Chapter 7: Chapter 6: Is This What Being Strong Feels Like? (3/3)

“Fuck my life,” I cursed out loud when I saw a very familiar-looking foe standing in front of me. 

It stood at a massive frame of around 5 feet, had an ooze the color of the night and a smell akin to rotten corpses and eggs. It’s giant, wobbly fluid-based body naturally secreted toxic waste that ate away at everything around it, especially dissolving the grass from which it slid upon, leaving behind a trail of black death like a slug of calamity, or otherwise known as the Black Slime. 

It’s a very funny story about how I encountered the slime that gave me stage nine trauma. I had spent most of tonight hunting slime, venting out my frustrations on them to the point I might have cleared 4 sector’s worth of slimes, earning me hundreds of eighth and ninth circle cores but I was still plenty of energy and frustration.

 So, in a moment’s stupidity, I decided to transverse a little out of my current sphere of eight circle monsters and into the seventh circle, hoping to hunt the weaker seventh circle monsters around the edges of their sector, but then my luck decided to rear its ugly head. I’m really starting to think that I may have used up my entire life’s worth of luck on that gacha roll thing. So, I had just stepped into the edges of the area where seventh circle monsters thrived in, and to my luck (at that time) I found that there was a Wood Wolf pup not too far away from me.

Long story short, I was just about to pounce on it and kill it, an infantile seventh circle core was still a seventh circle core after all. If word of that had gotten out to my previous world, I’d immediately be canceled. Or, maybe not since nature decided to intervene in the form of my trauma-giving black slime who sliced the pup cleanly in half with one of its acidic crescent shots. The poor thing still struggled and yelped in pain for a few seconds before the black slime devoured it alive. 

Now, I would have ran away. I should have ran away but I was scared so shitless I couldn’t move my feet as I watched in horror at how the pup’s dismembered body dissolved inside the translucent body of the black slime. Instead of the pup, I saw myself and my head inside its stomach which really didn’t help. 

Of course, eventually I snapped out of it but it was at that moment, I fucked myself ten times over by stepping over a twig that was definitely not there ten seconds ago. Which brought us to my current situation.

The question was, do I fight? Do I run? I needed information. It wouldn’t have worked before but now that I was in the same circle as the black slime, it should work right?

Ignoring the amount of cold sweat drenching my back right now, I quietly summoned a skill, “Analyze.” I felt the familiar sense of heat surround my eyes as pure data about my nemesis appeared inside my head. 

“The Black Slime. A mutated seventh circle monster that can devour anything in the same rank and possibly obtain an inner skill of the devoured prey.” Unconsciously, I muttered the more important parts as my head unraveled the huge wall of information in mere seconds. “Extremely dangerous to any average hunter of the same rank. Proceed with caution and beware of its two most commonly used inner skills; [Acidic Shot], [Acidic Whips] and its core skill; [Devour].”

“Side note; Black Slimes are usually sadistic monsters that feed off their prey’s fear,” I finalized. Fucking Slimes, in fact fuck anything that’s even remotely related to them. 

I was still in a stare-down with the Black Slime as it mindlessly munches on the disfigured body of the wood wolf pup. If it had a face, I bet it’d be looking at me with boredom written all over his, her face? Did slimes even have a gender? Nah, fuck them still, bitch or dick. Though, I missed being a dick.

Fuck. Focus. I’ve been swearing a lot these past few moments, haven’t I? Well, seeing as that was how I usually dealt with stress and that my current situation was extremely stressful, I had a right to swear as much as I was right now. 

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I thought over my options. What would happen if I fight it? I was nowhere near the mutated slime’s level back when I was in the eighth circle but now that I was in the seventh, how big is  the strength gap between us? Slimes were extremely resistant to any, if not all physical attacks and seeing as how anything produced from this particular slime could melt even rocks, I don’t think poking it with my stick would work. I couldn’t use the ambush tactic I usually used against slimes and throw spears at their cores from afar either. If I did want to fight it, I’d have to dodge it’s extremely fast [Acidic Shots] and [Acidic Whips], perhaps even at the same time. I was strong now but I don’t think I was strong enough to do all that.

Which begs the other question. What would happen if I ran?

I twitched backwards and felt IMMEDIATE danger. I narrowly dodged the acidic whip that shot forward towards my head. I used the momentum and rolled sideways, heart slowly revving up from how close I was to death over there. I stared at the black slime again and found that it had already finished devouring the pup but it looked hungry for more. 

Looks like running isn’t an option. If it’s fast enough that I can barely dodge it while focusing on it, there is no way in hell I could turn my back to it and make it away safely. But if I used a distraction? 

This time, I sensed danger to the side and jumped backwards, avoiding the slime’s ebony acidic tentacles that had crept from below the grass. “Of course you’re tactically smart as well. Can they add any more skills on you?!” 

I quickly ran over my choices. Fight Or Flee. I looked at the multiple acidic black whips swirling from the black slime’s huge body. Yeah, no way I was going to flee that. Fight it is. So, the question was, how on earth do I fight something that can severely injure me with just a drop of its acid and is impervious to everything I can currently do. 

The answer to my question came into the form of a black ball of acid? Fuck. I rolled to the side but had no time to breathe as the black slime continuously shot balls of acid at me, along with occasional supersonic whips that threatened to melt the flesh of my skin.

“You’re not very gentlemanly, are you?!” I screamed at it, while running and dodging like a featherless chicken. As I continued dodging, I had run around it enough that I could see the rising of the sun that had previously been blocked by the stygian body of the slime. 

Oh, sweet baby Jesus, it was my time to fight. “[Question]!” I activated my skill with a roar and asked my question. 

Ding!

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