Nenandil zipped out and grabbed me, fluttering her wings like crazy to stall my fall.
She landed me on a slab of cold, gritty stone.
She threw me in the water. No, I didn't drown. I could breathe water even before I became a mermaid. I splashed up and she lathered me with soap foam, then moved the water away from me. Finally wrapped in some fine living silk sheets, We huddled by the firepit.
I finally got my eyelids unstuck. We were in a cave, below the chasm. A lot of broken tools, picks, minecarts, and other junk was discarded down here.
Pandora floated next to me, the light of the fire reflecting on her yellow surface. She was calming me with her aura, but it wasn't working very well. She was also... sad?
The Wisp nudged me. Nenandil finished cleaning up the bottom of the chasm and returned.
she confessed. He seems to be very strong and respected by the dwarves.>
Nenandil didn't reply. She seemed tired.
she waved a hand.
Nenandil giggled.
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I woke up hearing something sloshing and splashing.
I sighed in relief. Slimes were terrifying things. Forget about the cute little blobs of joy in Japanese and Korean media shows for kids. No. First, resting slimes have weird surface tension. They can change it at will, using this hardening property to create movement inside its body. But slimes are always very viscous. They can throw a blob of their own bodies forward, connected by a tendril. That blob then splatters and splashes everywhere. The slime then seeps its mass through the tendril by hardening and softening their bodies to create a pumping action. And that happened at breakneck speeds. Slimes could be very fast in combat but they usually moved slowly to conserve resources.
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They also dissolve one particular inorganic material along with organic matter. When Nenandil said this slime dissolves metals, she meant it dissolves both flesh and metals. Tossed into a pit by my mother's murderer, then eaten by a slime. If my end goal is dying, this might be the fastest speedrun ever.
Oh, wait no. Those fanatics made sure I'd... Then the demon worshippers... yeah. Nevermind.
Some types of slimes could absorb elemental damage and grow. But this one should be acidic, so it was fine to freeze it.
I rolled around and watched as Nenandil flew and sprayed a cloud of fine dust over the slime, freezing it. The slime still tried to attack but it was too slow to catch the fairy. After it was thoroughly frozen, Nenandil sent ice shards to break it into pieces.
Slimes are also freaking hard to kill. They don't have a core, at least not the basic ones. You need to kill every single drop of the slime to exterminate it, but if you get a good portion, the System awards you with the kill and turns what's left of the slime into a lower-level creature.
We heard more sloshing, more splashing.
We spent days killing slimes, trying to see I would get an emergency activation. At least we knew to stop before three hundred years had passed. I didn't get an emergency activation even though I should've gained the Exp from Nenandil's kills. We even tried to let me crush a small (by letting gravity do the heavy pulling - giggle - gravity. heavy pulling.) one but no cookie.
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Eating slime popsicle was as disgusting as one could imagine. I felt it was time to get the fuck out of that cunt of a crevice. My life goal was to become the Queen of nothing, much less the dwarves' trash dumpster.
We got a basket and tied it to a hide slung over Pandora and tied up like an upside-down bag. The Wisp was secure inside. Then we tied the basket to the bag and boom! instant Wisp balloon.
Pandora went up, the rope holding the basket went taut, and... we were climbing.
We started to hear voices. We couldn't understand what they were saying, but by the cadence and intonation, they were dwarves.
Nothing like starting my escape plan with my daily dose of dwarven drama.
"I tell you, Ragnar! That was the worst shit that could happen to us! Who was the idiot that let that prick of loonie loose? You were out on the surface, did he really fuck us all up?"
"Aye, agreed," Ragnar grumbled and sipped something, smacking his lips afterward. "And ain't nobody that was going to spin a tale so stupid as reality, Grom. That asshole Fangor killed the patriarch's daughter in her bed, or so I heard. But I was up there when he burned our spot in the line to don the fucking tabard! The freaking piece of cloth fucked'im up good. Squeezed the bastard's lifeblood out of his eye sockets!" He chortled cruelly. "Suits'em up just fine, I tell ya. Whiskey?"
"Bloody hell!" Grom sips and clears his throat. "Ah! Burns like ye mom's piss, that's the good stuff!" Ragnar smacked Grom. "Now it will be years before the beasties and snakes and whatnot let us try the tabard again."
"I think we should find another way to select a king. Strange women Ice skating through the countryside leaving a magical washcloth behind is no basis for a system of government."
Grom smacked Ragnar. "Don't let them hear you. You know how the beasties, clothies, and snakes feel about their matriarch."
"Steaming pile of bullshit that is!" Ragnar interjected then guffawed after sipping their fire whiskey again. "Can you imagine how stupid it is for a woman to birth beastkin of all kinds, snakes, and cloth people? What is her womb made of? Weaving needles? I wouldn't stick my cock in there, that's for sure."
The two cheeky idiots kept talking and laughing and wasting good whiskey but I asked Pandora to move on. I didn't want to get [Assassin] as a Class again.
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At least I knew it didn't take that long for me to come back this time. Windemere is still selecting a King. I wondered what the fuck was that "take a turn" bullshit. Probably some stuck-up cunt trying to strut around the fowl pen crowing they were the top rooster. Let the idiots have them just desserts. I cared not an ounce.
We reached the top of the shaft and Nenandil helped Pandora navigate. Lying down inside the basket, I could only watch to see if the knots weren't coming undone. I could see the roof too. Damn, a cavern's roof has too many creases. Pandora even scraped against one.
Eventually, we found a ventilation shaft and exited the mine.
Two-legged talking monsters, or the irrational ones? What a tough choice.