Ciel and Xia continued their trek in the dense green foliage. The air was damp. The heat was irritating. It was, in all senses, an unbearable experience. Floras and greeneries shielded their sight in the most irritating way possible. The sweet smell of nectar and rot floated in the air like a stench of impending doom.

The image of the slime they met along the way was actively haunting Ciel’s mental landscape. Xia already moved back to her hunting spree. She stabbed what had to be the fifth gigantic praying mantises they met with her rapier, spilling blood everywhere and nearly recolored Ciel’s waistcoat into a gross green mess.

Ciel gazed at the goo with the urge to hurl, but it was then he caught something in the corner of his vision. It was a taint of oozing green slime on the brown rough bark of the tree. The color evoked a horrible memory. That had to be the tenth slime they met on this journey.

Inside the Residence, Amy observed this transpiring event with Caislean and shivered. Her ability, [Instinct], was overloading with warnings.

Amy: Ciel… I don’t like this.

Unperturbed and uncaring about the consequence, Xia marched deeper into the forest.

It took a moment later for Ciel to confirm his fear.

Xia impaled a green blob monster that died in a steaming acidic glue.

“What is this? Acid slime in this forest?” Xia swiped her blade, steaming from the acid. “Where does it come from?”

Ciel could answer that, and his answer terrified him. Everything assembled in his head like jigsaw pieces fitting together — those disappearances, the fractured ecosystem, the territory and the slime.

Inside the Residence, Caislean also put the pieces together.

Caislean: Master! We need to get out of here!

Ciel couldn’t agree more, “Xia,” he grabbed the young woman’s hand, “we need to leave now! You can’t handle this!”

“What are you talking about?” Xia protested. Without Ciel’s understanding, she didn’t realize the danger incubating in this execution ground. “Ciel, you aren’t making sense.”

“Shut up, we are in danger. Trust me, this guy is bad news. To make it worse, he already knows we are here,” Ciel heard the rustling. “Oh crap. He is surrounding us. Amy, I need your [Instinct] for the best path to escape.”

Xia barely caught where the conversation was going. She was too surprised at Ciel’s sudden surge of adrenaline.

Amy: Go right! Full speed right!

“Ciel, what got into you?” Xia was still slow on the uptake and kept asking questions as the two barreled past woods, logs, and mud. “What does Amy have to do with this? What exactly is going on?” Then Xia realized something as both of them ducked past a low-hanging branch of a misshapen apple tree. “Wait, you know something about this? You look at those slimes like they are dragons.”

“Xia, forget everything they taught you about slimes,” Ciel shouted. “Those commonsense don’t work against that guy. He isn’t your average joke.”

“What do you mean?”

It was then that Ciel and Xia exploded into a clearing.

“Oh my god,” Xia’s eyes widened in fear

“Shit,” Ciel muttered.

Inside the Residence, Caislean sighed in despair, while Amy ran toward the nearest sink to empty the content of her stomach.

What stood in the clearing was raw misery incarnated. Animals and humans were frozen inside a hardened green gelatin. They were all in different poses. Some were shielding their faces. Many looked like they were crawling away. Few were kneeling in prayers. Every living being trapped inside the solid mucus was mummified. Their wrinkled skin was wrapped tightly against their bones as in shocking displays of desiccation.

“Is that why you are so afraid?” Xia’s confidence quaked. “How do you know there will be a mass grave here?”

“They aren’t dead.”

“What? Are you telling me they are still alive?” Xia glanced at the statues of people and animals once more in renewed horror.

“Yes, he wouldn’t waste them,” Ciel trembled. “I know it will be bad, but even I don’t expect this.”

It was then the master of the territory emerged from the forest at the opposite end of the clearing.

It was a green blob of slime over eight meters tall. Fizzy gas bubbled inside its body. The pink pearly core ominously glowed inside the translucent blob like a bulb from doomsday. The ground and grasses of the clearing bubbled as the slime made its way to them.

Ciel could hear the rustling from behind him.

They were surrounded.

“It has been three years, Unity Lord,” the glowing pink orbs inside the giant slime blinked with every word. Its voice sounded like an underwater echo. “Greetings.”

“Slomrath,” Ciel greeted the Lords. “Greeting, o Lord of Devouring Slime.”

…

Xia glanced between the gigantic slime and Ciel, struggling to take in the development.

Ciel, still holding Xia’s hand, edged toward the direction of the clearing he aimed at. Meanwhile, Slomrath moved closer. Both Lords were trying their hardest to reach their objectives before the chaos broke out.

Xia picked that moment to point her rapier toward the gigantic slime; only for Ciel to bat it down in panic, and looked at her like she was an inch from setting herself on fire.

Slomrath was impressed, “You, of all people, exert your control over a minion? Perhaps there is hope for you, Ciel.”

“She is more like a friend,” Ciel replied with steady calm. “You know I don’t do minions.”

The slime audibly groaned, despite having no mouth, “It appears something never changes. For a second there, I believe you might finally become more like us. I don’t get it. You are like me, older than time, with the promised destiny and birthright. Yet, you deem it fit to treat an ant like your equal. Your Authority is a travesty of such audacity, and I admit it couldn’t find a more fitting master.”

Upon hearing that, and realizing the inhuman relation between the two, Xia wrenched her hand from Ciel’s grasp and backed away from him.

Ciel didn’t stop her.

“For old time’s sake, I have a question,” Ciel swallowed his hurt feeling to face the threat. “What are you doing here?”

Slomrath snorted.

“Of course you ask that. It appears your inability to sense faith power has come back to bite you. You probably never feel the vast faith coming from the south.”

Xia gripped her sword.

The south was the direction of the capital.

“You landed here three years ago and ran?” Ciel asked in surprise.

“Obviously,” Slomrath confirmed. “Even back then, the faith gathered in that huge human city was absurd. In fact, the growth has only increased exponentially these past two years.”

Xia froze. The words ‘two years’ weighed a huge amount on her.

“You ran into this forest, and started a farm to catch-up,” Ciel assembled the picture together. “You probably began with the animals first, then expanded your territory to get the human. But I don’t get it, why the museum show?”

Slomrath was proud, “You obviously won’t get it given how incompatible you are with faith power, but worship comes in many forms — adoration, admiration, love, longing and much more. Thanks to a little experiment, I figure out the most efficient aspect — terror. I don’t need their gratitude if I can simply trap them in undying torment.”

Xia trembled. She could follow this conversation just fine. She looked around her. All these people were being trapped as an energy farm, kept alive in a living death to maximize this monster gain. How could Ciel take this so calmly? She could barely hold herself from retaliating, and he was talking to this inhumane monster like an old friend.

“Well, you are an idiot,” Ciel gave his opinion on Slomrath’s method. “The folks in the capital are noticing you, buddy. They will be coming after us.”

Slomrath wasn’t worried about them at all.

“That can be a bother. Well, it is about time I start a major expansion anyway. It is not a loss to go on offensive. I believe there is a city near here, isn’t there, Ciel?”

It was then that Xia drew her sword in a rage.

“You think you can walk over us easily!” Xia’s Aura surged. “You are going down right here!”

“Xia! Don’t!” Ciel’s mind ground to halt at the thought of escalating a doomed battle. “Run. You don’t have a chance.”

“Shut up, traitor,” Xia pointed her sword at Ciel. “I will deal with you later when I am done with your friend here!”

It was the beginning of a long fall.

…

Ciel couldn’t watch what would happen. He already knew how the battle would turn out. Anyone who had an idea what a Lord could do when supported by faith power would declare the result when anyone less than a walking god picked a fight with them.

Countless showers of acid came at Xia from three-hundred-sixty degrees. Ciel automatically ducked down to the ground to avoid the bone-melting spurt.

Xia, registering the attacks, performed an acrobatic flip in midair to evade countless acid bullets and rolled across the ground. Despite her excellent maneuver and speed, she didn’t emerge unscathed, audibly flinching from the ankle that steamed from an acid burn. She swallowed her pain and rose, only to find herself surrounded by creatures and animals made of green goo.

Xia gathered White Mana around her burn.

White Magic Rank 1: Heal

The white light shone for a few seconds, fixing Xia’s injury. It further spread across her body, rejuvenating and amplifying her strength, vitality and stamina.

White Magic Rank 2: Strengthen

“Okay,” Xia said while positively glowing with power. “Let's do this again.”

The young woman grabbed her sword and rushed toward a slime-like bear, decapitating it in a blink in her enhanced state, and swung her sword toward another slime-like giant Komodo dragon… only to realize her rapier had melted to its hilt.

Xia’s surprise was cut short when the lizard-shape slime lunged, nearly taking out her head if not for her quick reflex.

Xia jumped back and finally noticed the vast army of slime-animals approaching her. Finally, she got why Ciel was so insistent on running away. These monsters were acidic, taking them down meant sacrificing her weapons. Weapons which they didn’t have to spare.

Xia glared at the gigantic blob of Slomrath. If it was impossible to make a dent in the minion, then the big boss was the obvious target.

Xia tossed away the useless hilt of her sword and gathered the White Mana in her palm to perform the most powerful White spell she could use.

White Magic Rank 4: Smite

Xia held her palm out and fired a beam of light toward Slomrath. White Mana churned through the air as a column of brightness the size of a cannonball punched the slime’s gigantic body. The membrane of the slime bubbled as the internal content of the Lord boiled from the intensity of the attack.

After a second, the light faded and Xia fell to her knee, huffing from channeling such a huge amount of Mana. Her platinum hairs was dampened with sweat. She looked up to register the damage she had done.

Only despair greeted her.

Slomrath’s gelatinous body didn’t have a single scratch on it. It was as if he reversed time and undo Xia’s effort to injure him.

It was then Xia finally comprehended the unreachable gap between her and Slomrath. At that moment, Ciel’s effort to be diplomatic against the blob of evil made perfect sense. Her companion knew the attempt to fight him would end like this.

“You should have to sit down with Ciel before trying to fight me, human,” Slomrath jeered. “Given you have the audacity to attack me directly, Unity Lord must tell you next to nothing about us. Well, I think I am done playing.”

The army of slimes edged closer.

Xia regathered the surrounding Mana.

“White Magic Rank 5: Wra-” Xia coughed up blood. She could barely cast ‘that’ at her peak, much less in this diminished state. Instead, Xia downgraded her attacks.

White Magic Rank 3: Bind.

She impaled a slime-Komodo dragon with a white pillar. Her Bind also caught a slime-monkey and another bear. But that was just a drop of water in an army of drakes, wasps, birds, gorillas, elephants, and jaguars all made of slime. A single target spell would not do a thing against the Animal Planet horde.

Then things got much worse.

Xia saw a spark of red.

“No way,” Xia said.

“So, how do I do this?” Slomrath mused. “Oh right, Red Magic Rank 1: Haste.”

The army of slimes quickened. Xia tried to evade them, but they simply came at too many numbers at too fast of a rate. An icicle from a slime-bird impaled her legs. A flame from a slime-tiger roasted her shoulder before she could scream, and several slimy tentacles from a creepy-looking mollusk wrapped around her leg, burning her limb with acid.

She tore those tentacles apart with her bare hands, biting back tears while using Heal to fix her various injuries.

Then all the animals cast Bolt. Xia had a moment to see the barrages of Red Magic filling her vision like a volley of arrows. The only thing she could do is put every ounce of her power into her Aura.

It was the finisher.

The barrage hit her like a shower of missiles. Xia flew across the floor. Her clothing was reduced to rags. Her forehead bled, and her unhealthy pale skin bruised. She got to her knees and saw the massive army of creatures surrounding her. Xia’s gaze caught a sight of the horrifying statue of a desiccated woman trapped in a green shell beside her.

The thought of ending like that statue broke Xia. Through the terror, her repressed despair for the last two years finally shattered the dam.

“No. Don’t.” she begged, crawling away in tears and all four. “I will do anything. Please. Betty. Father. Save me. I give up. I don’t want to fight anymore. Anyone! Help!” she curled up on the forest floor. “Please help me...”

“Ahh, humans always break in the end,” Slomrath said.

A streak of tears rolled down Xia's face as the army of slimes approached.

Suddenly, a crystal orb flew between her and the hoard before exploding.

Boom!

Xia barely reacted to her savior grabbing by the arm and dragging her out of a certain horrific fate. Her heart did a little somersault upon grasping that familiar hand.

“It won’t slow them down for long,” Ciel yelled. “Run!”

…

Ciel dragged the recently humbled fallen princess by one hand. In another was the grenade Betty gave to him. Both of them ran as fast as they could. The slime quickly tried to close their path of escape, and at that critical junction, Ciel, using [Calculative], timed the exact moment to toss his grenade.

Boom!

The couple rushed past the gaping hole in the hoard before it closed and finally found themselves at their destination ordained by Amy’s [Instinct].

A cliff towering over the rushing river below. At such height, the river beneath them looked like an earthworm.

“It is a dead end, Ciel,” Slomrath said. “Just surrender. I always wanted to run some tests with another Lord.”

Ciel shielded the trembling Xia behind him. In his hand, was another grenade.

“Do you trust me?” Ciel asked.

“No,” the shaken, shell-shocked Xia were utterly terrified of the slime, refusing to look at the monster in fear of death. Instead, she buried her head in Ciel’s shoulder and hugged him for dear life.

“That is reassuring,” Ciel tossed the grenade.

The explosion blasted the cliff to smithereens, sending the couple into the water.