> Death is inevitable. Death is preventable.
>
> Death lurks just beyond the shade of night, always waiting silently in your shadow.
>
> Despite the hiding attempted or the armour worn, death will find its way to your soul.
>
> No need to rest, it never stops; no breaks for its subjects to exploit.
>
> Respect death or its keeper shall be angered, fear death or it will soon near you, do not mourn death or it will control you.
>
> But do not run from it or be remembered as less than it.
-Excerpt from 'Mortem' by an unknown human guided by a divine revelation.
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As Andrew heard a shout from far off, he cast his gaze instantly shifted along with the rest of his team- Which was mostly only built in the case of another slime apostle 1 appearance- To the top of the staircase, where a group of people was shouting on the top of their lungs "Get out of the dungeon! A dragon destroyed a village close by, who knows if another one will get destroyed and this place caves in!"
With their piece given, they ran back up with haste, at least it seemed like that to Andrew.
There had been a sudden shake a minute or two ago, but since it didn't do that much except maybe make two of the five-strong party stumble and fall- Andrew being one of them- But a dragon destroying a village... He had never heard of that throughout his not so long life, nor had any large shaking of the earth occurred. So, this was a first...
But Andrew did know about dragons, they were unbelievably powerful from what he understood, though not that common. The main reason for that being the fact that they were purely [Epic] or [Legendary], with not a single [Rare] dragon existing. Though he wasn't exactly sure about the specifics outside of them having large amount of mana, a large bonus to
...Well, they were [Epic], even if they were weak for their rarity, almost every human would be unable to face one in a one-on-one duel. And considering they were actually in the upper rungs of [Epic], there was no way anyone out here in this rural place could properly fight back. Even if it was near the border of another country, though Andrew did not know which, said border was already defended in stead of humans by the Iralen mountains.
"Uhh, should we go?" He asked his mates.
"Nah, if it's a dragon, we're screwed anyways. How many more cores?" Peral, the {Duelist}, queried to Kanor.
The {Spear thrower} slung the backpack he had been carrying infront of his and opened the flap and counted for a moment "Three more."
"That'll be like half-an-hour." With the information noted, stretched his neck while twirling his axes.
With half-an-hour to go, Andrew looked at his half-full mana pool, meaning he had 5 out of the 9 max mp ready for use. Not the best, but considering his low level of 3, it was actually pretty good. He had started out with 3 max mp and had gotten an extra 6 added on, and since most people just had 1 or 2 max he was quite the talent! Though most of that came from his [Rare] class.
...Well, it was more like an [Uncommon] class in the magic department, it just gave a bonus to physique along with the magic stats. It probably just came out instead of {Wizard} or something because he lived with a lot of madness-wielding mages.
Anyways, it was good enough for a pair fire bolts and would refill fully in a few minutes. Though a fire bolt was overkill for a normal slime, the few 'D-7' or higher slimes that rarely roamed the plains required them, and; Andrew didn't have precise enough control to take out less mana than what was required for fire bolt even with level 5
Seeing another slime enter the light, he quickly used
2nd weave acid slime Common
A slime variant born in recent times, holding far greater acidic potential than it's kin, holding enhanced magical structure and the chance to bring about a greater future for all of slime kind.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Weakness; Aspected attacks.
Seeing the fragments of a near fully-grown core, his sense of danger flared as he skimmed the words. It was a new variant! Different from all the others, the dungeon was again trying to create something greater again. He had heard from the elder that it seemed to be more intelligent than usual, but to constantly iterate on slimes of all things!
"Back away, its a new variant!" He yelled out as mana was drawn out as fast he possibly could, pacing back as best he could while pushing forwards his right hand, beginning to chant "O' flame obey my command, form a bolt of-"
But, the still lengthy chant- He had changed it after some practice with his master because the original one was a bit too taboo- Was far the burdening as a shot of acid was rapidly propelled through the air, directly towards him; landing on his outstretched- And protected- Right hand.
With that fact in mind, Andrew's first thought was obviously 'SHIT!' Though it quickly dissolved to nothing as all he could do to the unbelievable pain was scream with all his might.
Though as he lay on the ground, guttural screams of agony endlessly spewing from his mouth, a spear pierced the slime and split the semi-fragmented core into the many pieces it had been built from. But a spear being thrown through it was not enough to kill it, but an extra axe was enough to finish the job.
"Why the hell isn't the armour working?!" He heard in blurry tone, slowly regaining consciousness as the pain faded slowly along with the world around him, metal breaking apart and bone revealing...
And then there was nothing, no pain in his mind and the world blurred and mere remnants of voices remained.
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Falc watched as a sentient with one of its stubs was ferried up the staircase and pulled through with the support of two stronger than usual sentients, though the sentient hadn't died the protected 'Hand' had indeed been destroyed, and it was truly wondrous for his emotional state.
When the shake had came, he was scared shitless. But it seemed to be a one-time deal, even if it was his oversight that he hadn't thought about the wall between the new slime variants and the slime plains during the whole ordeal, doing his best to stop the- Already strained to its limits- Ceiling from falling in and making him have an ludicrous amount of effort to recreate it.
But it seemed the variants were doing pretty well, though it was actually specifically the newest one. It was kind of a shame that it died before it could start mimicking twirl and properly start leveling up like slime apostle 1 used to, and it was a surprise to him that it could even properly see with its not yet fully developed nuclei. A fact that was happily noted in the mental record, along with the current growth rates of the other slimes.
Which also surprisingly had some pretty well developed cores as well, and weren't currently in the process of seizuring.
And though, yes, if he had willed it they would've stayed in their hidden little hole. But the whole ceiling debacle had not been some random little nothing that he could risk messing up, so he might've taken back all the little wisps of himself to make sure nothing got messed up.
The only one of the slimes that had yet to get far enough with nuclei creation to do anything was the double volume slime, so he had after he had finished with what he was doing he once again appointed a wisp to suppress it and then fixed the wall and all the acid marks left behind by the slimes that had already left in their first few minutes of freedom.
From what he had seen from the sentients and how they dealt with the sudden shake- After he had finished dealing with the ceiling, of course- It seemed that they somehow vibrated the air to do something. He wasn't exactly sure what vibrations in the air could do, but he was kind of curious so when 4 sentients, from the 8 that had entered in a hurry, which had come through the tunnel vibrated the air at a scale he only saw when sentients died, he just happened to...
Maybe exacerbate the intensity to see how all the sentients still in the slime plains would react, and he was satisfied with the results. Though he wasn't going to make any conclusions for now, he noted down all the reactions and left a few wisps to linger around before returning to the test box and continuing with what he was doing before he was disrupted: Testing out the new elder slime weave and attempting to create a nuclei without having to wait for the slime to do its thing.
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"Don't you dare die!" Thalos commanded loudly while rummaging through rubble, hasty in every action "If you die I might actually have to do paperwork dammit! You're not allowed to die unless I give you permission!"
And he wasn't the only one, as the noble human spirit of 'If there's no harm in it, sure I'll try to help someone.' showed itself in the fullest, especially in the stronger adventurers who might even get paid for their part in disaster relief.
As a large plank was thrown to the side, a small bit of human skin was seen through wooden remains. And with even faster movements, random pieces of rubble were tossed to the side, before his hand pierced through it all to grab on to something human and wrenched the person hidden inside out "Now, let's hope you aren't dead... We got another one here!"
From what he could see the woman he had gotten seemed alive enough, so she could probably make it in spite of the gashes that may or may not have been formed by his own hasty extraction- He honestly wasn't sure if they had.
It was annoying that there were only two life-using magicians, so he couldn't reliably get information on which piles of rubble had people.
But another one handed over to the only {Priest} that had come to town, one of Culaed, god of life; and they sure as hell were going to level hard considering the amount of people that would be grateful and how much life would be preserved through his actions. It wasn't as if the two life mages weren't going to get maybe one or two skill levels in
And while Thalos was leading the actual rescue, Zera was pacing quickly between wounded souls, noting down how many there were and trying her best to figure out which needed the most care. She hadn't been trained for this, and never even planned to get involved in anything related to disasters like this.
She was almost definitely drinking herself to sleep tonight, and then Norman would get worried again, and then it'd be even more stressfull... If only the dragon just stayed in it's den like it always did, did it just wake up and feel like killing something? She heard it happened from time to time.
Anyways, she noted one of the people they passed by as deceased and called someone to mark it as such before continuing to walk around, quickly noting a newly discovered victim. She seemed good enough and could be healed later on, though maybe cleaning the gashes would be a good thing, with that in consideration she put less priority on her before once again looking around as a sweat began to build up.