14. The Slime That Would Devour the World

I stared at the prompt, debating my options. On one hand, a faster, sturdier slime would be way better in the long run. It could defend me and attack as well, swiftly taking down opponents. I had already started to worry about the size of my slime, especially in cramped places. I looked over the sea of slimes, all gathered on softly rolling hills, hanging from trees and jumping across the streams that ran through the meadow. Would a faster slime even matter when faced with such numbers? Did it even need more magic power on this floor if it could already consume every enemy without worrying about taking damage? But what about beyond Floor 1? Without enough magic power, would it be completely useless after this floor?

I mulled it over for a long while. Technically, I had another summon, the demon, that could take on single opponents. She didn’t seem great at hordes, though, as evidenced by her reluctance to take on even these weak slimes. I had aaaaalmost forced the issue. I had trouble believing that a monster from a much higher floor, even at a quarter of her strength, would be inconvenienced too much by mere slimes. Still, we had plenty of time to figure it out. Assuming my demon wasn’t capable of handling large groups of mobs, the bigger the slime would probably round out my weaknesses better. It would probably be foolish to focus on single targets with both summons while the first few floors of the Tower were probably all as crammed as Floor 1. I almost chose option 2, but I was worried about the ‘denser’ descriptor. A smaller slime would be a detriment, at this point.

A bigger slime wouldn’t be great in tight spaces, but I wasn’t dealing with tight spaces. My biggest obstacle, right now, was in a wide open field. When I had thoroughly talked myself into the decision, I selected option 1, regretting my decision the moment I selected it. Once I did, I received another notification.

Congratulations, Théo. Milestone reached: threshold evolution. Your skill, Summon, has been upgraded to rank 2.

New capabilities unlocked.

Class : Summoner, rank 1.

Soul Echo (rank tied to class rank). Passive. Effect: absorb a portion of your opponent’s essence upon their death, adding it to your Bestiary.

Summon, rank 2. Active. Cost: variable. Effect: summon the power of the souls in your Bestiary. Examine and influence the stats of the souls in your Bestiary.

Bestiary monsters: 2/2. Upgrade your Bestiary to hold more souls.

I took note of the additional effect of my Summon skill. I quickly opened my Bestiary, excited to see what I had to work with.

[https://i.imgur.com/lOtTQcK.png]

Bestiary entry: Devourer slime selected.

Soul strength: 402%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.

Stats : select a stat to prioritize.

Size: E

Magic power: F+

Magic resistance: E-

Physical resistance: F+

Speed: F

Shrinkage: F-

I read over the stats and the ranking system, then I read them over again. I assumed the stats started at F-, which meant that the Shrinkage stat was the weakest it could possibly get. I idly wondered if stats could be altered by environmental effects. I would have to test and check my Bestiary in a frozen biome to see if anything changed. I chose to prioritize size for now. I may as well double down on it. It seemed as if I could readjust later if needed, anyway.

“Théo, what the fuck did you do?” The shout from Pyro brought me out of my screens.

I looked around to see what his problem was, and that’s when I noticed Slimey. He wasn’t going to be devouring the world anytime soon, but I felt as if ‘devourer’ was an appropriate title. My slime had doubled, maybe even tripled in size. He stretched about twelve feet long and was around two feet tall, more than enough to eclipse the other slimes. He was rolling on top of slimes like a rolling pin, picking the slimes up as he went. He looked like a monstrosity from the deepest depths of the abyss, filled with the eyes of innumerable slimes as he slowly digested them. Huge swaths of slimes were being picked up and digested, actually leaving empty space in his wake for more than a few seconds for the first time since we had started climbing.

“Ehhhhh, I evolved my slime? Something like that,” I said sheepishly.

“I guess!” Pyro exclaimed. “Tower’s balls, man, it’s huge!”

“Yeah, it is!” I bragged.

“Above average."

“At least!” I said, puffing out my chest.

With my slime set on devouring the entire floor, I went through the loot that we had amassed, separating it into piles. There were two small daggers, a wooden training sword, a few jars of jelly, a pile of filled waterskins that I didn’t dare test, some unidentified pre-grilled meat drumsticks, a dozen cabbages, a really soft pillow that looked almost exactly like a slime, and a pile of copper coins.

When I had organized, reorganized, alphabetized, arranged the loot by weight, then put most of it into the shittiest bags I’d ever seen, I heard the flapping of wings. I was going to do the super cool thing where you don’t look at the person, he lands behind you and you talk to him with your back turned thing, but I couldn’t take the chance that it wasn’t some mutant flying slime. I turned around and looked up. It was a good thing, too, because it was actually… Yeah, it was Thwain. He landed awkwardly next to me, stumbling. I reached out and steadied him, just in case. It wouldn’t do to have him faceplant into some slimes. He collapsed against the portal archway, exhausted.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Hi honey, did you have a good flight?” I asked.

He just grunted and shot me a glare. I passed him one of the dubious slime-looted water skins, which he guzzled down. I looked at him intently, examining him for any signs of discomfort.

“Fine,” he huffed. “If you’re just going to keep staring at me like that until I spill… I flew to the next portal and dipped into Floor 2. It’s goblins, by the way. Some of them throw spears and others hurl magic, but I made it to Floor 3. Barely. Fruit orchards, forests, boars. I didn’t dare go further, so I rested up and came back.”

“Holy shit!” Pyro exclaimed. “So, you’ve ranked up twice? What did you get?” He bounced up and down giddily.

Thwain shook his head. “Floor 2 didn’t give me anything since we’re already Awakened. You can’t double dip. Floor 3 gave me a rank, though.” He read us his stat sheet.

Thwain

Class : Gunner, rank 2.

Conjure Pistol (rank tied to class rank). Active. Cost: Medium. Cooldown: Medium.

Infuse, rank 1. Active. Cost: variable. Effect: channel your energies into your conjured weapon for increased effect.

Demonic Wings, rank 1. Active. Cost: Variable. Cooldown: None. Effect: conjure demonic wings to carry you into the skies.

Health Steal, rank 1. Passive. Cost: None. Cooldown: None. Effect: absorb a portion of the damage you deal with your conjured weapons as health.

Pyro squealed in delight. “Health steal! Yessss!” He pumped his fists in the air wildly in celebration.

“Congrats,” I said. “Can you carry us, too? Even one at a time?” I asked hopefully. A free ride to the third floor was no joke.

Thwain shook his head. “Not today, that’s for sure. I can try carrying one of you tomorrow, but I don’t know if I have the strength, the stamina or the coordination to carry someone that distance while dodging incoming fire,” he said, dashing my hopes.

“That’s fine,” Pyro said happily. “At least you’re stronger. Let’s go, I’m starving and I don’t wanna try that Tower-spawned grilled meat the slimes shat out or the bottles of slime piss.”

Thwain shot me a horrified look, looking between his water skin and the pile on the ground. “You did not!”

I threw my hands into the air. “You were thirsty! Hey, you didn’t complain, so it’s probably water.”

Thwain gagged a bit, grabbed a bag full of goodies in one hand, held a pistol in the other and exited the portal. Pyro grabbed the other bag and stepped through. I hastily scooped the rest of the loot into a roughspun bag and hopped in after him. When I popped out on the other side, I swore. I had forgotten to unsummon Slimey! Would he stay there? Would he despawn? Would he die? Pyro’s earthen constructs always cleared out between groups, so I really wasn’t sure what would happen to my summons.

I looked into my Bestiary quickly. I sighed in relief as I noticed that Slimey hadn’t died, and he had gained a bit in Size and soul strength. So, leaving the floor dismissed but didn’t kill. Noted. I dismissed my Bestiary and looked around the square. More and more people were filing in, weapons raised. Shit. No overwhelming amount of any particular colors, but there were definitely some members of gangs strewn about the crowd.

“Loot!” Someone shouted. It was like an electric surge passed through the crowd. I looked down at the bag that I was carrying. Yeah, ok, it was mega obvious that we had loot. But, did they really want waterskins?

“Back!” Pyro hollered, covering his skin with his skill and shoving me back into the portal. I had just enough time to hear gunshots before I was teleported.

I appeared on the first floor, disoriented. I almost went back into the portal, but restrained myself. I looked around, noting the absence of my slime and Pyro’s pillars. I hastily summoned my devourer slime next to me. He was so big that he spilled off of the stone circle, aggroing smaller slimes. At my command, he stretched upwards, shrinking in width but gaining in height, reducing the amount of space he occupied on the stone and stopping his bulk from hitting more slimes.

I held my breath, waiting… After what seemed like forever, but was certainly only a few seconds, Thwain tumbled through the portal. I caught him, but something was wrong. Very wrong. He was covered in bullet holes and bleeding profusely. Pyro stepped in a few seconds later, clad in chipped stone skin from head to toe. He was alarmingly calm.

“Take care of him while I get us somewhere to hide,” Pyro said in a monotone, no-nonsense voice. With that, he waded into the slime horde, letting them attack him as he raised a dome of earth above his head, hiding him from my sight and blocking out the slimes.

Thwain gasped and sputtered in my arms, reaching for a pistol.

“No, you’re safe,” I said, trying to soothe him. I fumbled through bags, trying to find something to help. Right! The healing shield. If I could get it charged fast enough, it could work. I sent Slimey to block the portal with his ginormous slime body as I fumbled with the shield.

Thwain shook his head.

“No, there’s time,” I said desperately.

He reached for his pistol, but it was just out of reach. “Life…S...” He mumbled.

I froze, realizing what he meant. “I’m such a dumbass,” I said, running over to the pistol and putting it in his hand. I moved his arm, pointing it towards the unending horde of slimes. Thwain didn’t move. I pressed down on his finger, pulling the trigger. The recoil threw the gun out of his hand. The bullet smashed through slime after slime. A tiny wisp of red energy was released from each defeated slime, flowing into Thwain. He blinked his eyes open, gasping for breath. Slimey easily stretched to intercept the incoming aggroed slimes, then returned most of his mass to his post at the portal. It was just in time, too.

The portal flashed once, twice, three times… A total of seven flashes later, seven men flailed, trying to escape my slime’s embrace. One of them managed to shoot his gun twice, bullets ripping through Slimey. My summon didn’t seem to mind too much, burbling excitedly as it consumed its prey. The portal flashed four more times, dooming four more people to excruciatingly painful deaths. I could see their mouths opening to scream, just to be overwhelmed with Slimey’s goo. He forced his caustic acid into orifices, filling their bodies, dissolving them from inside and out. I watched in fascinated horror as skin sloughed off and was absorbed by my summon.

I shook my head. I couldn’t get distracted. “Again,” I said, retrieving the gun and placing it back into Thwain’s hand. This time, he shot off the rest of the bullets himself. Tiny rivers of red flowed into him, closing up the worst of his wounds within moments. He sat up, patting himself down for more guns. He found one more pistol and, instead of unloading it into the slimes like I thought he would, he channeled mana into it. Slimey decreased in height, stretching out to block the incoming slimes. After a moment, the pistol glowed slightly. He pointed forwards, waiting for Slimey to retract a bit, before unloading his clip into the waiting monsters. This time, bullets that exited the pistol weren’t ordinary. They glowed purple, leaving faint trails of light in midair. They didn’t stop after four or five slimes, either. They continued until they slammed into sloping hills or shot off into the distance. A river of red energy rushed into Thwain.

The wave of slimes that rushed towards us was the biggest wave I’d ever seen, but things were different this time. We had each grown in our own way, but none of us had grown as much as my devourer slime. Slimey simply moved in front of us and took the wave head-on. Slimes threw themselves forward, adding to the bones that were floating in his gelatinous body, inflating his bulk more and more.

I didn’t even care that loot orbs were coalescing and being absorbed almost instantly. Another day, I might have balked at the loss in revenue, but not today. Today, I was a proud Papa. I wiped relieved tears from the corners of my eyes as my monstrosity finished digesting his meal of slimes with a side of humans.

As I watched the bones disintegrate slowly inside of my summoned monster, I couldn’t help but feel bitterness creep in. All of this over some loot, as if my slime pillow would change their lives. If they wanted loot so badly, they could have used those bullets to kill dozens of slimes, but nooooooo. Everybody was so scared of being backstabbed that they all turned against each other first to not be the one with a knife in their back. No wonder nobody wanted to climb.

All of the gangs had Awakened, but they were all held back in case of an attack from a rival gang. How much did that help the Blood Oats? Dumbasses. If Thwain would have died in that ambush… Over some coppers and some meat? We should just climb to the fifth floor and forget the Slums. They weren’t worth it.

I snapped myself out of that train of thought. I couldn’t think like that. That’s what got us into this mess, and it wasn’t that line of thinking that would get us out of the mess we were in.