A purple glow shifted through the caves of the nightmare realm, blitzing, blazing by, following an in-descript object that flew at immense speeds.
The roughly circular ball of light bounced off of walls and moved through thick growth unfettered until it eventually swerved and entered a room, landing on top of Neave’s head.
He opened his eyes and grinned. The slime may not be the most promising weapon in his arsenal, but damn it, it was likely the most fun.
Given that he had possessed the slime after doing minimal damage to its body, none of the additional energy from the violet avatar was wasted.
All of it went into empowering the slime. With some practice, this turned the small avatar into an unbelievably fun scout. It wasn’t an excellent scout, granted, given that it glowed in the dark. It was utterly incapable of stealth.
Who cared about that, though?
Neave picked up the slime, lifting it off his crown and putting it in his lap. He still hadn’t done any ‘upgrading’ to the slime, and frankly, he was sort of short on ideas for what to do to begin with.
So far, his ideas effectively came down to: feed slime life force, feed slime treasures, feed slime meat, and perhaps equip it somehow.
Naturally, the slime couldn't equip a damn sword.
That didn’t mean that Neave was entirely out of options.
But, one thing at a time.
Neave focused, and a thin stream of life force entered the slime’s body. Frowning, he stopped doing that. If the slime were a monster, or rather, if it still had a core in its body, it could easily handle an influx of life force like that.
Sadly, it didn’t. That meant that pouring life force into it haphazardly was effectively the same as poisoning it.
Thankfully, the complete absence of remnant spirit in the slime and Neave’s profound connection to it allowed him to quickly purge any of the life force he had poured in.
He would have to employ a different strategy. This time, he poured a significantly thinner thread of life force into it and then used the tendril to burn the life force.
Sadly, that didn’t really do anything. Neave couldn’t empower the slime with life force alone the same way he couldn’t empower anything permanently with life force alone, besides monsters, that was.
If he could do that, growing in strength would be a breeze. Sighing, he once again changed strategies.
Neave put the slime down and hopped over to the monster coop he had created for experimentation. The monsters inside were the same breed of abominid that served as a food source.
Culling one, he returned to the slime and fed it a few chunks of its meat.
The slime struggled mightily to digest the piece of flesh. To the point that it made Neave frown. Was the slime’s usual supernatural digestion a byproduct of power originating from its core?
If that were the case, empowering the slime to any noticeable degree would be a nightmare.
He quickly had to extract the pieces of flesh he had placed inside, as he realized that the slime couldn’t purge the toxic qi that usually resided in monster flesh.
Neave clicked his tongue and cursed. Washing the meat in his blood was a prerequisite to feeding it to anything.
After purging the slime and burning some life force to help it recover, he placed the little thing on the ground and got up, walking back into the adorned part of his workshop.
Spreading his arms open, he fell back first to the carpet on the floor and frowned as he stared at the chandelier on the ceiling.
“Deep breaths Neave. Use your damn brain.”
He still had to mentally adjust to the slime not being a monster and all the implications that fact brought forth with it. Thinking more along the lines of raising a plant than raising a monster, Neave contemplated his options.
Suddenly, he frowned.
Were slimes a plant?
Slapping his forehead, he swallowed that idiotic thought. But that did leave an interesting question. What were slimes anyway? If one had to categorize them, would they resemble fungi, plants, or animals the most? Or were they their own thing entirely?
Most of the reading he had done on monsters had a great deal of speculation on their nature and origin.
All that was known with any degree of confidence was that monsters originated from the lost continent. Besides that, it wasn't really known whether they had dropped from the sky, spawned from nothing, been sent by gods or devils, or originated from a freak experiment.
Neave took a deep breath and got up, walking back into the room. He stared at the small, purple blob on the floor.
What are you…?
And more importantly, how should he approach raising it?
It wasn’t just for fun or vanity that he chose to raise a slime avatar. There was a legitimate reason behind it as well. All seven avatars he would raise would be created from monster bodies.
It was practically unavoidable that he had to learn how to treat and raise monster bodies without cores. And what better place to start than with the primordial monster?
Walking over to the pile of meat on the ground, Neave grabbed another bit of flesh. Summoning his dimensional mule avatar, he opened one of the boxes he had placed on it and pulled out a few containers.
He put the piece of meat into one of the containers and dripped a lot of his blood into it.
The life force tendril was used in the sacred blood concoction, and the impurities inside the meat were purged. Neave didn’t stop there. Gradually, the meat was melted inside the blood. The final product was a thick, viscous liquid that perfectly blended his blood with the flesh of the abominid.
Finally, he left some liquid spirit in there, even though he still wasn’t clear on whether that would achieve anything.
With that, he poured a few drops on the slime. Then, he swapped his consciousness into the slime body to more closely examine the effects.
If the slime body had a heart, it would be fluttering. The sheer density of the power of a single drop was unbelievable. Neave had lost perspective on the might of the stuff they were eating practically all the time, but now he realized exactly how potent the flesh of this abominid was.
Every aspect of the slime's existence was boosted in ways Neave didn’t even realize were possible.
The perception of his surroundings while in the slime form was artificial. It was like having eyes without having eyes. Now, however, he realized that the slime itself had a means of perceiving its surroundings and that his other form of perception was a byproduct of the avatar power.
Slimes could sense the flow of the ambient energy, far better than even Neave could do in his main body. It wasn’t a spirit sense, either, as it seemed directly connected to the slime’s body.
The room around him grew ever slightly brighter as the air and the walls lit up with a faint flow of energy.
Every piece of equipment on Neave’s body was like a star that far outshone the surroundings, and the only thing that could even vaguely keep up was the body of the abominid.
Beyond the walls, Neave could clearly see the roots of the glass shrub, although anything too far into solid matter became blurry after only a couple of meters.
Hurriedly rushing back to his real body, Neave dripped a few more drops of the blood and returned to the slime.
The radius and clarity of the sight had expanded yet again.
***
The slime was all.
Center, top, and bottom of the universe and all its realms. Every trickle of energy flowing through the environment was visible far in every direction.
Even the faint vestige of the obsidian shrub’s energy was plain to see, and naught could impede the vision of the mighty slime.
Neave returned to his main body, and he could feel tears rushing down his eyes. It was strangely beautiful to see reality like that. He had been arrogant, believing himself to be supernaturally perceptive due to the shitty spirit power he had.
Far, far too naive.
It was as if he had been colorblind his whole life, and for the first time since he had been born, the vast myriad shades of reality were laid before his eyes.
Ok, that’s enough emotional stuff.
A fat grin replaced the somber expression on his face as he greedily observed the slime. The body of the abominid was entirely gone; every cell of its body melted into food for the slime. Several others had also been processed.
And oh boy, what a slime it was. True, without a core, the slime held a mere fraction of its true power. But that true power lay in transformation, evolution, change, and alteration.
Divergence.
A path away from being a slime, a direction that led it to greater but distinctly different heights. It gave, yet, as all power did, it took away.
Without the core, the slime was free.
Neave went to the collection of regular slimes and dragged a few out into the testing chamber. He threw his limbs, broken shards of glass, piles of the abominid flesh, and whatever else into a pile, urging the slimes to eat and grow.
And ate they did. Soon enough, several had evolved into blood slimes, gaining yet losing. Many of them simply grew in size until they split, and their children also took a chance at turning into something more significant.
Eventually, abominids grew from the pile as well, and the creatures gradually grew different in nature. And monsters of different natures never got along with one another.
Neave observed the carnage as the large abominids tore each other to shreds. Eventually, all that remained was a single creature. Its skin was blood red, and it looked like a mutated gross dog with a short body and long limbs.
That would do.
Neave summoned the violet avatar and brought forth the mighty slime. Then, he entered its body.
The large creature circled around the slime, and Neave tensed his body, preparing for a lunge. With speed so fast it created a shockwave, the slime rushed toward the abominid, leaving cracks on the floor behind it. The force of the strike sent the creature flying and ramming into a wall.
That wasn’t enough to kill it. It got up and screamed at Neave as he bounced around the creature.
The slime had a core weakness. It was soft and squishy, so its blunt strikes didn’t do much direct damage.
Slimes did not really need to do blunt damage. Neave was simply testing his new toy.
The avatar hopped again and attached to the creature's back. The sizzling of powerful acid effortlessly scraped the monster’s skin off and even took a chunk of flesh with it.
The dog abominid thing screeched in agony as it twisted its body to strike at Neave, and he merely stood still. The claws sank into and went through the slime.
That was all they did. The abominid repeatedly clawed at Neave’s slime avatar, scratching and biting, but it was hopeless. The slime wasn’t taking any damage, no matter what the dog did.
It was sort of like trying to beat up a puddle of water. A fool’s errand. Except, this was no puddle of water. This was a puddle of acid.
The abominid screeched as its claws, teeth, and the inside of its mouth melted. It backed away, trying to escape.
This was the time to demonstrate the true power of the slime.
Neave bolted forward, bouncing off the floor, then off a wall and straight into the abominids mouth. He crawled into the creature's stomach, where he dissolved its body from the inside and spread gooey tentacles all around the creature's body.
The core fully crystallized, signaling the death of the monster. Yet, it still moved as Neave, the slimy puppet master, forced its limbs into action.
The creature melted, and eventually, its body was turned to slush that the slime slurped up. With the extra power Neave had granted the slime, he could now finally manually remove the toxic qi from the stuff he consumed with it.
“Hmmm… Maybe I’ll crawl up Astrador’s ass?”
He couldn’t help but grin as he thought of the possibilities.
A purple glow shifted through the caves of the nightmare realm, blitzing, blazing by, following an in-descript object that flew at immense speeds.
The roughly circular ball of light bounced off of walls and moved through thick growth unfettered until it eventually swerved and entered a room, landing on top of Neave’s head.
He opened his eyes and grinned. The slime may not be the most promising weapon in his arsenal, but damn it, it was likely the most fun.
Given that he had possessed the slime after doing minimal damage to its body, none of the additional energy from the violet avatar was wasted.
All of it went into empowering the slime. With some practice, this turned the small avatar into an unbelievably fun scout. It wasn’t an excellent scout, granted, given that it glowed in the dark. It was utterly incapable of stealth.
Who cared about that, though?
Neave picked up the slime, lifting it off his crown and putting it in his lap. He still hadn’t done any ‘upgrading’ to the slime, and frankly, he was sort of short on ideas for what to do to begin with.
So far, his ideas effectively came down to: feed slime life force, feed slime treasures, feed slime meat, and perhaps equip it somehow.
Naturally, the slime couldn't equip a damn sword.
That didn’t mean that Neave was entirely out of options.
But, one thing at a time.
Neave focused, and a thin stream of life force entered the slime’s body. Frowning, he stopped doing that. If the slime were a monster, or rather, if it still had a core in its body, it could easily handle an influx of life force like that.
Sadly, it didn’t. That meant that pouring life force into it haphazardly was effectively the same as poisoning it.
Thankfully, the complete absence of remnant spirit in the slime and Neave’s profound connection to it allowed him to quickly purge any of the life force he had poured in.
He would have to employ a different strategy. This time, he poured a significantly thinner thread of life force into it and then used the tendril to burn the life force.
Sadly, that didn’t really do anything. Neave couldn’t empower the slime with life force alone the same way he couldn’t empower anything permanently with life force alone, besides monsters, that was.
If he could do that, growing in strength would be a breeze. Sighing, he once again changed strategies.
Neave put the slime down and hopped over to the monster coop he had created for experimentation. The monsters inside were the same breed of abominid that served as a food source.
Culling one, he returned to the slime and fed it a few chunks of its meat.
The slime struggled mightily to digest the piece of flesh. To the point that it made Neave frown. Was the slime’s usual supernatural digestion a byproduct of power originating from its core?
If that were the case, empowering the slime to any noticeable degree would be a nightmare.
He quickly had to extract the pieces of flesh he had placed inside, as he realized that the slime couldn’t purge the toxic qi that usually resided in monster flesh.
Neave clicked his tongue and cursed. Washing the meat in his blood was a prerequisite to feeding it to anything.
After purging the slime and burning some life force to help it recover, he placed the little thing on the ground and got up, walking back into the adorned part of his workshop.
Spreading his arms open, he fell back first to the carpet on the floor and frowned as he stared at the chandelier on the ceiling.
“Deep breaths Neave. Use your damn brain.”
He still had to mentally adjust to the slime not being a monster and all the implications that fact brought forth with it. Thinking more along the lines of raising a plant than raising a monster, Neave contemplated his options.
Suddenly, he frowned.
Were slimes a plant?
Slapping his forehead, he swallowed that idiotic thought. But that did leave an interesting question. What were slimes anyway? If one had to categorize them, would they resemble fungi, plants, or animals the most? Or were they their own thing entirely?
Most of the reading he had done on monsters had a great deal of speculation on their nature and origin.
All that was known with any degree of confidence was that monsters originated from the lost continent. Besides that, it wasn't really known whether they had dropped from the sky, spawned from nothing, been sent by gods or devils, or originated from a freak experiment.
Neave took a deep breath and got up, walking back into the room. He stared at the small, purple blob on the floor.
What are you…?
And more importantly, how should he approach raising it?
It wasn’t just for fun or vanity that he chose to raise a slime avatar. There was a legitimate reason behind it as well. All seven avatars he would raise would be created from monster bodies.
It was practically unavoidable that he had to learn how to treat and raise monster bodies without cores. And what better place to start than with the primordial monster?
Walking over to the pile of meat on the ground, Neave grabbed another bit of flesh. Summoning his dimensional mule avatar, he opened one of the boxes he had placed on it and pulled out a few containers.
He put the piece of meat into one of the containers and dripped a lot of his blood into it.
The life force tendril was used in the sacred blood concoction, and the impurities inside the meat were purged. Neave didn’t stop there. Gradually, the meat was melted inside the blood. The final product was a thick, viscous liquid that perfectly blended his blood with the flesh of the abominid.
Finally, he left some liquid spirit in there, even though he still wasn’t clear on whether that would achieve anything.
With that, he poured a few drops on the slime. Then, he swapped his consciousness into the slime body to more closely examine the effects.
If the slime body had a heart, it would be fluttering. The sheer density of the power of a single drop was unbelievable. Neave had lost perspective on the might of the stuff they were eating practically all the time, but now he realized exactly how potent the flesh of this abominid was.
Every aspect of the slime's existence was boosted in ways Neave didn’t even realize were possible.
The perception of his surroundings while in the slime form was artificial. It was like having eyes without having eyes. Now, however, he realized that the slime itself had a means of perceiving its surroundings and that his other form of perception was a byproduct of the avatar power.
Slimes could sense the flow of the ambient energy, far better than even Neave could do in his main body. It wasn’t a spirit sense, either, as it seemed directly connected to the slime’s body.
The room around him grew ever slightly brighter as the air and the walls lit up with a faint flow of energy.
Every piece of equipment on Neave’s body was like a star that far outshone the surroundings, and the only thing that could even vaguely keep up was the body of the abominid.
Beyond the walls, Neave could clearly see the roots of the glass shrub, although anything too far into solid matter became blurry after only a couple of meters.
Hurriedly rushing back to his real body, Neave dripped a few more drops of the blood and returned to the slime.
The radius and clarity of the sight had expanded yet again.
***
The slime was all.
Center, top, and bottom of the universe and all its realms. Every trickle of energy flowing through the environment was visible far in every direction.
Even the faint vestige of the obsidian shrub’s energy was plain to see, and naught could impede the vision of the mighty slime.
Neave returned to his main body, and he could feel tears rushing down his eyes. It was strangely beautiful to see reality like that. He had been arrogant, believing himself to be supernaturally perceptive due to the shitty spirit power he had.
Far, far too naive.
It was as if he had been colorblind his whole life, and for the first time since he had been born, the vast myriad shades of reality were laid before his eyes.
Ok, that’s enough emotional stuff.
A fat grin replaced the somber expression on his face as he greedily observed the slime. The body of the abominid was entirely gone; every cell of its body melted into food for the slime. Several others had also been processed.
And oh boy, what a slime it was. True, without a core, the slime held a mere fraction of its true power. But that true power lay in transformation, evolution, change, and alteration.
Divergence.
A path away from being a slime, a direction that led it to greater but distinctly different heights. It gave, yet, as all power did, it took away.
Without the core, the slime was free.
Neave went to the collection of regular slimes and dragged a few out into the testing chamber. He threw his limbs, broken shards of glass, piles of the abominid flesh, and whatever else into a pile, urging the slimes to eat and grow.
And ate they did. Soon enough, several had evolved into blood slimes, gaining yet losing. Many of them simply grew in size until they split, and their children also took a chance at turning into something more significant.
Eventually, abominids grew from the pile as well, and the creatures gradually grew different in nature. And monsters of different natures never got along with one another.
Neave observed the carnage as the large abominids tore each other to shreds. Eventually, all that remained was a single creature. Its skin was blood red, and it looked like a mutated gross dog with a short body and long limbs.
That would do.
Neave summoned the violet avatar and brought forth the mighty slime. Then, he entered its body.
The large creature circled around the slime, and Neave tensed his body, preparing for a lunge. With speed so fast it created a shockwave, the slime rushed toward the abominid, leaving cracks on the floor behind it. The force of the strike sent the creature flying and ramming into a wall.
That wasn’t enough to kill it. It got up and screamed at Neave as he bounced around the creature.
The slime had a core weakness. It was soft and squishy, so its blunt strikes didn’t do much direct damage.
Slimes did not really need to do blunt damage. Neave was simply testing his new toy.
The avatar hopped again and attached to the creature's back. The sizzling of powerful acid effortlessly scraped the monster’s skin off and even took a chunk of flesh with it.
The dog abominid thing screeched in agony as it twisted its body to strike at Neave, and he merely stood still. The claws sank into and went through the slime.
That was all they did. The abominid repeatedly clawed at Neave’s slime avatar, scratching and biting, but it was hopeless. The slime wasn’t taking any damage, no matter what the dog did.
It was sort of like trying to beat up a puddle of water. A fool’s errand. Except, this was no puddle of water. This was a puddle of acid.
The abominid screeched as its claws, teeth, and the inside of its mouth melted. It backed away, trying to escape.
This was the time to demonstrate the true power of the slime.
Neave bolted forward, bouncing off the floor, then off a wall and straight into the abominids mouth. He crawled into the creature's stomach, where he dissolved its body from the inside and spread gooey tentacles all around the creature's body.
The core fully crystallized, signaling the death of the monster. Yet, it still moved as Neave, the slimy puppet master, forced its limbs into action.
The creature melted, and eventually, its body was turned to slush that the slime slurped up. With the extra power Neave had granted the slime, he could now finally manually remove the toxic qi from the stuff he consumed with it.
“Hmmm… Maybe I’ll crawl up Astrador’s ass?”
He couldn’t help but grin as he thought of the possibilities.
