The scorching sands swept around the pyramid on the second floor of the Soul Nexus as the opening accepted yet another eager soul to prove themselves capable of ascending to the third floor. Klark strode through the hall confidently. The torches along the wall flared to life with each step he took down the hall. Each step sent yet another echo of his plate armor banging against itself. The oni held one of his spears lazily over his shoulder, as he didn’t expect any danger since there weren’t any on the first floor.
As he entered the halfway point, something dripped onto his forehead. He paused and furrowed his brow as he tapped the spot on his forehead. There was moisture, but it wasn’t water. Curiosity got the better of him. He looked up at the ceiling, but didn’t see anything. The sandstone bricks looked fine to his eyes.
But then he saw something squeezing through the bricks. “What?”
He gripped his spear tighter and took a step back. But then the substance spread from the crack. He aimed his spear at the slimy green material, but it lunged at his face.
He instinctively raised a hand to his face, but it was futile against his attacker. The slime slipped through his fingers and through his eyelids. It then flowed past the eye and into Klark’s skull effortlessly. Klark convulsed as he felt the creature begin dissolving his brain. At first, everything started feeling less important, but then suddenly, the fact that something had dared to attack him so cowardly was an affront to his pride.
He tried to raise his hand to pluck the creature from behind his eye, but his arm twisted backwards, as if to move in the opposite direction he commanded. His other limbs started following suit, or he lost any ability to control them at all.
Inside Klark’s skull, the slime known as Killa pierced and dissolved the fleshy gray matter.
She wouldn’t let herself feel anything. This was nothing more than hunting a simple creature for food. She needed a lot of it. The oni’s armor only sounded louder now that she was trapped in his skull. As she ate, everything dropped around her, and she bounced in the skull as the oni died and collapsed to the ground. She went to finishing the brain and then worked her way down through the spine and ate all the internal organs, one at a time.
With each organ consumed, she felt a little more like her old self. Not the self she was with Rina, but the monster she was before she met her mentor, Aquantula. The kraken that reigned her in and taught her that there was more to life than ravenous consumption for the sake of consumption. She even taught her how to perform magic.
She pushed aside the memories that would only slow her down. She needed to be a monster, and to do that, she needed to feel like a monster. As she worked her way through the bones, muscles, and skin, Killa kept one name at the forefront of her mind: Rina.
Killa crawled out of the armor. She looked at the oni’s weapons and armor and sighed. “That makes two today.” She scooped up his belongings and carried them further in.
She walked into the large chamber, where a sphinx sat by the door, letting her tail sway to her side. “This grows tiresome, this killing spree. When will you satisfy your gluttony?”
Killa dumped her spoils into the pile of her growing hoard. She’d grown six times what she started, leaving her capable of forming her humanoid form, but only standing at a hundred centimeters.
“You said you had no problem with what I’m doing.” Killa crossed her arms and glared at the mythical creature.
“Do you wish to become the monster you fear?” The sphinx leaned forward and flashed her fangs. “After all this, can you face your peer?”
Killa slumped her shoulders. “All I’ll do right now is slow her down. I’ll keep her safe so she can climb in peace. She deserves to live. But since I can’t tell who that creature is masquerading as, I have to kill everyone, even the innocents.”
The sphinx purred and padded next to Killa. “What is this I see, guilt? How far will you go for what you built?”
“As far as I must.” Killa headed to the hall. “You said you weren’t going to stop me so long as they hadn’t entered this chamber.”
The sphinx trotted to the gate. “Your statement of our agreement is correct. And while entertaining before, I’ve grown bored of your quest to protect. Please enlighten me in full. Express your final goal.”
Killa paused and looked at the collection of weapons, armor, and other miscellaneous supplies. She needs more mass to condense herself enough to dissolve the metals. But she had enough mana in her body to use magic again, so things were closer to normal for her.
“There is something hunting my friend. And I’m staying here, knowing that it will have to go this way to catch up to her. I’ll ambush it when it arrives and then catch up to her once I’m not shorter than a meter.” Killa waved at the sphinx. “If someone does get through, the pile is theirs to take.”
The sphinx curled up on her perch above the portal and closed her eyes. “Some days I just want to do my job. This whole doing nothing is driving me mad.”
Killa paused at the sudden break of character from the sphinx. She barely held back the chuckle as she finally saw a crack in the seemingly impervious facade. After all, the sphinx wasn’t perfect.
Killa returned to her favorite crack, noticing she had to dissolve more of the stone to fit herself back in. “It looks like I’ve made some decent progress and won’t be able to fit in through the back of the eye anymore. The nose or ears still make decent orifices though.” The slime woman hated the fact that she was growing into the habit of talking to herself more and more. She silently scolded herself.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She waited and waited. Recently, there had been a rather large influx of people attempting to climb the tower recently, and the gnawing guilt of each kill threatened to distract her. Then the guilt of leaving Rina to climb the tower alone, without her aid, pulled at her emotions.
If something were to happen to her while she was climbing... Killa’s mind continued to wander.
The sounds of claws scraping the stone caught her attention. Someone was coming, and Killa, for a moment, was going to let this one through. She wished that the creature would arrive already. Killa craved some validation that she was doing the right thing.
She poked out a small tendril to look at who was coming. Walking towards her hiding place, a beastman lumbered through the hall. It was a bear beastman with white fur. Several plates covered sections of his body and were fastened to each other, protecting everything other than the joints.
The beastman paused short of walking under her. He seemed to sniff the air as he straightened up, his head nearly reaching the ceiling. “I know you’re there. I can smell you.”
Killa smiled internally. It was a trick so many have used before. It was a half-truth. She didn’t doubt that he could smell her; beastmen were frequently praised for their enhanced senses. Unfortunately, she knows enough about smells to know that it can’t pinpoint her actual location just by smell alone, at least from that distance. So she waited.
The polar bear beastman growled as he scraped his claws against the wall, ripping the torch off and slamming it on the ground. “The longer you make me wait, the worse it will be for you, creature.”
Killa nearly jumped and laughed. He doesn’t even know it’s a slime he smells. That makes things almost too easy. She circulated the mana in her body, preparing to wrap his arms in tentacles once he got closer. The beastman’s growling only grew as he refused to take another step.
The beastman stomped his feet and paced from side to side. His eyes darted everywhere except for the small crack Killa wedged herself in. Then the beastman stopped and took a few steps back. With a sudden yell, the beastman sprinted forward. Killa summoned the field of tentacles below her before he arrived.
The yellow tentacles whipped around and latched onto the bear’s legs. The first few tentacles snapped as more followed and didn’t break. He caught himself as he tripped, unable to move his legs. Killa took the chance to drop onto his back and reach for his head.
He reached an arm around his back and twisted. The slime easily stayed out of his reach, holding on between his shoulder blades. He writhed and shouted, but nothing let him reach the slime on his back. Kill created more yellow tentacles. This time, they grew from the wall and pulled him to it.
As the beastman pushed against the wall, fighting the magical tentacles, Killa crawled up to his ear and dove in. Pushing through the eardrum only slowed her down momentarily. She had to remove her ability to hear as the beastman’s shouting echoed through the hall and in his head. Now that she was inside, it became a trivial matter to dissolve his brain, kill him, and consume him as per her usual routine.
She consumed the brain and let the magic controlling the tentacles fade. As she braced for the body to hit the ground, she could feel it convulsing, even without the brain. Something was moving inside the body. She pushed through the bear’s eye and saw his mouth open to release an inky black shadow that grew out.
It turned to look right at her. There were no signs of a face, but she knew it was staring at her. She could feel its hatred seething even as its body stretched. It raised a finger and pointed at Killa. Even though she didn’t hear anything or see a mouth move, the idea of it swearing vengeance against her then crept into her mind. Slowly at first, then speeding up, it became thinner and thinner until it seemed to disappear with a sharp pop.
That was it. That was the thing hunting Rina, and now Killa wouldn’t have been surprised if she was added to its list for stopping it. She bought more time. Any sense of patience was gone. The same trick wouldn’t work against it twice. It was time to move on and see if she could find Rina.
But first, she needed to finish her meal, and she had a big one this time. She took one quick look at her status, distributing her stats while she ate. Her status was a stark reminder of how effective this hunting strategy really was.
Name: Killa Level: 22 Agility: 190 Arcane: 190 Power: 190 Quickness: 190 Resilience: 190 Toughness: 190 Unassigned Points: 0 Shards: 80860
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Nyxnthix stared at the void it found itself in. It couldn’t understand how that slime survived. That thing was frozen solid. It made sure of it. But it was much smaller than before. Which meant it didn’t walk away unscathed, and it was weak.
But brute force was a wasted effort. Nyxnthix didn’t expect itself to be foiled so easily. It didn’t even have a chance to reach Rina before being killed.
It shook its head and scanned the multitude of worlds available to it. Hoping that a soul headed to the Nexus would be a strong one wasn’t going to be enough anymore. Nyxnthix needed to find a specific body. The beastman was strong, durable, and had improved senses, but there was no defense against something eating the brain.
Now it looked for something harder to kill. Something that was powerful. Something that can compete with a slime. In so many worlds, Nyxnthix saw how the populations viewed slimes. It knew that wasn’t how it worked in many of the worlds that didn’t eradicate them with extreme prejudice.
But there were other beings capable of being more powerful than slimes, and one came to mind. There was just one problem: would there be one it could separate the soul from the body? Nyxnthix had avoided trying to steal one of their bodies because they were notoriously difficult to influence.
Other cosmic assassins went after such creatures because they saw something or went somewhere they shouldn’t have. Each time, they would send three or four assassins to slay them and lock their souls away. And now, Nyxnthix was attempting to take one over by itself.
There was a delicate balance it needed to strike. Nyxnthix looked for one—the younger the better—until it found one. With a wide grin on its featureless face, it followed its target into the shadows of its home.