49. Spirit Beasts

Too many things happened all at once.

I ran forwards, intercepting the first few slimes with my necklace-protected body to buy time for Tam. Next to me, Burt struck out in wide sweeps with his dark blue energy blade, easily and efficiently killing slimes on contact. Even glancing blows were enough to send slimes to respawn. Tam put his back to the portal archway, trying to give himself enough space and time to trigger his blabbermouth skill. Slimey sped towards TG, who was hidden underneath a pile of raging slimes.

Tam’s rambling cut off, replaced by a scream of pain as a slime caught him in the ankle. The entire mass of slimes stuttered to a halt for a too-short second of blissful silence as the Motormouth Bard’s skill inflicted psychic damage upon every slime in the vicinity, albeit not enough to kill them outright. Burt and I backed up even closer to Tam, doing our best to protect the boy.

“We should retreat into the portal,” Burt said, casting a nervous glance around. He struck out with his blade in almost graceful arcs, obliterating any incoming slimes.

“We can’t leave TG!” I shouted, hurling two slimes while clumsily kicking a third away.

“If we don’t get him a healing pill in the next few seconds, he’s done for. Can Slimey give him one from storage without hurting him?”

I frowned, but didn’t have the chance to respond as a trio of slimes slammed into my chest, pushing me back a foot. Between the attackers, I saw Slimey forming a defensive perimeter around TG, but I couldn’t get a good look at how the burly Totem Warrior was doing.

“Buck up, TG!” Tam shouted from behind me.

“What?” I asked, risking a glance behind me. Tam had a look of concentration on his face. Sweat poured down his neck as a trickle of blood seeped from one of his ankles.

“Yeah, you heard me. Tower God? More like Trash Golem. I’d be embarrassed if I were you. I’d change my name to Carl or Greg if I’d get my ass handed to me by some half-baked Floor 1 desserts.”

Just as I was about to say something, a green haze surrounded Slimey. As Tam continued to berate TG, the green light intensified.

“There you go. Walk it off, princess. Leave the work to the real men.”

Slimey opened up a foot-wide hole, letting out a translucent blue puppy from the other side. The small dog raced around the meadow on stubby little legs, passing straight through slimes and grabbing their attention. When the pup doubled back, slimes that were hit a second time shattered into glowing motes of light. Meanwhile, Slimey slowly escorted TG back towards us.

“Don’t tell me that’s the best you can do,” Tam called out. “In my day, we used to kill slimes with nothing but our toes and not one of us dared limp back home. You’re all so damn soft these days! Everyone gets a loot orb, that’s the problem. I bet you were ferried to Floor 2 like the little bitch that you are!”

By that point, Slimey had reached us once again and started spreading out to shield us from the raging slimes. A haggard TG limped over to Tam, huffing furiously. His hand twitched towards Tam’s throat, but he stopped, visibly restraining himself.

“Eh, I think you can stop, Tam,” I said. “Anything else from here on out is on you.”

“Sorry!” Tam said sheepishly, cringing away from TG and holding up his hands defensively. “It’s my skill, Insult to Injury. It says I have to chirp at someone to heal them. I promise, I don’t mean it. I swear!”

TG took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He was covered in blood, but his wounds all seemed to have closed up. Burt dismissed his blade and I took off my necklace.

“Well, I guess it worked,” I commented. “Anyone else injured?”

Tam looked down at his own ankle, wincing slightly. “Oh, come on, Tam,” he berated himself. “How are you going to climb the Tower if you can’t take a hit? You wouldn’t be bleeding if you could dodge worth beans. You had one job!”

Just like when he berated TG, Tam was surrounded by a soft green mist. The raw skin around his ankle healed almost instantly, reverting to soft tan skin.

“That’s…” Burt started, before giving up and rubbing his face with both hands.

“Great,” I finished for him. Turning to TG, I pointed to the transparent dog, still running through slimes. “Cute puppy.”

TG assumed his usual chest-puffing pose. Thankfully, he had gotten Josh to enhance his clothes, so they were still intact. “Indeed! I must continue to face peril and myself in order to grow my spirit bond. To forge my spirit in the fires of adversity. This has been a magnificent first step on my journey.”

“Yeah, well I think you need to take a magnificent first step into a bath,” Tam commented, smirking. At a look from TG, the boy darted behind Burt and hid from the bloody Totem Warrior.

We continued farming slimes, though much more carefully, throughout the day. Burt spammed his turrets on cooldown. Tam alternated between killing large amounts of slimes and rudely healing up the team’s injuries. TG experimented with his totems in conjunction with his spirit companion. I, on the other hand, stood. I just stood there, watching it all happen. I just didn’t have much to contribute. Sure, Slimey was invaluable for our team, but I had hardly any part in that. I used my necklace to envelop myself in Slimey a few times just to shake things up and practice our coordination, but there was only so much we could practice.

I watched enviously as TG’s spirit companion aged and grew as it fought with the Totem Warrior, gaining power along with its size. No matter how much I farmed Floor 1, I knew that there just wasn’t enough growth for me or Slimey to be had unless we went to a higher floor. Burt seemed to notice my sour mood and came over to see what was up.

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“What’s got you down?” Burt asked, dispatching a few slimes lazily with his energy sword.

“I just… I need to go to Floor 2, but it’s just so… Dangerous. I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t know if I can face that many goblins alone.”

“Then don’t.”

“I need to.”

“No. I don’t mean don’t go to Floor 2. I meant don’t go alone.”

I looked over to Burt, cocking an eyebrow at him. “You saying you’ll come with?”

Burt shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I’m saying I can’t think of many people who would say no if you asked.”

I furrowed my brows. “Why wouldn’t they say no? Floor 2 is dangerous as shit. Have you seen the amount and diversity of goblins?”

Burt outright laughed in my face. “You literally brought dozens of people across just to give them classes, and you haven’t asked for anything in return. That’s why everyone is so gung ho over tomorrow’s raid. It feels like a way to pay y’all back.”

I did an inadvertent impersonation of a fish, opening and closing my mouth a few times while I tried figuring out how to respond. “I guess, then… Who do we bring?” I shrugged slightly while nodding towards the portal.

We decided on asking a few people, though only Thwain and Jean seemed eager to assault Floor 2, aside from the group that we already had. We all met outside the portal to Floor 2 to discuss the game plan, though it ultimately boiled down to: enter floor, kill goblins, exit floor.

We confidently marched into Floor 2 and got into position. I summoned Rella, filling her in on the plan and eyeing up her second sword. I had never asked her about it, though I was curious to see how it worked. It was the first blue drop from Floor 2 that I had seen, after all.

I entered Slimey while Tam and Burt hunkered behind Jean. The latter, for his part, enthusiastically muttered curses while setting up glowing blue barriers between the goblins and himself, Burt and Tam, using the portal as an impenetrable wall blocking their rear. We weren’t sure if Burt could summon his turrets on the other side of the barriers, but we didn’t have the time to waste on a test, so we decided on testing it live. Worst case scenario, Jean could drop a shield for a moment and resummon it again once the turret was up.

With a nod from Thwain, we initiated the plan. Thwain sprouted his black wings, flying upwards a good fifty feet before looping about in the sky, directly over the gathered goblins. Spears launched from a thousand tiny greenish blue hands as the gathered monsters all focused the pale chested Gunner. He really should work on getting a shirt that worked with his wings, I thought, as Thwain darted back and forth above the goblins with powerful beats of his demonic wings.

TG summoned two totems at once, throwing them as hard as he could into the rampaging goblin swordsmen. The goblins weren’t outright killed by the first pulse, but soon fell as the totems repeated their attacks. Out of totems, TG grabbed a large spear and darted into the goblin spearmen, joyously killing them with their own preferred weapon while his spirit beast followed along, not doing much more than distracting and aggroing goblins as it ran about.

My demon, Rella, followed TG, careful to stay out of reach of the Totem Warrior’s broad spear sweeps, but close enough to keep goblins from jumping on his back. She was a whirr of blades as she danced in and out of spear range, decapitating and dismembering with every strike. Her black and red scales were almost instantly covered in goblin blood of various hues of green and blue, though she didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

With most of the goblins distracted, I crashed in from the side, bringing caustic death in the form of a towering dark green slime monster. Without the full brunt of the goblins’ attention, I took the time to practice dodging spear strikes with quick dips, ducks and dodges all while swallowing up handfuls of goblin spearmen. I also noticed that the more scrunched up Slimey was, the faster we dissolved goblin bodies. As such, we started spreading out to cover as much ground as possible, then shrank inwards to speed up the digestion. I bet we looked like a nightmare inch worm, devouring warriors on the battlefield while scrunching our way through it.

Gunshots rang out from above, redirecting some of the attention back to Thwain, who riskilly dipped low a few times to really tantalize the spearmen before unleashing a volley of bullets into the swarm. Unlike last time, he didn’t stray too far from the portal, wanting to see if the goblin elites would still arrive even if we stuck near the entrance to the zone. Still, he didn’t stop his aerial acrobatics as innumerable spears shot towards him. A few lucky spears caught him in the legs, cutting deeply into his shins, but a few gunshots later, he was back to full health.

I heard the familiar clanking of Burt’s turrets and turned to see the bald Warfare Specialist pushing into the goblins. He had summoned his turrets on the very edge of the battle and was using them to cover him from each side while he lashed out with his dark blue energy blade. I was impressed as his weapon cut through spears, skin and bone as if they were merely air. The beams shooting out of his turrets bore holes straight through in his enemies, each turret dropping around a goblin per second. Burt wasn’t necessarily what I’d call graceful, but he sure was effective with his energy weapon. He quickly and calculatingly cut down opponent after opponent until his turrets winked out, then slowly retreated towards Jean. I swooped in to take out the advancing spearmen. The fewer attacks that directly hit Jean’s shields, the less mana he’d have to expend to keep them up.

Tam, meanwhile, used his gift of gab to commentate the entire fight from the safety of Jean’s semi-transparent barriers. We weren’t sure how much his skill would affect the goblins, so we decided on testing it out at maximum strength while everyone was also reasonably topped up. If anyone got seriously injured, Tam would stop channeling his skill and would switch to healing. Otherwise, he was pouring all of his mana into a single powerful attack.

“OH! Another four points for Tower God, letting these goblins know who’s boss. Hit ‘em with a totem, TG! Oh, hi Burt. Good wub wubs. That was cool. Speaking of boss, though, has anyone seen this demon chick? She’s got two swords and a whole lot of skill. I haven’t met a demon before, but I sure wouldn’t want to be on the other end of those swords. Especially the one that glows every time she kills something with it. Do all demons have glowy armor that shifts and bends or is she just decked out in some super cool edgy leathers? Edgy Leathers sounds like a good band name. Hey, Burt, wanna make a band? You look like you could play a mean flute. You’d just need to get some edgy black leather, like Rella over- THERE’S my Thwain! A fan favorite, there, folks! Swooping in with another volley from his seemingly unending arsenal of guns. Actually, he seems to be conserving his ammunition quite well, only shooting goblins when they seem to hyperfocus one of the team members. Speaking of team members, check out Théo. He’s quite the team player, eh, Jean? Look at him, squeakin’ along, mopping up goblins and flanking them when they gang up too much. OH! Did you see that?! What a hit! Since when can he extendo-smash? Maybe we could call that one slime-slam. I like that idea. Slime-slam! Put ‘em in the Slimey! Ooooh, I kind of hate that for you. Just the sight of fourteen goblins all dissolving, piece by piece, like tiny flakey pastries in green milk. Well, dark green water. You can’t really see through milk. Either way, I think he’s technically in the lead, if you count Rella and Slimey as a single entity, with Burt as a seemingly close second. That, and if swordsmen are only a single point. If swordsmen are multiple points, TG might be in the lead, depending on how many points swordsmen count for. Hey, TG, throw a totem to the spearmen! Yeah, just like- OH BABY, A TR- hey, what are those? Guys, do you see the procession of creepy-looking goblins? Nice horns, though, very harmonic. Harmonic Goblin Horn could also be the name of a band. Horny Harmonic Goblins. Death March of a Goblin Champion. Or is it a priest? Do goblins have priests? Kind of looks more like a shaman. Yeah, goblin shaman sounds about right. I’ve never seen one in person, though it’s not much of a surprise. Not much shamanry in the Slums.” Tam kept going, but my attention was drawn to the parting goblins as there was, indeed, the sound of war horns.

“Mah, vaiteur, I’m gonna accidentally drop deez shields and let da gobbos eat the fuck if he don’t stop soon,” Jean grumbled.