Paaang!!
Shia swung her hand.
‘Endless, isn’t it?’
As she smashed the approaching slimes like a tidal wave, yet another wave came rushing in.
Still, Shia, being a dutiful Seongnyeo, showed no complaints and threw herself into the fray.
Surrounded by Seongnyeok, the tips of Shia’s nails pierced into the slime’s liquid. The firm yet viscous fluid that protected the core of the slime couldn’t restrain Shia’s hand as if it were mere tofu.
Puk!
As soon as the slime’s core was crushed in Shia’s grip, red liquid sprayed into the air like a fountain of blood.
Perhaps because she had slightly grown her nails wanting to try nail art, Shia’s hands, resembling those of a werewolf or vampire, caused life to vanish wherever they moved.
After all, monsters are living beings too.
Puk!
Shia, who had carelessly swung her hand at the slimes charging at her without even looking, opened her eyes.
‘Hmm, good. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness.’
As her eyes adapted to the dark, Shia began to slowly assess her surroundings.
It was a forest.
And beneath her feet was a shallow swamp of blood.
Even now, red slimes were writhing in the swamp above, inching closer to attack Shia, but for Shia, who had secured her sight, it was no longer an issue.
Of course, if she had brought a Hunter Drone, illuminating the surroundings wouldn’t have been a problem; however, unfortunately, Shia had been unexpectedly tossed out of the train due to an unforeseen accident, leaving her with nothing but the casual clothes she usually wore.
Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, all that remained was tidying up.
No, since she had already smashed the groups of slimes that swarmed like waves, what remained was almost a one-sided slaughter of the leftovers.
Of course, the slimes wouldn’t just take it silently.
Some tried to bind Shia’s legs or cling to her arms, trying to corrode those parts, while others attempted to infiltrate her body.
“Perverted slimes!”
Of course, Shia wasn’t going to consider giving her precious purity to such slimes.
Probably because she had kicked the slimes so often, her favorite leather boots were already corroded away to nothing, but thankfully her other clothes were intact.
Even though Shia often lived her life half-zoned out, she had over 50 years of combat experience from her previous world at a minimum.
She didn’t want to end up humiliating herself by walking around naked just because slimes melted her clothes.
“Well, if Menelapie were here, she would gather my clothes. I could have just jumped into the slimes and said ‘Wow! It’s the sea!’”
Puk!
Thinking of Menelapie made Shia unconsciously smile.
Ah, no, she shouldn’t.
If she let her mind wander during the battle, her clothes would truly melt away.
While a single slime wasn’t threatening, their numbers were overwhelmingly massive.
Besides, she wasn’t wearing any panties or a bra, so if her outerwear melted, it would be a real problem.
This dungeon had over 2,000 people from the Hunter Train invading it, and an unfortunate incident could happen at any moment.
During broadcasts, Shia had a tendency to not hold back, but being in a serious dungeon raid with the Hunter Train without properly strategizing and acting like she did during broadcasts would indeed be a huge shame to the other Hunters.
Thump!
Puk!
“Whoa….”
Creeeak, screeech…
Thirty minutes later, after bursting through dozens of tidal waves of slimes, Shia sat there, gazing blankly at the last remaining slime, which was half-crushed and trying to crawl away.
Noticing the unpleasant feeling of the slime’s remnants clinging to her hands, Shia frowned and shook her hands.
Even though the slime’s core had been destroyed, the remaining slime still glowed and tried to corrode Shia’s skin.
Once she flicked the slime residue off her hands, the skin that was melting away quickly reconstructed in an instant.
“These slimes do have some intelligence to group attack…”
With her shaken-off hands behind her back, Shia slightly tilted her head while following the slime.
“It seems to feel fear. And perhaps pain as well.”
Fear and pain are signs of intelligence.
As she walked through the blood-colored swamp, red liquid dripped between the toes of Shia’s white feet.
Typical slimes wouldn’t feel fear or pain.
Shia realized that these mutated slimes were more than just a simple increase in power or danger level.
Shia blinked slowly, lost in thought.
“It’s too quiet.”
There were no sounds of beasts or insects, which were usually common in forests or swamps.
Even the typical rustling of the wind seemed to have stopped, with only the sound of droplets splattering as Shia walked barefoot through the swamp occasionally piercing the silence.
“Could it be that this entire dungeon is occupied by slimes?”
Other than the red slimes that attacked Shia, there were no other living beings visible in the dungeon.
If the mutated slimes could obliterate the dungeon’s ecosystem to this extent, there must certainly be a boss monster controlling them.
Whether it was a Slime Queen or something else, it didn’t matter.
“Anyway, it means there is a boss…”
The problem was that this place was a vast dungeon occupying the Geumgangsan area.
Searching this expansive place for a boss monster whose location was unknown would be overwhelming even for Shia.
If it were Teresa, she might have somehow constructed a magical formation for detection, but currently, Teresa was in a weakened state without any mana of her own, so she couldn’t expect too much.
So now, Shia was left with three options.
One was to find the unknown location of the Hunter Train’s encampment.
The other was to fabulously locate and hunt down the slime dungeon’s boss, wherever it might be.
Finally, the last option was simply to sit here and wait for Menelapie or Yeonhwa to come looking for her.
Teresa would definitely not come looking for her.
She was probably still laughing at Shia, saying, “What a foolish thing to stick your head out just to fall, haha.”
Though Teresa’s feelings of affection and interest for Shia were real, so was her genuine penchant for teasing and making fun of Shia.
“Hmph, I promised my mom a fun trip…”
Shia wasn’t feeling good.
She had promised Yoonjeong, saying, “It’ll be a safe, enjoyable, and fun trip! I’ll make it that way!”— a trip for filial piety—yet here she was facing such a situation right from the first dungeon invasion…
Puk!
Feeling the slimes lurking nearby, Shia vented her frustration by stomping on them barefoot.
The mutated slime, with compounded elasticity and strength, couldn’t withstand Shia’s tremendous power and allowed her to strike at its core. Shia, annoyed, crushed the core of the slime under her foot.
The sizzling sound of burning flesh and the reconstructing sensation was rather unpleasant.
Moreover, the slow melting rate made the pain feel ambiguous…
“Oh?”
In that moment, Shia realized that the slime’s bodily fluid melting her foot was at an unusually slow rate.
Of course, the difference was very subtle.
If Shia hadn’t personally experienced the encounter with numerous waves of slimes, nobody would have even noticed this.
The slimes that had formed a wave earlier had instantaneously begun to digest Shia’s skin on contact, while the slime Shia just stepped on continued to melt her skin at a much slower pace despite being stomped on repeatedly.
While this might seem trivial, if all slimes of the same kind possessed the trait of human corrosion, then naturally, the rates at which they melted human skin should be identical as well.
Yet, slimes have the ability to adapt to their surroundings.
In fact, it’s not just a trait—eating a plant changes their color to resemble that plant, or a slime that has melted minerals for an extended period starts mimicking the hardness of the mineral.
If there were individual differences in their melting rates, it would imply that these red mutated slimes had gone through some process of adaptation.
‘Did the boss mutate these slimes from the beginning?’
To confirm her hypothesis, Shia began to search for mutated slimes nearby.
Soon, a few slimes were captured by her sensory enhancement, and after smashing two of them, Shia used her purification miracle on the remaining slime.
The purification miracle was a spell that cleansed all impurities including bacteria, contamination, debuffs, curses, and even fraud, based on Shia’s thoughts.
If Shia was correct, this slime hadn’t been born as a mutant but had become mutated due to some contamination.
And just as Shia had anticipated, the body of the slime, which had been a blood-red color, became as clear as pure water.
“Oh… It’s clean now?”
Even placed on her hand, it didn’t corrode her flesh.
Of course, its aggressiveness remained intact, and the slime’s physical specifications were still quite high, so Shia dodged its liquid tentacle attacks as it shot towards her.
At that moment, Shia understood.
The ability of this mutated slime was not specialized in “corrosion.”
In addition to the overall boost in its abilities compared to the typical slime, these slimes were significantly enhanced in their capacity to “adapt.”
‘It must be because of this swamp.’
Shia rolled the slime in her hand.
Wait a minute… Adapt?
“What happens if I spill food on them?”
Could they, perhaps, also “adapt” to food?
—-
From afar, a group of unlucky Hunters existed.
Before the S-grade Hunters fully joined the front lines, some of the advanced party Hunters who had formed their own smaller party were exploring the dungeon after breaking away from the main body of the Hunter train.
Their initial aim was to acquire resources and treasures gained from exploring the dangerous dungeon.
Though there was risk involved, gaining the ability to monopolize any resources or new byproducts was the primary motivation.
Among Hunters, this behavior was quite common.
It was needless to explain the benefits that came with preemptively monopolizing resources and treasures.
“Ugh, ung…”
However, in this case, that luck had completely run out for the “advanced party.”
Instead of obtaining treasures, they found themselves in a situation where their lives were being claimed by monsters.
“Stop!!!”
“I can’t stop it..! It’s the end!!”
They ended up facing a situation similar to Shia’s.
Surrounded in an instant by a wave of Blood Slime, they tried to use their abilities to beat down some of the slimes, but as the waves kept tightening around them, party members began to fall one by one.
“Ahhhh!”
“No!! Brother!! Don’t come closer! I told you not to come!!”
Unlike Shia, these human Hunters suffered immediate and lethal disadvantages when even a drop of slime contacted them, causing their flesh, muscles, and bones to corrode into irreversible damage.
However, the slimes did not kill them.
As soon as they incapacitated the humans, the slime hordes began to seep into their orifices.
“Ugh, urk!?”
“I don’t want to, ugh… I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die like this… ugh, gurgle…!?”
Through mouths, eyes, noses, ears, and even the wounds punctured through their lower holes, the slimes began to infiltrate the Hunters’ bodies.
And moments later, the Hunters rose from their spots.
The wounds and holes were filled with the red liquid of the slimes, which began to mimic the hue of human skin.
To the naked eye, they appeared to be unscathed and perfectly fine Hunters.
“Th-this body is… too big.”
“I’ll share part of my body with you.”
As the sludge began to teach themselves how to move the Hunter’s body, they seemed delighted.
“Ah, aah, I can talk just fine too.”
“Yeah, brother.”
“Brother? Ah, is that what the human called him?”
“Yeah, I guess because my brain has merged with his so much, I unintentionally mimic speech.”
“I can use Hunter abilities?”
“If I poke at the brain, it should work soon.”
As mutants, the slimes exhibited intelligence.
Naturally, they were aware of their ‘adaptation’ abilities, and they had long realized they could also apply ‘adaptation’ to human bodies.
While they hadn’t always had opportunities with invading humans in the past, those slimes capable of consuming human brains and occupying their bodies spread the knowledge to others.
Now, they could divide and destroy humans from the inside out.
“…There is a base of theirs far away.”
“I confirmed that from the brain, brother.”
“Stop calling me brother.”
“I can’t help it, I’ve merged so much with the brain. It’s inevitable, bro.”
“Alright, understood. Then, we head to their base…”
Thud thud thud!
In that moment, the slimes occupying the Hunters’ bodies tensed up in response to a presence they detected nearby.
Had the sight of Hunters being taken over been spotted?
If that was the case, it would be quite troublesome… Their plans to divide and occupy human bodies one by one might be hindered.
If there was a witness, they needed to chase them down and kill them immediately.
But the slimes still hadn’t fully occupied the Hunters’ bodies, so leaping away wasn’t feasible.
“Oh?”
“You are….”
A woman with white hair.
The slimes recognized exactly who she was.
Temporary Hunter License, Seongnyeo, Isia.
“Wow, what a relief! You guys are also lost like me!?”
And Shia smiled brightly at them.
As if she hadn’t noticed their true nature at all.
