[Book 1 Completed] Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World [Kingdom Building LitRPG]
B2 | Chapter 19 – Clashing with the Slime King

Knowing better than to wait for the Slime King to move, Theodore took action.

He had discovered the price of uncertainty the hard way. There was no point in luck while facing a monster of Rank 3. With his Class still trapped in the tier below, he was hardly a Rank 2. He lacked the toughness and mana breadth associated with a higher advancement. So he blasted forward with air and struck first.

There were going to be no testing probes and no warm-up casts. He couldn't conceal his strength; in fact, he wasn't going to, as there was literally no point in doing so. Not that he could hide his strength facing such a foe anyway. Without hiding his skills or mana, he struck with all he had. Three blazing javelins sprang forward like lightning. They shrieked through the air, burnt, and struck the Slime King's gelatinous bulk with concussive power.

The first tore the membrane apart, and the second hit the precise spot where the first had. The only difference was that the second was hit more deeply. Then the third exploded within the sticky body, sending forth a quick pulse of smoke and hot slime.

Theodore didn't wait to see the results. He was under no illusions of this working, so he charged forward with a second wave of spells already beginning to materialize. He wasn't strong enough. The fact that his Class was still Rank 1 was significant. In addition to his poor foundation, it showed that his body was still immature and had not evolved enough to hold the full power of mana that a Rank 2 could conjure. But at the time, it didn't matter. Not here, not with death already breathing up his neck.

Forcing his way through would be his only option.

Unlike any typical enemy would upon getting attacked, he noticed how the Slime King didn't move. That was the strangest thing of all. He was pretty damn sure that it was far too intelligent, but that also begged the question… Why was it not moving?

Like the bloated, semi-transparent glob of slime that it was, it just sat there. He was more interested in how it obtained the runes and then used them to perform a spell than he was concerned about the fact that it was pulsating with a light that resembled a heartbeat. This clone magic, whatever it was. After he bonded with the creature, he pondered if he would be able to utilize the clone magic. It would be really helpful to have a clone.

Theodore had already thrown a number of missiles at the beast, but it was hardly impacted. Then, on the next breath, it opened like a flower would unfold in the sun. It unfolded. At its center, a gradual but irreversible circular break occurred. It resembled an organic iris drawing back thick, transparent membranes as it opened up. And from inside what appeared to be a core, seven slime tentacles sprang forth.

As thick as tree trunks, the slime tentacles snarled and squirmed into the air. No, they weren't quick, but they had a baleful aura about them that pressed down like a mountain on Theodore's mind.

Theodore's [Mana Shield] snapped into place just in time. When the first tentacle struck it, it sent him sliding backward, boots digging furrows in the stone. The second curled around the edge of the shield. The third originated from above.

Even though he got overwhelmed by the amount of mana that was unleashed, he responded the way his body remembered to. Theodore flicked his fingers without thinking, summoning a sharp arc of thermal energy into existence. Then, with another breath, he fashioned it into a javelin, its tip gleaming with power.

As it sliced through half of the first tentacle, the javelin split its mass into slapping globs that hissed and slammed against the walls of the cave.

Theodore had forgotten for a moment that this was a blue slime, which meant that it was a mana variant. It would, of course, possess much more mana than he did. Theodore fired another javelin that sliced the other half of the tentacle as he recovered from feeling overpowered by such a baleful aura.

But it was like cutting water. Worse still, it was similar to cutting into the ocean and believing you had triumphed because you were able to block a small wave, forgetting that the ocean at large remained unmoved by your antics.

Not barely a second after he sliced it, the tendril reformed. At that point, the disparity in Rank became apparent to him.

Slime poured into the expanding pseudopod as the breach pulsed again from the center. The monster contained a place with more mass than this seeming blob should have. Whether it was dimensional storage or something else completely didn't matter; the fact of the matter was that it had something like that, and that meant it would probably continue to regenerate whatever it lost. Which was a bummer.

Rather than classical regeneration, the creature was drawing from its own resources, sending out slime to fill the cut and create the tentacle anew.

Displeasure rolled through him, and instinctively, his mana ignited. He began filling a new construct with mana. A tendril slashed by his side so closely that it left a wet track of slime on the outside edge of the shield. He dove under the second and twisted past the third, dodging low to the left and turning his heel on the stone ground.

He needed to adjust his strategy. Cutting was insufficient. He had to burn. So he poured mana into the new construct and sculpted it. Although he had previously done it in theory, he had to put it into practice and acknowledge that it was risky to do so while engaged in combat with an opponent who was higher in Rank than him. He extracted thermal energy from both his internal reserves and the ambient environment around him. He channeled it into a lance by compressing it once he had finished pulling.

The theory itself resembled what he had previously referred to as a "ball of doom," which was a silly word but a fitting one. It was theoretically similar but much weaker, and it was a lance rather than a ball because he didn't want to experiment with thermal energy to that big an extent in such an unsafe environment. Unless he was pressed up against a wall and had no other option, he wouldn't be forming a ball of doom.

Before the construct took shape in the air, it first took shape in his head. A narrow shape formed by containment lines, flow channels, compressed heat cores, and spinning vortices of controlled thermal energy. With his teeth clenched, he poured more and more thermal energy and mana into it.

In the meanwhile, he kept avoiding the Slime King's attacks. And then, there it was, a lance of white light that radiated impossibility of blazing concentration, buzzing with controlled devastation. Although it took time to describe everything, it would suffice to say it had happened in the time it takes for a spark to fly off a piece of flint.

The lance was surrounded by shimmering air, and as he threw it, a foolish and delighted grin broke free.

It didn't scream through the air so much as hum, slicing the space it passed through. It collided with the nearest tendril, and what's more, it didn't just slice it... it simply cauterized the slime tentacle. In order to prevent the pseudopod from reforming, Theodore had created the lance in a way that it would release all the compressed thermal energy upon striking its target. The lance embedded itself halfway inside the Slime King's main body. Now that it had struck, all that thermal energy obviously needed mediums to move through, and while some of it exploded in a quiet storm of force and steam, a lot of the thermal payload gutted its way into the slime and everything it came into contact with.

Naturally, some of the energy dissipated into the atmosphere; he could sense the heat wave sweeping over his face from a distance and hear the slime's liquid transform into vapor. However, the majority remained within the creature, moving through it like fire through paper.

He made another. With his mana pathways heating like a forge and his thoughts already working as fast as humanly possible, the second lance developed more quickly. He also threw that one. Then another. The motion had become habitual by the third lance. Something prickled within him as the fourth or fifth pseudopod boiled away under his attack. As he continued to shoot, the process improved via repetition, and finally he got a notification that surprised him.

Congratulations! You have learned a new spell: [Thermal Lance]!

[Elemental Mastery] has leveled up! – Lvl 1 > Lvl 2!

For a split second, the world slowed, and he blinked. A tendril almost caught him because he was distracted long enough, but he managed to dodge again just in time, half-stumbling, then recovering his posture as he consciously pushed the notification out of his mind and tucked it into a corner of his consciousness.

Had he just learned a spell? Was that what had happened? But why had the system never registered anything else as a spell before this? What, exactly, was a spell in that case? What led to the registration of a thermal lance as a new spell? No, no time. No time for that.

He put everything out of his head and went back to casting. Now, however, things were different. For starters, casting the spell was much simpler and easier. For another, the shape of the spell, the scaffold of it, the flow paths—all of it had snapped into place in his mind like a blueprint suddenly manifesting. The challenge had fallen away like a freed shackle. At this point, he could quickly make one [Thermal Lance] as quickly as he could think of it. The next one took a breath, however. Two seconds for the third. Three on the fourth. It appeared that he could create one instantly, but it took time to create more.

They circled him. He carefully guided the luminous lances of light and heat that were placed around him, acting as extensions of himself.

The pseudopods were on fire. One by one. They were unable to reform quickly enough. Now, every incision was more than just a cut; it was a closing off, a cauterization, and a denial of regeneration as thermal energy burned off anything that came out. The Slime King shivered like jelly under siege, convulsing and no longer motionless.

He started aiming toward the core. He just launched strikes at it since he didn't have time to hesitate. The Slime King then underwent a change.

The fuck…

Instead of the gradual "healing" of the tendrils before, new pseudopods erupted abruptly. That was not what he had expected. And he was still aiming, thinking that he had neutralized the slime tendrils. He was in the open.

With a speed that none of the others had, the first new tentacle whipped across the air. It sliced past two of his circling lances before they could be utilized, piercing them rather than disintegrating them. The other one crashed into his side. Although it was intercepted by the [Mana Shield], Theodore twisted a little too late.

The blow had come like a wrecking ball dipped in hate and slime, and the [Mana Shield] shook and flared. His feet left the earth as his [Mana Shield] cracked beneath the impact. The shield buzzed in his ears, damaged but intact, as he fell backward, rolled, and landed hard. His [Mana Shield] remained intact, though just barely.

As mana flowed out of the slime in waves, the Slime King screamed, which was strange since it was an air-whistling sound rather than the sound of vocal cords. With his face partially coated in slime, one shoulder hurting, and his eyes shaking from the impact, Theodore suddenly recognized two things as the baleful aura pressed down on his mind like a mountain:

One, he had fucked up.

And two, why was he grinning like a lunatic as he got up and charged at the Slime King?

***

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