Chapter 183: Extremely Powerful Regenerative Ability

The group of children that came running over were dressed quite amusingly.

Although they were clearly wearing nothing more than ordinary coarse cloth shirts, thick discarded wooden boards had been tightly strapped to their chests using rough hemp rope.

Those wooden boards were obviously meant to serve as adventurer armor.

In their hands, they tightly gripped wooden sticks of varying lengths and hastily carved short-handled wooden hammers.

Their appearance looked exactly like the civilian subjugation squads described in novels.

The little ones sprinted all the way over and stopped before Toby, panting heavily.

Leading them was a half-grown boy with a large smear of mud stuck across his cheek. He raised the sharpened short wooden stick in his hand high into the air and shouted loudly at the top of his lungs.

“Toby Adventurer Party! All members assembled!”

Looking at these little brats with serious expressions.

Not only did Toby not find it funny, he instead cooperated seriously by straightening his posture and puffing out his chest.

“Vice Captain! What emergency situation has occurred?”

The muddy-faced boy immediately stood at attention and reported loudly in a proper manner.

“Reporting to Captain! Those Slimes came over to eat the fence again on the eastern side!”

Slimes!

Upon hearing this familiar name.

Lance, standing nearby, suddenly felt his heart jump violently.

After searching high and low to no avail, the answer had practically delivered itself to his doorstep.

He had just been troubled over the ranch’s slaughter volume of Ironhide Boars being too low.

And now a ready-made substitute had arrived.

Wouldn’t Slimes work just as well?

Slimes occupied the very bottom of the magical beast food chain. Their reproduction speed was definitely hundreds of times more outrageous than wild boars.

If he could extract talents from them, the efficiency would absolutely become much faster.

“How many Slimes are outside right now?”

Lance immediately stepped forward and asked the muddy-faced boy.

“Maybe I can help.”

Hearing Lance actively offer assistance, Toby looked somewhat surprised.

“Big Brother, there are way too many Slimes around here. You can’t kill them all.”

Toby sighed and pointed toward the low-lying area east of the ranch.

“There used to be a very clear stream near our ranch. We used it for cleaning pigpens and providing daily drinking water for the livestock.”

“But this summer, for some reason—maybe just terrible luck—a huge number of Slimes suddenly began appearing upstream.”

“Now several slow-flowing sections of the creek have been completely polluted by the acidic mucus they shed from their bodies. If the boars drink that kind of water, they easily get sick.”

Toby’s face was full of bitterness.

“A few days ago, we already submitted a cleanup commission at the Birchwood Town guild counter, but the weather lately has been way too damp and stuffy.”

“Several nearby farming villages have all suffered outbreaks of Slime infestations.”

“The Birchwood Town guild’s team size can’t compare to Graystone Town’s in the first place. They simply don’t have enough manpower.”

“We have no idea when our urgent commission order even got queued. Might not happen until sometime next month.”

Because they truly could not wait for guild assistance.

To prevent the protective structures around the ranch from being completely corroded and destroyed.

Toby could only come up with a solution himself by organizing these mischievous children wandering around the workers’ homes.

He distributed simple equipment to them and had them conduct safe patrols along the wire fences.

As soon as they discovered traces of Slimes crawling over, they would immediately run back and summon strong adults to handle them.

Of course, Toby absolutely did not dare allow these children to drive away magical beasts themselves.

Although Slimes ranked at the very bottom in the Monster Manual and were often treated as jokes by adventurers.

They still posed significant risks of blindness or burns to children.

Whether it was the physical impact generated by compressing their bodies.

Or the mildly acidic corrosive fluid constantly secreted from their surfaces.

Even slight contact would burn children’s skin into swollen red blisters.

Therefore, all the children assigned to the patrol squad uniformly carried several sealed ceramic jars hanging from their waists.

Those jars were filled with plant ash produced by the adults.

This specially processed dry powder could effectively disrupt the moisture circulation on the surface of mucus-type creatures, serving as a simple deterrent and repellent.

“Let’s go. Take me there.”

Without any hesitation, Lance directly waved for them to lead the way.

Under the excited guidance of the muddy-faced boy, the group quickly ran along the dirt road to the wire fence at the eastern side of the ranch.

Sure enough, just as reported.

Four or five translucent Slimes were tightly plastered against the rusted iron fence like gigantic piles of mucus.

The bodies of these monsters had a jelly-like texture, mostly pale blue or light green in color.

They possessed no fixed facial features at all, merely sticky masses of flesh wriggling and stretching along the iron wires.

As their bodies rubbed against the fencing, faint but dense sizzling corrosion sounds continuously rang out from the contact points.

“Watch this!”

Wanting to show off in front of Toby, the muddy-faced boy courageously rushed forward.

He yanked open the ceramic jar at his waist and grabbed a large handful of gray-black plant ash from inside.

The boy swung his arm hard, fiercely scattering the plant ash toward the green Slime climbing highest on the fence.

The dry powder instantly covered the monster’s slippery body surface.

The surface moisture maintaining its life was rapidly absorbed away.

The Slime immediately emitted an unpleasant convulsing sound similar to air leaking out. It clearly felt extremely uncomfortable, and its plump body directly fell from the wire fence, smashing heavily into the grass.

But it was not defeated by that handful of plant ash.

The puddle of liquid on the ground rapidly contracted before violently swelling outward again. In only a few seconds, it reformed into a giant sphere reaching a child’s waist in height.

It had clearly been enraged by this provocative behavior.

The mucus-like body suddenly compressed backward, beginning to gather power internally.

Immediately afterward, it bounced viciously toward the boy like a gigantic rubber ball.

“Get back!”

Toby was startled badly. Cold sweat appeared on his forehead as he hurriedly drew the short blade at his waist, preparing to rush forward and block it with his body.

But just as he took half a step.

A black afterimage flashed past before his eyes.

Lance moved far faster than him.

Relying solely on the terrifying explosive force polished through daily training.

His right leg swept horizontally through the air like a steel whip, accompanied by the sound of rushing wind.

Bang!

Lance’s leather boot struck the airborne Slime with flawless precision.

The impact directly shattered it into pieces.

Countless droplets of mucus exploded outward like scattered rain, splashing across the surrounding grass.

The crisis was resolved.

Before the frightened children even had time to cheer, Lance narrowed his eyes slightly.

His gaze locked onto the remains on the ground.

He discovered that the monster had not completely died despite its body being shattered.

After the splattered mucus fragments landed on the soil, they actually began behaving like living mercury.

They wriggled, slowly yet steadily gathering toward a central fragment, attempting to reconstruct a complete body from the scattered pieces.

This was the Slime’s life core.

As long as the magical beast core inside these low-level creatures was not completely destroyed by external force, they could use surrounding moisture and their own mucus to regenerate almost infinitely.

Only by completely crushing that core could they truly die and dissolve into an ordinary puddle of liquid.

What terrifying regenerative ability.

Looking at the mucus on the ground, Lance sincerely sighed inwardly.

Although Slimes possessed simplistic attack methods and low intelligence, this survival-oriented regeneration system truly had its own remarkable strengths.

If he could extract this ability through the system.

Even merely accelerating natural recovery speed somewhat would effectively increase the upper time limit of Dragon Form State usage in disguise.

Once he possessed such monstrously abnormal regenerative power, combined with his bottomless stamina.

Then in future life-and-death battles, he would become an undying monster capable of plunging all enemies into despair.

“Wow! Big Brother’s amazing!”

“He exploded the Slime with a single kick!”

The children protected behind Toby finally reacted and erupted into excited cheers filled with worship.

Under Toby’s loud commands, they enthusiastically raised the flattened wooden hammers in their hands and rushed forward while shouting loudly.

The children crazily smashed the wriggling mucus fragments on the ground without any pattern whatsoever as they attempted to regenerate.

Crack!

A wooden hammer happened to precisely smash apart the hard core hidden within the mucus.

As the faint sound of crystal shattering rang out, the struggling mucus masses instantly lost all activity and quickly transformed into ordinary puddles of water, thoroughly seeping into the soil.

At the exact moment the core was shattered by the little brats.

A faint glimmer suddenly flashed across Lance’s retina, and that familiar translucent notification window popped up.

【System Notification: Magical Beast · Slime Research Progress +1】

Looking at the rising data, Lance’s expression became somewhat strange.

That kick earlier had merely crippled the monster and caused it to lose mobility.

The ones who actually delivered the finishing blow were clearly these children randomly smashing things with wooden hammers.

Yet the system still recognized the kill and directly counted the monster’s experience value under his name.

It seemed the party recognition mechanism of this Biological Research panel was extremely broad.

As long as he participated in battle and dealt dominant effective damage to the target.

Then even if harmless nearby allies delivered the finishing blow afterward, the reward would still be completely counted toward his research progress.

What a strange yet extremely convenient judgment system.

Lance silently sighed inwardly before the way he looked at the Slimes completely changed.

Compared to painfully waiting in line every day to slaughter those pitiful fifteen Ironhide Boars.

These moisture-infested streams overflowing with Slimes nearby were practically a natural experience pool custom-made for him.

There was no need to hesitate any longer. The new target had been completely locked in.

For the next period of time, he would begin with these enormous numbers of sticky monsters.

And see whether he could grind out that regenerative talent!