“What’s the door say this time?” A young girl asked, her skin an almost ghastly pale of white. Similar to nethrak but… with an almost sleeker texture. She wore leather armor, but carried no visible weapons. Next to her was a white slime standing nearly three meters tall, its form highly translucent.
“It looks like the first boss is Wind today, Lifre.” The slime said as he read the word written above the stone door. The reason that the slime read off the domain was not because the smaller girl was unable to read it herself, but rather because she was knelt down on the floor preparing something.
“Wind, huh?” She muttered, thinking to herself. “It’ll probably be some kind of bird, then. But arrows won’t work against a wind domain, so I’ll need a way to get in close. So… let’s go with flight boots, and long blades.”
As she said that, her feet began shifting, as if liquifying before settling on the shape of thick leather boots. Her hands vanished into her wrists as a pair of long, silver blades emerged. “For the right one, let’s use energy disruption to attack its divine power. And the left one… let’s have that one set for increased defense, so I can parry attacks.”
“Armor… maximizing my slashing resistance should be the best bet.” She nodded her head happily once she had set that, before standing up. Her left and right blades rubbed against one another, producing dazzling sparks. “Okay, Flandre, you stay here. I’ll come back for you after I beat the boss.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to take a nethrak with you? Nobody’s ever beaten the first boss… It’s really dangerous.” It was obvious that the white slime was worried for the girl, who simply shrugged her shoulders.
“Nah, you can’t trust a fleshy to take down a god. Only a god can kill a god!” She held up her right blade, as if pointing to the sky.
“But you aren’t a–”
“I’m a god in my own heart!” She puffed her cheeks out to cut her friend off. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Anything they can do, I can do better! And if the worst happens, I’ll just teleport out! Wind doesn’t trump space, after all. I’m pretty sure that this thing won’t be able to instantly kill me, anyways.”
The white slime let out a long, wet sigh when he heard that, visibly deflating. “Just be careful.”
“Yup, I’ll see you later!” She waved, already charging towards the door. Without her having to touch it, the massive stone blocks began to open on their own, as if accepting their challenger. Once she had entered, the doors slowly closed behind her, leaving the worried slime to wait outside.
Inside the dungeon, the little challenger looked around to find her opponent. “Come here, little birdy. Lifre’s got a couple presents for you.” She said as she swept her eyes across the large room.
Suddenly, Lifre felt an impact at her back, causing her to tumble forward. Her bladed arms penetrated into the ground as she spun to face her attacker, blinking when there was nobody there. “Wind bullets, not blades? Has nobody taught this guy how to wind properly?” She muttered to herself.
Still, she remained observant, waiting for an opening to attack. “Let’s see… if they’re using a wind-based invisibility…” Her head briefly shifted, goggles seeming to grow out of her skull. Looking through the goggles, she could see the flow of the wind currents in her surroundings, and could use that to gauge where her opponent was hiding.
“There you are!” She shouted after finding an area where the wind was congregating. Surprisingly, the area was on the ground rather than the air, but she wasn’t going to complain about an easy target.
Lunging over, she readied her right arm to swing at the mass of wind, but found herself only cutting through empty air. The target had retreated as soon as it saw her accurately targeting it. “Now now, I can see you! No point in running!” She said as she chased after the mass of wind. “Enchant leggings for maximum speed…”
After she said this, her speed drastically increased, allowing her to catch up to the fleeing God of Wind. With a single slash, her right blade tore through the invisible barrier surrounding the creature, causing her to gasp out in surprise. “It’s a puppy!”
The God of Wind that she was fighting was a massive, silver-furred wolf. It was hard to tell where it had evolved, but it was intelligent enough to know that Lifre was not an easy opponent. Having barely evaded a direct hit from her last attack, the monster god let out a low growl, yet that noise couldn’t reach Lifre.
“Hmm?” She tilted her head, feeling the vibration from the ground as the god charged forward. However, she could not hear any noise. She even clashed her swords together, and only ‘felt’ the sound of the impact that was transferred across her body. “Oh! A vacuum!” She giggled at that, before readying her blades again.
As the god reached her, she intercepted its paw with its left blade, before stabbing forward with the right. Once again, the cautious monster pulled back to avoid the blow. Seeing this, Lifre only grinned broadly. The blade on her right hand expanded explosively, piercing forward dozens of meters to skewer through the body of the wolf.
The pained howl of the wolf god could be heard in her ears, letting her know that its control of the vacuum around her had lapsed. Even if it didn’t, however, she wasn’t worried. Her eyes were drawn to the health bar above its head, as if savoring a long-sought prize. “One down… nineteen to go!”
The small girl had a manic grin on her face as she charged again, her right blade temporarily returning to its normal length. A trace of panic could be seen on the enemy’s face as it opened its mouth to release a powerful howl. Unlike its initial attack, this howl contained not only a brute force impact, but also numerous condensed blades of wind.
Lifre brought her arm up to parry the wind blades while enduring the impact, only to feel one of the blades slip past her sword arm and sink through the elbow. With a sloshing sound, the arm fell to the floor, causing Lifre to look at it in alarm. “Hey! I was using that!” She called out in indignation, a new bladed arm sprouting from the stump.
Once the howl ended, Lifre lunged forward again, stabbing towards the wolf. Having learned its lesson from the previous exchange, it did not try to dodge backwards this time. Rather, it dodged to the side, delivering a powerful slap with its paw towards Lifre’s head.
“Bad dog!” She rebuked, and her right blade shifted again. This time, the blade swept out to the side like a long scythe, stabbing the flank of the divine beast. She allowed its paw to crush her head, popping it like an overinflated water balloon as white liquid splashed everywhere.
To the wolf’s dismay, the girl attacking it did not collapse with the loss of her head. Instead, it felt an agonizing sensation as the blade inside of its body suddenly branched off. Dozens of smaller blades formed along its length, and began rapidly rotating within its body. Almost immediately, a hole was punched through the wolf’s body, and the blade tore towards its head.
Its health bar was rapidly depleting as it fled back, barely able to support itself on its front two paws. The wolf could only look helplessly at its back half that was left behind. Then, it saw bubbles rising along the girl’s body, forming a new head that grinned back at it. “Well, it looks like someone is on their last legs~.” She teased, her barbed right arm looking like a blender in action.
Her right arm retracted, returning to its normal appearance. Afterwards, she stabbed the blade directly into the ground. The wolf looked as if it wanted to take advantage of her position, and launched a wind blade at her from its side. However, her left arm expanded, wrapping around her entire body and forming a solid dome of enchanted steel.
It was what came next that caused shivers to run down what remained of the wolf’s spine. All along the steel dome, narrow slits formed, turning into eyes that observed in all directions. Without two of its legs, the wolf had lost a great deal of its mobility, but it still felt as if staying in one place would be dangerous.
Thus, with the power of wind supporting it, it lifted off the ground, flying higher up into the air. “Ooh, smart doggy!” Lifre said within her steel dome. “Unfortunately for you… I had a big meal before coming here!”
All along the room, the ground suddenly began to crack and twist. Hundreds of blades extended from the ground, branching off and filling the room from top to bottom. In such a situation, the wolf did not even have any room to dodge, let alone counterattack. It let out a helpless whine as it was pierced by over a dozen blades, its health plummeting.
Once the God of Wind had died, Lifre slowly retracted her blades, bringing it down to the ground as she emerged from her steel dome. She wrapped her blades around both the newly pierced front half and the previously severed back half on the ground in front of her. “Now, time for seconds~!” She called out happily, devouring the body of the god.
It was a common belief among the slimes that they would only be able to ascend to godhood if they themselves devoured a god. Lifre, a mimic slime that had finally achieved this task, fully intended on putting that to the test today.
As she devoured the divine body of the monster deity, she felt its power filling her. Yet, there was something stopping it from fully integrating with her body. Sure, she felt like she could release wind blades such as the wolf had previously used, but… it would only be by consuming the energy she was currently storing. She wouldn’t be able to produce that energy herself.
This caused Lifre to sulk, her body drooping as a pout formed over her lips. “Am I only a half-god of Wind now, after all that?” She muttered to herself, before seeing a portal forming along the edge of the stone room. Looking over, she realized that she could either take the door to the next floor, the door out of the room, or the portal.
There had never been a case of a portal appearing after a dungeon boss. The most that would happen would be a chest appearing to reward the adventurer for their hard work. Allowing her arms to return to being… well, arms, she began walking towards the portal.
“I should let Flander know that I beat the boss, but… shiny portal is shiny and new!” She said to herself, charging into the glowing portal. Whenever something ‘new’ presented itself to Lifre, she couldn’t help but want to investigate it as far as she could. That was how she was able to master the art of creating enchanted weapons and armors out of her own body, due to having extensively studied the creation of such items manually.
Lifre jumped through the portal, fortifying the defense around her core. When she appeared, she was standing on a wide, flat island of stone in the middle of an ocean. “Buh..?” She voiced out intelligibly, moments before she felt a divine presence falling onto the island next to her.
Lifre shuddered, feeling that the strength of this divinity couldn’t even be compared to the wolf that she had fought previously. When she turned over to look at the source of the power, she found a girl standing no taller than herself, with pink hair and wearing a long, silk dress.
“Hello, Lifre.” The small goddess said, smiling towards the mimic slime. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
