He was completely befuddled and slightly afraid of possibly forceful descent, this had never happened before.
He didn't like it, he couldn't help but feel nervous as he watched them rush down at speeds he had never once seen from a sentient.
Along with the foremost sentient a ball of... What seemed to be fire floated, it tethered to him by mana. Once again leading to the theorem that sentients needed light to see, unlike Falc himself who could perceive almost everything in his territory perfectly.
It did make him wonder how slimes saw things, it probably wasn't through light considering the general lack of it when he experimented with their ability to see.
But that wasn't important, it was irrelevant even. At least at the current moment, what was more important was what he could possibly do to stop the two- Whom he had casually dubbed 'A' and 'B', the one in the forefront the former and the one chasing behind the latter- It seemed as though the two were not exactly cooperating at the current moment.
Based on the current evidence, specifically the fact that A was sporadically looking behind him while boosting himself the whole way through the staircase between the third and fourth room of the subterranean whirlpool, Falc came up with a somewhat flimsy theory.
What if... A and B are in conflict?
Though it could be that A was acting as a sort of scout for B, or a guide. Usually sentients calmly descended the stairs, with one or two that had rushed like the two essence generators currently were had tumbled down; with multiple wounds to show for it. But even those few impatient fools had taken the time to fell the slimes that were placed there occasionally, A and B were ignoring them out right.
They would probably rush towards the slime plains, considering that not many had taken the time to check on old diversion rooms. If so, then he could probably bring his seeing slimes to reduce the life of at least one essence generator to nil. Maybe it'd even be a great opportunity to finally decide which of the slime apostle 2 candidates would be the lucky slime, however unlikely it may be.
With that idea set in place, Falc extended his grasp towards every single slime apostle prototype that lived along with a good few slimes within the slime plains that held the ability to be led to a specific destination. And obviously, all of them were led towards the entrance of the slime plains. Though he did take the time to have them avoid the groups of sentients actively slaughtering their kind.
At the moment that A reached the fourth room, the one just before the slime plains, they slowed down a bit and changed direction while holding on to the end of the hallway that they left. Smoothly sliding through the tunnel hidden to a sub-par degree, their arms sporadically supporting their own momentum. Though in the meanwhile they, like many others, for some reason created ripples in the air without it properly acting as a communicative medium.
Behind A, B was not one to be left behind. Though slower than... The sentient who may be their target, They were not that far behind. Following behind, directly boosting into the tunnel face first with chest to the floor. Not sliding, but instead 'Crawling' at a surprising speeds.
Fast enough that the distance between the two narrowed in the moments that they went through the narrow but growing tunnel. Though the moment A reached the place where they could stand back up on their two feet, they pushed up with the arms and smoothly returned to a run. Doing one or two strange movements with their hands before Falc noted with great worry that the stone in the tunnel behind A and before B rose rapidly.
Though B himself just got up to a crouch and sprung over it before it could close the tunnel fully, them also returning to a full sprint moments later.
'It seems that essence generators are good at traversing,' Falc noted with troubled thoughts 'Or, hopefully, not all essence generators can blitz through sudden obstacles.'
It could be linearly related to the amount of essence they provided, still, he hoped that it wasn't as he watched on as A turned along with the tunnel. Retaining all their speed with a leaning turn, once again futilely trying to communicate. All the while B was hot on their trail, keeping their own speed with a jump towards the deepest corner of the turn.
Then from that rounded corner, B leapt from a sideways position to their previous upright orientation with a full 270 degrees of rotation afforded for it.
As the stairs of the slime plains came into sight, the two sentients seemed to speed up even more than before. A troubling matter which meant that their previous speeds were while still restricted by their environment, once again heightening Falc's drive to bring slimes to tear the duo down from their current status of 'Alive'.
With A still in the lead, reaching the end of the tunnel turned hallway it seemed as if they had reached their terminal horizontal velocity. At the very edge of the highest step their feet pushed on the floor as they twisted to the side, for some reason rotating during their jump which seemed destined to soar over every single step to the ground floor of the rocky plains.
B, right behind, launched themselves up near the end of the hallway while turning around in the midst of their ascent and rotating backwards by approximately 40 degrees. From said moment, perfectly pushing up from the upper edge of the hallway wall's hook-like end. Noticeably fragmenting the somewhat fragile and thin stone as they also soared like their presumed target.
And of course, at the sides of the stairway were a good few slimes in waiting to besiege to two sentients the moment they dared to show their faces. And with their creator's due support, they were told exactly where to shoot in order to hit the two through leading shots.
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And somewhat surprisingly to the slightly experienced juvenile core, sentients A and B both had methods prepared to avoid damage amid the barrage of acid that had befallen them.
With the end of useless air ripples, around A came about some kind of force that disrupted the air around them. Falc being able to see weird sparks along with it, energy temporarily mobile through gas which somehow generated faint light for less than a moment each time an arc formed. From what he could perceive, it seemed that mana had played some part in its initiation.
And its purpose was clear from what its effect, the roaring air around A pushing any acid that dared near out of the way. But sentient B's method was far more frightening, as the acid autonomously swayed out of the way. There was no specific force that was exerted from the sentient, no. The acid just gradually turned away, the affect of whatever was causing it growing stronger the closer it got.
Even if the effect was minor when one looked in the realm of seconds, as the turning overlapped with the turning before it, it became more and more exaggerated until some acid even reached sentient A.
Though there was one difference between the two he found most notable, that B had animatedly extended something tied to a rope all the way to the roof of the slime plains. It soaring and wedging itself into the rock a bit easier than how rock usually was wedged into by metallic nails. Though, of course, like the metal nails which held rope the implement also found itself being pushed out of its snug little wedge.
And with the rope reaching tension as B swung- While A finally landed in tumble that quickly led to their previous full pace rush- So obviously, as B reached the lower zenith of his swing with the rock having already slightly recuperated, whatever they had used as an anchor in the ceiling fell out of its wedge.
With a useless attempt at communication as they realized their worrying descent, maybe directed at the implement? Anyways, they retracted the rope and seemingly returned it all to their original state before finally seemingly intentionally rolling into their own dash behind A. Though their tumble of sorts was far less smooth that A's own momentum-maintaining strategies, maybe because it wasn't planned? Or it could be that A's angular momentum from their mid air side flip was carried over into the roll?
But their landing had not put a pause to the good few slime apostle 2 candidates primed to level up from hunting them down, though sadly the two sentients far surpassed the speed of mere slimes.
After the surprising phenomena of sentient A expressing their communicative air waves for seemingly no reason, though far less loud than B, A seemed to suddenly burst forth directly towards B with their hand in a fist.
The fist propelling to B, who turned around and used their 'Sword' to block it, it being pushed back to B before the fist somehow launched B upwards at a speed far beyond what should be possible from what he could see from A.
Though, for some reason as B finally landed in their signature rolling to standing landing, they did not in fact keep running. Once again communicating with seemingly no reason, though it then got a response from A so maybe it wasn't for nothing?
Though the attempts at talk were for naught as A's fist once again neared and was once again defended against by the sword, though instead of staying still sentient B shifted to the side and let the fist and sword smoothly pass him by before punching A's face. Before once again communicating, this time finding actual proper response from what Falc could tell. Though after one or two exchanges with the two sentients less than a meter away, A and B once again engaged in a fist fight.
With A superior in their clashing, while the red B communicated without response multiple times all the while avoiding attacks earlier and earlier. Though then it seemed that A had taken note of B's more and more pre-emptive evasion and used their small and seemingly weak fingers to slash at B multiple times, leaving multiple red wounds with each attack.
B paced back, once again starting to communicate. This time, though, unlike every other time A was animatedly responsive. With B swaying his arms and hands in the air with sword in one hand while generating air waves once more, A seemed to actually try and communicate.
And from what the sole direct onlooker of their exchange, it seemed that A had obtained some piece of information most important. As seen from their little outburst of weird, loud and repeating 'Sounds' while looking up before directly leaving B behind without any notice.
Sadly for B though, a good few slimes waiting to finally have their skill weaves once again ready to fire. Not that it mattered, they only communicated to no one in specific and once again had that weird force appear around them along with the sparks that denoted its appearance. The next moment running away and out of the slime plains while getting pelted with D-7 acid, making it out alive while having left a good bit of red liquid laying about from previous and new wounds.
Said liquid apparently being 'Blood', he had seen it before. It was inside the sentient body and was destroyed completely only after both the earth and water aspects, though he had never properly gotten the chance nor had the interest to inspect it. Sadly, while he now had the former he had none of the former.
But luckily the thought came to him, and he used both the earth and water aspect to gain authority over the blood before drawing it all to where he had originally fostered nuclei for prospective sentient slayers. All the while taking his mind off of the complete panic of
First of all, confirming that sentients weren't a hive mind and had the capability of holding violent conflict between each other. Which then brought up the possibility of an entire world being beyond his reach on the surface, one which he couldn't access and held secrets that may or may not be crucial in killing sentients.
But after some thought, a conjecture that brought him a bit of joy in his sad little pity party was simple; 'Wait a second, if they had to take the effort to redirect or block the acid, doesn't that mean that the acid itself is dangerous to them. As long as I can get the acid on them and through whatever they used to redirect it, they could die!'
But, problem, it seemed that the stronger of the two sentients seemed to have their protective means on at all times. But, the good thing was that the weaker of the two sentients seemingly needed to communicate with something or communicate with nothing in order to set up their acid-evasion measures. And Falc could even feel their method, so he would know when it would or wouldn't be useless to attack them!
He couldn't help but wonder momentarily how much essence an essence generator would give him when they died, that weak slave died pretty easily and gave a minor in retrospect but massive in comparison to how much they originally gave him. But... It wasn't exactly certain when that sentient- No longer referred to as B due to lack of urgency- Would come back into the upper recesses of the dungeon.
But there were more pressing problems, and that was the appearance of another essence generator. One that very clearly could easily crawl through a tunnel, though their ability to traverse the tunnels was still in question. Just the possibility that his perfect buffer which had gone unbroken for an unprecedented amount of time would fall apart because of a single sentient... It wasn't exactly comfortable.
It was almost certain that his jump from [Common] to [Uncommon] had catalyzed the appearance of new sentients, specifically new essence generators. More dangerous sentients, ones that could easily trample everything he had made.
He really didn't like that, not even slightly.
yet, but it'll do.