Chapter One: The Hero of the Slime Cavern

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Radiant sunlight filtered through the foliage, casting a gentle glow upon a secluded country lane. A man clad in drab leather armor, a single-handed sword at his waist, trudged along the path, listlessly carrying a basket of lunch. Now and then, he would fish out a tea egg from the basket, peel it, and eat it as he walked.

“Ahe! You’re here!” a sweet female voice called out as the man turned into an even quieter byway.

“Is there something delicious today too, Ahe? Yesterday’s pancake with scallions was amazing!” The voice lingered incessantly in the man’s ears, while a faint green spark of light circled above his head.

“Oh, today it’s tea eggs. Tea leaves are so expensive—they cost me two silver coins… Luckily, I boiled quite a few, enough for two days,” the man replied, halting in front of a pitch-dark cave shielded by a faint blue barrier. He took two tea eggs from his basket and walked to the side. “Say, Pixie, don’t you ever feel embarrassed eating and drinking for free all day?”

The spark of light hovered over a tiny wooden house built in a low tree and transformed into a dainty, beautiful girl no taller than ten centimeters. She wore a neatly tailored bodysuit of unidentifiable material, her hair a soft shade of green. Though diminutive, her figure was well-proportioned: her chest flat, but her legs strikingly long, much like the fairies of children’s tales.

“I’m a wood sprite, not a human. I won’t feel embarrassed,” Pixie replied, hugging the tea egg Ahe placed before her house. She inhaled the mingled aroma of tea and spices, her luscious lips parting for a lick. “Besides, you big dummy, back when you kept getting hurt every day, you only survived thanks to me! This is my reward!”

“All right, all right, let’s not dwell on the past, hahaha…” Ahe laughed, retrieving a wooden badge marked with a circular pattern from his belt and placing it atop the magical array on Pixie’s house. “At least I can now clear the monsters on the first floor without a scratch. Though it took me half a year to get used to it…”

My name is Zhao Tianhe. It’s been three years since I crossed into this world.

This place is called the Land of Infinity, a truly peculiar world, and it’s definitely another realm—not just another planet.

Because it isn’t a planet at all!

Though the principles are unclear, this world is a boundless continent with no known edge. The land under human rule is called the Holy Divine Empire.

The earth, sky, and sea here are saturated with life pulse energy—a force that can nurture life. All living things on the continent, humans included, are born from this energy. The trouble is, this continent continuously spawns various forms of life…

And these new beings are monsters, utterly incompatible with the existing ecosystem. If left unchecked, any one race would see its known territory utterly devastated by them. These creatures are called “fiends” by the world’s intelligent races.

Three thousand years ago, the intelligent races were embroiled in civil wars. It wasn’t until fiends abruptly appeared and destroyed vast swathes of nations that the survivors finally united against the common threat.

That conflict is known as the First War Against the Fiends. The alliance of the intelligent races barely eked out a victory and sealed away most of the monsters. Over the next millennium, they launched two more wars, ultimately sealing all the fiends.

Fiends cannot be destroyed outright—their origin is the world’s life pulse energy, its very source. To eradicate them would mean destroying the world itself or warping its laws, and to this day, the great races have made no progress in that regard.

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After all, that task is as outlandish as stopping Earth’s rotation and revolution while keeping it in perpetual spring.

Though no fundamental solution has been found, the intelligent races have made remarkable advances in mitigation. Among their greatest inventions are: the “Dungeon System” by the dwarven archmage two millennia ago; the “Hero System” by the great human sage a thousand years back; and the “Summoning of Causal Spirits” by the elven prophet.

The Dungeon System subdivided and refined the ancient seals, transforming their brute force into vast, structured spaces known as “dungeons.” This made the generation of monsters traceable, easier to target, and much weaker—gone were the “world-ending” fiends that once formed from accumulated life energy behind impenetrable seals. To Zhao Tianhe, these are “game instances.”

The Hero System is a permanent, developmental magic that allows people to grow stronger by absorbing the spirits of slain fiends—in other words, leveling up by killing monsters. This method of strengthening through battle produced countless superhuman warriors, eliminating the need for vast, resource-draining armies and ritual arrays. It granted the races a period of recovery and development.

The Summoning System allows for the calling of many extraordinary beings from other realms—good-aligned, lawful, yet abandoned by fate. Simply put, it summons promising and powerful individuals who have died. Over the millennium, hundreds of epic heroes, thousands of legendary champions, and countless virtuous, loyal warriors have arrived this way. Their personalities and abilities have been filtered by the summoning array, making them far more useful than homegrown fighters.

And Zhao Tianhe was summoned in just this way.

He was, indeed, a good person—he died saving a child from an oncoming car. In his final memories, there was only the terrified face of the child and the overwhelming impact he could not resist.

Unfortunately, Zhao Tianhe had absolutely no potential…

The Causal Summoning Array of the Holy Divine Empire is located at an institution called the Hero Academy.

When first summoned, Zhao Tianhe’s incompetence was obvious, but the teachers at the Hero Academy—having seen many underdogs turn things around—did not give up on him. They trained and nurtured him, putting him through all sorts of trials to awaken his talent. Yet, he had none.

After a year and a half of assessments, the Academy’s summoners reached their verdict: after wasting tens of thousands of gold coins on equipment and a top-tier Hero System, all they had produced was a “janitor-grade” useless hero!

Still, such cases weren’t unheard of—every few decades, one or two top-tier washouts would be summoned.

Even a scrap of paper has its use, so Zhao Tianhe was dispatched to a remote country dungeon: the Slime Cavern.

This is the lowest-level dungeon, with only two floors. The life pulse energy here is so weak that only the first floor’s feeble slimes need occasional culling. The second floor’s monsters are so weak they cannot generate advanced fiends, and are locked away by the dungeon’s seals.

Zhao Tianhe’s predecessor was a sixty-year-old restaurant owner. The old man would spend two hours traveling each day, but only needed half an hour to clear the first-floor slimes.

Despite knowing Zhao Tianhe was a “useless hero,” the old man simply handed over the dungeon’s badge and returned to his restaurant, never suspecting that after a year and a half of training, Zhao Tianhe would still struggle to handle a few slimes!

“Back then, I was almost beaten to death by those slimes. If not for Pixie’s healing magic, I’d never have survived…” Zhao Tianhe watched Pixie struggle to crack open a tea egg with a toothpick, and smiled as he stepped forward to help her peel it.

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Though she was said to eat and drink for free, in truth, the little one’s daily appetite was barely that of one of Zhao Tianhe’s snacks.

After a brief chat with Pixie, the dungeon badge on the tiny house finally finished logging in. The thing was basically a time clock, connecting to the “Continental Dungeon Management Association” via the magic web. Once the energy hazard level in the dungeon dropped, the badge could be removed.

“All right, let’s get started for today!” Zhao Tianhe drew the sword at his waist and stepped into the Slime Cavern.

As the entrance to the most pathetic dungeon, the cavern required little description—a gloomy open space of around five hundred square meters, scattered with a dozen stone pillars.

Overhead, several ancient, flickering perpetual-light arrays cast a wan glow, illuminating the half-human-sized gelatinous blobs squirming across the floor, lending the scene a distinctly eerie air.

Zhao Tianhe approached the nearest slime, raised his sword with a solemn expression, dashed forward, sliced sideways, and then leapt back!

Though slimes resemble elementals, they’re closer to single-celled organisms. Once their outer membrane is breached, they’re as good as done.

However, these creatures are incredibly tough and hard to kill. If their skin is pierced, they unleash a burst of vitality, spraying digestive fluids from within.

In other words, they self-destruct—albeit in a rather low-grade fashion.

Unfortunately, Zhao Tianhe’s strike was not precise; he managed only a shallow gash less than ten centimeters long.

“Damn!” he thought, frowning—this was not good.

Green digestive fluid began to spurt at him in all directions. Fortunately, the slime’s jets were little faster than a child’s water gun, and even less accurate, so he dodged with ease.

Compared to self-destruction, this was more troublesome. He’d have to dodge around until the slime expended its digestive juices and the pressure faded, then finish it off safely—without any explosion.

But this meant running in circles, and if more than one slime joined in, it could be a real mess. If, in the confusion, he provoked several more slimes into “sprayer mode,” it would spell disaster!

Back then, Zhao Tianhe, inexperienced, was battered by three slimes spraying him at once. The digestive fluid corroded away seventy percent of his life. With no healing potions on hand, if Pixie hadn’t intervened, he would have been the first “Otherworldly Spirit” killed by a slime in a thousand years!