Slimes

Immediately, I’m surrounded by an open grassy plain, dotted with slimes around the area. They all notice me and start to move towards me. They’re slow moving green blobs that don’t really have any kind of a form. They look about how I expected they would look, so I throw an observe at them to see if there’s anything interesting I can find.

I’m happy to see that I was right about them being weak to magic. The description isn’t quite correct about their movement speed, after watching them for a few seconds, I can tell that they move at a pretty slow walking pace. Not quite the pace of a snail, but nowhere near quick either. Considering that speed, this fight doesn’t have to be a very fast paced one, so I have time to plan out my actions and strategy. My high intellect and wisdom are helping quite a bit for the speed of my thoughts, so as long as I plan carefully, this should be a fairly easy encounter.

Step one is to test exactly how weak the slimes are to my frost magic. There’s one slime a few metres from me, so I decide to use it as my test subject. Casting freezing blast, I watch as the slime visibly and significantly frosts over. It isn’t completely frozen, but it mostly is, and it’s movement speed is reduced to an actual snail’s pace.

I use the spell once more, and the slime completely freezes over. With my cryomancy passive at level 6, the freezing effect now lasts for 2 seconds. In that time, I dart forwards and stab the slime with the steel knife that I unfortunately still have to use, to see what happens. The slime dissolves into nothingness and I check the XP that it gave me.

25xp

Not too bad, especially for such a near effortless kill. My mana bar is still mostly full at 210 and I check around me to see where the other slimes are. Turning in a circle, I see that while the slimes have moved closer, there are none of them currently in a dangerous range. Now that I’ve completed that test, I can figure out a proper battle strategy.

It takes two freezing blasts, or 16MP to freeze a slime. The spell works in a 45 degree cone and has a range of 5.6 metres at level 6, meaning that I can freeze a couple of slimes at a time. The best strategy would be to try to freeze multiple at a time, then stab them all. That would help me conserve mana, and expose me to minimal risk. I shouldn’t freeze too many at a time, because I won’t be able to get to them all in the two seconds that the effect lasts for. I should keep it to a maximum of two or three slimes at a time.

I also need to take care to not let them touch me. I’m not entirely sure how they attack or deal damage, but video game knowledge and common sense, says that they’ll do damage if they touch me. With my mana regen at nearly 15MP per minute, as long as I take it slow and steady, I should be able to make it through this fight with minimal damage and most of my mana bar full.

There are a group of three slimes coming closer to me. I wait until they’re in range, then use the spell twice, freezing all three of them. I dart between them, stabbing them once each. They dissolve and I get three more 25XP notifications. I smile at the results. This should be easy.

The first problem I run into comes in the form of a lot of the slimes not being bunched up. There are a lot of slimes coming towards me completely on their own. I solve that by walking in circles around a small group of them. I have a quick walking pace, so I can walk rather than jogging. This works quite well, and I have XP notifications rolling in one after the other. Unfortunately, I miss a slime coming up behind me at one point, as I’m conducting my strategy.

It’s touch burns my leg and I instinctively leap backwards away from it. I realise a split second later that the movement has nearly put me in range of another slime, and I quickly retreat from that one too. Jogging into a space in the plain that is relatively far from any slimes, I look at my leg. The burning sensation is still there, albeit lessening. A nasty smell and a soft sizzling sound is present and steam is coming up from where the slime touched.

My jeans aren’t completely burnt through yet, and I do the first thing I can think of, rubbing my leg on the grass to try get rid of any of the acidic slime that’s trying to burn a hole through my leg. It works, sort of, and the burning sensation goes away. I look at my health to see how much damage that did. I currently have 72HP, down from my 100HP maximum. That did a lot of damage.

That does kind of make sense, the slimes are relatively easy to kill but they also apparently would have an easy time killing me. A reminder that this situation could turn out very deadly for me. I turn my focus back to the slimes, making sure to be extra careful to not let them touch me, now that I know what they’re capable of.

I manage to get through most of the rest of the horde with only one more minor injury, reducing my HP to 61 before I manage to scrape the acidic slime off once more. A quick observe on my jeans confirms the durability is at 30%. I take some steps back from the remaining singular slime, having killed all the others. I’ve been keeping track of how many I’ve killed, and I’ve currently killed 29, meaning that the entire horde that I’ve faced, originally consisted of 30 slimes. That’s not too bad all things considered.

I use the repair function of craft on my jeans, restoring them to their maximum. It does cost me 32MP, courtesy of the jeans being slightly magical in their nature. I step further back from the slime coming towards me. I kite it around while I wait for my mana to regenerate fully, reasoning that as soon as I kill this last slime, the boss is going to spawn.

I’m reminded of the fact that this is a well known Call Of Duty zombies tactic, to kite around the last crawler in a round or sit on top of a box where it can’t hit you, while your teammates run to get food or go to the bathroom, or just for your team to take a rest before the next round starts.

I never played the zombies mode in those games, partially because I never had friends to play it with, and partially because I was never much of a fan of multiplayer games. Titanfall 2 was the only game I really enjoyed playing with a team, and even then, I played with complete strangers.

I shake my head slightly to clear my mind of stray thoughts, and focus on the battle in front of me. The fight against the regular slimes has been fairly slow paced and not all that exciting, and the slow pace of the encounter has meant that I’ve been able to preserve as much of my mana as possible. As my mana bar tops out, I walk towards the slime and cast freezing blast twice at it. The slime freezes, and I stab it, getting one more kill confirmation notification, before the expected boss notification comes through.

A large shadow forms on the ground a few metres away from me, and I look up to see a giant mass of green slime falling down towards me. I scramble backwards to get out of the way, as the slime hits the ground after a few seconds of free fall. A distinct thump is heard as it hits the grassy field and the impact ripples through its huge body. It does not seem fazed in the slightest by the impact.

What’s particularly strange about this boss in comparison to the others that I’ve faced is that it makes no noise. It’s body is exactly the same green amorphous blob as the regular enemies, except it’s about twice as tall as me and a lot wider. It certainly makes for an easy target to hit, but from the size of it, it can probably take a lot more punishment than the regular slimes can.

As I read the window, a part on the side of the body of the Slime King starts to bubble in a strange way. I look at it for a second before realising that it could be the start of an attack and that it’s facing directly towards me. I manage to move out of the way just as a column of slime shoots out towards me, hissing through the air where I was standing half a second before. I throw a mana bolt at the creature, and it burns a small hole through the boss.

More bubbling on more spots over it’s body, the wound from my spell starting to close over. I make sure to move out of the way, now that I know what’s coming. Multiple columns shoot through the air, most in random directions, but two aimed at me. I dodge them once again, and run towards the boss. As soon as I’m in range, I fire off two freezing blasts. Icicles form over the creature’s body. The description on the boss window was definitely accurate in saying that the King can take more punishment than the lesser slimes.

I fire one more freezing blast and the movements of the King visible slow. Seeing an opportunity, I fire another blast and the King freezes completely. I move in closer and stab at the frozen boss. My steel knife opens up a deep cut on it’s body, and I slash again, wounding it further. The freezing effect wears off and before I can react, the King’s body expands slightly once before expanding much more quickly, like a balloon being blown up and suddenly popped. I scramble backwards, managing to avoid the brunt of the Slime King’s attack but still getting a lot of slime on me.

Frantically, I retreat while scrubbing the slime off of me. The hissing sound and burning smell is back, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that touching the Slime King has the same acidic effect as touching the lesser slimes. A quick check to my health bar once the hissing has stopped, reveals that I’m only at 24HP. Shit.