Ugh. That sll. No wonder Heroes get paid big—why’d you even give that brain to that man, Adam? Are you trying to act cool?
Adam stepped through the white portal and imdiately felt the change. The air was almost... acidic. So thick that it made his throat burn.
He now stood in a cave. Massive. The walls curved upward into darkness, and unlike the previous cave Adam had been in, the darkness extended... into more darkness.
The only source of light was the portal behind him, but that was even light. Leaks don’t really glow, no.
He stepped forward, and the floor squelched under his boots.
"Hm...?" A wet splat echoed from above.
Adam looked up just as a translucent mass dropped from the ceiling, landing inches from his face. More followed. Dozens of them, each the size of a basketball, plopping down like rotten fruit.
Adam!
Adam quickly stepped back, and the slis hit the ground and imdiately began moving toward him, leaving trails that hissed against the stone. One sli rolled directly into his path. He stepped on it. The creature burst, spraying acid across his leg. His pants dissolved instantly, skin following seconds later.
The wound sealed before he took his next step.
And soon, light flashed behind him. He glanced, and Beatrice and Harvey materialized through the portal with flashlights on their armor.
"Jesus Christ," Harvey muttered, taking in the sight of Adam surrounded by dozens of approaching slis.
More slis surged toward the entrance, drawn by the two.
"Not even a single rest?!"
"Focus."
Beatrice reacted instantly, raising her hand. Wind exploded outward from her palm, flattening the nearest creatures against the cave walls. They splattered like water balloons, but half of them began reforming imdiately due to their cores still being intact.
Harvey positioned himself between Beatrice and the advancing mass.
He rushed into the slis, his incredibly flexible fra allowing him to dodge most of the acid splashes—no. Flexible wasn’t even the right word for it. Harvey’s body was almost like... rubber.
When one sli wrapped around his arm, he used his snake-like flexibility to coil around three more, crushing their cores simultaneously. Acid coated his armor, eating through the tal plating, but his movents never slowed.
At the sa ti, Beatrice swept her arm in a wide arc. Compressed blades of air sliced through the slis that Harvey couldn’t kill, bursting them at the sa ti. The cave filled with the sound of popping bubbles and hissing acid.
The two moved efficiently, and each of their movents covered the other. But their armor was corroding. Harvey’s gauntlets showed bare tal where the acid had eaten through the protective coating. Beatrice’s boots smoked where sli residue clung to them.
"There are too many of them," Beatrice called out, launching another wind blade. "We need a change of tactic."
Harvey crushed two more slis, then noticed the ground beneath his feet... squirming. "Uh... sothing’s happening."
Ahead of them, Adam continued walking forward. Just moving deeper into the dark cave—using whatever light the two brought with them.
A sli the size of a cow rolled down from a hole above, landing directly on top of Adam. It engulfed him completely, his silhouette visible for a mont before disappearing entirely.
Adam didn’t resist as the acid dissolved his skin. He reached inside the sli blindly, feeling for the dense core he knew had to be there.
His fingers closed around sothing solid, and he crushed it.
But as the large sli burst into liquid, more slis piled onto him imdiately. From Beatrice’s position, Adam simply vanished under a writhing mass of translucent bodies.
Harvey started forward. "We need to—"
Beatrice grabbed his arm. "Wait."
The slis began dying from the inside. Adam was just crushing the cores while the small slis ate him—and soon, he grabbed the core of the last sli on his shoulder, tugging on the core and crushing it.
Adam erged from all this partially dissolved, his left arm nothing but bone from the elbow down, half his face missing. But, once again, already healing as he just continued to walk forward.
"Sothing’s happening!"
And as if sensing the threat, the slis that were also attacking Harvey and Beatrice started to retreat. The floor... also retreating along with them.
No, the floor flowed with the.
"What’s... happening?" Adam asked as he waited for the two Heroes. The three watched as the slis began to rge into larger and larger masses—but not... in the sa shape as the sli Adam had fought before.
Instead, they filled the entire path—almost like... a river, in a way.
Beatrice was about to say sothing, but a sudden pulse whispered from behind them. A certain... pressure. She quickly looked back, and the portal was starting to wriggle and fluctuate.
"I knew it," she muttered. "This Leak is going to level up if we don’t clear it fast."
"...That can happen?" Adam blinked.
"Yes!" Harvey rushed forward to do sothing, but he couldn’t really do anything against the mass blocking their path. "Fuck! I’m useless here!"
Beatrice launched a barrage of attacks. But her wind lost effectiveness as the surface area beca too large, and the sli’s cores began moving deeper into this massive river.
And so, once again, Adam did the only thing he could do... seeing as he was the only one who actually could do sothing.
He marched onward.
"What are you doing, man?!" Harvey’s eyes turned wide as he watched Adam step inside the blob. "Even soone like you can’t survive sothing like that!"
Adam didn’t care and let himself sink. The sli closed over his head, cutting off air, light, and sound. Acid burned faster than before, concentrated by the pressure.
But, like a trigger, his regeneration matched the rate of his disintegration.
Sli pressure crushed him inward. Ribs snapped. Reset. Snapped again. His spine compressed, bones grinding together before healing. He used the broken limbs as leverage, using them as hooks on the floor and walls while tearing through the sli by force.
The cores that were moving to converge burst around him, turning into liquid—and very soon...
...Adam was literally swimming across this river of acid.
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