"Huhn?" Alya was a bit disappointed when the black slop took a humanoid form, not even gigantic one, but a normal sized human, about six feet tall.
Both the girls watched curiously as the man shaped slime creature started walking towards a house.
"What's it doing?" Nebula whispered into Alya's ear. "Maybe it's looking for people to eat?" She added.
Alya pushed Nebula's smelly mouth away.
As Alya was starting to doubt if there had been some kind of misconception about the overpowered monster, it got to the building and tapped on it.
"..." Nothing happened.
It walked over another to another building and did the same thing.
"Tch!" Alya jumped down towards the black slime man.
It rose its head up as it sense Alya's presence.
#You're not the thing I'm looking for.# Somehow, it's voice spread throughout the environment, even without any oral organs.
#Oh well, who am I to reject a free meal.# It opened its arms as if waiting for Alya to come into it.
Alya's body couldn't take hearing its voice for a second time. For some reason, her body froze as she continued to fall towards the black monster. 'Dammit! What's happening to my body?!'
Unable to move, Alya had almost fallen into grave trouble when a white rope suddenly grabbed her waist from the distance and pulled her back.
Nebula caught Alya's body and ran to the top of another high building.
The slime man shrugged them off and then continued to touch more houses.
"What was that out there?!" Nebula grabbed Alya by her shoulders and shook her out of her daze.
"I... I don't know." Alya stared at her palms, they were shaking in fear.
'What was that? That thing just spoke didn't it? How the heck did I suddenly freeze from hearing just it's voice? I... Was too scared to hit it.'
'Shit!!!!!' Alya was confused. How was she going to fight the thing if it kept using its numbing skill?
"But yo, what's with that thing? Beasts don't talk, do they?"
Alya's eyes opened at Nebula's question. 'So she heard its voice?'
"Did you feel anything? What did it say, cloud for brains?"
Nebula shirked back from Alya's intense stare but answered. "It said something about free meal and looking for something, but, how's a person's voice supposed to sound like? Scratchy?" She scratched her head.
Alya looked down at her own hands. 'What's wrong with me?' The slime man's voice had triggered immense fear in her, but nothing in the white haired girl. Was there a special reason, or was her will just not strong enough?
'Heck no! I'm the queen of strong will. But... there's something else in play here.' She looked at the buildings the slime touched carefully and —'
"Hey!"
When Alya brought her gaze up, she saw Nebula standing at the edge of the roof. "I don't know what that thing's doing, but I doubt it's anything good. So, I'm going in. Back me up!"
"You idiot white pants. You'll die without my help!"
Nebula jumped anyway.
The slime man continued with its weird behaviour, however, this time it was moving a lot faster. So much so that it looked like he was teleporting from one building to another, and then the next.
#Where is that thing?# It's voice permeated through the night's breeze again.
BOOM!!
As the slime man went to another building, it suddenly collapsed from the top, down, raining down on it.
"Haha! You weren't expecting that, were ya?!" Nebula said, floating above the rubble the slime man was trapped under.
Soon though, the slime stood up from the rubble and dusted it's body like nothing had happened. It looked at Nebula for a second and said,
#Why are you laughing? That wasn't funny.#
'Hmm. Why'd I even think that would work?' cold sweat dripped down her face.
The slime looked at Nebula and then turned away. It was acting so carefree and treating her like she wasn't something worth hitting.
Nebula got pissed at its condescending attitude. She picked up a rock and threw it at the slime man's head, however, that just bounced away. 'What the heck is this thing doing?'
She was confused. The slime man didn't seem like the vicious monster the province had made it to be. It didn't attack them, except for that time that she was sure it wanted to eat Alya. But, Alya had tried to attack it first.
Was it self defense?
"I thought you were supposed to be a creepy as heck demon guy. You know? Like a creature from hell, coming to rip out the spines off countless warriors? But you're just a weirdo, aren't ya?"
Nebula did a little spin in the air as she crossed her legs, questioning the slime man.
#Oh yeah? What gave you that idea?# The slime tapped another building, this time, looking through the window.
"Everything about this place: the children, the people and even the giant gem you absorbed was proof of how big of a baddy you were... Supposed to be."
The slime man turned his head behind him to look at Nebula. "And what gave them that idea?"
"I don't know man." Nebula put her hands behind her head as she lay, floating in the air. "It's kind of a fable really. Oh yeah! There's this giant tabl—"
"Stop you idiot!!!" Alya's shout suddenly hit her. "Don't tell that blackey anything!"
Nebula turned her around, in the direction of Alya. "Why not? The dude's chill~"
"The houses... look at 'em." Alya pointed to one heap of brown sand. "It's been absorbing the residues of its energy, turning them into dust."
"What~?" Nebula let out a sound of disbelief in Alya's words. She flew over to the house the slime had just touched. "They're not sand —" Nebula was forced to stop talking, because as soon as she touched the building, it disintegrated.
"Wha..." She looked ahead, soon realising that the building she had knocked over before was the heap of sand Alya had just showed her.
"Get away from him, now!"
However, Alya's yelling was useless, as the slime had already set it's eyes on Nebula.
Before either of the girls realised it, the slime had already jumped up to Nebula.
Noticing it behind her, she shot herself away from the slime, however, she couldn't move as far as she wanted; the slime man had grabbed onto her leg, absorbing her body into its own in the brink of an eye.
#I don't usually swallow food whole but, I'm kind of in a hurry.# It said, descending to the ground.
"Nebula!!!" Alya picked up her weapon, immediately activating her special ability. [Imperial Hell (1st Phase)]
She jumped off the building, shattering it to dust and and stones.
In less than a half second, her weapon had cut cleanly through the slime's neck, the shockwaves from her attack almost forming a five hundred meters in diameter tornado, before dissipating.
#Woah there! What if that girl's head was where mine was? She still inside me you know?#
The slime man effortlessly attached it's head back together.
Alya hesitated a second strike, both from the shaking in her heart as she heard its voice, and knowing that Nebula was inside the slime's body. 'Dammit! What do I do?'
#Don't worry about that pretty little idiot. She's in my stomach at the moment being digested.
And, if you tell me what you know about that thing that brat was going to tell me then, I'll give her back to you.#
Alya flinched again, barely gripping her weapon tightly. 'Is this one of its skills?' The reason she was feeling this constant fear even though she didn't know the slime man personally, Alya couldn't think of any other reason.
"She is stupid, isn't she?!"
'That brat's too immature...' Alya suddenly gripped her weapon even tighter. 'What am I supposed to do now?'
She couldn't trust Sorbo because there was a high chance he was just lying to get information from her. After all, it would probably kill everyone in the province once it found what it was looking for anyway. But if she refused to tell Sorbo what he wanted, then it was the same as abandoning Nebula.
Alya might not admit it, but Nebula was the only other friend she liked hanging around with. She was so free spirited and had involuntarily brought smiles to her face more times in a week than Alya often did in a year. And what's more, it was fun having a sparring partner around.
Sorbo saw her hesitance and mistook it for acceptance to its terms. If it had a face, it'd probably be smiling right now.
"What do you wanna know?" Alya asked, trying to figure a way out of this situation.
"Where are the records your people kept of my arriving? And of course the information about what I can do or... What can be used to defeat me?"
Alya's eyes flashed with understanding. So it was looking for the stories written about its battle, most likely to erase any clue the records might have had of its weaknesses. When it destroys the records, no one in this province would be able to figure it out, then it would be unstoppable.
That was why it had left Alya and Nebula alive, because it could deal with them at any time after it had found the records. But there was something Alya didn't understand.
"You know that we can't read it... don't you?"
After all, the records had been in Ogmore for a very long time, long enough to make a nursery rhyme out of it. But if that was the case, then destroying the records would be stupid since hundreds of people would already know about it.
However, since he knew the records couldn't be read, then it made sense why Sorbo wanted to destroy it, so they would never be a record to refer to in the first place, even if it couldn't be read.
#Yeah.# It admitted. #It's been almost a century since my defeat, but the ancient language couldn't be deciphered. It's weird that I'm afraid of it spending a few more days after my escape, but...
I've known you humans for a long time. When it's in these critical times, that's when you receive, 'revelations'. It's like you're being backed by the gods, preventing your extinction. Alas, even the gods hate your kind so..."
It grabbed it's head in frustration, reminiscing about the past. #... So who the hell is trying so hard to keep your weakling race alive?#
"If there is someone..." Alya took a breath to calm her trembling heart. "... Then I don't think they exist in this dimension." She pointed her weapon at him confidently.
"Allow me to introduce you to another dimension, one you didn't go to when you were defeated by my old man... Hell!"
Sorbo looked into her eyes, looked, even though it didn't have eyes for itself and let out a heart rending laugh, even without a mouth.
#... I'll really enjoy killing you, just like I did your friend.#