“What the hell is that?!”

Athena’s jaw dropped, her eyes widened as the sledgehammer previously tightly gripped on her left hand hit the floor.

At first she had only seen a glint against the low lamp light she had left behind in the beginning of the tunnel, but only after her eyes adjusted to the light she noticed what was a few steps away from her. A bulbous blob of translucent material was inching closer to her, dissolving the minecart rails as if it was nothing each time it crawled forward.

It would’ve probably be a simple task to run around it since despite being three times bigger than her, there was enough space in the tunnel for one person to slip by, but with Leona on the floor a few meters behind her, running away wasn’t an option. She had to fight it.

“Dammit…! Dammit!”

Athena aimed her derringer in the center mass of the blob and without wasting any time, pulled the trigger. When the hammer struck the backside of the shell, a loud explosion sent a myriad of iron pellets through the small barrel of the handgun, leaving a spent cartridge in her gun and ache ringing in her ears as a gunshot in an enclosed space was many times more painful than if she was to be outside.

However, despite the increased firepower of a firearm, the individual pellets were simply absorbed by the sheer size of the slime. Seeing how ineffective that ammo was, she decided to run back to where Leona was.

“Leo, I need your help!” She desperately reached for the satchel on her belt and pulled another shell before removing the spent one and loading it in the derringer. “Can you hear me?! Leo!”

At that point the slime had reached the corner where she was standing and began to melt the sledgehammer left behind, it was just slow enough that she could outrun it, but fast enough to be able to catch her if she was to carry Leona around it.

Unaware of the impending danger, the tactician was trying to fight the throbbing pain that assaulted her brain; it felt like her head was being cracked open by some strange force and despite her best efforts, the dizziness and urge to regurgitate was not going away.

Meanwhile Athena was weighing her options. In order to kill a slime she knew it was important to hit its core, but the amalgamation of gelatin could easily stop a grapeshot shell which only meant one thing.

‘I can only pierce it with a normal bullet…’

Despite that, having already loaded another shell she decided to go for a dangerous gamble.

“Grrr… die already!” She dashed forward aiming her derringer in point blank range where she thought the core would be and pulled the trigger. But despite being almost touching the dangerous monster, it only served to splash bits and pieces of gelatin around her as well as leave her ears ringing slightly. “What the-?!”

Without any warning a very thin yet sturdy tentacle shot out from the center of the slime, nicking the left side of her cheek which left a tingling burning sensation on the skin of her face. The tentacle retracted but before it could try to strike her again she stumbled backwards and fell on her butt beside Leona who was still wriggling in pain.

“Come on Leo!” Athena stood up, almost tripping in her own legs before grasping Leona’s body from behind under both her armpits and dragging the struggling tactician backwards. “I need you right now!”

Despite not fully hearing what the lieutenant was saying, Leona did faintly hear her own name and through the blurred vision she saw the distortion of light going through the slime in front of her, though unable to fully tell what it really was, she knew something bad was happening.

“Nngh…”

She was grumbling in pain as Athena kept pulling her backwards. The slime didn’t seem in a hurry however, all the bits blown off from the grapeshot was already regenerating at a rapid pace and anything left behind it was sizzling with acid.

“Dammit… I don’t want to die like this! Ahh!” She tripped backwards and hit the back of her head against the wall of stone, accidentally letting go of her firearm as her head bounced back from the impact. “Gah!”

It was so dark she could only see thanks to the low blue light emitted from the walls around her, she desperately searched for her firearm by touching around the vicinity where she had dropped it.

“Not now!” Using her arm, she swept the floor in order to luck out and grab her weapon but instead she hit her forearm against a wooden box no bigger than her own arm. “Huh?!”

She hurriedly grasped the box. It still had a lock but it was so rusted that she managed to break part of it with a good strike using a nearby rock.

‘Please let it be what I think this is!’

The moment she opened her eyes sparkled with hope. There was a single white cylindrical stick with a long fuse, dynamite. Normally used for mining, such explosive ordinance could prove fatal in an enclosed space, but Athena was bold if nothing else. She quickly grabbed Leona’s derringer from her holster and pointed the gun at the slime while placing half of the fuse in front of the barrel as pulled the trigger.

“Argh!”

The gunshot left her ears ringing and the pellets did nothing to the slime. The fuse was lit through the expansion of gasses inside the gun’s barrel, but tossing it directly inside the slime would simply melt the explosive, while leaving it to explode outside would mean the blast would most likely kill them as well.

‘I have to time it to go off when it touches it.’

She winded up her arm back to throw.

“Athena-” Leona’s weak voice managed to grab the inventor’s attention before she could throw the live explosive. “Toss it near it, I’ll make sure we don’t die.”

It was visible that some of the ambient mana began to gather around the tactician’s right hand as she prepared to cast a spell.

“Are you sure you’re able to pull this off?! We’ll surely die if we get caught in the blast.”

“You’ll just have… to trust me.”

The confident smirk on her face dispelled Athena’s doubt as she once again prepared to throw the stick of dynamite, this time aiming for it to land beside the gelatinous monster.

“Alright Leo, here goes nothing! Hah!”

She lobbed the explosive with a flick of her right arm and the white stick of gunpowder went flying off spinning three times in the air before hitting a rock, bouncing towards the slime and landing right in front of it before rolling slightly towards the side wall.

Seeing how it landed perfectly where the slime wouldn’t go through, Leona began to chant.

“Northern winds hearken to me, freeze those who oppose me, Ice Wall!”

She swiped her hand in front of her releasing a generous amount of mana in the vicinity and in a matter of seconds, frozen stalagmites began to form on the ground and shoot up towards the ceiling, sealing them behind the ice wall and even after finishing casting the spell Leona kept pouring mana in the barrier to make it tougher in order to be certain the blast wouldn’t affect them.

‘Come on just a bit more!’

Even though her head felt like it was going to be split in half, she continued on with reinforcing the wall until a dry sound of an explosion shook the inside of the cave. Thankfully the magically made barrier of ice seemed intact even after the strong tremor.

“Are we safe?”

Athena asked with a strained voice as if she was holding her breath from tension.

“We should be- argh my head…” Leona clutched both sides of her skull, it felt like her cranium was being torn apart by some strange outward force. “Athena I- I don’t think I’ll be able to cast any more spells for a while so we might be stuck here for the moment.”

She rolled on her back and laid there staring at the rocky ceiling that left a thin blanket of dust to come down after the tremor from the explosion.

“Better than being blown to smithereens I’d say. Thanks to your quick thinking I didn’t have to time the fuse as precisely.” With a dry thud, the inventor leaned against the rocky wall behind her as she sighed. “On the other hand, I do worry for the tunnel’s integrity. Worst case scenario we get buried under countless boulders.”

“Let’s just hope that’s not the case then…”

She closed her eyes and both arms went limp from exhaustion.

“Man… I just hope to get back and get that engine finished so I can take it easy for the next few days… I still need to get my brother checked with Lawrence as well.” She pinched both sides of the ridge of her nose. “I’m sure you also have your hands full regarding your deal with lady Fye, but at least now that we can get our hands on some frostburnt silver we’ll-”

Seeing how her friend had her head slightly turned to the side on the cold rocky floor she decided to poke her left arm.

“Hey Leo, are you alright?” A few seconds passed and there was no response. “Leo? Leona?! Hey! Leona answer me! Leona!”