Chapter : 487
The green plains of the Soul Farm had beco a landscape of thodical, sticky genocide. The air, once so pure and neutral, was now thick with the faint, almost sweet, sll of boiled sli and the sharp, clean tang of ozone. The pristine grass was dotted with hundreds of steaming, viscous puddles that sizzled and popped before slowly dissolving into nothingness, a testant to their grim, repetitive work. Lloyd felt less like a mighty warrior and more like a celestial exterminator, engaged in the most bizarre, and most tedious, pest control operation in the history of any universe.
The rhythm was ingrained now, a muscle mory of will and power. Manifest the chains. Ensnare a writhing, jiggling cluster of the oblivious creatures. Signal Fang Fairy. A silent pulse of azure lightning down the steel conduits. A chorus of wet, pathetic pops. A brief, almost smug, flicker of the kill counter in his mind’s eye. Rinse, and repeat. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.
He had lost all track of ti, lost in the monotonous, almost ditative, cycle of slaughter. His initial satisfaction at their efficient system had long since evaporated, replaced by a profound, soul-deep boredom that was almost a physical weight. The Major General, the man who had planned multi-pronged military campaigns and thrived on the complex, high-stakes thrill of tactical warfare, was now engaged in a battle with an enemy whose only strategy was to jiggle nacingly and then die with a sad, squelching sound. It was an insult to his very nature.
He tried to entertain himself to pass the ti. He experinted with his chains, no longer just binding, but trying to slice the slis in half. The result was unsatisfying; their gelatinous bodies simply oozed back together, their inner light flickering with what might have been mild, bovine annoyance before he had Fang Fairy electrocute them anyway. He tried using his Black Ring Eyes, creating a constricting ring of energy around a single sli. It squeezed it, yes, turning it from a sphere into a grotesque, pulsating hourglass shape, but it refused to pop. It simply jiggled with a new, compressed intensity. He sighed and had Fang Fairy zap it.
Fang Fairy herself seed to be sharing his profound sense of ennui. Her initial, almost regal, stillness had given way to a posture of supre, divine boredom. She would sit, perfectly poised, on a small, grassy knoll, her silver-grey hair stirring in an unfelt breeze, and would, with a flick of her slender finger that was the very picture of bored, celestial indifference, send the necessary jolt of lightning down the chains. Her golden eyes, which had at first held a spark of analytical curiosity, now held the flat, glazed-over expression of soone who has been forced to watch the sa, incredibly dull, theatrical performance one thousand tis in a row.
Master, her silent thought was a hum of pure, unadulterated tedium in his mind, is the complete and utter eradication of this particular species of gelatinous lifeform truly critical to our long-term strategic objectives?
It is critical to acquiring the one thousand System Coins necessary to ensure our continued survival against the reincarnated, trans-dinsional assassins who are likely plotting our grueso and untily deaths as we speak, Fang Fairy, he sent back, his own ntal voice dry and weary. So yes. The jiggle-pocalypse continues.
A silent, ethereal sigh seed to pass between them, a shared mont of profound, soul-deep boredom.
The kill counter ticked upwards, a slow, agonizing crawl towards their distant, glorious, and seemingly unreachable, goal.
[Sli Cull: 713/1000]
[Sli Cull: 714/1000]
[Sli Cull: 715/1000]
Each notification was a tiny, insignificant drop in a vast, tedious ocean. Lloyd’s mind began to wander, drifting away from the monotonous task at hand. He thought of his factory. He wondered if i Jing had finalized the new distribution contracts, if Tisha had managed to quell the latest riot at the gate, if Borin had accidentally invented a self-peeling potato that could also calculate trajectories for siege weaponry. He thought of his classroom, of his strange, brilliant students. He wondered if Borin Ironhand had managed to forge a practice sword with a perfectly balanced poml, if Nira of Silverwood had figured out how to use her light magic to create a solid, defensive wall.
Chapter : 488
He even, to his own profound surprise, thought of Rosa. He pictured her in their silent, chilly suite, her head bent over so ancient, leather-bound to, her veiled face a mask of cool, inscrutable concentration. He wondered what she was reading. Was it a treatise on advanced frost magic? A history of the ancient southern dynasties? A detailed manual on the proper care and maintenance of a profoundly annoying, sofa-dwelling husband? With her, it was impossible to say. The thought, which would have once been a source of pure frustration, now held a strange, almost fond, sort of mystery.
His distraction, however, proved to be a tactical error.
He was in the middle of ensnaring another cluster of the bouncing, gurgling blobs, his mind half-occupied with calculating the potential profit margins of a self-peeling, artillery-calculating potato, when a new, unexpected variable entered the equation.
From the heart of the teeming sli horde, a new sound erged. Not the usual gentle, wet squelching. But a deep, resonant, and distinctly, alarmingly, angry, GLOOMP.
A section of the plain, about fifty paces away, began to tremble. The smaller slis in the area bounced away in a sudden, frantic panic. The ground bulged upwards, and then, with a sound like a giant pulling his foot out of thick, cosmic mud, a new creature erged.
It was a sli. But it was not a small, cute, lon-sized sli. It was a King Sli. A monolithic, quivering mountain of translucent, royal-blue gelatin, easily the size of his father’s ducal carriage. It was crowned with a small, almost comical, golden crown that seed to be fashioned from the sa solidified, gelatinous material. And at its center, suspended in the quivering, semi-liquid mass, was a single, massive, and distinctly, furiously, baleful, glowing red eye.
The King Sli let out another, even louder, GLOOMP, a sound that was less a gurgle and more a concussive, bass-heavy thrum that vibrated through the very soles of Lloyd’s boots. It had clearly taken exception to the ongoing, systematic genocide of its smaller, jigglier subjects. Its single, massive red eye fixed on Lloyd, and he felt a wave of pure, simple, and surprisingly potent, malevolent intent wash over him.
Well, now, Lloyd’s internal monologue comnted, a flicker of genuine, surprised interest cutting through the thick fog of his boredom. That’s new.
Fang Fairy, who had been lounging in a state of regal, divine ennui, was instantly on her feet, her boredom vanishing, replaced by a low, predatory crouch, the lightning aura around her flaring back to life with a renewed, vicious intensity. Master? her thought was a sharp, clear query. New target designated? Threat level… moderate?
The King Sli glooped again, then it launched its attack. It did not bounce. It did not jiggle. It compressed its massive, gelatinous body, then launched a pseudopod, a thick, whip-like tendril of royal-blue sli, at him with startling, unexpected speed.
The slimy whip cracked through the air, aiming to splatter him into a fine, lordly paste.
“Fang Fairy, intercept!” Lloyd commanded, his own battle instincts roaring back to life, the boredom instantly forgotten.
Fang Fairy moved, a blur of silver and azure. She t the sli-whip head-on, not with a lightning claw, but with a crackling shield of her Lightning Cloak. The sli tendril sizzled and stead as it made contact with the high-voltage aura, a significant portion of it instantly boiling away into a foul-slling, bluish vapor. But the sheer kinetic force of the blow was imnse. Fang Fairy was knocked back a few feet, her ethereal form flickering for a mont before stabilizing.
The King Sli, its initial attack thwarted, reared back, its single red eye glowing with an even more intense, furious light. It was preparing for another, more powerful, strike.
Lloyd grinned, a genuine, wolfish grin of pure, unadulterated, combat-fueled joy. Finally. A challenge. Sothing to break the monotony. Sothing to fight.
Fang Fairy, his ntal command was no longer weary, but sharp, exhilarated. Forget sanitation. Full power. Let’s show his jiggly majesty what a real storm looks like. He raised his own hand, the air around it already crackling, the blueprint for a beautiful, sharp, and very, very pointed, Spear of Justice already forming in his mind.
The grind was over. The hunt had just gotten interesting again.
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