Finally, that monster of nightmares was dead, impaled by a rock. I was worried about how to dispose of it, it's not like my spawn or myself could carry it out. The former did not have arms and, well, the latter did not have a body. I forgot that my minions were slimes. Without even having to order them, Beezlebub and its crew descended upon the lifeless corpse, entering through the wound caused by the stalagmite to bypass the hard exterior and eating it inside out. It was pretty repulsive to watch, but that was not the aspect of this I focused on. Newfound power surged through me and the cut on my core mended together, letting the little slime that kept me awake go feast with its siblings. I felt around, discovering three days worth of power in the tank and my passive income slightly increased. Did I improve from its defeat? Is this how I am supposed to grow? With the end of other creatures within myself? So I must court death to avoid death huh? Damn administrator.
Other than Beezlebub, only three survived. Damn, I knew I would lose any number of them with them as a sacrificial pawns of my plan, but the cost was necessary to protect the king. Yet a silver lining did exist for my goo children. Feasting off the carcass of the fallen, they became like Beezlebub, adult green slimes. Beezlebub in turn grew to a giant size, or at least in my perception, adding another meter and a half to its diameter. It now could tower over a normal human in my old world. There was yet another anomaly however, the slime that kept me in the fight was more opaque than the rest and seemed slower yet sturdier. Did its task in the battle influence its evolution? Curious. Might experiment with that, although it would be rather difficult to test until I can comfortably fend off a monster.
Such an ingrained habit as it was in my old life, I turned my perspective up as if to mimic looking up as I thought about the possibilities. Only then did I get another feeling like when I discovered that the pond could spawn slimes, yet it did not have the same vibe to it. It felt more lifeless, not a monster. Not desiring to potentially hurt my defenders by spawning whatever it was recklessly without knowing what it was, I flew to the cave section of my dungeon to summon it. It was… stalagmites. It cost all the power I got from the beast too! What a rip-off! Wait no, I can feel it, I trigger this thing to fall. I can even set it to automatically drop when sensing a hostile presence under it to impale them at the cost of a little continuous upkeep. Not so much to make a significant dent, but I could feel my bits of my power trickle towards it. Excellent! More defense! Shame they are so costly however, or costly for my broke self. But there is no use to stockpiling when death is around the corner. When I have the luxury of not having to worry about the reaper’s scythe around my neck, perhaps I will be a little more careful in my spending, but now was time to spend, spend, spend!
I began to restore my slime defense force and expand even further with the gains caused by the trap. It was indeed a solid investment, picking off fodder monsters like bats, various large insects, and even some wild slimes, the issue however, was that I had to manually reload the trap once it was out of stalagmites to drop on my unfortunate victims, leading some creatures to get through. Fortunately, my more veteran slimes and their baby companions could take them down in direct battle. The reset of the trap was not even free either, having to pay half the power I spent to make it. For creatures like wild slimes, it was not cost-effective at all to kill them with the trap, yet I could not make it discern between creatures sadly and had to manually turn it off and on for those little annoyances.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
But, on the plus side, nothing like the first invader has come again yet thankfully. It seems that I have proved that I am no pushover, and now the ones greedy eyeing my core now are cautious. Yet I could not relent my eternal watch, since they were waiting for my guard to lower, or so I believed in paranoia.
It was time for another project. If the past battle taught me anything, it was perhaps that fighting near the core was not the best for my health. Thus, combat should be taken care of in the caves, although the original squad of slimes should remain as my personal bodyguards in the event something got past the soon to be cave of hell.
My small horde of baby slimes bankrolled by the falling rock trap flooded the caves and started boring holes everywhere. These little holes would hide the slimes and allow them to jump out and ambush intruders before disappearing back into them to avoid injury. Anything that survived the trap and constant assault of slimes in the tunnel should be exhausted both physically and mentally by the time they get to the core room or just turn around in the cave section, deciding it is not worth it to suffer this much for my small core. Truly an annoying but effective strategy.
But what now? My options are a bit limited by the small pool of things I could summon. I decided to experiment using the fact that I could freely make the stalagmite trap after performing an action mimicking it. Thus, I made a giant hole in a section of the floor of the caves and filled the bottom with a pool of water using some baby slimes as water containers and made the walls smooth using acid. Turning off my falling rock trap, I lured something that resembled a beetle but the size of a small dog near to the hole. It kinda just looked at my trap, trying to judge the distance it had to jump. It did not expect a whole collection of slimes to hit it in from behind.
It struggled, splashing the water everywhere, before managing to flip back to its six feet. The bigger issue, however, were the walls and water. Its wet legs could not gain enough traction against the smooth walls to climb up. After desperately trying over and over, getting more and more wet and tired with each fall, Eventually, I decided it was exhausted enough and flooded in slimes to devour the barely moving beetle. Not a pretty scene, I'll tell you that. The trap was a glorious success, although it was a shame that I had nothing to cover and hide it. Only really worked with those creatures with tunnel vision or those who did not watch their backs for my monsters. I now could make more. It was half as cheap as the stalagmite trap, probably since it was less complex. It was just a hole with water afterall.
Nothing could go wrong, right?