Chapter 16: Efficiency is Essential

Tide woke up the next morning feeling much better. His mana was fully restored, and he was ready keep going. Yesterday’s events made things a bit more complicated. He was planning to use these slimes to slowly grind up levels before going to explore the cave the slimes are coming from.

Now that he had to deal with those hunters, his location was most likely exposed. Perhaps, they wouldn’t think he was the problem, and that pebble was a monster that snuck up on them. If someone saw Pebble bring them back or thought that the pile of dirt near the unconscious body was suspicious, they would try to investigate what happened.

Either way it looks like Tide would not be able to use this hunting spot for long. He would have at least one more day to make progress and clear out the cave. Tide opened his stat screen and tried to figure out the best way to go about this.

Tide Blackwater

Lv: 7 (5%) [10 Stats Undistributed]

Class: Elementalist

Health: 250/250 (Regen 12/h)

Mana: 700/700 (Regen 70/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%

He had gained two levels yesterday from the hunt. Him and Pebble were more efficient at killing slimes, so Tide ended up with most of the exp. Tide looked at the ten stats he could distribute before coming up with a best course of action. He put six points into control to bump it up to twenty the rest he put into wisdom. With twenty points of control, he could summon two pebbles at the same time, and the extra wisdom would give him enough mana to maintain them.

Once that was figured out, he began to break down camp and using a bit of earth and water manipulation he was able to remove any trace of him being there. He would finish up with the slimes before making a new camp further away from the creek.

After getting everything neatly packed away into his storage ring, Tide and Onyx made their way to the slime cave.

Tide noticed that there seemed to be less slimes roaming outside than yesterday. There eight of the aquamarine slimes Their spawn timer was probably just on a longer timer Tide reasoned. He didn’t really care. His objective today was to explore the cave and see if there were any higher-level slimes to hunt. If he was lucky, perhaps there would be some equipment or treasure lying around to be discovered.

He quickly summoned two earth golems. In order to separate the two golems, he carved a one and a two into their foreheads and dubbed them Pebble 1 and Pebble 2. He sent the newly made soldiers into combat against their semisolid opponents. Without missing a beat, they marched into battle.

It only took a handful of minutes to take care of the newly spawned slimes outside. Tide gathered up their core shards and made his way over to the cave mouth. He noticed that it was quite dark inside. To remedy this issue, he made a makeshift torch and made his way inside with the Pebble pair taking the lead.

As he made his way deeper the passage began to narrow, and water trickled further in under Tide’s shoes. There was an occasional higher-level slime every once and awhile, that blocked the way, but they couldn’t last long against the two golems working together.

Soon the tunnel got to the point where each member of Tide’s party would have to go one at a time to pass through. After a couple more feet in the cramped passage it suddenly opened into a large cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites littered the ground and celling. Tide’s attention wasn’t draw to the wonders of the cave, but instead he was looking at the multiple overweight slimes slowly rolling around. They were either attempting to dissolve the rocks around them or taking a dip in a pool of water that was filled by the water flow.

After a moment of observation their info window popped up in front of Tide.

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Mother Slime

Magical Monster

Level 8

Hp ???/???

They were as tall as Tide and looked like they could ingulf him hole if they wanted to. One was a bit separated from the group and it sat in a small puddle of water not moving.

Tide had Pebble two approach the slime trying to gauge when the slime would notice it and attack. Surprisingly, it did nothing as the golem approached. It sat there unresponsive even as the golem stood only a couple of inches away.

Confused, Tide looked around to make sure there was no other slimes nearby, before ordering the golem to attack the slime.

Pebble two raised its earthen fists up into the air before slamming them back down on the slimes surface. Its attack did nothing to the slime, besides sending a large ripple reverberating through its entire body.

After the ripple settled, the mother 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 launched itself at Pebble two and they both tumbled away. After a moment of grappling with its Pebble two managed to pin down the slime and pop it. Tide did not watch their battle as he was more concerned with the two other bubbles of slime beading up on the mother slime and falling off.

“Fuck it’s a spawner type” Tide muttered to himself getting his staff ready for the battle of attrition that was starting.

Spawner type enemies were quite annoying to deal with. A spawner was any monster that could either gather or create other weaker monsters. The effort it took to kill them made most hunters try to avoid them.

Tide was able to smash one of the new slimes with his staff while Pebble 1 dealt with the other. Despite this the mother slime had made another two that jumped to attack Tide. One slime was intercepted midair by a pouncing Onyx, who quickly began to tear into it search for its core. The other Tide tried to dodge but he was hit dead on, causing him to be knocked back into the side of the cave. Luckily, the slimes spawned were quite weak and it felt like hitting the rocks on the wall did more damage than the slime itself.

At this point Pebble two had returned from its scuffle and took care of the one that landed a blow on Tide. Now that every member of Tide group was prepared and fighting, a delicate balance was created. They would kill the new slimes as quickly possible, while the mother slime spawned more hoping to overwhelm them. After a couple of minutes and another six slimes, the mother slime had lost half of its volume. At this point it stopped spawning more slimes and jiggled much more violently. Much to Tides surprise it launched itself towards Pebble 1 and crushed the golem into dust.

Seeing the force of the impact Tide was bit nervous and stopped pulling his punches. He was attempting to save mana by just using the two golems and fighting with the staff, but if he had to resummon the golems it would be pointless.

In the interest of preserving his groups fighting strength Tide opted to end the fight quickly. He sent a quarter of his mana into a stalagmite and broke it off from the floor of the cave. He quickly polished it to a more even point and launched it at the mother slime like a javelin. As it hit the slime, the stalagmite put pressure on a very small section of the slime causing pressure to build up.

The pressure was too much for the weakened mother slime and its structural integrity fell apart with a loud pop. Tide had Pebble 2 approach the pool of slime congealing on the floor and smash the much larger slime core.

Taking a deep breath and regaining his calm Tide began to collect the shards each slime had dropped.

After checking his exp it seemed that these slimes were pretty good to farm. Since he had to kill eleven normal slimes and then the mother slime, it might not be worth it though.

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 as large and complex as this there tended to be a boss encounter. Bosses tended to be an evolved monster, or a different species of monster all together. For instance, a goblin settlement could have a hobgoblin or an orc warrior as its boss.

Boss fights tended to be difficult but were worth the risk. They often dropped a large amount of gold and could even drop usable gear. If he could kill the boss in this cave, it would be an immense power spike quite early into the trial. Something like that would help Tide snowball his progress making him much stronger. He thought about just ignoring the mother slimes as they did not seem to care about him but shook his head. If he just carefully snuck past them and found the boss, it would be dangerous to leave them in his retreat path.

Having resigned himself to a long day of slime slaying, Tide resummoned Pebble 1 and began walking towards the next mother slime.

As he continued to fight his way through the cave and the rest of the mother slimes, he picked up a couple of tricks that made things go smoothly. The mother slimes were using the water in the cavern to help make up for the loss in volume when spawning the slimes. The water was like a reservoir to fill themselves back up. Also, he found the optimal time to attack the mother slimes. It was after the seventh or eighth slime were spawned.

At that point, the mother slimes had lost enough volume for Tide to pierce them with his stalagmite spears. This timing prevented the mother slimes from engaging in the fight themselves because they had yet to stop spawning slimes. If he prevented the mother slimes from using their larger mass physically, there did not seem to be much of a threat. The only problem was that each fight was long and took a decent chunk of mana to end.

By the time Tide had cleared the cave of the mother slimes he was exhausted. He willed himself into the tunnel at the end of it though because he needed to see what was at the end of this cave. He was not going to walk out of here just to have to come back and fight through the respawned slimes.

Looking over his shoulders he saw that his faithful companion was not looking too hot either. He crouched down giving the pup a head rub. Only Pebble 1 and Pebble 2 looked like they had energy to keep going due Tide having to resummoning them every once and a while.

“Only a little more bud.” The Wolf’s eyes shone a bit more with determination and Tide felt his own confidence rise as well. Readying himself for anything he walked forward. As he did, he noticed the light change drastically, instead of the dim glow given off by the moss he was put off by the almost fluorescent light emitted from crystals in the next passage. Soon the path opened into a much smaller cavern, the size of a house. Inside there was a pool of water and crystals embed randomly throughout the cavern’s walls. In the middle of the space was a single slime. It was the same size as the normal slimes, but the drastic difference was that it was pitch black.