15 - Chapter 13: Slime Queen
Before we marched toward Stone Hill, we set up our formation. Jeong Hae-in and Jeong Hae-yeon took the lead, while I stood behind them. Jeong Hae-seo brought up the rear, sniper rifle in hand.
Standing right behind me, Jeong Hae-seo kept subtly groping my ass.
She seemed pretty aloof on the outside, but she definitely didn't hold back.
We began our march, and before long, a different sound mixed in with our overlapping footsteps.
"It's a slime."
Jeong Hae-in, leading the way, was the first to spot it and whispered.
A basketball-sized slime wobbled toward us like pudding.
Slimes. They were weak to heat and cold, but practically immune to physical attacks, making them a real pain to deal with.
"Hey, looks like this is a slime dungeon."
While I was lost in thought, Jeong Hae-in muttered, aiming her already-shouldered rifle at the creature.
A faint, heavily suppressed gunshot cracked through the air.
Turned to mush by the spinning bullet, the slime failed to regenerate and dissolved into a puddle, quickly soaking into the dirt.
Then again, they were easy enough to kill physically as long as you destroyed their core.
Starting with that first one, slimes began popping up everywhere like mushrooms after rain, as if they'd been waiting in ambush.
We pushed forward, shattering core after core. With every crack of a rifle, another slime melted away.
Jeong Hae-yeon's weapon of choice, a grenade launcher, was particularly effective. Every time a grenade went off, multiple slimes writhed and dissolved.
"Feels like we're in a pool full of jelly,"
Jeong Hae-seo muttered, cycling the bolt to eject a spent casing.
It was the perfect analogy.
Individually, the slimes weren't much of a threat. But there were so many of them clustering together that they looked like a rising tide.
"This is getting a little dicey,"
Jeong Hae-seo muttered again, watching the ring of slimes tighten around us.
"Is it?"
Jeong Hae-in grinned at that, lowering her rifle to pull out a canteen.
Inside, of course, was water.
Jeong Hae-in squinted one eye to peer inside, then used her magic to draw the water out, suspending it in the air.
Given that she had to look inside first, she could probably only manipulate water she had directly seen and recognized.
Still, considering how she kept control of her waterbed even while asleep, it seemed that once she established control over a body of water, she could maintain it indefinitely.
And since she could maintain it while unconscious, she could likely program specific patterns for the water to repeat automatically.
Jeong Hae-in began manipulating the floating sphere of water. It whirled around us, tearing through the slimes' squishy bodies and crushing their cores.
She's a human blender.
Thanks to Jeong Hae-in, we finally got some breathing room.
Watching her, Jeong Hae-seo spoke up as she swapped out her magazine.
"Don't burn through too much mana. You can't afford to be exhausted when we hit the boss."
"Then why don't you help out a little?"
"Yeah, yeah."
Jeong Hae-seo waved a hand dismissively, clearly annoyed by her sister's nagging.
Since she hadn't nagged Jeong Hae-yeon, she probably possessed some auxiliary magic that wasn't very useful in direct combat.
"Fine, I'll do it."
As Jeong Hae-seo spoke, her shadow began to bubble and boil. A human figure crawled out of the dark pool.
The clone that emerged looked identical to Jeong Hae-seo. And since she looked exactly like Jeong Hae-seo, she naturally looked identical to Jeong Hae-in and Jeong Hae-yeon as well.
The only difference was that its entire body was pitch-black, as if coated in tar, with eyes like yellow buttons.
"Hey, use this to shoot the slime cores."
Jeong Hae-seo tossed a pistol to her clone and gave the order.
With what was essentially an extra person on our side, dealing with the wave of slimes became much easier.
Somehow, by the time we reached Stone Hill, we had managed to clear out most of the slimes.
Atop Stone Hill, a slime shaped like an adult woman was sunbathing. It was the entity known as the Slime Queen.
[Hmm?]
Sensing our presence, she looked down with a pleased expression and slid down the hill like flowing liquid.
Now on the ground, the Slime Queen had no visible core anywhere in her body.
That was the defining characteristic of a Slime Queen.
She was capable of separating her core from her body, usually hiding it in some hard-to-find spot.
Because of this, she was considered a far more troublesome opponent than even the Slime King, the actual boss of the dungeon.
There was even a theory that the massive influx of slimes in B-rank gates was caused by the Queen—a regular monster—rather than the Slime King who served as the dungeon's boss.
"Shit."
Even though she knew the Slime Queen didn't have a core in her body, Jeong Hae-yeon raised her grenade launcher and aimed anyway.
Come to think of it, grenades exploded and created fire.
And slimes were weak to fire, regardless of whether their cores were hit.
I suddenly realized we might actually be able to take down the Slime Queen pretty easily with the grenade launcher.
With that hope, the muzzle of the grenade launcher spat fire, but...
[Fufufu.]
With a mocking chuckle, the grenades sank deep into the Slime Queen's jelly-like body and failed to detonate.
"What do we do now?"
Watching this unfold, I asked, my voice laced with anxiety. Jeong Hae-in flashed a confident smile, telling me not to worry.
"I've got a plan."
With those words, Jeong Hae-in stepped behind me. She unzipped my gym jacket, pulled up my shirt, and yanked down the front of my pants and underwear, pulling out my cock.
"Ngh...?"
"Well, how's this?"
At Jeong Hae-in's sudden action, the Slime Queen's gaze locked onto my crotch.
Was it because slimes, while normally reproducing parthenogenetically, were also capable of interspecies breeding?
In fact, they supposedly preferred interspecies breeding because it yielded stronger, more unique mutations than asexual reproduction.
Perhaps that was why the Slime Queen was showing such an intense interest in my body.
"Hey, bite down on your shirt."
Seeing that her trick had worked, Jeong Hae-in stuffed the hem of my shirt into my mouth.
"Slimes have an incredibly strong breeding drive, so they don't kill hunters right away. On average, it takes about four hours for a victim to die. In the meantime, we'll go kill the Slime King, the dungeon boss, and come back. Just buy us some time."
Jeong Hae-in whispered as she slowly backed away.
To be fair, since the Slime King was massive, taking him down would be much faster than hunting for the Slime Queen's tiny, hidden core.
I watched the hybrid mermaids make a hasty retreat while the Slime Queen was distracted by me, resigning myself to my fate with a silent sigh.
Either way, the Slime Queen, her mind entirely consumed by breeding, casually spat out the unexploded grenade and slithered toward me.
"Ah, fuck."
The Slime Queen's hand touched my skin. The cool, slightly stinging sensation sent a strange shiver down my spine.
At least orcs and hybrid mermaids looked human enough, aside from their skin color.
But the moment the Slime Queen's slimy touch brushed against me, the reality of getting fucked by a completely non-human creature hit me like a truck.
Honestly, I was terrified.
Fuck, all I have to do is buy time, right?
They told me to buy time, but they never specified how I had to do it.
So, reaching down with my free hand, I grabbed the smoke grenade strapped to my waist, threw it down, and filled the area with smoke.
"?!"
Startled by the sudden plume of smoke, the Slime Queen momentarily faltered, her grip on my hand slipping.
I didn't waste a second. I bolted. I had no intention of running far—after all, the moment I stepped out of the smoke screen, I'd be caught immediately.
But playing hide-and-seek inside the smoke forever wasn't an option either.
The smoke was bound to clear eventually.
So, the refuge I chose was the cave I'd spotted earlier on Stone Hill.
The cave was likely small, and there was a high chance it was the Slime Queen's actual lair.
But unlike the other options where guaranteed rape awaited me, this was the only path where I could at least take a gamble. I had no choice.
"Oh, fuck."
Fortunately, my gamble paid off to some extent. I found a crevice just big enough to squeeze myself into.
Not long after I hid, the Slime Queen slithered into the cave, looking around in search of me.
Failing to find me, she ventured deeper and deeper into the cave.
Perfect. I need to escape while she's distracted.
While the Slime Queen was wasting her time, I crept out of my hiding spot and slipped out of the cave.
My plan was to run as far away as possible while she was busy searching the cave.
By now, the smoke from the grenade had thinned out significantly.
Just as a grin began to spread across my face at the thought of getting out of this without being fucked by that monster—
"Uh."
I came face-to-face with the Slime Queen, who was waiting right outside.
My brain short-circuited for a second.
Meanwhile, the jelly mass shaped like the Slime Queen that I'd seen inside the cave emerged and melted into a heap.
Only then did I belatedly recall one of the Slime Queen's abilities from class.
[The Slime Queen is capable of multiplying her body, detaching parts of it, and controlling them independently.]
Oh, motherfucker. Why didn't I think of that?