I took a deep breath. I can do this. I’ve been doing this for the past week and yet for some reason, hunting this damn slime still felt like a tall order to me, possibly due to the fact that slimes, unlike in games and animes, had an ability that made them really hard to deal with, in real life. Yes, a simple skill that every living organism had, called the ability to sense danger and react accordingly. Now, this normally wouldn’t be a problem but that was only if the aforementioned organism didn’t have a super elusive and quite literal bone-less body that could twist and turn in ungodly directions. 

Honestly, I’ve kinda grown to respect them over the week. They not only were completely impervious to physical attacks, they had something called a core, basically their brain, which was on the same level as a human toddler. I would know since, being as cautious as I am, I used up an entire three days just studying them, from what they eat, to their ability to shoot out a spray that can easily melt and dissolve flesh under a matter of minutes, all the way down to how they shit. 

They don’t, in case you were wondering. 

The first time I tried hunting them, I didn’t use my [Question] skill and rather simply shot a fist-sized rock at them. Another fact that isn’t very popular about slimes; they acted in groups. I spent that particular evening running and hiding away from a pack of angry slimes, which was pretty hard if you considered the flat terrain I was in. 

So, the next time I tried hunting them, I swallowed my pride and used my [Question] skill, asking the quickest way for me to kill a slime. It was then that I noticed how useful my [Question] skill was, as it immediately provided me with a single, perfect answer that properly conveyed how dumb I was.

The answer I got? Just hit their core in a single strike. Now before you say anything, you had to understand that I wasn’t very sure fisting through a slime’s body of fluid that can easily melt flesh until bone was a good idea, until I found out that it just felt like water. Of course, that answer led to me pondering over how the process of their dissolving spray worked but I stopped wracking my brain over it when I killed my first damned slime by simply ambushing it and fisting the living core out of it. 

Something I was going to be doing now. 

I was currently hiding behind a large rock, stalking the unaware little green slime, my prey and dinner for the afternoon. It was just munching on some grass through its transparent body, a sight that never stopped fascinating me. 

Stop. Focus. Take a deep breath. 

Gripping the stalk of the make-shift spear I had crafted through the lucky findings of the bones of a beast’s carcass, I pulled my arm back and took aim slowly, tensing through every little jerk and motion of the muscles in my arm-lean, feminine muscles that definitely felt stronger than the masculine ones I had built over a ten year gym period. Fantasy worlds and their logic really was unfair.

My colorless eyes zoomed in on the green slime, singling it out in a show of pure focus. This state of focus was something that was really risky since I wouldn’t be able to react to any external threats. .which was why I always double-checked my surroundings before I hunt in this state. 

The green slime seemed around satisfied with it’s large gulp. I watched how the grass dissolved in it’s transparent stomach and just as the slime was about to leave, satisfied, I made my move. 

With minimal movement so as to not cause any unneeded sound, I exhaled the breath I had been holding in, and threw my spear. It streaked through the air like a silent bullet, hitting true to the rather large external core of the green slime. 

The slime didn’t even know what hit it before its external core was shattered, causing the surrounding green gel-like flesh to melt and turn into a puddle but without the dissolving venom and simply dampened the grassy soil, it’s only mark left into this world.

 “Shit.” I fell back on my ass, moaning at the throbbing headache that now plagued my head. Another demerit to being in a state of absolute focus. Well, at least I didn’t pass out like I did the first time I used it. 

How’d I learn to be in that state? I simply used my extremely overpowered skill, [Question]. A little tip; Just take a deep breath and hold it, while imagining yourself standing on top of the sky. On the topic of my skill, despite it’s extremely broken-ness, there were still limits to the questions I could ask. 

The first and foremost being that I would only be able to ask 1 question a day, aka a single question per the twenty-four hours over in this world. The second was that there were limits or realms to the questions I could ask. For example, I couldn’t ask something like ‘Where’s a source of unlimited energy?’, even if I asked smartly. Trust me, I tried. Questions that were outside my current realm of influence wouldn’t be answered but of course, that all would change as I progressed in my individual strength, which begs the question. 

How do I increase my individual strength?

Since I basically knew nothing about this world, the first thing I did was go to Question and the answer I got was obviously cut off, probably because I was still too low level to know the full power scale of this world. It told me that for any mortal of this world, the moment they gain sentience or breathe their first gasps of life, the World Spirit immediately assesses them and then provides them with a rank, something that could be seen on one’s personal status. 

“Status,” I muttered. A familiar chime resounded in my head. 

As you can see, the only thing that significantly changed within the 1 week worth of time I had spent in these plains was that I had evolved from a 9th circle mortal to an 8th circle. These circles represented the trials a mortal had to overcome to evolve and transcend mortality, or so was what my [Question] told me. This World Rank Assessed By Terra, or just World Rank for short, was something that you had to focus on if you wanted to become strong in this world. 

Of course, I wasn’t so naive as to believe it was the one thing that wholly determined a person’s strength but as of right now, it was the only reference I could use to determine how strong I was. After all, If I was a highschool athlete at the 9th circle [Mortal] rank, I could be compared to a once in a century Olympic athlete at the 8th circle.

 I wonder how it’d feel to be at the 7th circle. 

I took a glance at the sparkling green core of the recently defeated lesser, poison slime and after warily assessing my surroundings, I walked towards the core and picked it up, holding the glass-like crystal and ignored the need to absorb the energy within. 

“Finally,” I whispered. “After 1 whole week of running, planning and pulling my hair out, I’ve finally obtained the last core.” I couldn’t believe I had actually reached this far. With this one lesser core, I would have amassed a total of 50 lesser cores, a number that had been calculated as the bare minimum to enter the 7th circle. 

I stared at the sparkling core and saw my feminine face muddled with dirt and grass as the reflection. I really looked like one of those women after a month of survival reality shows. I thought I would have stank but again, fantasy world logic said that I must smell like daisies and roses.

“Grr. . .”

Something growled behind me, breaking me out of my thoughts. I turned around. And before my eyes, was something that looked like a cross-breed between a rabbit and a wolf, a monster that I had dubbed creatively as a were-rabbit. The question was why on earth was a were-rabbit so far away from its own pack, which by the way, was supposed to be far away from the slime’s territory. Also, why was its fur red instead of white?

Then, I realized my mistake. “Wait, that wasn’t a-?!” But, it was too late.

Ding!

I read the last sentence of the answer I had received. “Energy rich items. . .Items rich in energy. Ah.” I took a slow glance at the sparkling slime core in my hands and back at the Blood WereRabbit in front of me. 

To test the answer, I moved the slime core around, moving it left to which the Blood WereRabbit also turned left. Then, I moved it right and as if pointing a laser at a cat, the Blood WereRabbit gave out a snarl before following my hands and turning right as well. 

Then, the Blood WereRabbit started to crouch as if preparing to pounce on me. Fuck’s sake. I immediately turned tail and ran away, perhaps the fastest I had ever run in both of my lives but maybe I shouldn’t have since I heard something tapping the ground at high speeds and turning my head back, I saw that the Blood WereRabbit was quickly chasing me, openly flaunting it’s huge fangs at me. 

“Shit, shit!” I cursed. Now, as everyone knew already, I would never fight a battle I wasn’t at least ninety percent sure I could win and seeing how I got a very clear warning to not engage in a battle with it unless I was in the seventh circle - a rank I would have already entered by not if not the fucking, big ass WereRabbit chasing me right now. 

The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. I trusted my gut and rolled to the side, narrowly dodging a swipe of the Blood WereRabbit’s claws that would have easily beheaded me from the back. It’s claws landed on a nearby large rock, slicing it in half which immediately made me feel queasy just imagining that could have been me. It’s little nose twitched in annoyance before it snarled at me. 

I got off my ass again and started to haul ass, trying to come up with a plan to deal with the spawn of satan. Shit, I hated rabbits. I swear that if I ever got through this, I’d kill every rabbit I see, even if I somehow got back to Earth and not this shitty world that spawns rabbits that looked like the devil’s fucking pet. 

Oh god, what do I do?!  Right now, I really wanted to smack myself across the face for wasting a valuable question on useless information when I could have used it to guide me into defeat or at least running away from it. 

My white eyes glanced at the sparkling core in my hands. “Fuck no. Hell if I threw you away!” I was so close. So close to entering the seventh circle and seeing as I nearly hunted all of the slimes in this area, I would have to move to another area to hunt more slimes, a process I really didn’t want to do. 

Why don’t I want to move to another area to hunt? Because in any other area, big monsters live alongside these ‘low-levelled’ slimes.

Why don’t I just hunt other small monsters akin to these slimes? You really think I haven’t thought about that in the one week I was here?

Throw it because It’s better to live another day in misery than to squander your chances of living today? Hell no. I’ll smack anyone that said that.

I rolled to the side, once more dodging a life-threatening bite to my neck. I let out a painful grunt when my sides hit a number of pointy rocks hidden beneath the grass. Shit. I couldn’t continue running. My legs were sore, my breathing was haggard. I had to either fight or flight but now that I couldn’t ‘flight’ I had to fight. 

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