Chapter 2

  This is a Slime?

  You have reached Level 1 in C???????e????????????????r?????????b????????e?????????r?????????u???????????????s????????????? ????????????S???????l??????????a??????????s??????h?????????e???????????????r??????????!

  +1 to Strength

  +1 Endurance

  +1 Vitality

  You have reached Level 2 in C??????????e???????r???b????????e??????r???????????u???s????? ?????S??????l????a???s?????????h???????e?????????r??????!

  +1 Strength

  The pop-ups obscured the world forming around Elijah. He was too distracted to notice the translucent tentacle that shot towards him. The gelatinous whip scored his arm, melting through the schoolboy’s blazer, burning a line in his flesh.

  Elijah yelped, stumbling back on the pumice-like rock. That was enough for the system. The prompts winked out, leaving only the Health, Mana, and Stamina bars at the periphery of his vision.

  One eye watched as the Evolved Sime’s appendage slipped seamlessly into a glowing green acid pool, and the other kept track of his Health. It dropped by a quarter. The throbbing in his arm grew and grew. Elijah did his best to ignore it and scan his surroundings for the next attack.

  The series of acrid pools were connected by gaps in the volcanic rock. Toxic mist swirled above. The only safe areas were thin, spindly pathways, one of which he was standing on.

  There was a slight stirring in the water-like liquid behind him. Without thinking, Elijah threw himself aside and spun around in one motion. He was just in time to watch as another green whip cracked past his face, dripping burning acid on his cheek.

  The pain nearly distracted the frayed boy as his momentum sent him right to the edge of one of the deadly acid pits. His arms wheeling, he heaved. A jolt of his head was enough to pull his feet fully back onto the uneven surface.

  This was no good; he couldn’t win like this! About a hundred meters away, there was an area of safety, a large circle of cleared ground. Elijah set off at a sprint, determined.

  The Slime was having none of that. As soon as it realised what the human was doing, the attacks began in earnest. A tentacle shot at Elijah’s head. He ducked. Droplets of acid rained down, sizzling holes in his blazer but not making it all the way through.

  A second limb swiped along the ground; Elijah was forced to jump. Just as he thought himself safe, a third tentacle dropped down like the hammer of god. Stuck in the air, he was unable to dodge. Acting on instinct, the raven-haired lad spun his arm around to block, which caused the rest of him to move out of line.

  The attack sizzled into the skin of his forearm, and the homesick child was sent tumbling along the path, his arm half melted through. Elijah screamed, his eyes filled with tears. The burning pain was too much, and he wasn’t able to recover in time to avoid the next strike.

  SSSSSssssssSSSSssssss.

  The sickening sound of flesh searing accompanied a whole new wave of agony. It felt like his legs had been doused in petrol, set alight, stabbed through with needles, then sliced to ribbons. Looking down, through the unimaginable torment, the crying boy saw why. His eyes didn’t believe it. He had been sliced in half, and his organs were crackling and popping in caustic liquid.

  Elijah let out one last cry of pain and fear before the darkness once more claimed him.

  You have DIED

  Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.

  The pain disappeared with his death, but Elijah knew it wasn’t over. This couldn’t be happening. He wanted to go home. He could just see it now:

  he would open his door;

  Light began materialising from the outside in.

  mum would call out from the kitchen.

  The far-off mountains were the first thing to return.

  She would be tired from the long hours being a nurse demanded.

  The pits of burning death came next.

  Still, she would be making dinner without fail when he came home.

  Glassy stone reflected a sun Elijah hadn’t noticed was orange.

  Elijah would walk into the kitchen and sling his blazer over the chair.

  He caught a brief glimpse of the monstrous Slime’s outline,

  His mother would take one look at him and ask,

  before the acid rendered in.

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Elijah had been right; the only safe place was that circle.

  To which he would reply,

  The colours seemed to saturate seconds before,

  “Nothing, just a bad dream.”

  “Must have been bad if you’re still thinking about it.”

  “Mmm.”

  She would wrap an arm around him and kiss him on the head.

  “There, there, everything's gonna be alright.”

  the reality he found himself in snapped back into existence.

  The Trial of Evolution 1: Slime

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  You have reached Lv 25 as a Slime! Welcome to The Trial of Evolution: beat the Evolved Slime to prove your right to undergo the first Evolution. A better performance in this trial will lead to a more powerful Evolution with stronger monster Skills and Traits.

  Elijah let out a loud, mournful sigh; his mind was off somewhere else, his body very much wasn’t. A probing tentacle came slapping through the window, dispelling it. A strike across the stomach sent him flying, the pain blossoming anew.

  With the clothes on his top half already melted, he had no defence against the blow. It snapped him back to reality.

  This wasn’t right! His mother would be sitting on the kitchen chair fretting, and his supper would be getting cold. He shouldn’t be here!

  Unfortunately, he was unable to act on his emotions as the initial hit had sent him straight into one of the acid pits. Elijah let out a gurgled cry as his lungs liquified.

  You have DIED

  Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.

  Mountains, pits, Slime, acid. The world reconstructed itself once more. It looked like a game loading.

  Elijah was angry. He would get out of here. He would go home. There was no wasting time this go-round. The screen appeared once more, but he ignored it. His feet slapped the ground as he ran; his shoes had melted off.

  Tiny spikes of stone bit into his feet. Swishing tentacles flailed about wildly. Acid roiled. None of this mattered; Elijah had one goal, one focus. He was going to make it to the circle of land, out of reach of that monster. It was the first step in making it back.

  One jelly-like tendril melted through his head, and another went through his chest, destroying his favourite pen on its way through. That only added to his rage.

  Elijah dismissed the death notification and jumped about impatiently in the nothingness. The second he could, the sixteen-year-old shot off like a whippet. The pain of the beastly Slime’s lashes still hurt, but for now he was able to push it down with anger.

  The next run didn’t go much better. He made it thirty meters before becoming a bubbling puddle. It didn’t matter; anger still burnt hot in his veins.

  Fifty times he hit his head against this wall with no change. He simply couldn’t make it past thirty-five meters on grit alone. And that was in short supply. His anger could only last so long.

  He tried to reignite it by thinking of how his grandparents would react when they learnt Elijah was missing. It worked for a time, but that thought soon flamed out. Not even the anger he held for his father could stay alight forever.

  “You son of a bitch, just let me through!” Elijah screamed. It didn’t work. There was no bargaining with this thing. If anything, it killed him quicker.

  Slowly but surely, with each attempt, he lost energy. Not his physical energy; his Stamina was refreshed each time he died. Despite this, he grew tired.

  By the one hundredth attempt, he had completely given up. Two points were added to Endurance because of all the running but he didn’t even notice. His mind had been through so much pain that it couldn’t take anymore. When he spawned in, he just stood; eyes staring unfocused at the distant mountains.

  Elijah was catatonic. His thoughts were blank as he stood silently. It could have been seconds or hours; he truly had no way to tell. It wasn’t until the wind peppered his face with volcanic dust and he sneezed that Elijah realised it had been quite some time since his last death.

  No sooner had he had the thought than a familiar Slime’s tentacle came out of the acid to greet him. Elijah died, yet again.

  That was strange, he thought absently. He felt lethargic. His brain was too tired to put together what had happened, so he returned to standing there, unmoving. It wasn’t until he died two more times, the first after slipping on a rock, the second after yawning, that he finally realised what had happened.

  If he remained completely still, the Slime didn't attack him. With something to focus on, he was drawn back from the dark place he had mentally gone to. He finally had something he could use. It wasn’t hopeless.

  Now, the question is, what is it sensing?

  Did it hear him? Could it feel him move? Did it sense the flow of air? It couldn’t be the latter; he had been breathing this whole time. It was probably sound. To test his theory, Elijah steeled himself and whistled. It hadn’t become any easier to die. The pain was still just as bad; he was only better at forgetting it.

  For a moment, nothing happened. When Elijah began to think he had been wrong, a tendril of Slime slipped silently out of the acid from his left. The creature blended in so well to its acidic home that the sixteen-year-old was taken by surprise and couldn’t react before the creature cut through him like a hot knife through butter.

  A tinge of annoyance shot through him as he was greeted with the death screen yet again. How was this thing a Slime? In any game he’d played, slimes were low-level creatures that could die from being tripped over by a passing adventurer, not silent predators with near-invisibility in their chosen habitat and a deadly corrosive touch.

  He let go of his frustration with a breath; emotionally, he was wrung dry. When he spawned back in, Elijah was sure to be silent.

  With incredible slowness, he raised his foot. Nothing. He moved it forward. He eased it down in front of him. A pebble shifted slightly. Pain. Death.

  He tried again, even slower. He set his foot down to the left of the stone. Silence. He let out a breath in relief. His reaction was slightly too loud. Pain. Death.

  He came back, with no choice in the matter, ready to try again. This time he made it a full ten meters before he stubbed his toe and swore. Pain. Death.

  This wouldn’t work. Elijah was moving at a slow and measured pace; whenever he messed up and the Slime attacked, which always happened, he couldn’t move quickly enough to react. Unfortunately, it took him seven more deaths before he realised this.

  Somehow, Elijah needed to move slowly enough to be silent yet spring into action quickly when the need arose. But that was impossible! Unless…

  When he had tried to run for his goal, the Evolved slime had lashed out, striking in quick succession. With all the noise it had made, there was no way it was able to accurately tell where he was. He had just been running full force in a straight line; it wouldn’t have been hard to guess where he was and attack.

  Elijah started the next attempt with a sprint, though not a blind one this time. As soon as the monster realised what he was about, it launched its frenzied attacks once more. The second it started splashing about wildly, Elijah froze in his tracks.

  An attack swiped out in front of him. He stepped over it calmly. Another tentacle ran along the ground further ahead, and a third crashed down from above in the spot he would have been if he’d kept running.

  Wait? Elijah thought, I recognise that attack. It was the same sequence of moves that had killed him on his first run and several times since. The creature couldn’t tell where Elijah was when it was making all that noise; it was just using combinations to try and kill him.

  Perception +1

  The System all but confirmed his revelation. Sadly, the young man took too long marveling over his discovery and was struck down by a tentacle. That didn’t bother him, at least it didn’t when the pain wore off and he could repress the experience.

  Elijah had something to work towards. Again he started at a run, carefully watching where the tentacles came from. One from the right, then the left. The creature would then realise he was running and start its wild strikes. Elijah would switch to the defensive and remain still unless dodging was required. The slime would think it had killed him and calm down. At which point he would take off again.

  This technique became his bread and butter and with each run he learned more and more about how the monster moved, coming closer and closer to his goal. With a sense of progress after each excruciating death, he didn’t even notice how many times he was sent back to the start.

  It was in the hundreds. Elijah got to a point where he knew where the attacks were going to come from without thinking. At least until there was a twist. The Slime clearly wasn’t smart, either that or it got reset each time he died.

  Elijah would be able to tell exactly where every blow was going to come from as it followed the exact same pattern every time, so long as he did. That was until the random attack came. Before every vicious spate of wild attacks, a blow would come from a new direction and he never could tell where it would be. It was as if it was RNG, except it only struck where he was least expecting. Elijah suspected it had something to do with his Luck.

  In response to this random attack, he was forced to improve his dodging. After far too many deaths to count, Elijah was just about able to evade the strike by reacting alone, something he was fiercely proud of. Any achievement in this hellscape was worth celebrating. The System seemed to agree.

  New General Skill Unlocked!

  New general Skill unlocked:

  Dodge: C

  Use 15% of your Stamina to raise dodge chance to 70%. Passive Dodge chance raised by 1%.

  With his new general Skill, whatever that meant, Elijah was able to more reliably dodge the random attack, and before he knew it, his ordeal was over. On a run like any other, he pushed forward and reached the centre of the cleared land, out of reach of the probing tentacles.

  He had done it! He had actually done it! For a moment he just stood there in stunned disbelief. The young man had been so focused on not getting hit for so long, he didn’t know what to do. Then a tide of euphoria smashed into Elijah, and he threw his hands in the air, dancing a little jig as he cried out in jubilation.

  Happiness doesn’t last. It was a lesson that Elijah was about to be taught in the school of hard knocks. The trial was not to survive but to defeat the Evolved Slime, and the creature wasn’t beaten so easily. Elijah’s jaw dropped, and the colour drained from his cheeks as he watched on in horror.

  The Slime, finding its prey out of reach, emerged menacingly onto land. It was a towering, translucent green monster with seven tentacles that whipped about it as if tasting the air.

  Slurp, Slurp. It moved slowly towards him. Elijah had been wrong; this was not a safe haven; he had just entered a boss arena. The real challenge was yet to begin.