Chương 33: Speedrunning The Final Zone

Hm. This is… highly concerning. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Putrescent Slime (Level 39 | Tier 1) Species: Slime Aspect: Flesh A massive slime composed of congealed flesh, blood, and organic fluids. Its body continuously shifts and reforms, producing wet impacts, tearing sounds, and overpowering stench as it moves. Contact with the creature is hazardous due to corrosive biological matter and crushing mass. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Inspect really does say everything that needs to be said.

A room-sized threat to both my eyes and my nose simultaneously. A fearsome foe, without question. Especially considering the fact that its core is fully obscured—and almost certainly buried deep enough within the writhing mass of biology that I can't simply stab it once and walk away dramatically. Unfortunate. Starfire would, as always, solve this problem in seconds. Would, if I could use it.

I take a few deliberate steps backward, eyes never leaving the embodiment of body horror as it oozes toward me at the speed of an extremely motivated snail. While doing so, I spare a quick glance around the forest. Withered trees. Dead bushes. Dry grass. Leaf litter everywhere. No rivers. No open paths. Not even a strip of dirt pretending to be helpful. One spark and this entire zone goes up like a sacrificial offering. Very useful for later plans.

Not so useful when I'm the one who has to sprint through a cloud of ash while continuing my relentless pursuit of Tutorial Points and—ideally—a dragon to dramatically stab to death. Therefore, Starfire is placed under temporary lockdown. At least until the number of Tutorial participants reaches a comfortable, manageable one. Then, well. Accidents happen. Which raises a far more pressing question. How, exactly, do I deal with this?

The stars went quiet about thirty minutes ago when dawn broke, depriving me of their deeply unhelpful habit of offering suspiciously specific advice. Which means I'm on my own. Unfortunate. For the slime. Billions of plans form in my mind—an endless cosmic river of flawless strategies capable of slaying slimes, dragons, and potentially gods. Naturally, I select the best one. The pinnacle of tactical thought. The plan that has carried warriors through the ages. Slice it until it dies. I nod sagely. Yes.

Truly, a genius at work. Which, unfortunately, means I'm going to have to get close. And with Starfire on lockdown, I can't even use my flame shell to burn the smell out of the air. I grimace faintly. My tail flicks in dignified disgust. This is going to suck. I surge forward, sword already in hand—courtesy of me dramatically throwing my sheath aside about an hour and a half ago and then immediately forgetting about it once the fight ended. Didn't need it anyway. It was slowing me down.

I'll just continue walking around with my blade on display like the well-adjusted, perfectly normal person I am. I reach the slime in an instant and begin carving into it with precise Horizon Slashes, exploiting the extended range to maximize carnage while minimizing the amount of it that gets near me. The slime attempts to retaliate. It sprouts fleshy tendrils. Launches projectiles composed of meat and… something that aggressively refuses to be categorized.

Unfortunately for it, I have yet to encounter a monster with anything resembling a reasonable Dexterity investment—aside from the squirrel, and maybe the canopy stalkers if you're willing to lie to yourself. The slime is no exception. Some might argue that dumping nearly half of one's total points into Dexterity is itself unreasonable. Those people have clearly never been systematically dismantled by the equivalent of a weed whacker powered by spite and increasingly questionable physical stats.

In my defense, running fast is very fun. I flick my wrist, batting away a projectile made of meat and mystery organ, and stifle a yawn with my free hand. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Despite my stamina bar being nearly full, I can feel fatigue creeping in. Annoying. Nap time after this. The slime steadily loses mass as I slice, churn, and violently eject pieces of it with every swing. A cut here. A slab there. A few twirls.

Several entirely unnecessary flips. Eventually, the writhing mass diminishes to a manageable size. I step in and cleave it cleanly in half. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Putrescent Slime (Level 39 | Tier 1). A slight experience bonus has been awarded for slaying a monster 5 levels above you. You have gained 49 Tutorial Points. Your race has leveled up to level 35. Your class has leveled up to level 35. Skill Selection Available. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Another level. Very nice.

And another skill selection—which I will, of course, completely ignore for the time being. Experience has taught me that poking that button too early results in a depressing number of repeats and aggressively mediocre copy-paste skills. I'll deal with it later. Especially since the next one might be farther off than expected.

If the last two hours in the final zone have taught me anything, it's that experience gain slows dramatically here—almost as if whatever cosmic entity is responsible for handing out levels suddenly broke into a cold sweat upon realizing how fast my numbers were climbing. Annoying. Vengeance will be mine. … Eventually. I file it away in the mental checklist, then glance back at my handiwork. Calling it a battlefield would be generous. This is modern art. Grotesque, abstract, deeply upsetting modern art.

I nod appreciatively. I am officially an anime character. If dicing a room-sized slime into neatly separated pieces and scattering them across the forest like a cannon with very strong opinions about the color brown doesn't qualify me for isekai protagonist status, then I genuinely don't know what does. I stifle another yawn with the back of my hand. Okay. Nap time. I lower my gravity and hop up to the nearest branch, because the forest floor is now significantly more red—and textured —than it was a minute ago.

A few more hops carry me well away from the lingering stench before I curl up on a particularly inviting branch and promptly pass out. When I wake, the sun is already high, warm light filtering through the sparse canopy. Naturally, I remain exactly where I am for nearly ten minutes. Being able to function immediately after waking up is a rare perk reserved for psychopaths, overworked salarymen, and people who have unsubscribed from the concept of enjoying life.

My peaceful protest against productivity is rudely interrupted when the smell of smoke muscles its way into my nose. I blink. Then I stretch and rise like an overly dramatic cat, limbs extending with deliberate exaggeration as I prepare to investigate whatever fresh nonsense has decided to interrupt my rest. Lightly hopping to my feet, I drop my gravity to its absolute minimum and launch. The branch beneath me snaps instantly as I kick off it like a fox-tailed bullet, rocketing skyward in a clean arc.

Silently, of course. Because Silent Star does not care about physics, structural integrity, or the emotional well-being of trees. I crest roughly ten meters above the treeline and finally get a clear look at what's ahead. … Oh. That's a lot of fire. Not a campfire. Not a controlled burn. Not even a mistake. A wall. A massive, advancing curtain of flame and smoke, orange and red tongues devouring everything in their path while a thick ceiling of ash rolls overhead like an angry weather system.

I spot several birds fleeing in blind panic, wings beating frantically as they try to outrun the expanding wall of regret. Tragic. Naturally, I make the most obvious, morally correct decision available. I sprint directly toward it. My starfire shell flares to life around me as I accelerate, helpfully igniting everything I pass in the process. New plan. No more careful hunting. If the dragon has decided subtlety is optional, then so have I.

Which means it's time to switch to the most efficient experience-farming method known to all realities. Indiscriminate arson. I hit the flame wall in a heartbeat and charge straight through with absolutely zero regard for consequences. The heat is intense—but this zone is so dry that the fire burns fast, chewing through fuel and collapsing into ash almost immediately. The active band of flame is surprisingly thin. And I am so aggressively fast that I clear it in barely a second.

Just long enough to feel the heat kiss my skin before the world on the other side resolves into a shimmering wasteland of scorched earth and rising distortion. I blink. No trees. No bushes. No undergrowth reaching for my hair with malicious intent. For the first time since the mole highway, I can actually sprint at full speed without the constant risk of becoming decorative forest paste. … And I am at least ten times faster now than I was then. My ears perk. My tail sways in barely contained excitement.

Then I Dash. Because instant acceleration is objectively worth the stamina cost. Obviously. Wind curls tightly around me as Slipstream politely asks the air to step aside. Smoke, ash, and embers peel away from my path, leaving the run ahead almost… Peaceful. Well. Peaceful for me. A quick glance back reveals a perfectly carved corridor tearing through the smoke, collapsing violently as embers flare and rush inward to fill the void. Note to self: Slipstream is a very literal name.

I sprint across the featureless wasteland at top speed for nearly an hour, stopping only once—about twenty minutes in—to let my stamina recover before continuing. Judging by the scale of the destruction, this fire has probably been burning for close to a day. Then— Finally— Something that isn't ash. I slow to a stop at the edge of a massive hole. Or rather… A crater. Several dozen meters across. Roughly two meters deep. The center is glossy, almost ceramic, like the bottom of a kiln.

The damage softens toward the edges, transitioning into baked dirt and charred roots where the blast lost cohesion. I stare. Yes. That is extremely concerning. I don't think my current output is anywhere near enough to cause damage like this. Which confirms my earlier suspicion. The dragon is either significantly higher level than me— —or it comes preloaded with attacks that should be considered a war crime. … Or both. Probably both. My tail swishes in excitement… again.

I continue onward, perfectly confident despite the increasingly unsubtle warning signs that I might not be high enough level for whatever nonsense is waiting ahead. Notifications keep rolling in as unlucky undead and forest creatures finish burning to death behind me, nudging my level up to 36. Slow, for now—but the fire seems to be picking up traction. I dump every available free point straight into Perception, silently willing it to hit 500 and unlock another special skill.

The System, in its infinite cruelty, declines. Rude. Still level 36 when I finally reach something new. A city. Dilapidated. Half-collapsed. Standing alone amid endless fields of ash like a bad idea that somehow survived multiple revisions. Crumbling outer walls. Broken towers. And, looming behind it all, what appears to be a palace. … Visible. From outside the walls. I squint. Stupid design for a castle.

Why would you put the palace where every catapult in a siege could line up and take turns pelting it with boulders—or whatever deeply unfair magical nonsense siege weapons are capable of? Judging by the towering fog wall just beyond the city, I'd guess this is the lich's spawn point. The furthest point in the Tutorial. An entire zone sprinted through in a handful of hours. Excellent. Dexterity really is the best stat. I take a dramatic step forward— —and immediately stop. My ears twitch.

I narrow my eyes and look up. Above the city wall, a humanoid figure hovers in the air, massive draconic wings beating slowly. Then it starts flying toward me. Fast. Not faster than me—but closer than anything else in the Tutorial has managed. … Aside from the squirrel. A comparison I'm sure he would not appreciate. Naturally, I wait. My expression smooths itself into a polite smile, perfectly pleasant and revealing absolutely none of my internal thoughts.

He reaches me in seconds, touching down with an appropriate amount of dramatic flair. I take the opportunity to study him properly this time. Wings larger than I am. A long reptilian tail that looks deeply concerning when you imagine it slapping you out of the air. Claw-tipped fingers. Tough-looking red scales covering his extremities. Yellow, slitted pupils. And, of course— An absolute hodgepodge of gear, assembled with the timeless RPG mindset of stats first, aesthetics be damned. I Inspect him. … Hm.

I may have made a minor miscalculation. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Experienced Pyromage [Uncommon] (Level 50 | Tier 1) Race: True Dragon of Flame ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━