BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I pulled the trigger in a rhythmic, merciless cadence. The cavern erupted in blinding flashes of crimson fire as the Death Chant Shotgun tore through the approaching horde. Every single pellet flying from the barrel was forged directly from my own blood. With each deafening blast, I could feel a heavy chunk of my own life force being violently drained away, a toll that would have dropped any ordinary human from sudden blood loss within seconds.
But I wasn't human anymore. Beneath my heavy traveler's cloak, the hidden, primordial passive of my sixth evolution quietly awakened. The moment my blood reserves dipped, the low-grade copper ring on my index finger flared, and my body instantly began converting raw mana directly into fresh, oxygenated blood. My veins hummed with unnatural, self-sustaining energy. The more mana I pumped through the reservoir, the more ammunition I had to burn.
The swarming bio slimes stood absolutely no chance. The explosive, high-pressure blood pellets vaporized their cores upon impact, blowing the A-rank beasts into a harmless mist of blue-green droplets before they could even think of duplicating. Within minutes, the immediate tunnel was cleared, leaving nothing but scorched, smoking stone.
But as the echoes of the gunfire faded, the swinging lantern strapped to my thigh illuminated something truly extraordinary… and deeply horrifying… stumbling out from the deeper, forgotten shafts.
They looked human, but their movements were completely wrong… jerky, unnatural, and accompanied by the sickening wet sound of squelching flesh. They were the lost miners of Caria who had vanished down here over the years. But the slimes hadn't just corroded them down to the bone. Instead, the gelatinous mass had burrowed deep into their nervous systems, wrapping around their skeletal structures and hijacking their corpses.
"Eirene, these aren't slimes, they were humanoid creatures that slimes hijacked their body." Plasma said
Nautilus had warned me that these bio slimes were highly intelligent creatures. They didn't just mindlessly dissolve everything, they were puppeteers. The miners' bodies were deeply mutated… translucent blue-green slime pulsed beneath their rotting skin, and jagged, hardened protrusions of calcified slime had burst through their fingers to form built-in claw weapons. Their dead, hollow eyes glowed with an eerie, predatory bioluminescence.
The moment their glowing eyes locked onto my hooded form, they let out a collective, choked hiss and lunged forward with terrifying, supernatural speed.
"Watch out!" Plasma said
One of the slime-puppet miners blindsided me from the shadows, its built-in claws cutting through the air with a vicious swipe. I tried to dodge, but the razor-sharp talons shredded through my heavy cloak, slicing deeply into my right arm. Dark blood welled from the wound, and the agonizing sting of residual slime acid flared in my flesh.
Worse, I couldn't even raise my left hand to block or push him off. My left arm remained completely mutilated, a useless limb from past battles. I was pinned down, forcing me to operate completely single-handedly.
Snapping into raw survival instinct as well as Plasma response, I gritted my teeth behind my canvas mask. I jammed the heavy barrel of the Death Chant Shotgun directly under the jaw of the attacking miner and pulled the trigger at point-blank range.
BANG!
His head completely exploded into a shower of gore and blue-green fluid. The moment the blast connected, the hidden, vampiric curse of the shotgun triggered. Because the bullets were made of my own living blood, the weapon's lifesteal effect activated instantly. A sudden surge of warm, stolen vitality rushed backward from the blast, flowing directly into my torso.
I gasped as the deep claw wound on my right arm began to rapidly knit itself back together. The flesh fused, the pain vanished, and the burning acid was completely neutralized, leaving my arm perfectly patched up and ready for the next shot.
I kicked the headless corpse away, cocking the shotgun with a single, brutal flick of my wrist. My arm was healed, my fury was unchecked, and I still had an entire mine to purge.
I dropped into a low stance and reached out toward the headless corpse I had just blasted away. I needed to replenish my rapidly draining mana, and the quickest way to do that was to harvest the dead. I pressed my palm flat against the miner's torn torso and activated Blood Siphon… my innate ability that acts as a localized vacuum, pulling the raw life force of a target straight through my skin to refill my internal reserves.
I waited for the familiar rush of stolen warmth, but nothing happened. Not a single drop seeps into my palm.
A cold spike of irritation hit me. I looked closer at the tattered flesh. These miners had lost every ounce of their human blood days ago, perhaps even weeks ago. Their cardiovascular systems had been completely emptied and replaced by the pulsing, gelatinous mass of the bio slimes. They were nothing but walking shells of corrosive sludge. There was no blood to siphon.
Before I could even stand back up, the rhythmic, heavy vibration of the cavern walls intensified. Something big was growing out from the darkness ahead.
I instantly backed away, charging my shotgun with a swift channel of my blood magic. The silver engravings on the barrel flared back to life, glowing a menacing crimson in the pitch black. I pointed the weapon dead ahead into the maw of the deepest shaft.
Out of the shadows, a massive horde of infected miners spilled into the tunnel. I rapidly scanned the incoming line… I estimated there were at least twenty of them, their bodies horribly bloated with glowing blue-green slime, their built-in calcified claws scraping wildly against the stone walls as they charged straight at me like a pack of rabid wolves.
They were fast, and the tunnel was narrow. I didn't have the space to just stand and shoot, especially knowing that this specialized Death Chant Shotgun only held a maximum of 8 rounds before its internal chamber needed a full manual cycle to reform the blood shells. I had to make every single shot count, or I'd be shredded to pieces by those claws.
Acting on pure instinct, I spun around and delivered a brutal, empowered kick to the rusty iron frame of a nearby abandoned ore cart sitting on the tracks. The heavy metal cart screeched violently, hurtling down the inclined track directly into the frontline of the horde.
CRASH!
The cart plowed into the lead infected miners, shattering their limbs and scattering their formation into a tangled mess of thrashing bodies.
With the horde temporarily bottle-necked, I raised the crimson-glowing shotgun with my right hand, bracing the stock against my hip. I squeezed the trigger in rapid succession, aiming strictly for the glowing, bioluminescent sweet spots where their heads used to be.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The deafening roars rattled my teeth as three successive waves of explosive blood pellets tore through the air, obliterating the skulls of the closest miners. The lifesteal effect hummed, keeping my energy sharp, but my counter was ticking down.
Five rounds left.
The remaining infected crawled right over the wreckage of the minecart, their glowing eyes fixed entirely on my cloak.
The lead infected miner leaped over the rusted wreckage of the ore cart, his calcified claws slicing through the air inches from my face. I didn't blink. I pulled the trigger, blasting his torso into a spray of blue-green sludge at point-blank range.
Four rounds left.
But the sheer numbers were catching up, and the rhythmic clicking of my shotgun's internal chamber warned me that I was burning through my ammunition too fast. Operating completely single-handedly was slowing down my tactical options. I needed a second limb if I was going to survive the remaining wave.
"Eirene, use your blood manipulation to create a prosthetic limb. It's for your own good."
As from Plasma's response, I stepped back, dodging a vicious swipe from another puppet, and focused my absolute intent on my mutilated left shoulder. Channeling the volatile blood magic pulsing through my veins, I forced my own crimson lifeforce to erupt from the severed stump. The liquid iron coed and hardened in a fraction of a second, molding itself into a sharp, gleaming, temporary **prosthetic arm made of crystallized blood**.
With my newly forged left hand free, I didn't bother using it to reload. Instead, I focused the blood manipulation further, extending the fingers of the prosthetic and lengthening the hardened material into a razor-sharp, heavy blood sword.
My previous attempt to slash a pure bio slime had failed because their acidic bodies dissolved my magic. But these were humanoid creatures hijacked by slimes… their outer shells were still made of brittle bone, rotten muscle, and weak flesh. They could be cut.
I lunged forward into the horde, my lone jade-green eye tracking their erratic movements. I swung my newly formed blood sword in a brutal, sweeping arc, capitalizing on the strength of my S-rank evolution.
Slash!
The crimson blade sheared effortlessly through the necks and torsos of three infected miners simultaneously, their bodies collapsing into heaps of dead tissue and leaking slime. As the remaining three monsters rushed me from the flanks, I leveled the Death Chant Shotgun with my right hand and emptied the final four rounds of my chamber in a rapid, deafening succession.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The explosive blood pellets completely demolished their upper bodies, blowing them backward into the dark walls of the shaft. The lifesteal effect hummed one last time, a warm wave of stolen vitality washing over my frame and stabilizing my mana conversion. The remaining infected were dead, completely silenced, and the suffocating pressure in the immediate tunnel finally faded back into a grim, dripping quiet.
My temporary blood arm and sword dissolved back into a mist of red vapor, returning to my bloodstream as I let out a long, ragged breath beneath my canvas mask.
I reached down and tightened the brass lantern strapped to my right thigh, ensuring the golden light wouldn't fail me as the blue-green bioluminescence of the slimes died out. But as the swinging light passed over the tattered, shredded remains of the miners I had just executed, something caught my eye.
A heavy, leather-bound parchment was sticking out of a pocket from one of the freshly sliced coats.
I knelt down, pulling it free from the slimy fabric. I unrolled it beneath the lantern's glow. It was a detailed, official structural map of the Caria Mines. It showed every hidden shaft, every deep excavation zone, and most importantly, the path leading directly down to the lowest sub-levels where the ancient, central monster had been sealed six years ago. The very place my mother drew her last breath.
"Eureka, Eirene!"
My grip tightened on the parchment. The map to my vengeance was finally in my hands, and the path to the bottom of the abyss was wide open.