Chương 22: King Slime

LANCE was in no rush to engage the bandits in a melee, not when there were limited visibility and numerous non-combatants. Instead, he took the leisure path and shot one bandit after another dead.

"Four... six... nine..." he counted as casually as rolling beads on an abacus. Another few minutes and lives claimed passed and the number of bandits below turned thin. They were in hiding. Which meant, he would need to get down and personal; fine by him — he willed his crossbow into a knuckle-duster pair and readied his buckler. This time, he was going to get close and personal. He didn't bother taking the ladder down to the floor.

Instead, he jumped over the poorly constructed balcony and landed with a crash on the rocky dirt below. He twirled around to check if there were any enemies to his back. Seeing none, he oriented himself to his left and right while keeping his back to the wall. Seeing several bandits ahead but still under the impression they were hidden, he called out, "I see you, bandit scum! Repent now and I will spare you! What do you say?" The bandits' response was typical.

They charged him with bloody cries and found their faces caved in as a result, his knuckle-dusting fists, backed up by his incredible Martial Prowess, causing a genuine, and gruesome, cave in of their face to their backs. One, two, three dead bandits in quick order. He ignored the System notifications as well as the cries for help from the prisoners. He would help them, of course, just only when all the bandit scum had died or repented. Even now, he wondered why the bandits here would seem so obtuse to conversion.

It didn't matter, not really, but he couldn't help but be curious. Lance swept the entire room, including a few minor chambers next to the circular room which acted as rest spaces for the bandit crew. Each room had several fearful bandits inside who, like the previous, had charged at him like drunken, disoriented bulls. Their fate was the same, the minor difference being their heads, because of his sideways swing, weren't 'caved in' as much as they were shorn from their heads and splattered against the walls.

He regarded the sight with distaste and against his better judgement, said a prayer on the bandits' behalf for their souls; he felt a warmth spread inside of him because of the prayers, something he needed to help make up for starting combat without first asking for his foe's surrender. Confident that the whole chamber and its offshoots was clear of thugs, Lance turned his attention to the prisoners. Dozens of people were crammed in filthy, stinking cages.

He smashed the petty locks on each gate using his knuckle-dusters and let the gates open, freeing all inside.

"Thank you, thank you!" person after person cried to him, some bowing, others kissing his feet, other plying other mercies yet, all of which he refused.

"Folks, folks! You are free. See that balcony? Travel up the ladders and follow the trail of slain slimes all the way to the harbor. There will be there some freed prisoners who should take you toward a safe area outside of the harbor's limits. Be wary! I do not know if additional bandits have entered the harbor since when I was last there," he told everyone. The prisoners, after some plying to stop thanking him, were on their way up the balcony and the ladder beyond.

It was a good thing he had taken the time to slay the slimes instead of rushing through them. Lance was about to follow the prisoners and resume his way on the two remaining tunnels, those which had fresh air coming from each, when he heard a grumble from the transparent cube holding the oversized slime. The slime was quaking, rumbling, and before he could do anything, part of it shot up and crashed through the partially open hatch left by one of the bandits when they fed the creature a prisoner.

"Run!" he shouted at the few remaining prisoners.

"I will hold it off!" The creature continued to rumble as it forced its overgrown body through the tiny hatch. He had to think fast and act faster if he had any hope of saving the prisoners. He looked around the chamber, dashed in and out of the rooms which surrounded the chamber, searching for something to use against the beast. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He saw several buckets of explosive powder but using explosive powder in a confined tunnel underground would be suicidal. Shit. There was only one thing he could do: he climbed atop the translucent cube, infused the rest of his mana into his knuckle-dusters, and smashed down hard on the slime. Right before impact, he infused his mana with electro-magic, the one type of magic most, if not all, squishy slimes were weak to and let the power rip into the beast.

His impact sent the beast reeling back but also caused the cube to break and shatter. He fell with the beast. Now, the real fight began. He acted as swift as his hands could manage and found the packet of Fairy Dust. He tore into the packet and chugged the whole packet's worth of powder into his mouth. He swashed it around a bit, getting it nice and wet with his saliva, and swallowed with a grimace. It tasted gross but he wasn't complaining, not when he felt his mana fully restore.

In front of him, the King Slime, identified as such by the System, reared itself to its full stature. His fists wouldn't do it for him anymore. He willed his weapon to transform into a great sword. Since fire magic and the explosive powder buckets wasn't going to do it for him in this fight, he needed to infuse a wide weapon with magic and hack away at this thing.

Next, he infused the blade with electro-magic and charged; his sword went wide in violent arcs that seared across one part of the slime's body, then overcut from its other half, forming a visible, red 'x' that left a large gash on it. The slime reacted to its wound as any animal or beast would and ejected mass amounts of acidic goop. Although most of the goop he deflected with his shield, a disturbing amount slipped through and lodged itself in his boots and leathers, dissolving both material and skin.

He roared in pain and though his healing factor was already at work, he lamented his lack of reaction time. Pain or no, Lance couldn't afford to let up, so he pushed through the pain. He charged the creature again, this time from its backside, and gave it another couple of might lashes, forming another 'x'-shaped wound on its backend. It again shrieked and spat out acid; this time, he reacted in time to dodge or to harmlessly deflect the acid goop with what remained of his buckler.

He dropped the rest of his buckler, it no longer being of use to him in its mostly dissolved state and lunged for the kill. He reared back on his sword and dumped the rest of his mana into a final electro-blade infusion.

"Shame you can't beg for mercy or repent, beast, because this is your end!" he shouted for his own benefit. Just as his blade was about to end the creature's life, something happened he did not expect — the creature spoke!

"I give, human! I repent!" the creature spoke. At the last second, Lance re-directed the flow of his blade, and the energies flew around the chamber finding purchase on nothing except rock.

"You can speak?!" he asked it. He was incredulous. He had never known a monster to speak, before.

"How?"

"My intelligence was gained from the human spiritual fragments which could not escape my body upon death. Over time, those fragments built up, leading to the creature you see before you. Please, spare me! I do not seek to hurt anyone!"

"Why should I spare an abomination like yourself!? Are you not responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people!" Lance kept his eyes locked on the creature. A single wrong move and he would throw everything he had into striking the beast down.

"I hurt no one of my own accord!" the slime countered.

"Those despicable men captured me, forced many slimes together creating my body, and desecrated us further by using us as an execution machine! I will never forgive those bastards for the unholy act they imposed upon nature!" Strange as it seemed, Lance was moved by the monster's plight. He heard in his ear the past lectures of his academy's professors. How monsters could not be trusted. Then again, those same instructors had said monsters could not be self-aware. This one was a clear exception to that rule.

Against his formal training, Lance lowered his sword.

"Would you be willing to take an oath of servitude to my God, Cannabus? If so, I will spare your life. Be warned, creature, I do not know if the oath will stick to one as... monstrous as you. If it does, you will be expected to serve my God as all his servants do — in totality." When the creature replied, its tone was without hesitation.

"Yes! I will swear your oath! I only wish to serve in a way that fits my being! That is all I ask!" What 'fit' its 'being' was an open-ended question, for sure. Though a fair one. He told it, "Fine. Repeat the oath after me." And so, the beast swore the oath, and to his surprise, the oath stuck, the words never wavered in their intensity as the glowing lingual chain entrenched itself on the beast's 'skin.' He hadn't thought it possible.

A beast, a creature formed of forcefully congealed slimes and of dissolved people, had taken a holy oath. Shocking, yes, but the divine did not lie. If the beast now wore the holy markings of Cannabus, then it meant it was no different than he, a servant of the holy god.