The three figures hurried away to their human business. The heavy wooden door, now barely visible without the glow of Mana all around, closed with a sonorous thunk.

In typical, very chill fashion(my current MO), as soon as the three humans left the laboratory, I staged a jailbreak.

Considering that our captors considered us bloodthirsty and expendable monsters and the new, arriving elements thought we were heretical necrotic spawn, the whole laboratory cage had taken on a death-row-inmate sort of vibe. It was time to bounce.

A budget death row, considering our last meal was rat…

Without the Mana covering the front of the cages, it was just a common metal latch keeping us locked in. My tentacles could easily reach out and unhook it.

Your Skill (Earned) Inferior Body Manipulation has grown to Level 2.

Just goes to show how dangerous it is to underestimate a ‘base’ Chimera Core, I moved to the swinging metal door. I stretched out my tentacles and shoved; I wished I had managed to obtain body parts to give more than a single point in Strength. I peered out and around, using my eyes to examine-

Two bodies leapt past me, not waiting for further information.

Green and Indigo seemed immensely pleased by our liberation and rushed out of the opening… and fell three cage lengths to the floor and splattered on the ground. I could only sigh. Truly, a human’s awareness and experience were invaluable in many circumstances… I could even see that one of Green’s spider legs had snapped from the fall and now began to dissipate.

When I rolled myself over the edge, I moved my valuable organs and claw up to my top. Tipping myself over the edge actually felt somewhat fun. My body cushioned the fall and I lost no Health nor Anima from the impact. When I had righted myself into a humanoid form and looked around. Several cages with rats were along the bottom and these creatures instinctively cowered away from us. My instincts assured me I had time for a quick meal, but once you were used to it, you could ignore those just like stomach hunger.

Just… this was a hunger to suck away life from the living. Definitely, I would need to learn to cope with the hunger if I wasn’t just going to become a murderer…

Ahem, does murder count as investing energy in the world? Not rewarding at all.

…unless my instincts twist me until I become a sociopath who actually enjoys the death throes of my victims…

Okay, I might be spiraling a bit. Focus, focus. Need to escape.

Above, Sapphire apparently noticed our departure. It pressed against the edges of its cage and seeped part of its body through. But that brainless idiot couldn’t pull its crab claw through as well. So it responded with its usual instinct, to start smashing.

I felt annoyed that Sapphire still had the energy (and Anima) to mess around, but then I realized that Sapphire had only absorbed the brain and the crab claw. Once that lucky rat brain had been eliminated, it only had to support a single body part through the night.

I chuckled at its fury until the cage began to deform underneath its blunt attentions. Then I decided to hurry up. While waiting around to finish it off would be satisfying, survival was the priority.

I opened up two of the rat cages and let Indigo and Green pilfer two heads and two tails respectfully. And gather a bit of emergency Anima. Watching them happily do their ‘I just fed’ cavorting, Green definitely moved faster, so it must be receiving a Speed or Agility boost. Maybe even Balance? But Indigo, with the heads…

Indigo doesn’t appear to be getting any smarter. Maybe… Attack? Or even the legendary boneheadedness Stat, doubling down on only absorbing heads?

The other cages along the bottom were either filled with cobwebs or empty. I scanned through them one last time, my mind already shifting to how we would escape this place, but I noticed the smallest spark of blue from the depths of the cobwebs.

Your Skill (Temp) Lesser Mana Detection has grown to Level 10 (+7).

Curious, I unlocked the cage and walked back to the corner. There, tucked away behind the lion’s share of the cobwebs, hung an egg sac. I pulled it down carefully, trying not to tear the edge. Ahem, not to toot my own horn, but my tentacles were so delicate that I even earned another Skill Level in Inferior Body Manipulation.

I opened the sac, took out one of the tiny marbles, and popped it into my body.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +2.

Your Skill (Species) Absorb Anima has grown to Level 7.

You have slayed a Lvl 1 Hex Spiderling!

Oho? A portable food source? Won’t this be quite useful? I gobbled down another.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +1.

You have slayed a Lvl 1 Hex Spiderling!

It might only be one or two Anima per pop, but there was almost a hundred little eggs within the sac. Feeling very suave, I swung the sac over my shoulder like an orphan slime runaway, wanting to try my luck at the circus. Come one, come all! The magical, wondrous Tallum! In but a moment he can suck the life out of your blood and wear your face!

…Can’t make jokes to cope with the anxiety, that’s just me spiraling again… Back to escaping…

Unwilling to allow my imagination to paint any further gruesome pictures of my existence, I gathered up Green and Indigo. Luckily, they still followed meekly behind when I grabbed their tails. The door to this laboratory hadn’t been left open, which caused me a bit of scare considering its weight, but the bottom had a sizable gap. We rolled out under the barrier and found ourselves in a tunnel of ludicrous size.

Obviously, it was a normal hallway. Perhaps a long one.

Traversing it was extremely tiresome. At our speed, it might take several minutes to reach the end. So I picked a door at random and oozed our bodies under the poorly shaped doorframe. And I released a sigh of relief to see a window in the room, with a desk pushed against the wall beneath it. I gestured to my companions and Green hopped up without a care in the world. Indigo and I took the more mundane path of oozing up a chair leg and then clambering up onto the desk.

Green jumped excitedly in front of the open window and Indigo moved to join the other Chimera Core. I examined the small book sitting in the middle of the desk and opened it with mounting excitement. Very obviously, this was a journal. Perhaps I could learn a bit about how and why they were made-

Okay, there was no way I could magically understand the writing of this world… I stared down at gibberish. I spitefully slashed with my claw, damaging a page or two. Then I went and joined my fellow Chimera Cores at the window. I looked out over a new horizon— and immediately began receiving notifications from the horrifying vista.

My body jello-ed around in fear. What the hell is this?!?

Your Skill (Temp) Detect Danger has grown to Level 9.

Your Skill (Temp) Lesser Mana Detection has grown to Level 10(+8).

We sat in a window in a keep-like structure. Around that building was a small clearing, and around that clearing was a dead and leafless forest. Let me be even more specific; the trees had the dried-bone look that screamed ‘an evil existence is sucking away the life from this place’.

Even if I hadn’t been part of this fantasy world’s religion, I would want to put a stop to whatever was happening at this location.

All of this I would have been willing to accept. However, thrashing and roaring in the clearing were sewn-together abominations, monsters that had been stitched together from various fantasy creatures. Humanoids with the heads of bulls and the arms of ogres swung hammers. A serpent with wings attached to its scaled-skin breathed fire. A skittering centipede with a woman’s head smiled and cackled as it fought.

Uh, is it a bigger problem than I thought that us three Chimera Cores were made with necrotic energy?

However…

These monsters, who instilled no hunger in me, likely due to their similarly evil nature(ie, necrotic origins), were being put down. And, from what I could tell, without much effort.

Your Skill (Temp) Lesser Mana Detection has grown to Level 10(+9).

Your Skill (Temp) Detect Danger has grown to Level 10.

A man in a blue robe pointed and smote a monstrous humanoid with a crackle of thick cobalt electricity. A samurai with a sword releasing green waves of energy cut back and forth, severing artificial limbs with each sheering strike. A short and stocky woman flicked her wrist, throwing out an improbable number of axes stored across her person. And at the center of the offensive was a paladin-looking fellow, pointing and calling golden hammers down from the sky.

He pointed and the centipede woman stopped laughing, her face mushed underneath glowing golden metal. She staggered, giving time for the samurai to bisect the top half of her body.

Your Skill (Temp) Detect Danger has grown to Level 10(+1).

Please note: as a transitionary (Temp) Skill, Detect Danger cannot grow beyond Level 10 until you pass the First Growth Threshold (Lvl 10). Additional Skill Levels cannot be gained. However, for pushing a Skill past its limits, you will receive additional bonuses upon reaching the First Growth Threshold.

Ah, I watched the unfolding battle with greater and greater alarm. The crusade was making quick work of the defenders. Am I about to get ‘saved’?

I felt very confident that we had to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

Or we would be squashed or sliced or electrocuted or axed into bits of ooze so small we would dissipate to nothing.

Just as much a part of this feeling was the certainty that I would not get the chance to reincarnate again. This ooze life was it, for me.

Completely obvious to the danger all around us, Green jumped out the window, excited to explore the new space. Indigo followed because of course it did. Both, for the second time in twenty minutes, splattered onto the ground. And falling from the second-story window, the damage was much more significant.

Even if the whizzing spells and casual martial mastery I witnessed hadn’t filled me with alarm, I knew their haste was the right call. Somehow, I had a hard time believing that this Paladin would allow us Chimera Cores to just wander around the world freely. When I jumped, I first spread out my slime body as wide and flat as possible to slow my descent. The air whooshed past as I descended. I think my method… slightly worked.

Your Skill (Earned) Inferior Body Manipulation has grown to Level 4.

The impact still hurt. I even lost a single Health, as well as an integrated body part.

Warning! Your Left Eye of the Chubby Rat has been severely damaged! Access to (Temp) Perception (+2) has been lost. Integrated body part has been destroyed.

Some of the clarity in the surrounding situation faded. I could still hear and feel the danger nearby, but it was a little easier to focus on other, closer, details. For example, the last of Green’s spider legs turned tails had shattered upon the impact, and it seemed deeply disturbed. Indigo consoled Green with several pats on the jello. In the end, I had to grab their remaining tails and lead them toward the bare tree line.

Uwaahhh, hard to defend the actions of this place when it is decorated with such evil-looking trees…

Just when we had cleared the open area and reached the first tree, a voice bellowed out. “Racain! I bring word from your father. It is time… to come home.”

Wait a second, I paused. Why the hell are they speaking English when that journal was covered in such gibberish!?