A massive slime, truly describable as a small hill.
The tentacles that had been endlessly extending from the water since earlier were not tentacles in the truest sense, but rather extensions of the slime's own body.
The slime had not yet fully emerged from the lake, and it would not be wrong to assume the majority of its body remained submerged.
Even so, at this point, there was no doubting its overwhelming presence.
Still, a slime, huh. What on earth was it thinking, attacking us? Was it driven by appetite, as you'd expect from a slime?
As far as Rei knew, slimes generally did not possess high intelligence and were beings driven largely by instinct.
...Of course, the slimes Rei was familiar with were mostly the kind that existed in dungeons.
At the very least, slimes found in dungeons served a strong role as the Dungeon's cleaner, and their aggressiveness was by no means high.
However... the slime now present before Rei and Set was undoubtedly an existence that completely defied his expectations.
After all, it had actually attacked them with tentacles.
For now, at least it's certain it won't come out saying something like, "Wobble wobble. I'm not a bad slime." ...Though I'd be a bit troubled if something that huge said that to me.
Perched on Set's back, ready to respond instantly no matter what happened, Rei recalled a line he had seen in some meme back in Japan.
It was a line from a certain character in a nationally famous game, but since it was a fairly old game, Rei had never actually played it himself.
Whether it sensed that Rei was thinking such things or not, the slime suddenly made its move.
It extended tentacles toward Rei and Set, just as before.
However, their numbers were clearly greater than last time.
No matter how he looked at it, this was not the behavior of something trying to be friendly.
"Set!"
"Gruu!"
At Rei's call, Set let out a sharp cry, flapped its wings, and shifted away from its position.
A moment later, tentacles pierced through the spot where Set had been.
As always, it was by no means a sharp strike.
But the fact that it kept lashing out at them in this situation meant the tentacles undoubtedly possessed some kind of ability, just as Rei had suspected.
Understanding this, Rei cast Flying Slash, sending a barrage of slashes from Death Scythe that sheared through multiple tentacles at once.
While doing so, he noted where the tentacles had struck and confirmed his suspicion.
Sure enough, it seems that slime isn't focused on me—it's after Set.
What the tentacles had pierced straight through was undeniably where Set had been.
Of course, given that Set was overwhelmingly larger than Rei, it wasn't entirely impossible that the slime had meant to target Rei but its aim had drifted and struck Set instead.
Considering the possibility that the attack had been sheer coincidence, Rei couldn't be certain yet—it was more of a "probably not" feeling.
"—Not even time to think!"
As if the first strike had been a starting signal, tentacles were unleashed one after another from the slime.
Given that it was a slime the size of a small hill, the number of tentacles its sheer volume could produce was far too great to be described with a word like "massive."
"Innumerable" might have been more appropriate. That was what it seemed like.
Yet even faced with those countless tentacles, Set was by no means about to just sit there and take it.
Using skills unleashed one after another, it dodged the tentacle attacks zeroing in on them while pressing forward.
Set must have also judged that making direct contact with the tentacles was a bad idea. Its attacks against them were not strikes with its front legs or beak, but primarily long-range attacks using skills.
Occasionally it would unleash Fire Breath, incinerating a wide swath of tentacles all at once as if scorching the entire vicinity—yet still the tentacles showed no sign of running out.
It's fine for now, but a prolonged battle against that slime would be reckless. Besides, since it's only targeting Set, we'd be better off splitting up and attacking it separately.
He didn't have definitive proof, but based on the slime's behavior so far, it was clear its target was Set.
He couldn't entirely fathom why it was so fixated on Set, but this slime—possessing an abnormal, truly extraordinary size—was fixated solely on it.
When Rei tried to think of anyone who had ever been this fixated on Set before, he momentarily recalled two women he recognized, but immediately drove them from his mind.
Reasoning that even if they had been fixated on Set, the nature of it was surely entirely different.
However, unlike Set who could take to the skies, Rei could not fly.
To be precise, if he used his Sleipnir boots he could manage to kick off the air, but even that had its limits.
In that case, not the sky but the ground. And in a direction away from the Birth Tower.
Even while weighing his options, Set kept flapping its wings, dodging the enemy's attacks while countering with skills and destroying tentacles.
Rei, too, was cutting and destroying any tentacles that came too close, using Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear.
What was fortunate for both of them was that the tentacles extending from the slime were by no means too fast to track visually, and in terms of defensive strength, they were certainly not high either.
...However, in exchange for being trackable, they came in countless numbers. And above all, though Rei had not yet noticed it, every tentacle that was severed or destroyed would fall onto the water's surface or the slime's body and be instantly absorbed right back into it.
"Set, over there! We're leading this giant slime that way. If we can get it onto solid ground, I can fight at full capacity!"
"Grurru!"
At Rei's words, Set let out a sharp cry and beat its wings even harder than before.
Until now the slime had been floating in the lake, but it likely noticed that its target—Set—was gradually pulling away.
The slime began moving across the lake in pursuit.
Set headed in the direction Rei had indicated: the opposite side of the Birth Tower, toward an empty area.
Since it was spring, grass covered the ground, but beyond that, there was nothing particularly noteworthy.
Toward that spot, the slime advanced.
What was fortunate for the lake's inhabitants was that the slime's attention was completely hijacked by Set alone.
Thanks to that, even though fish and other animals were swimming right beside it, none were preyed upon.
...Even so, shellfish that couldn't flee from the slime's path, and fish or animals too slow to escape, were crushed beneath it and absorbed on the spot.
Seeing the slime steadily pursuing them, Rei leaped from Set's back.
It was a fall from a hundred meters up, but Rei was well accustomed to dropping from such heights.
Activating his Sleipnir boots, he killed his momentum by stepping on the air several times mid-descent before landing on the ground.
He touched down so softly it was hard to believe he had just fallen a hundred meters, then immediately broke into a run in the opposite direction from Set.
Even after Rei started running, the slime continued to target only Set, just as expected.
Giant is the only word for it.
While the slime had been floating in the lake, its full form had been hidden from view.
But now that it had emerged, its entire body was visible.
Because of that, Rei was able to properly appreciate the slime's size once more.
If it was merely a giant monster, Rei had seen his fair share before.
The most notable examples would be the Lemures he had encountered in Port City Emocion, the Gigant Turtle that had emerged from the Treant Forest, or the giant Eyeball from the Cobolt incident.
The size of the slime that had crawled out of the lake was by no means inferior to any of those.
Ah, but thinking about it that way, is it really any different from before? ...Though this time it's just me and Set fighting.
When he had fought other giant monsters, including the Lemures, he had almost always had allies at his side.
But this battle was his and Set's alone.
...Just as that thought crossed his mind, he noticed the figure of a massive Lizardman sprinting toward them.
A Lizardman standing roughly three meters tall—there was only one such individual.
Gaga, huh.
What had driven Gaga to come here required no deliberation.
From Gaga's perspective, he simply wanted to test himself against a slime this enormous.
What surprised Rei was that Gaga was the only one who had come.
Zozo, who harbored a loyalty toward Rei so intense that even Rei himself wondered why the Lizardman was so devoted, was nowhere near Gaga.
If Zozo wasn't running toward them, that meant he had stayed behind at the Birth Tower.
Zozo possessed considerable strength, but even so, he couldn't reach the tier of fighters like Rei and Gaga.
He must have understood that joining the battle would only get in the way rather than help.
That was by no means a misjudgment. In fact, with Gaga coming to reinforce them, Rei had already concluded that someone needed to stay behind and keep the other Lizardmen in check.
In that regard, Zozo—who could communicate with the Adventurer and the Knight via the Stone Tablet—was the ideal choice.
And... of course, it doesn't even spare me a glance. How on earth is it distinguishing Set?
Watching the slime still barreling straight toward Set, Rei felt a flicker of puzzlement.
That said, thanks to that very fixation, he was able to lure the slime using Set as bait, so he had no particular complaint.
"For now, eat this. Flying Slash!"
At Rei's words, a slashing arc flew from Death Scythe.
The attack raced forward, but unlike before, it failed to cut through the slime's body with ease.
The tentacles had been severed effortlessly—as if that had been a lie, the slash could not cleave through the slime's main body.
No, to be precise, it could cut to a certain depth, but the slash would lose momentum partway inside the slime, and the moment it stopped, the severed flesh would fuse back together as though nothing had happened.
If Rei could at least tell that it was taking damage, he wouldn't have been so frustrated.
But the slime did absolutely nothing in response to the slash. It simply kept chasing Set.
Its attitude—acting as though it hadn't even registered that it had been attacked—was getting on Rei's nerves.
"●●●!"
Right then, Gaga, having caught up, thrust his hand out toward Rei.
For an instant, Rei had no idea what he was saying. But after Gaga pointed at both Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear in Rei's hands, then extended his hand again in a gesture clearly demanding something be given to him, Rei understood. He plunged the Twilight Spear, gripped in his left hand, into the ground.
What he drew from the Misty Ring was Gaga's greatsword.
Given that it was large enough to be called a greatsword even when wielded by the roughly three-meter-tall Gaga, for Rei—who stood at barely half that height—to hold it, and one-handed at that, looked extremely incongruous.
So much so that if anyone had been watching, they might well have wondered if their eyes were playing tricks on them.
Yet when Gaga saw Rei holding the greatsword, he accepted it without the slightest sign of surprise.
From Gaga's perspective, he already understood that Rei was an existence beyond the norm.
The very fact that Rei could clash head-on with him while he wielded this greatsword, without yielding a single step, was strange in any number of ways.
Greatsword in hand, Gaga charged straight toward the slime that was assailing Set with tentacles.
Set was weaving through the sky, intercepting tentacles from every angle, but without Rei on its back, its attack options were inevitably fewer.
Set could perform at its absolute peak when in the state of Man-Beast Unity—even though Set was a Gryphon, not a horse.
Even so, Set's abilities were formidable. Without Rei on its back, it compensated by frequently deploying wide-area skills like Fire Breath to keep the tentacle assault at bay.
Into the fray, Gaga barreled, raising a war cry with his greatsword raised high.
Now, what do I do? The slime is out of the lake—should I use Flame Magic to annihilate it?
The reason Rei had held back on using magic while the slime was in the lake was the risk of inflicting massive—potentially fatal—damage on the teleported lake itself.
But the slime had left the water in pursuit of Set.
Judging that there would no longer be any issue, Rei focused his awareness on Death Scythe—his Magic Catalyst—and began to chant a spell.