Feeling his strength being drained, the Elite Kobold tried to pull the axe back, but Lohan suddenly became as heavy as lead, anchoring Lisa and himself to the ground with crushing gravitational pressure as he clung to the floor at full power.
"Lisa, let’s take advantage of this opportunity, get ready for the third tail above him!"
Lisa understood the creative idea.
Instead of attacking the Elite directly, she opened her mouth, forming a powerful white-gold flame, and aimed just above the Kobold’s head.
And just before her blast reached him, a black fox tail made a movement above her, but unlike the two tails she possessed and controlled, this third tail was exactly like hers, yet created and controlled by Halon.
That tail moved forward at high speed, causing a powerful crack that collapsed the atmospheric pressure, creating a sudden vacuum that pulled the Elite’s massive body upward, completely throwing him off balance and lifting his body upward for a single instant.
But that single instant was precisely what they needed, with Lisa’s flame striking that spot at the perfect moment, catching the Kobold off guard and allowing the flame to hit him perfectly in the head.
GRWAAAAARHHGG!!
The Kobold screamed in pain and fury, struggling to hold onto the axe and maintain his balance.
Meanwhile, Lisa spun on her axis, channeling all her spiritual fire into her two tails, creating a whip of white-gold flames that wrapped around the Elite’s neck. At the same time, Lohan fired a barrage of dense ice spikes from his membrane, impaling the joints of the enraged Kobold’s legs.
The combination was lethal.
With such an intense combo of attacks in such a short time, the Elite didn’t even have time to process what was happening and fell heavily, the axe finally breaking free from Lohan’s mass, which was already visibly regenerating as it consumed the enemy’s greenish blood.
The other Kobolds, seeing their leader being overpowered by that strange black monster, hesitated, and that was their final mistake.
Lisa turned into a blur of speed, wiping out the rest of the group in seconds, while Lohan coordinated his clones to trap every foot and every weapon with his extreme selective stickiness.
When silence returned, Lohan retracted his black scales, returning to the form of a clear blue sphere, though slightly smaller due to the healing effort.
"Level 12 Elite, right?" Lohan vibrated with satisfaction, looking at the leader’s corpse. "I think that axe will yield a nice bonus with Intervar, or maybe Dylan and Alice want it for one of their boys."
Lisa looked at the battlefield, then at the body of the little Slime beside her, which was now visibly smaller, and felt a wave of worry wash over her.
"Halon, how are you?" She still remembered the sensation and the sound of cracks appearing in her friend’s scales; if even the small wound from the axe that had reached her was painful, imagine how it must have been for Halon, who had taken the full brunt of the blow for her.
At that point, Lisa was even considering whether the idea of keeping him as living armor was still viable."To be honest, Lisa, it did hurt, but it wasn’t like you’re imagining," Lohan said, trying to project a calmness that would ease the weight on the fox’s chest. "My constitution as a Slime allows me to dissipate the impact through the gelatin.
What you heard was the forced hardening of my obsidian scales giving way to absorb the kinetic energy... but for me, it’s just a sign of ’structural damage’ that I can mend in seconds."
He rolled over to the Elite Kobold’s body and extended a tentacle, beginning digestion. "See, as long as these corpses are here, I’m like a battery that recharges in real time. If I weren’t with you as living armor, that axe would have struck your flesh directly... and the biological cost for me to regenerate your complex tissues and organs is qualitatively much greater than simply replenishing my own gelatinous mass."
Lisa looked at the wound the Elite had previously inflicted on her flank, now nearly invisible thanks to Lohan’s vitality injection, but she still seemed hesitant, hating the idea of being the cause of her partner’s suffering, yet his logic was undeniable.
"You really do have a practical way of looking at things, Halon..." she whispered, swaying her two white tails as the glow of the Spirit Fire dimmed. "But promise you’ll warn me if the core gets hit. I don’t want to be the ’blade’ of armor that’s about to collapse."
"Promised, little fox," Lohan vibrated with amusement, feeling his body quickly recover as the experience bar flashed. "But now, shift your focus. How much experience do you need to reach Level 12 evolution?"
Lisa checked her semi-transparent interface. "Honestly? I only need another 1,000 points."
"Nice. For me, killing that Elite gave me a huge boost. Now I only need 3,000 points," Lohan replied, forming a small blue hand to pull the human battleaxe from the ground and stow it in the guild’s Astral Chest.
With a precise movement of a hardened tentacle, he pierced the Elite Kobold’s chest, removing the pulsating Mana Stone directly from the beast’s heart, and stored the corpses of the remaining kobolds in the Astral Chest as well, to serve as a reserve of biomass and vitality.
This battle brought Lohan back to reality, knocking him off the pedestal of invincibility he believed himself to be on, and bringing back the cautious Slime with contingency plans for moments of crisis.
For his last evolution, he had digested the entire stockpile of monster corpses, and from then on, he devoured everything that came his way without worrying about a lack of nutrients for battle.
But this Elite Kobold brought him back on track.
"Come on, Lisa, even if we don’t find any other Elite Kobolds, in less than an hour Astralist will have its own two Level 12 members!" Lohan commanded excitedly, climbing onto the fox’s back and wrapping her once again in the neon-blue protective layer.
Lisa dug her claws into the ground, feeling Lohan’s vitality flow through her veins once more. "Then let’s hunt, Halon. I don’t plan on stopping until I see the Level Up light."