SARAH AVERY VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5

SKYLAND

Sarah and Kimi-Lim stood side by side as they peered at a large dark patch of slime on the wall of the Dungeon. The only light in the room was coming from Sunspot in the form of a dim orange-golden glow which made it impossible to tell if the slime on the wall was either blue or turquoise.

“It just looks black to me,” she said dubiously. “What did you mean when you said it could be potentially life-altering?”

“Blue slimes are one thing—pretty harmless Dungeon monsters that go around devouring corpses, but turquoise slimes are an unmitigated nightmare.” They looked around the room one last time and said, “Doesn’t look like there’s anything else in here. Let’s get going.”

There wasn’t any more slime in the room, so they left and kept going down the hall. There weren’t any more rooms in that hallway, so they pressed deeper into the ruin, Sunspot’s golden light illuminating the dripping, echoing halls. They didn’t speak, the tension of exploring the unknown leaving each of them trying to be as quiet as possible.

The hallway eventually ended in a set of double doors. Slime coated the doors and ground and they hesitated before they opened them. “What could be making all this slime?” Sarah whispered.

Kimi-Lim frowned and tapped worriedly at their bottom lip with one long finger. After a moment, they shook their head, “There’s too many possibilities, but I’m leaning towards a blue slime. Or maybe a colony of them. But we won’t know until we open these doors!”

Sarah nodded and they braced themselves as they pushed the double doors open. Sunspot took a few tentative steps in, his golden light stretching almost ten meters into the pitch darkness, but his light didn’t light up the whole room as it had in every other room they’d gone in. The only thing the light illuminated was a pillar near the edge of the light. The pillar was coated in slime. “What do we do now?” Sarah asked, keeping her voice near a whisper.

Kimi-Lim strode into the room past Sarah, their Silverstaff tapping metallically on the floor. Sarah followed after, keeping a wary eye out. She’d let the Master Sword disintegrate once it seemed like there was no threat as she and Kimi-Lim had been searching through a bunch of empty rooms, but now she re-summoned it. She spent the extra time prepping the edge with The Blade That Cuts Anything just as she had before, feeling only slightly better afterwards. They kept a slow but steady pace into the interior of the room.

The first mound caught Sarah by surprise. It stood two meters tall and four meters across—a mini-hill—and looked like a really big pile of wet leaves, sticks, mud, and slime. Kimi-Lim came up next to her and poked at the mound with their silverstaff. The staff sank in several centimeters with a wet squelch sound. “There’s a slime colony down here. Not this mound though. It’s dead—you can tell because when I poked it, we didn’t get hit in the face with a swarm of slime larvae,” the elf said, voice filled with tension. “Normally they’re not dangerous on their own, but judging by the size of this mound, they’re not going to be on their own.”

“We’re talking a little lump of jelly, right?” Sarah asked, visions of cute little anime slimes arising unbidden in her mind. “I don’t know, but I think we can take ‘em.”

“Normally yes, slimes don’t pose a problem to any Reborn, no matter their rank. However, this isn’t just one slime. These mounds are evidence that there are a lot of slimes living here. They’ve got amorphous bodies and can both squeeze through and live happily in any crevice, no matter how tiny. And they’ve got sharp claws and even sharper teeth floating around in their amorphous ‘bodies’. The little monsters are ravenous and they have a skill for finding any hiding spots and then ambushing you when you least suspect.”

“They sound disgusting.”

“It’s like someone sneezed, then gave what flew out ravenous hunger, the ability to self-replicate, and razor-sharp teeth.” Kimi-Lim pulled up their sleeve and poked at the wrist-mounted Spellweaver they constantly wore. “I’ll need to reprogram for wide-area effects.”

Sarah’s eyes widened a bit in surprise: Kimi-Lim had faced the manticore with more temerity. This time, the elf seemed unusually tense—anxious even. It made Sarah feel distinctly uneasy.

Kimi-Lim’s hands moved rapidly through a complex holographic display interface that was projecting from the Spellweaver on their wrist. After several tense moments where Kimi-Lim was doing something complicated while Sarah waited for slimes to pop out of the cracks in the ceiling, the holographic display flickered and disappeared. Kimi-Lim let out a long breath, shaking out their wrists and loosening their fingers.

“I think you need to tell me why you’re scared to death of slimes,” Sarah said, gently but firmly. “If we’re about to fight them or something, then I’d like to know what we’re walking into. And why haven’t they attacked us?”

Kimi-Lim nodded briskly, “I was wondering why you weren’t already demanding to know what the problem was. It’s hard to separate your…humanity, I suppose, though it might be just cultural—anyway. You don’t act like most humans I’ve encountered or even heard about.”

“It’s good to know that racism seems to extend across the galaxy,” Sarah said sarcastically. “Now… the slimes?”

“Oppression in all its forms exists here,” Kimi-Lim said, “and all the evils that oppression brings. But slimes are another thing altogether. Recall how all the rooms we’ve explored have been empty except for dead leaves, bits of wood, and mud?” Sarah nodded. “Slimes are voracious and they consume almost anything except for plant matter. They’re notoriously difficult to kill and they can’t be reasoned with. Their color determines their unique abilities.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“And if they’re turquoise­—?”

“We’re dead. Turquoise slimes are like bags of highly corrosive acid. They can spray that acid up to ten meters away with pinpoint accuracy and they explode when they die.”

“…”

“But these slimes are blue,” Kimi-Lim said reassuringly. “I think.”

“You think?”

Kimi-Lim shrugged, “I’m pretty sure! But this is a Tutorial Zone… the System isn’t going to kill one of its precious Great House Scions.”

“I don’t like how you’re betting my life on…I don’t even know what you’re betting my life on. But it seems flimsy.”

Kimi-Lim sighed and nodded, “Fair enough. But you need the gear that this place is going to have and we are out of time to search for another place that’s as prime as this place.”

“I’m itching to pick apart why you think this empty shell is a prime place for treasure hunting,” Sarah raised a hand to forestall Kimi-Lim’s almost immediate protest. “But like you said, we’re out of time. I’ll follow your lead.” She gripped her Master Sword nervously, making sure its edge still gleamed with her power and feeling her palms prickle with sweat.

Kimi-Lim didn’t say anything else, they just kept pressing forward. Sunspot was leading the way and Sarah wasn’t sure what kind of trail the dog was following—if any—but it became quickly apparent that this level was enormous. Or maybe it’s the darkness, Sarah thought.

Her sense of time was thrown off by the absolute darkness of the area. The only light came from Sunspot who trotted faithfully just a couple of meters ahead of them, providing a little golden bubble that they traveled in. After a few minutes of slow, silent travel, Kimi-Lim held out their hand, stopping Sarah.

The Light Mage sniffed at the air intently, taking great lungfuls of air before letting out their breath in slow, silent exhalations. Kimi-Lim leaned over to Sarah and whispered in her ear, “They’re going to be very close. Do you smell that?”

Sarah sniffed a little and wrinkled her nose. “It smells like nail polish remover.”

“That’s what their shit smells like. They’re close.”

They kept moving, delving deeper into the huge basement. The ammonia smell got stronger as they went and the floor started sloping down. They’d been walking on a smooth concrete-like floor that was filthy but largely intact. Now though, large cracks were running along the floor and footing started getting very treacherous. Sunspot picked his way along with Kimi-Lim and Sarah until he stopped at the edge of a large hole in the floor. He sniffed at the edge of the hole and sneezed, then wrinkled his snout and made gagging noises.

Sarah could understand why he’d had such a violent reaction: the ammonia smell was so thick here, that she could barely breathe. Kimi-Lim stayed away from the edge of the hole, narrowing their eyes at it in concentration. “Where are the slimes?”

“Where’s the treasure?” Sarah asked.

Sunspot suddenly yelped and something sizzled sharply. Sarah looked over at the Sundog and saw something dart away from him, but she couldn’t make out any details. It scuttled into the dark quickly. “Kimi-Lim, I think we’re about to find out what color the slimes are.”

Something dripped onto her shoulder from the ceiling. Sarah brushed at it with her free hand, but it clung to her tenaciously. It was warm viscous and sticky. Where it touched her bare skin, it tingled like it was going numb.

Kimi-Lim spun around to face Sarah and pointed their silverstaff directly at Sarah. Before she could react beyond widening her eyes in surprise a bright light flashed and a curl of smoke. Sarah smelled a burnt plastic smell and looked down at her shoulder where she was belatedly realizing a slime had dropped down. All that was there now were some smoking bits of slime. Kimi-Lim shouted as another slime dropped down on them from the ceiling and Sarah saw it clearly for the first time.

It was about the size of a football, colored a deep gorgeous blue, and it had several pseudopods that it was using to cling to the Light Mage. A bump on the outside of it seemed to serve as its head.

She guessed it was its head because there were two wildly goggling eyes perched atop it like cherries on a sundae. It was the goofiest-looking thing Sarah had ever seen. Another one dropped from the ceiling, landing near Sarah’s foot. It googled up at her and Sarah brought up the monster entry in the System, trying to figure out what the hell was so scary about them.

Blue Slime

Enhanced System Monster Entry

Description

Blue slimes are a species of slime, a common monster that subsists on organic, non-plant material. Blue slimes are not normally aggressive, but if they create a slime nest, they can spontaneously generate the ability to Combine. If a slime nest Combines, it becomes a C1L2 Boss Monster called an Azure Slime Behemoth.

Rarity

Common

Class/Level

0/2

Type

Arcane Beast

Size

Small (30 cm)

Special Abilities

Combine – Become new monster: Azure Slime Behemoth. Must use Combine with at least 250 other Blue Slimes.

Defenses

Unarmored; Acid Blood; Slime Division

Attacks

Bite – Physical damage. Piercing. Applies Weak Acid.

It says these things aren’t dangerous, but that thing doesn’t feel like Weak Acid to me! Sarah thought,

Sarah shouted and slashed at the slime with the Master Sword. The slime wasn’t quick and the sword bisected it cleanly. The two halves of it slowly slid apart but instead of dying, the two halves bubbled and hissed for a second or two, and then both halves grew new pseudopods, new headbumps, and new googly eyes.

The new slimes were half the size of the original and no less ridiculous-looking for being smaller. A half dozen more slimes dropped from the ceiling all around Sarah, squelching as they landed. Kimi-Lim exclaimed again and Sarah looked back up to see the elf pulling at a slime that was stuck to their chest.

Their light source—Sunspot—was fluctuating wildly as the sundog avoided slimes as they dropped, barking loudly the whole time. Sarah ran over to Kimi-Lim, trying to help pull the slime off, ignoring the two new slimes she’d created when she’d chopped that one in half. She dropped the Master Sword, letting it dissolve away to nothingness—the damn thing was worse than useless to her—and gripped the slime on Kimi-Lim’s chest with both hands, pulling at it with all her considerable strength. It hung on like a limpet, gripping with tiny metallic claws. Finally, it let go with a pop and Sarah flung it away into the darkness.

More slimes were falling every second and the floor now looked like it was undulating. She had no idea where the giant hole in the floor was and that was very worrying. The panic that had been at the edges of her mind, now threatened to engulf her and the feeling brought a scent-memory with it: the smell of grilled eel. Gammon loved that stuff—tenji on skewers, she thought, nearly tripping over her feet. Wait, that’s right…!