The rain had not let up for two hours. Her only protection was her Beginner's Mage Cape, hood up.
She was cold, but she did not care.
Fortunately, the eastern Virmion Forest was quiet, save for the endless drumming of water on everything. It seemed even the monsters stayed in under this weather.
Good. For their sake.
She was not in the mood.
Suddenly, her right sole slipped on a smooth rock, and she stumbled backward. She caught her balance, but she was quick to get mad at herself. Her body tensed, fists clenched.
Biting her lower lip, she swallowed a curse.
"Just keep walking," she whispered.
Nothing about this made sense.
They had saved at the only Unus's landmark, a fountain downtown. If either of them died, they would respawn there after a one-hour wait.
But he didn't die! We were inside the Town Hall. I even happened right in front of the Mayor!
Questioning that NPC had not cleared up a damn thing. According to the Mayor, she had finished processing Alan's request and turned away for a moment. Then Astrid's distressed voice had pulled her attention back.
Astrid had grabbed other Users by the collar and screamed in their faces, but not a single User or NPC had seen what happened to him.
And Alan did not exactly blend in. That only made her more anxious. It was impossible that nobody in the building had noticed a five-foot-nine young man with hair as red as a stop sign vanish into thin air.
Even the bitches in town kept sneaking looks at him, until they met my glare!
She snarled, then shook her head hard, as if scolding herself. This was not the time for that.
A flash of lightning lit the path for an instant and revealed a cave in the distance. The entrance to Caeruleum Mountain. Nobody in the Eurola region had a reason to come back here.
But for Astrid Bradford, it was the last place left to check.
She had searched all of Unus Town without rest, even barging into NPCs' homes. She had crossed the Virmion Forest from west to east, screaming his name.
Only the mountain and its caves were left.
"Equip torch," she said once inside. The System conjured a stick of wood with cloth wrapped around its tip, and she lit it with basic pyromancy.
"I just need to make sure," she said aloud, her voice echoing off the rock.
As she moved at a steady pace, a memory of their first conversation at the Alvearium Enterprise headquarters resurfaced.
"Anyway, I'm Alan Warden. What's your name?"
"Astrid Bradford."
"Astrid. Cool. I'm eighteen years old. You?"
"...Me too."
Astrid cringed in the dark at the memory. Had she lied to him?
Technically, yes. Not really, though.
I didn't want to get into the details. Or rather, I didn't want to scare him off.
Her right hand closed around nothing above her chest. She had reached for a necklace without thinking. An accessory that had not come with her into The Novus.
Eventually, the torchlight spread out. She had finally reached the heart of the mountain, a wide cavern with a high ceiling, and the territory of a dangerous boss.
A monster she had accidentally woken up on the first day.
And now my carelessness is coming back to bite me in the arse, and at the worst possible time. I bet it's still around here. Nobody could beat it back then, and unless someone has a vendetta against it, there's no reason to hunt it.
She steeled herself and moved forward, ears straining. Any wet wobble. Any dragging sound.
The good news: unlike the Weasenox, this monster was not smart enough to sneak up on her.
Or so she thought.
Something heavy slammed down a foot away. The shock knocked her to her knees and scraped her already torn stockings.
Where did that come from?! Was it stuck to the ceiling or what?
The torch flew from her hand, but it still lit a small patch of ground. Her soon-to-be battlefield.
Astrid looked back at a large, round mass looming over her. It wiggled menacingly, rippling across its translucent body.
Did this thing remember her?
Oh, shit!
It lunged to swallow her whole, but she saw it coming. She had already learned its attack pattern, back when she had practically summoned it by slaughtering its brethren for hours.
Too late for an apology, huh.
The gelatinous thing searched for her with two tiny white eyes. The moment they met hers, a name and title appeared above it.
~ Slomiak ~
* King of Slimes *
* Sovereign of Caeruleum Mountain *
Besides being level 10, its Boss status boosted its stats by a fixed multiplier Astrid did not know.
Although she was level six, she still did not run.
She rose to her feet and extended one hand to her side.
"Sorry for being such a wanker before, but could you let me go just this once? Please?"
The monster let out a war cry like a trumpet underwater.
She exhaled.
With no weapon in hand, she took a combat stance as magic circles bloomed around her wrists.
"I'm really not in the mood for this right now…"
Even as one of The Novus's beta testers, Astrid had never seen the monsters that would later inhabit it, so she did not know the Slime King's weakness. Still, she had an advantage only someone with inside info could exploit.
Astrid could cast magic without a staff.
"Twin Blaze!"
Two fireballs burst from her palms and slammed into the King head-on.
The instant smoke rose, Astrid sidestepped. A long tentacle whipped through the space she had just left.
She might have no data on Novus monsters, but one week in had taught her this: the game's difficulty was cranked to max.
At least compared to the other simulations I've done.
She fired off more fireballs in rapid succession, toward where the tentacles came from. Direct hits.
The King's HP bar showed the fire had chipped away 30% of its massive pool.
She could do this. She could take on a boss without a weapon.
A Magic Staff was great for mana efficiency. It cut spell costs by almost half. Depending on the quality of the core or orb at its tip, it could also amplify a spell's power.
What it could not do was speed up casting.
But Astrid had spammed the same Fire Spell for a week. The cast time, the method, and the cost were burned into her muscle memory by now. As long as she kept her focus, she could rapid-cast.
Right now, her outstretched arms were the conduits.
"Twin Blaze!" she shouted again, dodging another whip.
Then the inevitable happened. Her hands smoked. Her skin turned red-hot, as if she had plunged them into boiling water. That was another perk of staves: they took the strain of unleashing mana.
"Bloody hell," she hissed through gritted teeth before checking her MP bar.
Going by how fast her mana had drained, she had just enough to reduce the monster to a puddle of goo. But would her hands hold out?
"Sod this," she muttered, grabbing the torch and bolting toward the caves deep inside the mountain.
The Slime King did not like that. It gave chase at an impressive speed for something with no limbs that basically just rolled forward.
See? This is exactly why I say the Novus difficulty is set to max!
"What's your problem, Slomiak?! First Bosses are supposed to be nothing but hit sponges, you fucktard!"
A bridge stood between her and the tunnels. For a second, her mind conjured the image of her right foot punching through a plank and the gap swallowing her whole leg.
Stop being negative, Bradford!
She crossed it anyway, and the wood held. But could it hold the monster?
She glanced back for an instant. The giant ball of living gelatin seemed to be weighing its options.
Forget it. Even if it makes it across, it's too big to fit in the tunnels. I'm almost there!
Then she heard it. Something dragging across wood.
She looked back and found the slime had stretched itself out and was slithering forward like a serpent. In its new form, its weight spread evenly across the planks without a problem.
Alan, where are you? You disappear, and I get a stalker.
She got into the narrow tunnel, but a long tendril caught her waist and anchored her in place while the rest of the slimy body caught up. When the Boss reverted to its round shape, the walls squeezed it tight, engulfing Astrid completely. The torch in her hand went out.
The true terror of the Slime King had begun.
Its gelatinous body did not just dissolve everything inside like a stomach full of acid. It also drowned its enemies.
Her body felt twice as heavy inside it. She held her breath and tried to walk forward, but the slime kept creeping ahead, canceling out every step.
Every inch of her skin burned, from head to toe. She was literally submerged in acid. She looked down and saw her dress slowly dissolving like paper. Even looking hurt her eyes, so she shut them.
She imagined herself going balder by the second.
Funny where my priorities are when every cell in my body is about to be consumed, not just my hair.
She only thought of it because of him.
Back in the real world, she had once caught Alan Warden staring at her over breakfast. When she asked if she had something on her face, he chuckled and propped his chin on one hand.
"I just think your hair's really pretty. It looks like fine strands of gold."
Even with her eyes closed, she could see her MP bar.
If she had learned anything about Novus magic, it was that it was flexible.
Just half a day ago, I came up with a brand-new spell, right? What's stopping me from doing it again?
For anyone, the only requirement was understanding how mana flowed.
Checked.
And knowing what form to give it.
By improvising.
She channeled mana as she always did, drawing it from her core and coating it with the Fire Element by filling herself with a strong emotion, like anger or bloodlust.
I really want to kill this thing, so that's easy.
The next step was to concentrate it into a single point. With a staff, she would conduct her mana from her core, through her arms and hands, and into the stone at the tip. Without one, she had used her arms as conduits to cast Blaze.
But this time, I'll conduct it through my whole body: shoulders, elbows, knees, soles, buttocks, lower back, shoulder blades, nape, and the top of my head.
Finally, she only had to speak the Words of Power, the step that was basically pulling the trigger. But when Astrid opened her mouth to yell, only muffled, broken sounds came out. It sounded like gargling vomit.
Doesn't matter. I didn't say a thing earlier either. I just have to pay the price.
No Words of Power existed for this spell yet. To unleash what she pictured, and had gathered across her body, she had to skip the step entirely, the same way she cast spells without casting.
By paying with a chunk of my HP. So here it comes, you giant pile of snot! Eat this!
Magic circles spun around Astrid as she radiated energy, like a fuse about to blow. Which was exactly what happened.
All that energy burst out at once and blew the slime apart from the inside.
The tunnel lit up for a brief instant as slime splattered across the walls and floor, the biggest chunks burning away fast.
Astrid fell to her knees, gasping for air and coughing violently, hacking slime out of her throat.
Without a moment's rest, a System Message was already pestering her to name the new spell.
"What—cough—ever! I don't—cough—caaare!"
Suggesting a name…
Would you like to name the new spell 'Royal Firestarter'?
"Sure—cough—why the hell not!"
Assigning a new name.
Congratulations, you have successfully created a new Fire Spell.
~ Royal Firestarter ~
"I hope I don't come up with a better one later on…"
She winced as she struggled to sit, back against the rock wall. Fortunately, thanks to the darkness, she could not see the missing skin and exposed muscle on her arms and hands as she tapped her User Interface.
Her HP hovered at 23%. Then 22%.
The slime acid coating her body was taking its sweet time to evaporate.
A red potion appeared in her palm, and she thanked her past self for buying a pair back in town. One of them was meant for him.
She chugged it as Alan's remark came back to her.
"It tastes like blood…"
She spat out a bit of the liquid as she laughed. "I can taste it now. You were right!"
Even laughing hurt, but only for a moment, as her HP climbed back to green at 82%.
If she'd had night vision, she could have watched her skin heal in real time and her lost hair grow back.
She stood up too fast, then stumbled.
Her HP might be in good shape, but her stamina was completely drained.
When was the last time she ate something?
"Who cares," she muttered, moving on slowly, one hand pressed to the wall on her left.
Her foot knocked into something light and charred. Her torch, now reduced to a third of its original size. She lit it and continued.
Astrid remembered the way back to the spawning caves, every turn and every fork. She was good at this, even if she loathed that part of herself.
The part that reminded her of her formative years. While other kids her age goofed off, her digital self had explored dungeons with no textures applied. Nothing but narrow white corridors and endless dead ends that tested her patience.
This tunnel layout is a piece of cake compared to what those arseholes put me through.
Eventually, she reached an area the faint light of the dying torch barely covered, but her mind filled in the gaps. She stood in front of what looked like a beehive. Except instead of honeycomb cells, there were hundreds of individual caves, six by six feet, about the size of a small restroom.
She stood there, waiting for any sound to reach her ears. The torch finally died, and the darkness swallowed her again.
"He's not here."
Exhausted, she sat down, pulled something out of her inventory, and hugged it.
It was the mage staff Alan had picked out for her as a reward for beating the Weasenox. She had not wanted to risk breaking it against the Slime King.
I'd never forgive myself if it even got scratched.
Because deep down, something told her this staff, this gift from Alan, might one day become a grim memento.
She hugged it tight against her chest while a system window hovered at eye level: her friend list, showing Alan's status as 'Offline'.
She, more than anyone, knew what Offline really meant. And yet she had stubbornly clung to the possibility that this was just an error.
He's out there. In the real world. But why?
Only two possibilities existed. Either Alan had been forcibly awakened on the orders of the Santa María's Captain, or he had died in cryosleep.
BUT I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT'S THE CASE!
No matter how dangerous, thrilling, or scary The Novus could get, passengers could not die of a heart attack in there.
And there are failsafes and redundancies that alert the ship to any malfunction.
But even with all those security measures, accidents could happen. Hundreds of variables were in play.
This is just a quick fix, right, Alan? Your pod only needs a--calibration! Yes! You'll be back in a heartbeat, right?
Right?
With no choice but to wait until morning, she finally gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep.