6 'Mucus Monsters'

Deeper into the supposedly small cave system we came to a cross-section of tunnels that was guarded mainly by eight large spiders and three human-sized slimes with distended flippers of loose skin for appendages. On their backs. 'Mucus monsters' were some of the creepiest looking things I had ever seen, offset only by their opaquely colorful appearances that reminded me of precious stones.

The tankers banged on their shield from within our tunnel to draw in the enemy while Ms. Gwyn placed Emilia and I to either side of the group. Between Emilia's higher capacity for damage before reloading and my own slow marksmanship, the last spider was on the ground by the time I needed to reload. The slimes were then left to the Emile and Carlos to deal with, making passing slashes using incredible leg strength to swiftly enter and exit attack range in the time it took to swing their longswords.

It took only a few passes for each slide and a quick shield slam from the tankers before they had lost enough mass through the openings to confidently shoot their cores. Emilia and I, however, shared a brief look and nod before calmly striding up to our closest slimes and firing three carefully aimed shots through their sagging forms. Three shots was all it took to both reduce mass and disconnect the cores enough to simply reach in and grab them.

The tankers kept the remaining slime busy between themselves, playing a crude game of 'catch' by batting the deflating amorphous blob back and forth until I finally walked over to pull out the core.

Ms. Gwyn actually took a few moments to chastise the tankers on expending so much of their energy fooling around before gathering up the party. Looking at me, she says seriously, "I was actually joking earlier when we made that deal, but if you feel like you need to sit out to be ready for the main course I can't tell you no. Take your time, it'll be a minute before anything gets here from down the tunnels."

"I'll be fine," I replied without even thinking about it. The most action I had taken so far was while when I went one-on-one with the spider after emptying my gun at the entrance. I felt pretty confident that I could still do that another couple of times before feeling the weight of my weapons.

Rubbing her chin thoughtfully, she nods once before saying, "These side tunnels are short, one ends in a small cavern that is likely a larder of sorts while the other is their main resting grounds. Down the middle tunnel is two more caverns thought to be breeding grounds and the queen spider's chambers. We'll split the party down the middle here and clear the side tunnels.

"Emilia, Emile, Frank, and Leo will take the left tunnel," she goes on quickly. "You, Carlos, Fred, and I will take the right tunnel. The left tunnel showed larger numbers of spiders than slimes while the larder tunnel showed slimes on the radars. I personally think the so-called 'larder' is the slime breeding ground and will house the middle boss. Since its slimes, the strongest healer and melee fighters will go there while the strongest ranged fighter and mage goes and deals with the spiders."

After hearing about how the team would be divided I suddenly got the feeling that the entire make-up of the team was just for this part of the plan. With a heavy ranged gunner like Emilia, even the bigger spiders would be dealt with quickly with the support of a combat mage. Against the potentially larger and plentiful slimes we would be facing, guns would potentially lower the profits of the group.

I was suddenly extremely grateful for having bought a giant sword.

After a minute or two to let the tankers rest without their shields and maces while drinking water, the two teams split up down the left and right passages dimly lit in the distance by glowing mana crystals. Ms. Gwyn, thought, kept the tunnel within a hundred feet of us brightly lit by holding up an LED lantern from the entrance with her wand.

Only a few minutes after separating from one another the originally dark blue faceted walls of the granite-like tunnels became a milky gray with the collection of dust and mildew from slimes and offal. It son became apparent that Ms. Gwyn was entirely correct in guessing this tunnel led to a breeding ground for slimes.

Why would spiders even need a larder? If anything was actually stored down here it was the empty husks of the spiders' kills. Which, of course, would be prime feeding and breeding material for asexual slimes that procreated based on consumption of almost any organic matter.

We started slowing down our travel and moving with quiet caution once the walls started visibly changing, which proved to be a smart move because the air grew steadily more stagnant and noxious from a combination of rot and acid fumes. Continuing to travel forward without to use of a respirator or gas mask would become troublesome.

Luckily for me, a simple carbon filter mask was stashed away inside my coat while Ms. Gwyn produced similar items from inside her spacious robes. If I was capable of using magic I would be very envious of those robes, they used the energy signature of the wearer as fuel to not only absorb impact but also resist cuts and penetration as well as offensive magics.

However, my current signature was not strong enough and I would only benefit from the defensive aspects and not the passive strengthening of magics used by the wearer.

It would be a waste of money or contribution for me to get gear like that.

Even though the tunnel was wide enough for us to walk side by side, we maintained a formation with Ms. Gwyn close behind Fred the tanker holding the lantern up high above and behind his head while Carlos and I flanked them both from a few paces back. Even though fire magic was weak against mucus monsters, he proximity to the tanker only increased her healing abilities while affording the two damage dealers to make hold back the excess numbers.

When we finally made contact with slime after roughly eight minutes of overall travel since dividing, it was to find five big and bouncy bastards with flippers and tentacles who flounced about from side to side. They had thick slug-like lower bodies from constant scraping on the ground and drying into new skin but their upper bodies were relatively thin-skinned to better reveal their inner teal coloring.

Sadly, their cores did not appear to be in their upper bodies as I drew my big sword from over my shoulder and scanned the targets. Because the cores were in their lower bodies I simply told myself that they would be at at the back around the hind quarters in the thickest and densest areas. Sadly, Fred had the responsibility of drawing in three of the slimes to smack aside with his shield while Carlos and I rushed forward from the sides.

Aiming for right along the tunnel wall so that my slime had to turn away from the group, I hop up onto the rough rocky wall and kick off into a swift spin.

With my one hundred and ninety pounds of body moving through the air on top of the increased strength-to-weight ratio of my F grade legs swinging the twenty-pound sword through the air, bisecting the slime's upper body completely away with half of its tentacles was a fairly simply matter.

Escaping the gallons of liquefying acidic gelatin spraying all around from the released pressure in both parts of its body, though, was an entirely different matter. Despite the fact that my leather gear was treated with resins synthesized from portal materials, I had already been through quite a few scrapes and bumps in it as well as many sprays of acids from my last mission. I made sure to oil it and treat it well with waterproofing agents, but it only helped so much.

My next attack was from behind the entire group as Carlos was making a second slashing pass on his target by leaping from the wall, finishing what I started by chopping my sword down through the back of the wriggling slime to expose its core. Once the core was exposed to air, the slime was as good as dead. I just moved on to the next.

Fred the tanker was doing fairly way, busting open the 'faces' of the main slimes with his mace while using his shield as an umbrella for both himself and Ms. Gryn. Carlos was only just slicing up the back of his slime when I chopped down the back of the group's middle slime. Of course the insides all sprayed out at me, but I was already in motion after the slash.

With one enemy split most of the way down its back, a single tackling shield slam was all it took to smash out half of the slime's mass and send the other two skittering aside. These two slimes were quickly picked off by Carlos and I. Less than two minutes after confronting the first group of slimes, we were continuing on our way with a large bag of cores.

Roughly twenty minutes away on the opposite side of the cave system, the other half of Malcolm's party was currently engaged with over a dozen spiders. Because the formation they traveled in had Emile directly behind the tanker for immediate support, Emilia and Leo were currently filling the sides of the tunnel with literal fire and echoing gunfire.

Arachnid chitin sizzled and burned with a smell like smoking hair as Leo bathed one side of the tunnel in a blinding wall of flames. The smell of enriched ballistic powder augmented the smell of burning keratin in the tunnel, giving the area a dizzying noxious smog. Despite the affect that fighting like this would have on their noses and breathing, it was efficient.

Half of the enemy numbers fell away from the sides of the advance party of spiders blocking their way under the relentless torrent of firepower while Frank and Emile only had to deal with two or three spiders at any given time. Between the two of them, it was relatively easy to smash and hack at their probing legs with laying down some damage to their heads and faces. When the fight was over they took a short break for Leo to recover his energy while Emilia tended her guns.

"How do you think Fred and the others are holding up against the slimes?" Frank asks Leo while they rested, chewing his way through a large protein bar.

"Mine are the only gunshots I have heard," Emilia replies frankly, speaking for one of the first times this mission. "If they had run into trouble, I'd have heard the kid shooting at something but its only me using guns so far. With that in mind, they're definitely having an easier time than we are."

Remarking more to himself than to the group, Leo idly says, "We probably should have divided the team differently, then. A full ranged group would have an easier time of dealing with these spiders. My fire could take the role of a tanker for Emilia and the kid while all the melee fighters and Gwyn handled the slimes. Still, this distribution is not too bad."

Emile then took the chance to say, "For now, but there's a lot more spiders than we thought already. This was the second group we came across."

*