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’Oh, those poor kids...’

’I might’ve traumatized them with that kind of defeat.’

Ren would be the first one to admit that he went a little vicious in that match.

This was one thing that he discovered the moment he completely accepted this new identity and this new world of his. In his previous life, he probably would’ve never been this vicious. He used to be forgiving and accommodating, even to his enemies. But here, he’s got no qualms squishing vulnerable parts of human bodies with his bare hands just to get the job done.

Sure, technically, this is VR, but still...

Anyway, that’s just how it is, he supposes. Had he been the weaker party, those three would’ve had no problems hacking him to pieces. They won’t be holding those weapons if they don’t realize that their enemies will also aim theirs at them.

It’s just that Ren had no better options; he’s forced to be ’handsy’ to deal with his enemies.

Anyway...

Hopefully those three recover from that defeat. Luckily, they’re not ones to rage at a defeat and send him hateful messages and curses on his inbox. Yes, there had been some people who were like that. Ren reported those accounts along with proof; their accounts will receive some warning. Any more than that and their accounts might get banned.

Speaking of messages, his previous teammates, Young Lord and Ghost Lady, sent him a friend request and an invitation to team up again.

Ren obviously refused. He’s not in need of dead weight. And even if he was, he wouldn’t pick them. He’s not a trash collector.

After his match with Woody, Star Lord, and Cowgirl, Ren knew that it’d be very unlikely for him to find another match that’s as awesome and exciting as that. So instead of queueing up for another 3v3 match, he switched to Player vs. Monster (PvM) matching.

He went solo this time and decided to challenge an Elite Slime.

Yes. A slime. An elite slime, but a slime nonetheless.

And this wasn’t the first time either. He had been regularly fighting slimes in this arena since he reached the muscle-forging stage.

You see, PvM wasn’t really something a Foundation Strength Stage martial artist could freely challenge. Hell, even now that he’s a Muscle Forging Stage practitioner, it’s still a little bit of a reach for him to fight monsters, especially the ’Elite’ variants.

Ren reacted the same way any other transmigrators would react upon realizing that they’re fighting a slime—he’s disdainful of them.

He initially thought, It’s just slimes! How hard can they be?

Hard. Much harder than he ever expected is the answer to that question.

Ren tried fighting one when he was still at the Foundation Strength Stage, and he got mauled. It was a horrible experience, a bitter defeat. It wasn’t even close either.

You see, PvM in this arena was no joke. Although challengers can choose any monsters to fight, that’s under the assumption that they’d be reasonable, because the data of the monsters here were replicated with a 1:1 ratio from the real world.

There’s a reason why somebody has to reach the Bone Forging Stage first before they could apply to become Dungeon Explorers and be allowed to do raids.

That is because even the weakest of the monsters in the dungeons were equivalent to Bone Forging Stage martial artists. And even then, dungeons, even the lowest-level one, could still become really dangerous for bone-forging martial artists.

The first common enemy all martial artists would face in the dungeons is slimes.

In their natural habitat, they’re docile creatures. They just hop around without any care in the world; they could absorb things they come in contact with and consume them for sustenance; even plain air itself would be enough for them to keep surviving.

They have cores that break down matter and convert it into nutrients; that’s why slimes could theoretically live anywhere they please. Even if the environment becomes a little too harsh for them, given enough time, slimes will evolve to adapt.

Slimes won’t attach unless they’re attacked first. And because of their generally patient and peaceful nature, they could be tamed by skilled people.

But just because they’re patient creatures and peaceful in general, that doesn’t mean that they’re not dangerous.

Slimes are peaceful, not harmless. Something or someone can’t be peaceful if they’re not capable of doing harm. You call that harmless. There’s a massive difference there.

And Ren personally discovered that difference the first time he attacked a virtual slime.

That thing sprouted three tentacles from its body that turned into weapons with real heft and edge in them. One was a blade, another was an axe, and the last one was a hammer.

Ren got killed a minute into the fight, and he couldn’t even muster up any strength or find any chance to counterattack. The slime’s attacks were too fast and layered. The Foundation Strength Stage power and speed simply weren’t enough to keep up; that’s how Ren was defeated.

At first, he wasn’t convinced, but in his second attempt, the end result was still the same. He got abused very badly. Sure, he did get a chance to attack the slime, but the results were pathetic.

The gelatinous body of the slime just absorbed his force without causing any ripples to its body. His strength was nowhere near enough to reach the slime’s core, which is its most vulnerable part.

Furthermore, its body was sticky. Once his arm was in, he was essentially trapped. He was unable to pull his arm back, and he got slashed in half.

This wasn’t the full extent of the slime’s abilities, though. They could remotely control their gelatinous body. Meaning that they could shoot out some of their volume and use it to attach itself to their enemies’ bodies. They usually do this to search for the enemy’s vulnerable areas, and most of the time, that’s their organs.

So long as the target remains within 50 meters of the slime, that thing will be able to remotely control the slime they separated, and it is very possible for them to kill someone like that.

In fact, a lot of people had fallen victim to that. There were some idiots who thought that eating or drinking a living slime was a good thing. Well, sure, they taste like candy sometimes, yes, but that’s still a stupid idea. It’s an even worse way for them to die.

It wasn’t until Ren reached the Muscle Forging Stage that he tried again and found some success. He could now defeat an ordinary slime comfortably. He was fast enough to evade its attacks and strong enough to actually deliver a killing blow that would reach its core.

Once Ren declared that ordinary slimes are no longer a threat to him, he moved on to the ’Elite’ variants.

And so far, he hasn’t won. Not even once.

The ’Elite’ variants are typically bigger, stronger, and faster versions of the ordinary variants of monsters. They’re about 30% stronger, to be exact. And often times, there’s an indication of an elite, that being their color scheme being slightly different, either brighter or darker compared to the ordinary ones, them being slightly larger, having additional appendages...basically, they usually looked different compared to the ordinary monsters.

Elites, Lords, and Bosses are the ranks above the ordinary variants of the monster’s hierarchical evolution.

The real difference was the addition of a ’status’ after a monster becomes an elite-level variant and above.

Take the Elite Slime that spawned to fight Ren. It has a [Burning] status.

This meant that attacks of the fire attribute would be less effective against this elite; its attack also [burns] the target. It also left a trail of flames that could similarly burn as well.

If Ren plunged his arm into that Elite Slime’s body, he could almost guarantee that his whole arm would be scalded by the high temperature of that thing’s body.

This Elite Slime was bright red with a dark red center. Its body was simmering due to the heat it emanates, and it’s particularly aggressive too.

The slimes it shot were like acidic sprays, which hurt like a bitch; Ren would know; he got hit after all.

And unlike ordinary slimes, who could only form three tentacles at a time and turn them into weapon varieties, Elite Slimes could do five at once, which severely hikes the pressure and danger it exudes.

Ren tried, really. He used his entire strength; he went all out. He used his newly upgraded techniques, but it’s no use.

Sure, he could absorb attacks using the Golden Fleece, but they still burn badly. Plus, some of the tentacles were really sharp; he’d seen one cutting a fully grown tree without any problems, leaving the stump burned. The Golden Fleece was strong, yes, but it’s bad against negative status effects.

The Nine Echoing Canons could, at most, push the slime really bad. The worst part is that Ren had to endure burning his hand just to land an attack.

The Calm Spirit Technique barely helped here too. The Flash Steps did save his life, but it could only do so much. There was no way that he’d exhaust the slime before it exhausted him.

So, this match was his loss.

’Okay, Elites are still out of my capabilities. Got it.’