The sudden attack sent the peaceful Slime tribe into an uproar!
"Pff! Pff!"
"Pff! Pff!"
Frightened by the sudden death of their companion, the Slimes became aggressive in their panic, bouncing wildly through the muddy ground.
As they landed, their gelatinous bodies slapped into the mud and water, repeatedly making squelching sounds.
For a moment, the entire stretch of murky mud seemed to boil.
The Slimes grew restless as their emotions spread among them.
Their two round black eyes, set on either side of their bodies, kept searching for the enemy.
Gauss made no attempt to hide. Instead, he watched the Slimes with interest, recalling what he knew about them.
It was said that even low-level monsters like Slimes could produce stronger individuals. Some could learn Mana Perception, allowing them to lock onto enemies from afar without relying on sight.
Besides Mana Perception, some advanced Slimes were rumored to master powerful abilities such as spellcasting, Form Mimicry, Energy Absorption, Gigantification, and fusion.
Some adventurers even claimed they had seen Slimes stronger than dragons!
But could the Slime race really have the potential to surpass dragons? Almost no one took such drunken talk seriously.
Back to the present, this group of Slimes consisted only of the weakest kind: ordinary Slime Slimes.
After observing with their naked eyes, one frenzied Slime spotted Gauss and his two companions.
No one knew how they communicated with each other, but before long, nearly all the Slimes were looking their way.
Perhaps they had noticed how few enemies there were. After a brief "discussion," the Slime tribe, which was just as prone to "bullying the weak," immediately sprang into action.
"Pff! Pff!" "Pff! Pff!"
All the Slimes bounced toward the three of them, one after another. The twenty blobs of slime somehow made a thunderous commotion.
At the sight, Gauss and the others calmly prepared for their second attack.
Bows were drawn and arrows nocked, triggers pulled, staffs swung.
Another volley of ranged attacks began.
But this time, the arrows Oliver and Meva fired failed to kill any Slimes.
The arrows only sank into the outermost layer of their gelatinous bodies without hitting their cores.
The foreign objects jolted the two Slimes, but did no damage. After a brief convulsion, they caught up with the others.
Gauss, who had taken his time aiming, was the only one to succeed. He used that ability that seemed to slow the world down again, piercing the cores of two more Slimes.
"Crack!!"
The Magic Missiles skimmed just above the ground. After piercing the two cores, they burst into the mud, sending up a huge splash of muck.
It had to be said: with a staff, Gauss's spellcasting had become much more fluid.
At the very least, casting spells empty-handed had never been this precise or efficient.
"Slimes killed *2" "Monster Kill Count: 28!"
Oliver and Meva had not missed the Slime cores because of poor marksmanship. The Slimes' erratic jumps were hard to predict, and their cores were constantly shifting around inside them.
Gauss had managed it thanks to several factors combined: the slow-motion effect of his low-grade Bullet Time, the boost from the Bone Staff, and the Magic Missile's greater speed and wider area of impact compared to arrows.
Nearby, Meva discreetly glanced at Gauss and realized that she had been right earlier: his spells really did travel faster.
That guy had gotten stronger again!
Perhaps encouraged by the many companions beside them, the Slimes weren't frightened by the second round of attacks.
Instead, they sped up and bounced out of the mud, reaching solid ground in the blink of an eye.
That was when Leven and the others appeared.
Leven, the Shieldbearer, and Doyle, the Swordsman, stood up from their hiding places in the bushes.
Daphne, the Cleric, also stepped out from behind a tree, taking up position behind the others and ready to provide healing.
The party's formation snapped into place!
When the Slimes saw their enemies' numbers jump from three to six,
the once-fierce tribe seemed to take a blow to the head, and their charge faltered.
The two Slimes at the very back, their movement hampered by the arrows stuck in them, stopped bouncing altogether.
They trembled where they stood, uneasy.
That was why only Gauss and the others had shown themselves at first: to appear weak to the enemy and make the Slimes "bully the weak," luring them out of the mud.
The muddy ground was clearly no place for the party to fight in earnest.
"Doyle, move up with me!"
Leven didn't give the Slimes much time to react. He shouted, worried that the leading Slime might flee and trigger a rout.
If nearly twenty Slimes scattered in all directions, it would be difficult for a six-person party to chase them down in the woods.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
Leven charged forward in a few long strides, activating a skill at the same time.
"Greatshield Charge!"
With a shout, Leven's face flushed red as he raised the Oak Greatshield before him and charged fearlessly at the Slime horde with heavy steps.
Doyle, holding a small wooden shield, followed behind him and charged as well.
Their "fearless" advance seemed to enrage the leading Slime.
"Da-da-da!"
It leaped forward, leading the charge.
A mouthful of thick, dark green slime sprayed from its mouth.
A large glob of slime traced an arc through the air.
"Splut!"
It slammed hard into Leven's Oak Greatshield.
Fortunately, Leven's wooden shield had ample coverage. And as he charged, he hadn't put all his strength into it; he had kept his body within the shield's protection the whole time.
So the thick slime only splattered across the Oak Greatshield, evaporating into faint white smoke on its surface without harming him.
Leven kept moving, ducking his head and charging on through the slime.
One step!
Two steps!
His huge shield finally collided with the leading Slime.
Though the Slime, over fifty centimeters across, also surged forward at tremendous speed, it was no match for Leven in strength.
"Thud!!"
The Slime, fifty centimeters in diameter, slammed into the shield with a thud. The opposing forces compressed it, flattening it in that brief moment of contact.
The two forces clashed and held against each other for an instant!
In the end, Leven, who had activated a skill, came out on top.
"Haaah!!!"
He drove into a second charge while pushing against the leading Slime, which weighed dozens of kilograms!
"Boom!!"
With his head down and his greatshield braced before him, Leven charged headlong and forced a path through the Slime "army."
The Slimes along his route were sent flying by his tremendous strength.
Doyle, charging behind him, drew his long sword and took on the Slimes.
The ranged fighters didn't sit idle either. They quietly moved to the flank of the battlefield, took aim, and tried to pick off isolated Slimes from a distance.
Gauss should have been with the ranged group, but he had already fired two Magic Missiles and had only enough mana for one more.
Besides, with his teammates fighting at the front, it wouldn't do to launch a spell recklessly.
So he chose to follow Leven and Doyle, holding a small wooden shield up in his left hand to partly cover his face, and carefully trailing behind with a Rapier in his other hand.
"Crack!"
Doyle was clearly no stranger to killing Slimes.
He knocked away a small glob of slime spat by an enemy with his shield, then swung down the long sword in his other hand.
"Cross Slash!"
"Whoosh! Whoosh!"
The long sword flashed white as two swift strikes, one horizontal and one vertical, crossed over the core at the Slime's center with pinpoint accuracy.
"Splatter!"
The core was split into four pieces, and the Slime melted away once more!
"Use your small wooden shields to block the slime. Slimes can't spit slime repeatedly, so once you block it, you can seize the chance to attack."
"But watch out for attacks from the other Slimes!"
"Don't let them swarm around and surround you!"
"Oliver, Meva, provide ranged support when you can!"
Leven shouted the warning at the top of his lungs.
In fact, his first charge had already knocked away nearly half the Slimes, scattering their formation.
That had neutralized the most dangerous first wave.
Now was a good chance to kill them.
Gauss had naturally heard Leven.
He followed Doyle's example and went after a Slime.
It was a glob of slime only thirty to forty centimeters across, its whole body giving off a powerful stench of decay.
It had probably taken the full force of Leven's strongest charge.
Now it was wobbling and writhing, dazed, while the core inside its body trembled violently and moved unpredictably from side to side.
This was an instinctive way for them to protect themselves, preventing enemies from easily striking their cores while they were dizzy.
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