Chương 71: 71 Loop 2, Part 25

Within moments, every single clone collapsed into a small pool of water, and then they started combining. Dozens of my faces melding into new shapes in front of me. I floated near the ceiling and started thinking. Despite the fact that there'd be less individual clones to handle, whatever they were combining into was not gonna be easy to handle.

I knew enough about dungeon studies to know that this was gonna be a boss fight, and boss fights were always much, much harder than the general rabble you'd fight getting to them. But something was wrong. A body half the size of the shadow dragon started to form, and it was clear it was trying to make legs and arms—maybe even wings. But as soon as a limb would form, it would collapse. As if water wasn't good enough to hold its shape at that size. Except for one feature.

One feature did its best to stand out amongst the blob, sort of. Where there should've been a head was my face, but it had been stretched across the front of a watery skull until both eyes were too far apart. And my mouth ran all the way around the head, almost forming a halo of teeth.

"That's not... um... yeah. Okay," I said, unsure what to make of the thing in front of me. But there was nobody around to bask in the glory of my observational skills. Even the first clone had joined the mass. More and more clones fought their way out of the mirrors, joining the giant thing. And every one that joined just made it worse. The blob kept trying to turn into something recognizable. A leg would push out and hold for a few seconds before collapsing back into the body.

An arm would start forming fingers before losing form entirely. But whatever the dungeon was trying to make, the water couldn't hold its form together. Through all of its attempts to make a real shape, the face just kept staring, growing wider all the while. Of all the times I had ever been uncurious about dungeon studies, now was the first time I had seriously regretted that lack of curiosity. Was this normal? Was the dungeon supposed to do this?

But in the end, it didn't matter if this thing couldn't form whatever the fuck it was supposed to be. I just had to use it to my advantage. I raised my wand, spell at the ready. But despite its inability to form a shape, the mass was faster. In the split second I saw it moving, I had to prepare to dodge. The whole giant blob went flat and slid down the hallway, almost like a wave. Undulating, up and down. My cartoonishly grotesque face riding in the front of it.

I flew sideways, and the blob broke against the wall and ceiling where I had been moments earlier. The water went everywhere, and then it just pulled itself back together. And then it climbed up the wall—slower this time, as if it were actually coming after me. It was clear. Whatever shape it had been trying to make, it had decided it didn't want to be anymore. And would stay as this amorphous thing. An amorphous, slimelike thing. The shape finally clicked in my head. It was a slime. A fucking slime.

I'd never cared much about dungeon studies, but everybody knew about slimes. They were a cautionary tale used to scare first-years away from Dungeon Track. They were hard to hurt and even harder to kill. As the old saying went, you couldn't disarm a thing that didn't have arms to begin with. The traditional way they handled them was by bringing a full party of adventurers and at least one ward specialist. The latter would trap the slime inside a ward while the rest of the party distracted it.

With its attention split multiple ways, it became really easy to confuse the things. Unfortunately, I was missing several important components of that strategy. It reached the ceiling and kept sliding. The water defied the laws of gravity as it held tight. But it kept going until it was hanging upside down. The monstrous face rotated around, and then it grinned. Again. Except now, instead of a beastly halo, it was broken, and it was hard to take seriously.

I think the monster had wanted to go for terrifying, but honestly, I just felt a little bemused. Like a sad clown at an even sadder birthday party. I dropped away from the ceiling in the opposite direction, hoping the dungeon wouldn't play another hallway trick on me and trap me against my will. The slime detached from the ceiling and dropped toward me. But halfway down, it split around a pillar of empty air. One half came from my left while the other half came from my right, both pieces stretching toward me.

I shot through the gap that formed before they connected and slammed my shoulder into one of the water-based mirrors. But unlike the soft landing I had been expecting, it felt like hitting… well, glass. I bounced off and rolled through the air, trying to get my bearings. I didn't want the slime to touch me. I knew what would happen then. The paralyzing agent coursing through it would stop my ability to control my limbs. Then I'd likely drown, or get eaten, or both.

I wanted to float there, cradle my shoulder, and complain about just how unfair life had been since I'd "saved" my uncle. Still, I knew I didn't have time to waste. I swam forward through the air as the mass tried to keep up. My original clone was long gone. But I figured it was worth at least one attempt at trying to bait it back out.

"You know, for a dungeon, you haven't been very original so far. I'm not even in Dungeon Track. And I know of at least three water and tree-based dungeons. Like, come on, man. Try something new." But the slime didn't answer. While I was busy pontificating, three hands reached out of the mirrors. I swiftly moved out of their reach, and they collapsed into puddles and joined the horde. A new one formed and grabbed a hold of me, so I waved my wand and cast [Spark] straight into its forming ribs.

It evaporated into a puddle and then joined the mass. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The next few minutes became a repetitive routine. Normally, I would have hated it, except it proved itself to be an efficient way to clear the monsters. A clone climbed out of a mirror. I hit it with [Spark], and it collapsed, joining the blob. Another would appear behind me. I'd hit it with [Spark], and it rejoined the slime.

Two more pushed their way out at once, and the same process repeated itself. For about a minute, it felt like I was making real progress, even if they mostly joined the slime. Then the thing swelled as more clones joined its mass. When it finally settled, it filled the hall floor to ceiling.

"Oh, come on. How was that fair?" And a creeping horror was starting to occupy my mind just a bit. I was about as full on mana as I'd ever been. I'd slept. I'd let Flag meditate at me for a few hours. Honestly, I could keep up what I'd been doing for a long time. But the problem was, so could the slime. Every clone I popped turned into a puddle and joined the mass. Every wave I dodged hit a wall, got up on the ceiling, and tried to hit me again.

And eventually, I'd get tired, or blink, or sneeze, or worse—get bored. And then it'd kill me. That was the biggest problem with monsters like slimes. They were persistent hunters. Almost just like me. I likely would have even appreciated it more if I wasn't the victim of its persistence.

"Okay," I said.

"New plan." If only to psych myself up. Because I didn't have a new plan yet. But it was clear running away wasn't the solution. I flew back down the hall after hitting another dead end and went through the list of my spells. Was there any point in trying to [Freeze] it? I'd been hoping, since it was made of water, that the spell would… you know, freeze it. But the mass was just too much at this point. Hell, it'd been too much since it first formed. The spell was too weak to penetrate the slime.

I couldn't really outlast it. Like I'd said, it was a persistent hunter. I'd eventually die of dehydration or run out of mana. But as a water slime, it would never really slow down. It really fucking annoyed me. No matter what I'd done so far, it was just getting bigger. Meanwhile, my resources were slowly getting smaller. And then realization struck. I slowed down, the slime gaining on me. The mirrors were made of water. And the clones were, too.

Whatever magic brought the slime to life hadn't stopped it from being made of water, either. A very, very important distinction. Because I had a spell designed to move ridiculous amounts of water very, very fast. And it was funny, because the solution was something I'd already used in the dungeon once before. So I was probably gonna get an F on my next report for repetition. But, I mean, what else were you supposed to do with fucking water? And besides, I couldn't stress this enough.

No matter what grade the dungeon gave me, this was the laziest possible thing I could do to solve this fight. So fuck his grades. I took pride in my lack of a work ethic. I lifted my wand and shouted, " [Stream]!" throwing as much mana as I could into the spell. [Stream], as a rule, needed a source of water. Or, well, liquid. Usually, that meant something like a lake, or a pool, or a river, or a channel. Generally speaking, it didn't mean something that was just a water elemental.

But so far, the dungeon had been pretty generous about what counted as water. And it was his dungeon. So I wasn't going to argue with him. Especially when he was trying to kill me. I directed the spell at the slime. And then directed it towards a mirror. The spell connected. And then a rope of water tore out of the mass. It shot across the hall and continued pouring out.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," I said.

"Oh, I love magic so much." It was gonna be hard. But I needed to continue moving forward, avoiding the slime and slowly whittling away at its bulk with the spell. It lurched at me on something like legs. Which was funny, given it had stopped trying a long time ago. But apparently, being on the losing end of a fight was a motivating factor. I had no idea. I didn't get it. Thankfully, it wasn't enough. The slime couldn't replace its body as fast as [Stream] was tearing water away from it.

Every second it chased me, another stream of its mass disappeared into the mirror. For once, persistence was working against it. I floated backwards down the hall with my wand in front of me, [Stream] pulling water out of the slime as fast as I could. We were in a quasi-stalemate, but ultimately, I was gonna win. It couldn't catch me, but I couldn't stop casting the spell. It wasn't exciting. But it was easy. And effective. My favorite kind of fight. There was one problem, though.

Every ounce of water I ripped out of the slime went straight into a mirror. Ten seconds later, a hand would push through somewhere behind me. Another clone would step into the hall, collapse, and try to rejoin the mass. The fatal flaw was I wasn't removing the water from the system. I was only moving it from one problem into another. Fortunately, I was moving it faster than the dungeon could move it back. The persistent hunter had become the persistent prey.

Over time, the giant slime got smaller and smaller and smaller. After it started to lose its form, I pulled in more and more water from the clones. But [Stream] still beat its pace. Eventually, it went from a mountain filling the hall to a hill of water, and then to a giant puddle. Until the spell canceled out. And I was standing in a quiet, flooded hallway, with six copies of myself climbing out of the walls. But before they had a chance to fully form, I put the second stage of my plan into motion.

I cast [Freeze]. [Freeze - Enchantment] Cost: 15 mana. Freezes a targeted body of water solid. Duration: Until melted. The mirror nearest me went from a clear blue to opaque white within seconds. The spell froze the half-formed clone, too. I cast again and again until [Recursion] kicked in. Which made each [Freeze] cost less than the spell before it. I worked my way down the hallway. One mirror at a time. I'd point, cast, and then move forward. But eventually, the dungeon caught on to what I was doing.

It started pushing out clones from mirrors farther ahead of me. Without the slime chasing me, though, I had all the time in the world to aim. By the time I made it to the last of the mirrors, a single eye was looking through it, as if trying to catch me with my back turned.

"Yeah, no," I said, pointing my wand and casting [Freeze] one last time. The eye froze, and then so did the mirror. Everything was finally quiet. I floated there in the hallway, my mana a mess, having cleared almost half of it in such a short period of time. And then a chime rang out. And a new hallway appeared.