Chapter 14: The Most Dangerous Water Balloons

When Tide woke up the next morning, he did a quick inventory of his and Onyx’s gains from the previous day.

He had gained a level and a point in both Endurance and Agility. He also decided to distribute his stat points from the level up and the three left over from last time. Two were used to get his strength caught up to his other physical stats, the other six were equally spread across Intelligence, Wisdom, and Control.

Tide Blackwater

Lv: 4 (32%) [0 Stats Undistributed]

Class: Elementalist

Health: 250/250 (Regen 12/h)

Mana: 500/500 (Regen 50/h)

Stamina: 250/250 (Regen 20/h)

Vitality: 5

Strength: 5

Endurance: 5

Agility: 5

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 12

Control: 12

Affinities:

-Earth: 5%

-Water: 2%

-Fire 1%

With these additions Tide felt that his stats were rounding out well. Hopefully, he could still grab a couple of physical stats from just being active while they were still low. Typically magic based didn’t distribute any points to their physical stats, letting the other members of their party deal with blocking threats. For Tide who was trying to avoid joining a team, it was vital that his physical stats improved as well to increase the odds of his survival.

Next, Tide looked over at Onyx who was sleeping next to him. Focusing on him Tide pulled up his description.

Onyx

Bound to Tide Blackwaters

Black Dire Wolf

Level 4 (13%)

Hp 220/220

Skills:

Stealth: The user blends into their surroundings becoming harder to sense.

Pounce: A leaping attack used to surprise or finish an enemy. Increased damage when undetected or when the enemy’s health is 20% or lower.

Tide was unable to see Onyx’s raw stats, but Onyx was certainly faster and stronger than the other day. The combination of his skills was great and allowed Onyx to take monsters by surprise. Now Tide was much less worried about Onyx getting hurt while hunting. Already the pup was a great asset and Tide could trust him to handle a rabbit alone. Of course, to remain cautious and safe they would keep together, incase an incident like what happened last night occurred.

Once he looked over Onyx’s details, he woke the pup up with a quick rub down. A quick breakfast consisting of roasted rabbit and hard tack bread was had before Tide cleaned up camp and began to make his way back to the rabbit’s territory. They would continue hunting them today with the goal of each of them reaching level five.

On the way, Tide decided to work on his fire affinity and control a little bit. So far he had really only used it to start their campfires. He conjured a small orb of fire in his palm using a fifth of his mana and took it through the same practice as he did with his normal mana training.

As he began make shapes and letters using the fire, it began to dim. The mana put into creating the orb was quickly dissipating as thermal energy. Tide noticed this and attempted to maintain a small flow of mana into the orb giving it more fuel. Sadly, his control was lacking and the orb ended up sputtering out of existence.

Not wanting to show up at the hunting grounds with no mana Tide decided to stop their and conserve what he had left.

Soon they reached the meadow with tall grass and began looking for rabbits. Once he arrived there, he noticed there was much more traces of conflict and hunters throughout the territory. A couple competent groups must also be using the rabbits to level up.

To ensure his identity wouldn’t be exposed Tide donned his clay mask to obscure his face. He would do his best to avoid the groups but having an extra step of precaution was reassuring if he messed up.

It made his face a bit sweaty, but after adding a couple of very small holes to let in some air, it was much better.

Now with the mask in place Tide and Onyx began their hunt. Due to the other groups around hunting it was a bit harder to find rabbits, but they still did quite well for themselves. The extra stamina and mana that he had from leveling up allowed them to hunt a bit faster, despite the lower number of prey. This day went without a hitch. He was much more careful in scouting out the battlefield. If there was ever two rabbits, he would leave one to Onyx while taking care of the other one. Onyx with his new skills was able to get the upper hand in the 1v1.

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At the end of the day and after fourteen more kills, they both reached level 5. After this the rabbits exp had a very small effect on their progress. It seemed that they would have to move on to a different monster and hunting ground.

As such Tide called it a day despite there being a couple more hours left in the day. Instead of continuing he began to move farther from the town scouting for a suitable monster habitat. He began to follow the winding river, wanting to keep near the river to maintain his clean water supply. Being able to bath after each day of hunting was one of Tides only comforts. That and Onyx seemed to enjoy being able to cool of by swimming in it.

Besides a couple of forest deer, Tide didn’t come across a different monster until he found a creek branching off from the river. Tide decided to follow the creek hoping to find something new. After walking along the creek for another twenty minutes, they eventually came across a rock face. The creek went straight into the cliff and looked to have created a cave. Outside the cave there were a bunch of aquamarine blobs jumping around absorbing rocks and grass.

Tide observed one of them and its status screen popped up for him.

Slime

Magical Monster

Level 4

Hp 200/200

After looking at a couple of other slimes he was satisfied with this new hunting ground. The slimes range of levels were from four to six. Plus, there was plenty of them around. He noticed that most of the higher-level slimes were closer to the cave. This made Tide assume that inside the cave there could be even stronger slimes. If this was true then this hunting ground would last him a decent while.

He could at least spot twenty loitering around the cave entrance. Luckily slimes weren’t a very perceptive monster and would only defend themselves once attacked. If they had any form of eyesight perhaps, they would gang up on Tide and Onyx. Without any real means of perception, Tide and Onyx would be able to slowly pick them all off one at a time.

This didn’t mean that they were easy foes. Slimes were extremely resistant to a lot of attacks and would only die once the core floating around in their bodies was destroyed. Tide scouted out the rest of the area looking for any other dangers but didn’t find any. After this the sky was beginning to darken so Tide decided he would leave off fighting the slimes until later and went to set up a camp only a bit further away from the cave.

With the extra spare time left in the day, Tide continued to try and get the hand of making a sustained fire ball by trickling mana into at a constant rate. After another hour or so of struggling with the flow of his mana he was able to fuel the fire in his palm like a propane tank fueling a grill. From their he began increasing and decreasing the rate of the flow causing the flame to grow bigger and smaller accordingly.

Before he went to sleep, he noticed that his efforts were rewarded by an increase in his fire affinity and an additional stat point in Control. He also placed his undistributed stat points across his class dependent stats bringing them all up to fourteen.

The next morning when Tide and Onyx woke up, they made their back to the cave. Along the way Tide had to make a change to his staff. He jabbed its tip into a nearby rock and fused it to the staff. His mana took control of the stone which was almost the size of his head and began condensing it into a sphere and attaching it to the staff. With his increased strength, Tide was able to lift the weapon and gave it a practice swing. It was a bit cumbersome but would be much more effective when dealing with the slimes.

Typically, there was two methods to hunting the slime. The first was to use a piercing and slashing weapon to cut the core while it was inside the slimes body, but this was quite difficult due to the core constantly moving around in the slime. Only very fast and precise hunters could use this method. The other and more consistent way was to hit the slime with enough blunt force to cause it to pop and lose its structural integrity. This would expose the core for a moment and allow the hunter to crush the core before the slime gathered back around it.

Tide obviously was opting for the second method. He tried to explain to Onyx that the slimes cores were their weak spot, but it was bit to complicated of a concept for the young wolf to comprehend. Sometimes the best way of learning was by seeing.

As such Tide told the wolf to stay a bit further back and let him take care of first one.

Tide began to advance towards the first slime. As Tide neared it and reached a distance of about five feet away, ripples begin to course through the slime. Tide brought the staff above his head getting ready to swing down and splatter the slime. Instead, the slime compressed itself inwards before bouncing into the air. It had shot of the ground like a cannon ball not even giving Tide a chance to swing his staff. All he could do was flinch as it hit his chest, feeling much harder than it looked.

It felt like someone just chucked a bowling ball at his chest. The impact caused him to fall on to his back and knocked the air out of his lungs. The slime ricocheted off him but, wasted no time and crawled onto Tide’s legs and started moving towards his chest.

Tide was unable to do anything as he felt a burning sensation coat his leg. Tide would have let out a scream as he felt his skin start to melt but had no air in his lungs to produce the sound.

Onyx seeing Tide’s struggle jumped on the slime, ignoring its masters orders to stay back. After a second Tide was able to recover his breath and regained control over his body.

Tide grimaced, he forgot how annoying slimes were. Tide looked over to see Onyx tussling with the slime. Tide frowned, he saw how his pet's claws and fangs were ineffective against the slime’s elastic nature.

Tides frown became a scowl as he saw that Onyx and the slimes fight had entered the five-foot radius of another slime gaining its attention. In a panic Tide quickly sent a sizable chunk of his mana out into the dirt next to his companion to summon Pebble. While it was being constructed, Tide got to his feet picked up his staff. He quickly commanded the golem to attack the new slime. This order caused it to promptly run at and tackle the ball of slime like a linebacker.

Hopefully Pebble would be able to distract that slime long enough for Tide to help Onyx deal with the other slime. Quickly, Tide ran up to the slime which was now clinging to the wolf dissolving some of its fur. Onyx let out a whimper and was still trying to claw at his opponent with no success.

Once Tide got close enough, he kicked the slime removing it from Onyx and sending it crashing into a nearby tree. The impact stunned the creature for a moment which gave Tide the time to slam the round ball on his staff into it. As the sphere hit the slime it was forced to compress to the point where it popped, and its slime splattered all over the nearby area including onto Tide. Quickly, Tide found and stomped on the small core that fell to the ground, preventing the slime from reforming. He ignored the burning sensation where the slime splattered on him and turned around.

With one down, Tide quickly looked over to see how Pebble was fairing in its fight against the other slime. As he looked over, he saw Pebble bear hugging the slime who was dissolving the golem’s arms and chest. Pebble squeezed hard and the slime began bulged out of the gaps in Pebble’s arms. Eventually Pebble squeezed hard enough, and the slime collapsed with an audible pop. Tide walked over and quickly grabbed the core from the ground and removed it from the rest of the slime that was gradually gathering towards it. Looks like against slimes Pebble was a great combatant. I looked like the only damage the golem took was a slight weathering away of the dirt composing him.

Tide, then took the core over to Onyx who had now gotten back up and was trying to wash off the remaining slime on its fur using the creek. Tide let the wolf cub smell and look at the core to help it figure out the slimes weak point. Once Onyx was familiar with the core Tide smashed it against a rock in the creak causing the slime inching towards him to go limp lifelessly.

Tide channeled a bit of mana into the water creating an orb that he used to help clean the slime off himself and his two allies. After doing so he found that his mana was quite low. Deciding to take a quick break to let himself and Onyx recuperate from the fight he took them a bit father from the slimes before sitting down to meditate. Before he started, he told Pebble to keep watch and intercept any slimes or other monsters if they came by.