Chapter 55—Run!
"Hahaha," the man laughed, pouring green energy into the earth.
Crack!
Crack!
The ground beneath the white wolf split apart.
The wolf had already been watching his feet, since his right leg was held by a woven vine hand.
He tried to jump but couldn’t break free, as the vines didn’t budge.
In a swift blur, three more vine hands shot up, locking down all four of his legs.
"^tgd<d," the man muttered, voice twisting unnaturally.
The wolf’s body convulsed violently as black energy surged through the vines and flooded into him.
"Howll!" Wolf winced in pain as his body started thinning, visibly shrinking to the naked eye.
"Roar!!" Seeing their pack leader’s condition, the remaining wolves tried to rush in, but—
"Run! Run!" the horned white wolf ordered.
"As you command, my lord!" The wolves stopped mid‑charge and started to retreat as ordered.
But "gft&&7," the human grinned, eyeing the fleeing wolves as he slammed the staff into the ground—Thud!
Whoosh!Crack!
Huge vine hands tore up from underground and grabbed a wolf each—the nine wolves, which were alive, caught in nine hands.
"*uh," the man began emitting strange sounds. The vines twisted into thick threads and bound the wolves tight.
Even the horned white wolf was not spared. From muzzle to tail, their entire bodies were wrapped, not a single inch left free.
The vines swelled into ugly bulges, and those bulges slowly sank into the soil. At the same time, the staff began to glow. The human faces grinned, their grotesque eyes narrowed in delight.
’It’s devouring their bodies and energy... He’s the real demon here,’ Slime#47 thought, slime-sweat sliding down his body as he quietly rolled backward, ’I wonder, just how many did he swallow before like this?’
He didn’t dare bounce, not wanting to draw the corrupted human’s attention.
Roll!
He rolled far away, stopping only when his gang came into sight.
"Run! Elder, run away—everyone!" he yelled as he jumped onto Bull#1.
"Hope this works..." he muttered, taking a deep breath, placing his tiny hands on the bull and pouring out every drop of aura he had.
His aura washed through the cows and bulls; his vision dimmed, and he stopped only when the world threatened to go black.
"Mana Chain!" Elder Slime cast his spell. One end of the chains, tied around many bulls’ horns, the other bound a group of slimes.
"Hold on!" Young Slime ordered. On his command, slimes grabbed each other tightly.
The first batch was strapped with mana chain; the next held onto them, the third clung to the second, and so on—forming one long living rope.
"Run!" he shouted, then turned once to glance at the battlefield, ’I came this long in this loop...I don’t want to die here.’
Thud!
Thud!
They ran at insane speed, approaching ten percent of the sound barrier.
’Not enough... not enough...’ Red Slime’s core tightened in panic.
He himself could reach the speed of sound, and that corrupted human was even stronger; he could find them if he bothered to check the surroundings.
Slime#47 took out an aura crystal and forced himself to absorb it.
[ Ding! Aura Meditation Proficiency +5 ]
"Cough!" He fainted from the overload, coughing red liquid as darkness swallowed him
Wob!
"Child!" Mama Slime leapt onto Bull#1 and grabbed him.
"Boss Slime..." Little Slime’s voice trembled with worry.
"I’ll take over from here. Remember, I might be unconscious for a few days," Elder Slime said seriously to Mama Slime, then swallowed a few aura crystals.
"Rock Chain," Mama Slime cast, a brown magic rune flashing on her palm as chains of rock manifested. She tied Elder Slime to the cow he was riding so he wouldn’t fall.
They didn’t know what Young Slime had seen, but they knew one thing: he wanted them to run, so they would run.
Elder Slime then closed his eyes and entered meditation, refining the enormous aura by force and pouring it into the cows and bulls, who dashed forward even faster. With every pulse of aura, their speed climbed.
’It’s refined... calm and easy to control, unlike Lord’s aura, which was too wild and mostly burning power,’ Bull#1 mused as he Thud!—drove himself forward.
"It doesn’t hurt this time. Before, I felt my insides were burning," Cow#1 said, still wincing, while running.
Not just those two—every cattle felt the boost as they pulled the long chains of the slimes behind them.
Boom!
They soon broke the sound barrier. A sonic boom echoed through the forest.
Elder Slime sweated blue liquid as he focused all his concentration on the aura refining while he sat on the bull behind Bull#1.
Even at that speed, he meditated properly, body steady, not a wobble.
"Awesome... So great—but Boss missed it," Little Slime yelled, thrilled by the roaring wind as he clung to his cow.
Mama Slime had tied him to his mount with rock chains as well.
She held Slime#47 and bound both of them firmly onto Bull#1 with rock chains.
----
Back to the corrupted human...
"Hhahahaha, blood... blood..." he laughed eerily, staring at the vines, which had shrunk back to normal, looking like ordinary plant vines with no bulges.
There was no trace of the wolves—they had been devoured!
After a few seconds, the vines turned into green energy and flowed back into the human‑face staff.
"Nothing left... I need more food," the human said in a cold, alien voice that sounded neither male nor female.
He glanced at the cracked earth where the pack had been. The horned white wolf, the other wolves, even the corpses—everything had vanished without a trace.
"Hmmm... the slime, was it? A red slime—interesting. Should I devour it? ...No, no... those adventurers are stronger. Tastier," he muttered. After a moment of thought, he made his choice.
Slime#47 didn’t know that luck had saved him yet again!
Boom!
Whoosh!
The corrupted man dashed toward the direction the adventurers had fled.
----
The adventurers had run a great distance—almost ten kilometers—before finally stopping.
They sat around a man‑made campfire, faces grim.
"Will that idiot come after us?" the bulky man asked nervously.
"No. This far? Absolutely not. We even set up a presence-hiding array," the fat woman said boldly, forcing a confident grin.
"We have to find another fool now?" the thin man said bitterly.
"Yup. And we also lost that precious sealed artifact," the fat woman snarled, furious at the loss. "We manipulated him into using it whenever we were in trouble... It won’t be easy to find such a fool again."
End of the Chapter.