"Ahhh." Mark groaned, he could feel his strength wearing off, and the weight of the sickly things on his back, their touch stung him, most especially his wound area.
They were spreading, bringing their chill with them, they were layering across his body, creeping towards his neck, and to his arms.
Mark turned to see them close to his elbows, and he could feel them nearing his neck.
'Withdraw gold, all of it.' he wailed, and a white light appeared, pouring chips of gold on his back, directly on the bulby black mass.
The bulbous growth burst from the impact, the black spread shrieked, the heavy coins hurting them. They lost their grip and fell apart and away from Mark's body.
The coins had hurt Mark too, but the things took most of the impact and he suffered little.
He swiftly turned, his back on the ground, the spider legs in his hands disappeared, and above they reappeared, descending and going through the two standing figures of him, and they too became muck.
They were all gone, he had survived their onslaught.
He took deep breaths, he had been holding his breath in the entire fight. The creatures had been very close to eating him up.
He sat up and looked around to the gold he had spilled, there were quite a lot of them, shimmering chips behind threads of black and brown.
There was no black mucky slime as he expected there would, the things had left no traces of their existence.
Ding✓
[You survived an onslaught from the slime of Unlife]
[You've received +12 vitality]
"Slime of Unlife." he murmured, he hadn't gotten time to notice its name with his goddess's eye.
'So all of it was just one entity?'
Once the message revealed itself, Mark felt a wave of energy surge within him and his weakness abated.
He stood up and checked his body, parts he suspected the slime had crawled on, but there was nothing, nothing that told of its previous presence any longer.
He felt his back wound, and noticed that it only hurt a little. Once he was done checking through his body for possible new wounds, he deposited the Silverine Fanged Spider legs laying around back into his inventory, and so did he deposit back his gold, although doing so was quite the trouble as he had to move around and feel the coins so he could deposit them.
There were over a hundred gold coins scattered, but fortunately for him, they were scattered in groups and they didn't spill very far away and apart.
[Silverine Fanged Spider legs has been deposited]
[Gold has been deposited]
"Time to move on ahead." He told himself, rubbing his hands to rid it of the dirt that had stuck to them.
He was close to moving when a blue dim light appeared just by his side.
"That was close, wheww! Trust me, I was close to appearing and pulling you from that thing, I know the slime is quite slow and that it takes its time with killing so I waited, I guess I made the right call." It said in a high pitched voice.
Mark crossed his arms in annoyance and looked ahead, the cat continued its yammering, striving to get his focus, but something else had it, he squinted his eyes trying to make out what hovered at the elevated distance from where he stood.
"A ball of light, a door perhaps." He said out loud.
"Ohh, yes, that's the door. Not too far as well, but be careful, the room will show its ace card once you approach the door, it wants nothing more than to make you a part of it." The spirit guardian warned and then meowed, phasing away into inexistence.
"Only three more trials await me after this, I can do this." His hands balled into fists held up.
He then began jogging, his destination was in plain sight and obstacles were absent.
In about 15 minutes, he got close–only about ten meters away from the rectangular door of light.
He felt drawn to it, it was no salvation, but it will get him away from here at least.
He approached it slowly, the cat's warning at the back of his mind. White lights brimmed on his hands and spider legs came in place–his new trusty weapons.
His eyes darted back and forth, cautious of whatever might creep from the ground like the black slime had done.
Seven meters away, and still no response. Perhaps the spirit guardian had meant to have him afraid, either way, he wasn't going to drop caution now, not when he was close to leaving.
He crept with silent steps and wandering eyes, then true to the spirit guardian words, something came.
Something came from the door itself.
Mark saw its big blue hands on the sides of the empty door, then a leg came forward, and then the rest of its body.
"Oh mother of God." Mark muttered, as his eyes scanned the towering monster before him, its frame blocking the light from the dim sun from him.
Muscles tough as steel, limbs massive as trees. The creature stood at the height of three men and the frame of five, its muscles strained against its blue skin, massive horns jutted from its head–one each above an eye. Its head was like a square holding black deep eyes that looked like they could see all.
Its arms were massive and were like that of a man, with three large fingers, its legs were like the hind legs of bison –powerful and at its groin was a blue large serpent.
Mark simply looked at it with surprise, especially at the sight of the serpentine thing between its legs.
'Seriously, isn't this a little overkill?'