Chương 10: Tiring Snow

Another one waited further in. She went for it. She didn't use her claws. The light had worked last time, and it had left her feeling bigger than she was, and her paw went out on that alone. It came easier this time. Quicker to answer, less fumbling to get to it. The slime seized the instant the light touched it, violent and sudden, like the first one had. It came apart before it finished shuddering, a wet burst against the stone, gone before the sound of it had time to reach her properly.

[SYSTEM] You have slain: Lesser Cleaner Slime Mana gained. No slime stuck to her paw this way. Claws always left something wet behind, and she'd shake it off after, flick by flick, until her fur sat right again. She went to shake it off out of habit anyway, and found nothing there. She kept going. The next one she found in a side passage, hunched low near a crack in the wall, and she didn't rush it. She watched first, the way she'd watch a bird before deciding it was worth the jump. It hadn't noticed her yet.

That was the part she liked best. She closed the last of the distance low and slow, paw first, no claws out. It never got the chance to seize up or roll away. The light caught it on contact, quick and messy, and that was that. Twice now, and both had gone down easy. Easy stopped being interesting fast. The tunnels kept opening wider the deeper she went, the air changing too, thicker now, carrying a hum that reached her whiskers before it ever reached her ears.

Bigger puddles marked the ground here, wider than any she'd crossed before, some of them stretching the length of the passage itself. Something had claimed this ground. She could feel it like a stranger's scent rubbed into her own territory, faint but unmistakable, the kind that made her fur rise before she'd even decided to be wary. She slowed without deciding to.

Her paws knew before she did, easing down softer with every step, same as they always did when something bigger than her was close enough to hear a mistake. The hum got louder first, then the smell, thick and cold, nothing like the small ones she'd been killing all night. This one didn't smell like water pretending to be alive. She found it in the widest chamber yet, low-ceilinged and open, the kind of room built for something that needed the space.

It was easily three times the size of the one she'd killed her first night down here, its surface catching what little light there was and holding it, dark and faintly moving, something shifting slow just beneath the skin of it. [SYSTEM] Territory Guardian Detected: Prime Adult Cleaner Slime The size of it was the part that mattered. That, and the hum, low and even, and something in her flattened low to the ground before she'd told it to, some old fear she had no name for. Her fur didn't agree with the rest of her.

It puffed out anyway, ears flat, a hiss escaping before she'd decided to let it, pupils blown wide in the dim. All of it doubled her for exactly as long as it took the slime to not care at all. Her legs didn't lock, though. They held steady, ready to move. It moved first, faster than something that size should have been able to move, a wave of itself rolling toward her low across the stone. She was already gone before it reached where she'd been standing, three lengths clear, claws already out.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. She went in low, same as always, and caught it hard along one flank. It barely reacted, the wound closing almost as fast as she'd opened it, the whole mass shuddering once and reforming around the damage like it had barely noticed. That was enough for one pass. She turned to put distance between them instead of pressing another attack, the way she always did once a fight stopped being winnable.

There was nowhere to put it. It caught her mid-turn, the whole front of it rising up and coming down over her before she'd found anywhere left to be. Cold closed over her head, then everything. No stone under her paws, nothing to push against, just cold pressing in from every side at once, thick enough to swallow sound. She dug her claws in blind and found nothing solid enough to hold. Whatever this was on the inside, it wasn't built to keep anything in one piece. Nothing burned.

Nothing pulled at her the way she'd braced for. Whatever this thing usually ate, it had never once had to eat something that was still moving. Her paw found something small and dense at the center of all that cold, and she didn't think about it. She just reached for the one thing that had ever worked and gave it everything she had left. The light didn't spread slow this time.

It went straight through whatever she'd found, and the whole world around her seized at once, cold and dark and suddenly holding nothing at all. It didn't come apart the way the smaller ones had. It dropped away from her all at once, the whole mass of it collapsing to the stone floor, and she hit the ground hard enough to knock what little air she had left clean out of her. By the time she could breathe again, there was nothing left of it but a wide dark stain, already starting to dry at the edges.

[SYSTEM] You have slain: Prime Adult Cleaner Slime Mana gained. Dungeon Cleared: Slimes Dungeon Title Earned: Slayer of Slimes Cleaner Slimes will flee at your presence. She lay flat on the stone a long moment, soaked through and shaking, dragging in air like she'd forgotten how it worked. The shake in her legs eased faster than it should have, like her whole body always seemed to know what to do with whatever she'd just earned before she did. The chamber sat quiet around her now. No hum.

Just stone, and water, and the wide dark stain already fading into the floor. She was already thinking about what else was down here, and there wasn't anything else down here, and that was the part she didn't like. She took one step toward the dark passage anyway. Then she remembered the cold closing over her head, and her ears went back on their own, and she turned the other way instead. She climbed back up soaked through and shaking, up through the narrow places, up through the gap in the grate.

One flake landed cold on the bridge of her nose before her eyes had even adjusted to the light. It had started sometime while she was underground, thin white flakes catching in the cracks of the street, gathering soft along window ledges and cart wheels left standing too long in one place. The air carried that particular hush snow always brought with it, sound going soft and close. She climbed the last of the way out and set a paw down onto the street, and the street was covered in it.

She put the paw straight back where it came from. She looked at the paw. She looked at the street. Then she put it down again, because there was nowhere else to put it, and started walking with the stiff, deliberate steps of a cat refusing to admit her paws were cold. She knew this pattern. She'd watched it every year since she was old enough to notice. Snow meant nobody left. Not for days, sometimes longer.

Roads turned to mud under it, then ice, and no adventurer with any sense pushed a horse or a cart out into that on purpose. The streets told a different story than the sky did. Men in matched gear stood at every corner she passed, more of them than she'd ever seen gathered in the city at once, snow dusting their shoulders and long wood-and-metal poles slung across each of their backs on worn leather straps, smelling of oil and cold metal even through the snow. Something about the shape of it scratched at a memory.

A similar dark shape stood propped in the corner of Garr's room, one of the only things in there he ever bothered to keep clean. Not guild adventurers. City men, all of them dressed the same, standing with a stillness that had nothing casual in it. None of them looked at her twice. That was the strange part. Every man in gear like this she'd ever passed before had at least glanced down, like people did at anything small moving near their boots. These ones kept their eyes on the street, and on each other.

She hadn't noticed the cold deepening, not until the snow said it for her. She crossed the last street toward the guild, unbothered by any of it, and slipped through the door into the warm hall. She was tired in a way that had nothing to do with her body anymore, the kind of tired that came from a day too full to hold anything else. She found the beam over the flue and climbed up, the warmth sinking into her before she'd even settled her paws. Below her the hall carried on.

Bram swearing at something that had burned. Ren turning a page. Boots by the door, drying, going nowhere for a while yet. She should have slept. She'd earned it twice over. She lay with her chin on her paws and her eyes on the door, listening to the snow come down outside. She hated the cold. She hated the snow. Neither one cared how she felt about it.