The Slime Doesn't Die from Mana Transfer-Chapter 35 : Corrupted

“Phew…”
Rozelite wiped the fine sweat from her brow and felt as if energy channels in her body had been cleared; the oppressive weight that had sat on her chest vanished, and she suddenly felt refreshed.
She rubbed her cheek against the nearby tentacle.
“Thank you, Mr. Slime. I feel so much better now.”
“Everyone has pressure. Everyone meets mental barriers for psychological reasons; when that happens you should vent appropriately — it’s good for the body.”
Russell gave the tentacle a satisfied shake.
“You should have done this sooner.”
“Yes, you were absolutely right.”
Rozelite smiled as she turned to look at Anna, who had been beaten into a trembling, pork-headed mess.
【HP：22】
That truly counted as a candle guttering in the wind.
Unfortunately — perhaps because of the magic he had sown himself — the status effect 【Poisoned】 that had been on the status bar had disappeared; it looked like she wouldn’t die anytime soon.
“All right.”
Rozelite stepped over and planted a foot on Anna’s head.
“You’re a demon, right? Be honest: how did you get past the Great Barrier?”
Anna lifted her head slightly.
“I—”
“Hm?”
Rozelite frowned.
“Did I tell you to raise your head? Put it down!”
“S-sorry, I won’t dare again…”
Anna sounded as if she was about to cry.
“From now on, wherever you see me, Rozelite, keep your head bowed and act like a decent person!”
Rozelite grabbed Anna’s collar and said coldly, “Understood?!”
Anna nodded so hard it looked like she was being pounded.
“I-I understand…”
Russell: “……”
Maybe that was a bit heavy-handed?
Who on earth had tuned our pure, naïve little princess to be like this?
“All right, let’s get to the point.”
Russell spoke through Rozelite.
“Rozelite, I wanted to ask earlier. Does that Great Barrier you mentioned really stop all demons? Are there no exceptions?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think anything is absolutely one hundred percent.”
Rozelite shook her head.
“Sometimes I hear my father and brothers talk about demons crossing the border in the frontier regions, but the numbers are tiny. Sometimes you might hear about it only once every year or two.”
“So there are exceptions, but it does block most demons.”
Russell understood Rozelite’s meaning. The Great Barrier was, after all, merely a product of magic. Since it was made with magic, it could be undone by magic. Because the kingdom had been maintaining it, even when demons managed to sneak through, those incidents were accidental and couldn’t be systematically exploited before the kingdom plugged the loophole. It was like a bug in software: a program with zero bugs was rare; you couldn’t stop people from trying to exploit loopholes, but you could fix the bug quickly once you discovered it.
“So this one exploited a loophole in the Barrier and tunneled through from the Demon Realm?”
Russell asked.
Anna shook her head.
“No. I flew straight over.”
“Flew—”
“This is impossible!”
Rozelite shook her head decisively.
“The Great Barrier stretches east to west across the entire Continent and divides it north and south. That’s why it’s called the Great Barrier. Its height reaches two thousand five hundred meters; this design was explicitly to prevent winged races from forcing a crossing by flight. Even the strongest recorded winged warrior couldn’t fly higher than two thousand meters…”
The winged races took pride in soaring like birds, but there were limits.
“I can,” Anna said, head bowed; though she kept a posture of submission the entire time, pride still threaded through her tone.
“Can you just say you can and that makes it so?”
Rozelite’s voice carried displeasure.
Anna’s body trembled at the words and she dared not speak.
Russell did not get hung up on that claim. First, Anna’s assertion might be true: a level-9 【Flight】 skill at that height — he didn’t know its exact weight in value, but it was probably top-tier. Second, more importantly than how she got past the Great Barrier, Russell wanted to know why she had crossed it.
A demon had come this far into human territory. There was no way it was just for sightseeing. On the surface she seemed harmless, but she had staged a convincing “play-dead” ambush that had nearly taken Rozelite’s life; even Russell had been deceived. He wouldn’t believe for a single punctuation mark that she’d simply overshot while flying and accidentally dropped into human lands. Maybe she had a heavy mission: silently infiltrate to overturn Rhine Kingdom’s regime, break the Great Barrier for the demons, and prepare a widescale invasion — an epic saga of heroic proportions might be about to begin.
“Tell the truth. Why did you come here?”
Russell said through Rozelite.
“Also, what caused those wounds on you?”
“My wounds were from fighting a party of adventurers in the forest earlier,” Anna said softly.
“As for why I came… that’s a longer story.”
“Wait… adventurers in the forest?”
Russell’s senses sharpened at the clue.
“A party of two men and a woman?”
“Yes. One man was very tall and used a greatsword. Another hid in the trees and used a bow. The woman threw magic items and similar projectiles.”
Recalling that forest battle made Anna shudder. At first glance it had seemed a loose, disorganized little group. But when she tried to ambush them and quickly take out the most troublesome opponent, she was met with a storm of counterattack. The archer who could detect and counter wind magic in an instant was one thing; the towering man was what truly terrified her. He wielded a nonsensically huge weapon with one hand and possessed explosive power—a monster. Even one-on-one, Anna didn’t think she could easily beat any one of them.
“I see…”
Russell nodded at her answer. It seemed they had made the right choice earlier by not confronting that adventuring party. If it had been one-on-one, Russell could have used preemptive strikes and reckless mana bombardment to win. But that group had clear teamwork and cooperation skills. They covered each other’s weaknesses and reinforced strengths; they would be extremely troublesome. He’d have to keep that in mind. Reality wasn’t an MMO where level alone decided everything.
“So, what exactly is your objective?”
Rozelite crossed her arms and pressed her booted foot against Anna’s head, pushing her face into the cold snow.
“Answer honestly! If you dare lie—”
“—we’ll kill her!” Russell growled viciously.
“—or we’ll turn you into a humanoid nursery for slime breeding!”
“?”