บท 594: Slime Net
Hera still had a wound on her leg. Lurize had a broken gauntlet. Helena and Blue had cuts all over their bodies, and Shane struggled to move around after being slammed by the Proto Slime's arm. The only two who were in good shape were Nimbus and Mylo, who, so far, were able to deal with everything without getting hit. Yet, the monster they were facing had changed. It was like phase 2 of a video game boss. It went from a bipedal form to this weird net of a creature. However, now everyone could see where the core was. It was a massive cocoon being protected by a few layers of the web-like structure that the rest of the Proto Slime became.
Amongst all the strands of liquid, there was a very large bubble that moved around at a blinding speed. No one had to say anything. They all suspected that that would be where the Proto Slime would attack from. When the monster shifted forms, most of Hera's court ended up trapped in some of the smaller layers of slime net. Because of that, the Empress recalled all of them and summoned the blades once more by her side, this time telling Nimbus and Lurize to assume their full forms. They barely did anything while in their weapon form, but it wasn't their fault. The giant slime didn't allow many attacks to come through, and even the hits did little to no damage. When everyone came back, Hera felt a wave of lethargy washing over her body. She knew that constantly summoning and dismissing her court would make her tired, but it felt much worse this time.
Just as he returned, Lurize covered his zweihander with mana and attacked a cluster of tendrils using his Venom Blade. The attack went through and broke a couple of layers, opening a path for the party if they wanted. However, the strands reconnected in less than a second, and they seemed just as good as new.
"Shit…" Blue looked around. Even if the slime web did not completely surround them, there was enough to be a problem. The Proto Slime was now taking half the room's space, with some of the strands reaching the side walls as if they were trying to reach the other side and corral the party into a circle.
"Dao!" Hera called, telling her blade to launch another Chain Lightning. The blade used the skill, but the tendrils moved out of the way, evading the electricity without a problem. Hera noticed something as that happened and told the blade to attack again. Just like the first time, the Lightning that Dao created missed, but the Empress understood what was going on. Her blade's aim wasn't the issue, but somehow the slime was controlling where the lightning would hit. Just as the electricity left the golden blade, the Proto Slime would change the mana surrounding the strands that were going to be hit, making the lightning follow it as a magnet pulled it. But things didn't seem to be perfect. At some points, the slime had to remove a strand to let the attack pass through.
Everyone was also testing the waters of this new enemy. Even the Proto Slime was only making some very slow and careful attacks as if it wasn't able to understand its new form completely just yet. The monster would move the massive bulbous pustule around and then launch some sharp tentacles at the group, but Nimbus, Lurize, and Mylo easily defended against those strikes. The attacks were nowhere near as strong as the ones that the Proto Slime used before its transformation.
Hera walked closer to the group, going against the idea of staying away from each other, but she had to say something and didn't want to let the Proto Slime know. Just in case it could understand her. While Dao was attacking, she realized that the location where the lightning ended up was not that far off from the blade's actual target, "Guys, let's aim at the core. I don't think it can move it around."
"What? Isn't that where the assistant should be? Are you saying we should kill her?" Blue asked.
"I am," Hera nodded.
"But why?" Mylo asked as he blocked another of the blows from the Proto Slime using his staff, but they were already getting past the point where he could stop them without taking any damage.
"She is crying. I saw something weird before, but now since it's closer to the surface, I can tell she wants to die. Every fiber of her body wants to die. She is even using their mana to try to stop her heart, but the Proto Slime is stopping her from doing so," Hera replied, aver since Dao started attacking, she could sense the mana from the core, the mana of the person inside it, and just looking at it made her heart ache. No one deserved to be in that situation.
"Hera, are you sure? That is not a light thing to do," Helena asked, worried that killing someone might trigger some bad memories for the Empress.
"I am. If I was suffering like that. I also would want to be put out of my misery," Hera nodded with a solemn expression.
Hearing that, everyone nodded and looked at the slime. The moving blob appeared above them and launched a flurry of tentacles, trying to pierce the group, but that happened just a moment too late for it to hit them. Everyone already sprung into action, with Nimbus slowing the attack down with a series of shields while Mylo created a floral mandala above them to protect the group. It was a very intricate pattern, slowly spinning around and giving everyone a small buff to their defenses and to their lowest attribute. Or in Hera's case, to all her attributes.
Lurize prepared another Venom Blade, this time aimed at the core, and Helena used her shadow grabbers to make about five bows that started firing Shadow Bolts at it. She had other options, but they would all lose power as they hit some of the strands of slime. Blue was just under the umbrella of protection, preparing a thunderstorm inside a cloud. Her idea was to cover the entire ceiling with that and bring down lightning anywhere, but since damage was her first priority, she had to charge up the cloud before sending it away. Core started tossing the Sediment at the slime's core, hoping to make the lava stuck there and constantly do damage. The rest of the court focused on stacking Scythe's damage increase. Each attack against the same enemy would increase the damage it took by 1% from the Empress and her court. Hera had lost count a while back, but Armory was keeping track. So far, they were dealing 49% increased damage, but it really didn't look like it. Each blow would barely do anything, and the lava sediment that Core was using was intercepted by the tendrils, which burned with the impact but took away all the momentum that came with the spell.
At the same time, Shane started firing at several pieces of the slime network. She considered focusing on the center of the creature, as everyone else was doing. Still, since she had the only projectiles that could potentially be intercepted and sent back, she didn't want to take any chances and lose sight of her bombs. She trusted that her enchantment to make them blow up on impact would work, but a part of her still was worried that the Proto Slime would pull something as the cube did and interrupt her spells. In that case, she wanted to know that it was happening so she could stop the projectile from blowing up and damaging the party.
The battle continued, but it became clear that no matter how many times the team attacked, they couldn't deal enough damage. The slime seemed to have endless energy reserves, and it never stopped moving or launching more tentacles. Aiming at the core helped lessen the number of attacks that were coming toward the party, but only slightly. The Proto Slime was still able to continue its barrage of strikes that kept constantly getting stronger. However, little by little, that was starting to change. The more times Hera and the others were able to hit the core, the more the monster seemed to protect it, and the fewer attacks were coming at them. But it wasn't all good news. Every time a tentacle would hit their defenses, the damage would increase exponentially. First, it only bounced off Mylo's mandala. Then it pushed it down. Then it cracked. Now it came to a point where Nimbus and Mylo were completely focused on defending and having to use multiple layers of barriers to stop the creature from hitting them.
Another flurry of attacks came out of Hera and the others, with the Empress now using the Wind Feathers spell as a base and changing the mana to lightning. Since this particular attack focused on quantity over quality, she imagined that it would be helpful to hit the Proto Slime.
However, even though the attacks hurt the slime, it showed no sign of stopping. Its tentacles moved faster than ever, and the amount of them increased every second. A few of those reached the group, and each one managed to inflict additional damage. As the battle progressed, the number of hits grew until it was impossible to keep an eye on everything. The bulbous growth had become thinner and more spread out, making the attacks come from more locations at once.
"Blue? Are you done?" Helena asked as she dodged a tentacle but was hit by another. Luckily, that tendril was focused on blunt force and not piercing through their armor. Because of that, the mage only lost some air as the blow hit her chest.
"Fuck it, I am!" Blue yelled and threw the stormcloud in the air. It instantly started to spark and send thunderbolts at the Proto Slime. Because of the frequency of the attacks, the monster wasn't able to dodge all of them, but at the same time, the storm wasn't doing any permanent damage. Blue clearly sent out her spell sooner than she should have, and when one of the tendrils started to spin inside the cloud, making part of it dissipate, that fact only became more apparent.
Mylo's mandala protected him again, but he looked pale. He tried to stand up and cast another barrier, but his legs gave way. Nimble stepped forward and supported him for a moment, then grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the shelter of the umbrella barrier he had created. This was hardly something that would last, but it was better than nothing.
Helena also had to start playing defense, using a Shadow Cloak spell that would control the darkness around her to intercept any attack coming her way. Hera tried to send a few poison needles, but they didn't seem to affect the slime. She looked at the core and could swear that she saw a pair of pleading eyes looking in her direction. Then, a very bad idea came to mind.
'We are doing something stupid. Dao, to me. Lurize, get ready to use everything you have. Nimbus, pass Mylo to Helena and stay close to me. If this doesn't work, I'm going to need you to get out.'
"Keep that thing occupied!" Hera yelled to the group without giving more explanation. There was no time for that. Lurize moved to be right in front of her with Nimbus behind, the conga line aimed at the Proto Slime's core that was hidden behind at least 30 layers of slime web, 'Lurize, you say when. Open a path for us.'
Lurize closed his eyes for a moment, activating his Venom Blade to cover the zweihander. "Nothing ztandz in the way of..." His armor started to glow and turned golden as a pair of beetle wings appeared on his back, and his horn grew longer, forming the familiar horn of a Rhinoceros Beetle, "MR. BEETLE!"
With that battlecry, he dashed forward, breaking the slime tendrils. Some were cut by his weapon, while others were ripped apart by his body. The Empress was right behind him, running with all her might and hiding from the tentacles that tried to stop the Royal Tutor. On the back of that, Nimbus and the rest of the court were all following along, intercepting the attacks and stopping the slime from reattaching itself. The Sentinel also triggered his [Share the Pain] so that he could take a portion of the damage that Lurize was taking, letting the new blade focus on breaking through. Daskka covered everyone with a dark mist, hoping to hide their actual location from the slime. At the same time, she kept healing those who were hit by any attacks.
Back where the party was, everyone gave one last push as they saw Lurize and Hera move forward. They had an idea of her plan, and the best way to go about it was to support her. Helena continued using the Shadow Cloak but changed the attack to one of her most destructive spells called Well of Darkness. It would create almost a tornado of tentacles that tried to rip apart everything in sight. A swirling plane of darkness appeared as each shadow inside that area lashed out, trying to grab whatever it could and pull it toward the center. Against a slime that could regrow as much as it wanted, it didn't seem that good. After all, the spell would just split the body, but it was flashy, and it looked dangerous.
Shane grabbed one of the tendrils of the Proto Slime and tried to petrify it. That move seemed to trigger alarms in the monster, who reduced a lot of the number of attacks aimed at Hera, focusing more on Shane. Blue continued to bring down the thunder while making a pair of massive cloud hands before punching the slime with all her strength. Spells and magic were fine and all, but she was a fighter at heart, despite her role. Mylo also wanted to help and created a couple of sunflowers that peppered the monster with seeds. It wasn't something that would do a significant amount of damage, but the number of attacks would be annoying, at least.
During that time, Lurize finally broke through the last layer of the slime web. The Royal Tutor had cuts and dents all over his armor, despite being in the Rhinoceros form. Nimbus wasn't looking much better. He had cuts and bruises all over his body, and even his beak had a large crack, not to mention the lack of feathers in half of one of his wings. Lurize continued forward, and when he reached the core, he slammed both his weapon and his horn inside it. The blows seemed to pierce the cocoon, but it wasn't enough. Hera stepped on the Royal Tutor's back and jumped with Dao in her hand. She stabbed the core and used a Chain Lightning with almost 200 thousand mana. The spell was so strong that the blade turned red hot, and Hera had to let it go so as not to burn her hand. The electricity covered the entire Proto Slime, who started spasming and losing some of its shape, but that didn't seem to be enough to kill it.
"Dao, I apologize!" Nimbus yelled as he jumped above Hera and slammed his tonfas against the blade, pushing it deeper into the cocoon. The Empress could see that the person inside the core tried to move closer to Dao, but she was unable to get hit by the weapon, that is, until Nimbus' attack. With that boost, the blade managed to cut the assistant's neck, allowing her to finally die.
There was no cry, no sound, no struggle. The Proto Slime simply stopped moving and dissolved where it stood, leaving behind the items that it dropped. However, Hera could hear something from her, not as a voice, but a feeling of gratitude coming from her mana just as the assistant, stuck inside the slime's core, vanished.
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