The Hamster Ball Gambit

“Use the orb, quickly!”

Wawalde’s voice bellowed.

To his mind, if the enraged, crimson Slime King was to be prevented from turning the delicate elven maiden into its waste, the only correct course of action was to immediately activate a Force Field Orb scroll, encasing herself in an impenetrable shell.

While Shadow Walk could indeed create distance, in the chaos of such a battlefield, it would invariably lead her to instinctively flee the source of danger, thereby moving beyond his protection as a knight.

The battlefield would then be bisected: the Slime King in pursuit of the isolated Sovenia, and he himself chasing after the Slime King.

Sovenia, however, was a veteran of countless battles and had seen far too much to be so easily caught.

Almost concurrently with Wawalde’s shout, she had already torn open the Shadow Walk scroll.

Black runes dissolved into a wisp of smoke at her fingertips, and her form instantly blurred.

The next moment, she materialized beside Wawalde, heralded by a faint breeze.

A triumphant smile played on her lips as she quipped, “Use what? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Boom—!”

The Slime King’s colossal body slammed down with crushing force, impacting the very spot where Sovenia had stood moments before.

A dull, colossal thud resonated from the rocky ground, and spiderweb-like fissures rapidly spread outwards from the point of impact.

The entire cavern trembled violently, dislodging dust and debris from the stalactites overhead.

A massive shockwave surged forth, buffeting Sovenia.

Her frail elven body, unable to withstand the force, stumbled, sending her uncontrollably toppling sideways.

Just in time, an arm encircled her waist, steadying her firmly; it was Wawalde.

The cold touch of his broad breastplate met her, mingled with the scent of post-battle sweat and earth.

‘Damn it… I am Jimi the Cruel, the First Heavenly King, yet now I am so weak that I must rely on my sworn enemy, my executioner, merely to stand steady.’

Sovenia quickly regained her footing, her gaze fixed on the Slime King.

Having missed its strike, the Slime King’s colossal form writhed on the ground, repositioning itself.

Sovenia felt as though its ‘face’ had locked onto her, which was odd, as slimes were not supposed to possess faces.

The crimson goo coating the Slime King’s surface churned with even greater ferocity, like boiling water.

“Watch out!”

Wawalde uttered a low growl, gently pushing Sovenia behind him before gripping his scorched longsword and charging towards the surging behemoth.

Before Sovenia could even exhale in relief, a series of sizzling sounds erupted behind her, prompting her to whirl around.

Behind her, the wall of fire, conjured by the Ring of Fireball spell, was currently being extinguished by countless smaller slimes, each sacrificing itself in a relentless wave.

They smothered the flames with their viscous bodies, emitting incessant sizzling noises and plumes of acrid white smoke.

Though the foremost ranks of slimes were incinerated into charred, gelatinous masses, their brethren behind them relentlessly surged forward, trampling over the corpses.

A verdant tide breached the fire line, oozing towards Sovenia, their solitary target, from all directions, forming an ever-tightening encirclement.

Ahead lay an “ocean” of slimes, while behind her loomed the Slime King.

Wawalde had to dispatch the Slime King swiftly, or she would be engulfed by these diminutive creatures.

‘I cannot simply wait for death.’

Sovenia sprinted directly towards Wawalde’s clone; in her desperation, she resolved to act, turning to shout at Wawalde’s retreating back, “Hurry, you foolish dog!”

Her voice, owing to the delicate structure of her elven body, rang out with a surprising clarity.

Wawalde didn’t catch the full phrase, only the encouraging sentiment in the maiden’s voice: “Right away, Miss Sovenia!”

His longsword instantly erupted with a blinding white light. “Holy Slash!”

A blade of divine light, honed to its absolute peak, shot forth from the weapon, cleaving precisely into the Slime King’s body, passing directly through its viscous form and leaving a linear fissure in the cavern ceiling behind it.

The Slime King’s body was bisected cleanly down the middle, sending dark green bodily fluids mixed with half-digested demon remnants splattering everywhere.

Yet, the anticipated division into two distinct halves did not occur.

Just as the wound was about to cleave through its entire mass, the demon corpses within it stirred to life.

Mutilated bodies extended their stiff arms, grasping each other and forcibly pulling the sundered form back together like grotesque sutures.

Witnessing this, Wawalde immediately snatched a handful of salt from a pouch at his waist and scattered it, but against such an immense body, the meager amount was akin to throwing a cup of water onto a raging inferno, merely producing a few wisps of white smoke upon contact and proving utterly useless.

‘Damn it! The intel was flawed!’

Sovenia’s heart sank. ‘It must be due to the devoured demon corpses. Damnation! No wonder the reward was so generous.’

Without hesitation, Wawalde raised his sword once more.

Another Holy Slash whistled forth, this time finally annihilating the tenacious regeneration completely.

After a final, resentful convulsion, the Slime King finally split into two ‘junior’ Slime Kings, each noticeably smaller yet still immense.

Only one Holy Slash remained.

Sovenia mentally calculated, silently praying Wawalde had held something back, underreporting his remaining Holy Slashes.

Before her, slimes of all sizes were now perilously close.

Their crawling pace was not swift, yet their sheer numbers were overwhelming, forming a slick, verdant carpet that surged towards Sovenia.

They seemed to harbor an intense hatred for Sovenia, who had just immolated their brethren with fire.

She glanced down at the sacrificial dagger in her hand, intended for her own demise, then up at the surging tide of slimes.

She felt like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

She was caught between a rock and a hard place, forced to await Wawalde’s defeat of the Slime King, but he had only one Holy Slash left, and…

‘I cannot entrust my life to another!’

Sovenia rapidly scanned the battlefield.

Her gaze landed near the two ‘junior’ Slime Kings.

As they had split, several demon corpses and weapons had been flung out, scattering across the nearby ground.

She pointed at a demon-standard single-handed sword protruding from a pile of corpses not far away, and shouted to Wawalde, who was locked in fierce combat, “Quick! Throw me that greatsword over there!”

“Quickly, use the Force Field Orb!” Wawalde roared back, simultaneously unleashing his final Holy Slash to bisect one of the ‘junior’ Slime Kings once more, temporarily alleviating his pressure.

The other ‘junior’ Slime King seized the opportunity to spray a large amount of glue-like slime at him; he rolled clumsily, only dodging half of it.

Even so, in a brief moment of evasion, he precisely flicked the demon single-handed sword with the tip of his own blade, sending it flying towards Sovenia.

The sword arced through the air, and Sovenia caught it with the unerring accuracy of a dog retrieving a frisbee.

‘The Hero truly is a useful, foolish dog,’ she mused internally, gripping the hilt with both hands.

The hilt felt cold and rough in her grasp.

The blade was too wide and too heavy; she could barely lift it even with both hands.

Facing the relentlessly advancing swarm of slimes, her figure appeared exceptionally fragile.

Yet, she had no intention of fighting, not yet.

“Have your clone kick me!” she yelled to Wawalde again. “Kick me towards the spot where I burned the slimes earlier!”

Wawalde, struggling to fend off the combined assault of two large slimes and the ‘junior’ Slime King, turned his head for a quick glance, utterly baffled by her outrageous request.

“What? Are you trying to commit suicide?”

To kick an unarmed princess into a horde of monsters? It was sheer madness.

Sovenia had no time for explanations.

She produced her last scroll and tore it open without a moment’s hesitation.

The demonic runes on the scroll emitted an eerie glow, and a translucent sphere instantly enveloped her.

The instant the Force Field Orb materialized, a medium-sized slime, leading the charge, splatted against its surface with a wet thud, unable to advance even an inch, merely writhing futilely on the smooth, spherical shell.

The Force Field Orb sealed off the putrid stench and squelching sounds from the outside world, and with them, the danger.

Sovenia was safe, yet she did not stop.

She turned to face Wawalde’s clone, which stood ready nearby, and through the translucent sphere, she frantically gestured to him.

First, she pointed to her feet, then mimed a soccer kick.

Next, she hunched her body, crossed her arms over her chest, and performed a forward roll within the orb…

She resembled a hamster in a hamster ball, desperately trying to direct its owner to roll it towards its food bowl.

Finally, Wawalde’s clone moved, delivering a kick to the ‘Sovenia-brand’ hamster ball.

“Thump!”

With a muffled thud, Sovenia felt the entire world spin in an instant as the Force Field Orb, carrying her, hurtled away in a high-speed rotation.

She rolled across the verdant “ocean” of slimes, large and small, the orb’s surface emitting continuous, sticky “squelch, squelch” sounds.

Through the blurry green smears, she glimpsed countless writhing bodies below.

‘This feeling… it’s like sailing on a sea of excrement.’

A nauseating thought flashed through her mind.

The tumbling journey did not last long.

After crushing a vast expanse of slimes, the Force Field Orb lost momentum, eventually coming to a halt with a “thud” as it collided with the cavern wall.

The violent tumbling left Sovenia dizzy and disoriented; she lay prone within the orb, taking a full second to regain control of her body.

Lifting her head, she peered out through the relatively clean upper half of the orb’s wall, observing numerous black remnants.

She had reached her destination.

Here, the air hung heavy with the scent of burnt protein, and the ground was carpeted with black debris left by the scorching flames…

…and the spoils of war.

These were cards.

Grey cards, each bearing a colossal question mark on its face, silently awaiting her draw.

She knew she now had to assemble a usable deck.

Sovenia stretched out her hand, gently pressing it against the inner wall of the Force Field Orb, and summoned the golden finger within her heart.

“All-Encompassing Cards, activate!”