17. Whip These Chūnis Into Shape.

Back again at the meeting table, Thwain started with a round of updates.

“Ok, Pyro, you’re first. Progress report?” He asked.

“Rocks are better than dirt. Crystals are hard. They’re different and I ain’t sure if they’re worth the time. And they taste weird,” Pyro grunted over a rock mug of water that he was pretending was hot coffee.

“Advantages of crystals over rocks?"

Pyro shrugged. “Earth is easy, but flimsy. Rocks and dirt are all different, but easy to move. It’s like pushing different sized copper coins around with a shovel. You can bend some coins with enough force, you can direct the pile, but you aren’t going to pile them high enough to make a nice statue. Crystal is like…” He bobbed his head from side to side, looking for the right words. “It’s like a single steel beam. Reckon it needs to be melted and reforged. Recast. You can prolly make tiny, fancy, precise things with it, I just can’t seem to get it.”

Thwain nodded thoughtfully. “Théo. Thoughts?”

“Harder is better,” I said with a shrug. “If he can wrap his head around it, it’s another advantage on our side. Could make windows, too. I vote crystals.”

“OK. Then, Pyro, if you’re up for it, go focus on crystals. We’ll try and help how we can.”

With that, Pyro got up and went over to one of his mine shafts to go try and absorb some new materials.

Then, it was my turn. “Ok, Théo,” Thwain said. “Progress report. What use is your demon?” He asked.

I rubbed the back of my head in embarrassment. “I, uh… I didn’t work on that yet. I was busy with loot.”

“Ok, what’s its stats?” He asked. “Can you check them without summoning her?”

I glanced to the side to hide my embarrassment. “Yeah,” I mumbled.

“What’s the issue?” Thwain asked.

“I forgot that I could check them without summoning her,” I admitted. With that, I opened my Bestiary and looked at her stats.

[https://i.imgur.com/TyeTp8L.png]

Bestiary entry: Demon selected.

Soul strength: 23%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.

Stats: select a stat to prioritize.

Health: F+

Phys Power: E+

Magic power: D-

Magic resistance: E-

Physical resistance: E

Speed: E

We mulled over the stats for a while, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages as well as the differences between the available stats for my demon and my slime. I decided on prioritizing speed for now, since Slimey wasn't the swiftest of companions.

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

Bestiary entry: Devourer slime selected.

Soul strength: 552%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.

Stats : Size prioritized.

Size: D-

Magic power: E-

Magic resistance: E

Physical resistance: F+

Speed: F

Shrinkage: F-

Slimey really was progressing well. He had grown larger each day, and so had the amount of slimes that he could handle at once.

“I don’t really see the problem,” Thwain said, frowning. “If she’s got magic resistance of E-, she should be able to fight slimes. There might be something I’m missing, though.”

I nodded. “I think it’s a quantity issue. She can probably obliterate slimes, she just can’t avoid them all. A single slime probably couldn’t affect her, but an entire swarm would eventually wear away her defenses.”

“I still don’t like it,” Thwain said. “She lied about the magical power/magical resistance difference, even if she was technically right. It would be suicide, but she could have explained it fully.”

“I don’t disagree,” I said. “She was more than willing to help when she got something out of it, though. I think that might be the issue. I don’t think she gains anything from killing slimes. At least, not in the way she gained by draining humans. She’s a more intelligent monster, so we should expect that she has more complicated desires. I have a feeling that Slimey doesn’t follow my instructions at one hundred percent, either, so I can understand someone smarter and more willful would be tougher to bargain with.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Great,” Thwain said, “we just need to find her some humans to fight. Got it. Technically, I might have solved that particular issue.” He rooted around for a bit, trying to find more stone pieces for the table. He found one like the ones we were using for the portals and placed it onto the table, to the north-east of us, between and to the east of the portals to Floor 2 and Floor 0 respectively. My eyes widened as he explained.

“I’ve found our first anomaly,” he explained. “There’s another portal. I don’t know where it leads and I haven’t laid eyes on anyone using it, but it’s there.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Well, I think the first thing to do is to scout it out. Keep eyes on it until we see people use it. If nobody uses it after a week or two, we send one of your summons in, preferably. Then, we go in as well.”

I nodded along with his plan. I had never tried sending Slimey into a portal, so we would have to gamble on it working. I was reassured by the fact that he was unsummoned instead of killed when I had exited the floor without him. Maybe it would work while descending to Floor 0, maybe it wouldn’t. We would just have to see.

Thwain kept tabs on the new portal from afar for two days. Pyro spent the time absorbing tiny amounts of crystal and I busied myself with farming loot. Thwain, for his part, took notes.

“Alright,” he said, pointing to our table map. “I’ve seen two groups. There’s a party that enters every six hours or so. Five-man team, standard arrangement. Always the same people. They portal in, attack slimes in twos and threes, dispatch them quickly until they’ve killed around sixty, then portal out. They’re swift and organized, but not very skillful.”

“Classes?” Pyro asked.

“One, at the very least. Backline healer. He’s got some spell that lets him heal with a touch. Possibly of limited uses, but there’s definitely a cooldown period. Maybe five minutes,” Thwain explained.

“Can we take em?” Pyro asked.

Thwain nodded. “Easily, to be honest. Their most protected people are barely armored. They use wooden boards as shields and knives that are far too short to be optimal against the slimes. They’re being kept alive by their healer, but that’s about the only thing they’ve got going for them. I give them a week before someone slips.”

“What about the others?” I asked. “You said there were two groups?”

At that, Thwain looked pensive. “Yeah…” He said slowly. “I think the first group is being protected, in secret. Like, they don’t know it, but someone is watching out for them.”

“Secret bodyguards? You think we’re dealing with rich guys or maybe a noble’s kid?” I asked.

Thwain teetered his head for a bit. “Maybe?” He hedged. “The group is too undergeared to be some lord’s brat being sent for power leveling. But for some reason, the last time that they came, a woman beat them here. I’m not sure if I missed her the other times or not, though. She used a skill to turn invisible, then I didn’t see her again. It’s probable that she exited through the portal without dropping stealth.”

“Secret bodyguard,” Pyro said, nodding. “Rich kid wants to pretend to earn it, so he goes in without gear, gets carried til he’s geared up. Heard of it before.”

“Then why not stay longer on the floor?” I asked.

“Prolly tapped the healer. Go til he’s out, then bounce,” Pyro explained. It was as good of a theory as any.

“So, what do we do about it?” I asked. We went back and forth on the issue all day, not coming to a consensus. Pyro wanted to obliterate the group the next time they showed up. I didn’t necessarily mind the idea, I just thought there might be a better way. We didn’t want to just kill everyone who dared enter Floor 1. Really, we should be helping anyone who wanted to clear slimes. Thwain suggested that we could kidnap the healer and hold him for ransom. Force whoever was on the other side to act. I liked that plan better, but the stealthed bodyguard worried me. She absolutely had a class, but we didn’t know what she could do other than turn invisible. If she had powerful skills, we’d never see her coming.

Having not made as much progress with the new portal as I wanted, I decided it was time to have a chat with my demon. With Pyro’s assistance with closing up the base to the outside, I dismissed Slimey, waited a bit for my mana to regenerate some more, then summoned my demon. She appeared, looking exactly the same as last time. I could just barely see her in the light of a few light crystals Pyro had found while mining under the base. They emitted a soft blue light, barely enough to see by, but it was a huge improvement from sitting in the pitched darkness.

“Alright, demon,” I said. “We need to figure out how you’re going to be useful.”

“I am useful,” she said evenly. “I was very useful with the blood sacrifices and the acting.” She wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t really what I was looking for.

“True. But our biggest obstacle is this never ending horde of slimes. If you refuse to kill slimes, what good are you?” I stared at her intently, looking for a reaction. I might have caught a glimpse of a wince, but I wasn’t sure.

“Killing slimes is only going to weaken me,” she explained. “Sure, I could kill a few, but I use my hands to fight. Eventually, it’s going to start hurting me more than it hurts the slimes. So, I technically didn’t lie about that.”

Pyro grumbled at that last line.

“So, again, what use are you?” I looked her dead in the eyes. “If I can’t use you, I’m not keeping you around. I’ve got two Bestiary slots and I’m not keeping one locked down for nothing.” It might have been harsh, but it was true. I had already technically killed her once, it’s not like doing it a second time was much different.

“Send me back in,” she said, almost desperately. “To the humans. They were all so weak that I could probably get away with either knocking them unconscious or outright killing them by draining them dry.”

“What do you drain, technically?” I asked. “Is it life force? Spirit? Like, what DO you drain?”

“Life force is a good term for it,” she said confidently. “We demons usually just call it health, though.”

I nodded slowly at that, a plan starting to form in the back of my mind. I sloooooowly turned to Thwain, a grin creeping up onto my face.

“Oh, no. No. No, no, no, no, NO!” Thwain said, frantically waving his arms and backing out of the light slowly.

“Come on, Thwain! Be a good sport,” I teased. “She drains something that you can easily replenish! Think of the children.”

Pyro snorted.

“Are the children orphans?” Thwain asked grumpily.

“Starving! And their caretaker is mean to them! He calls them awful things, like Useless.”

“Not even just useless, but Useless?” Thwain asked, a little less grumpily.

“You heard it right,” I said. “He’s so mean to them, he proper-nouns his insults.”

“How can you hear a--” Pyro started asking before I cut him off.

“Butt out, Pyro!”

“Ok…”

“Fine!” Thwain said, throwing up his hands in surrender. “But only for the hypothetical children and their hypothetical terrible situation.”

I nodded graciously. “You’re a wonderful man, man.”

I stood on the rooftop, holding a spear and the slime shield as Pyro got to work, expanding his chimney into a sort of octagonal crow’s nest. My demon flitted about, killing slimes in a single blow (and often multiple slimes per swing) with the use of both of our looted short swords. She was right, she really wasn’t nearly as efficient as Slimey, but at least she wasn’t perpetually tortured by the slime’s acid if she used weapons instead of her hands. Once our perch was raised high enough, we boosted each other into it one at a time, leaving my demon to be hauled up last. She got rocked by a few overzealous slimes, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle in the short term.

Once we were all in the makeshift arena, Pyro coated his hands in his earthen armor and started playing defense, killing slimes as they reached us. We weren’t being mobbed, but the pile surrounding our perch was steadily growing taller with each minute, letting more and more slimes jump onto each other to reach us.

“It’s go time,” I announced, pushing a slime off of the railing and down onto the slimes below.

Pistol in one hand, Thwain stuck out his other arm to the demon. “Go for it, demon,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “Drain me of all that I am, and hope that I persist.”

“Oh! I almost forgot,” I said. “Her name is Sunder, now, so we don’t have to keep calling her a demon.”

“Sunder?” She asked.

“Well, I wasn’t going to keep calling you by your race, and I sure wasn’t going to call you She-Who-Eats-People-in-the-Night or whatever the Blood Oats were calling you. It was creepy. So, Sunder. A weapon to break our foes, split em in half. All of that fun stuff.”

Thwain shot me a dirty (the not-sexual kind), knowing look, but didn’t comment.

“She got a last name?” Pyro asked, beating back slime after slime with his armored fists.

I shrugged. “She’s quick as a flash of light,” I said nonchalantly. “Sunlight? Flash? Sun-Sun?”

“You’ve already got it picked out, Théo,” Thwain said drily. “Just say it. I know you want to say it.”

“Ray,” I said with a smile. “I think that’s a perfect last name.”