BDSysteM

Melody was right. It really didn’t take long. We continued roaming the dungeon, at one point passing through a passageway that opened up to the boss room, which we sprinted past, and before long we had all leveled up again. The largest slime group we faced was fifteen, so I guess that other S tier was keeping the dungeon sufficiently focused.

Despite leveling up, none of us gained any more abilities, not even me. The world is so unfair…. Melody has yet to level up once in this dungeon, which wasn’t surprising given that she was level fourteen. Slimes are too weak for her, slimes are too weak for everyone. Everyone A tier and above at least. I think we could all defeat a slime by ourselves.

Except me. 

Amane can punch it to death, since slimes won’t deal enough damage to her. Elle can do the same, but just dodge everything. Fara and Melody would have no trouble at all obviously. And Silvia… I guess she might have the same problem as me.

I don’t have any defense or attack. If I’m hit I’d just die before I could fight back. I guess that’s not that surprising since my system is support-based, same with Silvia’s.

Anyway, since we all leveled up, minus Melody, everyone’s stats have practically doubled. Mine haven’t doubled, but they still went up a lot.

I did have one minor complaint… You’d think level five would be a major milestone, right? Nope, wrong. Just some random points that I completely forgot even existed. What the fuck are they? BDSysteM, can you please tell me?

Not until level ten, whiny girl.

Anyway, since we’re all overleveled for weak slimes, Melody finally suggested, “Let’s go to the boss.”

“Finally,” Fara heaved. “What’s the plan, Ms. Strategist?”

“Well,” Melody sighed. “Let’s begin with the background. This first floor’s boss is the Rainbow Slime, also known as the Prideful Slime… I’m still not sure if that’s an insult or a compliment or a coincidental description… and it does basically everything.

“In addition to eating cotton, it does what the two slimes on this floor that we haven’t met do, which is leave a trail of ooze and split off chunks of mass to make baby slimes,” Melody explained. “So, I propose Scarlet makes a chronofield, Amane distracts the boss, Elle distracts the split-off slimes, Fara attacks the boss, and I’ll attack Elle’s slimes.”

“Good enough for me,” Fara agreed instantly. “How strong is this boss anyway?”

“Not particularly strong, but it can easily overload a single person,” Melody replied as she began walking down a passageway, one that led to the boss chamber. “The splitting is the thing that causes trouble if you can’t kill the babies fast enough.”

Before long, we reached the boss room, which was huge. There were five giant pillars that were way bigger than normal pillars… more like the walkways around them were so large that they created a single room. At the center of the boss room, just past the giant rainbow-striped slime, was a cube-ish object, similar to the one that we used to enter the dungeon.

Taking a look at our target, the giant slime that was probably fifty meters away from us, it was big. Really big. I’d guesstimate it's fifteen meters across, ten or so vertical. Each stripe was a meter tall, and they were very clearly defined, all perfectly straight and parallel with the ground, which felt odd to see on a living creature, even more so on a slime—a literal blob of goo—but nature’s like that sometimes. 

Thankfully, the rainbowy slime wasn’t very fast. It was barely even bouncing. When it did its “bounces,” it became a couple meters taller, and slid a few meters forward. Not a bounce at all.

Seeing that the slime had noticed us, Melody spun around. “Everyone ready?”

We all nodded, and our plan was set into action. Melody began by charging toward the slime, about ten meters in front of it, where I created the five-meter chronofield. Simultaneously, Elle and Amane charged in, with Amane heading straight into the barrier and Elle moving to the side, prepared to jump in and steal the focus of any baby slimes that spawned.

After the field was set up, Melody dashed over behind Elle, while Fara joined Amane in the circle, readying her lightning bolts. Meanwhile, Silvia and I kinda just hung out in the back, by the wall. Silvia kept scanning the room, making sure no new monsters joined, and I just watched… not much to do right now.

As Fara released her second lightning bolt, the first obviously not doing much damage—it didn’t even slow the slime. The slime's left side began to deform, and the spherical blob partially collapsed to its right, as the slime oozed away from it, forming a smaller slime, which was actually really big too. It was around a meter in diameter.

The rainbow slime re… uh… solidified itself, although ever so slightly shorter now, and continued attacking Amane while Fara released more bolts. The goop that came away also solidified, and began heading toward Elle, who was itching for action. She ran straight in front of it and danced around it.

“I can’t hit it like this!” Melody shouted at her, chuckling. “Stop moving!”

Elle kept dancing, but eventually slowed, allowing Melody to kill the slime, when another two came off of the rainbow slime. How does this rainbow slime die exactly? It seems like it just keeps splitting off… maybe that’s how? Every time it takes damage, it splits into some baby slimes, and eventually there’s no more big slime.

As the battle continued, my chronofield actually faded away, this battle took longer than like a minute, crazy. Once it did, Melody ran over to Amane and yelled at me to spawn another chronofield, which I did, and then she went back over to Elle, and the pattern repeated.

It took nearly six chronofields, our longest battle by far, but eventually the boss began to whittle down to just a couple meters. It was so small, it couldn’t split anymore. And that signaled its doom. I was pretty impressed by Fara’s ability to just… endlessly attack. Probably not endlessly but I guess my cooldown reduction and regeneration boost at least allowed her to keep going for ten or fifteen minutes.

After a few more strikes, the slime died, becoming nothing more than a gooey blob, and revealing the giant trail of slime it left behind it. Probably an inch thick of pure gooey goodness… cotton-dissolving gooey goodness, I believe. Wouldn’t swimming around it be kinda fun? It’s so weak it can’t hurt me… but… being tied up, wiggling back and forth, as Melody whips me along…. Or maybe I’m crawling to Melody? A vibrator stuck inside me, and the longer I take, the more I get denied… fuck yes. Gooey slimes…

Regardless, with the slime dying, the combat summary appeared.

That’s a lot… like around all the other slimes we’ve killed today combined. I wonder if everyone got this much… I actually didn’t get any for the split-off slimes. Unless those are simply part of the boss. Almost immediately after the combat summary, my thoughts were interrupted by BDSysteM. Melody would like to let you know she found something very odd in your level up options and would like to discuss it later.

Okay… Melody found something odd? Melody? What the hell is there to find odd in my system? Well… okay, a lot, but like… nothing has really surprised Melody I think. Other than that first day, where I… licked her foot…

“Well, I think that’s enough for today,” Melody said, as she walked toward Silvia and I. Everyone else was as well. “Did everyone level up again?”

“Yep,” Fara replied. Followed by Elle, then Silvia, then Amane.

“Good. We can discuss our abilities again next time, but I’d say we can make this team work.” Melody glanced around, locking eyes with everyone in turn. “Everyone okay with making it official?”

“Good with me,” Fara agreed.

“Yea.” Silvia and Elle said.

“Yea…” Amane added last.

And that was that. Dungeon team formed.

“I’ll register it with the school,” Melody began. “Let’s head out now, before more slimes try to attack us.”

With the battle complete, and all of us well ahead of probably everyone else in the academy, we quickly left the dungeon, only facing one final group of slimes, and returned to the surface, leaving from the east exit, where we met up with the S tier that was… sitting on a pile of solidified slime goo and lazily firing bolts with their fingers at the slimes that kept trying to climb up their makeshift mansion.

Anyway, once we left the practically empty dungeon complex, Amane spoke up for once. “I’ll… go… catch the metro… thanks for today.”

Melody and I both smiled down at her. I replied, “Thanks for joining.”

She nodded politely, and began heading off. Then Melody turned toward Fara and Elle. “I’m sure we’ll see each other tomorrow at the academy. Thanks for joining us.”

“Thanks for having us,” Fara replied. “It was fun.”

“I’m sure we’ll have plenty more fun at the academy,” Melody chuckled.

The two of them went toward the south parking lot where we initially went, and that left the other two S tiers. “Thanks, you two can… go… level or whatever. I don’t know what you were assigned to.”

One of them chuckled. “We’re assigned to whatever you want us to do.”

The other one added, “We’ll head back to the guild, call us if you need any more babysitting.”

Melody groaned. “Scarlet made me!”

“I did not…” Okay… maybe… but not really…

“Sure.” Melody smirked. “Let’s head back to the car, we can talk about your ability there.”

Oh yeah. There was something unexpected. More unexpected than my crazy-ass system apparently.

7w1

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