After Inkaro effortlessly pushed the large door open enough to leave a sizable gap for the group to squeeze their way through, Yuuvia, G.Galore, and he ducked their way through the boss room. As they snuck away from the entrance, they scurried over to one of the many pillars, evading any slimes along the way and alerting them, as they avoided drawing unwanted attention too soon. From door to pillar, the short journey took about five seconds of non-stop running.

  It was a fairly large room, constructed from the same bricks as the rest of the upper dungeon floors, only some sporting crystalline engravings embedded into them that resembled a simplistic slime design. On the topic of the room itself, its layout was unusually uniform, to Yuuvia anyway: the outer section of the boss room with the centre rectangle section having a slight depression in it from which a deep pool of opaque bluey slime was situated.

  Every so often, these engravings would let out a flickering glow before a slime, ranging from the size of a fist to that of a beach ball, would come squeezing its way out of the wall before plopping on the floor with an amusing "plap".

  From observing the engravings, the duo identified the three types of slimes that would be formed from the many engravings that bore their resemblance: the normal cyan ones, uncommon blue ones, and a rare deep blue one. Yuuvia also noted that only a single instance of the rare slime type was ever present in the room at any given time. Other than them appearing to be the boss's direct minions, the only thing about these slimes that allowed them to stand out from those in the hallways, to Yuuvia, was their unusual lack of a mana core and instead a random trinket/treasure.

  Of all the slimes present in the room, the boss slime was naturally the sole monster with a mana core, making it easily identifiable as the dungeon's first encounterable boss, if its size over the other slimes didn't give it away.

  It was a boulder-sized, deep blue slime with a diameter of roughly twenty centimetres. Around its body, it has a thick, blue gelatinous slime chain. Inside its body, it has a blue, pea-sized mana core and is filled with a fair amount of treasure stashed away within its squishy embrace.

  The size of its mana core suggested the monster's rank was between E and D. Thinking more intently on the thought, Inkaro leaned toward it being E rank seeing how every other slime so far shared the rank of E. Then he racked his brain away, giving it a good shake with his hands as he tried to unjumble the non-grimoire-related piece of info from within the sea of grimoire knowledge that was his mindscape. Such a task was surprisingly easy, thanks to some ultra-subtle whispers from G.Galore as she mimicked Inkaro's voice to disguise her assistance.

  "A baron slime? I suppose that means the higher floor bosses with all be noble-themed until we get to a king and queen slime," Inkaro jested as G.Galore floated beside him while carrying her fellow grimoire in her purple mana ribbon hands.

  His comment, mixed with the use of an official-sounding name for the slime boss, did wonders to sully Yuuvia's mood, ensuring the mental enforcement of her unease that her reconnaissance was a waste of time, with how Inkaro made it sound like the guy already knew about it. "And here I thought my teacher was joking when he said a baron slime looked like a mobster."

  The noble girl felt a wave of consolation and reassurance well up in her. Hearing the guy's words ring in her mind gave her nothing short of a soul-elevating liberation from her worries, on the basis that her scouting hadn't been a waste of time. Her face was one of pure, self-gratifying joy, not too dissimilar from that of a child when she received praise from her parents' own mouths instead of it being passed along by a servant.

  Catching herself from almost looking like an idiot from using her face to make a dumb expression, Yuuvia felt like scoffing. But she refamed from doing so, not wishing to muddy either of the two's focus by letting Inkaro know she was overthinking things again: "Okay... my reconnaissance informed me that slime pool at the centre of the room acts like a form of healing zone, so unless we can get the baron slime off it or hinder its connection to the boss, we won't be defeating it outside of an overkill attack."

  "And I take it using one of these overkill attacks should be avoided?"

  "...well, naturally. If we go overboard, the mana core would most likely end up destroyed," Yuuvia grumbled disapointedly, whilst anxiously checking her various mana cartridges were properly socketed to her staff. Inkaro nodded, to which G.Galore parted their ribboned hands. Following its fellow girmoire's movements, Shadeful Tribute pryed its covers open with enough vigour to give someone the impression it had some form of sentience like G.Galore. It's pages methodically flick one after another before abruptly stopping mid-turn, like it missed something, and slowly unturning a few pages until reaching the intended pair of pages.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "That spell, huh?" Inkaro murmured to himself, bringing a hand to his chin in contemplative amusement as he inspected the spell G.Galore chose for him.

  "What are you yammering about?" Yuuvia murmured, speaking in a hushed whisper while peering around the side of the pillar, keeping an eye on the baron slime.

  "Just that G.Galore seems insistent I use one of Shadeful Tribute's 'Death' oriented spells," Inkaro said nonchalantly while lightly reading the syntax with his finger, ensuring the output of the spell won't leave the room as anything other than a room.

  Not bothering to even turn away from her observation of the baron slime, Yuuvia mentally groaned as the heavy burden from being capable of common sense began to suddenly weigh on her, both in mind and body: "...I'll just pretend you said something moderately normal just now."

  Yet another outlandish prompt had weasled its way from Inkaro's mouth to her ears. The noble girl could only groan, rubbing the bridge of her nose in reluctant indignation. She almost wanted to straight-up give up on the boss, leave the room, and just hunt the normal slimes to alleviate the panging headache she was slowly gaining. The dreadful sensation was effortlessly worsened by the thought that Lizu not only deals with such events on a daily basis but also seems unquestionably unfazed by Inkaro's Inkaroness. It almost scared the noble girl that Lizu might be equally as unorthodox as Inkaro, but just better at hiding it. She shivered a little at catching herself using the term 'Inkaroness' outside of a mocking context.

  Yuuvia shivered like she was in the middle of a blizzard, the few thin hairs on her body standing at attention, before managing to find her voice, as timid as it had become: "I'll... no. You deal with getting the barron slime off the slime pool, I'll freeze if, and then we'll dispatch of it before it can thaw. Simple."

  "Rilo, could you-"

  "Regected! Using Spatial Severance would be boring! Vetoed!" G.Galore bellowed at the top of their nonexistent lungs. With a deep groan, the result of the grimoire's actions finally broke Yuuvia's resolve before she slumped her shoulders and hung her head lower than said shoulders, acting like every bit of her strength had simply dissipated into the wind.

  Why would a bratty outburst be the final nail to get under Yuuvia's skin? Was it the shame from seeing a younger version of herself in the grimoire? No, the real reason was so much simpler: their presence had been oh so unceremoniously broadcast to every single slime in the room.

  None of the slimes, excluding the baron slime, which remained slouched and lounging on its slime pool, wasted any time in propelling themselves right at the delving duo like slippery and malleable projectiles.

  Yuuvia swung her head up as she heard an oddly familiar, conductive crackle. The familiarity wasn't immediately apparent, but the moment she laid eyes on the magic pouring out from Shadeful Tribute, Yuuvia's memory from quite some time ago resurfaced, just like an embarrassing memory the moment someone is trying to go to bed.

  Mini darts of dark coppery mist pierced the airborne slimes, imparting each and every one of the slimes with rigid ripples, followed by them exploding into wobbly chunks of gelatin that crumbled to dust long before they could've hoped to reach the floor.

  "First wave eliminated. Accuracy: one hundred percent. Brattiness: incalculable!" Morilore and G.Galore announced in perfect harmony, "Prepare the second volley from Father's mana reservoir, Me."

  She was stunned into silence, not from the display of such effortless dispatching without going overboard by even a hair. No, she was taken aback by something much more personal; she'd seen this they spell on the same day she met that imposing individual in her childhood. For a second, Yuuvia considered the possibility of the imposing individual and Inkaro being one in the same; she genuinely did. However, that idea was quickly snuffed out of her mind as she recalled the individual who saved her that night was something Inkaro could never be: a member from one of the demon races.

  After a weak rub of her left temple, Yuuvia gave in, resigning herself to whatever obscene nonsense Inkaro would pull next and beyond even that. She actually found herself snickering, just a tiny bit, through her teeth.

  "It's always one thing after another with you, isn't it? Honesty, using demon magic; are you trying to be secretive and discrete, or not?"

  "If it's any sort of condolence, Lizu looked like she was about to die when I should the spell I made for this grimoire," Inkaro remarked cheekily as he flicked a cyan slime away with a magically reinforced flick of his finger. Although the noble girl didn't say if the reveal enlightened her mood, she didn't have to say anything; the greedy grin that leaned towards ecstasy on her face said it all. She was delighted.

  "I think you mean consolation, I'm not going to be dead any time soon, but I will concede my mood certainly has elevated. Not to the level I would've been had I been paired with Prince Myhail, but getting to hear embarrassing escapades of Lizuranti is a close second," Yuuvia snapped back playfully, her tone still that of noble practice and elegance. She followed up her comment by placing a fairly strong jab of her staff into Inkaro's side, to which he didn't flinch, thanks to G.Galore using physical reinforcement on her creator: "Now, shall we dispense some much-needed discipline on these mentally empty balls of nutrients? I'd rather refrain from ending up below these things on the pecking order known as the food chain. Understand, Inkaro?"