Isabella met the killer-level monster’s assault head-on. Her feet stepped on illusory footwork, and as her body leaped up, she turned into a streak of white light.
Relying on her agility, she slipped past the cutting wind blowing in from all directions with ease. Every time she dodged, there would be a sharp sound by her ear—gusts of wind grinding trees or boulders into powder.
Sure, the Slime King could launch attacks one after another. But that was only if it could track its prey’s movements every second.
No matter how you exaggerated it, that was something it could never do.
Sensitivity had always been this king’s greatest weakness, and just so happened to be the girl’s biggest advantage.
After dodging every last attack, Isabella’s gaze turned icy. The staff in her hand flashed into a radiance so sharp it seemed to cut the air, and she stabbed at her target, swift as lightning.
Sizzle.
Its slick surface let slime-type monsters reduce the damage from physical blows.
With that smooth, slippery skin, they could bleed off part of the force from a stabbing attack, creating the illusion of insanely high defense.
But that skin didn’t always reduce damage. Take tofu, for example—once it gets wet, it becomes very smooth, doesn’t it?
Yet once a sharp kitchen knife comes down, it still slices cleanly through. Why?
Because the blade is too sharp.
If you used a dull knife on a tofu “mountain” taller than a person—the equivalent of the Slime King’s height—and cut down from above, you might not be able to cut it all the way through.
Swap in a sharp knife, and it’s a different story.
You don’t even need to put your weight behind it. Just hold the knife straight down, let it fall onto the tofu and slide under its own weight, and the block might split clean in two.
Same logic here. Even a slime, hard as it is to cut, will take serious damage if it runs into something unnaturally sharp.
Even though Isabella was holding a blunt staff, her own power poured into it, pushing its cutting force beyond that of normal blades and swords.
Just like Wang Xiaole’s branch before, no matter how fragile a staff was, could it really be weaker than a thin twig?
In that lightning-fast clash, the staff’s shadow swept past, carving a long, deep gash across the surface of that massive body. Thick, sticky fluid gushed out at once.
“Roar!”
The intense pain didn’t make it back down. Instead, it enraged the Slime King.
Its body slammed into the ground hard. In the next instant, countless long, sharp spikes sprouted from its surface. With all those hooks it looked like a gigantic hedgehog as it lifted off the ground, instantly locking onto the girl and crashing down at her.
You couldn’t ignore that body size, or the momentum it gained as it plummeted from above.
This move was aimed squarely at Isabella’s agility, trying to crush her with a wide-range attack she couldn’t evade and settle things through raw power.
By now, her “skill cooldown” was nearly over. Most of the five minutes had already passed.
She just had to hold on a little longer, and then it would be time for a full counterattack.
Thinking of this, Isabella’s body shuddered and vanished from where she stood, reappearing in midair a heartbeat later.
She raised both hands high, driving the staff upward in a fierce thrust. She braced it against the shadow crashing down with all its weight, forcing the tip of the staff into that descending mass, stabbing into the heavy body from the front.
The two clashed in midair. The force that erupted from the impact shattered the ground below with a deafening boom. With one dull rumble after another, the earth around them caved in, one section after another.
On the surface, Wang Xiaole looked relaxed and casual, but his right hand had long since been quietly raised, ready to move at any moment.
He’d said he wouldn’t interfere, but that was based on Isabella being able to win. With the situation unclear, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.
Even in this world of illusion, where the girl couldn’t be truly hurt, Wang Xiaole still refused to just watch her get beaten into a mess. He’d already made up his mind:
The instant Isabella fell into a danger she couldn’t escape, he would blast the Slime threatening her into paste.
Right now, he’d finished both the mental and physical prep work. All that was left was to wait for the person who might need saving to start losing ground with no way to turn things around.
One person, one chain of thought; two people, two completely different trains of thought.
Compared to Wang Xiaole’s tension, what Isabella was thinking now was:
Forty seconds left.
Either ask for help from the start, or cling to your pride to the very end. That had always been her life motto.
Precisely because Wang Xiaole already held the weight of half a friend in her heart, she could not rely on his help. She chose to end the target with her own hands.
The closer someone was to her, the more she wanted to look strong in front of them.
Because she saw him as one of “her people,” she wanted to show her best side even more. She’d rather get battered than give up.
A few small red slimes rushed her from all directions. They were the minions born together with the king, completely different from the blue ones from before.
Isabella lifted her legs and kicked, sending gusts of wind sweeping out and booting them away one by one. After removing the threat of these little guys, she had twenty seconds left.
Her own body was slowly sinking. She was less than two meters from the ground now; she’d hit it in a heartbeat.
The King’s barbed spikes shot out in all directions, wildly restricting her movements. Every spike that streaked through the air was sharp enough to injure.
