Chapter 154 - Unexpected turn of events

Eiro stared down in front of himself, at what was left over of . Two golden cards. One of them showed a golden, decorated key, while the other showed a circle with blue, green, brown and white parts, simply sitting there in an ocean of black.

appeared right next to Eiro and quickly picked up one of those two cards, the one with the key. "Now then, that was quite a pleasure to watch. Truly, I did not expect you to be forming a magic circle of all things." He chuckled, and Eiro just stared back at him.

"Now what?" He asked, and the Devil just kept smirking, "You can try to become the next world. But rest assured, just because you have the card and killed a royal monster doesn't mean that you can truly become a royal yourself. You are most likely too weak to become one right now, so don't take too much onto yourself." The Devil advised. And Eiro had to admit, he did feel something coming off of that Major Arcana card that made him feel reluctant to pick it up, but he wasn't sure if it was because it was a card of the major arcana in general, or because he was, as the devil said, too weak to make use of it.

"Well, nevermind that." The Devil said, and with a slight smirk looked past Eiro for a moment, "Let's just get started with this." He added as the Devil quickly quickly turned the card in his hand into a key that he then pressed into the center of Eiro's chest.

It opened up a hole while the Demon just stood there as if frozen, and the Devil pushed the three things he took from Eiro back inside there.

[Your fear was returned to you]

[Your empathy was returned to you]

[Your fatherly instincts were returned to you]

Eiro still just stood there as the Devil leaned forward and just took a look at what he could see, "But it's quite cluttered in here... you should do some spring-cleaning, don't you think? There's your cards over there just laying on the table, magic stones on the shelves, even some tools laying on the ground... And those books are nearly falling over, how annoying." The Devil pointed out as he waved his hand to the side and made the portal that he came here through appear once more as he pulled the key out of Eiro's chest.

"Now then, I would try to hurry up before a certain someone steals your prize from you." The Devil winked, and stepped through the pulsating gate that soon disappeared as if rotting away at a rapid pace.

The hole in Eiro's chest was still closing, so he didn't really know what he was talking about, before he noticed the sound of something slimy moving around. Something that he heard before, although in this situation, it was still quite different. It was far, far more aggressive.

Although, now that Eiro thought about it, a lot seemed to be going on at the temple at the moment... The seals of all the monsters were removed, and they were practically just going wild in there.

Besides one. A monster whose seal seemed to have malfunctioned from the start. The Shapeless Slime that Eiro had trapped in the bottle before.

While the hole in Eiro's chest was still closing, weirdly slowly for some reason, Eiro just watched as that slime approached him, "Hahaha, I would have preferred that girl, but I have to say, I'm curious what a demon tastes like~!" The Slime exclaimed, trying to start wrapping its slime around Eiro's foot.

Eiro was kind of annoyed, since the slime didn't seem capable of hurting him all too much right now anyway.

It seemed to take only another few seconds for the hole to fully close... It took longer when the devil tried to open it up, so maybe it was because he didn't have the key for too long yet? Well, either way, Eiro just stood there and had to watch, although something else happened soon.

The slime suddenly stopped, "Hm...? There's something else tasty here..." It muttered quietly, and Eiro immediately glared at it deeply. Somehow, Eiro couldn't speak this time around either, so he couldn't even try to threaten the slime to not even try. Because it was approaching the card at the moment. The Major arcana card of . Eiro himself could tell instantly after just looking at it for a few moments that he wouldn't be able to handle actually activating that card and becoming the new 'World'. So how would such a slime be able to handle it?

Eiro tried his best to maybe use his mana to obstruct or kill the slime using earth magic, but no matter what he did, simply kept approaching. The Devil was smirking before, was this why? Did he just want to play around again?

With a deep groan, Eiro tried his best to pull through and get his body to move again. "Don't you... touch that..!" Eiro could finally say as the hole came close to closing, but it was already too late. The Shapeless slime's body already enveloped the Major Arcana card. The moment that Eiro was able to move again he jumped forward as quickly as he could and sliced through the slime's body with his dagger to try and force the card out of it, but just before he could, the card had already been absorbed into the shapeless slime.

"That's not..." The Demon muttered quietly as he watched what was happening in front of him. The Shapeless slime's body recovered from Eiro's attack near to instantly, and just started pulsating, growing larger and larger as if expanding in size.

"Ahh... That was... good..." The slime groaned out as its slime slowly started moving over some of the rocks and pebbles on this path that were quickly moved into the inside of its body. The rocks slowly dissolved there, and the slime's body seemed to slightly change. It wasn't as translucent as before anymore, it was as if it was just dirtier all of a sudden.

"Shit..." Eiro muttered quietly, and immeditately tried to use ice-magic to freeze the shapeless slime's body to make it stop moving. It seemed to work and damage tickers appeared right in front of the demon as well, but before Eiro knew it, the ice started to crack up and was then absorbed into the slime's body piece by piece.

"Don't tell me..." Eiro muttered quietly as he saw the slime's own body slowly give off cold mist, "It's actually f.u.c.k.i.n.g absorbing my magic?!" Eiro exclaimed confusedly. The former world couldn't do that... otherwise the flame magic wouldn't have worked in the first place. Maybe it was because the shapeless slime was much smarter to start it off with... And slimes were known for absorbing things anyway, so maybe it just had a talent for that card, somehow.

"I'm hungry..." The shapeles slime muttered quietly, and just kept on taking in more rocks from the path, and even some flowers from the side of it. It started eating the rock that made up the steps even, and its body became much darker and opaque, and even took on a rock or dirt-like texture. Now Eiro kind of understood what the difference between this slimes 'World' power and the former royal's 'World' power. The former controlled other things and used them as if they were its body, like Eiro and the three of swords, for example.

But this slime actually made other things its body. Or rather, it made its body turn into other things. Something could only be under the control of one being at once, so not even the former royal could take in magic, but since the slime is simply taking other things without controlling them and just takes them apart, it can turn them into its body.

This really became much, much more troublesome... Eiro had to be careful, he couldn't just freely attack this thing. If he used magic, it would only strengthen this slime, if he used weapons, they would also just strengthen it... Was there anything that it couldn't absorb?

Either way, Eiro had to find out soon... And there was a specific reason for that. It was going crazy. Eiro could hear that the slime's body was constantly ripping apart into pieces, but since its ability was 'Absorption', those parts were immediately integrated back into the slime's body.

It seemed to be healing and destroying itself at all times... but there had to be some sort of limit to it, right? Otherwise, what would stop it from just absorbing this whole mountain right off the bat. Maybe if Eiro tried his best, he could turn it into something that couldn't easily be pieced back together. Or maybe, something that contradicted itself.

The Demon quickly ran past the slime into the broken-down courtyard of the temple, and soon found the well that he had been looking for. He reached his hand down into it and pulled out as much water as he could possibly get, and tried to feed it to the slime.

Like Eiro expected it to, the slime absorbed it soon thereafter, and its body became somewhat muddy afterward as the water was combining with the dirt from before. But Eiro didn't stop, he kept going and going and just kept feeding as much water as was connected to this well to the slime that kept growing and seemingly even losing its ability to perfectly control its body. It was like it was hanging down, as if being this liquified wasn't something it was used to.

When the well just dried out, Eiro got started with the next part of his plan. He created flames next that enveloped the slime, but were quickly absorbed thereafter. Its body was quickly expanding in response, and it was as if it was turning less visible to the average eye. The flames and water 'combined' and turned into steam. After more and more fire was added, while the slime did indeed keep growing in size and absorbing more small rocks and pebbles, it was also so light that it was unable to properly keep its body together after it was being taken apart. The smaller pieces that weren't connected to the core couldn't stay together and simply appeared into nothingness soon after as well, so this monster was slowly taking more and more damage the longer the 'fight' went on, even though it wasn't really a fight. The slime wasn't attacking Eiro, after all. But then, something that Eiro hadn't expected to appear appeared, and that in the worst place possible. He hadn't been paying attention to the ground, even though he should have been... The former 'World' had taken the digging ability of one of those underground monsters.

And it was one of the few 'ability' representations that seemed to have survived Eiro blowing the World's body into pieces. It dug a tunnel underground, and now resurfaced right underneath the slime.

Of course, it immediately absorbed the ability, and things immediately went south as the slime gained the abiliy to dig through the ground easily and disappeared into the small hole that the ability-representation just created under it.