The Slime Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo

The slime grew larger and larger as it approached, towering above them.

As he saw the creature’s full size for the first time up close, Haruki’s mind began to swirl with doubts.

I’m a fool! There’s no way we could possibly take on such a creature, these puny barriers will never work!

All of Haruki’s instincts were telling him to run for his life; that even if he couldn’t outrun the slime, it’d be better to at least die trying.

Yet, his feet didn’t move. They stood firmly anchored in place.

The slime crossed over the first line of alkaline fertilizer.

Haruki closed his eyes.

This is it, in the next moment all of our fates will be decided.

A few moments later, he opened his eyes again. The slime had suddenly come to a stop just meters in front of them.

It worked! We stopped it!

The four of them all felt a huge surge of relief flood up their bodies. But they weren’t safe yet, the massive creature was still there.

The tiny amount of potassium hydroxide it absorbed by passing over the first barrier wouldn’t be nearly enough to kill it, for that we’ll need to hit it with a much larger dose.

The creature backed up outside of the outer barrier, and then began to slowly roll around the village’s perimeter, trying to hunt down a spot where it could safely enter.

The four of them jogged around the edge of the village alongside it.

“It’s working!” Haruki shouted.

“It’s all going according to plan!” Lillianna yelled back.

They slowly made their way around the village, headed directly for the trap they had set for the monster.

They hadn’t only made circular rings around the village using the alkaline fertilizer. Haruki had foreseen that the slime would begin circling the village in search of a way in, so they had also laid out two opposite funnel paths that connected to the ring around the village, one for each possible direction the slime could have chosen to move around the perimeter.

These were wedge-shaped paths that started out wide and quickly narrowed. After the slime enters the funnel, it will soon meet a dead-end. That’s when the trap would be sprung.

The slime entered the funnel. Haruki raised his arm up and gave a signal, alerting a team of villagers a distance away to spring the trap.

“Now!” he shouted.

The villagers had erected a large dirt ramp positioned at the end of the funnel, at the top of which were over a dozen barrels full of pure potassium hydroxide. Once they received Haruki’s signal, the two men at the top of the ramp removed the gate, unleashing a volley of rolling barrels straight down the ramp.

Just as the slime reached the funnel’s dead-end, the barrels all cascaded straight into its side, penetrating its gelatinous body.

“It’s a direct hit!” Johannes yelled.

An immediate reaction began to take place within the slime’s body. Vast quantities of bubbles and foam erupted from its side as the contradictory acids and bases violently reacted inside of it.

The slime’s entire body began fiercely convulsing as it started to slump over and collapse in on itself, the chemical reaction spreading across its side.

“We did it, Haruki!” Lillianna grabbed him, nearly suffocating him in a hug.

Everyone was elated at the sight of their victory. It had been such a long-shot, no one was sure whether it would work, there were too many ways it could go wrong.

And indeed, it did go wrong.

Just as they had begun to rejoice at the slime’s defeat, Haruki noticed a peculiar thing happening with the slime’s body.

“Look, something’s going on!”

As the slime’s body gradually deflated into a bubbling mess of white foam, the top portion furthest from the reaction extended outward. This slimy tendril swelled in size like a giant fruit, before separating from the main body and falling to the ground.

The slime has split in two!

The new body was much smaller, but it was still well over five meters in diameter. Even if they had adventurers with them, it would not be something they could easily take down.

The slime started heading straight towards them, passing through the gaps in the fertilizer barriers due to its reduced size. It was clearly pissed.

“Johannes, take Lillianna and run!” Haruki yelled.

“Haruki, wait!” she shouted.

Johannes grabbed Lillianna by the arm and pulled her away.

“Rudolph, you know what to do.”

Rudolph nodded his head and sprinted off. Now it was only Haruki versus the slime, the creature rapidly approaching him. He needed to distract it without dying for as long as possible.

Thanks to the blob’s reduced size, its rolling speed wasn’t nearly as superhuman as before, but it was still fast enough where Haruki wasn’t sure how long he could outrun it.

Haruki let it get close enough where he would be sure it would follow him, then began sprinting in the opposite direction.

Every plan needs a plan B. If there’s no backup plan then it isn’t worth anything, he thought to himself as he ran.

In the final days before the slime had arrived, Haruki had come up with a backup plan, as he knew the odds of the first plan going without a hitch were too low to rely on.

But in order for the backup plan to work right now, he would have to be able to make it half-way around the perimeter of the village without being caught by the slime. Rudolph would be waiting for him on the opposite side of the village, ready with the final ingredient they needed to defeat the slime.

Haruki ran for dear life, he knew that if he slowed down or hesitated for even a moment right now it could mean the end for everyone.

He bolted around the edge of the village. The slime was only interested in him right now, it wasn’t slowing down for anything else. It could tell he had been the one who orchestrated the attack on it earlier. He was its biggest threat.

Haruki finally saw Rudolph ahead of him. Rudolph held up a small barrel in one hand and took a pitching position, before slinging it through the air with the speed of a professional fastball, straight into the slime.

Rudolph’s father Sven suddenly appeared with a bow in hand, shooting a flaming arrow straight into the slime.

“Run, Haruki!” Rudolph screamed.

The five-meter slime behind him erupted into a roaring blaze, and then the next thing Haruki knew he was being flung through the air by an enormous explosion.

He landed skidding through the dirt, but luckily unharmed.

He looked back behind him and saw the slime writhing in the flames, its body charring and falling apart. After about another minute, it was finally dead.

At last, they had killed the giant slime, for real this time!

The barrel which Rudolph had thrown at the monster was full of calcium carbide, a special compound which reacts violently with water and produces acetylene, a highly flammable and explosive gas.

This material had been synthesized with the help of Lillianna’s magic, using lime and coal as the ingredients.

As the blackened remains of the slime slowly stopped burning, the villagers emerged from their homes and surrounded the scene.

“You’ve done it, son!” Johannes stepped out from the crowd and gave Haruki his hand, lifting him up off the ground.

“Haruki!” Lillianna ran out from behind Johannes and clung onto Haruki, sobbing. “I thought you were gonna die!”

Haruki just stood there, still taking the scene in.

“I can’t believe it. W-we really did it, we actually killed that thing!” Haruki stammered.

“Take pride Haruki, this is your victory!” Johannes congratulated him.

Haruki shook his head. “No, no… if it weren’t for Lillianna using her magic to make that explosive, I would have been a goner for sure.”

“Then, in honor of our two heroes today…” Rudolph picked Haruki and Lillianna up in his arms, hoisting them both up onto his shoulders.

Rudolph paraded the two of them around the village, surrounded by the applause of the joyous villagers.

Today we all did the impossible. A bunch of nobody farmers took on and defeated a monster, a devil that even the magicians couldn’t do anything about.

Haruki gazed around him at all the merry faces. Because of him, all these people could live to smile for another day, and he’d get to continue being a part of it.