169 - Waste Elemental

The stench was horrendous, but Alexandra couldn’t fight with a hand over her nose. She slowly stepped back, careful not to slip on the slimy mold that covered the floor under the pooling water.

“What the hell is that?” she whispered, taking in the elemental that had just crashed in front of her.

A blob of brown waste matter adorned with two holes made to resemble a twisted face. Two pseudopods dripped with a wet liquid that she’d rather not identify. The creature was using them to pull its mass toward her.

Her spell was almost ready. She pulled her veil of mana around Rays Of The Sun, building up a single, focused beam that would hopefully fry the monster.

It was Silver. She felt it from her senses, and Giant Slayer stirring in the depths of her soul.

Alexandra almost sent a thread of mana to connect with the elemental, but refrained. She didn’t want any of that lifeforce and was too afraid to learn what Aggressive Assimilation would yield.

At least, the beast was slow.

“There.”

She closed the veil around her skill and let the beam fire straight into the center of the waste elemental.

With a flash, the beam tore into the mass of waste, sending bits and pieces everywhere. Alexandra ducked, trying to avoid the blast, but a few landed on her face and clothes.

“Shit.”

“Yes.”

“Shut up, Speck. If you’re not gonna help, shut up.”

Speck offered no further commentary, but the silence did little to dull the foul reality settling over her.

Alexandra wiped a glob of rancid filth from her cheek. The blast had obliterated the elemental, coating the damp chamber from floor to ceiling in dark-brown sludge. It dripped from the ceiling arches, trickled down the slick stone walls, and weighed down her clothes.

She took a shaky breath through her mouth, trying not to vomit, and scanned her body to assess the damage. But as she reached down to clean her clothes, something stopped her.

A subtle pulse resonated through the sludge.

Alexandra froze. She looked at the specks splattered across the walls and dripping into the water. Tiny, threadlike pseudopods were extending from the severed fragments, dragging themselves toward each other.

Every drop, every stray fleck of waste splattered across the room was still alive.

“Fuck this shit.”

“Language.”

Alexandra didn’t grace her familiar with a response. Instead, she took advantage of the fact that the monster hadn’t gathered its body back together to cast Inflict Weakness. Then, she linked Drain Life to it.

Feels like shit.

The lifeforce running through the thread of mana was sickly in a way she hadn’t experienced before. She didn’t use Aggressive Assimilation. Too dangerous.

As with other elementals, she didn’t think she could wait out the drain to finish her prey. It didn’t have as much lifeforce as the stone elementals, or even Speck, but it was still too much.

She directed her beam toward the specks of waste. She wasn’t sure if she was eliminating them or splitting them into even smaller chunks, but that was her best idea for now. Loosely aiming her beam, she added a few Solar Blasts into the mix.

The spells flared in rapid succession and tore through the tunnel, splattering filthy water everywhere. The concentrated heat shattered the gathering clumps, stopping the sludge from crawling back into a singular mass.

But the number of clumps didn’t seem to decrease. It didn't kill them. It just made them smaller.

Where a hundred palm-sized blobs had been dragging themselves together, there were now thousands of specks writhing.

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The elemental shifted tactics.

The specks stopped trying to gather together. Using their miniature pseudopods to crawl, they moved toward Alexandra.

She kept hitting them with her spells, but every hit that landed only multiplied the numbers. They couldn’t reach her, but she couldn’t kill them either.

Why do I keep going underground?

Without the sun to feed her, her mana pool was far from infinite. Despite her intelligence reaching a hundred points, her spells were not the most cost-efficient, unleashing wide devastation instead of controlled bursts.

She had no solution. She was drowning in a swarm of microscopic shit, utterly helpless.

Alexandra stepped back again. Her back hit the wall.

Panic.

No. She slammed her back against the wet stone wall again. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but she refused to give in to the rising terror.

She had stood toe-to-toe with a Gold-rank beast. She had slaughtered an army of Silver-rank stone elementals. She wasn’t going to lose to a single Silver threat.

So Alexandra forced her jaw to relax and reviewed her options.

Dark Bolt. It could help. Maybe. But she had sworn off that skill after a few too many curses. It just wasn’t worth it unless used as a last resort.

First, she leaned on her newest rare skill: Solar Core Control, using her improved command over her mana to reduce the intensity of her spells. In fact, she stopped casting Solar Blasts altogether.

With a cooler head, she realized the tunnel was narrow, so she didn’t need much to keep the waste at bay.

She adjusted her veil around Rays Of The Sun. Using it as a beam was powerful, perhaps the most destructive way to use this skill aside from what she did against the lizard. But in this situation, it was too much. The specks were weak and fragile.

Sweat pearled down her neck as she focused.

Thank god I have upgraded Mana Manipulation.

Rays Of The Sun was difficult to control with fine precision. This time, what she was trying to achieve would push the limits of her ability.

Alexandra pulled a thread from her core and anchored it right where the floor met the wall. Then, she took another and did the same to the corner where the wall met the ceiling.

The specks were crawling toward her. Without the beam, nothing could stop them. She had to be quick.

A strand of hair slicked with sweat and waste plastered itself to Alexandra’s forehead as she focused every ounce of her raw attention into the four anchor points. Her pulse thudded in her ears, competing with the squishes of a thousand microscopic waste elemental clumps crawling toward her.

She took a ragged breath and drew heavily upon Solar Core Control.

She wove a lattice between the top and bottom anchors, threading her mana upward, downward, and across the narrow corridor until the thin veil spanned the entire width of the damp tunnel.

Then, Alexandra channeled Rays Of The Sun directly into the weave.

Instead of a single, piercing beam, the skill hit the mesh of mana and refracted. Light bled along every thread, snapping into a blinding, solid sheet of solar fire.

The curtain of pure solar energy completely sealed the passage, glowing with terrifying heat and a low hum.

The front line of the crawling filth hit the barrier. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it through her mana. They melted.

This time, there was no splatter, no splitting. The high temperature caught the specks and incinerated them on contact. Soft, popping sizzles echoed down the tunnel as the waste turned straight to ash, unable to breach or bypass the curtain.

Burned waste didn’t smell better.

Alexandra leaned her head back against the wall behind her, staring at the shimmering, golden curtain. Behind it, the swarm had stopped. The elemental changed tactics again and tried to reform a single body.

She let out a long breath, her fingers still trembling from the strain of holding the weave.

“Disgusting.”

“Shut up, Speck,” she muttered, a faint smile on her lips. “It's working.”

Alexandra pinched her mana threads at the four corners of the curtain and stepped forward.

The curtain advanced, incinerating more specks.

Solar Core Control 1 -> 2

Rays Of The Sun 4 -> 5

She kept going until the entire elemental was nothing but ashes.

When the last sizzle faded, Alexandra finally dropped the curtain. The sudden absence plunged the tunnel into darkness. The immediate threat was gone, but the victory felt hollow. The intense heat of the solar grid had baked the wet sludge covering her clothes and skin, turning it into a crust. Every breath she took cracked the dried shell on her face, sending flakes falling onto her chest.

“I don’t know if I can keep going,” she whispered. “That quest is looking harder than I thought.”

Her mana reserves had taken a hit, not to the point she had to retreat, but any hopes of completing the quest today were dashed.

Since the quest rewarded the equivalent of an uncommon skill, it couldn’t be too easy. But, for the same reason, it shouldn’t be too hard either. Alexandra expected to encounter a few more threats at the level of the waste elemental.

“Could I fight another one of those right now?” she wondered aloud.

The answer was yes. But that was only because she’d figured out a way to destroy a waste elemental. If there were other types of beasts in the sewers, she might be in trouble.

“It’s not like I have to finish it today,” she said. “Let’s go home, Speck.”

“Dirty.”

“Well, I can’t wash in the sewage water, can I?”