Prologue – Trade Chat
(Adventurer’s Guild Official Forums, Miami Branch)
SunnyBunz, MightyMouse, ImAPally, DontYouWantMe, AsaAkiraIsBae, BestGirl, LatinHeat, Salty, Backpage, Craig34, l33tpally, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, RedFox, Kimiko, DonnyJuan, Crusader, BadCompany, HurricaneGal, Ambassador, Scholar, Righteous, Id10t, Satyr, DarkEnchanter, RangerMiguel, ScoopGirl, VenusFlyTramp, MagicMike, TsundereHealer, Max, LightningLegacy, SwiftTaylor, Domino, Bacchus, Aegis, Temptation, and Lord_Kickass are in the chat.
Id10t: So, it looks like Boca is finally free of the goblins.
ScoopGirl: Yes, both the military and the Guild have sent people in, and confirmed that there have been no new goblin spawns in the last two weeks.
BadCompany: What about the ones that got away?
RangerMiguel: Some of the goblins escaped to the sea, or into the swampland bordering the Zone, yes. However, since doing that broke the connection to the broken dungeon, they’re no more of a threat than normal goblins. There are teams from the Miami Guild sweeping the area, to make sure that they don’t establish any nests.
Bacchus: From what I heard, most of the goblins that tried to go through the swamp got eaten by the gators hiding out there.
TsundereHealer: That’s true. And the gators have been leveling up. I saw a Level 2 Deathmaw Alligator while checking the area. That’s a Tier 2 monster.
MightyMouse: That could be a problem, moving forward. Tier 2 creatures need to eat more than lower-Tier ones, just to sustain themselves. Before, the gators were eating goblins that got too close. Now, though, with that self-replenishing food source gone…
RangerMiguel: We’re already looking at the situation. While there are teams capable of dealing with Tier 2 wildlife, there is some concern about what kind of creatures might fill the void if the Deathmaw Alligator is removed from that environment.
Temptation: Alligators don’t actually eat that much, unless they are dungeon creatures, which are substantially more active than normal alligators. Especially the older, larger ones. Remember, they’re cold-blooded creatures, so their metabolism is dramatically lower than a human’s would be. Toss a wild boar to the gator every week or two, and that should be sufficient to keep them content. Even a giant one like a Tier 2.
AsaAkiraIsBae: Yo, Temptation, what about Orlando? I heard that the zombies are finally done, and your dragon got to play?
Temptation: Yes, I unleashed twenty thousand slimes into the Orlando zone, and the slimes ate all the zombies in the city, which killed the broken dungeon there. Then, I sent my dragon in to clean up the slimes, since that wasn’t something normal people would really enjoy handling.
LatinHeat: Why not send the dragon in at the start?
Temptation: For the same reason the military didn’t take care of Orlando, too, after they took care of Boca Raton. Goblins die if the building they’re in collapses on top of them in an artillery barrage. Zombies don’t, unless the head is destroyed. Drop a building on them, and you have to dig them out so you can kill them. Slimes are basically immune to a zombie’s normal attacks, and have no problem digesting undead.
DontYouWantMe: But wouldn’t slimes also be able to survive getting a building dropped on them? From the drone footage people have been showing, the dragon was cutting up buildings all over the place.
Temptation: Well, a slime is more likely to survive than a human, sure. But that’s just because the only vital organ they have is the core. A zombie can’t usually hit hard enough to punch through the slime mass and get the core, but a building could smash it, depending on how it hits. But she settled that problem by using her steam breath, and boiling the slimes. Very effective.
Scholar: What about that slime dragon thing that the cameras caught during the extermination?
Temptation: Chimeric Slime Dragon. Basically, multiple high-level slimes fused together, adding their strengths and resistances together.
Ambassador: Such things are fairly common in areas where slimes are plentiful. It is usually the result of overhunting. Slimes might be only barely animal-level intelligent, but they are aware of being hunted. When one of these chimeric fusions forms, it usually takes on a form that the System recognizes is related to the hunter in some way. And the additional cores increase the intelligence of the end-result. That means if the chimeric creature isn’t put down before it can fully adjust to its new powers and intelligence, it can become a major problem.
Scholar: Really? Why haven’t we seen something like this yet?
Ambassador: Because it is rare for slimes to gather in great numbers outside of dungeons, and the transformation requires ‘wild’ slimes to take place. Dungeon slimes, even ones in a broken dungeon, can’t combine and transform.
Temptation: That is not quite true. Dungeon slimes can ‘naturally’ transform, depending on stimuli and their level, and dungeons can forcefully transform their slimes, if they wish to invest the energy, and have the necessary knowledge and intelligence. Also, it is possible for a dungeon with slimes as their monsters to create a chimeric slime as one of their bosses, but dungeon slimes will not ‘naturally’ become chimeric. System limitations.
Temptation: For instance, the Slime Emperor that is the boss of the second floor of the Forbidden Chambers of Exotic Pleasures dungeon was originally a slime lord that evolved when it tried to breed two targets at once. I took that slime, and then made it a boss. These kinds of things are rare, but they happen.
Temptation: Also, a lot of the variant slimes in the dungeon were created by just having slimes eat a lot of the same things over and over, transforming the normal slimes into different versions.
SunnyBunz: Ugh, I’ll admit that the slime lords, and that slime emperor, know how to make a girl moan, but it just feels wrong.
DarkEnchanter: Not a hentai girlie, Sunny?
SunnyBunz: No, give me a good Latin man, or maybe a big, buff minotaur. Someone with some muscles, hands, and a tongue, as well as having an actual cock instead of tentacles.
Necromancer has entered the chat.
Necromancer: Is this thing on?
l33tpally: Oh, a new name! That doesn’t happen too often, these days. Most people who would join the Guild did so a while back. Did you just unlock your System access?
Necromancer: No, I’ve had access since the thing came on. Unfortunately, I’ve been trapped in Orlando until recently.
DarkEnchanter: Wait a minute! There were actually survivors in Orlando? HOW?
Necromancer: We holed up in a gym building. Were lucky enough to have a druid and a wizard in the group, which gave us access to food and water once I managed to raid some stores for the things we needed for some rooftop farming. Though it seems the wards we used to hide from the undead also kept people from finding us.
Temptation: Necromancer acquitted herself well, as did the others in her group. They managed to survive in situations where most people would have given up and died.
Necromancer: Didn’t have much choice.
VenusFlyTramp: How did you manage to raid stores in the middle of Orlando without getting swarmed by zombies?
Necromancer: The System made me a Greater Lich when it activated. The zombies saw me as another undead, unless I started picking fights. Combined with my necromancer class, I had some advantages that most people didn’t. Even so, it wasn’t exactly easy, or pleasant.
ScoopGirl: Would you be willing to give an interview?
Necromancer: I’m going to visit my family in Puerto Rico, first, but eventually, yes.