episode_0039

Following the light of the torch Rai held, we carefully stepped deeper into the dark cave.

The slime’s mucus pooled on the floor and the unpleasant dampness emanating from it made us frown.

However, as we drew closer to our destination, none of us complained, merely focusing on the cave’s darkness, gradually illuminated by the torchlight.

“It’s… right here.”

Deep inside the cave, a space large enough for the torchlight to faintly reach appeared.

Killua and I, guided by the faint torchlight, could see a fragment embedded in the cave surface, glowing faintly like a tiny star.

“That’s…!!”

“A pendant fragment!!”

Recognizing the fragment’s identity at once, Killua and I, without needing to be first, gasped in astonishment.

“Ariel!!!”

But burying our exclamations was Rai’s shriek, almost like a scream.

Rai raised the torch high in his hand, pointing to a figure we hadn’t seen, our eyes fixated on the fragment.

“Oh my god…”

As the human shadow became clear in the light of the torch Rai lifted, Killua groaned with complex emotions.

“Is she alive?!”

It was presumably Rai’s fiancée.

Her arms and legs bound to the cave wall, she lay as if in a deep sleep.

We could have thought she was dead, but her chest, moving subtly with a steady rhythm, told us she was still alive and breathing.

“The fragment is embedded in her chest…”

And the pendant fragment we found was lodged between the breasts of the woman Rai called Ariel.

“I’ll… I’ll save you now!!”

Rai rushed towards Ariel frantically.

He was so desperate that his usual calm demeanor vanished; he trod precariously on the slippery cave floor, trying to reach Ariel, who was bound to the cave wall.

“Bound to the cave wall?!”

Unlike Rai, who was distracted by his former fiancée Ariel, we questioned the fact that the woman named Ariel was bound to the cave wall.

“Jazel! Shoot a magic bullet! Stop Rai!!”

That’s right. It wasn’t the cave wall that was binding Ariel.

“Tch!!”

At Killua’s command, I quickly gathered magic in my hand, forming a small bullet.

The target was Rai’s side, as he blindly rushed towards Ariel.

Perhaps it was the fruit of my nightly practice; the small magic bullet, imbued with my touch and will, accurately struck Rai’s side as he tried to grab Ariel.

“Urk!!”

The sudden impact, like a small fist striking him, made Rai lose his balance. He stumbled on the slippery cave floor and fell.

Rumble…

Then the cave moved.

No. The gigantic slime we thought was a cave.

The massive slime, which had been restraining the woman Ariel’s limbs within its embrace, slowly began to move.

“Oh my heavens…”

Something I had never seen before…

No, a gigantic slime I had never even imagined once.

The small hill where the cave was located *was* the slime’s body itself.

The massive slime slowly lifted its body, holding Ariel, whose limbs were bound, high into the air as if showing off its trophy.

Soon after, a massive core, about the size of three adults, fitting its enormous stature, emerged from within the gigantic slime.

“That’s an eye… and nerve cells?! A mere slime?!”

“D-dammit…”

But unlike the cores of other slimes, which seemed like simple single cells, the giant slime’s core was grotesqueness itself.

At the center of the large core was an eyeball, seemingly clumsily mimicking a creature’s eye, and radiating from it were nerve cells, like roots, spreading in all directions.

“Ugh… Ughh…”

Rai, facing that monstrous core and eye directly, was so terrified by this bizarre creature that transcended the slime species, he couldn’t even scream.

“Back off, Rai!! We have to run!!”

Killua realized that the gigantic slime we now faced completely surpassed all our common knowledge about slimes.

But despite Killua’s shouts, Rai, his reason paralyzed by fear of the unfamiliar creature, couldn’t even think of standing up.

Frantic, Killua abruptly moved forward to help Rai, who was sitting on the ground, paralyzed with fear.

“Killua-nim!! I’ll go!!”

Grabbing Killua’s shoulder and pushing her behind me, I ran to save Rai in her stead.

The gigantic slime, as if intending to deal with the terrified Rai first, began to extend a large tentacle towards him.

“Magic Bullet!!”

I gathered magic in my hand, far stronger than what I’d used to stop Rai.

A slime’s body, inherently weak to magic, could easily be shattered by my magic bullet.

Thud!!

The lump of magic, gathered to the size of an adult’s fist and thrown by my will, accurately struck the massive tentacle of the slime that was trying to grab Rai.

The powerfully condensed lump of pure magic unleashed a shockwave that shattered the slime’s massive tentacle into pieces.

“What the?!”

But the injured area, which had clearly shattered from the magic bullet, regenerated at an incredible speed, as if it had never been harmed, even before the fragmented pieces hit the ground.

“Ugh…”

As the gigantic tentacle wrapped around Rai’s waist, his fear-paralyzed reason finally returned.

He tried to grab the throwing knife on his thigh, as if belatedly attempting to resist, but the massive tentacle wrapped around his waist prevented his hand from reaching it.

“Hyaah!!”

Fortunately, thanks to the tentacle’s sluggish movements, as if it hadn’t fully woken up, I was able to reach Rai’s side before it dragged him away.

Gripping the large logging axe I had received from the Hero tightly with both hands, I swung it down on the tentacle with all my might, using the same technique as splitting firewood.

CRACK!!

The sharply honed axe blade, combined with the axe’s heavy weight and my strength, tore through the surface of the gigantic slime’s tentacle, burying the axe head deep within its massive interior.

Fizzle…

As the axe head burrowed into the slime’s tentacle, the beeswax powder coated on the axe began to do its work.

The beeswax powder rapidly absorbed the moisture from the slime tissue it touched, turning it into a useless mass of organic matter.

Fortunately, even this slime’s incredible regeneration seemed unable to quickly recover from wounds caused by the beeswax.

“Th-thank you!!”

With more than half of the tentacle severed, the strength of the tentacle wrapped around Rai’s waist noticeably weakened.

Thanks to this, Rai was able to easily shake off the tentacle wrapped around his waist and escape on his own.

“Come over here quickly!! It seems like the creature hasn’t fully come to its senses yet!!”

Killua gestured towards us, as if urging us to quickly get out of the creature’s range.

As Killua said, the giant slime’s core seemed to still not grasp what was happening, as its large pupil adjusted in size, looking around.

The enormous eye couldn’t even focus on Rai and me, who were right in front of it; it was haphazardly looking around at empty space, vacant lots, and forests.

It probably wasn’t used to seeing things with its eyes.

“Let’s go! We have to escape!”

“B-but Ariel…”

“We’ve confirmed she’s alive!! Hurry and come!!”

Rai said, pointing at Ariel, whom the gigantic slime had lifted high into the sky like a trophy.

I grabbed Rai by the scruff of his neck, unable to shake off his lingering attachment to Ariel, and forcibly pulled him.

“W-we can save her!!”

However, Rai, having found his fiancée still alive before his eyes, couldn’t easily let go of his attachment.

He pulled out his bow, nocked a black arrow with an explosive arrowhead, and aimed at the creature’s core, wriggling within the massive gelatinous mass.

“Idiot, stop it!!”

The moment he was about to release the string of the tightly drawn arrow, Killua rushed forward, almost throwing herself, and grabbed his arm.

“This is our only chance to escape! If that thing comes to its senses, Ariel or anything else will be finished!!”

“Gah…”

Killua’s judgment wasn’t wrong.

The gigantic slime was still so unaware of the situation that it didn’t even recognize us as intruders.

It was clearly suffering from the after-effects of being forcibly awakened from a deep sleep and had not yet adapted to its newly evolved body.

If Rai’s attack on the core were to make it come to its senses, it would attack us even more aggressively and menacingly than it was now.

“Let’s go!”

I grabbed Rai’s arm to prevent him from drawing his bow and forcibly pulled him away.

Ultimately, Rai didn’t resist my grasp and started moving.

But his gaze remained fixed on his former fiancée, Ariel, whom the gigantic slime was holding high in the air.