The Slime King’s Unexpected Mutation

Wawalde spoke, “Ah, I neglected to inform you, my clone can only be deployed once more today. As for ‘Holy Slash,’ I have but three uses remaining.”

‘To lay bare his life-saving trump cards so readily? This imbecilic dog’s mind must surely be muddled by slime mucus.’

Sovenia replied:

“That will suffice. Upon sustaining enough damage, the Slime King will cleave itself thrice, growing progressively weaker with each division. Once it has split twice, the four remaining slimes will be indistinguishable from common large slimes. By the way, this is salt.”

With a graceful motion, she extended the wrapped salt towards him.

Simultaneously, her mind replayed the chaotic three-way battle in the throne room, meticulously tallying Wawalde’s uses of his clone and Holy Slash to deduce the full extent of his daily capabilities.

‘In her former world, such a reckless divulgence of life-or-death trump cards was tantamount to a death wish. Wawalde was destined to learn this harsh lesson eventually.’

Wawalde then inquired:

“Now it’s your turn. Tell me, Miss Sovenia, what of your own capabilities? Beyond your proficiency with spell scrolls and your astonishing knowledge of demon lore, do you possess any other particular talents?”

Sovenia would never divulge the secret of her golden finger to anyone; not even the Demon Queen, through her formidable pressure and severe punishments, had managed to extract it from her.

“I… I truly don’t know. My mind feels utterly muddled… There are moments when it seems as though I could accomplish something, yet in the very next instant, that sensation vanishes entirely. Thus, it would be best if you simply regarded me as an elven princess who merely hurls magic scrolls.”

“Is that truly the case? It appears our lovely princess is perpetually shrouded in an aura of mystery. Very well, then; I shall await with anticipation.”

Without pressing further, he rose to his feet and murmured softly, “Echoes of the past, manifest before me.”

From a patch of shadow some twenty meters distant, a doppelganger bearing Wawalde’s exact likeness materialized. It clutched a glob of slime mucus, smeared it across its form, and then vanished behind a nearby boulder.

With all preparations meticulously concluded, they were ready.

Wawalde offered Sovenia a brief nod.

Sovenia, understanding his unspoken cue, retrieved the pebbles she had prepared earlier. As she weighed one in her palm, noting its diminutive size—no larger than her little finger—a wave of profound sentiment washed over her.

‘To think, ‘back in the day,’ I could single-handedly hurl a charging war ox clean over the city walls…’

‘And now, less than a day into this new existence, each minute stretches into an eternity.’

Taking a deep breath, she coiled her body, drew her arm back, and unleashed a mighty swing.

The pebble, imbued with her full, albeit diminished, strength, arced in a pathetic trajectory, traveling perhaps forty meters before silently plinking against the distant Slime King. It merely elicited a minuscule splash of mucus, failing to create even the slightest ripple.

A pall of absolute silence descended upon the cavern, broken only by the faint, rustling squelch of the slimes’ movements—a sound that seemed to morph into soft, derisive snickers, as if mocking her profound impotence.

No, that wasn’t right. Someone *was* laughing. Though barely perceptible, Sovenia’s long, sensitive ears unerringly pinpointed the source of the muffled snickers: it was coming from right beside her.

Her head snapped around, her gaze fixing on Wawalde.

Wawalde’s shoulders were subtly trembling, betraying the mirth he attempted to suppress. As Sovenia’s eyes met his, the faint snickering abruptly ceased.

A faint blush crept across Sovenia’s cheeks as she shot a disdainful glance at Wawalde.

‘What is there to laugh about, you imbecilic hound! Were it not for this accursed body, I’d hurl you alongside that pebble!’

Wawalde cleared his throat, a sound perhaps a touch too loud.

He strode towards a massive boulder, easily half his own height. With a powerful squat, he engaged both his arms and legs, muscles bulging taut, and wrenched the colossal stone from the earth, hoisting it onto his shoulder.

Retreating a few paces, he began a powerful sprint. Upon reaching the edge of a prominent stalagmite, he unleashed a sudden surge of core strength, launching the immense boulder from his shoulder.

The colossal stone shrieked through the air, akin to a cannonball unleashed from a siege engine, traversing a considerable distance before finally, with a resounding ‘boom,’ striking the Slime King precisely upon its crown.

The sheer force of the boulder’s impact utterly dwarfed the feeble strike of Sovenia’s tiny pebble.

The Slime King’s colossal form convulsed violently. Where the boulder had struck, its dark green surface cratered deeply, sending viscous mucus splattering outwards, and the fragmented demon corpses it had enveloped tumbled haphazardly from its mass.

The entirety of the Slime Mire fell into a momentary, eerie silence.

A guttural roar erupted from the abyssal depths of the Slime King’s form. This sound did not seem to emanate from vocal cords, but rather resonated like countless air bubbles detonating simultaneously within its viscous mass—a deep, throbbing sound imbued with a disturbingly thick, sticky quality.

The very rock walls of the cavern quivered faintly in response to the roar, dislodging fine debris that pattered down from the ceiling.

In the immediate aftermath, the entire verdant mire began to churn as if boiling.

The colossal Slime King began its advance. Its immense body, which had previously covered nearly half the cavern floor, now oozed towards the exit, resembling a dark green deluge on the verge of breaching its confines.

Its velocity seemed oddly incongruous with its gargantuan mass; though it appeared to merely writhe, each inch of its progress sent tremors through the very ground.

In its wake, innumerable slimes from the mire coalesced into viscous tributaries, trailing their colossal sovereign as they surged forth in unison.

Sovenia remained rooted to her spot, utterly motionless.

The turbulent air currents within the cavern caused her silver hair to stir gently, yet her golden eyes remained fixed with an unnerving calm upon the impending slime catastrophe.

She observed that as the Slime King drew nearer, its immense form, along with the countless lesser slimes, collectively began to almost entirely obstruct the sole exit of the bowl-shaped cavern.

It resembled a colossal cork, laboriously extruding itself from the narrow neck of a bottle. Viscous mucus continuously oozed from the crevices between its body and the cavern walls, emitting a sickening, teeth-grinding ‘squelch.’

The entire cavern entrance now resembled a monstrous birth canal, laboriously delivering tons of reeking refuse. The ground quaked with increasing ferocity, making it nearly impossible to maintain one’s footing.

Wawalde stepped forward, his searing longsword already unsheathed. Without glancing back, he addressed Sovenia:

“Very well, Your Highness, the time for our withdrawal has arrived.”

Sovenia, stepping past him, hushed, “Shh… not a sound. Just a moment longer.”

Finally, after a prolonged, violent struggle of writhing and squeezing, the Slime King’s gargantuan form erupted from the cavern entrance with a sickening ‘pop.’

In its wake, the long-dammed torrent of slimes instantly found its release, surging from the cavern entrance with astonishing velocity, like a flood unleashed from a broken dam.

A verdant wave of viscous slime surged forward, teeming with countless writhing individual masses—a spectacle potent enough to send any trypophobe into an immediate swoon.

This was the moment!

Sovenia swiftly unfurled the ‘Ascending Ring Fireball’ spell scroll.

She articulated a single, resonant word in the Demonic tongue: “Fire.”

Ancient demonic runes flared to life across the parchment.

The ambient fire elements rapidly coalesced, and a fist-sized fireball shot forth towards the slime horde. In a mere second, it swelled to the formidable size of a millstone, its blazing orange-red light suffusing her alabaster face with a fierce, crimson glow.

The colossal fireball, trailing a magnificent plume of fire, ripped through the cavern’s gloom and plunged with unerring accuracy into the heart of that verdant, undulating sea.

“Boom—!”

A deafening explosion ripped through the air, sending a scorching shockwave rippling outwards in all directions.

Flames ravenously consumed all in their path, instantly transforming the cavern’s mouth into a raging inferno.

The ground and cavern walls, touched by the inferno, erupted into a furious conflagration. Within the searing flames, countless slimes writhed in voiceless agony, their bodies rapidly boiling, evaporating, and carbonizing under the intense heat.

A pungent, acrid stench, a sickening blend of sulfur and charred protein, instantly permeated the air.

The fiery glow illuminated Wawalde’s face, his emerald eyes mirroring the dancing flames. Before this inferno stood the slender, silver-haired figure, utterly composed.

He cast a glance at Sovenia, an involuntary nod of approval asserting itself.

Confronted by such a horrifying tide of monstrosities, she exhibited not merely an absence of fear, but also a remarkable blend of courage and cunning, delivering a truly effective strike against their foes. This display of audacity and intellect genuinely compelled him to view her in an entirely new light.

Yet, his nascent admiration had barely taken full shape.

For in the very next instant, Sovenia, who had moments prior embodied the image of a valiant Valkyrie, abruptly pivoted. Her slender legs propelled her into a frantic sprint towards their predetermined safe zone, never once glancing behind her.

As she ran, her clear voice echoed throughout the cavern: “Brave Hero, the stage is now yours! Perform admirably. Oh, and do remember to leave the final blow for me; my ability requires the finishing touch.”

She had already covered more than twenty meters, nearing the colossal stone pillar designated as their cover.

But at that precise moment, a chilling sense of unease settled upon her.

The immense, viscous writhing sound that had pursued her from behind had inexplicably ceased.

A terrifying silence enveloped the cavern, broken only by the incessant crackle and hiss of the consuming flames.

Wawalde’s voice, laced with urgency, cut through the quiet from behind her: “Beware—!”

Sovenia instantly became vigilant, her gaze darting through the surrounding shadows, seeking any lurking slimes. Yet, the deep recesses of the cavern yielded nothing; the shadows were utterly empty.

It wasn’t in their immediate vicinity.

It was behind her.

She spun around abruptly, her pupils constricting with alarming speed.

The colossal Slime King had not, as planned, pursued Wawalde to be ambushed by his clone.

Instead, it had halted at the very edge of the inferno, its immense body bathed in the fiery glow. Its color was visibly morphing, shifting rapidly from its customary dark green to an ominous, deep crimson, akin to a glowing hot iron.

Its colossal body was actively contracting, relentlessly compressing inwards, much like a colossal spring coiling to unleash immense power.

‘Something is amiss,’ Sovenia’s heart plummeted with a sudden, chilling dread.

‘The Slime King of my memories possessed no such ability. Could it be that its rapid consumption of so many powerful demons in such a brief span had triggered some unforeseen mutation?’

Before her thoughts could fully coalesce, the crimson mountain of flesh, compressed to its absolute limit, erupted with a muffled, explosive roar.

“Boom—!”

The Slime King rocketed from the earth, its colossal body hurtling upwards with a velocity utterly incongruous with its mass. With a sickening ‘splat,’ it slammed heavily against the cavern ceiling, dozens of meters above, its viscous form adhering tightly to the rock before it began to rapidly roll forward.

In a single, horrifying motion, it bypassed Wawalde’s carefully laid ambush.

Like a gargantuan spider launching a sudden assault from the ceiling, it targeted Sovenia and once more propelled itself outwards with terrifying force.

It vaulted over Wawalde, carving an immense arc through the air, and descended with a terrifying, whistling rush, plummeting directly towards Sovenia.

‘Run, you useless legs! Damn it, are these long limbs of this female form merely decorative?’

Sovenia’s frantic pace did not falter, as she exerted every ounce of strength from her elven body.

Yet, before the descending Slime King, her speed was no different from standing still.

She craned her neck upwards, the colossal, putrid-red gelatinous mass filling her entire vision, like a collapsing firmament—a firmament reeking of decaying flesh.