Slowing Mucus, Flash Movement!

The Snail-Shell Parasite understood Lucas, but it did not stop.

It dragged its heavy gray-white shell forward, secreting translucent mucus from beneath it and leaving a wet, gleaming trail across the deck.

Several pirates beside Lucas rushed at it with blades drawn. The first to step into the mucus lurched to a halt. It was as if someone had poured industrial-strength glue onto his soles; even with all his strength, he could barely lift one leg, drawing out a long, transparent strand.

"What the hell is this?!"

The crewman behind him could not stop in time and stepped into it too. The men who had been closing in were suddenly stuck where they stood.

This was D-03's skill, [Slowing Mucus].

Lucas clearly knew what it could do. He stayed well away from the mucus trail.

Short blade in hand, he circled in from the side. Water burst beneath his feet as he closed on the Snail-Shell Parasite in an instant, his water-sheathed blade slashing straight for its exposed neck.

D-03 reacted at once. Its head and upper body snapped back, and in the blink of an eye, its entire body vanished into the enormous shell.

Clang!

The blade struck the shell with a deafening metallic crash that rang across the deck. Several nearby crewmen winced as their eardrums throbbed.

A clear slash mark cut across the gray-white shell, but D-03 inside was unharmed.

Skill: [Shell-Wall Defense]

Lucas's expression darkened further.

He knew better than anyone how hard this test subject's shell was. It had once belonged to a seventh-tier Magic-Patterned Rock Armor Snail. To improve D-03's chances of survival, the laboratory had revised the fusion process and changed shells more than a dozen times before finally getting this one to fuse completely with its human body.

An ordinary sixth-tier attack