"Huh?" Claudia shrugged in surprise. "A spare barrel? What for?" she asked, puzzled by Tom's sudden request.
"Can you just listen to my request? Or do I need to go and get them myself?" Tom asked in an annoyed tone while rolling his eyes.
'I understand that you are curious, but it is me facing the boss right now, not you!' He complained in his thoughts, trying to hold back what he would voice out as to not put a rift between the two of them so early on.
"Okay, okay! You didn't need to shout at me like that!" Claudia pouted while obediently moving towards the backpack and opening it up. "A spare barrel... How does one look like?" she asked while raising her eyes on Tom.
"..." For a moment, Tom froze in place, stunned by the question. 'How does a barrel look like?' he asked himself, trying to figure out how this kind of question could be confusing. 'No, I shouldn't antagonize her,' he thought while lowering his eyes and taking a breath to calm himself down.
"It looks like a pipe? Oversized drinking straw?" he suggested as he shook his head. "You know, the part that's at the very front of your damned rifle!"
"Can you stop being so aggressive?!" Claudia protested while rummaging through the backpack. "I'm not one of your militaristic lackeys!" she added while moving the stuff inside the bag haphazardly.
Tom only shook his head while taking a few steps to distance himself from the slime. Even though it was pretty slow, given how long it took the girl to find the single item he asked for, the slime almost managed to catch up to him even at its slow speed.
"Here! Is that it?!" Claudia shouted in a happy voice while raising her hand. In it, she had a simple metal tube, roughly twenty centimeters long.
"Yeah, pass it on and wear your gloves!" Tom ordered the girl while stretching his hand towards her.
Claudia didn't hesitate this time. Maybe she didn't want to receive another scolding, or maybe she had some other reasons, but she threw the barrel as soon as she saw Tom extend his hand.
"I didn't expect you would need my help with such a weak monster," she muttered as she rushed to wear her gloves.
"I'm just trying to minimalize the loss of our equipment," Tom countered while catching the barrel and moving his eyes back on the slime. 'As expected, it already mended its injury,' Tom noticed after a few moments of looking for the opening he made with his spear earlier.
"Just one more minute!" Claudia shouted from the corridor, still busy trying to put her gloves on.
"It's okay," Tom said, not wasting any time on his end. He rushed towards the slime with a spear in his right hand and a barrel in his left. This time, he didn't aim at any of the stones. His plan was different.
"Here we go," he muttered as he threw his spear forward, once again puncturing the outer shell of the slime. Its sticky insides latched on the blade's metal and wood of the handle, instantly trying to dissolve it.
But Tom didn't allow his spear to stay inside the slime for long. Rather than trying to move it around and hit one of the slime's cores floating in its insides, he decisively pulled the weapon back and stepped aside.
Only thanks to his innate drive to dodge did Tom avoid a sudden flush of the slime's insides that seemingly came after him. But rather than stepping aside and away from the slime, he just moved to its side.
It was questionable whether the slime's actions were an intelligent act of a being trying to defend itself or just natural processes that happened due to simple physics. But as soon as the slime stopped ejecting its insides, Tom brought his left hand towards it before slamming the barrel right where he injured it earlier!
"Now, you won't be able to close the gap," Tom muttered towards the slime before turning his head towards the girl. "It's your turn now! Try to squish it as much as you can!"
"On it!" Claudia said, rushing towards the slime. Even though she wasn't a part of Tom's militaristic family, she played Dungeons Online for long enough to figure out his plan.
"Here it... GOES!" She shouted as she jumped only to drop-kick the slime. If it continued to spew out its insides before, then the small stream of those turned into a raging river when Claudia pushed her heel heavily into the boss. But rather than stopping, she fixed her footing before sending a barrage of heavy hits towards the slime. Every single of her attacks produced a new current in the stream of its insides flowing out.
"That was quite smart of you," Claudia commented after a moment as she distanced herself from the slime to take a short break. At this point, its size already decreased by half, with half of its insides sizzling on the stone floor.
"Thanks," Tom nodded his head while accepting the praise before delivering a kick to the slime on his own. Once again, a bit of greenish glue spewed out through the barrel, putting even more dirt on the floor. "Just make sure not to..." Tom attempted to warn the girl, only to see her take a step and slip on the glue that covered most of the room's floor.
PAC.
The sound of Claudia's back smashing the floor was truly comical... if not for how potentially disastrous it would be. At the same time, she slid on the floor forward, reaching the exact place that the slimes insides would discharge whenever it was hit.
'Fuck,' Tom cursed in his mind when he noticed a strange flow of the slimes insides. But just as he rushed forward to bring the girl out of the danger zone, the slime squeezed itself, sending a constant stream of its insides right towards the girl!