Pern was extremely wet.

Rick had entered the hole, and then Pern followed him. They climbed down the ladder and into the aqueducts that ran underneath the city, and they both dropped into a great big puddle.

“Tunnels with the Industrial District’s groundwater,” Rick said. “The mayor pays an alchemist to purify the system every week.”

“Stupid aqua duck,” Pern murmured. “Not as cute as I thought it’d be.”

Pern carefully stepped onto the limestone side platform and avoided the fast flowing stream in the tunnel’s middle. “Oh!”

There by a passage lamp bounced a fluorescent, gelatinous sphere. Pern took three steps, looked at it. Pointed at it with her sword. Then twirled, did a flourish, leapt at it from the left and cleaved it into two!

Sploosh!

She smirked and licked the slime off her fingers. “Revenge tastes oh-so-sweet. That’s for getting us soaked.”

In fact it was fairly tasteless. The part of the slime she’d struck just turned into water; paleish, whitish, turbid, water but water nonetheless.

“There’s one thing you have to be careful of when you’re fighting water elmens like these,” Rick warned as she posed. “Their liquid’s made from living cells. If you don’t kill every last cell, then—”

A frozen ooze touched her ankle. For Pern, revenge might be sweet, but for a slime it was a dish best served cold.

“Argh! What the hell?” She scraped her greaves against the limestone as it crawled up her thigh. Two slime pieces flew onto the old flooring, re-forming, then Rick stomped and the puddle splashed away.

“The “S” in your S Rank.” Rick murmured. “Does it stand for ‘sense’ or for ‘slimed’?”

Pern pointed her sword at Rick and a crackling violet ball gathered its tip. It flew —

TSS!

The slime behind him spattered everywhere, unable to handle her hundred million volts.

“I’m full of sense,” Pern said. “I’m thick with it! I see a quest, I finish it to the best of my ability. That’s the common sense of an Adventurer.”

“What a brilliant thickheaded lady. If you’re so smart, explain why I took you to this ‘aqua duck’.”

They walked down the tunnel together, and moisture hung in the air. The color of the stream beside them gradually darkened.

“Elmens spread elemental pollution wherever they go, right? And slimes are water based…”

“Go on…”

“And they served gelato at the Morning Lark, which is a water based product. And my whole team who ate it got horrible food poisoning.”

The groundwater roiled brown, then black.

“So the place we could find more monsters was here, the slime-polluted water source of the Morning Lark and the Industrial District . Marvel at the mental prowess of the S-Rank queen of combat Pern!”

The two stopped. At the end of the corridor was a corner where moss grew heavy and thick. Black water burbled and a constant “shhhhh” came from an unseen waterfall, and a sticky squealing echoed from an unseen passage further down…

“Fail,” Rick said.

“Fail?”

“I’d score your reasoning at fifty percent,” said Rick. “I think you’re going to have some combat troubles from here on out too.”

Pern flushed red, in contrast to the black-streaked stream and the swarm of blue slimes that now approached them.

“Thunder!” She shouted. She thrust the sword into another small slime, and it shuddered before bursting all over her in an oozy spray. “That wasn’t too bad.”

“Now do it twenty-two times more,” Rick said. While the elmen had splattered Pern and the aqueduct’s bricks, Rick himself had remained untouched. He stamped on another slime, and Pern’s face caught another splash.

“Rick…”

“Twenty-one. Just twenty-one more slimes. What?”

“Twenty! Nineteen! Eighteen! Seventeen! Sixteen…!” Pern rallied.

“Fifteen… ugh… fourteen… thirteen! Twelve… um…ick…”

Pern was, in a word, smeared.

“I told you water resistance would come in handy.”

“Thunder!” Pern shouted again. “Thunder, thunder, thunder!”

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“Woah, woah, woah…”

She waited til each slime crawled to Rick’s feet before she blasted them away; for the seventeenth, she tossed it at him and burst it in mid air with a lightning bolt.

“I’m frustrated… ever since the tavern with Eliza, this whole quest has been nothing but frustrations of different kinds,” Pern said. “You’ve been helpful, hurtful, helpful, then hurtful again. I don’t get it, Rick! I don’t understand you at all!

I don’t mind being hurt in battle. In fact, it can be really exciting. But it’s hard to be hurt by a teammate who just won’t talk…”

Rick didn’t reply, and somehow he was completely dry. They had turned the corner, and he was examining a water pool on the chamber’s dead end. It was pure and clear, a mirror to him and Pern; and in it he could witness her flustered look.

“I’m sorry,” Pern said. “I don’t know why I expected more from a Rank E.”

Slash!

“That’s slime twenty-four,” Pern continued, helplessly wiping off fluid on her already-damp armor. “Goddess, they’re easy to slay, but do they have to be so damp?”

She locked her armor, unlocked it, and locked it again. The slime-water mixed with her own beads of sweat, and her skin was glistening

Should he tell her, or should he not? Rick thought.

There were a few secrets about this quest he’d kept close to his chest. An Adventurer should always share information with his party, but as an E-Rank he barely was one. Rick knew that too.

And how he was about to fight and finish this quest would be the opposite of what someone in the Adventurer’s Guild would do. His Majesty, to whom all Guildmasters were ostensibly allegiant, wouldn’t be happy at the very least.

If Andrestia’s government thought Pern was complicit in what he was about to do, it could have negative consequences for her. He clutched the vial he had taken from Cure as he steeled himself.

He wouldn’t tell her. But… he might need to use her.

Pern made the final decision for him. She stepped into the mysterious puddle alone.

“We’re not going to have to wait another twelve hours for the slimes to respawn, are we? I’d give anything for another monster to fight. Rick, say something. I’m getting a little lonely. B-b… bwahhh!!!”

The water swirled underneath her, tendrils wrapped around her ankles, and then — her whole body was subsumed. She lay prone in a giant blue ball that oozed like jelly, spanning about six feet across.

“Agh! Ah! Stop!” Pern said. “I take it all back!”

“Alright! That was a King Slime after all!” Rick said, stepping back and framing the scene with his fingers. “Now all you have to do is Thunder!”

“Agh! Ah! Blugglugblugblug…” Pern’s face began to redden as the slime began to jostle and sway, sliding all over her armor. The S-Rank Adventurer was very much in a vulnerable position, and one might think that Rick would be a great fan.

But to be honest, he was a little peeved. She was ruining the view of this pristine specimen that could be seen once every a thousand years. It’s a well-known fact that women have a spawn rate of about fifty percent, but few understand that Slime Kings have a spawn rate of only about zero point zero one.

She flailed everywhere, hands outward, and when that didn’t seem to work she moved her palms all over her body to try and pry herself free.

“I have it handled— hic!— Rick… trust me… hee, hee, hee… ugh..!”

“...”

“Wait just… a little more…! Agh… oh! Ah…!

“...Thunder?”

“Rick, I…. Ah… oh, oh, ah, ah, ah, ah!!!”

Pern soon fell limp, and her breathing slowed. She had been thoroughly defeated.

“You’ve had your fun. But it’s time to have mine,” Rick said, most likely to the slime. As for the time, he was referring to the happy hour in the Four-Leaf Inn that took place every evening at five. He couldn’t miss that!

Rick stared at the giant blue. The King Slime stared back, as much it could without eyes.

He poured five coins into his hand. He looked at them, looked at the slime — then uselessly tossed them away. Clink! Clink! Clink!

He rolled up his arms, and punched it.

Information Resistance S [down]

Water Resistance S [active]

The slime’s liquid parted around his arm, leaving an air pocket where the fist drove in. He gently grasped Pern’s hand, and pulled her out from the creature.

The lady knight collapsed into a quivering heap and leaned against the wall.

“Rick…”

“Shh.”

Rick made another approach and the slime cowered to the back wall. He managed to scoop some of it into the vial, but this accomplished only a tertiary goal.

“Hm.”

He couldn’t touch the slime, and the slime couldn’t touch him. Pern leaned forwards, watching, and Rick turned towards her.

“You mad at me Pern..?”

“Huh…?” Pern sighed. She wasn’t mad at him. Not anymore. But before, she really had wanted to punch him.

She bundled up all the rage she had felt in this stupid day, the frustration of working with a clueless young man who took every opportunity to digress or to accidentally tease her. And set it aside, as befit a professional Adventurer.

“You seem a little more relaxed.”

“...relaxed?“

“You’ve lost all your frustration from the tavern.”

“From the—” Pern remembered. The debt collection.

“Ha…” Pern said. “Rick…!”

Phys Resistance C [active]

Pern punched him, and he flew like a bullet into the slime’s depths. Normally, the slime fluid would have parted around him because of his Water Resistance S, but Pern had smote him with such force that he plunged into its core.

This impact created a molecular reaction, as the slime’s particles all cascaded away from him at once.

FWIIIIISH

The sphere dissolved. The slime wave surged far from Rick… and right to where Pern lay.

“Arghh!!!” Wet. Wet. Everything was wet again. “My hair… my eyes… my dignity!”

“You don’t think things through before you act, Pern,” Rick said. “But that’s a good trait for a warrior.”

“Yeah yeah. But my head’s not entirely empty. I have one question in my mind. Hmm?” Pern said, sopping. “If you had Water Resistance S, why didn’t you save me from the start? Hmm?”

“My plan was for you to use Thunder.” Rick said. “But it seemed like you were having a good time trying to figure it all out… and you said pain excites you anyway, too.”

“Oh, is that so? Is that really so? I was having fun in that slime? Me, a masochist? No, no, no… I swing the other way if anything…” There was a crackling in her eyes, and she wore a vicious grin.

Thunder Resistance S [active]

“OoOoOOoOOoOOOOoOogh!”

“I see, I see. Don’t mind me, just testing some of your skills. Maybe I should check your other masteries too?”

Rick had taken the quest expecting a King Slime to be his greatest foe. However, despite this, he finally understood that his greatest enemy was Pern.