Episode 4: Gas Burner
I’m pretty sure there’s kerosene left over from winter. If I pour it into the hole and light it… no, it would be terrible if it spread to the trees in the garden and caused a fire.
Besides, is it even safe to do something like that in a Dungeon? There’s no end to the worries.
Then—
Yuma goes to the kitchen and rummages through the cupboard.
“I think there’s one we used when we had a barbecue with the family… Found it!”
What he found was a torch gas burner. It’s a device where you attach a torch to a household gas canister and can spray flames like an aerosol can.
He goes down to the garden again and walks to the Hole. The Metal Slime was standing still inside the Hole.
Getting close is dangerous. He puts only one foot into the Hole, stretches out his arm, and points the nozzle of the gas burner. Since the opponent is metal, it probably can’t withstand heat.
He pulls the ignition lever and sprays flames. The burner’s fire reaches the surface of the Metal Slime.
The Slime notices the abnormality and immediately jumps back, moving around inside the Hole.
“Ah! Damn it, don’t move!”
Yuma also moves the gas burner to try to hit it with the fire, but the Metal Slime, dodging the flames and hopping around, tackles Yuma’s leg.
“Ouch!!”
A sharp pain runs through him. Yuma crawls out of the Hole and writhes in agony. He holds his ankle and rolls around on the ground.
“Aaaaaah! I don’t want to anymore. I can’t defeat something like this!!”
He decides to cover the Hole with a board or something and pretend he didn’t see it. Yuma thinks so, drags his leg, and enters the house.
He had a terrible experience. If he hadn’t found something like that, he wouldn’t have had to feel such pain. Yuma grumbles in his heart and lies down on the sofa, sulking.
Why do I have to go through this…? Even so, he can’t help but be concerned about the Hole.
Was my approach wrong…? Is there something else I could do, like putting water in the Hole to suffocate the Slime?
Yuma shakes his head. He doesn’t even know if it breathes in the first place. Besides, even though it’s small, flooding such a Hole would be quite a task.
So, what should I do…? Yuma thinks desperately. For someone who has never been in a Dungeon, he has no idea what to do.
“If I could stop its movement…”
At that moment, something flashes in Yuma’s mind. Stop? Stop its movement?
“Stop its movement, then defeat it.” He had heard that phrase before. It was the catchphrase of an insecticide spray on a TV commercial.
It uses a -85°C Cooling Spray to instantly immobilize cockroaches that are moving around.
Once the movement is stopped, extermination is easy.
Wouldn’t this method work on Metal Slimes too? The fact that it can stretch and move around despite being metal means it might be close to liquid metal.
If so, it should be vulnerable to cooling.
Yuma stands up, goes to his room on the second floor, and opens the closet. He takes out a cardboard box filled with miscellaneous items and rummages through it.
“Found it! This is it.”
What he took in his hand was Cooling Spray. It was something his parents bought him when he joined the soccer club a long time ago.
He quit the club in three days, so he never actually used it, but he never expected it to come in handy in a place like this.
He goes downstairs cheerfully and also picks up the gas burner on the table.
With two spray cans in hand, Yuma heads to the garden once more.
Even if he stops its movement with Cooling Spray, that alone won’t defeat the Metal Slime. But what would happen if he then heated it with a gas burner?
He remembers hearing something somewhere. Metals become brittle when they are rapidly cooled and then suddenly heated.
Something about thermal expansion was said on TV, but well, the details don’t matter.
Yuma stands in front of the Hole and takes a deep breath.
“If this doesn’t work, I’ll give up. This is the last challenge!”