Garnedell quickly leapt up, digging through the baggage and reached out to get both spoon spears then stopped, hand dancing towards and away from the weapons for a time before finally making sure the hafts of the spears were easy to grab and pull out before bringing the entire bag with him. Gwenvair had already run off, running quickly, if not exactly sprinting, towards his left and the Matriarch. Joe didn’t really notice too much, his focus almost entirely on the field of monsters, but he was distantly aware of a commotion appearing on the other side. Once he saw it happening, Joe dismissed it and stepped forward to glance over the edge and measure the distance. The slime kept moving slowly forward, and found the line of guards pressing backwards. His best guess put the guards still a good maybe two dozen or so meters from the wall and the craftsmen below were dragging corpses back at the same time as they butchered them as quickly as possible.
He looked behind him to take in what was happening and saw busy activity erupting around him. He also saw Garnedell crouched at the stairs, hiding his body well below the stairs but held the spoon spears up towards him. Joe nodded, and lowered his hands a few times, telling Garnedell to drop the spears for now.
“Just a moment. I don’t need them yet… uh… can you get me a cloak?”
Joe turned back and sighed, staring down at the oncoming slime. This… is gonna royally suck! Joe continued to stare down at the slime, waiting. The guards had been pushed back half the distance to the wall and the craftsman were now crowding around the wall’s base with the guards pulling in tightly, forming up a bubble against the base of the wall, leaving most of the wall unguarded. He looked back at the slime and saw it still slowly hobbling forward, now about where the guards had been previously. Still too far. But…
Joe took several steps back before turning, seeing Garnedell now holding out a cloak for him, the two spoon spears laying up the stairs shaft towards him so he could grab them when needed. Joe nodded to Garnedell and began walking back to him.
“So… this is really going to suck. Please watch my stuff, and tell Gwenvair that I need the water to bathe in as soon as possible when she returns with it… and I’ll need a way to get to the water… whatever that may be.”
Garnedell quickly nodded, “I’ll tell her right away!”
“Thanks, man,” Joe then sighed deeply, muttering more to himself, “Let’s get this out of the way.”
Joe sat and began quickly taking off his shoes, dropping his socks inside as well before ripping off his shirt quickly. This is stupid… this is stupid… this is so so stupid! His pants came soon after, stripping himself naked, although he did cover himself from the waist down with the cloak first so as to protect his privacy. I’m so gonna die with this! This is so dumb! Leaning down, he picked up the two spoon spears and headed to the wall. This is … I’m an idiot. I’m so going to… Looking down, he saw the slime, terrifyingly massive, stretching across the ground below him. His inner monologue immediately faded, his thoughts turning purely to accomplishing the task. The thing was still ten or so meters away from the wall, but its mass stretched high enough to reach almost half the distance to the top of the wall. About a fifty meter tall wall… half the height makes that slime about twenty five meters in diameter… twelve meters to the center core… but it’s flattened, so maybe about… oh… five… six meter loss in height? So maybe nine or ten meters to the center… yeah… I’ll have the reach… should especially with the spears!
Joe looked on, watching more closely, eyes staring into the transparent gel of the slime and found the core quite quickly, nodding to himself. His plan began running through his mind once again even as he watched the slime jiggle closer and closer. With the slime so close, Joe realized the small jiggling hops that the slime was making were actually quite large jumps, their distance hidden by the deceptive comparison to its size. Five meters… four meters… base has got to be close to ten meters away… so… yeah… I’m still about eight or nine meters from its center… three meters… two… uh… maybe six meters from dead center… just another couple…
Joe’s thoughts screeched to a halt as the slime shot out a blob of mass, a rather small tendril all told, but a mass about equal to the size of a typical man. The blob remained tethered to the main mass as it enveloped the front guard and slurped him up like a human noodle. The man didn’t even scream, but the other guards quickly began panicking, backing away, crushing and trampling the crafters behind them. Whelp… no more time… And I’m… no… no intent… not intending anything… I’m just going to jump down to the ground. Yup… just jumping to the ground.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Joe cleared his thoughts once again, squared off to be centered with the slime, then jogged back from the edge of the wall a couple meters before charging as fast as he could to the edge of the wall. As he closed with the edge of the wall, he quickly saw the slime and began angling himself for the center, using the far edge of the slime he could see as a guide to at center on the slime. He came to the edge and quickly saw the slime’s core, orienting on it. Joe’s panic spiked a bit, and his entire body tensed, even his mana spiked outward in a rush, most blasting straight up along his spine and through his skull. Time slowed, everything moving at a speed that Joe somehow found allowed him to think much more clearly and easily. Joe couldn’t actually move his head fast enough to really looked down, but his eyes began to dip, slowly, ever so slowly, and his peripheral vision was enough to catch the wall’s edge as it dipped down.
Distance from the wall to the slime was a tricky thing, but he quickly calculated again, just as he had for the distance, careful to account for the semi squashed nature of the slime. Twenty five meter diameter… five meters lost to gravity in height, added to width… guesstimate… twenty meter diameter height… thirty meter diameter width parallel to the ground… fifteen meter distance from walls edge to slime center… core probably in center… A fifteen meter distance… not gonna hap… no… possible… Extra time in the fall!
His head finally started to turn downward a bit and he began dipped his leading knee, his foot planted directly on the edge of the wall. His panic stilled, much more comfortable now since he had much more time. His other leg came to the edge, foot slapping down beside his other foot, and his knees completed their dip before leaping off in a dive. His arms swept forward, each holding a spoon spear before he dove down towards the slime, heading straight for its core.
With his calm returned, his mana expression faded and time leapt forward again, a spoon spear in each hand gripped up just shy of the spearhead, resting up against the guard of the spearhead. Pressing the two spears in front of him, he rested their shafts on either side of his head before they ran under his armpits and were tightly clamped between his arms and sides before jamming the base of the spear shaft into the tops of this thighs. He angled his legs slightly to give the shafts purchase to ram against his thighs which made his dive quite awkward since he was long used to keeping his legs straight behind him while diving and not oddly bent forward slightly to offer a platform for spears to rest against. He kept his head up and eyes locked on the slimes core, directing the spears and his body to angle towards it.
I’m just jumping to the ground… just the ground… gotta fight in melee…yup… got a fight in melee range… that’s why I have my spears… melee weapon… His inner monologue was sparse and intermittent as he tried to spend most of his thought purely in the moment, but the fear of diving from a fifty meter tall wall into a twenty five meter diameter slime wasn’t something that he found that comfortable. The spoon spears slammed into the slimes skin and Joe stifled the scream that leapt to his mouth as the shafts of the spears ripped into his thighs and slammed into each femur, tearing right through the thigh muscle with ease. The spears’ shafts continued digging down along his bone almost half way to his knees before finally stopping. Joe finally couldn’t hold in his scream, the pain wildly and jaggedly jolting through his body even as his HP struggled to heal up the tear left behind.
The spears’ points bowed the slimes skin inward and his right hand slipped, sliding down the spoon spear until his fist slammed into the rubbery skin of the slime. His hand scrabbled against the spoon spear, attempting to maintain grip upon it, his fear spiking. His worried fear spiked, but then the slime snapped up around his hand and the spears finally snapped through like a rubber band just pierced, the right spear piercing first. Just as the spoon spears pierced the slime’s jelly skin, the slime froze for a bit but Joe was already slipping through and diving straight towards the core. With the skin pierced, Joe forced himself to snap his mouth shut, cutting off his scream even as he ripped the spears out of his thigh and almost groaned with relief when his HP immediately healed up both thighs. He took a moment to open his status and glance at his HP and found only a fifth left, maybe a sixth, then grimaced. Well… that’s… not … good… was hoping the HP would help keep my skin whole for the few seconds I’m in here. Shaking his thoughts clear, he focused back on his task and turned the spears slightly to use the last of his momentum to guide himself toward the core, although he did keep his status open to keep an eye on his HP. Joe kept his mouth shut and sent out a slow but steady stream of air to generate overpressure in hopes of keeping the slime out of his nose. Sadly, that did not seem to work and he tried a hard breath but seeing as that failed as well, Joe quickly cut off his air, blocking his lungs and stomach from allowing the slime entrance. Although… what would win… my stomach acid or the slime… no! Focus! His nose flooded with the slime acid.
His nose burned even as his eyes began to water and burn, but he was still able to see and his momentum from an almost thirty meter drop was enough to have him slice straight through the slime. Sadly, the slime liquid was quite a bit less gelatinous than he expected and his body sliced through the gel and rapidly past the core. Joe flared his body, spreading arms and legs to instantly stop his forward movement before he quickly twisted his body and oriented on the core. Time for plan A!