Chương 406: (399) 6.13. A Slimy Situation

New elite monster discovered! 500 exp gained. Despite the fact that it was traveling through thin slime rather than water, the large eel moved fast, going from the edge of Vin's Tremorsight range to nearly on top of him in a split second. He had no idea how the monster was able to see anything down here, or how anything was able to see anything down here for that matter, but that was a question for later. At the moment, he had larger things to worry about.

Vin's first reflex was to fire off a Stone Shot, but if the spell didn't work underwater, he had a pretty good feeling it wasn't going to work in all this slime, either. Same with Fireball, which really limited his options. Deciding he'd start working on figuring out a third combat spell before too much longer, Vin went with his next-best option. Punching the thing in the face when it lunged forward and tried to bite him.

Vin's golem arm flashed blue as it slammed into the side of the eel's head, sending it careening away through the slime for a few dozen feet. Unfortunately, the slime did an excellent job at diminishing the eel's momentum, and the eel itself didn't actually seem all that fazed by his blow. In fact, Vin had felt like he'd punched a giant water balloon, and he blinked as he realized the eel monster was probably closer in consistency to some sort of jellyfish.

Blunt force probably wasn't going to work on it all that well. He was tempted to tug on the rope and let Shia yank him out of there, but he wasn't too worried just yet. He'd at least stopped casting Enhance Gravity, so he was drifting downward at a far more leisurely pace now. As he sank, he watched through Tremorsight how the eel finished shaking off his blow, silently turning and angling its body at him once more before diving at him yet again."

Aqua Sphere," he muttered through a mouth full of slime, shuddering at the unique taste combination of socks and kelp he received for his efforts. A large sphere of water erupted around him, pushing away at the slime and allowing him to halt his descent easily enough as he paddled in place. Far more curious was how the eel reacted. The moment the water spun into being, the eel slowed to a stop, its head turning this way and that as though its prey had vanished entirely.

Even so, it refused to swim away, slowly beginning to circle the sphere of water as though looking for a way in. Vin knew that monsters were able to detect the magic radiating off of anyone who got too close, but from how the eel was acting, it seemed as though the creatures from this world required the slime in order to 'see' what was going on around them. He could only assume they had their own form of sonar, similar to dolphins and whales back on Earth, but a version that required slime for it to travel through.

The monster could sense him due to the magic radiating from him, but it couldn't see him with its sonar now that he was out of the slime. How interesting… Vin watched the eel swim around him for another few minutes, noting how fluidly it moved about. It wasn't often he got the chance to observe monsters from up close, and especially not elite ones.

This eel was easily twenty feet long from tip to tip, and if it hadn't been for Tremorsight, he would have probably been bitten in half before he even knew what was happening. The monster was fast, which meant anyone who lived in this fragment either had to be equally fast, or also have their own version of slime-sonar to give them ample warning that something was approaching.

Deciding he'd watched the eel for long enough, Vin switched from curious observation to trying to come up with a way to actually deal with the monster. It seemed harmless now, but he knew the moment he set foot within the sea of slime it would be on him in a heartbeat. Monsters existed to consume magic, which made him an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord in the eyes of the eel. It was their very biology. Though perhaps the eel's biology was also the solution to taking it out.

Figuring the idea was worth a shot, Vin waited for the eel to swim up and over his Aqua Sphere once again, before casting a new spell. Enhance Gravity. This time, directly on top of the eel. The eel was all but yanked downward into the water as its gravity tripled without warning. The moment it broke free from the slime and hit the water, the monster began thrashing about, desperately trying to fight its way back into the sea of slime.

Not willing to let that happen, Vin swam closer and started grappling it, even casting Binding on the monster in order to lock part of its tail against its own upper body. Now forced into the shape of a ring on top of losing the slime it had spent its entire life living in, as well dealing with Vin actively grappling it, the monster really wasn't able to go anywhere, and it thrashed about for another minute before its movements began to slow down.

Eventually, they stopped entirely, and Vin let out a sigh of relief as he let go of the eel and drifted back. Just like how the creatures and monsters of this plane required slime to see, it seemed they required it to breathe as well. He'd managed to drown the giant eel in his sphere of water, which seemed rather ironic. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Elite monster taken care of, Vin let Aqua Sphere come to an end, getting slapped in the face by the thin slime as it flowed back over him. The water from his own spell didn't actually disappear, but without his magic keeping it in a spherical shape, it seemed to get almost absorbed by the slime around him, or at least displaced somewhere else fast enough that he couldn't tell where.

Leaving the body of the large eel behind him, he turned and began swimming down, pushing himself through the slime as he searched for any signs of life within the sea of slime. Swimming increased to lvl 17! 1, 700 exp gained. Seeing as he was functionally swimming through what felt like pudding, Vin wasn't surprised in the slightest to see his Swimming skill tick up. In fact, it was probably only because of his high Swimming skill he was able to move about as easily as he was down here in the first place.

With a strength attribute of 20, his physical prowess was at about peak human levels from back on Earth, but he doubted even an Olympic swimmer would be able to maneuver around all that quickly down here. Vin swam about for another thirty minutes, only encountering a small number of regular monsters for his trouble. These were more like piranhas with limbs, and he managed to kill each one with a punch from his golem-arm without any issue.

He'd been trying to hold back on a wide cast of Sense Soul in order to not risk losing his divine boon, but it seemed he was going to have to risk it if he wanted any chance at finding the people who actually lived in the sea of slime. Crossing his fingers, Vin tweaked the spell, sending out a powerful burst of magic that swept the entire fragment in seconds. Returning no hits whatsoever beyond his own teammates. Vin frowned, scratching at his slime-coated head as he wondered what that meant.

The obvious answer would be that the people from this fragment had in fact been wanderers, and they'd simply moved on to a different part of their world before this chunk was ripped away to form Edregon. Or perhaps they had moved on to a different fragment post Edregon's creation, which would explain why there was nobody here now. The only other answers were that everyone who had once lived here was now dead, that everyone living in here had no soul, or they had some method of hiding themselves from his spell.

No matter what the answer was, Vin had no easy method of finding them. Deciding not to tire Shia out, Vin turned and swam back up to the surface, following the rope so as to not get lost. The closer he got up to the top of the sea of slime, the thicker the slime got, and the more Vin had to struggle to keep moving upward.

In the end, he had to tug on the rope and get some help for the last couple of feet, before he popped up into fresh air once more, spitting the nasty slime out of his mouth as he tried to get slime out of his ear.

"So, how was it?" Shia asked, laughing as he struggled to hop up and down on the bouncy slime to clear his ears.

"Meet anyone interesting?"

"No, I couldn't find anyone. And Sense Soul didn't give me any hits either," Vin admitted, casting Create Water and using Runic Recalibration to turn the stream into that of a hose in order to wash himself off.

"Seriously? Damn it, I've got to stop betting against the rat," Shia grumbled, pulling another chunk of cheese out of her pocket and handing it over to an excited Reginald.

"What did you bet?" Vin asked, laughing as Reginald started on his mid-day snack with gusto.

"I honestly expected you to find pulmons down there," Shia admitted.

"I mean, come on. Fragment filled with slime. They're sort of made of slime. I thought it was obvious."

"By that logic, wouldn't we all come from fragments filled with nothing more than mounds of flesh?" Vin asked, raising an eyebrow as Shia blinked.

"Huh… Point taken."

"Also, pulmons are more like gel than slime," he corrected, gritting his teeth as he tried and failed to get rid of the slime that had somehow gotten wedged up inside his ear.

"Lumel's skin is soft and lightly moist, not gooey and wet like this fragment." After a few more failed hops, Vin had a much brighter idea. Casting Mage Hand, he ever so carefully felt around in his own ear canal, grinning as he used the minute fluctuations in gravity to extract the slime and toss it to the ground. He let out a sigh of relief as his hearing was returned to normal, before turning to his companion.

"Either way, regardless of who used to live here, they're not here any longer. There's some super-cool life swimming around down in there, but none of it is sapient. We're good to leave this fragment behind and head onto the next one."

"It is sort of nice being able to bounce around up here without worrying about monsters," Shia admitted as Reginald hopped back across to Vin's pocket.

"And seeing as it's not stupid hot like it is in the red desert, this might be the new go-to fragment for dangerous spell testing. Want to swing by the dungeon before we leave for ease of access?"

"That's probably a good idea," Vin agreed, sighing as he realized that meant he was in for another dip.

"Come on, it's in this direction." Now that his Dungeoneering skill had reached 15, Vin was able to sense the precise location of a dungeon the moment he set foot on a new fragment. It would have been a fantastic addition to the skill, if his own Sense Dimensions spell wasn't already able to do the exact same thing. At the very least, when it came to the sea of slime, he didn't have to swim around for miles hunting for the dungeon.

He and Shia were able to run across the surface, coming to a stop a few miles away at a spot that looked just like everywhere else, other than the fact that Vin could sense the dungeon located on the sea floor beneath them.

"Be back in a sec," he said, tugging on the rope to ensure it was secure before casting Enhance Gravity and getting sucked into the slime once more. He'd already reapplied Replenishing Breath and was actively casting Tremorsight, so Vin watched his surroundings warily as he drifted down toward the dungeon. Thankfully, he wasn't set upon by any monsters this time around, and he touched down gently on the sea floor. Landing amid a field of corpses.