Path of the Dragon Mage: (Nomad) 64: Level 1 (Patreon)

One level 20 slime stood right in their path.

It looked like a slightly green raindrop with a darker green center. As Corvus watched, it jiggled back and forth, and the top elongated as if it were reaching for them.

"What do we do?" Starella asked. "Where are we?"

"Surrounded by enemies," Corvus said. “Watch out for these. They're dangerous." He withdrew his short swords from his scabbard and stepped forward.

But before he could take more than a couple of steps, Roan suddenly shoved him out of the way. "Stay back. It's my job to protect you."

Then, he brought his warhammer down.

The slime exploded exactly as if someone had punched a bowl full of bone-jelly. The only reason why Corvus wasn't splattered was because Roan big body acted like a shield in front of him.

"Gross, Roan!" Gwen complained.

"Was that really necessary?" Starella demanded.

"Guys." Corvus pointed ahead. The water droplets — the slimes — all stopped their jiggling and seemed to turn in place, all facing forward towards them.

Suddenly, a bright message appeared in the sky.

The colony of slimes have sensed an attack!

Use precision to defeat the slimes before they coalesce into the boss!

Suddenly, and slowly, the existing slimes started to move into one another. Two slimes joined together to form a blog twice as big as they had been before.

The closest amorphous shapes turned to them, splitting in half to show greenish teeth.

"We have to fight through,” Corvus said grimly. “We have to kill as many as these things as possible."

"Fine by me," Roan said. "You stay behind me. I'll cut the path."

Corvus answered that by stepping around his friend and bringing his right sword down, cleaving a slime into two pieces. The slime gave an unearthly whistle shriek, and then the two separate pieces jiggled angrily and formed up again into one whole piece.

Confused, he turned. What was left of the slime that Roan had splattered on the ground had reformed as well.

"Corvus! Duck!" Gwen yelled.

Corvus reacted instantly, dropping to the ground. He heard the thwhip of an arrow overhead. When he looked up it was to see an arrow strike a slime which had been clinging to the hedge bushes a few feet ahead. He was certain it hadn't been there a few seconds before. The things moved slowly, but constantly. If he made the mistake of taking his eyes off of it, he was in danger of losing track of where they were.

The two slimes he had split apart had rejoined and was reaching and amorphous tentacle towards him. He quickly stepped back out of their reach. But that made him lose all the ground he had covered.

Meanwhile, Roan had slammed two more slimes with his hammer, but the splatters that had hit the ground were only congealing again.

He gave an annoyed grunt. "How do we kill these damn things?"

"I'm not having a problem," Gwen said, laughter in her voice. She pointed to the slime that she'd shot.

Instead of splitting into two pieces or simply healing around the arrow, the slime had deflated like a blatter of water that had popped. Her arrow had pierced the darker green orb inside. As Corvus watched, it darkened and grew still.

Triumphant, Gwen stepped forward and yanked her arrow free of the slime.

When she yanked it out, there was something on the tip of her arrow. It was a green slip of paper.

"Did you just pull a message out of that?" Corvus demanded.

She shrugged and looked at it. "It says ‘Ticket’." And she held it up for the rest to see.

"I don't understand…" Starella said again. She hadn’t budged an inch, just watched with her fingers twisting anxiously together.

“I'm telling you," Roan snapped, "their magic is insane." He brought down his hammer, splattering another slime.

“Would you stop that!" Gwen demanded. “You almost got me.”

“You saw that sky message. We can’t let—"

"Roan! Stop!" Corvus said sharply.

The other boy turned to him, annoyed. "What?"

“Look at your chest."

Roan looked down and scowled. The splatters of slime were coalescing into a jelly-like substance on his chest, perhaps a centimeter thick.

Roan tried to shove it off him, but his hand pushed through the jelly, and it reformed afterwards. "What the —"

“Roan, take off your shirt," Corvus demanded.

"This is a brand-new uniform. I'm not running around shirtless around your cousin –"

Starella screamed.

While they had been arguing one of the creatures had snuck up on her in a very similar way it had with Corvus. One of the tentacles was wrapping around her ankle.

She tried to kick it away, but the blob released off the ground and stuck onto her instead.

"Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!"

Corvus rushed to her. "Stop dancing around and hold still!"

She did though she still wrung her hands in disgust.

Corvus brought the one sword down, and cleaved a portion of the slime off, but the rest simply clung on stubbornly to her leg.

"It's not glowing," Gwen said.

It took him a moment to realize what she was talking about because to normal sight, the slime was still greenish in color.

But she meant the outline around it provided by the Path system.

The moment it had suckered onto Starella, the outline had changed from red to the green of a normal object.

Starella reached down and tried to claw off the slime, but like the jelly that had attached to Roan, her hands only went right through it and the furrows reformed afterward.

"Is it hurting you?" Corvus demanded. "Any burning? Tingling?"

She shook her head frantically, and though she breathed hard, the edge of panic had dimmed. “No, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just… disgusting.”

"Well, that’s just great. How are we supposed to defeat these things?" Roan demanded.

These were only the first few ranks of slimes. Further on down the tunnel — or hedge row, he wasn't sure anymore— more and more were pulling together.

It hit him then.

"We kill them with precision," Corvus said. "That's what was in the message."

He turned, took three steps, and sliced down on a slime with his with one sword. Instead of using brute strength, he cleaved the slime halfway to the heart of the thing where the green orb was darkest. When he withdrew the sword, it had a ticket stuck to the end. The slime deflated, darkened, and died.

"Give me one your swords," Roan demanded.

Corvus shook his head. "I'm practicing Dual Wield. I need both. Here." He handed over one of his mana needles. It was thin and delicate and absolutely not suited to the stolid boy.

Roan made a face. Then he held the needle between his fingers, stepped forward and stabbed downward at the closest slime wiggling in his direction.

The slime died but when he pulled out the needle there was no ticket.

“Hey, where’s my paper?”

“Give me a needle,” Starella insisted. “I don’t want to get another one of those things on me.”

Gwen was closer and pulled an arrow from her quiver. “Stab with this.”

She made a face very similar to Roan but minced forward with one jelly-covered foot and did as she was told — though her stab was so sloppy she had to do it twice.

The slime died and rewarded no ticket.

They all exchanged looks. Roan shrugged. “Let’s get this over with.”

Clearing the hedges took time. It was easy to kill a slime the first few times with precision, but Corvus found if his concentration slipped he could easily slice a slime in half instead of a clean slice through the middle. The jelly substance didn’t give much resistance.

The hedges curved in a simple maze-like structures and more often than not, they’d end up at a dead end and have to turn back — though not without killing the slimes in the area, first.

One session their fight with the ratkin gave them was not to let the creatures live. One could quickly breed up and reinvest an area.

As they continued, they discovered more and more slimes had converged into larger creatures. These used more precision to kill as the outsides were covered with a thicker jelly surface. It became harder to judge the exact middle.

Eventually, Roan switched out the mana needle for one of Gwen’s arrows as the needle was too short to pierce all the way through the jelly.

Worse was when the slimes fought back.

They were inconsistent. But if one person got close and took too long to strike — or if the slime randomly sensed them— then the slime would strike out with a tentacle.

Once touched, the rest of the slime immediately latched on and was impossible to take off.

By the time they reached the end of the maze, everyone at least one slime on their arm. Starella still had one on her foot.

Roan was by far the worst off, his impatience having gotten the better of him. Three large, converged slimes covered his right arm and had purged with the pieces on his chest. They had crawled ominously to the base of his neck. His whole hand had been encased so through ally it was impossible for him to hold anything in his fingers. So he switched to his left hand.

Unlike Corvus, he wasn’t ambidextrous, so he’d had to be very careful with his strikes.

Finally the hedge mage ended. The narrow corridors opened into a larger grassy park encircled widely by even more bushes. And there, standing in the middle was a collection of what had to be at least forte been waiting for their appearance. It stood at least seven feet tall and was roughly human shaped with two arms and two limbs and one bulbs head. No neck to speak of.

Floating throughout the mass were the same greenish orbs that existed inside the smaller slimes.

As they came into view, the creature’s head split in two and it let out a roar.

Gwen didn’t waste a second. Before the roar was through she had knocked an arrow and loosed it. The arrow hit true right at the orb over where the heart would be in a person.

The orb flicked and died but the creature didn’t seem to notice or care.

It took one ponderous step forward.

“Split up,” Corvus barked. “Don’t let it trap you against those hedges.”

He didn’t want to think about what would happen if a slime that size glommed onto someone.

“I don’t have enough arrows to hit all the orbs,” Gwen said.

“Starella, Roan, you distract it. I’ll come in from behind.”

Starella stared at him. “How do I—“

Roan let out a roar and charged the creature.

It turned his way and lashed out with an arm that instantly lengthened into a whipping tentacle. Thankfully, Roan was lighter on his feet than he looked. He threw himself to the side, rolling just under the tentacle’s reach before he was clear.

“Like that but be more careful!” Corvus yelled, darting the other way to try to get around the creature.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have actual eyes and noticed what he was doing. He had to jump almost into the hedges to avoid the tentacle whipped his way.

Starella threw out a hand as if to call the wind. Nothing happened at all.

With a frustrated sound, she turned to the hedges, snapped a twig off one branch and tossed it right at the creature. It did absolutely no damage but that and Gwen’s next arrow did distract it.

Corvus darted in and made a clean slice to an orb on the back of one arm.

With that plan in place, the four of them tackled the boss. Eventually, Gwen ran out of arrows. She couldn’t get close enough to retrieve the ones she’d shot so joined in the game of distraction while Corvus darted in to cut and slice.

Corvus tried to use his Throwing Accuracy skill to pierce one of the orbs using a bladed dart. The dart struck true — he knew for a fact it did — but the orb remained green and healthy.

He suspected this was because he was supposed to be working on his Dual Wield. His throwing accuracy was a separate skill.

Perhaps that was why Roan and Starella didn’t receive tickets. They weren’t part of the Path system. They didn’t receive rewards.

Finally, the boss was riddled. Down to three orbs which were all located deep within his body. It took Corvus some time to precisely stab each, while avoiding being hit by a tentacle.

Finally, he struck home. The tentacle darkened and the creature let out one final roar.

The jelly trembled in rage and then… liquified all at once, splashing to the ground as if by water.

The slimes which had attached to Gwen and Corvus did the same.

The darkened orbs cracked open to reveal red slips of paper. When Corvus bent to examine them he saw each had X10 inscribed on one side.

Suddenly, the sky above them lit with a new message.

Congratulations for passing level one: Precision.

150 Slimes Defeated!

1 Slime Boss Defeated!

Bonus: All Slime Enemies on level defeated!

Calculating experience…

Corvus: 4 Levels (Dual Wield)

Gwen: 4 Levels (Archery)

Null Runtime Error: 0 Levels (No Skills Found)

Null Runtime Error: 0 levels (No Skills Found)

Corvus felt a strange tingle deep in his core. Warmth pulsed briefly through both arms, and he unconsciously corrected his grip on his short swords.

It wasn’t all good news.

“Hey!” Roan demanded. “What about me?” He held up a slime covered arm in annoyance.

He and Starella still had their slimes.

The sky didn’t seem to hear him or care.

A new message floated up.

Would you like to continue to level 2: Strength?

Continue / Exit