Episode 28: Dawn Deathmatch
It was too late the moment I thought, “This is bad!” Two tentacles were already attacking.
“Whoa!”
I instinctively covered my face with my arms. The blades of the tentacles hit my body with metallic “clangs,” but they were deflected with a high-pitched sound.
Yuma’s body, metallized into steel, easily defended against the Deca Slime’s attacks.
“What, trying to scare me…”
At this rate, I can defeat it normally. Yuma thought, picking up the Cooling Spray placed next to the hole with both hands. As he pointed the nozzle to spray, he doubted his eyes at the unbelievable sight.
The Slime was extending countless tentacles from its entire body. The tips were shaped like blades, hammers, axes, and spiked iron balls.
“No, no, wait! Wait a minute!!”
Of course, such a wish wouldn’t come true, and more than ten tentacles came at him all at once.
Yuma crouched down, trying to protect the spray can. He was mercilessly beaten, with blades, hammers, and iron balls raining down on his back, shoulders, and head.
It was a real pounding. It wouldn’t be strange to die instantly if he were a normal human.
But—
“I said it doesn’t work!!”
Yuma brushed off the tentacles, stretched out his arm, and sprayed the Cooling Spray.
No matter how much he was attacked, he didn’t take any physical damage. And the inside of the hole was filled with cold air.
Unlike Yuma, who was unaffected by the cold, the Deca Slime would gradually become sluggish.
This fight, I have the advantage. Just as Yuma was convinced of this, the Deca Slime retracted its tentacles with a squirm.
Did it finally stop moving? The moment he relaxed a little—
“What!?”
Hundreds, thousands of thorns were thrust into his body. The Slime had extended thorns like a sea urchin. The force of the thorns extending was so strong that Yuma was slammed against the wall of the hole.
But there were no holes in his body.
As expected, that Slime’s attacks can’t penetrate this body. Convinced of this, Yuma picked up the Cooling Spray that was outside.
The spray he had been using earlier had a hole in it and was continuously spraying cold air.
He struggled to stop the Slime using the newly acquired Cooling Spray.
A few minutes later, it somehow stopped moving.
“Haa, haa… That was rough… Just stopping it is hard work.”
Looking at himself, his clothes were tattered. “I should have worn some old clothes,” he grumbled, but it was too late to say that now.
Yuma took two Gas Burners and pointed the tips at the frozen, unmoving Slime.
He gradually heated it with the flames.
“It would be easy if it didn’t move…”
His wish was in vain, and in a few minutes, the Slime started moving, now hitting Yuma with more than twenty tentacles.
Even though it didn’t hurt, being beaten up was the worst feeling.
Moreover, the Cooling Spray and Gas Burners were being destroyed. He was worried about whether he had enough stock.
He desperately repeated the cooling and heating process. There was no other way to attack.
It was taking too long, and he was completely late for school.
Yuma’s mother was worried about him not coming to breakfast and was searching for him.
But Yuma was in no state to care about that. He was in the middle of a real deathmatch.
After an idiotic amount of time, nearly an hour, when he used up the last Gas Burner, the Deca Slime’s surface was finally covered in cracks.
“Please, just give me a break…”
He hit it with the Hammer, but it only made dull “bang, bang” sounds and didn’t break.
The Deca Slime, while exhausted, swung its tentacles with bladed tips.
He thought it was a futile struggle, but the tentacle hit Yuma’s right hand—and in that instant, something went flying.
The handle of the Hammer was sliced, and the head flew through the air and fell to the ground with a thud.
The 1280-yen Hammer that he had used every day for over a year. It had become a part of his body, beyond just attachment, was now lying on the ground like junk.
“You bastard…”
Yuma clenched his fist and punched the Slime’s body with all his might. It was deflected with a metallic clang.
He still couldn’t penetrate the sturdy armor; was the damage not enough?
He had no Gas Burners or Cooling Spray left. All that was left was to defeat it by force.
The Deca Slime was battered and seemed unable to produce tentacles or thorns. But Yuma’s stamina was also at its limit. He was exhausted.
Even so, he continued to punch the Slime again and again.
“Just break already!!!”
The last punch, swung with all his might, slammed into the Deca Slime’s steel body.
“Crack”—
Along with the sound of destruction, his fist deeply penetrated the body. The Deca Slime’s body crumbled like sand.
The glittering sand that floated up disappeared before he knew it.
“I, it’s finally over…”
Yuma slumped down on the spot.
This was the hardest it had ever been. As he repeated shallow breaths, his eyes stopped on something lying on the ground.
It was Demon Ore. Yuma slowly reached out and grabbed it.
“This also has a special effect, huh… Well, I’ll look into it later.”
Yuma crawled out of the hole and headed home.
His mother found Yuma and called out, “What were you doing!” but she screamed when she saw Yuma’s clothes torn to shreds and covered in mud.
After this, there was quite a commotion, but he brushed it off with the excuse that he “played too much with Mamezou-san.”