The runes she'd been sculpting snapped into motion.
A spiral of jagged frost erupted from her staff, flying like a spinning blade and slamming straight into the anchored slime.
It froze mid-motion—sections of its body calcifying under the magical frost. Its outer form twitched. Struggled. But the core?
The core was exposed.
"NOW!" Lilith shouted. "It's open!"
"On it!" Asmodeus roared from above, already airborne.
"Inheritor of wrath—
Let lightning carve its ruinous path!
Crack sky and bone—
Let my fury blaze!
Grant me power, for I am Asmodeus!
The Book of Thunder, First Verse: Bolt Strike!"
He slammed downward with full force, lightning bursting from the impact like a divine exclamation mark.
The King Slime shrieked—its bloated form sagging, mass sloughing off in chunks. It hit the floor with a wet, seismic slap.
It twitched once.
Then stilled.
Lilith stepped back, breath visible in the air, her sigil slowly unraveling into flecks of frost. Asmodeus dropped to one knee with a grin, sparks still flickering from his knuckles.
Eldric exhaled sharply beside me. "Well. That was—"
"Disgusting," Lilith offered.
"Effective," Asmodeus said, still smiling.
The soldiers began to regroup. One of them let out a low whistle. "Didn't think it'd actually work."
"It's not moving," another said, nudging a chunk of the collapsed slime with the tip of a spear. "Is that thing actually dead?"
I didn't move.
I stared at the fractured remains of the slime.
The glow inside its core hadn't vanished. Just dimmed.
Faint.
But not dead.
[Core stability: 12%.]
[Residual function: active.]
[Enemy designation: adaptive entity. Phase integrity: reforming.]
[Estimated window: 14.6 seconds.]
I tightened my grip on Yukihana.
"Of course, It's not dead."
[Correct.]
[Prepare to re-engage.]
"Wait," one of the soldiers said, voice uneasy. He pointed toward the core, now half-submerged in the center of the broken pile. "Is that… still glowing?"
Everyone turned.
The pulsing light—faint and rhythmic—was undeniable now.
It flickered.
Then steadied.
Then began to pulse faster.
"Chi," Lilith said quietly.
"I know."
Asmodeus stood back up. "Oh, come on—"
The remains of the slime twitched.
Not all at once.
In pieces.
Chunks of mass dragged inward, reconnecting with the trembling core like reverse blood flow. The crown, cracked and dulled, floated an inch into the air and began to pulse in time with the mana.
[Phase integrity: 23%. Rapid restoration accelerating.]
Metatron's voice echoed inside me like a heartbeat made of code.
[Critical anomaly: external mana siphon detected.]
"Fall back," I snapped. "Now. It's not done."
"What is it doing?" Eldric asked.
"I'm gonna assume its feeding," I said, stepping forward, Yukihana pulsing in my hand. "And if we don't stop it now, we're going to find out what's next."
The soldiers backed away fast, weapons half-raised, breath caught in their throats.
The King Slime's core pulsed brighter—no longer soft, but jagged. Like the light itself was cracking.
Mana bled from the glyphs on the walls.
Faint lines of energy—gold, violet, blue—peeled from the carvings and funneled toward the pile of collapsed sludge.
Lilith's eyes widened. "It's pulling from the structure—the ruin itself."
"It's not just regenerating," I muttered. "It's mutating."
The corrupted mass convulsed.
Spikes of crystalized slime burst outward—some of them black, some of them glowing.
The crown twitched once.
Then it snapped into the air like a hooked lure—embedding itself directly into the growing core.
The body followed, reforming fast. But not into the same blob.
It was tighter.
Coiled.
Taller.
The new King Slime hit the ground with a wet, slapping slam—but this time, it didn't bounce slowly.
It twitched.
Like a muscle trying to remember how to move faster than it was built for.
Its translucent form shimmered with corrupted glyphs—runes spiraling across its surface like tattoos made of malfunctioning mana.
Then—
It vanished.
A pop of compressed air and ozone.
Lilith's eyes snapped wide. "It moved—where did it—"
"ABOVE!" Asmodeus roared.
The creature reappeared in midair above the back line, its entire body compressed into a needle-thin point before expanding violently mid-drop.
A soldier screamed.
The group scattered—barely avoiding the impact as the new slime crushed down like a bomb, leaving a mana crater where two men had just been standing.
"Chi—!" Eldric shouted.
"I see it!" I snapped.
[Speed threshold exceeded. Est. movement: teleport-adjacent. Pattern erratic.]
Metatron's tone was calm.
My pulse wasn't.
The Slime King screeched—if you could call the wet, folding, gargling howl it let out a screech—and darted forward again.
Not bounced.
Darted.
A blur of acidic mana and crown-light, dragging residual glyph-light behind it like a comet tail.
"Everyone move!" I yelled.
Asmodeus dropped into a low stance, fists crackling. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Lilith readied another sigil. "Split it. Lock it. Then end it."
I twirled Yukihana once and felt the weight respond like a heartbeat in sync with mine.
"Let's finish this."
The mutated King Slime blurred across the chamber again—too fast.
It struck like a battering ram, its newly hardened form leaving trails of acidic mana wherever it skidded. The air behind it warped. Glyphs cracked. Walls wept magic.
"Can't get a clean shot!" Lilith shouted, forced to cancel her sigil mid-cast as the slime zipped past.
It spun, changed direction mid-slide, and smashed into the center group—hard.
Two soldiers went flying—one slammed into a pillar and didn't get up.
Eldric dove in with his blade, mana blazing along the edge in a precise arc—only to have it bounce off the slime's reinforced crystal crown with a shriek of metal.
"It's learning," he growled. "It's adapting faster than we can—Asmodeus, left!"
Asmodeus tried to dodge, but the slime blinked again—flickering through space—and clipped him mid-leap. He hit the ground hard, electricity arcing across the floor as he slid.
"Az!" I shouted.
He groaned. "Still alive! But it HURTS!"
The slime spun toward me next.
It lunged.
I tried to anchor—cast—anything—
But it was too fast.
A tail flicked out on instinct—caught it for a half-second.
Then it crashed into me.
The impact ripped through my ribs and launched me across the chamber. I skidded, rolled, and only stopped when I slammed against a wall.
Pain bloomed.
Yukihana slid from my fingers, clattering somewhere near the glyph line.
My vision swam.
"Chiori!" Lilith's voice snapped like breaking ice.
She threw her arm out, cast a frost wall just in time to block another slam—but it cracked under the pressure. Barely bought seconds.
[Damage threshold exceeded.]
[Recommended: retreat.]
"No," I whispered.
[Survivability: 39%. Decreasing.]
I pushed myself to my knees.
The slime was surging again—this time toward Eldric and the remaining soldiers.
He was trying to pull them into a fallback formation—but the slime cut him off, sliding through a glyph-boosted leap like a bladed wave.
Lilith dove forward, unleashing a flash-freeze directly at its core—only for the magic to bounce off a glyph shield now embedded inside its mass.
We weren't just losing.
We were outmatched.
The chamber twisted around me—colors bleeding at the edges of my vision. My fingers scraped against the stone, reaching for Yukihana through the haze.
Too slow.
The Slime King was already mid-lunge again.
A blur of mass and corrupted mana, it hurtled toward me—crown first, like a battering ram dipped in acid.
I couldn't stop it.
Not in time.
Not like this.
I turned, arms instinctively raising even though I knew it wouldn't be enough—
And then Eldric was there.
He didn't shout.
He didn't hesitate.
He just moved—sword up, body between me and the incoming death.
The slime struck him full-force.
The impact sent him flying—his body crashing into a crumbled column with a sickening sound of steel and bone colliding.
"Eldric—!" My voice cracked.
He didn't get up.
For a second, no one moved.
Then the slime twitched again, shifting its weight to surge for the next strike.
But I was already running.
The moment my hand closed around Yukihana's hilt, the chamber stilled.
Everything narrowed.
Not the room—
My perception.
The Slime King reared back, preparing another crushing strike—its body rippling like a coiled spring of corrupted mass.
But I didn't move.
Not yet.
Because it was about time I stopped holding back.
[Resonance breach acknowledged.]
[Initiating transmogrification: Void Aspect, Dragonoid Hybrid.]
My veins flooded with weight—not pressure, but presence.
The kind of pressure that could tilt stars.
That could rewrite the rules of the room just by existing inside it.
My spine arched back—pain lancing through me as vertebrae pulled into new alignment. Bones cracking. Stretching.
Then—
Click.
The pain was gone.
Replaced with motion.
I stood taller.
My arms—still mine—now shimmered with obsidian scale along the edges. Horns spiraled lightly from my temples, curling backward like broken crescents. My eyes pulsed silver, then deep violet, gravity condensed into iris rings.
My tails returned—longer, heavier, outlined in voidlight.
Wings—not full, not feathered, but thin-bladed constructs of mana and anti-mass—flared outward from my shoulders like reflections without mirrors.
A hush fell.
Not from silence.
From fear.
Lilith froze in place, her casting hand still raised mid-sigil.
Her eyes—sharp, always calculating—widened in raw disbelief.
"…Chiori?"
But she didn't say it like a name.
She said it like a question she wasn't sure had an answer anymore.
Asmodeus took one step back, sweat on his brow despite the chill of lingering frost.
His voice was low. Hollow. "I've known you since we were kids… and I've never seen you look like that."
Neither of them moved.
Two of Eldric's soldiers—still catching their breath from the last barrage—saw me fully for the first time.
One muttered, half-broken: "She's not human."
The other backed away. "That's not a mage. That's a weapon."
They weren't wrong.
And yet, I was still me.
Somewhere inside this new shape—this terrifying precision—I was still Chiori Tomaszewski.
But I was also more.
The Slime King twitched.
It tried to blink away again—but its body flickered.
Staggered.
My pressure had caught it.
I raised my hand, and Yukihana responded like a moon dragged into orbit.
Behind me, my wings pulsed.
Metatron's voice echoed one last time.
[Stabilization: 81%. Target locked.]
I leaned forward, claws flexing.
My voice came out wrapped in gravity, drawn down like a blade being unsheathed:
"Stay down."
The Slime King flickered again, its mass trying to phase-shift through space. A last-ditch effort.
It failed.
I was already on it.
Gravity snapped inward around the creature like a noose closing mid-air.
[Corruption signature confirmed.]
[Match: Subject 001A - Satoshi Hoshino.]
[Parasitic strain: Hex-born, deep-seeded.]
Metatron's voice was clear, clinical.
But I wasn't.
I was rage and instinct laced in control.
I struck—hard.
Yukihana carved through the slime's body like its mass meant nothing. A single slash turned it inside out. The core shrieked, trying to retract.
I didn't let it.
I dropped one foot—and with it, gravity—anchoring the core mid-air.
The thing spasmed, jerking uselessly as I walked forward, blade dragging a trail of violet sparks along the stone.
"You," I whispered.
Not to the Slime King.
To the thing inside it.
The corruption.
The parasite that took my father and laughed about it.
"You're not worth cleansing."
I lifted Yukihana—now burning cold with that same pressure I felt the day I first summoned her.
And I began to carve.
Not quick.
Not clean.
Deliberate.
I slashed the core once—then again—each cut forming sigils of collapse mid-air. My wings flared wider with every strike, the pressure in the room mounting until the soldiers were pushed back, until even Lilith had to anchor herself with mana.
The core screamed.
Good.
I wasn't done.
I brought an open-handed claw up for the final strike, drawing in everything—every ounce of control, pain, and history that had brought me here.
And I slammed it through the core with the force of an anchored star.
The explosion was silent.
Then it collapsed.
Not in flames.
In nothing.
Just a sharp inhale of gravity and light—and the core was gone.
The Slime King's form dissolved instantly, sludge collapsing inward like it was ashamed to exist without the thing puppeting it.
Then silence.
The chamber didn't echo.
It hung.
The silence wasn't relief.
It was reverence.
Dust settled around me—if it even was dust. Might've been mana ash. The remains of the glyphs were still glowing faintly across the floor. Some of the broken bridges above had cracked further from the gravitational collapse. The air hadn't stopped vibrating.
And I was still standing in it.
Yukihana lowered slowly in my grip, humming like a voice without sound.
My claws twitched.
The wings behind me didn't fold—they flickered, translucent and void-bound, gravity unspooling from them like dying light.
I looked at my hands.
Not mine.
Not fully.
Scaled. Sharp.
Too steady.
Too quiet.
I took a breath. It tasted like ash and metal.
[Notice: Dragonoid form destabilizing.]
My knees wobbled.
The horns retracted first, curling backward into flickering mist. The wings collapsed into violet ribbons and vanished behind my back. The tails—coiled like hunting serpents—dissolved one by one.
I staggered.
Yukihana disappeared into the seal on my palm with a soundless shimmer.
And I collapsed with it.
My legs buckled—every part of me suddenly gone. Like gravity had remembered it was never mine to command.
I didn't even feel the ground.
Because I didn't hit it.
A streak of blue and silver arced through the air—Lilith's staff.
She threw it without looking, the motion automatic, practiced. It slammed into the ground behind me like an anchor—
—and her arms caught me just before I hit the stone.
"Chi—!" Her voice cracked with it, hoarse with the raw edge of someone who never gets caught off guard.
I was unconscious before she could say anything else.
The chamber was silent again.
Lilith cradled Chiori close, one hand pressed gently against her shoulder, the other casting a faint cooling spell to stabilize her body temperature.
Footsteps approached—heavy, limping.
Eldric stumbled into view, blood trailing from his lip, one arm cradling the other.
He looked like death on detour, but he was alive.
He blinked through the pain, his eyes struggling to focus.
"What the hell…" His voice was rough. "What did I miss?"
Asmodeus, kneeling nearby with his back against a broken pillar, let out a long breath. "You missed the part where you played meat shield for a cosmic slime, and then Chi went full calamity core and obliterated it."
Eldric winced. "I what?"
"You saved her," Asmodeus said, quieter now. "It was gonna crush her. You took the hit."
"Right…" Eldric nodded slowly. "And then she—what? She cast something?"
Asmodeus hesitated.
A beat too long.
Then he shrugged.
"She… lost control. Used something she probably didn't mean to. It worked. That's all that matters."
Eldric stared at him.
Then past him—at Chiori, limp in Lilith's arms, her breathing shallow but steady.
"…You're leaving something out," he muttered.
Asmodeus didn't answer.
He just leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "Get some rest, knight boy. You've got ribs to regrow."