Yet Another New Spell

"Whoosh!" A shrill sound of something slicing through the air rang out, and the slime that had bounded out in front was instantly split in two. Wind Blade! At the sight, Vallis and Marcus turned back in surprise. Had Zelier just cast that spell? Had he learned yet another new magic? Ignoring his teammates' astonishment, Zelier, having loosed one Wind Blade, went on to gather the next. With the boost from the ash wood wand base, Zelier's casting time for Wind Blade had been cut to just over three seconds, and its power had risen somewhat. Against slimes, the results were excellent. In raw killing power, Wind Blade was now about on par with a warrior's full-force chop. But Marcus's chop could only bite halfway into a slime's body, while Zelier's Wind Blade cut one cleanly in two. After slicing through a single slime, the blade even carried enough force to bite into the next slime's body and keep cutting. Zelier guessed inwardly. Could it be magic power... Did magic power have some special damage-amplifying effect on slimes? After a brief moment of standing there blankly, Marcus and Vallis threw themselves back into the fight. Except that the party's main attacker had now become Zelier. The Wind Blades he cast were like a hot knife through butter, one of them shaving the bodies off two or three slimes at once, far more efficient than the others. Even when a blade failed to hit the core and kill on the spot, a slime missing part of its body slowed down and lost nearly all its threat, easy to finish off with a follow-up blow. "Whoosh!" "Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!" Invisible blades began rapidly reaping the battlefield, and large chunks of gel lay scattered across the ground, all pieces Zelier had sliced off the slimes. Marcus and Vallis only had to follow up at the right moment, driving a battle blade or arrow into the core to finish things off. "Hah!" Marcus brought down a ferocious shield blow, bursting a maimed slime apart like a water balloon. Vallis simply gave up on his bow and drew the curved blade at his waist to fight. Soon the twenty-odd rampaging slimes had been wiped out entirely, and the last one, trying to flee, was finished off by a Wind Blade from Zelier. The whole battle had been unusually efficient, taking no more than five minutes. "Whew..." Zelier let out a breath. He had cast six or seven Wind Blades in total, and the magic power stored in his sea of consciousness had dropped considerably, leaving about half his reserves. Meanwhile, his experience panel kept climbing. From Lv.3 (33/150) to Lv.3 (87/150), a total gain of 54 experience points. Zelier made a rough estimate: slimes that had died directly by his hand numbered a dozen or so. The rest were slimes he had sliced part of their bodies off with Wind Blades, which Marcus and Vallis had then finished. The experience from those assists should have been counted in there as well. He was still 63 experience short of leveling up... If there were no other monsters, he would probably have to take another quest. "I have to admit, you've far exceeded my expectations." Vallis patted Zelier's shoulder. "You've improved so fast." "Thank you." Zelier accepted Vallis's praise with a smile. A mage who could use Light, Fireball, and Wind Blade was already a prize catch in a low-rank adventurer party, the kind who would never lack for teammates. But some questions were still buried in Vallis's mind. Zelier had now displayed two new spells, and he also had a wand base on him now... That must have cost a fair amount. Could four gold coins buy two magic scrolls and a wand base? No matter how he thought about it, something felt a little off. "We split this payment by proportion. Zelier, you take forty percent, and Vallis and I take thirty each. All right?" Marcus said. Vallis did not object, and Zelier did not demur either, calmly accepting the larger share. He truly had contributed the most in the fight. It was what he deserved. Next, the party began to clean up the battlefield. They had eliminated twenty-four slimes in all, which at the bounty rate came to seventy-two silver coins. This quest was the same as the wild wolf bounty: only the kills were paid for, and the spoils could be handled as they saw fit. Each slime magic core sold for two silver coins on the market, so twenty-four cores would bring in another forty-eight silver. So the real take was one hundred and twenty silver coins, one gold and twenty silver. Zelier would receive forty-eight silver coins. Hmm... Not bad at all. Once all the cores on the ground had been collected, Marcus glanced into the depths of the cave. "Let's go deeper and take a look. There may be more slimes, and we have to wipe them out completely." The commission required a detailed investigation of the situation. And this was a commission issued by the Blackstone Town Administrative Hall. If they were not careful enough and something went wrong afterward, they could be held responsible. "No problem." Zelier had no objection whatsoever. He would be glad to see more slimes. He was short on experience points for leveling up. The group continued onward along the cave. Thin trickles of water had begun to appear on the ground, branching off from the subterranean river welling up deep in the cave. Vallis crouched down to examine them and gave a slight shake of his head. "Just as I thought... There are more slimes inside, and this water is contaminated too." As the party pressed on, the sour, rotten stench gradually thickened and the air grew steadily colder, until it was enough to make a person want to cover their nose. Soon the group heard the familiar "tak, tak" again. Only this time the sound was much heavier, and every impact seemed to set the ground trembling. "Doesn't sound right, does it?" Zelier frowned. "Can a slime pack that kind of weight?" Marcus and Vallis looked much graver too. They slowed their steps and tried not to make any sound at all. After walking several more minutes, a much larger, open cavern finally appeared before them. A branch of the subterranean river cut across it, the current rushing swiftly, and beside the river a giant slime more than three meters across was on the move! It was as bulky as a small hill, its gelatinous body much darker than an ordinary slime's. Its thick body contracted as if gathering strength, then with a "bang" it leaped high and splashed into the river. Great sheets of spray burst up, and where the water washed against the giant slime's body, it immediately turned thick and sticky. Streams of unknown fluid wound away along the subterranean river, flowing toward Blackstone Town. Zelier could also see many small slimes separating from its body and then fusing back into it, a dense, heaving mass that made the skin crawl. "What the hell is that thing?" Zelier asked, fighting down his disgust. "A giant slime," Vallis said softly. "Counts as an anomalous variant of the ordinary slime. Very troublesome."