Synthesis-type adventurers

Chapter 49, First Encounter

Ivy gave a low shout and lowered her center of gravity.

She raised her tower shield and slammed it into the frontmost slime with a standard tactical maneuver.

"puff."

A sticky, wet sound echoed in the narrow passage.

The shield didn't produce the sensation of impacting a solid object; the force felt as if it had struck a thick, wet dough.

The slime's body caved inwards dramatically, its translucent skin taut, and the gelatinous substance inside was compressed into a flat pancake on the shield.

But then, its strange elasticity kicked in, and it bounced back quickly, as if nothing had happened, and splashed out a large amount of strong acidic slurry.

A pungent white smoke rose from the surface of the tower shield, and the acid hissed on the metal, quickly etching out black pits.

"This thing is completely impenetrable!" Avira stared at the bubbling marks on the shield, her brow furrowed. "My power was completely absorbed. The feel is so strange; it's like hitting cotton, completely unaffected."

"Physical attacks are basically ineffective, which is expected."

Rhodes's gaze swept coldly over the approaching gelatinous creatures, several tentacles extending across the floor tiles, attempting to flank them, yet he showed no sign of tension.

This is an opportunity—an opportunity to verify the theory and practice of the runebook and Old Hansen's notes.

"Step back."

Rod reached into his waist pouch and pulled out a glass bottle about the size of a fist.

This is an extremely rudimentary homemade alchemical bomb.

Its glass walls were covered in oil stains and fingerprints, and inside swirled a pale blue, murky liquid—the unstable alchemical waste liquid he had scraped from the scrap metal yard's discarded condenser pipes.

After a rough purification process, Rhodes inserted a [low-temperature] term that had been peeled off from expired chilled ale.

But this is not enough.

The entry is just fuel; to ignite this energy, you also need the right detonator.

Rhodes drew the dagger from his waist, took a deep breath, and focused his mental energy on the tip of the blade.

Deep in my mind, the rune configuration for "energy focusing and release" on page 32 of "Basic Rune Analysis" clearly emerged.

The crucial page 134 and a small portion of the book—the chapters on "Elemental Arrangement" and "Elemental Property Transformation"—are missing, meaning that Rhodes cannot directly draw the Frost Rune.

But that doesn't matter.

Since we can't create elemental effects directly through runes, let's use the complete universal focusing loop on page 32 to brute-force detonate the [Low Temperature] attribute in the bottle.

The tip of the dagger pierced the surface of the glass bottle, the steel point scraping against the glass, making a teeth-grinding, fine sound.

Rod's hand-drawn lines are crooked, and the engravings are of varying depths, like a child's scribbles.

But as the final stroke closed, a faint, unstable blue light shone through the rough scratch.

This is the effect of the "Focus and Release" rune model—it can capture free-floating magic in the air like a funnel.

"It's done."

Rhodes clearly sensed that as external magic flowed into the bottle through the runes, the [Low Temperature] attribute, which was originally in an inert state, was being activated by the ugly rune, forming an extremely unstable elemental turbulence at the bottle's opening.

"Get down!"

Rhodes shouted a warning, his arm muscles bulging, and the glass bottle in his hand flew out and smashed into the center of the slime swarm.

The glass bottle traced a deep blue parabola in the air.

The bottle hits the target.

In that instant, extreme cold shattered the air structure, producing a cracking sound, which was amplified dozens of times by the narrow space.

With the point of impact as the singularity, a visible white cold wave erupted instantly, spreading rapidly in all directions in a circular shockwave.

The heat was instantly drawn away from the originally damp and stuffy passageway. Water droplets on the walls froze in an instant, turning into ice crystals that shattered, and the water on the floor froze into a smooth mirror.

The giant slime that was hit first didn't even have time to transmit nerve signals before its writhing gelatinous body froze on the spot.

The pale green, translucent body quickly turned cloudy and white, eventually solidifying into a hard, bluish-white, lifeless mass.

The remaining chill transformed into a ravenous predator, instantly devouring the entire slime swarm.

It took no more than three seconds.

What was originally a terrifying army of highly acidic soft tissues has now been transformed into a group of distorted, bizarrely artistic ice sculptures.

The passage fell silent, with only the white mist exhaled by the three people as they breathed drifting in the air.

Chiba poked his head out from under the cloak, his mouth so wide it almost dislocated his jaw.

Her gaze shifted back and forth between the ice sculptures and Rhodes, finally settling on the ordinary dagger in his hand, which was still dripping with condensation.

"...Is this also a family heirloom?"

"This is science... no, it's alchemy."

Rhodes exhaled a puff of white breath and examined his masterpiece.

Although the rune was drawn extremely poorly, resulting in an energy utilization rate of less than 50%, its destructive power was more than enough for these low-level monsters.

"Don't stand there, before they thaw, go up and smash them." Rhodes turned to look at Avira, who was still in a daze. "Remember, what we need is the core gel inside them. This excellent alchemical adhesive material is in high demand on the black market."

"yes!"

Avira quickly adjusted her stance, strode forward, and brandished her tower shield.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

A crisp, cracking sound echoed through the passageway.

Those physically immune monsters that had previously rendered even physical-type professionals helpless were now as fragile as inferior glass artifacts, crumbling into ice shards scattered all over the ground under the shield bash.

Rod followed behind, bending down to pick up a green crystal the size of a fingernail from a pile of broken ice.

[Strong Acid Gel Core]

Entry:

[Adhesive (White Common)]: High-quality alloy adhesive raw materials.

……

"Then," Rod flicked his wrist, tossing the crystal to Chiba, "this is the treasure I was talking about. Just this one is worth at least 50 six-cent coins."

Chiba hurriedly caught the cold crystal, his shock instantly replaced by the gold coin symbol.

"50 copper coins! There are at least 20 slimes here... that's 50 silver coins!"

She no longer cared about the cold or the dirt; she immediately pulled out a pre-prepared linen bag from under her cloak and rushed into the pile of crushed ice.

"Be careful not to step on it and break it!"

Rhodes watched the two busy people and looked down at the book "Basic Rune Analysis" in his hand.

"Knowledge changes destiny," he muttered to himself, "especially the destiny of monsters."

The first encounter was a complete victory.

But this is only the entrance to the basement level.

The prototype gear set is still deeper inside, in Zone C, where underground creatures are said to be surging up.

"Let's clean up the battlefield and move on." Rhodes put away his book and gripped the rough leather hilt of his sword again. "We still have a long way to go."