Chương 104: Penicillium - Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen The first slime I ever encountered was a blubbery mass of green-ish grey... something. I didn't dare touch it, not only because I worried about its caustic properties, but because it was currently wrapped around the body of a goblin who was facing us while holding onto a knife. Well, knife was an exaggeration. It was a long piece of stone with knapped edges and a piece of cloth wrapped around one end to serve as a handle. The goblin was holding it with both hands. It was blocking our path.

The room's maze-like hedges formed paths that started wide near the entrance, but as soon as we moved into the maze they narrowed until two people couldn't walk side-by-side without becoming very familiar with each other. That meant that a single goblin with an attitude could bar our path, and being swarmed would be so much easier when they knew the layout of the maze and could slip past each other within it with ease. held I held onto my own knife, hoping that I wouldn't have to use it. Then the goblin coughed.

First just once, then a few more times. It took a deep breath, then blinked a few times before shifting back into its guard pose. I hadn't noticed until then, but it was hunched over a lot, and beads of sweat were pouring down its green skinned forehead.

"It breathed in some of my spores," I said.

"Not enough to kill it," Phillipe said.

"Hey, you don't know that. Each individual spore has a tiny bit of neurotoxin. It might only take one to kill someone that size. Though, it might also merely impair them. Poisons are only an exact science when you know what you're doing."

"That's not as comforting to hear as you might think," Tyro grumbled.

"What's a... new-row-toxin?"

"Neuro," I corrected, then I realized that I'd been saying that in English for a while. There were a number of words that I just didn't know in what had become my second language and that I substituted the English word for. Fortunately, the local dialect had a mix of harsher tones and more melodic parts, kind of like English. I could get away with making up a word as uncommonly used as neurotoxin, probably.

"It means a poison that specifically and sometimes only, acts against the brain."

"You poison brains?" Tyro asked.

"Mostly with hallucinogens," I said.

"The mushroom making him cough right now might make him have a seizure or cripple something else. It'll definitely mess with his senses. But it's unlikely to kill him outright. Usually the... subject needs to have breathed in enough spores to cripple their lungs for them to die." Tyro was probably supposed to be paying attention to the threat just a step ahead of us, but he still spared me a strange, disturbed look.

"Hey," I said.

"One of the reasons I'm coming down here is to find more useful and lethal mushrooms. All of mine kill slowly and ineffectively."

"I'm certain you'll find something," Phillipe said.

"I recall the sixth floor having a number of mushrooms around it." I nodded. Hopefully he was right. I'd gotten four interesting fungal bodies from the Ditz dungeon already. [Blackbottle], [Purple Capped Night Watcher], [Blur Glow Lichen], and [Blue Cleangill]. Two of those had turned out to be immensely useful already, and the last I hadn't had the opportunity to test out at all. I didn't have much hope for it, but I'd been surprised before.

The [Purple Capped Night Watcher] had to come from one of the floors we hadn't explored yet. I decided to keep an eye peeled for it, and maybe some interesting natural variations. My thoughts were shattered as the goblin finally lurched forwards. Phillipe stepped up, hammer swinging down and around, the head crashing into the goblin's chest with a meaty thunk. Instead of killing the goblin outright, it sent it flying back, some of the slime clinging to its skin splashing outwards in long, goopy tendrils.

"Huh," I said. Had the slime just acted as a non-newtonian armour for the goblin? That was interesting. If it turned solid on impact and essentially distributed the force of the blow across a wider area, then it really was a useful bit of armour. How was the slime not eating into the goblin's skin though? It--unfortunately for my young, virginal eyes--wasn't wearing any clothes, so that wasn't an issue. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Phillipe walked over to the fallen goblin and killed it with a press of his boot to the goblin's neck that ended with a hard snap. He was about to move on, but I asked him to wait, and he didn't seem to mind. I knelt down next to the goblin and observed it for a moment. I didn't think I had any skills to help, so I was a little surprised when my [Druid Sight] skill triggered when I touched the goblin's exposed skin.

[Goblin's Goblet Sap] A sap extracted from a mana-rich plant that commonly grows in locations where acidic slimes have dissolved. Entirely resistant to weaker corrosive and caustic effects.

"Huh," I said.

"Find something?" Tyro asked. He didn't sound impressed by my calling for a halt.

"Yeah. They're covered in sap. Look, it's this oily stuff." I rubbed my fingers together. My [Poison Handling Expertise] wasn't pinging off of it, even when I tried, so while it probably wasn't edible, it wasn't poisonous or toxic to consume or touch.

"Non-toxic, a bit slick and probably not fun to be covered in, but it prevents the slime from melting our little goblin friends here."

"Is it useful for us?" Phillipe asked.

"I don't see how it could be," I said.

"Unless we'll be encountering a lot of slimes, in which case I guess we could get naked and slather some of this stuff on ourselves. Honestly, I'd rather just not." He chuckled.

"I don't think we'll have to go that far, no. Might be a good idea to get some on our boots for stomping slimes later."

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah, that's not a bad idea." He nodded.

"I've been on a team that collected a plant from this floor for the alchemist's guild. I wasn't responsible for harvesting though, just clearing the space. I suppose they use the plant's properties for something."

"Or they literally just use it to make equipment acid-proof in the lab. I can think of a few use-cases for something like that," I said. If I ever ran across a particularly acidic mushroom, then it might be handy to have some of that sap. But I didn't come prepared to collect it. Good to know it existed, I supposed.

"Let's keep moving, shall we?" I nodded and we continued on our path through the maze. We stumbled across a few dead goblins, their faces the ugly colour of someone who ran out of air, and one of them was in a corner, stabbing its own legs while crying feebly. Phillipe put it out of its misery. I imagined that was an adverse reaction to a hallucinogen. Interestingly enough, the slimes seemed entirely immune to my spores. Which... well, they didn't have lungs or organs for me to poison.

They were also ridiculously easy to kill with little more than a well-placed stomp or kick. Really, any blunt damage would spray them apart. As we rounded another corner in the hedge maze we found ourselves facing a small cohort of angry goblins. Some were coughing, but a few, I noted, had cloth hastily wrapped over their mouths. Smart. Not so smart was their immediate reaction of charging at us.

Phillipe met the first one's charge with a swing of his hammer, and Tyro kicked another in the chest, sending it tumbling into its companions. I stood back, grip firm on my knife as the boys ploughed through the goblins, laying them down and killing them with contemptuous ease. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to kill so easily. Physically, that was. With proper bioweapons, you could kill a lot more effectively and without any of the sweating and grunting.

I'd never have the sort of musculature that Tyro and especially Phillipe had, so I'd have to resort to more unconventional ways to do my dirty work. A big part of me missed proper civilization. Back when I didn't need to worry about killing people, just paying my taxes so the government could do that for me with proper civilised weapons. I'd seen guns already, so maybe this world was on the right track for that. Oh well.

I kicked a groaning goblin in the face, then ran to catch up to the others while hopping onto every slime I passed to make sure it was properly squished. At the rate we were going, we'd be done with this room soon enough, and then we could finally take a well-earned break. I was looking forward to it. All of this near-genocide stuff really worked up an appetite.