[Slimy Slime] Chapter 42: Disturbing the Big Bird.

I have come to learn a very important, vital, important, incredibly useful, and important fact.

I, Slimy Slime, King Slime as a few people call me… hate vultures. I fucking hate them. I may hate them more than I hate wolves.

That’s a lot of hate.

But as another one of my fists goes through a torso, another bird falls, and another spark of my slimy self dies, I must reflect on where this great wisdom came from. It all started so long ago… a few hours, that is. The mission? Simple. Get stronger! The difficulty? Easy (or so I thought…). Merely fly up into the sky, shoot out a ton of darkness balls everywhere, generally be a menace and fight off a horde of these weird sharp mouthed vultures.

An elegant plan from an elegant age. Alas, I forgot one very important thing.

Anything that is easy, takes a long time, and is also unpleasant, transforms into tedium. It becomes annoying. A chore. And sadly… this horde was bigger. Way, way, way bigger. I thought fighting around two dozen birds before was a bit crazy but…

There had to be a 100 here.

The worst part was they didn’t all come out the same time! Oh, it started fine enough! Take down a dozen little birds, feel disgust at how strong my fists hit them, the feeling of their bones breaking, blood splattering on them, the sound of their bodies crunching as they hit the ground and then the branches, creating a scene straight out of hell below. But then more came and I had to be a bit more careful, so they died slower.

And then more came.

And then more came…

And now what was once a dozen was now a hundred. Curse you birds! Why can’t you all go away?! I’ve already killed so many! Why on earth is this damn forest full of hordes?! First the wolves, then the goblins, now birds? Do weak species just throw numbers at everything in this world or something?! There better not be a horde of dragons out there, who would ever survive?!

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Three more dead birds, while I zoomed around on my own hand, disorentiatingly. Flying on my own hand has been… strange since day one. Now, it was like I was playing basketball with myself, constantly ducking and weaving, turning, spinning, once I even had to throw myself from one hand to the next. I could feel the air flow over me and honestly… I was starting to get a little dizzy. There were just so many birds! I felt like I had dived in a straight up storm of them. It gave me shivers going up my… slime. And they all attacked without regard for their lives. Oi, you know goblins are less crazy then you right?!

The only saving grace, was that the hateful tedium was slowly being worn away as more and more showed up. It was now starting to become a challenge to move around.

Suddenly, just as I managed to dodge a bunch more and punch another two, my [Danger Sense] spiked for the first time. But unlike that damn wolf, whatever was coming didn’t have any ambush skills. The description of my skill appeared in my mind.

[Danger Sense] - Sense Danger 5 minutes in advance to your life. The closer the danger, the stronger the feeling.

Hmm. Hmmmm. That was… actually a problem because looking around all I could see was birds and bits of sky. I don’t know what combination of stats made me faster per se, and I definitely hadn’t increased anything except END since my last fight, but the point was that I was only doing so well because I had experience with these birds now. A new variable would be… bad.

I kept my slimy eyes peeled, looking for anything even as I sped up my punching spree, hoping to take out as many birds as possible. Worst comes to worst, I’ll drop like a rock and pick myself back up. But I could feel it now, pretty steadily. Something… was coming. I could feel it coming from… directly above me?

I turned my vision, looking straight up. Above me was just more of the same, birds flying all around, winding back up for another pass through, clouds, bits of the sky and-

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

I gaped as something appeared. More than ever before I wish I had [Analyze] or some way to tell the power or strength of something. There had to be something out there, damn it!

Looking up… was a whale. Or at least… it was the size of a whale. It was huge! It was long and as I look more at it, I realized it was some kind of bird. Some kind, being the key words. Massive wingspan, dark red fathers all over it’s body, looking like a fused mix between a hawk and a vulture, with a long neck and an open beak with teeth that almost seemed to be vibrating. As if its mouth was a chainsaw. It began to tilt down. Diving straight for me.

Two, incredibly important realizations came to me all at once.

Danger sense can’t predict danger till it exists. It had only been a minute, after all. As a side, ‘closer’ was clearly distance and not time related.

And secondly…

“That’s not a Tier 2.”

I didn’t hesitate, I dropped. Sadly… gravity wasn’t nearly fast enough and only through side swiping my own body that I managed to dodge. The thing practically teleported it was so fast! All I saw was it’s giant mouth for a brief moment… my vision allowing me to see in the dark giving a strong, great, and detailed view of its gullet that sent shivers up my spine.

My hand and more than a few birds had been eaten. It… sometimes I forgot but I wasn’t big. I was very, very small. To a human, a whale sized creature is big. To a slime? I was literally shivering in fear. I wasn’t even the size of it’s eye.

An eye that was looking directly at me.

“NOPE!”

This time I grabbed myself and threw myself to the ground. Gravity was too slow, I needed speed or I was going to become lunch! There was no melting my way out from the inside of this thing. No way. It had barely worked for a strong Tier 1.

I fell, feeling the air speed over my slime, before I… stopped.

No one was more confused than me. I was… in mid air right? So… why? What?

Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled back up. I panicked, turning around and-

Oh my god.

The, The Big Bird, had it’s mouth open wide and now I could fully see that it’s inner teeth were vibrating. I also saw the effect… as dozens and dozens of vultures were being sucked in and rapidly sliced apart, only to be sucked even further in. The bird… was vacuuming everything! A massive amount of air was being displaced, all the birds were getting eaten, even the trees were swaying from the sudden vacuum!

And I was going back up, slowly going faster and faster.

No no no no no! I refuse! I refuse to be bird food! NO!

I summoned a hand, grabbing my slimy self, and pulled.

“AH!”

HP: 268/287

I was literally being pulled apart! I wasn’t, I wasn’t cohesive enough to survive this! Four more hands were summoned, clamping all around me, crushing me in their embrace, and pulling down. It didn’t matter how many times I revived, if I fell into that mouth I’d never come out again. Not as a living creature at least.

“FUCK!”

HP: 202/287

My slime was literally being ripped through my fingers. My own body was being ripped apart! It hurt, it hurt in a way I didn’t know was possible to feel. My slime didn’t usually feel pain like this, something was wrong.

My hands weren’t going down. I was pulling with all my strength, all 50 of it, trying to shoot right into the ground, but the suction force was stronger. It looked like the trees below me were going to get uprooted. It was shocking and horrifying. I was pulling on myself as hard as I could! Yet… I was still being brought up!

My mind panicked, thinking quickly. Summoned Acid Slime? No, it’ll just eat with no issues. Doubt it’ll even tickle that thing. Darkness? No time, no focus, no useful effect. Punch it?

That last one held weight but I wasn’t omnipresent. I needed to see my hands. I turned around while my hands kept pulling me down and nearly faltered. The vultures were murderous creatures, constantly attacking with no regards for their lives. I had thoroughly found that out.

And they were running away. Flying far, far away.

Yet the bird was still sucking. Still vacuuming up great amounts of air… while staring directly at me.

“What did I do to you?!”

Then a snap of recognition happened. This bird… this bird really was like a whale! It sucked up and ate the vultures. It had only attacked after I’d been massacring so many. So… are you pissed that I’ve been eating your food?! What bullshit! There’s more than enough to share right?!

“AH-!”

HP: 125/287

I nearly passed out, feeling such a large part of me fly away. Pain wracked me body, what was left of it. And it seemed like that had been a tipping point. More and more slime was starting pull away from me, into that massive void. The bird had gotten significantly larger, enough that I was feeling real fear from its size alone. How, how could anything ever be so big?

I focused, looking at its eyes. My HP was ticking down and this had to end right now.

They flew forward, smacking it. I felt them connect, felt the eyes get hit, felt it as instead of going through them, it felt like I had punched bulletproof glass. And yet still, for that brief moment, the suction stopped.

The force from my own hands nearly catapulted me into the ground. I’d been more than just a ‘few’ miles up, wanting to get as many birds as possible. Now, I was just above the tree line, much, much farther away from the bird. I doubted it wanted to come all the way down here but I wasn’t going to take that bet. Still, it stared at me, doing nothing, it’s mouth wide open. I allowed myself a small breath of relief, quickly checking my HP.

HP: 70/287

I was less than a third my normal size but at least the pain was starting to go away. I felt my slimy heart racing. Thank god I survived that-

I heard something and focused back on the bird. It was… was that a… whistling?

Suddenly, an explosion of air happened, physically distorting the air above me, as the bird seemed to deflate. It looked like the sky was falling and coming right for me.

“Wait wait wai-!”

BOOM.

*****

[H-H-HP:: -0/-2-287]

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[R-R-R-Ri-in-g-g-g A-c-t-i-v-a-t-e-d–]

I woke up gasping, taking deep, deep breaths. All I did was breathe for a moment, gasping for air, even though I didn’t need air. Holy shit, what, what was that?! I… I died? Just like that? So… so… so… quickly? So easily? Just from a random encounter with a monster?!

What a monster…

I had to get stronger… as soon as possible.