Chapter 42

This was bad.

Morae’s face drained of color as she hurriedly dragged the bed and table together, forming a barricade.

Ever since the Gates appeared, slimes had proven to be living creatures with the properties of raw materials. Mix gunpowder into one properly, and it could explode. Add dye, and its color changed.

If you mixed in yeast and certain ingredients, it would slowly become a slime that exploded after a delay.

Pour seawater into that…

It would start bubbling violently, its composition changing. Instead of exploding, it would become highly acidic.

She had known that much.

What she hadn’t expected was for it to grow bigger.

Either there was something unusual about the seawater, or some other variable had come into play.

One thing was certain.

Something had gone very wrong.

The slime, which had been barely half the size of an adult woman, continued to swell.

It grew as large as a bull.

Then as large as a bed.

Then even bigger.

To make matters worse, seawater had already risen to her calves.

The room was at least on the fourth or fifth floor, yet seawater was pouring in through the window.

That didn’t mean the sea level outside had risen that high.

“Eun Pado… seriously.”

Morae ground her teeth.

The only person she could think of who was capable of causing something on this scale…

…was Pado.

“What the hell is that?!”

Members of Shadow Knights burst through the door, only to freeze at the sight of the enormous slime.

Beyond the shattered doorway, seawater surged through the corridors like a flood.

Using the bed she’d set up as a barricade, Morae shoved it over to block the slime’s advance before sprinting toward the exit.

The Shadow Knights members waiting near the door immediately grabbed her.

“Don’t go running off! The hallway’s a disaster too!”

“Can’t you see what’s behind us?! Move! We have to get away before it reaches us! It’s highly acidic—we’ll be seriously hurt if it touches us!”

Held fast by the others, Morae shouted her warning.

Since securing the hostage took priority, the flooded hallway was packed with people.

The slime continued expanding, slowly oozing through the open doorway.

The wooden bed she’d used as a barricade was swallowed whole.

Inside the gelatinous mass, the bed could be seen slowly dissolving.

The people standing at the entrance rushed to stop it.

“Anyone who’s not a Hunter, get back! It’s acidic—you’ll suffer chemical burns immediately!”

The roar of rushing water, gunfire, and shouting filled the corridor.

Making sure even the people farther back could hear her, Morae raised her voice as she moved aside.

Several people seized the opening and hurried after her.

The rest were too busy attacking the slime, whose head had already reached the ceiling.

“What?! What the… Gah! My clothes are melting!”

“Only the clothes are melting! Who made this thing?! What kind of perverted scientist creates a trashy slime like this?!”

The clothing of anyone who touched the slime dissolved away.

Leather and thick wool held up better, but cotton melted like ice, exposing flushed red skin beneath.

The suddenly half-naked Hunters cried out and scrambled away from the slime.

The woman with her hair tied high stared at it in utter disgust.

Now being treated as the world’s biggest pervert by association, Morae protested.

“No! It’ll burn your skin too! You’re only lasting because you’re Hunters!”

An ordinary person would suffer burns the instant they touched it.

Hunters were simply far tougher than normal people.

Their clothes, however, were much more fragile than their bodies and dissolved first.

The result had become a slime that stripped away clothing before harming the wearer…

But that hadn’t been her intention.

Why would she ever deliberately create a slime that only melted people’s clothes?

Regardless, the slime kept growing and advancing, yet the Shadow Knights members neither released Morae nor retreated with her.

At this rate, they’d all be swallowed.

Left with no choice, Morae pointed at the slime.

“Even Hunters will get burned if they’re exposed too long! We don’t know how big it’ll get, so freezing it is the safest option for now!”

“‘Freeze it,’ she says. Easy for you to say! Hey… don’t tell me this was your—”

“Is that really what matters right now?!”

“Get Eun Morae out of here first! But don’t take your eyes off her! She’s a perverted scientist!”

At the order of the Hunter with the ponytail, three people hoisted Morae up and started running.

Fortunately, the slime wasn’t fast.

Even fighting against the rushing current, people could easily outrun it.

Being carried around like luggage, Morae continued defending herself until the sarcastic Hunter’s ponytail disappeared from sight.

“No! Who would make something like that?! Stop framing me! Just you wait—I remember your face! And could you carry me properly?! Hey! Don’t hold me like that! I can walk on my own, so either let me down or carry me normally! You’re digging into my ribs!”

“Will you shut up already?!”

“No!”

The woman carrying her snapped.

The next instant, she threw Morae onto the floor.

Morae spun twice through the air before crashing into the water-covered ground.

Her face plunged into the seawater.

Spitting out the salty water, she pushed herself back up.

“Sorry. My foot slipped.”

The woman looked down at her without even trying to hide her irritation.

Her foot slipping?

What a ridiculous excuse.

Petty bullying was still unpleasant, no matter how childish it was.

Furious, Morae started to stand, ready to pay her back.

But before she could throw a punch…

The woman who had thrown her—and the two people beside her—suddenly had their ankles yanked out from under them by the water.

All three crashed to the ground.

“Sorry. My foot slipped.”

Pado stood behind the fallen trio, looking thoroughly displeased.

Without another word, he scooped Morae into his arms and took off running.

The people who had fallen into the knee-deep water scrambled back to their feet and chased after him.

The moment they tried to pursue him while standing in the seawater, they ran into a problem.

The seawater began swirling in circles, dragging at their ankles like a swamp.

Still cradled in his arms, Morae jabbed Pado in the stomach with her knee.

“Stop moving the water around carelessly!”

“What? Why?”

“Because you flooded the place with seawater that had who-knows-what mixed into it, and now the slime’s gone berserk!”

Naturally, Pado had no way of knowing what had mixed into the seawater to make the slime grow.

Judging from the flooded hallway, he’d probably swept half the building with seawater. Along the way, the water must have picked up all sorts of unknown substances from laboratories or storage rooms.

“You probably flooded a lab or a warehouse, and this is the result. Get the water out of here first.”

“What happened to the slime? You mean that thing?”

Having come from the opposite side of the slime, Pado hadn’t witnessed the giant slime’s full size. He pointed at the massive blob in front of them.

Not knowing what had happened, he’d unknowingly fled straight toward the slime while avoiding the enemies.

“Yeah. If it touches you, your clothes melt. Stay in contact with it too long, and it’ll burn your skin too.”

Morae frowned.

By now, quite a few people had already lost parts of their clothes and were fleeing. Pado stared at the Hunters who looked as though they’d dressed themselves in rags.

“What kind of perverted scientist makes a freakish slime like that?”

“Who are you calling a pervert?! I didn’t make it for that! This only happened because you dragged in seawater full of weird stuff!”

“…You?”

The way Pado looked at her carried a subtle hint of disbelief.

And somehow…

It felt insulting.

Embarrassed, Morae bit her lip before clenching her fist.

She needed a moment to collect herself.

Unfortunately, the giant slime gave her no such chance.

The swollen slime suddenly began bursting apart like an overinflated balloon.

A chunk of slime the size of a forearm splattered onto Pado’s leg and Morae’s forearm.

Their clothes immediately began melting as if they were burning.

“Ah!”

The stinging on her skin was worse than she’d expected—painful enough that worrying about her clothes became an afterthought.

Making a miserable face, Morae violently shook the slime off.

Fortunately, the translucent slime peeled away without much effort.

But the fragment that landed on the floor absorbed the seawater beneath it and immediately began swelling again.

For a moment, it looked as though it had shrunk after bursting.

In reality…

It had simply multiplied.

The slime clinging to Pado’s leg rapidly grew as well, melting away Morae’s shoes.

Morae quickly looked around to assess how far the slime had spread.

It grew by absorbing seawater.

As long as the hallway remained flooded, it would probably keep getting bigger.

“Drain all the water first. Then I’ll go inside and destroy its core. I’ll do it myself, so keep Shadow Knights away from me while I work.”

“No.”

Pado answered without the slightest hesitation.

Already prepared to charge in, Morae’s eyebrow twitched.

Of all times…

That was the last response she’d expected.

She wanted to turn and look at him, but with the slime and Shadow Knights directly in front of them, she couldn’t.

“Why? What now? Just so we’re clear, saving Shadow Knights from this is the humane thing to do. They’re annoying, sure, but if we do them a favor now, we might be able to recruit them as subordinates later.”

“There’s too many people.”

“…What are you talking about?”

She’d asked him to drain the water.

She’d volunteered to throw herself into the slime.

She’d asked him to hold Shadow Knights back while she did it.

His answer…

Didn’t connect to any of those requests.

Morae had no idea what he was talking about.

Instead of explaining, Pado manipulated the water surging up from the floor, wrapping it around Morae and binding her in place.

This time…

He was the one kidnapping her.

“What?!”

Knocking down every Shadow Knights member who tried to reclaim Morae while avoiding the ever-growing slimes, Pado fled into a nearby room and locked the door.

Avoiding the slimes—now spreading in every direction faster than people themselves—proved even harder than dealing with Shadow Knights.

By the time they made it inside…

More than half of both their clothes had already melted away.

Pado dragged a sofa over and jammed it against the door before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

Then he rounded on the stunned Morae.

“Were you seriously going to jump into that slime and end up completely naked? Get a grip and think this through. Do you know how many people are watching?”

“…That’s what you were worried about first?”

“What else would I worry about? Of course that’s the first thing I’d think about.”

His matter-of-fact tone irritated her.

Morae folded her arms.

More than half of her pants had melted away, leaving her thighs completely exposed.

Her stomach and shoulders were bare as well.

Until now, she’d been too busy avoiding the burning slime to even notice.

“Something huge is happening. Why are you worried about clothes?”

“Then why don’t you just walk around completely naked? I just stopped you from embarrassing yourself. You should be grateful—damn it… that thing melts wood too?”

The wooden door slowly dissolved as slime began seeping through the gaps.

Morae immediately scanned the room.

She spotted a small storage closet with a metal door.

“Over there. It can’t melt steel or stone.”

The two of them rushed into the cramped closet and slammed the metal door shut.

Even with the door closed, they could hear the slime outside continuing to spread.

Morae pressed her ear against the metal door, listening for movement outside.

Seeing that, Pado did the same.

Each of them had one ear pressed against opposite sides of the door.

That meant…

They were facing each other.

Only then did they realize exactly what kind of situation they were in.

They were trapped.

Together.

Inside a tiny closet.

Half-naked.