Once they were close enough for Alan to take a shot, he did so, striking the slime, tearing it apart. It simply reformed, then started to make its way towards the party with small hopping motions. It wasn’t very fast. Alan continued to fire at the slime, aiming at its red ball, which Eve hypothesized to be its nucleus. Unfortunately, due to the chaotic nature of the nucleus’s movement, Eve couldn’t predict its movements, making it difficult to hit.

Five shots later, Alan finally managed to hit it, and with a small pop the slime exploded, its contents splattering onto the stone walkway.

“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.