Moving deeper into the mountain range in the direction of the gnoll civilization located at the center of the mountain range and at the base of the largest mountains, Scaly was let down by the monsters she encountered along the way.
Although they became stronger, there wasn’t any among them related to dragons. The only potential monster she had seen that might be related to dragons and have dragon blood flowing through it was a large bird that flew away and disappeared behind a mountain before she had a chance to inspect it.
The reason she believed it was related to dragon even though she didn’t get the opportunity to inspect was because of the prominent scales that covered its body. Not so different from the scales of the drake or the ones that covered her body.
Of course, the bird’s scales were far uglier than her beautiful scales, but they were ultimately still something that she had only ever seen on the drake.
As for the scales of other monsters she had encountered so far, they were somehow of a lower quality in her eyes, both in terms of appearance and overall beauty.
At the very least, that was how she saw it and the general way she had begun to classify the scales of anything not related to dragons. The lower ranked the scales, the further away from dragons... And of course, her scales would always be ranked at the top!
Even more so now that she had indeed become a dragon and could justify ranking the beauty of her own scales ahead of any non-dragon monster.
...
Rustle~
Always paying attention to her surroundings as she continued moving deeper inside the mountain range and got closer to the place where the mountain gnolls resided, Scaly was instantly alerted at the sound of something moving inside the canopy of a large tree not too far away from where she was. Focusing her full attention in that direction as she waited for the source of the sound to reveal itself.
Plop~
However, as a slime the size of her head plopped onto the ground after falling off one of the branches of the large tree, Scaly had no idea what to say as it bounced around for a few seconds before stabilizing itself.
Boing~ Boing~
Only to start bouncing towards her in a rather aggressive manner that made it clear that it was coming towards her with ill intentions.
Thinking about it, the falling off the tree branch might have been an attempt on the side of the slime to ambush her.
This... What is it doing...?
Having no idea what to say in this kind of situation as the slime bounced towards her at a speed that would at least take it another few minutes to reach her, Scaly didn’t feel the slightest bit afraid, as she decided to take the opportunity to inspect this strange slime. Hoping it might shed some light on the strange behavior.
[Dragon Devourer Slime, lvl 3]
[Description: An ancient slime that dates back to the beginning of the world where dragons were more abundant, the dragon devourer slime survived by devouring the bodies of dead dragons. Growing strong enough, the stronger dragon devourer slimes even fought and devoured living dragons, a testament to their strength and the reason for the name of their race.
Now that dragons are hard to come by alive, let alone dead, the dragon devourer slimes have become close to extinct. Only surviving to this day due to their almost immortal lifespan or inside special dungeons where monsters related to dragons are easier to find.
Beware, dragon devourer slimes outside dungeons are normally ancient entities that have survived since the ancient time of the dragons, their strength are far beyond the level of A Rank Adventurers. Only the strongest among adventures or the dragons themselves can defeat these ancient slimes.]
"..."
Reading through the description of this seemingly harmless slime that was bouncing towards her at an extremely slow pace, Scaly had no idea what to say as she could only look back at the description that had been provided by her inspection before turning to look back at the slime bouncing towards her.
No matter how she looked at it, she could not find any resemblance between the weak slime bouncing towards her and the terrifying description of an ancient slime capable of devouring dragons.
Perhaps it was because the one in front of her had been created by the dungeon and had not yet managed to devour a dragon and was still weak, but Scaly could not help feeling offended when she saw the name of the slime and compared it to the weak slime bouncing towards.
No matter what, she would not permit a little slime daring enough to call itself a dragon devourer to get away, let alone now that she clearly understood its reason for aggressively bouncing towards her, it actually wanted to devour her!
Filled with anger towards the weak little slime bouncing towards her, Scaly didn’t hold back, as she poured mana into her claws and slashed down towards it. Intending to split it open and crack its core in a single move to teach it that dragons were not to be underestimated by a little slime.
Swish-!
Huh?
However, different from the scene of her easily reaching the core of the slime and splitting it apart like she had imagined would happen, Scaly was instead shocked to discover that the core inside the body of the slime seemed to shift ever so slightly to just barely avoid her claws-
Whoosh-!
Not only that, but the slime took advantage of her claw entering its small body to attach itself to it and turn into an almost liquid state as it crawled up her arm in an attempt to try and engulf her body to devour her.
THIS ARROGANT LITTLE SLIME DARES!?
Feeling the slime about to reach her body, Scaly was enraged, as she wasted no time in violently shaking her arm to try and get the slime off her.
Unfortunately, she discovered that it did nothing more than delay the slime, as it clung to her body without being thrown off.
Even when she attempted to use her magic to hit the now rather exposed core of the slime, it was to no avail, as it easily moved it out of the way whenever one of her attacks was about to reach it.
No matter what she did, she couldn’t stop the slime and only managed to delay it for a few minutes before it finally managed to reach her body.
However, unexpectedly, the slime didn’t engulf her body to devour her- Well, it tried to do so, but it was far too small to do so and only managed to cover half of her body.
Not to mention, Scaly quickly discovered that the acid used by the slime to try and breach her defenses was far too weak to do any harm to her. Meaning that the slime just covered her body without really accomplishing anything other than attaching itself to her body.
Relived that the slime couldn’t harm her, Scaly could not help frowning to herself as she analyzed her current situation.
Although the slime didn’t harm her at the moment, that was only because it hadn’t found any way to enter her body and devour her from the inside, the moment it did find a point of entry through her head or worse, she would still end up dead.
So, with that in mind and wanting to avoid the possibility of the slime entering her body, Scaly did her best to force the slime away from certain areas of her body by attacking the slime core and forcing it to move away.
Of course, this was only a temporary solution, as she still needed to find a way to reach the slime core before the slime had a chance to move it, something that her current magic couldn’t do, as the slime core moved faster than any of her water balls, spears or arrows.
If she wanted to kill the slime before it had an opportunity to find a way into her body, she had to find a way to make her magic faster or cover a larger area of her body.
The only problem was, making her water magic larger, like creating a giant water ball and having it hit her to get the slime off, wasn’t possible. The reason for this being that she had to constantly keep the slime from moving towards any dangerous openings in her body and couldn’t focus on gathering her mana for more than a few seconds before she had to stop the slime.
With that in mind, she had to create a new magic that moved fast enough to catch the slime core before it had a chance to escape or create a magic that could cover her entire body and also hit the slime core in the process. All in a short period of time that didn’t need more mana than what a water spear needed, as anything beyond that would take too long to gather...