Free Web NovelChapter 11: I Expected a Boss Fight, Not to End Up Starring in the Exact Ecchi Cliché I Used to Write
After a few hours’ rest, once my body had recovered and my head was clear, I finally spent the seven free points I’d earned climbing to level seventeen.
This time, I poured every one of them into speed.
I’d turned it over all night. A boss wasn’t something you settled across a whole afternoon like a corridor of slimes: it was won in a handful of violent instants, by whoever struck fastest and truest. Mana, I had. What I needed was raw speed, just in case — enough to be where I had to be before the thing even understood I’d moved. Between the levels and those seven points, I’d never been so fast in my life. I could feel it in the slightest flex of my legs, like an overdrawn spring waiting for an excuse to snap.
Just before we set off, Alice stopped me with a hand on my arm, as if she had nothing remarkable to say.
"By the way. I hit level ten too, yesterday. I’d set the choice aside at the time, but I thought about it during the night, and I unlocked lightning magic." She tilted her head a little. "I figured it would go rather well with your water."
I looked up at her, and a smile climbed onto my face on its own.
"Excellent choice." Then, the corner of my mouth lifting a touch higher: "Just try not to electrocute me with it. I spend my whole time splashing water everywhere, and lightning through water — you can picture the result."
"Then you’d just better stay close to me." She winked, pleased with herself. "Speaking of which, make sure you sleep with me next time, and I’ll take much better care of you."
I shook my head without answering, because that was about the only defense that worked with her, and I turned to the door.
I laid my hand on it. It swung open almost on its own, as if a simple push was enough to wake the magic sleeping in the metal. The panel slid aside, and a breath of cold air slapped us — the low rumble I’d been following since the start of the dungeon, finally traced back to its source.
A vast chamber opened before us, and everything on its walls was shining.
Blue crystals by the thousand, set into the rock from floor to ceiling, pulsing with a soft glow. This was where all the dungeon’s mana had condensed, gathered over years until it froze into stone. The heart. And at the center of that heart, sprawled in the unreal light, a mountain of jelly.
A slime. But ten meters tall, a translucent, trembling mass that spilled over itself, with a denser, darker core drifting slowly somewhere within it.
I’d read about it, in the library. I recognized it at once.
"A Slime King," I said under my breath. "A D-rank boss."
And with the threefold gap in power that separated each rank, this single creature was worth a whole swarm of the slimes we’d been turning into puddles since the day before. Nothing in this dungeon had come close to it. Nothing came close, period.
A defiant smile tugged at my mouth despite myself. Had we become strong enough? Had I earned the right to stand here? I was dying to find out.
I turned my head toward Alice. "Are you ready?"
She nodded. Not a trace left of the teasing from before — just a serious, steady look that told me she wasn’t going to hold back either.
"Then let’s go."
And I launched myself.
"Sacred Surge!"
The buff hit me full force, its warm light pouring into my limbs while I was already charging, sword in hand. I opened my Eye.
"Eye of Infinity."
The world resolved into clean lines. I threw myself toward the slime’s right flank — calculated: if it spat, I could dodge without fearing for a single second that the acid would end its course on Alice, left behind me.
But it didn’t spit.
From its whole mass erupted tentacles — a dozen, two dozen, whips of jelly that cracked the air around me before crashing down onto the floor. And where they struck, the stone melted. Sizzled. Hollowed into smoking craters, in an acrid stench of eaten rock. Acid. Its entire body was nothing but acid.
I swallowed the shiver that crawled up my spine and kept charging. Reaching the bottom, I leapt — and my new legs carried me far higher than I’d have thought possible, all the way to its full height. I went to work, the Drowned Widow’s Dance unfurling, water sheathing my blade, and I cut into the jelly, again, and again, opening long gashes in its flesh.
Which closed back up at once.
Not a scar. Not a mark. The jelly I sliced reformed within the second, as if I were cutting water. And there, hanging an instant at its height, I understood the real problem: cutting it would get me nowhere. Splitting it in two, reducing it to pieces, none of it would hold. As long as I struck it piece by piece, it would stitch itself back faster than I could open it.
I dropped, sprang backward to reclaim my space. It didn’t give me the time. The tentacles came again in a chain, and I danced between them, grazing them by a hair, cutting them as they passed me by —
"KURO, LOOK OUT!"
Alice’s cry caught me mid-dodge. My blade was already cutting through the tentacle diving at me — but behind it, hidden by its mass, an acid spit far larger than the others slammed square into my shoulder.
The impact threw me several meters. I rolled across the stone, and the pain exploded through my whole body at once, white, blinding. I got up slowly, my body on fire. This time, at least, I hadn’t let go of the sword. But when I looked down, I saw it: my other arm hung broken, bent where it never should have been. Some ribs too, probably, from the way every breath sawed at my side.
Already, behind me, Alice was speaking:
"Garden of Salvation."
Grass burst up beneath my feet, the white flowers opened, and the warmth of the garden began to stitch me back without pause — the bone knitting, the ribs settling into place, the burn ebbing away, second after second.
And then I knew exactly what I was dealing with.
My gaze darkened on the rippling heap of slime in front of me. This wasn’t a fight of strength. It was a duel of endurance, and of will. Which of us would last longer. Which would break first. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
A smile came back to me — a bad one, this time — and I charged.
This time, I no longer tried to carve it apart. I glued myself to it. A moving target, low, fast, that never gave it a second’s rest. My soles skidded on the melted stone, still warm and slick underfoot, and I danced on it, around its mass, my blade biting relentlessly into its flesh to keep it from drawing breath. A tentacle would lash out; I’d slip aside, cut it, strike the body. A second one; same thing. It wounded me, the garden repaired me, I struck, it reformed — and the loop closed over the two of us, in the blue light of the crystals, the taste of iron flooding my mouth.
And inch by inch, it started to pay off. Because I never stopped. Its regeneration kept up with my blows, but only just, and every time I hammered it without pause, it fell a little further behind. Ten meters. Then a bit less.
That was when it changed its game.
Its mass convulsed, and from its flanks broke away dozens of small slimes — beads of acid jelly that dropped to the floor and scattered at once. Faster than any we’d come across. And they weren’t coming for me.
They went around. They rushed toward the back of the chamber.
Toward Alice.
My blood ran cold. No.
I understood its plan in a fraction of a second, and it was a vicious one: my lifeline was her. As long as she stitched me back together, I’d never fall. But let a single one of those spits reach her, let her stop healing me for one second, and the boss took back every advantage.
I abandoned the slime and Dashed backward.
"Dash."
I scythed three acid beads with a backhand of water before they reached her. Alice, for her part, didn’t stay idle — a clumsy thread of lightning crackled from her palm and fried two of them. But she couldn’t stop them all and heal me at the same time, and there were too many, and every second spent away from the boss gave it back its lost flesh.
And my mana, for its part, was melting away. Every Dash, every wave dug into that reserve I’d chosen to neglect, and the gauge, deep inside me, was dropping far too fast.
I found myself torn in two. Running between two fronts — the boss reconstituting itself the moment I turned my back, the swarm always coming back for Alice. A bead splashed my thigh, the acid bit, I gritted my teeth. Another nearly touched Alice; I cut it down by a hair. I was losing ground everywhere at once, my mana was collapsing, and for the first time in the fight, a cold certainty dropped over me: at this rate, we were going to lose. Both of us.
Anyone would have panicked. Would have scattered, struck out in every direction, gone under.
But that cold footing, deep in my skull, refused to give. Instead of panicking, my mind emptied. Went clear, sharp, cold as a blade.
[ Skill Evolution ]
[Resolve - Lv. 1] -> [Resolve - Lv. 2] (passive)
And in that calm, I saw the only thing to do. Stop splitting myself. Settle the swarm in one stroke, and get back to the boss before it had remade itself.
I planted myself between the beads and Alice, sword low, and I let the water come — no longer along my blade, but all around me, called up from every puddle, every spit spilled across the floor since the start. Then I pivoted, a full rotation, low, total, and the water followed my movement in a spiral that swept the entire floor around me.
[ Skill Evolution ]
[Drowned Widow’s Dance - Lv. 2] -> [Lv. 3] (active)
The whirling wave gathered up the whole swarm in a single arc, mowing the acid beads down like a scythe through a field. In one turn, the floor was clean.
And I was already turning back toward the boss.
From there, I didn’t let go of it again.
No restraint, no half-measures. I threw myself at it with everything I had, and the Dance flowed now like never before — water wrapping every motion, lengthening every blow, my feet tracing ever-tighter circles around its mass as it shrank before my eyes. Eight meters. Seven. Six. I hammered it without a second’s pause, and its regeneration had finally given way. Its dark core, as it melted down, rose slowly toward the surface.
It played its last trick. A tentacle rose, drew my eye — and behind it, exactly like the first time, a hidden spit shot out to catch me off guard.
Except this time, I saw it.
[ Skill Evolution ]
[Eye of Infinity - Lv. 1] -> [Lv. 2] (active)
My Eye opened another notch, hungry, and the world slowed further. I saw the shiver run through its mass a fraction of a second before the spit, the current of mana rushing in to load it — and I slipped half a step aside before it had even left. The acid hissed through empty air, right where I’d been standing. I didn’t give it a second chance, and I plunged back into its flesh.
But my mana was getting dangerously close to empty. I could feel it, that bottom drawing near, that moment when I’d have nothing left. I had enough for one attack. Just one. If I was lucky.
Once, between two dodges, I looked for her. And I found her exactly where I’d left her, motionless, her hands held out toward me, the garden pouring from her palms without a second’s interruption. No panic on her face. No fear. Just a total, absolute focus, her red eyes fixed on me while I bled and she repaired me, as if nothing else in the world existed but me, fighting. I took it for devotion. In the moment, it warmed my heart.
The slime, too, must have finally understood.
That its lifeline wasn’t me. That as long as she stood there, untouched, stitching me back together, it would never win.
So, in one last surge, it abandoned everything. What was left of its mass twisted all at once, and a tentacle — the biggest, the last — shot up over my head, straight at Alice.
Finally a little sense, you damn monster.
The thought crossed me, cold, sardonic. I’d been expecting it. Somewhere, I’d known it would end up aiming at the one thing keeping it in check. And in the same instant, everything I was gathered into a single movement.
"Dash."
I vanished. The world tore open, the sword streaking with me, and I reappeared right in front of the tentacle, between it and Alice. An arc of water-sheathed blade, and I cut it clean through; the acid mass dropped in a harmless rain at my feet.
Then I turned halfway toward Alice, without taking my eyes off the slime.
"Now."
And I launched myself one last time.
Everything I had left of mana, I gathered into my blade. Every drop, down to the last, scraped from the bottom of me and driven into the steel. I leapt, rose above the streaming mass of the Slime King, and brought down a descending strike carried by an immense wave of water that crashed over it from its full height.
Behind me, Alice’s voice cracked out:
"Lightning Magic!"
A thread of lightning burst from her palm and married my water. And all the water — that of my wave, but also the water I’d seeded everywhere since the start of the fight, in every puddle, every splash, every severed tentacle — all of it ignited at once. The lightning raced through the slime’s entire mass in a single second, running it through from end to end, where no blade could ever have struck all of it at the same time. The blue crystals of the chamber lit up in echo, the smell of ozone mixing with that of the acid, and the dark core, at the heart of the beast, burst in a spray of white light.
The slime split in two — and exploded.
A blast of jelly and light that swept the whole chamber.
But I had nothing left. Not a drop of mana, not an ounce of strength. My gamble came back to me square in the face at that exact instant: everything into speed, nothing kept in reserve. My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the stone, flat on my back, unable to lift a finger.
Above me, I saw the exploded mass of the Slime King come down. All that acid, all that jelly, suspended for a second in the crystals’ light, then tipping straight toward me.
I couldn’t do anything. Nothing at all.
Oh well, I thought, strangely calm. Alice will heal me anyway. She always heals me. And just before it crashed down on me, one last idiotic question crossed my mind: how much is this going to hurt?
Then she was there.
Above me, out of nowhere, covering me with her body, her arms planted on either side of my head, her shadow shielding me from the rain of jelly coming down.
The impact was instant. The acid came down on her back, her shoulders, her hair, in a horrible hiss. Alice tensed violently against me, a low groan escaping her — but she didn’t move. Not by a millimeter.
"Alice! What are you doing?!" My voice came out hoarse, panicked. I tried to push her off, my trembling hands finding her hips, but my muscles wouldn’t answer — emptied to the marrow, I didn’t even have the strength to lift her. All I could do was feel her warm weight pressed against me, her ragged breathing mixing with mine, and the acrid smell already rising.
Except something was off.
The acid jelly ran over her, thick, smoking, eating away her tunic, which dissolved in shreds with a wet, slippery sound. The fabric melted, slid off her skin like hot wax, baring the full curves of her body little by little. Her bare breasts came into view, heavy, round, the pale, perfect skin gleaming under the blue light of the crystals. Drops of acid streamed between them, down her flat stomach, along her sides — without leaving the slightest redness, the slightest blister. Nothing. As if all that acid were, on her, no more than lukewarm water.
My heart was pounding fit to burst. "Alice... your body... it’s not burning?"
She lifted her head slightly. Her red eyes shone close to mine, intense, almost feverish in the shimmering gloom. A trembling smile stretched her lips.
"You see... everything’s fine." Her voice was low, breathless, her chest rising and falling against mine, skin to skin. "I hadn’t told you yet... but I have a passive skill. A shield. It stops any wound below a certain threshold."
And that was when it hit me.
A flash, sharp, ice-cold, in the middle of everything else. The swarm. Earlier — those dozens of acid beads that had poured toward her, and me tearing myself apart on two fronts, burning my mana on Dashes to scythe them down before they reached her, convinced that a single spit on her doomed us both...
My hand froze on her hip.
"Wait. That shield... you already had it, during the fight. The swarm, earlier — it couldn’t do anything to you. You were never in danger. And even before that... earlier in the dungeon."
For a second, her smile didn’t shift a hair. Then she tilted her head and gave me a wink, sticking her tongue out a little in a way so adorably playful it jarred completely with the rawness of the situation.
"That’s right." Her voice was soft, almost cheerful. "I planned it."
Three words. And a whole chasm underneath them, one I had neither the strength nor the desire to sound out. She’d let me bleed. Let me throw myself between her and the acid, burn, collapse, to protect her from a danger that had never existed. And she was smiling at me, as if it were the most tender attention in the world.
A part of me, very far off, shivered. The rest was too exhausted, too relieved that she was alive and whole, to dwell on it.
An incredulous laugh escaped me, hoarse and freeing. "Ahaha... Damn it, Alice. You’re impossible."
The tension released all at once in my chest — and the backlash, that brutal surge of relief after thinking I was about to die, tipped without warning into something else. My hands, still resting on her, slipped a little on her jelly-slick skin. And there, I realized.
My right palm was fully cupping one of her bare breasts. The flesh was soft, heavy, incredibly warm under my fingers, the hardened nipple pressing against my skin. Alice let out a small, stifled moan, almost involuntary, her hips pressing a little harder against mine.
"You know..." she breathed right against my ear, her voice gone huskier, warmer, "if you keep touching me like that... I won’t be able to hold back anymore."
Time stretched. The heat of her body glued to mine, the jelly still sliding slowly between us, her thighs framing my hips — everything turned electric. My thumb moved, almost despite myself, over the soft curve of her breast. She moaned again, longer this time, a low, vibrating sound that sent a burning wave rising in my gut. Her red eyes locked into mine, inches away, like a silent promise, our breaths mingled, and nothing left around us but the blue light and our two bodies.
Then a discreet little cough sounded above us.
"Ahem. Ahem."
I snapped my head up.
There, standing a few meters away, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised and the corner of her lips twitching with a wicked amusement, stood Elsa.
"Am I interrupting, heroes?" She tilted her head to the side. "Because I can always come back later. The boss is dead, we’re not in a rush anymore."
I think that, in the whole day, I’d never wished so hard for that acid to just finish the job.
