LIGHTNOVELSTORY Chapter 32: The Instinct to Deny
Myungho quickly ran outside when he heard someone shouting. I followed him, thinking that something unusual was happening.
And there, a terrified person was running away, and the villagers, each with various weapons, were confronting a green puddle-like thing.
Even when it was still, it was bubbling, and suddenly it surged on its own, which was far from the cute and harmless image I had in mind.
I would be fine, but… if the others touch it, they will become like the corpse I saw earlier. I briefly thought about my colleagues being turned to mush, then stopped.
“Everyone, prepare to fight! I’ve never seen anything like that, so don’t let your guard down! Akash. Don’t use strong magic, and don’t aim at people!”
The other party members also took out their weapons and aimed at the green puddle of slime.
The puddle of slime took out something like a tentacle and swung it around, then pointed toward Myungho and crawled toward him at a terrifying speed.
I channeled magic into my horn and made the ground where the creature was heading like a saw blade. As if it really had no cognitive ability, the creature rushed forward without hesitation, even though its body was being cut away at a tremendous rate.
I had reduced its size considerably, but its speed did not decrease at all. Since it seemed impossible to slow it down by giving it an impact, I created a wall of rock between Myungho and the slime.
Like when it was being ground on the floor, the slime hit the wall with all its might, and as if it didn’t know the wall was there, it was rubbing its body against the wall and trying to get over it.
The mage was just looking at the slime with a very suspicious expression. That guy is useless, as expected. Thinking that, I detonated the wall where the slime was.
Slime, gravel, and dust scattered everywhere. Myungho looked surprised because he heard the sound of the wall that was protecting him exploding.
I did it properly because he told me not to let my guard down, but contrary to the terrifying explanation, the slime died, leaving only numerous debris.
“…Altera. You are really strong. Did you clean it up? I don’t think it would die this easily…”
What. How boring. Leaving Myungho, who was making ominous sounds, behind, I returned the wall made from the earth and approached the remains of the slime.
“…It definitely aimed at you. Even when its body was being cut, it didn’t run away. And there’s no core… Wait a minute, tell that girl to come back. It’s not over yet!”
“What? No… no matter how I look at it, that thing is dead… Uh…! Altera, be careful! Above!”
I poked the remains of the slime with my claws, but there was no reaction. I did feel like I touched sparkling water, though.
But suddenly, the party members and the villagers were making a fuss looking at me. To be precise, they were looking a little above me. I wondered what was there, and looked up.
From a black hole in the air, the slime’s slime was pouring out.
Oh, no. Before I could even dodge, I was instantly covered in slime. I felt a tingling sensation all over my body, and the creepy feeling of the slime trying to get in everywhere.
I tried to shake my body with all my might, but I was surrounded by an incomparably larger amount of slime than before, so it was endless.
Thinking that it was really dangerous, I put my hand on the ground and poured a lot of magic into it. Fortunately, the slime’s slime was different from water, so there was no problem in operating the magic.
As the magic flowed, the pain that was at a tingling level turned into a burning pain. It must be because the protection was released. When magic moves, it loses the defensive power that it provides when it is still.
That’s why I don’t use magic in close combat. But in a situation like this, it wasn’t the time to consider such things.
The earth, containing my magic, cracked, and a golden light of magic flowed out from the gap.
This is going to hurt. I stopped the flowing magic, made it into a barrier, and prepared for the impact. The light of magic, which was as weak as a candle, gradually brightened, soon becoming as bright as the sun, and then caused a huge explosion.
I flew high up in the recoil, and the slime scattered all over the place again.
Even though I definitely blocked it with the barrier, I felt like all my internal organs were shaken. And before I could even shake off the impact, I was thrown to the ground again.
“Altera! Are you okay?!”
Myungho immediately ran to me and asked if I was okay. I wasn’t okay, but I could still fight.
I seemed to have some wounds that were being eaten away here and there, but they would be healing at a noticeable rate. I hid the scales that had grown on my palm and answered.
“I’m fine. But… it’ll be difficult to just hit it and shave it off.”
Myungho, who saw the slime pouring out of the hole in the air, seemed to think so too. No matter how much you hit it and shave it off, for some reason, twice as much pours out of the void.
The villagers seemed to be agitated because they had never seen anything like that before.
To make matters worse, the slime was stretching its body wide and reattaching its fragments. This is driving me crazy. If you hit it and shave it off, more comes out, and it even swallows its own fragments.
“Even if I bury it in the ground… it’ll come out again, right?”
Myungho nodded without answering. Sigh. Then how are you supposed to kill something like that? It was a much more frustrating situation than when I met a monster as a child.
Yuna… won’t be of any use in this fight. She was standing close to the villagers and protecting them, as if she knew she had nothing to do.
At first, the slime was about the size of a suitable rock stuck in the plain, but it had grown to the size of a small cabin.
“Hey, boss. I know what it is. That slime doesn’t have no core. It’s been moved to another dimension. While maintaining the connection with the main body.”
“Is… something like that even possible? No, it wouldn’t be strange if it were… Ah, could it be that that demon race said they’d see us again!”
“That can’t be it. It seems like they prepared in advance just in case. Ha, those cunning things. They were still using the method I created.”
The slime was wiggling its tentacles around again, as if it was looking for Myungho. But maybe because it was bigger, its movements were sluggish, and its mysterious human detection ability seemed to have deteriorated.
“You made it…? Then you know how to deal with it, right? You do, right…?”
“It’s easy. Just destroy the core. Well, you have to break through the dimension and break the core beyond it. It’ll be even easier for you. Just write ‘die’ with your brush and it will die.”
“But… I can’t write on something like that. I could on a spirit, but not on a liquid like that.”
Myungho put away his sword and took out his brush, but he didn’t look confident.
“First, let me use some big magic. Tell that worm to fill that thing with moist soil. Then you’ll know what to do.”
Soon, the slime seemed to have found us and started to run towards us with a more sluggish movement than before. The fences and trees in the middle couldn’t withstand its weight and broke.
…Should I use it?
“Altera! Fill that slime with moist soil! Akash says he knows how to defeat it!”
While I was hesitating, Myungho told me to fill it with soil, saying he had found a way to defeat it.
Will it work? I didn’t want to be swallowed by that thing again, so I crouched down and put my hand on the ground.
I concentrated fully and poured magic into it to control the nearby earth, and stabbed the moist soil into the slime.
It was already sluggish, but it became much slower with the soil inside. I kept stabbing it until the green body looked muddy brown, and the scales had already grown up to my wrist.
…That’s not important. I made a huge rock spike and pierced the slime’s body, completely fixing it in place.
“Chill of the underworld, rise to the surface you envy so much and devour my enemy!”
The mage mumbled something, and a blue magic circle appeared on the grimoire.
And a fierce blizzard blew on the spot where the slime was fixed. The slime moved violently as if to say that it couldn’t be stopped by something like that, but at some point, it froze.
Did the soil that filled the inside freeze?
So that’s why he told me to put in moist soil. Even if it tried to change its form, it seemed to be having trouble because of the soil that filled its body.
As soon as the deadly blizzard stopped, Myungho ran with his brush and touched the frozen slime.
“D…ie!”
As soon as he wrote something and removed the brush, the slime stopped moving as if its fierce movement was a lie.
“…Ha, really. It gives me chills every time I see… that.”
The mage barely managed to stand up, said something, and then collapsed forward.
…Is slime going to suddenly pour out from somewhere again? I couldn’t approach it easily because of my suspicion, so I made an umbrella out of rock to prepare for a situation like before and approached it.
As soon as I touched it with my scale-covered hand, I was surprised by the cold and pulled my hand away. Why is it so cold?
I hit it with the rock umbrella I was holding, and it cracked, so I kept hitting it.
In the end, the shattered, earth-colored slime did not clump together again, and nothing poured down from above.
“It really seems to be dead. Phew, what in the world is this thing…”
I shivered from the cold that lingered around me. And I sensed something strange. I mean, my chest feels a little empty.
I didn’t notice it because I was only looking at the slime and my hands, but I didn’t have a bandage on my chest. My nipples were covered in scales, so it wasn’t the worst, but…
…
Myungho was standing right next to me.
I covered my chest with my hands.
“…Don’t look.”
I tried to suppress the pleasure I felt in my heart and told Myungho not to look.
Even though I was a man, I knew this was embarrassing. I was aware that the posture Myungho was pointing out was also strange. But I couldn’t help it.
A desire I didn’t have when I was a man. The instinct to show off something outstanding and rare to others.
That was flowing in my blood.
It was an instinct I had recently realized while living among humans. Until then, I had been rationalizing it by making up plausible reasons, but now I could no longer deny it.
This body seemed to want to be ‘seen’.