9. Venting Heat and Frustration

When we emerged onto Floor 1, I looked around.

“No sign of the other group," I stated before summoning my slime.

“Nope,” Thwain said. “Tower reverts what it can if you leave. Bodies, loot, terrain. That’s why Pyro’s earthen constructs aren’t here when we come back. It consumes the mana and uses it for other processes.”

Pyro started with his typical ritual of raising a pillar. He was getting quick at it. The first time, we had to kill half a dozen slimes to give him the space and time necessary to raise a pillar five feet. This time, we only needed to kill two. Then, there it was, a five-foot tall pillar of earth, ready to block some slimes. He raised a second a few inches next to it. Thwain shot the slimes this time, wanting to work on his own skills now that my slime’s soul strength percentage gain slowed when killing slimes. It was now just under a single percentage point per kill.

Just because it was becoming less worth it to shoot a single slime at a time didn’t mean that I was down for the count. I had an idea.

“Pyro, make two more pillars here,” I said, pointing a good foot and a half away from the nearest pillar.

He obliged, raising two more pillars within inches of each other, but leaving a gap right in the middle of the set of four.

I want to try funneling them in through the gap, I explained. “There are too many of them flowing over and around the barricade, so if we leave them a gap, maybe they’ll tidal wave less.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure, just a thought.”

“Worth a try,” Thwain said. Pyro agreed as well.

“How we doin’ this?” Pyro asked.

I rubbed my chin like a proper nerd. “Let me try spears and my slime. I’ll need you guys as backup just in case. No swarms, yet. We need to make this run count,” I said.

When I mentioned my slime, my summon shuddered in anticipation. I wasn’t sure of much, but I was sure of one thing: as its soul percentage grew, so did its strength and its intelligence. The slimes around us looked glassy-eyed and dull. Even when they were whipped into a frenzy, they were in a blind rage and nothing more. My slime was starting to show scary amounts of intelligence. It hungered for battle, to consume. Well, today, I was gonna let it.

I positioned my slime between myself and the gap in the pillars. I grabbed my makeshift spear and gripped it tightly by the bottom of the shaft. I reached back, then, THWACK! I swung the spear down hard onto the nearest slime’s head. It squished so deeply into the monster that I thought it was going to split in two. I repeated my blow once more as it jumped at me. My spear caught it in midair and slammed it to the stone circle beneath my feet. It seemed angry, but not very hurt. My spear, on the other hand, was showing distinct signs of being slowly eaten away by the slime’s caustic goo.

Seeing that it was doing more damage to my spear than to the slime, I let Slimey intercept the angry thing. Sure, I had softened it up, but Slimey took care of it with ease. It rammed into the smaller slime and rolled its goo over and around the helpless monster. Slimey’s body burbled as the smaller slime’s acid clashed with its own. Slimey seemed to shrink a bit as they fought, so I checked my Bestiary. As I thought, its percentage was decreasing bit by bit. 210, 209, 208. Then, as the last burbles subsided, Slimey began growing again, consuming what was left of the slime. 208, 209, 210, 211, 212%.

It was a net gain, but I had also weakened the slime a bit beforehand. I looked over to where slimes were jostling to stake their claim on the newly emptied spot between the pillars as other slimes tried jumping onto the dirt barriers over and over again.

I hauled back and then thrust forwards, this time stabbing into the nearest slime. My spear passed straight through, seemingly puncturing the slime’s… Slime… and deflating it a bit. I stepped back, letting my summon intercept. This time, Slimey lost less soul strength and gained four percent again, netting a greater gain in strength.

[https://i.imgur.com/OcSKAl2.png]

Bestiary entry: Green slime selected.

Soul strength: 214.3%. Collect more essence to increase soul strength.

“Pyro,” I asked sweetly, “how good are you at slapping?”

We had a rhythm down. I reached over Slimey and poked a slime. It jumped at me, seeking to stick to my face and eat me, one layer at a time. Pyro slapped it from the air with an earth-encrusted hand, slamming it right into my summoned monster. Slimey would, in turn, devour the twice-weakened slime with a happy burble, growing in size at an ever-increasing rate. As Slimey grew stronger, the smaller slime’s acidic properties affected it less, causing less and less damage, resulting in bigger gains overall.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

We continued until I ran out of spears to use. We switched to throwing small clumps of dirt at the slimes, aggroing them one by one. When my summon reached 300% soul strength, we switched tactics yet again.

Thwain aimed his pistol in the gap in the pillars and fired a single shot. The bullet killed four slimes before tumbling into three more. Each dying slime seemed to aggro every adjacent slime, causing at least twenty slimes to rush towards us. Pyro stood at the ready, both hands armored in stone. He slapped slime after slime, either down into Slimey or back into the onrushing crowd. Soon, Slimey had eaten a whole wave of slimes.

We rested for a bit to regain mana and let the adrenaline slacken. While we did so, I tried yet another tactic. I sent my summon between the pillars and directly onto the nearest slime. As it digested its meal, Slimey inadvertently bumped into three other slimes. They all piled on, but were soon digested in turn. As the first slime died, the surrounding slimes pounced. I ordered my summon to hop back onto the stone circle, stopping the mob from growing further and dragging the attackers back towards us. Slimey wasn’t quite up to the task of taking on a big horde of slimes without a little damage assistance. However, at this rate, he would soon be devouring slimes by the score.

After Slimey had eaten his enemies, we repeated the process, Thwain sending a single bullet into the crowd. Again, the slimes rushed in and were splatted by Pyro or sent back to try again. Slimey gorged himself on his brethren, uncaringly and unapologetically dissolving them to the very last.

Then, I noticed something peculiar: the shot that Thwain sent out had killed a slime that had dropped loot. A small, white orb bobbed up and down within the rampage of slimes. There were, however, no loot orbs around Slimey at all. I peered closely at my summoned monster’s translucent flesh. And there it was. Every so often, a tiny loot orb would spawn within Slimey, only for it to be instantly consumed.

“Son of a…” I whispered under my breath. I talked it over with the others and we came up with a compromise.

Thwain fired another shot into the sea of slimes. The anticipated wave crashed into the earthen barrier, a few of them squeezing through the middle. We all backed up to give Thwain more space to shoot. When there were at least four slime between the pillars and us, Thwain fired again. Four more slimes died, but didn’t aggro more as they were well and into the circle of stone around the portal. Any slimes adjacent to the dead ones were already rushing in. The rest of the angry slimes dog-piled Slimey and were swiftly disposed of.

After a few more of those same pulls, the results were impossible to dispute. A total of four common drops spawned as white orbs bouncing gently on the ground. We collected the loot: small piles of copper coins in each. We continued farming slimes until Thwain was down to two guns. We stopped, not wanting to be caught unarmed outside the portal.

The before-last pull gave us a nice surprise, as well. Instead of the typical white loot drop, there was an uncommon green loot orb bouncing softly on the dark stone. We cleared the rest of the wave and went to investigate. Pyro poked the orb and it disappeared, replaced with a small, brown, round shield. It shimmered slightly, a green tinge covering the shield for an instant as he picked it up.

“What do you think it does?” Thwain asked.

“No two clues,” Pyro said, turning the buckler around to examine it from every angle.

“Maybe something to do with slimes, like acid or something on hit,” I guessed.

Pyro shrugged. There was no use in sitting around and guessing. We would have to test it. He blocked a few oncoming slimes during the last pull, but nothing exceedingly special happened. The shield didn’t seem to take any damage from the slime attacks, though, which was nice.

We decided to stick around a smidge longer since we had a new toy to play with. Instead of shooting into the crowd, Pyro simply bashed a single slime at a time with his shield to aggro it. Then, he slowly kited it around the stone circle surrounding the portal archway, smacking at it until it died. He passed me the shield and I did the same. It took me a little longer to kill my slime since I wasn’t as strong as Pyro, apparently. Still, it worked. The shield still wasn’t taking any damage, too, which was great news. Thwain took a turn battering two slimes back to back with the shield. He wasn’t as strong as Pyro, but he was by far the quickest of the three of us. He could quickly hit the slimes twice with every clash while Pyro and I could only manage a single strike at a time.

When Thwain was beating his second slime into submission, something new happened. The shield started glowing a bright green, almost as if a slime were partially oozing out. He looked at us for direction.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, just… Use it? Send mana into it and will it towards the slime or something.”

Thwain furrowed his brow and concentrated. After a few minutes of kiting, a blast of green energy rocketed from the shield, slamming into the slime. It… Grew… Regrew? The slime, which had been decreasing in size as it took damage with every exchange, expanded back to its original size.

“Ha!” Pyro shouted. “You healed it or something!”

Indeed, it seemed as such. The slime was back to being as large and as agile as it had been. Thwain redoubled his efforts, not giving the slime a chance to gloat. He smashed at it repeatedly until it expired. Sweating, he threw the shield to Pyro.

“That’s enough for me for today,” he huffed.

“That’s aiiiight,” Pyro replied. “Least we know kind of what it does. We’ll test ‘er again tomorrow.”

With that, I unsummoned Slimey and got ready to leave.

When we exited the portal and entered the Slums, something was wrong. Very wrong. We weren’t greeted with the expected crowd of filthy pickpockets. We weren’t accosted by rival gangs or even confronted with a greasy T the Tank. No, it was worse, in a way. The entire square was absolutely empty. A tumbleweed ambled by lazily, bouncing in a gentle breeze, making its way across the courtyard. We tensed, waiting for an ambush. Pyro brought his shield out in front, but Thwain’s hand on his elbow stopped him from going so far as to use any skills. It wouldn’t do to show off anything unless we were in real danger.

I scanned the courtyard intently, trying to spot any signs of movement. Nothing. Just… Nothing. I almost wished someone would pop out, just so that we could have a clear answer as to why the area was deserted for the first time in my entire life. Something must be brewing, and it wasn't good.