Tentacon

The son glanced around at the soldiers and said, "Dad."

The pudgy man glared at the soldier and whispered, "I know." He then turned to the captain of the team and told him, "Hey, I'll get my identification from my bag and show you that I'm a real merchant."

"I will allow it. Be fast."

"Alright, be right back." He ran back to his tent and loud rummaging sounds. Too loud. Suddenly, an arrow, almost too fast for anyone to see, shot straight out of the tent.

The arrow coated in a golden glow and tipped with a blue metal shot right into the head of the knights' captain. No one but Zeeth saw the arrow coming out since he could sense the mana that came from it just a single second before it was shot out. And that was after he had heightened his mana detection senses through every hair and fiber in preparation for a fight. in order to build up that much mana and to hide that much mana from Zeeth just a single second before release was damn impressive. This man must be something incredible to do.

The knights' captain withered away, along with all of his glowing armor and weapons.

"IT'S A TENTACON! ATTACK!"

The moment the arrow entered the withering body, the son pulled out a sword embedded with a yellow glow and started to cut apart the heads of the knights. Whatever part the sword came into contact with started to wither, although not as fast as the first one that was shot with an arrow.

The fat man jumped out of the tent holding a magnificent, golden bow laced with several purple strings and black patterns thinly running through it and he relentlessly shot arrows at whatever he could. The withering soldiers were coming back up again already but this time, it wasn't a human. It was just a grey blob that tried to strike the others.

A few others joined the fray immediately, they were the ones who realized these were the dolls of a tentacon and they were the ones who faced off against the thieves first.

The others realized what was going on and all jumped in one by one. Even the thieves realized what was going on and got ready to fight. It took them all just a few seconds to get into action. They were all brave enough to be traveling in the forest, they all had enough experience in fighting.

"Don't use weapons imbued with anything less than a gold-ranked gem! Anything else would do nothing! If you don't have a gold-ranked weapon, just try to tear them up from the ground or blow it up!"

"These things are just it's tentacles that it used to copy humans that it's met before, the main body is underground. This one must be a newborn, it was only using 10 simple soldiers easily found around the city. Don't focus too much on these, someone starts scanning underground and look for its body."

Amongst all the chaos, Zeeth finally found an opening to get his slime back. He jumped to the back and tapped his slime. Right where it was tapped, stretch marks in the shape of a vortex started to form.

It looked like a whirlwind formed on the slime as it got rapidly smaller. The top started to fall lower while the bottom was lifted up. The entire slime shrunk until it was just a tiny bead in Zeeths hand. He grabbed it and stuck it into his slime suit like it was normal, but that was the weight of a blob of water as tall as a tree. That single slime would be heavier than carrying a tree, and that was only a single mid-sized slime. He could see why this technique was forbidden. A single one of these beads could cause immense damage if a simple accident occurred or if it got into the hand of idiots.

He looked over at the group of people still trying to fight the tentacon. They were still yelling tips around and cutting at the weird blobs that the tentacles made and a bunch was trying to dig at the ground using various and very ineffective magic attacks. This showed him just how incredible Afir really was in comparison to these guys.

"Tarud, shoot at the bottom that's connected to the ground! That's where the solid tentacles are at!" a lady yelled at the fat man holding the golden bow and his attacks quickly went for the bottom. This time, dark orange blood came out instead of the blobs just withering and the tentacon finally started dodging the attacks by moving around.

Zeeth had actually noticed something strange about those knights from when he was up in the tree. The glow on the armor and weapons of these men were different from the glow of the swords of the others. The others had vein-like glows that stemmed from a gem but the glow from the knights had nothing of the sort. The pattern of their glow was watery that didn't stem from anywhere and when the men were running at him, there wasn't a single time that they left contact with the floor, which was really weird. Usually, at many points of a run, both of the feet would leave the ground to go fast and naturally.

It turns out they had to stay in contact with the floor so that the tentacon could keep its attached tentacles hidden to the bottom of their feet.

Even if they hadn't attacked, he would have. They just seemed too unnatural. But now that he knew they had it figured out, 'Should I just leave them to it?'

...No. They were clearly having trouble finding it, and having the main body underneath the floor must've been how it found him. It was able to scan the battlefield from below and detect him.

It would be a good learning experience, he had never fought or eaten this creature before.

He jumped to the center of the battlefield, boosted himself upwards by swinging the weight of his slime beads in one arm, and swung it back down as he fell, creating a giant crack straight down the ground and leaving a pretty impressive crater.

His force sent cracks all over the place and the ground trembled like an earthquake. The thieves all lost their balance, but everyone else looked at him to check out who was able to cause such a tremor. Even the tentacon was surprised since the blobs shook slightly and a bit of the tentacle that was connected to them was revealed.

The blobs continued to attack the people by thrusting spikes like spears at them.

Seeing the blobs gave him an idea. Just punching the ground really hard a bunch of times would be too much work, there was no way to be sure where the main body was. But there was a direct way to it. The tentacles. He dashed over to one of the blobs at the end of a tentacle, grabbed it from the bottom, and yanked up as hard as he could.

The tentacle didn't come out all the way, but he pulled out a lot. All the other tentacles were yanked down a bit, but before the tentacon could pull the tentacle back, Zeeth grabbed the bottom again and pulled even harder, this time he wrapped his arms and legs more tightly with slimes and had them pull up as well and used the help of his slimes reinforcing his movements and body.

With a little more force and properly balanced slime weight, he was able to pull the entire thing out. All the other tentacles were quickly jerked under and the tentacle that he was holding started to rip a little so the tentacon let go of the other tentacles to prevent that.

Thus, he was able to pull out the whole thing and he found a pink, bulbous head that was freckled with purple dots. It angrily spits out wet dirt at Zeeth from its long tube mouth and Zeeth easily dodged it by tilting his head, but in that short moment, it had blocked his view and that allowed the tension to pull out its other tentacles and wrapped it around Zeeths head.

Everyone else gasped, Tarud tried to get in to help, but all they heard was a loud yelp from the tentacon as a loud biting was heard.

"D-did he just bite a tentacon?"

Everyone froze as the tentacon quickly unwrapped its tentacles and revealed Zeeth chewing on one of its tentacles, still attached.

"Pleh-pleh-ploo. That tastes terrible." Zeeth released the tentacon from his jaws which revealed a red and swollen bite mark and complained about the dirt that is tracked into his mouth.

The tension tried to squirm away from Zeeth while crying in terror by digging into the ground, but his grasp enhanced with slimes was just too tight.

He wasn't sure what to do with it so he looked at the other people around him and asked, "How do I prepare this as a dish?"

The tentacon froze for a second when it heard that and started to cry and struggle even harder to get away from Zeeth. Huh, it seemed to know what those words meant.

"Oh, um. We don't usually eat it. We kill it then cut it up into nice chunks and sell the remains to others for money. The skin makes for some good under armor and the meat is used to feed larger and stronger animals since it is so tough to chew."

"Hmmm. I'll hold it down for now."

Zeeth would just use his slime to entrap the monster but before he left, Afir told him to never reveal to other people that he has a hundred slimes tamed and under his control. He was told to hide them even while fighting unless it was a life or death situation because hiding his full power was always wise. Revealing his slimes would also be dangerous to his well-being and he was told to only fight using brute force and lightly using slime as a thin layer of protection or support which would train his body to become more accustomed to close combat fighting. He was supposed to tell people that his skill was the body and muscle strengthening in order to make his power seem normal. His tattoo was even painted over to look like an arm bulging with muscles.

He slammed the tentacon down once more and tried to punch its head to kill it but Tarud said, "Ah, please don't kill it now. The skin and meat start to deteriorate very quickly after being killed, it's good to sell it live or freshly cut up so that people can use the proper tools to preserve and work on the hide." Zeeth took note of that and knocked it out but didn't kill it completely.

"Thank you very much for taking care of the tentacon for us. Without you, many of us here would have died or been severely injured." Tarud walked up to him as he let go of the bow which flew back to the tent as if it always wanted to go back there and all the others surrounded him to see who it was that took out the tentacon so easily. "Would you like me to pay you for your services? Here, please take this. It's a disc worth 30 styr's."

'This man is likely a money hunter. Some random person who had been dishonorably kicked from the Order for doing something nasty and is going around the forest hunting animals to eat and making the occasional cash by saving a bunch of people from some monster that they likely planted there. Horrible people, the thirty styr's should get rid of this guy.' Tarud was still wary of Zeeth. He was some random man who was hiding in the trees watching them until he was outed by the tentacon so his suspicions weren't unwarranted.

Zeeth was reaching out to take the disc, interest and curiosity got to him and all he wanted was to examine the disc. But just as he was about to take it, he remembered what Afir had said. Don't accept the first thing that someone else is offering out of the kindness of their heart 'cause of manners, or something like that.

"No, I can't. The disc is yours, I can't take it."

"Oh, well I insist. It's to thank you."

"No, really, I can't take it. I'm just going to rest up and keep running."

"Running? To where?"

Tarud eyed him up and down, 'Running from crime, more like it. Well, what does he want from us then, if not money? 30 styrs should be a lot for a criminal on the run. Is he trying to haggle for even more? Oh, he's a tricky one, isn't he?'

"To Jarlon."

"Jarlon, you say? Isn't that at least two weeks away by foot?"

"Is it? I don't know. I was told I could get there in a few days by running."

"Huh, really? How fast can you run?"

"Um. I'm not really sure. My master told me that I could get there in a few days."

'Huh, my pocket watch isn't ringing at all. Is everything this guy saying true?' his pocketwatch of truth. From a glance, it seemed to be a normal watch, but if the pocket watch senses someone lying nearby, it will shiver, and depending on the severity of the lie to the person lying, the harder it will shake. It measures the various symptoms that humans show when lying and shakes according to those symptoms, how strong and how many there are. Tarud decided to ask some more to determine how trustworthy he was, "How many days have you been running so far? And why are you trying to get to Jarlon?"

"I've been running for less than a day. And I want to get there because I want to experience city life." Zeeth knew he was sharing some information that he shouldn't be sharing, and he was getting dangerously close to telling too much, but he had hardly talked to anyone over the past few months and even when he was with his master most of his time was spent in the forest or fighting and had barely any human interaction, so his little talk with this little merchant was entertaining.

"May I ask what you are doing? You seem to be carrying some pretty serious stuff." Zeeth specifically looked for the bow that's power had even avoided his detection. This made him realize that he still had a long way to go and he really wanted to inspect it. All he had was a lot of strength that the master had forced him to learn so that he could carry all of his slimes and some slimes that he couldn't even use.

'Only one day? Then he's probably not some money hunter. And he sounds like a really naive person too. He doesn't sound like a thief.' All his years of exploring the world and interacting with all sorts of people had honed his senses for telling who was what kind of person simply by listening to their voice and their way of talking. Zeeth talked like he knew nothing and was always curious about the world. He didn't seem to have an arrogant bone in his body and seemed to be easily convinced. He reminded him of an inexperienced child trying to learn about the world.