Dungeons Online

"What kind of monster do you think it will be?" Claudia asked while leisurely trodding behind the man.

"A goblin?" Tom replied with a question on his own. "Maybe a slime?" he continued guessing for a while before shaking his head. "If it works just like in-game, then we can guess for an entire day, and we still might miss," he said.

Each of the dungeon's floors had a limited number of different monsters populating it. It was a truth that Tom learned even before discovering how the entire Dungeons Online was just a ruse to cover an actual dungeon that he was in right now. But while he couldn't understand why the game developers didn't share any information about the rules within the dungeon before, it turned out to be quite simple now. 

The owners of the game never shared any details of it with the players because they never were behind the creation of the dungeon in the first place. 

But that didn't mean the rules that Tom discovered on his own weren't valid. Or rather, just like with science, they were true unless proven otherwise. 

"We already saw slimes for this floor, so I believe there are little chances it will be another..." Tom was about to reveal his way of thinking when the two of them took a turn and saw the entrance to the boss area. 

And as if to humiliate Tom, the last room of the floor was occupied by a massive slime. It was the size of one's average cow and of deep, greenish color. What's more, rather than a single solid core like in its smaller brethren, there were five different stones free-floating within the inner liquid of the monster.

"How are we going to kill it?" Claudia asked, taking a stop just before the corridor could change into the boss room. 'While everything we know about this place is more like guidelines than strict rules, I have never seen any of the bosses cross this invisible barrier.' So Claudia thought while observing the slime slowly moving around its room. 

"It would be a waste of ammunition to shoot it. But it's too big to reach its cores with my knife," Tom concluded as he dropped his backpack to the floor and grabbed the one thing that was too long to fit inside. 

His simple spear. 

"Are you seriously going to fight it with this?" Claudia asked as Tom took a moment to familiarize himself with the weapon. "I know this is still the first floor, but come on! Aren't you worried it might be stronger in reality than it was in the game?" the girl protested while watching how Tom swung his spear around. 

"That should do it," Tom muttered under his nose. 'It seems that a part of my avatar's skills is stuck in my brain,' he thought, noticing how easy it was for him to revolve his spear around. Something that someone who got his hand on a spear for the first time would never be able to do with such ease. 

But he wasn't going to waste time just spinning his spear around. Once Tom confirmed that he could still wield this simple weapon, he stepped inside the boss room without even a shred of hesitation.

In an instant, the slime's attention turned towards him. While its speed was astonishing in comparison to its lesser brothers... It was still nothing to be worried about.

'How should I crack it,' Tom asked himself while circling around the monster. 'The main problem is that its cores do not remain in place,' Tom noticed, watching how those five small stones inside the dense fluid of the slime's body continued to move around its insides. 

"Right now, I would kill for a large sword," Tom muttered, imagining how easy it would be to just slice pieces of the slime away. 'Well, it's not like there is any point in wishing for a sword to appear right now,' Tom thought before finally making a step towards the monster. 

There was no need to attack in charge. In the current situation, charging would only have a bad effect on Tom's aim. And it was the only thing that gave the young man virtually any chance at shattering the slime's cores. 

Push!

Tom threw his spear forward, holding it just by the very end of its handle. The wave-like blade easily penetrated the slime's outer shell, but it didn't even come close to either of its cores. 

"Dang," Tom muttered as he pulled the weapon out. But Tom didn't continue his attacks. Randomly thrusting his spear in hopes that it would just chance upon one of the slime's cores wasn't the way to go here.

'It damaged the spear already,' Tom thought as he inspected the weapon, only to move his eyes back on the slime. Thankfully, the damage was minor, leaving Tom with some hopes of using this spear for a little longer before it would fully break apart. 

"Come on, this is a first-floor boss!" Claudia shouted from the safety of the corridor. "How come you are still dealing with it? Why not just shoot it to get it over with?" she asked while crossing her arms on her chest. 

"If you are that smart, how about you go and kill it yourself?" Tom replied in an annoyed voice, not even bothered enough to look at the girl while he did so. 

'Just how the heck should I deal with it? Chip it away without the slightest care for the spear?' he thought, puzzled by the situation to no end. 

Then, as he looked towards the slime, he noticed that it moved towards him a bit. But while that part was obvious and unimportant, how he could notice the slime's movement held a clue to how to defeat it. 

'Is that small puddle... its insides?' Tom thought when noticing a slight hue of green remaining in the place the slime used to be just a moment ago. 

Then, an idea struck Tom. He turned his face around and looked at Claudia with an excited look in his eyes. "Go and open the backpack, then, throw me one of the spare barrels!"