Chapter : 485

  His gaze drifted back to the teeming plains of glistening, jiggling slimes. The first quest was clear. One thousand slimes. It was a grind, yes. A tedious, repetitive task. But every single one of those bouncing blobs of gelatin was a step towards his goals. Each one was a fraction of a Farming Coin, which was a fraction of a System Coin, which was a fraction of an upgrade that might one day save his life.

  He felt a surge of pure, unadulterated motivation, the familiar, addictive thrill of a gamer facing a new, promising, and incredibly long, quest line. The existential dread, the political anxieties, the emotional turmoil of the real world—they all seemed to fade away here, in this place of simple, clear, and brutally direct objectives. Kill the slimes. Get the coins. Get stronger.

  He took a step towards the vast green plain, his hand instinctively going to his side. He didn’t have a weapon. He hadn’t brought one. But he didn’t need one. He had his chains. He had his fists. And he had a very, very motivated lightning wolf who had been cooped up for far too long.

  A silent command flowed through their bond. Fang Fairy materialized beside him, her ethereal, storm-goddess form a stunning, almost profane, slash of beauty against the serene, cartoonish landscape of the Slime Plains. Her golden eyes surveyed the bouncing, gurgling slimes, and then looked at him, a silent, questioning amusement in her gaze. This, Master? This is our great battle?

  “It is not a battle, Fang Fairy,” Lloyd replied, his voice a low, determined murmur, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. “This… is a harvest.” He pointed towards the teeming, endless field of glistening, oblivious prey. “And we,” he declared, his voice ringing with the grim, joyful purpose of a man who has finally found a clear, tangible path forward, “have a quota to meet.”

  —

  The Slime Plains were a deceptive, almost whimsical, landscape. The air was clean and still, the impossibly green grass felt like soft velvet beneath his boots, and the slimes themselves… they were almost cute. They jiggled. They bounced. They made soft, wet, squelching sounds as they moved, their translucent, gelatinous bodies pulsing with a gentle, inner light. They were less like monsters and more like oversized, sentient, and slightly moist, children’s toys.

  This, Lloyd thought with a grimace as he approached the edge of the teeming field, is going to be profoundly, comprehensively, undignified.

  He could have unleashed the Spear of Justice. A single, medium-yield strike would likely have vaporized a hundred of them in a brilliant, satisfying flash of azure light. But the energy cost was immense. It was like using a tactical nuke to deal with a gnat infestation. Overkill. Inefficient. A waste of the precious, shared energy pool he and Fang Fairy possessed. The Major General, the master of logistics, recoiled from the sheer, unprofessional wastefulness of it.

  No. The goal here was not speed; it was efficiency. Maximum yield for minimum expenditure. This was a grind, and the first rule of any successful grind was resource management.

  “Alright, Fang Fairy,” he said, his voice a low murmur, as they stood at the edge of the bouncing, gurgling horde. “New rules of engagement. We need to conserve energy. Low-cost, high-repetition tactics. The Spear is off the table unless one of these things turns out to be secretly a dragon in disguise.”

  Fang Fairy tilted her head, her golden eyes surveying the field of jiggling, seemingly harmless blobs with a look of profound, almost regal, boredom. Your orders, Master? her silent thought was a hum of contained power. Shall I… shock them? Gently?

  “An excellent idea,” Lloyd agreed. “But let’s be surgical about it.” He envisioned the plan, a simple, repeatable, and hopefully energy-efficient, assembly line of destruction. “I will handle containment and initial weakening. You will handle… final sanitation. Understood?”

  A flicker of understanding, and perhaps a hint of amused compliance, flowed back through their bond. As you command, Master. The sanitation detail accepts its duties.

  Lloyd took a deep breath and stepped into the field. A dozen nearby slimes turned their featureless, gelatinous forms towards him, their gentle inner light pulsing with a flicker of what might have been mild, bovine curiosity. They bounced towards him, their movements slow, almost playful.

  He raised his hands, the familiar thrum of his B-Rank Steel Blood answering his call. He didn’t form a cloud of razor-wires, nor a solid, kinetic projectile. He willed a different form into existence. The chains.

  With a silent, fluid whisper, two thick, heavy chains of gleaming Ferrum steel erupted from the air before him. They did not fly; they slithered, moving with the speed and sinister grace of striking cobras.

  Chapter : 486

  One chain shot out, wrapping itself around a cluster of three bouncing slimes, cinching tight. The other lashed out, ensnaring another four. The chains didn’t cut. They simply… squeezed.

  The effect was… strange. And deeply unsatisfying.

  The slimes, caught in the constricting steel embrace, did not cry out. They did not struggle. They simply… compressed. Their gelatinous bodies yielded to the pressure, bulging grotesquely through the gaps in the chain links, their inner light pulsing erratically. It was like squeezing a handful of very large, very resilient, water balloons. The chains held them fast, yes. But they weren't being damaged. Their strange, amorphous bodies seemed to absorb the kinetic force of the constriction with a frustrating, almost mocking, ease.

  Lloyd frowned beneath his mask. Kinetic force ineffective, his internal analyst noted. Their bodies are non-Newtonian fluids. They resist impact through viscous dissipation. Squeezing them is like trying to punch water. A new approach is needed.

  He looked at Fang Fairy, who was observing the scene with an expression of patient, analytical interest. A new command flowed through their bond. Plan B. The Lightning Cloak. Not the full-body aura. A focused application. Channel a low-level current through my chains.

  Acknowledged, Master. Calibrating output to… ‘mildly unpleasant’.

  Fang Fairy raised a single, slender finger. A thin, almost invisible, tendril of azure lightning, no thicker than a piece of string, leaped from her fingertip and connected with the steel chains Lloyd was still mentally holding. The gleaming steel, a perfect conductor, instantly became a conduit for her power. The chains began to hum, to crackle, a faint blue light playing along their surfaces.

  The reaction from the bound slimes was immediate, and far more gratifying.

  The seven slimes, which had been placidly enduring their constriction, suddenly began to vibrate violently. Their inner light flickered erratically, flashing from blue to white to an alarming shade of greenish-yellow. A high-pitched, sizzling sound filled the air, accompanied by the unpleasant smell of boiling gelatin. They jiggled, they convulsed, and then, with a series of wet, pathetic, popping sounds, they dissolved into steaming, bubbling puddles of viscous, bluish goo.

  [Slimes Killed: 7]

  The notification chimed in his mind, and a progression bar, stark and unforgiving, appeared in his vision. [Slime Cull: 7/1000].

  Lloyd let the chains dissipate, a slow smile spreading across his face. Okay. So they’re not resistant to being cooked from the inside out. Good to know. The tactic was effective. He contained them, she provided the lethal, electrical current. A perfect, synergistic system.

  They fell into a rhythm. A grim, repetitive, and surprisingly tedious, dance of death. Lloyd would send out his chains, binding a cluster of the bouncing, oblivious creatures. Fang Fairy would send a low-level jolt of lightning through the steel, and the slimes would pop, dissolve, and add to the growing number of steaming, gooey puddles that now dotted the pristine green landscape.

  Bind. Squeeze. Jolt. Pop.

  Bind. Squeeze. Jolt. Pop.

  It was a brutally efficient, almost industrial, process of extermination. But it was also… mind-numbingly boring. The slimes offered no resistance, no challenge. They simply bounced, gurgled, and died with a pathetic, wet sizzle. There was no thrill of combat, no tactical challenge. It was just… work. A repetitive, grinding, and increasingly sticky, job.

  After what felt like an eternity of this assembly-line slaughter, Lloyd paused, taking a moment to check his progress. The progression bar glowed with a number that was both a testament to their efficiency and a monument to their boredom.

  [Slime Cull: 482/1000]

  Almost halfway. He glanced at Fang Fairy. Her ethereal form was still bright, her power still immense, but he could sense the subtle drain, the constant, low-level expenditure of her energy. He felt it too, a dull ache behind his eyes, a weariness in his own Void reserves from the constant manifestation and control of the chains. This was efficient, yes. But it was still a grind. A long, slow, and increasingly monotonous grind.

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  He looked out across the endless, teeming plains of glistening, jiggling slimes. Five hundred and eighteen to go. He let out a long, weary sigh. The path to power, it seemed, was not just paved with danger and intrigue. It was also paved with a great deal, a truly staggering amount, of slime goo.

  Chapter : 487

  The green plains of the Soul Farm had become a landscape of methodical, sticky genocide. The air, once so pure and neutral, was now thick with the faint, almost sweet, smell of boiled slime and the sharp, clean tang of ozone. The pristine grass was dotted with hundreds of steaming, viscous puddles that sizzled and popped before slowly dissolving into nothingness, a testament to their grim, repetitive work. Lloyd felt less like a mighty warrior and more like a celestial exterminator, engaged in the most bizarre, and most tedious, pest control operation in the history of any universe.

  The rhythm was ingrained now, a muscle memory of will and power. Manifest the chains. Ensnare a writhing, jiggling cluster of the oblivious creatures. Signal Fang Fairy. A silent pulse of azure lightning down the steel conduits. A chorus of wet, pathetic pops. A brief, almost smug, flicker of the kill counter in his mind’s eye. Rinse, and repeat. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.

  He had lost all track of time, lost in the monotonous, almost meditative, cycle of slaughter. His initial satisfaction at their efficient system had long since evaporated, replaced by a profound, soul-deep boredom that was almost a physical weight. The Major General, the man who had planned multi-pronged military campaigns and thrived on the complex, high-stakes thrill of tactical warfare, was now engaged in a battle with an enemy whose only strategy was to jiggle menacingly and then die with a sad, squelching sound. It was an insult to his very nature.

  He tried to entertain himself to pass the time. He experimented with his chains, no longer just binding, but trying to slice the slimes in half. The result was unsatisfying; their gelatinous bodies simply oozed back together, their inner light flickering with what might have been mild, bovine annoyance before he had Fang Fairy electrocute them anyway. He tried using his Black Ring Eyes, creating a constricting ring of energy around a single slime. It squeezed it, yes, turning it from a sphere into a grotesque, pulsating hourglass shape, but it refused to pop. It simply jiggled with a new, compressed intensity. He sighed and had Fang Fairy zap it.

  Fang Fairy herself seemed to be sharing his profound sense of ennui. Her initial, almost regal, stillness had given way to a posture of supreme, divine boredom. She would sit, perfectly poised, on a small, grassy knoll, her silver-grey hair stirring in an unfelt breeze, and would, with a flick of her slender finger that was the very picture of bored, celestial indifference, send the necessary jolt of lightning down the chains. Her golden eyes, which had at first held a spark of analytical curiosity, now held the flat, glazed-over expression of someone who has been forced to watch the same, incredibly dull, theatrical performance one thousand times in a row.

  Master, her silent thought was a hum of pure, unadulterated tedium in his mind, is the complete and utter eradication of this particular species of gelatinous lifeform truly critical to our long-term strategic objectives?

  It is critical to acquiring the one thousand System Coins necessary to ensure our continued survival against the reincarnated, trans-dimensional assassins who are likely plotting our gruesome and untimely deaths as we speak, Fang Fairy, he sent back, his own mental voice dry and weary. So yes. The jiggle-pocalypse continues.

  A silent, ethereal sigh seemed to pass between them, a shared moment of profound, soul-deep boredom.

  The kill counter ticked upwards, a slow, agonizing crawl towards their distant, glorious, and seemingly unreachable, goal.

  [Slime Cull: 713/1000]

  [Slime Cull: 714/1000]

  [Slime Cull: 715/1000]

  Each notification was a tiny, insignificant drop in a vast, tedious ocean. Lloyd’s mind began to wander, drifting away from the monotonous task at hand. He thought of his factory. He wondered if Mei Jing had finalized the new distribution contracts, if Tisha had managed to quell the latest riot at the gate, if Borin had accidentally invented a self-peeling potato that could also calculate trajectories for siege weaponry. He thought of his classroom, of his strange, brilliant students. He wondered if Borin Ironhand had managed to forge a practice sword with a perfectly balanced pommel, if Nira of Silverwood had figured out how to use her light magic to create a solid, defensive wall.

  Chapter : 488

  He even, to his own profound surprise, thought of Rosa. He pictured her in their silent, chilly suite, her head bent over some ancient, leather-bound tome, her veiled face a mask of cool, inscrutable concentration. He wondered what she was reading. Was it a treatise on advanced frost magic? A history of the ancient southern dynasties? A detailed manual on the proper care and maintenance of a profoundly annoying, sofa-dwelling husband? With her, it was impossible to say. The thought, which would have once been a source of pure frustration, now held a strange, almost fond, sort of mystery.

  His distraction, however, proved to be a tactical error.

  He was in the middle of ensnaring another cluster of the bouncing, gurgling blobs, his mind half-occupied with calculating the potential profit margins of a self-peeling, artillery-calculating potato, when a new, unexpected variable entered the equation.

  From the heart of the teeming slime horde, a new sound emerged. Not the usual gentle, wet squelching. But a deep, resonant, and distinctly, alarmingly, angry, GLOOMP.

  A section of the plain, about fifty paces away, began to tremble. The smaller slimes in the area bounced away in a sudden, frantic panic. The ground bulged upwards, and then, with a sound like a giant pulling his foot out of thick, cosmic mud, a new creature emerged.

  It was a slime. But it was not a small, cute, melon-sized slime. It was a King Slime. A monolithic, quivering mountain of translucent, royal-blue gelatin, easily the size of his father’s ducal carriage. It was crowned with a small, almost comical, golden crown that seemed to be fashioned from the same solidified, gelatinous material. And at its center, suspended in the quivering, semi-liquid mass, was a single, massive, and distinctly, furiously, baleful, glowing red eye.

  The King Slime let out another, even louder, GLOOMP, a sound that was less a gurgle and more a concussive, bass-heavy thrum that vibrated through the very soles of Lloyd’s boots. It had clearly taken exception to the ongoing, systematic genocide of its smaller, jigglier subjects. Its single, massive red eye fixed on Lloyd, and he felt a wave of pure, simple, and surprisingly potent, malevolent intent wash over him.

  Well, now, Lloyd’s internal monologue commented, a flicker of genuine, surprised interest cutting through the thick fog of his boredom. That’s new.

  Fang Fairy, who had been lounging in a state of regal, divine ennui, was instantly on her feet, her boredom vanishing, replaced by a low, predatory crouch, the lightning aura around her flaring back to life with a renewed, vicious intensity. Master? her thought was a sharp, clear query. New target designated? Threat level… moderate?

  The King Slime glooped again, then it launched its attack. It did not bounce. It did not jiggle. It compressed its massive, gelatinous body, then launched a pseudopod, a thick, whip-like tendril of royal-blue slime, at him with startling, unexpected speed.

  The slimy whip cracked through the air, aiming to splatter him into a fine, lordly paste.

  “Fang Fairy, intercept!” Lloyd commanded, his own battle instincts roaring back to life, the boredom instantly forgotten.

  Fang Fairy moved, a blur of silver and azure. She met the slime-whip head-on, not with a lightning claw, but with a crackling shield of her Lightning Cloak. The slime tendril sizzled and steamed as it made contact with the high-voltage aura, a significant portion of it instantly boiling away into a foul-smelling, bluish vapor. But the sheer kinetic force of the blow was immense. Fang Fairy was knocked back a few feet, her ethereal form flickering for a moment before stabilizing.

  The King Slime, its initial attack thwarted, reared back, its single red eye glowing with an even more intense, furious light. It was preparing for another, more powerful, strike.

  Lloyd grinned, a genuine, wolfish grin of pure, unadulterated, combat-fueled joy. Finally. A challenge. Something to break the monotony. Something to fight.

  Fang Fairy, his mental command was no longer weary, but sharp, exhilarated. Forget sanitation. Full power. Let’s show his jiggly majesty what a real storm looks like. He raised his own hand, the air around it already crackling, the blueprint for a beautiful, sharp, and very, very pointed, Spear of Justice already forming in his mind.

  The grind was over. The hunt had just gotten interesting again.

  —