Tide woke up with a pain in his side. He let out a groan due to the pain in his head.

“Hey I think he is still alive” a feminine voice called out.

This was followed by another painful poke to his side.

“Hey get up.” A rough voice said.

Tide let out a groan before pushing himself off the ground.

What he saw when he turned around wasn’t great. There was a muscular man holding him at spear point and and a girl leveling an aria at him.

Tide instantly realized the situation and raised his hands before speaking.

“Woah there guys let’s not do anything hasty” Tide tried to sound as harmless as possible.

“What are you doing out of town? And why the hell are you naked?” The girl in the back asked visibly blushing.

Tide quickly looked down to see that he was currently still naked, with his junk hanging in the wind.

Embarrassed Tides hands quickly lowered to cover his privates. He quickly thought of a way to explain the situation.

“I was jumped by some guys who knocked me out before robbing me.” Tide said.

“That still doesn’t explain what you are doing out of town you're not a hunter. You'll be in big trouble when we get back to town for defying the mayor’s orders.” The man said while lowering his spear. He took off his backpack and fished around in it until he pulled out a pair of pants and a shirt.

While he was doing that Tides mind was in a flurry.

He was trying to figure out what the situation was in the town. Who was this mayor figure? Obviously he was the town leader or something. Tide really didn’t want meet the guy, or receive his punishment.

“Here you can keep these, you're going to need to be wearing something when we drag you back to town.” the guy said while throwing the clothes to Tide.

Tide deftly caught them and began to put them on.

Tide let out a sigh seeing no other way. He began to slowly put on the clothes feigning a physical injury. While he was doing so he began to infuse mana into the ground next to the archer who was too busy trying to close her eyes than pay attention.

By the time he was done dressing a golem was formed behind her. When Tide looked up he dug up his best acting voice and yelled.

“Watch out behind you!”

While he said this he commanded the golem to attack the girl and she let out a scream. The spearman whipped around, but before he could do anything a grey fist smashed into the back of his head making everything go black.

The archer panicked and was quickly knocked unconscious by the golem.

Tide looked down on the two unconscious people and let out a sigh. Not wanting the guilt of having something come along and kill the two he commanded the golem to drag them back to the outskirts of town before destroying itself. It was the least he could do for the second pair of clothes they gave him, even if they were a bit baggy.

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Seeing the golem grab both of their arms and began to drag them back, Tide turned back towards camp.

When he arrived, he found a pacing Onyx that looked anxious. Once the pup saw Tide he  sprinted over tackling him, while licking all over his face.

“Alright, alright calm down boy. I am sorry for making you scared.” Tide said while wrestling the pup off of him. Tide let out a grin and rubbed Onyx’s belly before standing up.

“Wanna go hunting?” Tide said in a questioning tone.

In response, Onyx leapt to his feet and began to wag his tail at light speed.

“Alright boy let's go” Tide said before jogging away with the excitable pup.

For the next three days Tide settled into a routine. In the morning he would go out hunting horned rabbits and the occasional forest deer in order to level Onyx up, before moving over to the slime cave to train himself.

He was quite happy at the pace things were going until he encountered a problem. After a couple of day his level began to stagnate at level 11. The slimes outside of the cave only reached level 8 and began to give out diminishing returns.

Tide Blackwater

Lv: 11 (17%)

Class: Elementalist

Health: 135(Regen 27/h)

Mana: 180 (Regen 108/h)

Stamina: 80 (Regen 48/h)

Vitality: 27

Strength: 15

Endurance: 16

Reaction: 19

Agility: 13

Willpower: 24

Intelligence: 19

Wisdom: 36

Control: 38

Affinities-

Earth: 25%

Fire: 10%

Water: 13%

Looking at his stats and at the empty entrance to the cave Tide strode forward eager to face a new challenge. At first there was nothing special just some more level 8 slimes. As the light grew dimmer behind him though he began to see a light in front of him. After finishing off the last couple of slimes in the corridor, he reached a cavern. Inside of it he found pools of water, stalagmites, stalactites, a weird moss that glowed a bluish light and finally a shit ton of overweight slimes.

Checking their levels he found that they had risen to an average level of 12 and were called mother slimes. Tide quickly summoned a golem, raised his staff and cautiously approached with Onyx behind him. The slimes were massive. Tides height was their diameter and it was quite intimidating. Slowly Tide approached, but the slime just sat there sitting in a puddle doing nothing. It continued to do nothing even as Tide reached arms distance.

Confused Tide decided to swing at it with his staff before dashing backwards. His attack only cause a tremor to ripple through the giant slimes body. After the ripple settled, the slime began to jiggle before a bubble came to the surface and disconnected from the main slime. Tide quickly looked at it and found that it was a separate slime now. It quickly launched itself at him and Tide dodged out of the way. Seeing the threat his golem jumped on the newly created slime and began to punch the shit out of it. Soon after the golem cracked its core the larger slime began to ripple again. This time two slimes were formed. Seeing what was happening tide lashed out quickly destroying one of the newly formed slimes. The other one Onyx jumped on slashing it to bits. The problem was that while this was happening more bubbles were being formed on the larger slime.

Soon Tide was being attacked by three slimes at once and they were being recreated as fast as they were being crushed by Tide and his companions. Soon Tide was out of breath and covered in slime. As they continued to kill more, the mother began to get smaller. Soon after killing around the fifteenth. The mother slime was half its normal size and stopped producing slimes. Oddly, Tide also noticed the pool of water under it was gone as well. It turned slightly red almost showing anger that Tide had killed its children before launching itself at his golem. Going faster than he could react  the golem was smashed to pieces. Seeing that this was going to be a problem, Tide sent a large amount of mana into the ground surrounding the slime. Two walls of dirt rose up on either side of the slime and tide began to force them together squeezing the slime.

With a loud squelch the slime popped and the core was crushed between the walls. Tide let out a sigh and began to collect the slime core fragments and put them in his ring. These were his least liked type of monsters, spawners. Instead of it being one strong monster it was a drawn out fight between a large amount of weaker monsters. It was a shity fight for two reasons, it took forever to fight and the exp pay off wasn't that great.

Tide considered just leaving the cave all together and trying to find another hunting ground but one thing stopped him from doing so. Usually when there was a monster habitat like this it contained a boss monster. If he could kill a boss he would gain a large amount of exp and have a chance at some gear.

Resigning himself for a long day of slime, Tide summoned a new golem, and went on to prod the next slime mother.