Chapter 183: Superhuman Recovery

Chapter 183: Chapter 183: Superhuman Recovery

The outfits of the children running over were quite interesting.

They were dressed in the most ordinary of coarse-spun tunics, but they had thick, discarded wooden planks strapped tightly to their chests with rough hemp rope.

These wooden planks were clearly meant to serve as an Adventurer’s Armor.

They clutched various wooden sticks of different lengths and crudely carved short-handled wooden hammers in their hands.

In their getup, they looked for all the world like a monster-hunting party of commoners straight out of a novel.

The little tykes sprinted all the way, rushing up to Toby, panting for breath.

The leader was a half-grown boy with a big patch of mud on his cheek. He raised the sharpened short wooden stick in his hand high and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"The Toby Adventure Squad! All members present and accounted for!"

Watching the group of dead-serious little rascals,

Toby didn’t laugh. Instead, he played along, standing up straight and puffing out his chest.

"Deputy Captain! What’s the emergency?"

The boy with the muddy face immediately snapped to attention and reported loudly, looking every bit the part.

"Reporting, Captain! Those Slimes are eating the fence on the east side again!"

Slimes!

Hearing this familiar name,

Lance, who was standing to the side, felt his heart skip a beat.

’What a stroke of luck.’

He had just been stressing over the low number of Iron-skinned Wild Boars being slaughtered at the breeding farm.

’Isn’t this a ready-made substitute?’

’Why not just switch to Slimes?’

As creatures at the very bottom of the Demon food chain, Slimes reproduced at a rate that was easily a hundred times more staggering than wild boars.

’If I could extract Talents from them, my progress would be so much faster.’

"How many Slimes are on the perimeter right now?"

Lance immediately walked over and asked the mud-faced leader.

"Perhaps I can be of some assistance."

Toby seemed a little surprised to hear Lance offer his help.

"There are just too many Slimes around here. You can’t kill them all."

Toby sighed, pointing toward a low-lying area to the east of the breeding farm.

"There used to be a stream with crystal clear water near our farm. We used it to clean the pigpens and for the livestock’s daily drinking water."

"But this summer, maybe because of bad luck, massive numbers of Slimes suddenly appeared in swarms upstream."

"Now, several slow-flowing sections of the stream are completely contaminated by the acidic mucus they shed. The pigs get sick easily if they drink that water."

A bitter expression filled Toby’s face.

"We already submitted a cleanup request at the Baihua Town Guild’s front desk a few days ago, but the damn weather has been so hot and humid lately."

"Several of the surrounding farming towns have also had outbreaks of these Slime infestations."

"The Baihua Town Guild’s teams are nowhere near the size of Gray Rock Town’s, and they’re completely short-staffed."

"Who knows where our urgent request is in the queue. It’s probably been pushed to sometime next month."

Since they really couldn’t wait for the Guild’s help,

And to prevent the protective barriers on the farm’s perimeter from being completely corroded and destroyed,

The only solution Toby could devise was to organize the mischievous children who were just idly hanging around the workers’ homes.

He gave them simple gear and had them patrol safely along the chain-link fence.

As soon as they found any trace of Slimes crawling over, they were to immediately run back and call for a strong adult to handle it.

Of course, Toby would never dare let these children drive away the Demons themselves.

Slimes were indeed at the very bottom of the Demon Atlas and were often treated as a joke by Adventurers.

But for children, they still posed a considerable risk of blinding or burns.

Whether it was the physical impact from contracting their bodies or the mildly acidic fluid they constantly secreted, a child’s skin would break out in red, swollen blisters with just a slight touch.

That was why the children assigned to the patrol team all had a few sealed little clay pots hanging from their waists.

Those pots were filled with wood ash made by the adults.

This specially treated dry powder could effectively disrupt the moisture cycle on the surface of slimy creatures, serving as a simple deterrent and repellent.

"Let’s go. Take me to see."

Lance didn’t hesitate at all, simply waving his hand for them to lead the way.

Under the excited guidance of the mud-faced boy, the group followed the dirt path and quickly ran to the edge of the chain-link fence on the east side of the farm.

Just as reported, four or five translucent Slimes were stuck fast to the rusty iron bars, like giant gobs of snot.

These monsters’ bodies had a jelly-like texture, mostly light blue or pale green in color.

They had no fixed facial features at all, just a gooey mass of a body that was constantly writhing and stretching along the wire.

As their bodies rubbed against it, you could hear a faint but dense SIZZLING sound of corrosion where they touched the chain-link fence.

"Watch me!"

The mud-faced leader, wanting to show off in front of Toby, bravely charged forward.

He ripped the lid off the clay pot at his waist and grabbed a large handful of grayish-black wood ash.

The boy swung his arm forcefully, flinging the wood ash at the green Slime that had climbed highest on the fence.

The dry powder instantly covered the Demon’s slimy surface.

The surface moisture vital for its life was rapidly absorbed.

The Slime immediately let out an unpleasant, convulsing sound like a leaking tire. It seemed extremely uncomfortable. Its chubby body fell right off the chain-link fence and landed heavily in the grass.

But it wasn’t defeated by this handful of wood ash.

The puddle of liquid on the ground quickly contracted and then violently expanded. In just a few seconds, it had swelled back into a huge sphere as tall as a child’s waist.

It was clearly enraged by this provocative act.

The blob of a body suddenly shrank back, gathering Power within itself.

Then, like a giant rubber ball, it bounced viciously toward the boy.

"Get back!"

Toby jumped in fright. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he hurriedly drew the short blade at his waist, preparing to charge forward and block it with his own body.

But he had barely taken half a step when a black afterimage flashed before his eyes.

Lance’s movements were far faster than his.

Relying only on the powerful Burst Power honed through daily training,

His right leg whipped out in midair like a steel whip, whistling through the air.

With a dull THUD,

The leather boot on Lance’s foot struck the mid-air Slime with unerring accuracy.

The force of the impact blew it to pieces.

Countless globs of slime exploded outward into the surrounding grass like scattered raindrops, splattering everywhere.

The crisis was averted.

The frightened children hadn’t even had a chance to cheer before Lance narrowed his eyes slightly.

His gaze was locked on the remains on the ground.

He noticed that the monster hadn’t completely died just because its body had been shattered.

After landing on the soil, the splattered fragments of slime actually began to move like living mercury.

They squirmed, slowly and surely converging on a central piece of wreckage, trying to reassemble the scattered parts into a complete body.

This was the Slime’s life core.

As long as the Demon Core inside these low-level creatures isn’t completely destroyed by an external force, they can use surrounding moisture and their own mucus to regenerate almost infinitely.

Only by completely crushing that core will they truly die and turn into a puddle of Ordinary liquid.

’What terrifying regenerative power.’

Lance stared at the slime on the ground, sighing with genuine admiration in his heart.

’Although Slimes have simple attacks and low intelligence, their self-healing system, which they rely on for survival, is certainly unique.’

’If I could extract this ability through the system... even if it only speeds up my natural recovery rate, it would be equivalent to indirectly increasing the time limit I can use my Dragon Form.’

’Once I possess this insane life-restoring power, combined with my bottomless stamina... in future life-or-death battles, I’ll become an unkillable monster that drives all my enemies to despair.’

"Whoa! That guy is amazing!"

"He blew up the Slime with one kick!"

The children Toby was shielding finally reacted, bursting into cheers of fervent admiration.

At Toby’s loud command, they excitedly raised the small, flattened wooden mallets in their hands and charged forward with whoops and hollers.

The children descended upon the small globs of slime that were still struggling to writhe and heal on the ground, smashing them wildly and without any technique.

With a sharp CRACK,

A wooden mallet happened to land a precise blow, shattering the hard core hidden within the mucus.

Following this faint sound of a crystal shattering, the struggling clumps of slime instantly lost all activity and quickly became puddles of Ordinary water that soaked into the soil.

The instant the core was smashed by the little brats,

A faint light flashed across Lance’s retina, and the familiar translucent notification box popped up.

[System Notification: Demon · Slime Research Progress +1]

Lance’s expression turned a little strange as he looked at the updated data.

’My kick just now only crippled the monster, making it unable to move. The ones who delivered the finishing blow were clearly this bunch of kids randomly bashing it with their little wooden mallets. But the system’s judgment registered anyway, and it actually credited the monster’s experience directly to me.’

’It seems the party-detection mechanics for this Biological Research panel are very broad. As long as I participate in the battle and deal a dominant amount of effective damage to the target... even if someone nearby, judged as a harmless teammate, delivers the final blow, the credit will still be counted toward my Research Progress without fail.’

’What a strange, yet extremely convenient, judgment system.’

Lance remarked silently in his heart, and the way he looked at the Slimes changed completely.

Compared to waiting in line every day to kill a measly fifteen Iron-skinned Wild Boars... this Slime-infested stream, a product of the humidity, was practically a natural experience pool tailor-made for him.

’No more hesitation. The new target is locked. For the foreseeable future, I’ll start with this massive, gooey horde of monsters. Let’s see if I can grind out that regeneration Talent!’