Danger Approaches

Zeeth and Page took the path to the right and were directed away from the main village, closer to the volcanoes. From what e could see, many of the buildings here were also a bit burnt and destroyed. The walls and ceilings of many houses had holes in them, many of the parts also looked like the black metal that they saw earlier.

"Is that what you mean by old traditions?"

"Um, no. That's not what I meant at all. I'm not sure what happened here, but this place didn't look like this before. What I meant by old fashioned was that everyone wore simple skirts and they use simple, flat electronic scanners instead of magical, full-body scanners. But it didn't look like this in my past life, many of the walls were made of stainless white steel and none of the houses were so destroyed."

"Huh. wonder what happened here then. I was wondering why they would choose to have houses with holes. I thought it was to allow the air to flow in and keep it cool, but that didn't make sense since the outside air was hot too."

"Yeah, I have no idea. Oh well, we gotta stay here for a few months while slowly getting closer to the volcano to get used to its heat. We're going to be moving much faster than normal people, so be prepared."

"Okay."

They got to the end of the path and arrived at an old hotel looking place with tall, red walls. Some parts of this were damaged too, but not nearly as much as the other houses. Only a few parts of the wall had turned black and metallic and there were no holes, which was good. They walked up to the sliding doors, which opened and led them into a small front lobby. A single long, white shelf stood in the middle of the room and a sign read, "VISITING HEAT RESISTANCE TRAINERS, TAKE A KEY CARD. WE NEED A 15 STYR DOWN PAYMENT AND 10 STYR FOR EACH NIGHT HERE." And below that was a small slot where you could scan your styr card. Right below that, it read in tiny words, "if you are a hunter tier B or up, admission is free as long as you scan your screen here to verify and sign a copy of our contract."

"This is what I meant by old fashioned, too. They don't even have self-moving robots, only key scanners and whatever. We don't need to pay, we just have to show our hunter license. I have tier B, you should be their C so you can just use the same room as me."

"Yeah. But what does the contract say?"

"Oh, basically that they can use your name and status as an advertisement. It looks really good for them if a high-level hunter comes to their place to train, so as long as you agree to have your face, name, and tier advertised, you can come free of charge. It's not bad, they only ever choose a few, you likely won't even be chosen. The contracts are sent out to us through the shelf after scanning our screens."

Page went to get a room first. He held up his screen to the machine and let it scan the barcode near the bottom. They waited for a few seconds before a paper was slid out of a small slit along with a pen and a small bottle of ink. He signed his name and printed his thumbprint on the paper in the tray before he pushed it back in and he was approved for a free stay. He carefully picked out key card 3.1 from one of the many on the shelf and swiped it, verifying that he was going to stay in that room. The paper said basically what Page had told him, that they could use him as an advertisement and whatnot.

"You know, a lot more of these cards were in use in my past life. There were a lot more people here in general, all wanting to increase their heat resistance. Now, only two of these cards are in use. And that's including us."

"Huh. Strange."

They walked up three flights of stairs to get to their floor, slightly sweating from all the walking and the heat as they pushed open the door to the room. Nowhere in the building did they have any air conditioning or fans because it was a place made to train for heat resistance. Anything to help make them cooler would be countering the original use. Although they did have a few single-use frost shooters. They were large containers filled with cool frost, meant to save people from dying of heat exhaustion if they get too hot.

The room had nothing but a single mat on the floor and a small cabinet. The walls were covered with etchings and layers of resolidified stone and cement as if to cover up the messes that years of visitors have caused.

"Get over here. What we need to do is live here for a bit until we get used to this place, then we can move to the building over there." Page pointed out the window from his room at a similar building a few miles away. "It's for the people who think this place isn't hot enough and want to get closer to the volcano. But first. Let's go to the courtyard, we can unleash all your slimes there and check to see which ones do the best against heat."

"Let's go." Zeeth was excited to go, he didn't want to stay here looking at these sad rooms anymore. They reminded him of the cage that the thieves he met in the forest were trapped in. Besides, he was finally able to test out the affinities of his slimes, which would be fun.

They ran backed own the stairs and burst open the backdoors, passing through the eerily empty halls that felt like they should be full of people. The courtyard was massive, they had a huge clearing since it was near active lava volcanoes. No one would want to build convenience stores here, business would be abysmal.

The floor was even redder and hotter here, it felt like they could cook a winged lions egg here.

"Alright, I think it's a good place to set your slimes free. Set them out 5 by 5, and from each 5 we select the ones that are doing the worst to be put back and keep going until we end up with the best few. Then we'll keep them out as we move forward."

"That sounds good, but wouldn't it take forever. I have a hundred of these guys. Let's just shoot them all out and put the worst ones back, there's enough space."

"Er, I'm not sure that's a great idea."

"Why not? Isn't it a lot faster? I can have the ones who feel they can't stand it anymore to come back to me and I'll get them back."

"Yeah, it sounds great, but what if someone comes and sees you?"

"You said it yourself, almost no one is in here. Even if they do see us, I just gotta cover my face and act natural. What are the chances that we even meet again?"

"Fine, let's do it. But if something bad happens, don't blame me."

"Alright, I won't. This is my idea and it's gonna be great!"

Zeeth pulled out all of the one hundred compressed slime balls from his robe pocket and threw them up in the air as he decompressed them. It was far easier to decompress them than to compress, it was like holding a spring down and letting a spring go.

All one hundred slime balls grew rapidly, bouncing into each other and bouncing far out as they did on the way over. But this time they weren't nearly as excited, while they were condensed the heat could hardly be felt. They were small orbs of super-condensed water, this much heat couldn't penetrate them. But now that they were big and soft, heat easily seeped to their outsides and they started light running water down their heads to cool off, making them look like they were sweating.

Page and Zeeth walked around, watching all the slimes to check if any were growing smaller too quickly. The slimes were actually doing pretty good, none had passed out or grown too small, although many did try to get Zeeths attention and ask to be turned back, they knew what he was thinking, and they wanted to take the test seriously for him. Even they didn't know their own attributes and this was how some could figure out.

From around the corner of the building, a single person stood, watching them with keen eyes. They clicked a small, purple button three times and left.

"Zeeth, I think this slime is starting to get smaller."