Master Of None

Walker pulled out the two smaller hammers the wandering blacksmith had made him. He turned the bladed side so he could use his double chop skill to cut the entangling vines from the plant. Gil pulled his dagger out and soon found that he was having a lot of trouble cutting through even the thinnest of the vines. 

"Remey and Su saw this and focused on the bulb shaped body. They were able to cause some damage and make the vines of the plant slow even more. Remey was throwing combos of punches at the bulb causing it to crack and start to fall apart. Su was using her shields to bash it and causing the bulb body to break even more. The iron vine trap was pretty much defenseless against them even though it had such strong defenses. 

Midnight was using her sharp claws to easily rend the vines. She shredded them at the base leaving the long iron vines for Walker to take away later. She had seen that Walker looked interested in the monster as soon as he called for them to pull it up. She knew that they could have easily cut the vines and been n their way hut Walker stopped and had them pull it up. 

' Iron vine trap defeated.

30 exp multiplied to 300 exp'

"I can't believe a monster tried to steal my shoe. That's what you get for making me get my sock wet." Remey berated the now defeated iron vine trap as she pulled her boot from it and motioned for Walker to give her a back up pair of socks. 

"Leader, is there any reason we pulled up the monster instead of just cutting the vine and leaving it?" Su had reached a similar conclusion as Midnight had but she still wanted to hear the benefits the monster had. 

"Ther vines that it has are really strong and great for forging equipment. My appraisal skill also said that they are really good for healers since they had a lot of natural mana in them." 

"Don't tell me you want to give it to your girlfriend." Gil was giving Walker a disappointed look since he thought that Walker had just had them all put in work for a gift for Alice. 

"First she is not my girlfriend yet. Second, if I make a staff that can boost my affinity with every element it is better to have materials that have natural mana in them. That would make it easier to use all elements." Walker looked smug as he said this and started to gather up the vines. 

"Ohhhh so not your girlfriend yet? You have plans then?" Gil had heard only the first party giving him plenty of ammunition to tease Walker as payback for the extra work of pulling the iron vine trap from the ground.

Midnight was huffing a little seemingly laughing at the jokes Gil was making. "I wonder when my scales will be stronger than those vines." Onyx suddenly spoke up after resting the majority of the morning since he had been asleep. 

"Sorry if we woke you up. We were just dealing with a small monster. It was not ideal for you to bind." Walker felt bad after putting Onyx to work all night and wanted to let him sleep as long as possible. As the youngest in the group, Walker was becoming prone to babying Onyx. 

"I just felt the commotion and wanted to see if I could help. When I saw Gil struggle to cut the vines I wondered if I would be that tough." Onyx was blunt with his desires and worries. 

"Well I can already feel you grew a few more inches, so give it some more time. You will be just as big as Midnight is now soon. Not that you will catch up." Walker tried to act more light hearted since he knew that Midnight's growth was always going to be ahead due to her hero title. But this still seemed to make Onyx happy. 

"Then I will try to grow more and more." Onyx said this as he returned to his tattoo form and quickly fell back to sleep. He was still exhausted after using his skill to translate all night and it was too hard for him to fight off the chill in the air since he was cold blooded.

"Do you think this part of its body is useful?" Remey kicked the large bulb and saw that some of the inner acids were dripping out.

" I would say no, but maybe the guild will know something when we bring it back with us." Walker stored the vines separately then store the bulb. He was starting to think about how useful the iron vines might be if he could have them to bind multiple crystals to a staff. The real question would be how well it would work when the darkness element was added since it was a decaying element and the vines were not. How questions would need to wait since Gil stopped them from moving again. 

They had only made it a few minutes farther when Gil was pointing out some small purple slimes moving ahead of them. They were systematically absorbing the small plants on their path in to their bodies and decaying them into more of the purple slime. 

"We should try to get the cores out of those ones. They can be useful for the research since they are newly formed." Walker's plan was simple, they could easily pull the small cores from the slimes and even use some of the containers Walker brought to store the bodies. The purple slime could be kept for the research s well and hopefully act as a catalyst for an antidote against decay.

Using slime's bodies for potions was not new but the different slimes in the different environments would cause the potions to have different effects each time. Since this was the case they were a popular topic of research and often hunted for by alchemists. It was still surprising that Remey did not get excited over them. 

"They would be the best ones to catch. They are the closest to the massive slime. If we bypass the massive slime and head to the elven city then we might be able to give it to them." Remey came out of nowhere with this idea. 

"You might be losing your mind. We aren't even supposed to travel in to elven territory since they do not like other races moving through it. And you just want to walk in to their city and say, hey I brought you some slime that is killing your forest. You're welcome." Gil's tone was a little mocking but what he said was still true. If the party went too deep in to the forest from where they could be seen as an enemy of the elven instead of an ally. 

"But it could save lives if we head to the city. We have no idea on what they do or don't know about the massive slime." Su was thinking that Remey's idea was not so bad. They could easily reach the city before a very slow moving slime and potentially warn those who do not know of the danger. 

"I really think we should keep following the trail for now. If we find that something changes or becomes more dangerous we can consider heading to the elven city. Now we should deal with those slimes though." Walker brought them back to focus on the small slimes that were still consuming the small plants on the ground. 

"Oh no…" Remey was cracking her knuckles and moving toward the slimes. She had seen something that pushed her in to motion faster than the others. 

"Follow Remey I guess." Walker did not see this as a bad thing since there were inky four small purple slimes. They could split the work and force their cores from their bodies easily. 

Remey was the first to a slime and using her gloved hand thrust it in to the small slime and forcefully pulled the core out. This brutality was something no one had expected. They were stopped in their tracks for a moment drawing Remey's attention. 

"Well don't just stand there, they are eating crystal ginger plants!" no one knew what the plants were but hearing the stress in Remey's voice they knew it could not be a simple weed growing on the forest floor. 

They jumped in to motions getting in to the best position to get the slime cores out of the slimes without causing themselves harm. Gil used an old arrow to push the core out of the body of a slime without piercing it. He frowned as he saw his old arrow decay. 

Su was able to split the slime body and grab the core before the slime covered it again. Walker used his frost whip skill to grab the core as he had before. The party didn't gain experience from this but it was still a good way to train their precision. 

"So what is crystal ginger?" The question drew Remey's full attention.

…..

….