In Pursuit
Days passed, and supplies were getting even lower. There was plenty of meat and edible plants, but not everything they needed could be hunted and gathered. They made another detour to a village further down the line, hoping that this time, they wouldn't arrive in the middle of a human sacrifice. Unfortunately, there was no one left to throw onto an altar. The entire place had been leveled, every building smashed and burned, and suffice to say, this town had also been emptied of inhabitants.
"What in the world happened here?" Seraph gasped.
"The village must have been raided," said Shannon.
"I don't think it was that simple. I'm getting a really bad feeling," said Valia. Noah climbed off of Shannon and walked around, investigating the scene. The earth, the rubble, they all held clues.
"Noah, what do you see?" Seraph asked.
"It's strange. All this wood, everything that's been damaged looks burned, but fire didn't do this. It looks more like it was corroded, as if by acid. And the ground... these formations in the dirt are unique. I don't see any hoofprints from horses, no imprints from heavy boots, or even monster tracks. It's all smoothed out, as if someone had come through here with a giant broom, or something huge was being dragged through here.
"We need to get out of here, now. This place is cursed," said Bojena.
Noah picked up a handful of soil. It was blackened, just like the debris of the destroyed homes, and gave an unpleasant sensation against his skin, a toxic sensation he had felt before. "Yeah, it is cursed, Cursed Earth."
"Cursed Earth?" Seraph asked.
"It's a Profane ability, one I encountered in both the library and the field. Just as they can corrupt people with their venom to bolster their ranks, they can corrupt the environment to their advantage. The land is saturated with dark energy, making it utterly toxic and draining the vitality of all who stand upon it. It weakens our bodies and magic, while they enjoy a boost in abilities. All of Welindar was turned into Cursed Earth when Kaisen died, and it can never be reclaimed. You can feel it, can't you? That sensation of cold oil in your stomach, that sudden heaviness in your limbs, that feeling of your mana leaking out of you like blood from an artery? Walking on Cursed Earth is like walking on your own grave."
"If the Profane are really out here wiping villages off the map, we have to stop them," said Valia. "We can't let this continue unchecked, regardless of Lumestada."
Noah wanted to refuse her. For him, the mission mattered more than the civilians, not to mention two members of their group were magic deficient. However, the threat before them wasn't something they could just ignore. If not stopped, it would continue to wreak havoc and chip away at Uther, killing its inhabitants and befouling the land. At the very least, they had to identify the source of the phenomenon and assess the situation. With any luck, they'd could pass the job off to someone else. He removed his hat and sealed it in his ring, releasing him from the headband restraint. He had a feeling that whatever awaited them wasn't something he could face while bound.
"Let's go take a look."
They set off from the destroyed village, following the trail of Cursed Earth, with Shannon and the horses trying to avoid stepping on it. Riding up a grassy hill towards a ridge of trees, they spotted something moving in the brush, and it was big.
"What is that thing?" Seraph asked.
"Damn it, I had hoped I was wrong," Noah cursed. "Be ready. I'll try and lure it out."
He took aim with a phantom gun and shot the shaded mass with a mana bullet. Instead of flinching or falling over from the sensation, the creature lunged in the direction of the shot as if it had been waiting for it. It burst into the light, facing the group without a face. It was slime, a common enough monster in these lands, but they could not compare to this abomination. The most enormous slime Noah had ever seen was the size of a beanbag chair, but this black mass was close to a garbage truck in stature, like a mountain of living tar capable of swallowing their whole group at once. Despite its dark shade, it was also translucent, and within its murky depths, the bones of countless people and animals could be seen floating, the multitude of skulls staring at Noah's group with empty eye sockets. Rather than dissolving the bones, it seemed to be collecting them. The mystery of the missing villagers had been solved.
"They found a way to attach a parasite to a slime core," Noah muttered.
"Making it just weak enough that it can survive in the sunlight," Valia added fearfully.
The slime again lunged towards them, moving with frightening speed, while the ground it rolled across was left tainted. "Everyone, scatter! Shannon, that way!"
The group split up, though the horses didn't need to be told to flee for their lives. Shannon took off in a gallop, following Noah's directions and circling the slime from a safe distance. Noah continued firing mana bullets at the creature, but none of them slowed it down, regardless of the caliber. If anything, they seemed to draw its attention, sending it chasing Noah and Shannon with greater and greater speed. Having no sense of fear or pain, this monster was immune to the effects of his guns. Flashbangs were similarly useless, for the slime had no sight and sound receptors, and any clones or illusory animals he sent running off to distract it were ignored, for they put out no vibrations for the slime to follow.
Seraph tried shooting a beam of light, and though it succeeded in burning away some of the slime's mass, the bones swirling within it, once exposed, helped shield it from his magic, and with his low output, what damage he did inflict was inconsequential. A barrage of wind rings was hurled by Bojena, ripping through the slime like a load of buckshot, but the core remained undamaged, and the slime healed itself instantly. Still not done, Bojena clapped her hands together and separated them, with a sphere of compressed air forming between her palms like glowing smoke. She then raised her arms above her head, with the sphere growing ever bigger.
"Tempest Hammer!"
She threw the sphere at the slime, shredding the ground with wind as it shot off towards her target. It struck the slime in the side, ripping through it like a giant cannonball and spraying aerosolized ooze and powdered bone. Noah conjured a handful of exploding daggers and hurled them at the slime, hitting the wound Bojena had left. They were swallowed whole, and the bombs in the handles went off, blowing open the creature and dumping a truckload of toxic muck onto the ground, but all the damage they inflicted healed in mere moments.
"How do we stop this thing?" Shannon asked.
"I don't know if we can. We're ill-suited for an enemy like this."
With the slime charging towards them, Noah threw a metal spike at the ground. It was a magic tool he'd used before, summoning a wall of packed earth before their foe. The slime crashed into the wall like a runaway car, but simply climbed over it, barely even slowed down. Noah took out one of his tralt jewels, charged with sunlight, and tossed it at the slime like a grenade. The slime swallowed the diamond-sealed gem just as it had the exploding daggers, and within its depths, history repeated itself with a brilliant flash of light. Instead of fire or a shockwave, it was hours of pure summer sunshine collected, stored, and then released in an instant.
Normal people and animals would receive first-degree burns from being near it during the discharge, but for the Profane, it was far more devastating. Though possessing greater resilience to sunlight than upper-ranked Profane, the slime was not completely immune, and almost half of its mass was burned away from the inside, releasing a landslide of its victim's bones. However, though momentarily stunned, its core remained intact, protected by said bones, and it regenerated instantly, then resumed the chase, leaving behind the tralt jewel like a spent battery.
"Shannon, use one of the scrolls in your ring to slow it down!"
Understanding what he meant, Shannon conjured a scroll from her ring, and Noah jumped off her saddle just before she assumed human form. She turned and faced the oncoming slime, and unrolled the spell across the ground. "Molecular Deconstruction!"
Rather than rearranging the materials around her to create something new, she broke down all of the chemical bonds in the soil beneath her, reducing it to its primary elements and grouping those elements together. A great pit opened up in the ground before her, with all of the heavier substances like carbon left behind as a fine powder in the bottom of the pit and all of the gasses released into the air. The slime fell into the pit, just large enough to hopefully contain it, but Shannon staggered from the mana expenditure, having used most of her mana to make the pit as large as possible.
However, before she could rest, Noah pulled her out of the way. Rising out of the pit, a massive limb reached out for Shannon, made of nothing but slime-wrapped bones. It tried to seize her and add her skeleton to its collection, while more rudimentary limbs reached up to pull it out of the pit. Bojena hurled several wind rings to sever the limbs, and though it dropped back into the pit, the limbs instantly rejoined with the main body and once more swung about. Now Noah understood why it saved the bones of its prey. Not only did they provide added defense for the core, but they also allowed the slime to assume rigid shapes.
Seraph attacked in with his knight hammer, charging it with as much holy magic as he could. "Seraph, don't!" Noah shouted, but the prince had already committed himself to the attack, and his body moved against his will.
He jumped up and swung the hammer upon what could be loosely called the front of the creature. The blow of his hammer caused a messy, and disintegrated much of its mass with his holy power. However, though Noah and Shannon were safe, Seraph got splattered. Immediately, the slime's fluid burned through his clothes and began ravaging his flesh, with his veins darkening as his blood was contaminated.
Howling in agony, Seraph collapsed, being burned on the inside and outside. He put every drop of mana he had into trying to purge himself of the corrosive infection and heal, but it was not a fight that could be quickly won. Noah grabbed Seraph and tried to pull him away from the slime, as it was already free of the pit. However, Shannon was still dizzy from her earlier spell, and without her, there was no chance of escape. Noah unleashed his full chemical arsenal on the slime, throwing everything from acid to monster repellent, but nothing was working.
As she watched the slime close in on the three of them, Valia could tell that the situation was dire. If the slime was smaller, she could slice the core without needing magic, but with all that toxic ooze between her and its vital point, killing it with simple technique simply wasn't possible. She had only one option, and as much as she didn't want to use it, she couldn't allow Noah, Shannon, and Seraph to be devoured.
