“Huh, that was rather easy,” Sidestep said, walking up to examine the slime more easily.
“You had to say that, didn’t you? Did you not learn your lesson earlier?” Alan asked while looking up. An avalanche of slimes, hundreds if not thousands were rapidly coming down the ramp. All were exact duplicates of the slime Alan had killed.
Alan began firing at the slimes, killing a number before they reached the ground. Immediately after one slime’s nucleus was destroyed, a nearby slime would absorb the dead slime’s body, becoming larger. Once a slime had doubled in size, the lasers Alan shot began to stop penetrating them all the way through. He started to wish he had an area of effect skill or weapon, something that could damage a large number of enemies.
Sidestep pulled out a pair of electrified short blades and created a few clones, while Kitana readied her sword. Alan still couldn’t tell if the images Sidestep left behind were actual clones or not, as various clones would deal damage independently, but never at the same time. Eve hypothesized that the real one might simply be moving about, taking the place of a different image as the battle continued.
Experimentally, Aurora froze a slime with a small burst of energy, but it simply absorbed the ice in moments, turning it into liquid, becoming slightly larger.
The first of the slimes reached them as they began making a steady retreat. Counter intuitively, the larger slimes moved faster than their smaller brethren, at about the speed of a light jog.
Kitana had no trouble slicing through the larger slimes, but a Sidestep duplicate found his blade suddenly embedded in a larger slime about the size of a microwave. The slime opened up, enveloping the blade, then surged forwards up the blade onto Sidestep’s arm, enveloping it with its slimy substance. The nucleus continued to chaotically move about within the slime’s green body, circling Sidestep's slime encompassed arm.
“Shit!” He yelled as he blinked backwards in an attempt to get the slime off him. “It’s absorbing my armor’s energy, as well as my own!”
The red ball within the slime began to turn blue and move about even more energetically, faster than before.
With a skillful pierce, Kitana managed to stab the slime’s nucleus, and it fell to the floor, inanimate. Another squelching slime absorbed the body, and its nucleus also turned blue.
Before long, they were overwhelmed by slimes attaching themselves to different members of the group, draining their energy. Even Alan’s Computational Energy was absorbed by the slimes. Out of the corner of his eye, Alan noticed a slime he was trying to destroy that was leeched onto him turned from blue to purple. The purple nucleus split in two, forming two smaller nuclei that moved even faster and had a sort of blue energy field around them.
Alan frantically began trying to scrape the squishy slime off his armor with his laser knife, thankful that the slime was touching his armor and not him.
“We can’t let them keep evolving!” Aurora called out. “Is there anything anyone can do? My ice isn’t having any effect.”
Void, who was suspiciously absent of slimes, sighed. “Looks like I need to help you guys. I’d prefer to watch the struggle a bit longer, but it seems as though if I waited too long they’d become more of a nuisance. And I still haven’t healed anyone…”
He brought out a wooden staff, inscribed with what appeared to be runes, hieroglyphic images that Eve couldn’t decipher. He held it aloft, and an electrical white blade formed an outline around it.
“I have the power!” he yelled, winking at Alan.
Before Alan could even ask how Void knew that reference, white lightning surged out of the blade, striking and destroying slime’s nuclei in rapid succession. The attack seemed to in turn absorb the slime’s energy, as the white blade grew slightly larger with each subsequent slime it zapped.
As soon as the sword attempted to strike the two purple nuclei attached to the slime absorbing Alan’s energy, a small electrical shield formed around each purple ball, repulsing the lightning strike. The slime suddenly detached itself from Alan, splitting it itself in two, one nucleus in each of the halves. They each began rapidly absorbing the bodies of all the slain slimes around them as Void tried to fry them with lightning, splattering bits of slime everywhere.
Each strike was similarly repulsed. With a sweeping strike Kitana managed to nick one of the purple nuclei, but it simply split into two blue nuclei instead of being destroyed. Meanwhile, the other slime’s nucleus turned white after it absorbed most of its dead brethren. The moment the next lightning bolt struck at it, it absorbed the energy, turning black!
“Oops,” Void murmured, dismissing the lightning blade as the slime leapt at it in an attempt to absorb the energy.
As soon as the blade disappeared, the slime landed on the floor then leapt backwards at its spawn! The slime body was now the size of a large truck and moved just as quickly. It absorbed the smaller slime’s bodies. Then, the black nucleus shot forth as fast as lightning and devoured the two blue nuclei. It quickly turned on the rest of the small slimes with red nuclei that Void hadn’t finished off.
By the time it had finished devouring the rest of the slimes it was the size of a small apartment, taking up almost the entirety of the twenty foot wide stone walkway. At this point, the black nucleus had divided itself in three, and the slime had gained the title Unstable Experimental Warden.
The gigantic amorphous slime turned its attention to the players. It lurched backwards, preparing for a leap forwards. Alan fired a couple of shots at the slime, but the laser bolts barely penetrated a couple of feet into the slime's body before dissolving.
“Well, that was my only offensive skill, so, um, I’ll leave the rest to you guys,” Void said nervously, backing up behind the group.
Alan glanced towards the others, who were resolutely staring at the slime, showing no sign of backing down.
Kitana held her katana before her as a visible blue flame condensed itself in an aura about her sword. The waves of energy surrounding the sword were so powerful they began to create pulsing waves of force that blew her hair and loose fitting robes backwards.
Meanwhile, Aurora pulled out the knife and wooden stake that Alan had seen her carrying when he first met her. She cut herself, and as her blood began to drip onto the stake it too began to gather power, a red aura glowing about it.
Meanwhile, the pulsing green veins of energy that swirled about Sidestep’s armor like miniature veins began glowing more brightly, condensing at Sidestep’s feet and hands.
Activate hypercognition, Eve commanded. Alan immediately did so.
Good, this is a great opportunity to give you an overview of the basic categories of psionic attacks and abilities. The abilities you see before you are an example of each category, almost as if someone wanted to conveniently explain things to you.
Um, right. Shouldn’t I be doing something to, like, help them?
There isn’t much you can do. Anyway, moving on. You see before you spiritual, blood and technological psionic abilities. These are the three main categories psionic abilities can be divided into.
Alan watched as the slime leapt forward in slow motion, continuing to listen to Eve’s explanation.
First you have the blue so called “spiritual” power that you see surrounding Kitana’s blade. Spiritual as in the power of one’s fighting spirit, not ‘ooooh there’s a scary ghost’ spirit. This is what most people think of when they think of psionic ability, a sort of magic that bends forces to the user's will. In the case of spiritual power, psionic energy is essentially the same thing as mana. All of Aurora’s attacks you’ve seen so far have been spiritually based. It is the most common form of psionic power, with about 75% of all psionic users using this type of ability.