Right before Cori entered the portal, the high priest called at the top of his voice, "If you ever change your mind, and decide to take over my position, I'll be waiting."
But his words though loud fell on deaf ears since Cori was fully absorbed in his thoughts, pondering deeply, "While Eo records seemed accurate, I don't think I can fully trust her, nor the Creator God. Eo was as much the creator of this world as the latter. I suppose the urgent matter is to find 777 and ascertain who is the enemy and who isn't." Cori stood as still as a statue as the portal closed behind him and questions piled up in his mind.
Mavia stood at the training ground silently observing Cori before breaking the silence, "You seemed to have a lot on your mind. It will be dangerous for your training if you do not empty your mind." She floated to Cori and gently picked him up to hug him. Looking deeply into his eyes she comforted him with a gentle smile and said, "Don't worry about anything now. Just remember... that your goal now is to graduate."
Cori blushed as his body squished against her bosom. His body relaxed as her calming heartbeats vibrated against his non-existent eardrums, "You're right, thank you..."
"Swift steps unlocked with a limited radius of 1 km," the system alerted the confused slime who immediately tensed up at the random notification.
Before he could even react, the duchess threw him across the room like a baseball at 170mph. An impending sense of doom tingled the slightly golden slime, the thrust was greater than the force required to manoeuvre through the air. The only thing that could protect him and the hard surface was his golden shield and his backpack, yet it still could not guarantee he would escape unscathed. Faced with the predicament, Cori's mind went completely blank.
"Cori!" the duchess yelled with her arms spread out hinting the slime to return to her side. "Swift steps!" Cori shouted while visualising being embraced by the Snow Maiden. The slime flashed to where the duchess was but instead of being embraced by her, he flew into the entrance of a portal and exited from the opposite end of the room.
"Cori!" the duchess shouted again with open arms. Inches away from pancaking the wall, Cori's mind toggled between the image of the portal and her.
"Exceeded range, changing the destination to the nearest location," the system notified as his skill activated and teleported him to the closest proximity between the portal and the duchess while terminating his trajectory. "If only I still have my skill 'Qinggong' instead of 'Swift steps'," Cori wished as he gravitated towards the ground and pictured how he would tackle the situation. The system immediately parsed his commands and activated swift steps according to the imagined scenario.
Mavia's eyes widened with awe as Cori's afterimages flashed and descended to the ground. "I haven't seen that before, should I speed things up?" she mused and conjured spears of icicles suspended in the air. Without any warning, she thrust the drilling spears towards the fledging slime.
"What the fuck!" the slime exclaimed as a spear strike his apparition. "The snow maiden was not only a duchess in name, her skills indeed command respect," thought the slime as he beamed to a random location near his assailant. While he narrowly dodged the attacks, the range of his skill still seemed randomised.
"What's the mechanism behind my skill? Can I use observation on it," he wondered. The observation screen appeared but Cori had no time to read it.
"No time to pause," the duchess hallowed passionately, shooting ice beams from her eyes. Her appearance was no longer demure. Instead, the Duchess during combat appeared as a domineering opponent.
"The floor is freezing and changing into an ice field!" Cori noted to himself. The skill immediately transported him onto the floor, which he was later stuck to.
"Try to escape from this," the duchess warned conjuring an iceberg above Cori. Luckily for Cori, his superb memory recalled information on "Swift Steps" in the nick of time, "Swift steps a combination of 'Qing Gong' and 'teleport' which allow the user or desired object to parse through space and other objects. To use the skill, you can:
1. visualise the place to teleport to.
2. name the place you wish to teleport to.
3. the actions you will take to reach the place.
4. to teleport to mid-point, think of the places simultaneously."
With a restricted range imposed, Cori imagined the iceberg teleported a kilometre above the duchess. Unsure if his gamble would pay off, he took extra steps to air-bounce into the mid-air. In a split second, the huge iceberg fell toward the Duchess as Cori made his escape into the air.
"Float," Cori commanded and hovered in suspension, observing the iceberg smashing into the lonesome figure only to disintegrate into snowflakes.
"Clever," a voice said behind Cori, her fingers faintly touched him and sealed his floating ability. "Now, try dodging this," the snow maiden said before disappearing into a portal behind him.
A flurry of snowballs came in all directions towards the slime as he fell. Luckily his backpack shielded him from some of the attacks. While it was impactful, it was not as deadly. "Cori, you have to take it seriously," warned the Duchess as she drove a snowball into a wall.
Cori immediately formulated escaping between all the attacks to reach the opponent. The skill did the calculations and moved Cori as he desired, successfully closing the distance between him and her.
Whenever Mavia was within Cori's teleportation range, she would open a portal to move to a further location. "Not this time!" thought Cori as he imagined himself going through the portal the Duchess created, finally catching up to her.
"Butthrust!" he shouted while visualising cannonballing her. The skill activated and teleported him along with butthrust, smashing into the formidable opponent and knocking her onto the cold floor.
"Hahahahaha!" the Duchess laughed heartily, "That kind of tickles, well done Cori."
"Tickle?" Cori cried in his heart, "You tried to kill me and my attack only tickled you?"
The Duchess hugged the little slime and patted him whilst removing all restrictions. "I guess you're ready to utilise your new skill now," she smiled and concluded the training.