Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Forty-Four

< < Item Purchased > >

< Spidersilk Pouch >

< 0 Points Remaining >

For his remaining eighty points, Weaver had made him a sack that would be able to hold quite a few things inside, and, importantly, protect them from Adam’s body.

Thanks to a suggestion from Finnian, who was hovering nearby, Adam discovered that he could push the spidersilk pouch inside his body, making it both easier to travel with and harder for anyone to steal. At the same time, he’d found that he could also store the glass heart inside his slime flesh without any harm coming to the relic, and he’d placed it in the exact middle of his chest. Amusingly, the golden-orange light inside it glowed through his body, which he thought might serve as a distraction from his five cores that he had left to their own meandering orbits inside his limbs and head.

Adam tested the night moth’s bracelet as he left the market, and after a bit of trial and error, he discovered that its cooldown was something like five minutes. It recharged the marbles at the same speed no matter if he was close to light or submerged in shadow, but he wondered if it was because it was currently night. If that was the reason, it might stop charging during the day.

The marbles would turn a dull grey after activation, and the relic could be used after all of the marbles were filled with the oil and smoke again. It was indeed a way to teleport, but it only worked within an area of about a hundred metres from where he stood, and only if it was within his line of sight.

After the small detour to test the bracelet and the mobility of his unfamiliar body, Adam returned to the player house and spent half an hour beating up the training dummy. He’d asked Finnian how to change his body to perform some of the special attacks that slimes possessed, but the slime emperor’s descriptions hadn’t been very helpful. Based on his explanation, Adam assumed the transformations were completely instinctual to the slime, since the advice had boiled down to “swing your fist to punch”, while completely skipping over the fact that Finnian was altering the very composition of the slime in his body as he fought.

If Adam focused on his fist when he swung, he was able to turn it into a spike like the purple slime’s attack, but it unequipped his shapeshifter’s claw when he did it, and it was hard to do it without concentrating completely. As such, he gave up the idea for now.

Surprisingly, using the claw, which enlarged before an attack, made his white slime hand go on the outside of the glove and balloon in size, and its double damage and impact obliterated the simple straw dummy. It was certain to be powerful against the goblins.

He had thought to try the ash and fire brooch on the defeated dummies, but it had no effect, making him wonder if it only worked on living things, or perhaps only on players. The latter made some sense, given that it’d come from Fal, who lived in the dimensions of dead players and people.

Adam wanted to test out whether he could shoot acid from his body, or create spikes from places other than his hand, but Parvillo informed him that he didn’t have much time left, so Adam left it for now and went downstairs to the basement restaurant.

“Show me everyone I know and have met in my previous loops,” he told Parvillo.

To Adam’s surprise, everyone except Emelia and Beck appeared. Those two had been killed by the Flayed Lady’s sadistic display earlier, but it wasn’t until now that Adam realised they had actually perished. It was like a cold spike through his lungs.

I’ll make her pay for this.

Kat was there, her self-inflicted wounds healed by the island.

“I thought she would have made them block me, so she could use them against me later,” Adam said.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

[She attempted such a thing, but I prevented it. Likewise, you are seeing players who are not currently in the tavern. The Flayed Lady will not be allowed to hide them from you.]

“That’s a lot of favours you’re doing for me.”

[As I have stated previously, all I do is in the interest of fairness. You are given certain liberties and aid due to the situation.]

“Then I won’t squander the opportunity,” Adam said and pulled out his challenge stone.

He had plenty of targets to pick between, but given how the Flayed Lady had already treated Kat, he thought it would be best to take her out first, before she was tortured further.

But there are a lot of people that have been powerful in my past loops.

Alexander Nova, Hiroshi Sakurai, Haoyang, Arturo Molina, Anri aka. Mórrígan, as well as all of Adam’s past friends, like Willow, Lenard, Gladwyn, Lasse, James, and also past enemies like Ilya, Juliette, Kate, and Aeran. This time, his family was alive as well, specifically his sister Helena and her husband Christian, not to mention everyone from his office, such as Sharon.

He didn’t yet know how much the Flayed Lady influenced the way they would progress, but he assumed she wasn’t taking over completely, since otherwise they’d all have used blood sigils. However, based on everyone’s performance in stage one, it was clear she was aiding them a lot, since there were many flawless and all secrets bonuses amongst them, and several who had defeated the secret boss.

Kat was amongst that group.

She’ll be the first, and then I’ll go based on everyone’s performance in the following stages, Adam decided.

< < Challenge Stone Activated > >

< You have forcedPlayer You Are Too Predictable Adam into fighting you >

Adam landed on sand, but somehow his slime feet stayed above the countless grains, not sinking in the slightest, despite his weight.

He had half expected to see Kat’s part of the arena matching the Flayed Lady’s theme, but just like Adam, her side was nothing but sand. Shadowy shapes watched them from the stands, but one of them was red and it seemed to be staring intently at Adam.

Is she here?? he suddenly thought, wondering if Kat’s creepy nickname meant that he’d fallen into a trap.

But the red shadow didn’t make a move nor did it say a word.

He turned back to face Kat. Her Class was Brawler, and she’d already evolved the weapon once, choosing the Pugilist evolution, which would increase damage dealt to the same target with each attack, up to a max of 50%. She only had one relic, which was the duellist’s glove.

“You need to return, Adam,” Kat said. “She will forgive you, if you do.”

As soon as they were able to move, Adam used the night moth’s bracelet to teleport directly behind Kat by using her shadow.

She turned as though predicting his move, but Adam sent his stone hand forward to grab her right arm with the duellist’s glove and stop her mid-swing, just as he tore his empowered right hand through her back.

The result was devastating, and she perished in an instant, falling to the sand in two pieces that were rapidly dissolving from acid.

I did the right thing, Adam told himself as he looked at what he’d done, even though he felt himself overtaken with guilt. It had been so easy, but that wasn’t the point. The Flayed Lady wanted him to waver, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him break.

Just then, the brooch on the front of his body lit up and fire leapt from within it, washing over her body and turning the remains to ash. For a second, he hoped that maybe Kat would come back to life, given the wording of the brooch’s effect, but instead he saw a pale and cloudy marble visible within the ash.

Adam stooped to pick it up, just as the announcement of his victory rolled in.

< < Challenge Stone Deactivated > >

< You have defeatedPlayer You Are Too Predictable Adam in the arena >

< < Victory Pearl Obtained > >

Adam returned to the basement restaurant with the strange marble in hand.

Is this the ‘life’that the brooch mentioned?

< < Object > >

< Soul Seed — A flower seed birthed by the passing of Kateřina Černá >

A flower seed? From Kat’s soul?

Adam didn’t waste a moment and hurried out of the basement and player house, heading for the garden.

[5 minutes remain before the day comes to an end.]

Adam found Meilo with just a couple of minutes to spare, and the glass moth looked surprised to see him.

“I obtained this from a player I killed,” Adam told her, giving her the soul seed.

Meilo accepted the flower seed carefully. “I will plant this. Tomorrow when you return, it will have bloomed.”

Before Adam could ask what it would grow into, his world went dark.

< < Now Entering > >

< Stage 2 >

< The Goblin Village >

< 5 Waves >