Chapter 21: Testing Guard Slimes
"Commander, the Council is demanding to know why you diverted five hundred million credits to an unverified merchant in Suran City."
Clame didn’t look back at Nair. Her eyes remained fixed on the military transport bay driving behind them, where a hundred translucent, crystalline blobs sat vibrating in perfect, silent rows.
To the Council, she had just squandered a small fortune on a pile of decorative jelly. To her, she had just purchased the fragile survival of the First Company.
"Let them talk," Clame said, her voice dropping into that cold, commanding resonance that had made her a legend across the northern sectors. "When we hit the rift tomorrow, I don’t want a single human soldier on the front line. Let these slimes show Nara City what ’trash’ can really do."
Nair gripped the edge of her tactical seat, adjusting her visor as the vehicle jolted over a ridge.
"Do you really trust that Terrence this much?"
As soon as the words left her mouth, Nair caught the sharp tone in her own voice and paused, her posture stiffening. "Forgive me, Commander."
Clame didn’t react to the breach of protocol. Instead, she closed her eyes, mentally projecting a detailed tactical map of the targeted A-Rank dungeon rift.
The rift was dangerously situated deep between two grand canyons, directly aligned with the primary migration passage leading straight toward Nara City. If the rift wasn’t clear soon, the sheer volume of beasts overflowing from its mouth would inevitably stampede down the gorge and hit the city walls.
After a long silence, Clame opened her eyes and looked up into the pale sky. The dry canyon wind whipped across her cheeks as she leaned back against the headrest of the open military jeep. The heavy engine continued to roar beneath them, growing louder with every second they drew closer to the staging ground.
"I don’t trust him," Clame admitted, her tone stark and brutally honest. "I don’t trust any merchant."
She bit the inner corner of her lower lip, a cold, sickening sensation washing down her spine as dark possibilities played out behind her eyes.
"This is pure desperation, Nair," Clame whispered, her knuckles turning white against her lap. "I am acting like a fool. But this siege has been grinding us down for almost three months. I refuse to send another squad of my men into that meat grinder."
Nair went completely silent. She shifted her gaze forward, watching the dusty trail stretch into the mouth of the canyon, before looking back at the flatbed transport following behind them.
The slimes sat there, seemingly oblivious, bouncing gently with every rock the heavy tires crushed along the uneven terrain. They looked utterly harmless, almost ridiculous in a high-threat zone.
Yet, as Nair watched Clame’s tense shoulders, a heavy realization settled in her chest.
Bearing immense military authority and political influence was never easy. Nair realized then that Clame had been silently keeping count—memorizing the face of every single soldier lost during their failed attempts to clear the rift over the past ninety days.
Behind her unyielding, icy facade and her perfectly composed public demeanor, Clame was bleeding inside for every life wasted against that dungeon.
"Tell me, Nair," Clame murmured, her voice barely carrying over the sound of the roaring engine. "Are we supposed to spend our entire lives clearing these endless rifts just to earn another day of survival? Is there really no end to this?"
Nair cleared her throat, her chest tightening. She didn’t have an answer to give, but as she looked at her commander’s tired eyes, she knew she had to say something.
She leaned forward, resting her hand firmly on the jeep’s metal frame as the vehicle crested a steep ridge.
The roaring engine dropped into a lower gear, and the wind suddenly gave way to a cold biting night breeze.
Spread out below them was the full, terrifying view of the canyons.
Under the pitch-black sky, the twin rock formations stood like massive, jagged teeth carving through the earth. The valley below was swallowed in deep shadow, save for the sickly indigo glow pulsing faintly from the center of the canyon floor—the mouth of the A-Rank rift. The light cast long, eerie shadows across the towering cliffs, making the canyon look like an open jaw waiting to swallow everything that entered.
Nair stared down into the abyss, her chest heaving as the weight of Clame’s question pressed on her heart.
"If there is an end to it, Commander," Nair said, her voice firm despite the chill in the air, "I would gladly end it with you."
***
The sun finally rose, casting a pale orange light over the horizon, but they still hadn’t reached the primary staging ground. Instead, they were parked at the rocky base of the access route, having just cleared the far end of the long canyon passage.
Clame stood directly before the flatbed transport containing the Guard Slimes. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, a faint flicker of lingering doubt stirring deep within her eyes.
’I don’t want to doubt them now that we’re this close, she thought,’ watching the silent swarm. ’But I need to know for sure before we drop into an A-Rank zone.’
Directly ahead of them lay a newly registered C-Rank rift. It was so fresh that the warning notification had only just popped up on their holographic wrist communicators a few minutes ago.
Up until now, Clame had relied entirely on the energy readings from her Inspecting Frame monocle. She hadn’t actually seen these creatures in action. With a C-Rank rift right in front of them, she finally had the perfect opportunity to run a live field test.
Taking a heavy, deliberate breath, Clame stepped down from the open jeep. Her combat boots thudded against the dry, cracked earth of the canyon floor as she walked steadily toward the swirling portal entrance.
’Terrence said they would follow my verbal commands without a contract,’ she reminded herself. ’Let’s see if that’s true.’
Clame stopped a few paces away from the transport bay, clearing her throat to project her voice clearly across the clearing.
"Guard Slimes!"
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
The response was instantaneous. Before the sound of her voice had even fully faded, all ninety-nine Guard Slimes bounced cleanly out of the transport bay. In less than two seconds, they organized themselves on the dirt ground, forming four perfectly straight, neat rows of twenty, with the final row holding nineteen.
Clame froze, her eyes widening as she took in their razor-sharp responsiveness. Stunned by their discipline, she had to clear her throat a second time just to recover her composure.
’This is... how do I even describe this? Amusing? Terrifying?’
Putting a slight smirk on her lips, she decided to test them further. "Are you ready to kill some monsters?!"
What happened next rendered her speechless.
The translucent, crystalline slimes shifted their gelatinous bodies in unison. From their rounded tops, the mass condensed into hard, metallic-density helmets that retained their vibrant colors. From their sides, small, defined arms sprouted outward.
Then, simultaneously, every single slime brought an arm up to its helmet, snapping into a sharp, military-grade salute.
"What..." Clame murmured, the word slipping out before she could catch it.
This was completely outside her expectations. These weren’t mindless, gelatinous wild monsters at all.
These aren’t slimes... these are trained soldiers!
A beam of genuine excitement lit up Clame’s eyes. She turned toward the swirling rift, her posture straightening as a wave of confidence washed over her.
"Follow me!"
Clame led the charge directly into the portal. The familiar, stomach-churning sensation of free-fall washed over her equilibrium for a brief second before her boots touched down on solid ground.
When her vision cleared, she paused to inspect her surroundings, her breath catching in her throat.
They had stepped into a crumbling, dystopian city.
The sky above was pitch-black, choked by thick, heavy plumes of black smoke rising from the ground. Ruined, structural debris stretched out for kilometers in every direction. The overwhelming stench of burning rubber, hot ash, and rusted iron slammed into her nostrils, making her throat prickle.
Clame coughed softly, waving a hand in front of her face as Nair stepped through the portal right behind her, sidearm drawn.
"This environment is unusual..." Nair commented, her eyes scanning the landscape in surprise.
It was indeed strange. Most dungeon interiors mirrored lost ancient civilizations or untouched wilderness. This rift, however, looked like a ruined modern metropolis. Broken LED billboards flickered weakly against shattered walls, and burnt-out sedans sat abandoned on cratered roads. To their right, a massive five-story commercial building had collapsed onto its side, spilling sheets of shattered glass across the pavement.
Clame shook her head, forcing her focus back to the objective. "It doesn’t matter what it looks like. A dungeon is still a dungeon."
Behind them, the Guard Slimes poured through the rift, instantly reforming their tight military grid in the center of the wide concrete clearing. The broken ruins of the dead city served as a stark backdrop to their bright, crystalline bodies.
"Alright," Clame said, her voice dropping into a focused, commander’s register. "Now for the actual test."
Her sharp eyes darted down the ruined street, instantly locking onto a distant figure picking through the rubble.
It was an Inferior Ogre—a C-Rank threat. The creature shared a basic humanoid structure, but its skin was a pale, sickly white and covered in rough, leathery warts. Strands of thick drool dripped from its malformed jaw as it growled at the debris.
Clame raised a single finger, pointing directly at the target.
"Kill it."
BOOM!
The instant the words left her mouth, a single Guard Slime shot out from the formation like a cannonball. The remaining ninety-eight slimes stood perfectly still, holding their ground without a single twitch, recognizing that the command didn’t require the entire unit.
The lone slime tore across the cracked asphalt in a blur of motion, slamming directly into the Ogre’s face before the monster could even register the sound.
CRACK!
The slime’s high-density helmet struck the Ogre straight in its left eye socket. The monster roared in agony, stumbling backward and raising its massive arms into a frantic defensive stance.
It was already too late.
Mid-air, the Guard Slime shifted its makeshift arm, condensing its crystalline mass into a long, razor-sharp spearhead. Before the Ogre could bring its guard up, the slime thrust the spear cleanly through the creature’s chest plate.
THUD.
The spear point tore through muscles and bone, piercing the heart in a fraction of a second. The Ogre’s eyes rolled back, its massive body collapsing onto the pavement like a sack of stones, dead before it even hit the ground.
The Guard Slime retracted its weapon, bounced casually off the corpse, and zipped back into formation, taking its exact place in line as if nothing had happened.
Watching the flawless, instantaneous execution, a roaring fire of hope ignited deep within Clame’s chest.
’Terrence... what on earth are these?’