*
The other pawns, the trip wires encroach on her king's location. Before they surround her too deeply in the adjacent 8 squares, she makes a beeline towards herself. She needed to make a quick breakthrough, another advantage of her skill, the clone needed no mental rest as the real Rei was doing all the high speed calculation and decision making.
Well enough, the clone slices the first few strings apart and jumps through the last few before running towards her Rei's left. She continues moving the piece a few squares at a time. Rather each square represented an attack that Rei could launch, the enemy had different attack speeds which cannot be reduced into squares. The enemy's exact stats were unknown after all.
"Hahahah!" (Rei)
Even her vibrant laughter could be completely concealed in this place. Here she could make enough noise to blow up the earth and still remain undetected, though that will harm her instead.
Anyway, why reminisce? That was the question she posed to herself after all this time, chuckling at the absurdity. It's not like this was the first ridiculously difficult situation that she faced. She was a magical girl through and through, an S grade ArcMaiden. She commanded respect with her mere presence back home, and now she was basically a sacrifice in enemy territory. But she took it all the same. Both the awe from her subordinates and the mortal threat to her life by the demon kingdom, they are all easily part of her pride as an ArcMaiden.
It is something to be proud of, something that she would gladly trade her life away for, just contributing to the Sanctuary. She didn't really care about humanity outside the Sanctuary, after all her frequent conflicts with them as the ruler of the western region of the Sanctuary have left her quite jaded. She would sooner sacrifice people from the other factions than throw away her own life. But if it was to help her 2 fellow ArcMaidens and friends here, Titania and Kanou, she would gladly put herself in harms way.
Fine, the slime can have it their own way. Who cares if they fill the board with their pawns. She slices through all the tendrils as Rei mvoed her king piece forward into the mass of pawns. Right, left, right, left, her slashes descend into a beautiful dance of artifical efficiency. If she sliced wide enough, she could take out more tendrils but it would slightly slow down her stance. She had to balance it perfectly, but that was up the the combat AI manning her clone.
The clone opened with a big slash then a step forward, followed by a short distance slash to protect herself. Then she swings forward once more, her body penetrates the air like a rocket, almost swimming forward at full speed. Her arms and legs acclimate to the speed and air resistance, jumping to the air and spinning, slashing away at multiple tendrils before landing and lowering her hips to a near crouch.
With a swift flick of her wrist, her blade slashed down towards her left, then a wide swing which clears up the way, uncluttering her entire view. Her magic brings her abilities up this much, but... That's the limit. Power types usually have a self enhancing magic, the type that increases strength endurance and speed the more one puts magical particles into their skill. In this case, even Kaori's gradient manipulation was more of a power type skill than Rei.
Fuhaha?! When has that ever mattered? She still trained herself all the way up to S grade, sheer tenacity and hardwork has brought her here. Even if a subordinate decides to turn on her, even if one of her pieces decides to attack, she won't bat an eye and retaliate in kind.
Her clone slices every tendril that comes close and eventually she got next to the slime. Leaping diagonally, she swung her blade under her armpit, throwing it into the air to slice at the tendrils in the air before catching it. Then she slides under the rest and arrives at the slime's feet if it had any. Finishing it off with an overhead swing, this time the slime couldn't react in time. It hadn't expect her clones to come rushing forward, or to zig zag the entire field filled with slime tendrils for that matter.
Slice after slice, in a single moment she cut apart and burst the cells 3 times. With a single swing, she cuts apart the tendrils coming behind her before bisecting the slime in half. She was capable of this much, the clone had a 360 degree awareness, she didn't need to look behind to know an enemy's attack was there. It could scan the entire field like an AI and automatically identify enemies.
With a penetrating stab, she blows a hole through the slime, leaving a hollow round tunnel shaped cavity. ' Shit, for cell body, you have to disintegrate everything.' (Rei) All she has is a sword, fire or water would be more effective. With water, the cells would undergo plasmolysis and burst if someone allowed the water to enter the cells. Something like Kaori's gradient skill would have been perfect for that since water obeys gradients really well even if she didn't apply her magic to it.
Another option is a nuke, Miwa would have been perfect for this role if only her magic attacks weren't scaled according to the enemy's magic attacks. If she fought a normal human, she might even get beaten up if not for her augmentations. Doesn't matter, it's time for her sec-
~[Phagocytosis]~
Her clone vanished. The slime finally used a skill instead of its body to attack. It had now recognised her as a threat. How discouraging, she was utilising the best of her first skill to subjugate the enemy while the enemy was playing with only its passive. This must be a step above digestion or ingestion, despite being a cell body type slime, these slimes are still transparent which reveal parts of her clone inside its body, and they have a skill called [phagocytosis] which is a bacterial process... Well technically cancer cells can do it too, but that was pushing reality and science.
This was a skill of an evolved being. Grade E to C, slime, grade B to A, high slime, and lastly grade S, malignant ascended slime. From needing to swallow and ingest... To being able to digest a target that's even outside of one's reach. The only way to resist this is to use bait like Rei's clone or to have a skill that can resist the magic based digestion. A high enough will stat will do, but this slime's own will stat is S grade so pretty much anything in the world wouldn't be able to resist it.
Also, Rei's clone is dead.
"GUHAGH?!!" (Rei)
When the clone dies, the first skills effects are turned off and her camouflage is gone. Her body was revealed to be a short distance away, the slime immediately notices her. [Phagocytosis], she vanishes.
Rei's second skill, working in tandem with her first skill. Second skill, [Execution goes on, mortality is natural]. The dead are brought back under her command to attack the living. But by dead... She could summon anyone she has met once. Combined with first skill, [Heavens granted under the dashing lies], one, she gains pawns, two, she layers it multiple times. The Rei that died at the chessboard was a clone as well, multiple clones seat at the chessboard, summoning another clone to sit at another chessboard.
Multilayer defence, the mastermind that the enemy thought they defeated was a mere clone. The original is still able to relay her thoughts to the clone at the farthest end. The second skill summons multiple warriors to protect the next clone. She gains multiple A grade subordinates, bishops show up on her side of the chessboard. She sends one of them into the enemy king at once. The summoned warrior, a phantom that was a transparent spectre of the real deal rushed towards the slime while bursting into flames.
An A grade suicide attack. After the collision caused an explosion with a loud radiating noise that seeped through the land with dust clouds and smoke, the surrounding tendrils had all been burnt away along with a significant portion of its main body. Fire spreads throughout the rubbled land, the summoned warriors slashed at the slime's remains, leaving flaky pieces to float among the smoke, hiding among the rubble.
This was definitely not the last of the slime. Another thing her chessboard can tell her, if the enemy king is still on the board... It's not dead. If it disappeared, then it either retreated or died. It may still come back anyway. She watched and watched, and saw that the king piece had in fact split into multiple copies and hid across the underground. Was it searching for her real body? It must have realised the one outside was a mere clone. But sorry to say, unless it killed a clone her entire existence will be hidden even from the Eye God.
Rather it was a rule of the universe that cannot be broken without breaking the universe's rules first. Fufufu!? It was like playing a game with herself. She never had an opponent that so shamelessly remained on the board and increased subordinate like she did.
Slime second skill, [Ultra sorcery]. Countless fireballs materialise in the air above them, expanding and growing in ferocity as they extended to the size of a house then a skyscraper, and finally the moon. As if the slime was saying 'eat your own medicine'. This would impact its own body too, so what was it doing? Unless...
[Ultra sorcery], there were sightings of high slimes that could absorb magic and spit them back. So it could either imitate an enemy's magic, or it could gather everything it swallowed in its life time and spit it back... I see... If it absorbed the clone and initiated [Heavens granted under the dashing lies], then it would remain outside of existence. Then it could completely ignore the magic attack like Rei will. The attack will pass through them and harm none of them.
Either that or the slime will absorb back the giant moon sized fireball. Haa~ the only one at a disadvantage here will be Rei who didn't have any other countermeasure against the giant attack. Once her clone dies, she will be whisked back into existence to die in the attacks aftermath. It was large so the attack could be sustained as long as possible. Right, the slime was definitely using at least 2 layers of her first skill.
"Hmpf? What the hell's that?" (Titania)
With a click of fingers... It vanished. The blazing hopeless scenery return into a dreary night scenery. "Fufufu! The more mystery you have, the easier it is to chuck you away somewhere else. I'm sorry to say, but it's mine now." (Titania)
Rei had no idea what she was saving it for since she didn't seem to want to use it on their current enemies. Rei summoned a bunch of B grade magic type, launching magic beams after magic beams. Using her chessboard to locate them, he eliminated the slime pieces one by one, and finally, she revealed a hidden slime at a short distance away. Killing the clone brings the mastermind into existence. If she couldn't bypass this rule of her own skill, nobody could.
Prava Phantasia, a black sludge shoots out of the slime to swallow all in an instant. A fantasy territory with set rules, a weapon of demonic heavenly kings.
"Hmpf! Is that all you got! OBLIVION MAGIA!! " (Rei)
Controlling the field, that was her role. But not literally. If she had to say, it was more like guiding. Compared to that, the slime had the most lethal Prava Phantasia of all, everything that gets swallowed is digested. It was a law, anything that entered, magical particles and all will get digested. So even spirits weren't safe at all. Compared to that, Rei's power of guidance seem measly... But she will still expand her own territory. After all, it was her duty to advance the border.
To guide the enemy's power backwards, to advance her own border. This was her power of guidance. The sludge moved backwards and began moving back towards their owner. Slowly the Oblivion Magia engulfs the Prava Phantasia. A giant chessboard like ground surrounds the black sludge.
Her face was stern, almost too strict for anyone to come near her. She always put some distance between her subordinates and herself, or her skill wouldn't be so effective. She's cold. She doesn't feel human emotions. She doesn't care if you die. Such constant drivel orbits her life, but she has long gotten used to it. Her results speak for itself, nobody can deny her might.
Tch... Final skill, [Apotheosis]. Just like how the Demon King could use its subordinates powers, this power was the origin of that ability. One of the predecessors of [Demon King constitution] which allowed the use of subordinate's skills... Was obviously the slime's ability to use mimicry. There was slime cells in Hikari's blood. But this meant the opposite was also true.
How ridiculous. This slime was barely royalty, the blood connection was so thin it was practically invisible. Well, all slimes were. [Apotheosis] causes the slime to change into a form that it thinks is the most powerful. In other words, another Hikari appeared.