Dragon King: Wind & Spirit

While the book was a welcome discovery, and quite fascinating to look at, not to mention I felt a sort of kinship or calling to it, I did not really have the time to peruse through it. At least not for a few more minutes.

With nothing left to do with it, I put the book back into its hiding place. Contrary to what I believed at first, my elbow did not punch a hole through the floor, rather there was a hidden mechanism that opened up the hiding place when pressure is applied to it.

I waved my spear as huge clumps of slime dripped from it and from various parts of my body. I was a little annoyed by the entire state of my body right now, I had slime in every nook and cranny, it was so much that even the skin tight inner suit I wore under my armor, did nothing in preventing such a disaster.

But there was nothing to be done about this at the moment, I had other things to worry about now. One of which included the fact that five slimes were all making a beeline for Me. I moved back until I was standing in the central path of the library and with enough room to move about.

In all of the time I had been battling the slimes, I have never had to take on more than one or two at a time. But five might be a challenge I might not necessarily overcome, not without being extra careful.

WHOOSH

This time the sound came from multiple angles covering any exit that I would have had to dodge. Without time to think I moved my right leg up while jumping back with my left. Where I once stood a second ago had a smattering of slime juice which was spread in a radius of a meter due to how intense its impact was.

Then with my balance still in question, I swung the spear in my hands and knocked down three tentacles that were shooting straight for me. The final attack however struck me straight in the abdomen driving a significant amount of air out of my body, and making me backpedal a little as I attempted to catch my breath.

There was a stinging sensation where the slimes tentacles had hit me, but it was not something I had to worry about for the moment. I took a few more steps back to get a feel for my current opponents.

they were not as fast or as strong as Samson when he was training me, but due to their numbers they made up for their deficiency in attack speed and power by the area they could cover if they chose to attack at the same time.

I was a little stumped, but keeping my distance might not exactly be a good thing. So far I've discovered the hard way how much of a distance their attacks could cover and I needed to get close enough to them to be able to kill them or cause any lasting damage.

I gripped my slick spear tighter as I immediately took off going directly for the kill. The slimes could not cause any significant damage to me unless they got extremely lucky.

The power of their strikes vary from slime to slime but the strongest so far could only ever dislocate or bruise my body badly. However this was an injury I could tolerate and even completely ignore in the face of a fight.

When I had reached my maximum speed, I threw my spear with all of my strength and above average human accuracy, towards the slime crawling in the middle of the five slime formation.

It was however a mistake, my strength was already three times more than that of a normal human being, and when you consider the momentum I had when I threw my spear, it was a little too powerful a strike to be used on a slime.

My spear pierced the slime and moved on through the dimly lit gloom of the library before coming to banging halt by slamming into what I could only call a huge trophy made completely of metal and studded with different jewels and stones of varying shapes, sizes and colors.

"BANG!!!"

The sound reverberated through my entire body and left my ears ringing. I did not know how slimes moved about, or if they had a sense of hearing. But if they did, I was massively screwed because there was no way they wouldn't all now know that there was an intruder on this floor.

"F.u.c.k."

All I could do was curse as I shifted one of my daggers and struck down on one of the slimes, driving my hands through its body and having my dagger push out its core, only to bring it smashing down to the floor from the force of my strike.

With no time to celebrate I slashed out with the other dagger in my left hand, lacerating the body of another slime and making a direct path to its core. And almost immediately before the slimes self healing kicked in, I stabbed my other dagger through the hole I just made shattering the core crystal and effectively ending the life of another inconsequential slime.

I heard a flip and felt a hit on my t.h.i.g.h that made me miss a step due to shock and pain. I narrowly moved my head to the right to avoid a tentacle that went on to strike at a bookcase right behind me punching a hole into the brittle wood.

I quickly struggled for my balance as I swung my formerly attacked leg with all of my strength. Instead of my leg going through the slimes body, it hit the slimes with so much force the little monster was sent flying like a soccer ball only for it to go smashing right on the same trophy my spear had hit.

The impact was akin to throwing a ripe tomato at a wall, as the slime splattered and had its core shattered from the force of the kick. As for the final slime a simple and downward swing from my dagger was enough to put an end to it for good.

I closed my eyes for a moment to catch my breath, however the moment I opened my eyes, I could see what was most probably the entire slime population on this floor coming for me with glows of extreme prejudice.

"Oh God."

One, two, three…. Twenty, the number was not clear, but I had a feeling of intending doom, cascade all over me like the shock of a cold morning shower, and not that it mattered at this moment but I hated cold morning showers.

This entire battalion of slimes were standing between me and my spear, so I was not sure I could cause as much damage with only the two daggers I had on. Not to mention, the reach that the spear offered me, was not something the daggers could give.

Also this might not be a good time to be rather obvious but my bullets were limited, very limited and I was told to save them for more dangerous enemies at the end of the floor, Which is to say, I still had to worry about a floor boss.

I hated to admit it but, with the way things were going, it seemed the only thing I could do was retreat. I could come back here when I was better equipped and kick all their asses.

As I turned to make my way back to the elevator, what was face with me made my blood run cold. Slimes, dozens of them were now standing between me and my escape. There was no way I could move past them or through them seeing as they were all heavily cl.u.s.tered together.

It seemed like all the slimes I had spent the last twenty minutes killing only counted for 5% of the entire slime civilization currently colonizing this floor. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place(but mainly between an army of slimes and an army of more slimes.) With no way out at all.

After a brief moment of hesitation I ran in between the gaps of the book shelves all the way to the end of the library hoping to find a path to slip through. But the book case at the end of the wall was actually bolted to the wall, bringing me to a dead end.

I cursed in annoyance, I was even more trapped now than before and the slimes were each making slow but steady progress as they made their way towards me.

I turned around frantically hoping to find something that would give me an advantage, or at least lead me away from unsavory position.

But I was surrounded by towering bookshelves each containing scraps of paper, damaged books and some books that were lucky enough to survive the onslaught of the slimes.

I was running out of time, and with every second I spent trying to figure out how to escape, it was one second more the slimes had, to get closer to me. I leaned my back against one of the bookshelves and frustratingly slammed my elbows on it's edges.

Such an action stung fiercely for a few seconds prompting me to rub my elbows in agony as I wondered how it was possible for the bookshelves to be so hard when I had seen enough evidence that the slimes could erode it. But the floating bits and pieces of paper that fell from the bookcase did not offer any answers. However they offered a way out of my current predicament.

With a bout of inspiration, I started climbing the three meter tall bookcase. I could not go through the slimes or around them, but I could very well go over them. It barely took me ten seconds to scale the entire thing leaving me perched precariously on the top of the bookcase.

However it seemed my contingent of new slimy friends had other ideas as they also began to find really cool and peculiar ways to get to him, such as continuously stacking themselves together, combining and meshing their body and cores into one entity, until the slime standing in front of me was twelve feet tall, bipedal and glowing with the whole shebang.