Chapter 15: Making a Splash

Once Tide reached peak fitness after a couple of hours he stood up and steeled himself to hunt some more slimes.

Before he did though he opened his stats to see how much exp they dished out.

Tide Blackwater

Lv: 5 (54%) [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: 14

Wisdom: 14

Control: 14

Affinities:

-Earth: 6%

-Water: 3%

-Fire 2%

Tide was happy when he saw that he gained 22% to his next level which means each slime would give him 11%.

Tide closed the window and banished his thoughts once again looking towards the slimes. Based off the last fight his golems seemed to be quite good at fighting these slimes. It was a shame that Pebble ran out of juice while he meditated, and Tide decided it would be best to resummon him. After all the golem almost completely by itself killed a slime. It was like their natural predator.

He poked Onyx in the head waking the wolf from its nap, before advancing in the direction of the cave.

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Tide sighed as he plopped down on a log back at camp, he quickly removed his shoes and tipped them upside down allowing some trapped slime goo to drip out. He had tried to avoid getting hit by the stuff, but it was almost impossible to avoid the goop after fighting so many slimes. After a certain point he began to not notice the small sting of the slime sticking all over his body

After the first fight he had made sure to keep the slimes corpses around so he could collect their core shards. Like the rabbit's horn these small slivers of the slimes core were much more valuable than the coins dropped. Still if a couple of the slime’s corpses were extra messy, he would let them fade away.

Quickly checking his storage ring, he counted the bounty of shards he collected.

“Twenty-one, damn” Tide said impressed with himself. It wasn’t a bad haul. The reason why he was able to collect some many was due to his golem skill. The animated dirt was great a squishing the slime’s bodies. Pebble was the MVP for the day taking on half the slimes alone. The golem was able to systematically go up to each slime give it a good beating before popping them like a bubble. Of course, Tide and Onyx weren’t idle while Pebble worked.

Tide after figuring out the slimes detection range and noticed the small jiggle the slimes would make before attacking was able to reliably reduce the slimes population. Of course, the slimes still got their hits in, and Tide was battered and bruised by their impacts.

Even Onyx got a couple of kills for himself after figuring out a way to dig into the slime with its claws and chomp down on the core. The cub acted like a lovable idiot most of the time and Tide underestimated his intelligence. He would use his claws to stretch the slime out so there would be less slime to bite through to get the core. It must have been painful to put the acidic slime in his mouth, but Onyx soldiered on.

Tide was forced to stop after a certain bit because he began to run out of stamina and mana to use. Thus, he called it a day. All that was left was getting all the slime off of him and making some dinner. Standing back up he and Onyx walked back to the creek to grab some water. After removing all the alge and dirt, Tide was left with a ball of clean water. Moving the water to Onyx he began to use it and mop up the slime stuck in his fur. As he was finishing up he began to have a fierce headache, one of the first signs of mana exhaustion. Looks like the little bit of mana he had left was drying up.

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He told the wolf to go back to camp and began to undress planning on cleaning himself the same way.

He quickly undressed and stored his slimy clothes in his ring rather than have them stick to the ground and pick up dirt. He would clean them after restoring his mana.

Activating element manipulation, he once again infused the water flowing down the stream and brought it up into the air. After the same process he purge the water of its impurities and brought it up to himself.

The water wavered in the air, unsteady and Tide had to focus to get it to stay together. After a long day of slinging spells and summoning Pebble multiple times Tides mind was exhausted and demanded a break.

Tide’s pride wouldn't allow it and pushed himself to make the water his listen to his will. Slowly, Tide had the water start to glide over his body removing any sweat, slime, or blood that accumulated throughout the day. The pain in his head began to intensify, but the relief he felt from removing the grime on his body was worth it. After getting his entire body sufficiently clean the orb of water now a brownish green color plopped on to the ground splattering everywhere. At the same time Tide lost consciousness as his mind and body rebelled against his abuse.

Lucky, he fell backwards otherwise it would be truly ironic if he died in a shallow creek, by drowning.

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

“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 a girl leveling an arrow at his face.

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 to meet the guy or receive whatever 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. They were a bit baggy but much better than nothing. While he was getting dressed, he also began to infuse mana into the ground next to the archer. She was a bit distracted by Tide’s predicament and was trying to look at him without having to look at him.

By the time he was done dressing Pebble had 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 mentally commanded the golem to attack the girl as she spun around. Her face was met with Pebbles earthen knuckles and was knocked out by the blow. Seeing his ally go down the man with the spear activated some skill that caused him to swiftly lunge at Pebble piercing straight through the golem’s chest.

This attack brought him right up to Pebble who unfazed by the blow clapped his hands together with the man’s head in between it. The man’s eyes swiftly rolled into the back of his head as he also lost consciousness.

Tide gave Pebble a quick thumbs up before quickly checking that they were both only knocked out and not dead. They both still had a strong pulse and Pebble’s dirt hands were too soft to crack their skulls. Most likely they would be fine and just have a concussion.

Now, Tide had a dilemma. Both saw his face and would remember him unless Pebbles blow gave them both memory loss. He could just kill them both and be done with them, but Tide disliked pointless murder. The more people who could handle themselves in a fight the better once the first event started.

Tide also couldn’t just leave them here; a wondering monster could come by and kill them before they regained consciousness. With a loud sigh Tide took a dagger off the female’s waist and threw it in his ring. This would be her payment for his help. The man gave him a set of clothes so it was only fair that she give up something as well.

“Go a head and bring these two back to the village. As soon as you see a human make a loud noise to alert them before immediately disassembling.” Tide ordered.

Pebble walked over and grabbed both of them by the legs and began dragging them in the direction of the town. Seeing the girls head bounce on a root Tide winced.

“Carry them on your shoulders so they aren’t being dragged.” Tide added sparing the two from the bumps and bruises that would come from such a trip.

With that Tide turned back around on his way back to the campsite as he originally intended. Once he got there, he was greeted by an anxious Onyx who let out an excited yelp. The wolf who had grow a decent bit now sprinted up to Tide and practically tackled him.

He must have been passed out for a decent bit it was probably around two hours based on how much mana he regened. Onyx, who was a good boy, was stuck listening to Tides order to wait for him must have been stressed.

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

“Alright it’s been an exciting day lets get some rest.” Tide said motioning over to the small fire pit and bedding the was currently his home.

After making a quick rabbit stew using some clean water and wild vegetables, Tide laid down in his bed waiting for sleep to take him. Hopefully, Pebble didn’t have any trouble bring the pair back to town.