two balls of slime coming out of her body and leaping towards a random wall. The balls of slime started shooting chunks of themselves at Rose, but were heavy enough to keep flying towards her even if they froze solid. Unfortunately, they did little but distract her as she mainly focused on dodging the deadly arrows.

Soon, however, Catherine fired her last arrow, which was effortlessly dodged by Rose who smirked “Target cannot duplicate ammunition.” She then focused, closing her eyes. The room was almost filled with frozen air, Catherine herself shrinking back, forming into her slime body and bracing herself.

“Accepted your fate? Good.” Rose said, extending her arms outwards as the entire room was flooded with freezing air, freezing the room and every surface solid.

Rose stood still for a solid minute, then breathed out a huge sigh of relieve before straightening herself out and stretching. “I hate variants.” She then took note of the room, the corpses, the pieces of frozen slime, the giant ice sculpture of spikes and tentacles, and most importantly the head sized blob of frozen slime that she assumed to be the main body.

She walked over towards it, giving it a blast of ice magic to make sure before she approached, tapping on it. “Sure gave these newbies a lot of trouble.” She shook her head. She then took a closer glance, wiping off the surface of the frozen glob she cursed, seeing movement under the ice “Tenacious little…” Rose raised up her arm, electricity forming and as she was about to strike the slime she stopped. Lowering her arm and then bringing another to her ear. “This is Rose, glad to see you guys in the sector finally.”

The insides of the frozen blob bubbled, Rose just chuckled “Yeah, right now things appear to be under control, variant slime captured alive, no core but I think I have the main body under ice.” She then shrugged “I don’t know, it’s a variant so it might not have one or it stashed it somewhere, I suggest a full wipe down of the ship.” She then walked towards the door leading out, only to curse.

“Yeah, froze myself in the room with it. Come prepared it specializes in ambushes…of course, have the full audio and video log of the fight with it…” She tapped her foot on the ground “Oh, right, gravity is off, ship is in major disrepair, 99% crew fatality.” She then paused, giving a short laugh “yeah I bet he will be glad, ok, will stand guard, welcome to the sector captain.” Rose then faced the slime, giving an innocent smile, mimicking the one it had given her several times in the last few hours.

“S-rank, Rose, signing off.”