We approached the massive, imposing archway that marked the entrance to the fifth mineshaft… the absolute deepest, most heavily guarded sector of the Caria Mines.
This was the subterranean core where the most immaculate, expensive jewelry and raw gemstones in the entire kingdom were formed. Being the closest sector to the planet's mantle, you would expect the air to be a suffocating, melting furnace, but instead, it carried a strange, pressurized chill. More than anything, this pitch-black depths served as the primary, highly concentrated breeding ground for the bio-slimes.
Evelyn had called this dark labyrinth home for six long years. But as she walked beside me, her translucent slime wings pulled tight against her bodysuit, her expression was hard. She was completely done with this place. She was tired of living in the shadows, tired of the hive-mind, and tired of being a weapon for a monster.
As we pushed deeper into the main tunnel, the ambient light of our bioluminescent suits caught the walls, and my lone jade-green eye widened. The cavern was glittering with raw, immaculate gems I had never seen in my entire career as an executioner. Emeralds the size of standard bricks and uncut diamonds bursting from the stone like frozen stars lined the pathway.
Suddenly, the voice of Nautilus… the secretary of CKBA plus the principal of Caria Mastery Academy echoed directly into my mind, analyzing the environment. Nautilus reminded me of the broader economic state of the kingdom above us. During the six years I had spent fighting through the mines, the capital city had plummeted into a severe, devastating economic deflation. Everything had slowed to a crawl due to an absolute, crippling lack of gold flowing into the royal treasuries.
Looking at the glittering walls and then at my sister, the missing pieces of the puzzle slammed into place.
Gold, silver, and copper coins had become incredibly rare and highly valuable in our country because the kingdom's richest supply was entirely locked down here. The gold mines hadn't dried up, they had been completely cut off from the surface because Evelyn herself had been guarding them. My little sister, wielded by the Master, had successfully locked down the lower mineshafts, killing any extraction team the Bureau sent down, unintentionally starving our entire country's economy of its precious metals.
Evelyn noticed me staring at the massive veins of gold ore embedded in the rock. She reached out, her hand gently resting on the barrel of my Death Chant Shotgun, her jade-green eyes reflecting the dull, metallic glint.
"Master hoards it all to draw in prey, but after today, they can have their gold back. We're taking our family out of the dark." she whispered, her voice echoing down the tunnel toward the breeding grounds.
I gave her a firm, resolute nod, my massive blood wings unfurling slightly behind me as the path began to widen into the heart of the fifth mineshaft. The source of our country's economic ruin… and our family's tragedy… was just ahead.
"Big sister, we are here. Home." Evelyn said
We stepped through the jagged mouth of the cave opening, and the narrow tunnel abruptly gave way to a subterranean cavern so colossally vast it felt like entering an underground cathedral.
The entire cavern was a glittering, blinding treasury. Thousands of raw, immaculate jewelry pieces, gold veins, and precious gemstones sprouted from the walls like crystalline gardens, reflecting the eerie, multi-colored glow of thousands of bioluminescent slimes scattered across the floor and ceilings.
But my eye was instantly locked onto the center of the cavern.
There sat Master himself. He was a monstrous, terrifying sight… a gargantuan, pulsing blob of concentrated, illuminating light the size of a two-story house. His translucent, high-density slime membrane rippled with immense, volatile energy, sending tremors through the stone floor with every breath-like expansion.
As our footsteps echoed into the chamber, a booming, telepathic voice resonated directly into our minds, speaking in absolute, flawless Alatist.
"Guardian of the Ravine, is your job protecting the gold mines finished? Why have you brought an intruder into the breeding core?"
The moment the monster spoke, Evelyn's biological chest core violently spiked, pumping with a sudden, white-hot surge of pure fury. The brainwashed puppet was gone; only the grieving daughter remained. She stepped out in front of me, her twin jade-green eyes flashing with a murderous, bioluminescent light as she protested against her master.
"My job is finished, you lying abomination! You used me! You killed my mother, you brainwashed my mind, and you turned me against my own flesh and blood! Your reign over this family ends today!" Evelyn shrieked, her voice echoing fiercely off the gemstone walls.
The massive light within Master flared into a deep, angry crimson. The colossal blob rippled violently as he turned his full, terrifying gaze directly upon me, recognizing my S-rank executioner aura and my blood wings.
"You traitorous guardian… You have been corrupted by a defective demon. Then you shall both dissolve in the dark." The master roared, the air pressure in the cavern dropping instantly.
Without a single millisecond of hesitation, the King of the Slimes flexed his massive body.
BOOM!
He shot a high-density, pressurized bolt of bio-slime directly at us… traveling at the terrifying, deafening speed of sound, ripping through the air like a kinetic cannon shell.
"Big sister, cover behind me!" Evelyn yelled, her super-intelligent combat instincts instantly taking over.
She lunged backward, slamming her body right in front of mine. In that split second, she triggered her god-given human skill. A blinding, crystalline barrier of Reinforced Mana erupted around us like a fortress shield, locking into place just as the sound-speed slime projectile slammed into our defenses.
CRACK-BOOM!
The sound-speed slime projectile slammed into Evelyn's Reinforced Mana barrier, detonating with enough kinetic force to shake the entire cavern, but her crystalline shield held absolute.
She didn't waste a single millisecond. With her barrier absorbing the shock wave, my little sister braced her feet against the stone, her eyes flashing a blinding, predatory jade. The humming biological core in her chest violently spiked, glowing with an intense, volatile light.
Using her god-given Explosion Magic, she channeled a massive torrent of raw mana directly into her slime traits, converting the magical energy into pure, devastating kinetic force.
"Die, you monster!" Evelyn screamed.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
She unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of concussive, explosive blasts straight from her palms. The kinetic shock waves tore through the air, hitting the two-story-tall King of the Slimes dead-center. The sheer impact was catastrophic, violently blasting through his high-density membrane and tearing massive, gaping holes straight through his illuminating light mass. Liquid slime and shattered gemstones rained down everywhere.
I crouched low behind her, my massive blood wings instinctively snapping forward to wrap around myself like a protective cocoon, shielding my true, single-eyed body from the acidic spray. Watching her fight from the shadows of my own wings, a profound sense of awe gripped me. My baby sister wasn't just holding her own against an S-rank abomination… she was dominating him with the strategic, lethal precision of a seasoned warlord.
But the Slime King wasn't defeated yet. The massive holes in his translucent body began to rapidly churn and regenerate, his crimson light flaring in sheer fury.
"Deploy, my children! Consume them until nothing remains!" The master's telepathic roar vibrated through our skulls.
Suddenly, the thousands of bioluminescent slimes that had been scattered inertly across the walls and the high cavern ceiling began to vibrate. They detached themselves all at once, launching into the air in a massive, overwhelming swarm. It was a torrential rain of living acid, falling from the darkness directly toward our position.
Evelyn was already recharging her core for another heavy blast at the Master, her defenses temporarily lowered as she focused on the boss.
I couldn't let my baby sister fight a two-front war like that. It was my turn to be the older sibling.
With a fierce snap of my back, my blood wings flared wide open, kicking up a gust of crimson energy. I lunged out from behind her flank, stepping side-by-side with her into the fray. My lone jade-green eye locked onto the descending swarm. I raised the heavy, cold steel barrel of my Death Chant Shotgun with my right hand, bracing the stock firmly against my shoulder.
I couldn't speak, but the cold, murderous grin of my Glasgow smile said everything. I aimed the barrel directly up at the raining horde of slimes, my finger tightening on the trigger. I was going to clear the skies for her.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
I pumped and fired, the devastating spread of my Death Chant Shotgun ripping through eight of the falling slimes in a fraction of a second. Because of the sheer kinetic and magical density of my executioner rounds, the slimes didn't have the chance to split and multiply on impact… they violently exploded into harmless, glowing mist in an instant.
As the buckshot shredded the creatures, the innate Lifesteal enchantment woven into my shotgun flared to life. A warm, vital crimson energy surged down the barrel, flooding directly into my right hand and racing through my veins. The effect was immediate. Beneath the tight latex-like bio-slime bodysuit, I could feel the agonizing, shredded flesh of my damaged intestines actively knitting back together, the internal bleeding finally stopping as my body rapidly healed itself.
Clack-clack!
I racked the pump, reloading on the move while systematically blasting the descending horde out of the air.
While clearing the skies, I glanced over at my baby sister. Evelyn was a vision of absolute, lethal perfection. She was systematically dismantling the two-story-tall Slime King, using the absorbed memories and tactical knowledge of the fallen Bureau knights to target his hidden structural weak spots with flawless precision. Simultaneously, her super-intelligent reflexes kept us safe, whenever Master shot high-density slime bolts at the speed of sound, she effortlessly intercepted them with localized bursts of her Reinforced Mana.
She was positioning herself to deliver a definitive, crushing final blow. But the Slime King… referred to in the tactical knight logs as the true Goblin King of the deep… mocked both of us, his telepathic laugh vibrating the cavern walls as his glowing core began to hyper-oscillate. He was ready to unleash his absolute ultimate attack.
Evelyn's jade-green eyes dilated in sheer panic. She whipped her head toward me, shouting over the deafening hum of the cavern:
"Big sister! Master is about to unleash his most powerful attack! Instead of the speed of sound, he's converting his core energy into pure light! It's a powerful laser blast that will instantly incinerate anything it touches!"
I narrowed my single eye, silently questioning her through my Glasgow smile… wondering why she didn't just deploy her shield.
"It will completely shatter my Reinforced Mana! The light frequency will pass right through it!" Evelyn screamed, answering my silent thought.
The very next millisecond, the Slime King's massive, two-story mass condensed into a single, blinding point of absolute luminescence.
VROOOOM…
A cataclysmic, searing beam of concentrated laser energy erupted from his core, tearing straight down the center of the cavern directly toward us, melting the stone floor into liquid magma as it advanced.
"We split up! I'll handle the Master's trajectory, and you handle the remaining slimes!" Evelyn ordered, her tactical instinct snapping into high gear.
With a synchronized surge of adrenaline, we moved. My massive, bat-like blood wings snapped wide, kicking up a gale of crimson mana, while Evelyn's translucent slime wings flared with blue-green fire. We launched ourselves into the air, flying in completely opposite directions to split the Slime King's focus, dodging the devastating path of the light beam.