Free Web NovelChapter 4: This Is What the Class Is For, Apparently
Nathan stared at the eight slimes for a long moment.
The slimes stared back with red dots where they should have had nothing at all.
"How long have they been like this?" Nathan asked, without taking his eyes off the field.
Farmer Hollen scratched his chin with the end of the shovel.
"Four days. They showed up normal at first. Green, small, doing that thing slimes do where they move like jelly and eat anything they find. I sent the request to the guild on the first day."
"And on the second day?"
"On the second day, they grew."
"And on the third?"
"On the third, their eyes turned red, and one of them killed my dog."
Nathan turned his head to look at him.
"That wasn’t on the mission paper."
"I sent another paper to the guild on the third day." Hollen shrugged. "I guess that paper hasn’t made it to the board yet."
*Of course it hasn’t. Of course. The bureaucracy in this world works exactly the same as it did in mine, which is depressing on a cosmic level I’ll process later.*
"Why didn’t you warn me when you saw I was an F-Rank Hunter?" Nathan asked.
"I tried. I started to tell you they weren’t normal slimes, and you interrupted me."
Nathan mentally replayed the conversation from exactly two minutes ago.
*Yeah. That happened. That happened exactly like that.*
"You’re right," Nathan said. "My apologies."
"Apology accepted."
"That doesn’t change the fact that the slimes are still there."
Hollen leaned the shovel against the fence and took a step back.
"I’ll be inside the house," he said. "If you win, let me know. If you lose, I’ll tell my wife to send another paper to the guild."
"Comforting."
"Good luck, Hunter."
Hollen walked away toward the house without looking back.
Nathan was left alone in front of the wheat field with eight undead slimes that, now that he was looking more closely, had clearly noticed his presence. The red dots had all oriented themselves in his direction. None of them were moving yet. But they were watching.
*Alright. It’s fine. This is fine. Let’s think this through calmly.*
Nathan backed up to the fence and leaned against it without taking his eyes off the slimes.
*Point one. There are eight of them. That’s considerably more than one.*
*Point two. Soul Sense registers them as non-living, which means Soul Pulse should work against them, which in turn means the ability that activated instinctively in the alleyway should be repeatable here if the conditions are similar.*
*Point three. I have no idea how strong Soul Pulse is against eight simultaneous targets, or if it activates continuously or has a cooldown, or how much mana it costs per use. All of this information is stuff I’m going to find out in about fifteen seconds under real combat conditions.*
*Point four. I also don’t have a weapon.*
He looked at his hands.
Then he looked at the slimes.
The slimes started moving.
They didn’t charge. But they shifted, all at the same time, with that gelatinous fluidity that semi-solid masses have.
The common direction was him.
*Fifteen seconds. Maybe twelve.*
Nathan pushed off the fence with his hand and stepped into the field.
---
The first slime got within three meters when Nathan decided he was willing to find out what Soul Pulse felt like.
He raised his hand.
Nothing happened.
The slime came another meter closer.
*Please work. Please work. Please work.*
A dark pulse shot from his hand.
It was a wave of something darker than the air, with edges that seemed to absorb the color from the wheat field around it, and it hit the nearest slime dead-on.
The slime stopped.
For a full second, nothing happened. Nathan began to wonder if he’d done something wrong.
Then the slime collapsed inward like a watersack with its heart ripped out. The red dots went dark. The dark green mass dissolved into the ground, and from it rose a small point of light that floated toward Nathan and dissolved into his wrist as it touched the Seal mark.
```
NOTIFICATION
Eliminated: Undead Slime [Level 4]
EXP gained: +180
Total EXP: 180 / 400
ITEM:
Soul Fragment x1
Automatically absorbed.
Mana recovered: +50
```
*Ah. There it is.*
*Good.*
Nathan looked at his hands. Then he looked at the seven remaining slimes, which had taken exactly half a second to process that one of them no longer existed.
*Mana recovers when you kill them. That means as long as I keep killing them, the cost pays for itself. That’s ridiculously convenient, and I’m going to be suspicious of this later when I’m not being chased by corpse jelly.*
He extended both hands toward the two slimes coming from his left and released two pulses almost simultaneously. Both hit their marks. Both slimes collapsed. Two points of light flew to his wrist and dissolved into the Seal.
```
Eliminated: Undead Slime x2 [Level 4]
EXP gained: +360
Mana recovered: +100
```
Three slimes from the right. Nathan turned, miscalculated the angle on the first one, missed the shot, and watched as the first slime lunged at him.
He didn’t see it coming. He felt it.
Soul Sense was still active. Soul Sense had been showing him the movement of every slime from the very first second, but Nathan hadn’t been paying attention to it because he was too focused on aiming.
*Idiot. You have a passive ability specifically for this.*
He ducked by pure instinct. The slime flew over his shoulder and landed in the wheat behind him with a splat. Nathan spun around already firing, and the pulse caught it before it could reorganize.
Four down. Four left.
Nathan took a deep breath.
*Alright. The strategy is not to aim with my eyes. The strategy is to aim with Soul Sense. Soul Sense tells me exactly where everything is, all the time, without needing to look at it.*
He closed his eyes.
He felt the remaining four slimes as cold points in the field. One to his right advancing. Two in front shifting to the sides to flank him. One behind that had decided the rear angle was a good idea.
*That first one.*
Nathan spun toward the back without opening his eyes and released the pulse.
The slime behind collapsed. He felt the point of light fly to his wrist even before he heard the System notification.
*The two on the sides.*
He extended both hands toward the flanks. Two simultaneous pulses. Both slimes collapsed at almost exactly the same time, with a double echo in the notification that appeared floating in front of his closed eyelids.
*The last one.*
Nathan opened his eyes.
The last slime was a meter and a half away, well within jumping range. The red dots were staring at him with what Nathan could have sworn was personal resentment.
"Sorry," Nathan said, raising his hand. "Guild policy."
He released the pulse.
The slime collapsed.
```
COMBAT RESOLVED
Eliminated:
Undead Slime x8 [Level 4]
EXP gained: +1,440
Total EXP: 1,440 / 400
LEVEL UP!
Level 1 → Level 2
LEVEL UP!
Level 2 → Level 3
STAT IMPROVEMENTS:
HP: 850 → 1,020
Mana: 1,200 → 1,480
Attack: 47 → 62
Defense: 31 → 42
Speed: 68 → 82
Perception: 90 → 108
Next skill at: Level 5
EXP to next level: 460 / 1,500
NEW PASSIVE SKILL DETECTED:
Soul Pulse — Passive confirmed.
Type: Dark energy attack.
Cost: 50 mana per use.
Undead kill refund: 50 mana.
Net cost against undead: 0.
```
Nathan stood in the middle of the field for a moment.
The wheat field was completely intact except for eight patches of dark liquid that were already slowly evaporating into the soil, leaving only the smell of something slightly metallic and the general sense that what had just happened wasn’t written on the original mission paper.
*Net cost zero.*
*Against undead, the Grim Reaper’s basic ability pays for itself.*
*This Class was designed for this. Specifically designed. Whoever built it had dead things as their primary target.*
He lowered his hands.
He looked at them for a moment.
They were the same hands. But they didn’t quite feel like the same hands.
*I went up two levels in one fight. Two. The first mission I took, and I leveled up twice. And I still need two more to unlock the first real skill.*
Nathan allowed himself a small smile.
"Good," he said out loud, to no one in particular. "Good."
Behind him, a voice said: "Are you done?"
Nathan turned.
Hollen was standing at the fence, leaning against the post. He had a piece of bread in one hand and a perfectly neutral expression.
"How long have you been standing there watching?" Nathan asked.
"All of it."
"I thought you were going to be inside the house."
"Changed my mind." Hollen chewed the piece of bread. "Wanted to see how you did it."
"And?"
"Honestly, I expected it to last longer."
"The fight or me?"
"Either one."
*Fair.*
Nathan walked back toward the fence. Hollen handed him the piece of bread without saying anything. Nathan took it.
"You’re going to have to report to the guild that they were undead," Nathan said, biting into the bread. "This was worth way more than eight silver."
"I know."
"Then why didn’t you say anything?"
"Because if I’d reported they were undead on the second paper, no F-Rank would have come to ’kill’ them, and I don’t have the money to pay a C-Rank." Hollen pointed at the remains in the field with his chin. "And because something told me when I saw you show up that you’d be able to handle it. I don’t know what it was."
"Something about me told you that?"
"Not exactly about you. Something more like... around you."
Nathan stopped chewing.
*That’s new information. That’s very new information about how Soul Sense, or something else from this Class, projects outward. People notice it. Ordinary people, no Seal, no training, notice something. The farmer literally just said he felt something around me.*
*Or maybe he just said that so I wouldn’t charge extra. I’m going to have to think about that later.*
"Go back to the guild," Nathan said. "Report that they were undead. The difference in pay isn’t necessary—tell them I said that. But there’s something more important."
"What?"
"If undead showed up in your field four days in a row, there’s a source. Undead slimes don’t generate on their own. Something in the Gray Forest is pushing death toward this area. That’s a much bigger problem than eight slimes."
Hollen was quiet for a second.
"And you know that because...?"
Nathan opened his mouth.
Closed it.
*Excellent question. How do I know that exactly? The System didn’t tell me. Soul Sense didn’t tell me. But I know it. I know it the same way I knew how to activate Soul Pulse before I knew it existed. This Class comes with knowledge built in. The Class knows things about death that I haven’t learned yet.*
*And apparently it’s willing to share them with me when they’re relevant.*
"I know," Nathan said, choosing his words carefully, "because my Class is specifically designed to detect this kind of thing."
Hollen nodded slowly.
"What Class is that, Hunter?"
Nathan thought about it for a moment.
"Grim Reaper."
Hollen looked at him.
Then nodded once, without asking for more details, with the dignity of someone who understands that some questions are better left unfinished.
"So you’re going to report your completed mission to the guild?" Hollen said.
"I’m going to report to the guild."
"Good luck with that."
"Thanks."
Nathan finished the piece of bread, returned the nod, and started walking back toward Greywall.
The sun was going down.
Soul Sense was still active at the back of his perception. And as he walked away from the farm, Nathan noticed something he hadn’t noticed before.
In the direction of the Gray Forest, far at the edge of Soul Sense’s range, there was something larger.
Not a slime. Not eight slimes. Something the size of several people, cold like the non-living things he’d felt today, but with a different density, a greater concentration.
Something that was waiting.
*Well*, Nathan thought, without breaking his stride, *that’s a problem for Chapter 5 of my life as a Hunter. Today is the day I got my card and killed eight slimes. That’s a full day. We’re not adding more things to this day.*
He kept walking toward the city.
Behind him, the sun sank behind the Gray Forest.
And something in the forest, very far away, opened an eye that had been closed for a very long time.
