Ice spears and holy spears were being thrown at each other. The forest became a beautiful symphony of chaos with golden shards and ice crystals clashing against tree trunks. Jack was hiding behind one of the trunks.
He looked for an opportunity to hop onto the giant ogre.
But Jeanne was getting sloppier. Her spear of light was getting weaker and the snow ogre had pushed her back next to a frozen waterfall. It was a losing fight. Yet Jeanne managed to avoid fatal injuries so far. Maybe she could win. Maybe all Jack needed to do was distract.
Observing the beast's attack pattern, he found an opening after it throws two consecutive ice spears. The monster is open for a few seconds, giving enough time for the slime to approach.
So he waited. He bided his time.
Jeanne dodged one spear, then the second. A small grunt of pain escaped her as an ice shard grazed her arm.
There was the opening and he rolled.
He was a small, unassuming blur against the pristine snow, a rolling stone of grim determination, but the snow was thick and he sank with every revolution.
The monster's foot was going to be his new destination. Using a mound of snow to get a better velocity, Jack prepared to launch himself. A hero's entrance.
His wife noticed him from the corner of her eye.
"No! Idiot!"
Her focus faltered for a single, disastrous second.
The final spear launched. It was not aimed at Jeanne's heart or her head.
At Jack.
His tiny rolling body would be crushed into ice and no one would ever notice he existed.
Her decision was instant, a scream tearing from her throat, but not in fear. She threw herself in front of it. An ice spear pierced her arm, slicing it off.
Jack stopped, his mouth widened. Heaviness assaulted his stomach like a punch to the gut.
"Agh!"
Her scream echoed in the cold forest. Her blood covered Jack's tiny form. Jeanne laid limp with her remaining arm barely moving.
The snow-ogre let out a triumphant roar, raising its foot to finish the job and crush the life out of the priestess.
No.
No.
He had the upper hand. He had planned a perfect attack, following the pattern.
Yet she was the one who got her arm ripped off
Her sacrifice to protect him. Him.
Unconsciously he absored her blood. The metallic taste mixing with the raw iron from the nail within him.
[Condition Satisfied. Skill learned: Blood Absorption.]
[Prequisite Condition for 'Evolution Path: Blood Slime' met.]
[Hidden Evolution Path to 'Blood-Weapon-slime' requires the combination of 'Weapon Slime' and 'Blood Slime'.]
The ogre's massive foot came down.
"Do it."
[Mixing evolution paths is a sin against the divine order of progression.]
"I'll pay the price later!"
Jack was angry. This was the first time in this new world where he was truly angry. Not at Jeanne. Not at the church or the paladins but at himself. His stupidity got her killed; his mistake.
[Evolution Complete. Weapon Infusion skill evolved into Blood Forging skill.]
He had an innate knowledge of his new power.
The beast's foot was close to crushing the fallen Jeanne.
For a moment Jack was afraid. The kind of fear he had when he was 12, being interrogated by the detectives. But this fear he used to fuel him, to be strong.
A nail made of blood emerged from Jack's slime, but this one was different. The iron from the rusty nail merged with his slime-blood then with Jeanne's blood that had traces of holy magic. The resulting creation was an alloy. Something new. Something deadly.
He compressed himself. Pulling all his mass into a single, dense point. Then he shot out. No, launched. He was a living, breathing, vengeance-filled harpoon.
The slime harpoon hit the ogre in its chest, pushing it backward. And forming a head-size gaping hole where a heart once beat.
Jack went through the creature like a cannonball through paper.
Blood. The ogre's black blood started seeping inside him via blood absorption. His stats went up.
After making sure the monster was dead, he rushed to Jeanne, who hadn't moved since she took a hit for him; because of him. Guilt crept on his conscience.
He tried to stop the bleeding with his body, just as he had before, pressing against the gruesome stump of her shoulder. He pressed so hard he almost burst himself.
"It's useless, slug," she whispered, her face as pale as the snow around her. Her one remaining hand, still gloved, trembled. She made no move to stop him.
Her words caused him to keep replaying what had happened like a broken record. The only way to save her would be to buy the heal-slime evolution.
Noticing his gaze at her hand, she managed a weak smirk.
"Don't even think about it," Jeanne whispered.
"You don't owe me anything. I just didn't want a dumb demon to die."
Despite her harsh words, Jack's core throbbed with an unfamiliar sensation.
"My name is Jack Der Quiver."
He announced, each word a declaration of personhood, an answer to the "demon" and "slug." She was not dying for an anonymous blob; she had saved Jack.
Jeanne's eyes widened slightly, the ice-blue of her irises stark against her snow-white skin.
"Jack... Der Quiver," she mumbled, her consciousness floating away as if in sync with the blood flowing out of her. "That's... a silly name."
Her eyes closed, her breathing growing more and more shallow.
[Jeanne D'Amain will die of blood loss in less than two minutes.]
"I won't have enough points..."
He was at a hundred. He needed two hundred for the heal-slime evolution. Quickly, he removed her gloves. Her nails were like little half-moons from a long exposure to holy magic. As soon as her bare skin was exposed, lightning flashed in the clouds gathering overhead.
[Host the lightning will kill you if she dies while you're holding her hand.] the system warned him. It wasn't a threat. It was a fact.
Fear of dying wasn't high on his list now. Instead a burning desire to save her overwhelmed him.
One minute left.
"Can I sacrifice skills, levels, anything for points? " he asked with a frantic squeak.
[Not possible. Handholding points are divine energy of the highest magnitude. You'd have to sacrifice planets to generate it artificially.]
His wife's face lost the faintest bit of red it had left.
Her hand, her severed arm were still next to him.
Walking over to it, he enveloped her arm up to the hand. Holding a severed arm for points was the definition of sick, but this was life and death. It was a desperate attempt.
Then he used blood absorption to absorb her entire arm, including the hand. But the taste was nothing he had experienced. It tasted divine yet painful.
"Tell me I get the points!" he wailed.
[The arm has become detached. She is no longer its owner. Host gains nothing from the hand.]
Tears dripped from his slime form. Jeanne's soul was fading.
[Host gained 100 points for absorbing divine sigils of the Goddess Of Purity.]
The system declared, as if he had just found a shiny nickel on the ground.
Without questioning, he bought the heal-slime evolution. The one he had previously thought was useless. Hoping he wasn't too late, he tried to heal her.