Chapter 6: A Taboo Solution to a Sticky Situation

My eyes darted from Zane’s failing strength to Kaela’s predicament to the hundreds of slimes still pulsating. The usual method—draining the dead—was too slow. They were generating faster than we could kill them.

There was another way. The taboo way. The way that felt like dipping my soul in ice water.

I could steal from the living.

I could reach out and rip the nascent, struggling essence right out of a monster while it was still moving. It was faster, more potent… and it came with a backlash. A psychic scream of violation that echoed in my own skull. It scared me. A lot.

But if it’s this or dissolving next to Pink-Hair…

I gritted my teeth, my hands trembling as I raised them toward the nearest advancing slime, preparing to do the one thing I’d always been too afraid to try in a real fight.

A blur of crimson and shadow cut across my vision.

A single, powerful, impossibly clean swing.

A crescent wave of force, visible as a distortion in the air, swept through the entire center of the chamber. It didn’t explode. It erased. Every slime in its path—dozens of them—simply ceased to exist, sliced into non-existence at a molecular level.

The sudden silence was deafening.

I slowly turned my head.

There she was. The woman with the dragon-scale sword. It was extended in the aftermath of that impossible swing, the crimson smoke already beginning to curl from its tip. Her cool gray eyes were fixed on me, a single eyebrow arched.

She walked toward me, her boots making no sound on the wet stone. She stopped a foot away, looking me up and down, taking in my smoking shoulders, my panicked expression, my outstretched, trembling hands.

“You again?” she said, her voice dry. “What was it you said when we first met? ‘If that’s how people see me…’ Was it all just a joke?”

I swallowed, lowering my hands. My heart was still trying to punch its way out of my ribs. “Nope,” I croaked, my voice shaky. I jerked my head toward the now-safe-but-still-very-exposed Lindis. “It’s just… the business model had a temporary expansion.”

She followed my glance, saw the half-dissolved girl, the frantic Zane now staring in stunned relief, and Kaela hastily trying to hold her top together. A flicker of something—amusement? understanding?—passed through her gray eyes.

“Ah,” she said softly. “I see. I guess I misunderstood you.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She simply walked past me, toward Zane and Lindis. As she walked, she raised her gauntleted hand and said a single, clear word.

“Inventory.”

The air in front of her hand shimmered. A small, crystal vial filled with a glowing, silvery-blue liquid materialized in her palm as if summoned from thin air. A potion. Mid-grade, at least. Maybe high. The kind that cost more than my monthly rent.

She knelt beside the unconscious Lindis, ignoring Zane’s stammered thanks, and began to carefully administer the potion. The empty vial vanished from her hand as quickly as it had appeared. She glanced at Lindis’s now-peeling, acid-burned feet. “She’ll be fine. If she’d been a few minutes later, she’d be looking for new boots permanently.”

Relief washed over Zane’s face, followed by a wave of awkwardness. He bowed deeply. “Thank you! We owe you our lives! And Lindis’s… um… everything.”

I cleared my throat, stepping forward, trying to shake off the main-character-energy this woman was radiating. “Umm… excuse me, Miss Powerful and… uh… administratively generous,” I fumbled. “I mean, we didn’t catch our savior’s name yet.”

The woman turned her cool gray eyes on me. She blinked, once, slowly. “It’s not your concern,” she said, her tone flat. “Nor is it mine to give to strangers in sewers.”

Ouch. Direct hit. She began to walk away, her form already blending with the chamber’s shadows.

Then she paused, half-turning. “Perhaps if you tried a little harder. If you climbed your rank beyond ‘Professional Slime Disturber,’ we might see each other more often.” A ghost of something—not a smile, but the idea of one—touched her lips. “Then, maybe, I could tell you.”

And with that, she was gone, vanished into the tunnel as silently as she’d arrived.

For a single, fleeting second, I felt it—a stupid, heroic spark of motivation. Climb the ranks. See her again. Be someone impressive. It was a pathetic, hormonal flicker.

Then my common sense, the true ruler of my life, bitch-slapped the spark into oblivion. Right. Because trading my cozy obscurity for a life of constant near-death experiences just to maybe get a mysterious woman’s name is a brilliant life plan.

I shook my head. “Drops a cool, badass line, then walks out with main character vibes,” I muttered to myself. “Show-off.”

Turning back to the group, I extended a hand to Zane, who was still looking wobbly. “Need a lift? Or are your legs as cooked as your attack strategy?”

He grasped my hand, and I hauled him up with ease—thank you, invisible stat padding. He gave a tired, grateful nod. “Thanks. And… yeah. That first charge. It’s my unique ability. ‘Force Impact.’ Channels everything into one blow. But I can’t attack for squat after I release it. I basically turn into a muscle-headed zombie swinging a mace around until I recover.”

“Accurate description,” I nodded. “I saw the zombie part firsthand.”

A soft groan drew our attention. Kaela was supporting Lindis, who was blinking blearily, her pink hair matted with slime but otherwise intact. Her blue eyes focused on us, then down at her tattered clothes. Her face flushed a shade that almost matched her hair. “Oh.”

Zane immediately offered his tunic with averted eyes, and Kaela shot me a look that threatened murder if I joked. I mimed zipping my lips.

High above the grimy streets of Hongdae, on the rooftop of a sleek, obsidian-glass high-rise, the woman with the dark-yellow hair sat perched on the edge. Her gaze was fixed on the alley below as a secure comm line opened in her ear.

“Yep. It’s me,” she said.

On the other end, a smooth voice answered. “Guild Leader Seo-Yeon. To what do I owe the honor? Did the ‘anomalous energy’ turn out to be a lost puppy?”

Seo-Yeon, Leader of the Crimson Scale Guild, allowed the faintest smirk. “No puppy. I just found a potential individual.”

“Oho,” Min-Jun, her chief analyst, chuckled. “What rank are we talking?”

“A to S,” Seo-Yeon said, watching Ethan hail a cab below. “He wields a refined, tightly controlled psychic energy—a deep green emission. I suspect he was using it to attack the monster’s essence, or perhaps absorb it.”

Min-Jun went silent. “An S-Rank psychic bludgeoning Sewer-Slimes in an E-Rank gate? That’s… terrifying. Did he notice you watching?”

“No,” Seo-Yeon said. “Discreet observation, Min-Jun. Full profile, but no contact. I want to know what he does when he thinks no one is watching.”

She ended the call, looking down one last time as the cab pulled away. She had completely misunderstood the exact mechanic of his power, but her instinct that he was something far more dangerous was chillingly accurate.

---

Author's Notes:

Ayy, we made it. The great slime debacle is... resolved? Kind of? They're not dissolved, and the mysterious main-character-energy lady has strolled off, having completely misdiagnosed Ethan's power but pegging him as "dangerous" anyway. Accurate.

So, the new players:

Ethan: Our protagonist. Believes his power is pathetic. Is wrong. Is currently having his every move watched by a top-tier Guild Leader.

Zane: The D-Rank bruiser with the one-hit-wonder skill and the stamina of a noodle.

Kaela: The scout who is now permanently out of throwing knives and probably holds a grudge.

Lindis: The pink-haired axe-wielder who is going to need a whole new wardrobe and possibly therapy.

Seo-Yeon: Guild Leader of the Crimson Scale. Thinks Ethan is an S-Rank psychic juggernaut slumming it. She is... not entirely wrong, but for all the wrong reasons.

[ALERT: FEELING GENEROUS]

You know what? I'm in a good mood. The coffee was strong today. Let's keep this train wreck rolling.

I'll drop the next chapter today at 6 PM. Be there or be square. I promise less slime and more... consequences. Probably.