Brutus felt cold sweat trickle down inside his steel helmet as he looked at Halon’s new form.
The pressure emanating from that small blue sphere, now transformed into an abomination with black scales and ruby eyes, was unlike anything he had encountered so far, either in Elysium or in the real world.
The power it exuded was so great that the air around Halon seemed to have suddenly thickened, as if gravity were being warped by the Slime’s mere presence.
However, Brutus’s ego, fueled by years of dominance as an elite soldier and by his confidence in his Rare Class of [Iron Vanguard], began whispering lies in his ears.
’This is just a trick... he’s just using a high-level visual illusion or a temporary Mana buff’. He looked at Halon and saw not a mythical monster as his aura suggested, but a winning "lottery ticket". If he killed the famous Halon, the first PK in Elysium’s Open World and Vice President of Astralis Requiem, not only would Dylan witness the power he would unmask, but it was possible that even the Vance Group would reward him handsomely for ridding them of this opportunist.
Perhaps his fame would even spread across the world as Halon’s slayer.
At that point, greed overpowered his survival instinct.
"You talk a lot for a mere Slime, I’ve already killed thousands like you in Newbie Village!" Brutus roared, activating his ultimate ability, [Colossus Charge]. With that, his body was enveloped in a gray metallic aura, qualitatively increasing his inertial mass and physical strength.
He charged at Lohan with his two-handed sword raised, delivering a vertical strike with all his Level 11 power. The impact should have split any creature of a similar level in half, as he had done many times before.
Halon, however, did not move. He used [Gravitational Anchoring], which was already active, making his internal mass as heavy and stable as the core of a mountain. The millisecond the steel blade touched his scales, he activated [Non-Newtonian Resilience]. The membrane beneath the [Obsidian Exoskeleton] hardened instantly, transforming the gelatinous body into an armor barrier far superior to the metal of Brutus’s blade.
CLANG!
The sound was sharp and deafening. Brutus’s sword ricocheted with such violence that the soldier’s arms vibrated painfully, nearly dislocating his shoulders.
He stared in horror at his own blade: a huge chip was missing from the edge of the sword, while Lohan’s black scales showed not even a scratch.
"Is that all?" Lohan’s voice echoed in everyone’s minds, now laden with the coldness of a [Predator] who no longer saw Brutus as an ally, but as a good source of biomass and a useful new Rare Evolution.
Before Brutus could retreat, Lohan acted.
He didn’t use long-range spells; he wanted the soldier to feel the difference between their existences on his own turf.
Unlike Lisa, who had a Legendary Race with very rapid initial growth, something that made her power and development very similar to Lohan’s, Brutus was just a Player with a Rare Class and a Common Human Race.
Although both were Level 11, the difference in their power and potential was like night and day.
Using [Viscous Flow], Lohan shot forward with an agility Brutus never imagined the small, clumsy creature could possess. In the blink of an eye, the Slime was no longer on the ground, but instead wrapping the soldier’s legs with ultra-adhesive tentacles generated via [Selective Viscosity].
Brutus tried to kick the dark mass enveloping his limbs, but the more force he applied, the deeper his feet sank into the acidic, ravenous gelatin.
The sound of the leather on his boots dissolving was drowned out by the hissing of corrosion that was already beginning to reach his skin.
Desperate, Brutus tried to activate a control-breaking ability, but Lohan, operating with precision through the [Parallel Processing Core], fired strands of [Magical Weaving] that wrapped around his arms and neck like black serpents.
The moment they touched, Brutus felt a terrifying "void": Lohan initiated a massive drain of Mana through the filaments, silencing the soldier’s abilities the instant they tried to manifest.
"Dylan... help me... MASTER!" Brutus screamed, his voice faltering as the Slime crept up his chest.
However, Dylan merely watched with a look of disdain, his red eyes glowing like burning rubies, observing his subordinate’s downfall with the coldness of someone watching an insect being crushed.
Lohan did not hesitate.
With [Hemolymphatic Tissue] active, upon direct contact with flesh, Lohan’s gelatin began to boil. Brutus’s steel armor offered virtually no resistance; the metal began to bubble and melt like wax under the touch of the Mythic Slime, fusing with the soldier’s skin into a grotesque mixture of liquid iron and burnt flesh, separated only by the Slime’s gel seeping through the cracks in the armor to further accelerate the digestion.
Brutus’s agony was brief, but excruciating. Lohan spread his mass over the man’s face, forcing the acidic gel into his open mouth in a silent scream.
The soldier felt his lungs flood with the corrosive fluid, while his internal organs were disintegrated and converted into pure energy that flowed directly into Lohan’s core.
Through [Memory Resonance], Lohan captured the last fragments of the terror he felt: the exact moment Brutus’s ego shattered upon realizing the mistake he had made by overestimating himself so much, finally understanding that the fools were not the others who believed the Slime was truly the cold-blooded killer their imagination portrayed, but rather himself, who doubted it despite all the signs he had received.
The sound of bones melting under the pressure of Lohan’s [Body Density] filled the silence of the tree.
In a few seconds, where there had once been an arrogant warrior, only a dark stain remained on the ground revitalized by Elle.
[You killed the Player: Brutus (Level 11)]
[Predator Title Activated: Extracting Rare Class Evolution... 100% chance of success!]
...
In a few seconds, all that remained of Brutus was a few pieces of equipment that Lohan’s [Digestive Filter] had isolated and "spit" out to the side, as if they were useless leftovers from a meal.
The hall of the fossilized tree plunged into a deathly silence.
Dylan’s other four soldiers fell to their knees, trembling, while Lisa calmly sat back down, watching her partner with pride.
Even though she was a woman, Lisa wasn’t faint of heart when it came to this sort of thing, having already witnessed far worse scenes during her training to take over the Vance Group.
Elle, who was watching from afar, though a little frightened by the scene, wasn’t particularly affected by it either, having also witnessed scenes like this in the past; after all, this is not a peaceful world.
And seeing the one who had tried to attack her savior being devoured in that way brought a strange sense of satisfaction to the little fairy.
Lohan retracted his scales and shifted his eyes back to their cute appearance, returning to his form as a clear blue sphere as if nothing had happened, leaving these new soldiers even more bewildered, making it seem as though the battle that had just taken place was merely a dream.
Allowing the silence to linger for a few more moments, Lohan used that time to assess the progress he had made by killing Brutus.