Syl

Chapter 44: Duplicity

I pull my hand away and glare at him. I did not sense any immediate open hostility, and Krutz gave me a sad, almost apologetic smile.

I mentally tell Alpha to defend against anything and Beta to counterattack any hostilities. Meanwhile, I start secretly withdrawing slime mass and releasing a transparent-white vapor of sleep poison. If my doubts were wrong, I could potentially dodge questions about them getting sleepy, but Bloodrot or paralysis poison was likely a point of no return.

"I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, Krutz, but you just tried to enslave me. I've had that tried before."

Krutz sighed and shook his head, "If you were my subordinate, I could give you a class."

"No." My response was immediate. I refused to risk being a mind puppet.

"The humans are coming. My scout spotted them this morning. Over twenty of them." He continued.

"I don't see why that means I must become your slave."

"I plan to leave. The tribe is doomed, like my previous one." He continued and slammed a fist against his table, "But I will survive. Continue to grow until I can exterminate them all."

"And you thought you'd take me along?"

"Yes, and a small party of the highest levels. The humans will think they killed us all with the sacrifice of the tribe here. Then we wait for the world to spawn new goblins and take over the tribe, just like I did before."

His words felt... Oddly convincing? He had planned this out, and there was some logic behind it.

'Wait, what?' I questioned as suddenly a fog lifted from my mind.

I activated [Mana Sight] and saw that Krutz was emitting his dark mana, and a small portion was floating toward me.

'Has Krutz been influencing my mind? Is this the first time, or has he done it before?' The thought horrified me, and I had no idea such subtle influence was possible.

"If you wanted me to join you, why didn't you say so rather than try to enslave me?"

"You're very powerful, Syl. I'm not entirely sure what type of monster you really are, but we've all witnessed your strength. I wanted reassurance that I wouldn't be your next meal like the badgers, bears, humans, or Tarz."

I had to admit I had been on an eating spree. Perhaps it was my slime instincts, or my intense desire to survive that gave me the goal to seek strength. Out of everything Krutz mentioned, the only one that really struck me was the mention of Tarz. I had killed her out of pure greed to get a new profile. I could have eaten a corpse for the profile, but I didn't. I saw her just as another monster to eat. I had to push back, this wasn't the time to have an existential crisis.

"Is that why you stole experience from me?" I asked, and the question seemed to surprise him.

"I did no such thing. Who told you that?"

"I've defeated a similar monster. It was slightly weaker than the Earthshaker and gave me vastly more levels."

This seemed to shock him greatly. Perhaps he had underestimated me and didn't think I had taken on evolved monsters already. I saw him trying to think and stifled a yawn with his hand. I felt my mind clearing up more, his influence further fading.

I wanted to laugh, as my emblem considered this a battle against an apex monster and was giving me bonus experience. I activated [Slime Conversion] to take advantage of the free experience offered.

"If you want me to trust you, why don't you show me a useful skill to purchase? You said you'd give me advice. What about how to use magic?" I asked.

Krutz actually scowled at my suggestion. His finger began nervously tapping against the table. Suddenly, I picked up an aura of mana from behind me, and Alpha reacted by forming two shields. There was a burst as an arrow pierced through the shields, and my head exploded. Alpha and Beta had retreated themselves into my torso. When my head rapidly reformed, Krutz looked stunned. I turned to see the source of the [Power Shot] arrow - Garz had his bow drawn.

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"I guess negotiations have failed," I uttered sadly.

"If you refuse to submit as my pet, then I have no use for you. I'll add your essence to my own." Krutz spat, "Guards, kill it!"

The sudden personality flip was startling. Where was the goblin chief who seemed willing to talk and trade ideas, or was that all fake to lead to this moment where he could try to dominate my mind? Krutz was looking towards the backroom door, waiting for his guards, but they wouldn't come. [Mana Sight] could see behind the door and showed me their bodies collapsed to the floor.

"Why join him, Garz? He wants to abandon the goblins and run off. I thought we were friends." I questioned the goblin, staring at me with hatred.

"Friends?!" Garz spat, "You kill Tarz. Kill Woz. Then you wear Tarz skin. Other goblins all say Tarz come back strong. Better. Everyone praise new Tarz. But that not truth. You, not Tarz!"

I wasn't sure who Woz was, but his words hurt. I hadn't thought much about how I had stolen Tarz's identity, and it had eaten at Garz's mind. I could guess that Krutz had influenced Garz's mind at least a little, maybe pushed him off the fence, but there were raw feelings behind his words.

'Alpha, Beta... Please, don't kill Garz. Sleep poison only for him.' I commanded mentally.

At this point, Krutz was getting a bit frantic and had pulled out his skull scepter and kicked open the door, revealing all the unconscious guards.

"You! What did you do?" He shrieked while waving his scepter around, black mana gathering, "Fine, I don't need these weaklings to kill you myself. [Condemnation of Sloth]!"

"Huh..." I responded aloud, genuinely surprised.

Meanwhile, Beta wasn't going to let an attack against me go unpunished, forming and controlling two tendril spears aimed at stabbing Krutz. He raised his scepter and formed a black disc which deflected one of the spears, but the other scraped across his torso.

Garz was firing arrows, which were easily blocked or appropriately ignored by Alpha, who had also taken control of two pseudopods to do the task. He'd need time to fire another [Power Shot], but this was a difficult task without support to give him the uninterrupted charge time. Alpha stuck to defense as ordered but would try to slam a tendril into Garz to force him to dodge and abandon his shot.

I kept dispersing sleep gas and hoped Garz would fall asleep soon. Levels must have determined resistance, and Garz and Krutz were the two highest-leveled goblins. I fired a burst of sticky sleep slime at Garz, which he failed to dodge, coating him in the goo. I could hopefully put him out of my mind to deal with Krutz, and I trusted in Alpha to stop Garz if he tried anything before succumbing to sleep.

Krutz was struggling to dodge Beta's tendrils. Clearly, he was not a frontline fighter and had neglected his [Evasion] training. He fired a black bolt of energy at me, but I dodged to the side. Being able to see the mana building up helped my predictions. Krutz was not pleased with my dodging and changed strategy. I could see the immense amount of blackened mana building up.

"[Agony]!" He shrieked.

Unimaginable pain suddenly wracked through my body, putting even my [Defy Death] training to shame. Black sparks danced across my skin and through my core. While I was distracted by the pain, he fired a black bolt at me, exploding a large portion of my goblin body. The destroyed slime flaked away into black specks.

With that amount of explosive damage, I couldn't risk such a small form. I was initially worried his magic might be able to pierce through me like that green slime, but it seemed his spells had differing rules and properties.

I deposited what remained of my outfit thanks to [Equipment Swap] and swiftly abandoned my goblin form, swelling to a size that dominated almost the entire room. Thanks to my translucency, I could now see my entire surroundings. Garz was finally unconscious, so I mentally told Beta to avoid drowning him in slime. I had made sure all three of us were transparent and matching the color of my slime, gotta make it hard to spot our glowing weak points.

"A slime? A bloody slime!? What mockery is this?" Krutz had lost it and was cackling as he spammed black bolts against my swelling size, "[Condemnation of Sloth]!"

I felt the movement and manipulation of my slime slow down to a crawl, which made me unable to simply overwhelm him. Each time I attempted to grab him with tendrils, he would hit me with another [Agony] spell and halt me in my tracks, then he'd continue blasting away at me. He was blasting slime while backed up against the wall with rapidly depleting mana, and I knew he'd run dry or succumb to the sleep poison.

At least I was gaining experience from this. While on the last dregs of his mana and on the verge of passing out, he reached out with a blackened hand.

"Submit! Submit! Submit!" He screamed frantically till his last breath when he collapsed to the ground.

I picked up his unconscious body, and I had a brief thought of sparing him before pulling him into my slime. I could forgive Garz, or at least leave him alive and go our separate ways, but I would not forgive someone trying to take over my mind. I made sure to exclude all of his equipment before I turned on the acid.

'And he said Chieftain was a class, but it was an emblem... Was anything he told me even true?'