Ch.9: Slime King's Arrival! Wall of Debris!

As the group felt the terrifying mini-earthquakes under their feet, their faces all became a few shades paler. They wasted no time and quickly began returning to the entrance of the forest.

Liam felt a sense of oppression and anger well up inside of him as they ran through the forest. He didn't like the feeling of running away, even if the opponent was many times stronger than him, it wasn't a nice feeling. The others felt the same way but there was nothing could do as they were all too weak.

Although the Slime King contained half the prowess of the Sun Crow, it was just as difficult to deal with it as dealing with the Sun Crow for an obvious reason. Slimes can regenerate over time, their bodies are made of acid and jello(?) with amazing regenerative properties.

This was the reason why some alchemists replace the use of frenzy boar blood with the gel of slime when making a Clumerika Potion. If a person doesn't either kill a slime quickly or keep damaging an already injured spot, then the injury will heal within a matter of seconds. This is why people have mixed feelings on whether the Sun Crow or the Slime King is the most troublesome boss.

Not to mention a boss Slime King would be even worse. It contained 2/3rds of the Sun Crow's prowess along with its body's regenerative abilities. This is also why Liam and the others couldn't dream of beating the Slime King, at least not as they are right now.

After running for around a minute straight without stopping, the group could see a teacher looking up in shock and disbelief. Although they felt a small sense of security when they saw the teacher, it was immediately crushed by his expression.

The teacher had long brown hair that was put into a braided ponytail that rested on his left shoulder while he also wore glasses. He also had freckles, although mostly unnoticeable.

"Mr Bonzly!" Michael called out to the teacher, waking him from his daze. The teacher looked over and breathed a sigh of relief. Mr Bonzly was working as the substitute for the group's second class(Mr Hilbert's) until a new teacher was assigned. It was also widely known that Mr Bonzly wasn't that talented regarding combat capabilities.

"Y-You guys received the notification right?" Mr Bonzly was just as freaked out as Liam and the rest when the window appeared. Since he wasn't particularly strong, he had no chances of fighting the Slime King at all.

"Where are the other teachers?" Liam asked. Mr Bonzly looked startled for a second as he heard the question but quickly regained his composure as to not raise any suspicion and decided to play innocent.

"T-They said that they were g-going to check out the situation"! Mr Bonzly said before changing the subject.

"Hm? But they wouldn't do that until all of the students were accounted fo-"

"Anyways, are you few alright? Have you seen any other students while coming here?" -Mr Bonzly.

Mr Bonzly's breathing sped up as he began speaking again. Hitting the group with multiple questions was his way of taking their mind off of what he said previously.

As he was asking the group questions, they heard screaming in the near distance and turned to their right. There was a student in a tattered uniform and partially covered in a slime's slime. The student had a terrified expression plastered across his face as he ran in their direction.

"S-Slime! T-Too big! Too t-terrifying!" The student could hardly speak correctly as he ran desperately towards the group. It seemed like he had encountered the Slime King, although he should have known what was happening based on the window that appeared for everyone.

"Calm down, can you describe what happened?" Mr Bonzly tried his best to calm the terrified student down. After taking a few deep breaths and sitting down, the student finally calmed down.

"M-Me and my friends were hunting slimes and collecting the cores, but all of a sudden we felt terrifying earthquakes and decided to head back here. As we were running back, I heard one of my friends calling for help, it seemed like he was tangled in something so I tried to help him.

To my surprise, it turned out that there was a vine grabbing hold of his leg and no matter how hard I tried, the vine wouldn't budge. The longer I stayed there, the worse the earthquakes got until I saw a gigantic slime in the distance!

I was forced to leave one of my friends behind!" The student cried. Just as he was explaining his experience, the earthquakes stopped for a moment, alerting everyone. Liam looked around, yet he saw nothing, that was, until he looked up. When he looked up, what was displayed before him could only be considered magnificent.

The Slime King was in the air, apparently it jumped into the air, causing the earthquakes to stop, momentarily. Liam and the rest of the group watched as the Slime King quickly fell to the ground, sending a devastating shock wave of debris towards them.

"Everybody run!" Dean shouted as everyone began running for their lives. Who knew that a simple hunt in the SloC Forest would turn into something like this. It was exactly the same as the situation with the Sun Crow, only, there were more people.

Everyone present ran with all their strength, desperately trying to gain distance from the terrifying shock wave moving their way at an incredible speed.

Thanks to Liam's new stats, he managed to get further away from the shock wave than anyone else. Although the group noticed this, it felt kind of normal considering is Liam's small frame. It made perfect sense for him to excel in speed rather than strength.

The rest of the group along with Mr Bonzly and the other student quickly escaped the forest entirely, despite there being tons of students still within the forest. The only thing they could do was pray for the students.

Shortly after, in the distance, multiple students could be seen running full speed towards the exit of the forest with terrified expressions on their faces. Since only freshmen and teachers were present, there wasn't much they could do without the teachers' help. The only thing that seemed odd right now was the absence of all of the teachers except Mr Bonzly.

Just as the students were almost to the exit, the gigantic wall of debris was coming full speed from behind, intending to crash into all of the students without stopping. Most of the students expended all of their mana to increase their speed, barely managing to escape the forest, while some were given a boost by the wall of debris, although, they overshot the exit by a margin.

Liam and the others stared at this scene in shock. It was to be expected that such an amount of debris would come flying as the Slime King exceeded 1000cm. One thought that managed to solidify itself in Liam's head was that without the teachers' aid, everyone here would die without an ounce of resistance.

All of the students hurriedly retreated further back from the entrance of the forest in case the wall of debris would pass over it, which happened. The wall of debris washed over the entrance of the forest like a tsunami washing over a building, although half of its height was gone. If one of the students was adept in wind magic, then they'd just barely be able to hover over the wall of debris safely for a split second.

Since all of the students used their last bits of energy to escape the slime-made tsunami, they could no longer run.

Mr Bonzly, who watched everything happened let out a snicker under his breath, but his face paled as he watched the scene before him.

3 out of 7 of the teachers who escorted the students to the forest had arrived! They immediately cast wind magic to blow away the wall of debris, which worked marvelously. It was like watching a wave of water be pushed back by the wind! No matter how hard the debris pushed, it couldn't get past the teachers' wind magic.

"W-We're saved!"

Many students let out happy cheers as they watched their teachers fend off the wall of debris.