“You should name your companions. Mine is called Becca,” Mikah said, idly kicking her feet over the black void in the center of the chamber. Cedric glanced at her and then the ferocious uber-cat, bemused. The girl had gotten bored within five minutes of waiting and had been talking his ears off ever since. “I think, Arty is a greater name for the Shieldbearer.”

“Wouldn’t Arty be a better name for something more...cute?” Cedric replied idly. He returned his gaze to his palm where the crystal remained dull.

“What?! Arty is totally cute. Aren’t you, Arty? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

Arty stoically ignored the bored Gnoll, but that didn’t seem to phase Micah as she got up from her perch and hopped over to the Voidborne Skyshade. She stopped before the menacing shadow and adopted a formal tone. “Henceforth, from now until blah di blah...I name you Boomer!”

“Hold on,” Cedric frowned. “They are my monsters. Shouldn’t I get to name them?”

“Well yeah, but you were slow so you snooze you lose, duh.”

“That is not how it works. At all.”

“Is too!”

“No, it’s not” Cedric sighed. “Arty and Boomer. No, I refuse. Arty is fine, but Boomer is uninspired.”

"It is not uninspired!" Micah gasped, crossing her arms. "That's what he does. He booms-them."

"it's more like a nuke if we're honest..." Cedric grumbled, mostly to himself.

"Even better! Nuke-em. Nukem! That's a great name!"

"I...never mind."

“Yay! Micah wins once again through attrition!” Micah hopped up, clapping her hands in excitement. Cedric shook his head, returning his attention to his palm. Ultimately he didn’t care all that much. Shorthand names were a good idea. It would allow him to give orders faster, even if he thought naming a sinister black shadow Nukem was a little incongruous. Arty was better, but Cedric somehow wished the Shieldbearer’s name was a tad more noble.

“Anyways, this is taking an age and a day. Are you sure that the slime is going to gain some levels? I think we should totally spend this time hunting for a dungeon with a good monster for me in the overworld.”

“It should,” Cedric said. “I think you are really underestimating the slime though. With enough stats it will be truly formidable—”

Suddenly, Cedric’s crystal pulsed. Micah spun as an upgrade wisp rose hesitantly into the air. Then the crystal pulsed again. And again. And it just kept going. Cedric exploded to his feet as the upgrades slammed into the slime. Its body rippled and appeared to grow denser as its effective health pool skyrocketed into the tens of thousands.

Water Slime

Stats Invested: 3373

Talents Invested: 1360

Health[7]: 26644

Regeneration[8]: 14306.7/hr

Attack Damage[5]: 171

Lethality[5]: 36%

Armor[7]: 1376 (93%)

Ability Power[6]: 735

Ruin[6]: 58%

Magic Resistance[7]: 883 (90%)

Ability Haste[7]: 70%

Area of Effect[7]: 425%

Regenerative Touch

0m:18s

Grant your regeneration stat to another creature for 1 minute

Acidic Touch

9s

Your next attack deals an additional 20% regeneration + 45% ability power as magic damage over 4 seconds

Glom

6s

26 ft line

Jump in a direction, latching on to the first thing hit

Amorphous Form

-passive-

Take 30% reduced physical damage. This value is increased 60% against physical damage less than your regeneration

“Wow...” Micah whispered, hushed.

Cedric took an involuntary step back as the slime shuddered. A quick calculation revealed that the thing was healing around 4 points of health per second. Coupled with its insane armor and magic resistance meant that it would easily out-regenerate their damage if they didn’t do something quick.

“Nukem!” Cedric almost choked on the stupid name. “All your spells now!”

The wave of purple miasma washed over the slime. Its resistances plummeted but were still massively positive. Wither darkened its crystal clear body but was obviously being outpaced by its prodigious regeneration.

“I want it,” Micah whispered.

Cedric barked for Arty to help and rushed forward with his spear. Corrosive blood and red claws bombarded the tiny ball of water as Cedric slammed his spear as fast as he possibly could into its body. Somehow, the combined assault barely managed to pierce its flesh. Cedric lunged forward at the still incapacitated slime and triggered tame. Even with it starting at zero health the tiny little slime was out regenerating their damage.

Taming Water Slime...2m 41s

Taming Water Slime...2m 55s

The time was going up...

“I want it!” Micah said louder. “I take everything back! I want it! Please!”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Help me find something else and it's yours!” Cedric slammed his spear into the thing. It was slowly starting to recuperate from its catatonia, and they were rapidly running out of time. “Just help stop its regeneration for god’s sake!”

“Really!” Micah gasped, then straightened formally. “I swear to help you find another monster once I’ve tamed this monster.”

“Shut up and help, dammit!” Cedric roared.

“Oh right!”

Micah clicked her tongue and she and her Fashta rushed in. They crowded around the hapless slime, battering it and ripping off droplets of water that merged with the wet floor of the chamber. Cedric triggered Tame twice more, just to see the time left and almost deflated as he saw the time start to tick down.

With only thirty seconds left, however, the slime recovered from the shock of the unsolicited upgrade. It shook, as if waking from a long nap and flattened its body against the floor.

“It’s going to jump!” Micah shouted, and Cedric hastily commanded Arty to intercept. The slime didn’t seem to care who it attacked and slammed into the two raised shields of the Shieldbearer with the force of a wrecking ball. Riposte triggered, but the hulking blood beast was still launched across the room with the slime atop it. Its two shields sizzled and melted away, not even leaving behind a residue as an unbelievably powerful acid chewed through the delicate veins.

“Nukem, take over!” Cedric shouted as the group raced over to the fallen tank. Nukem flapped once and wrapped its body around Arty protectively as the Slime started slapping it with gooey tendrils. Luckily, Hinder meant its most powerful abilities had an immense cooldown, and it could only use melee attacks. With 170 attack damage, its attack hurt, but Nukem had 4000 health and 70% physical damage reduction so could easily tank a few blows.

Becca the Fashta bit the wet slime and ripped it off the other two companions. It slapped wetly into the opposing wall and glooped down to the floor. Its form had lost the spherical symmetry and it looked rather ragged. Even still it managed to straighten as if it had plenty of fight left in it.

Micah tackled it, hugging it close to her chest. The two rolled in the shallow water, narrowly missing the massive abyss in the center of the chamber.

“Be mine! Be mine! Be mine!” Micah shouted as she repeatedly stabbed the creature from below with a long, curved dagger. The slime struggled. It raised a few gloopy tentacles and slapped at Micah, but somehow she managed to tank hit after hit as its body lost cohesion.

Suddenly, all fight vanished from the slime and it melted down into a puddle in Micah’s lap.

“Holy shit,” Cedric scratched his receding hairline. She’d done it. Something that he would not have been able to do with his low stats. Even with all the advantages it had been a close fight. Whether it was because the crystal in his palm was somehow scaling the difficulty, or whether the longer he lived in this world the more influence his crystal gained was irrelevant. Regardless of the reason, it was undeniable that the monsters he was fighting were slowly growing stronger.

“I’m going to name you, Droplet!” Micah declared, holding up the slowly congealing slime. It bobbed happily in her grip, apparently oblivious of the wanton violence it had inflicted mere moments prior.

“How much defenses do you have?” Cedric asked, staring at the slime and doing some quick and dirty mental math in his head. If his calculations were correct, the thing had effectively 400,000 health against physical attacks. Much more if he counted Amorphous Form. It was more fragile against magic damage, but not by much. With its insane resistances, its regeneration was 10 times as effective as it should be.

“Oh, all of them,” Micah replied, distracted. Her eyes were glazed as she looked at an invisible interface window. "Hey? How come I can't augment this little guy?"

"Welcome to my world," Cedric chuckled.

"What? That's stupid!"

"Not as stupid as you tanking half a dozen attacks from the slime."

"It's Droplet, and I'm just following a build guide. There is a super wise elder in our village by the name of Sabio who said that the most important part about being a tamer is being tough enough to get in physical contact with a monster. That means I basically put all my points into health and resistances. I don’t regenerate very fast, or deal that much damage, but that is what my companions are for. That’s what you are for! Yes, it is!”

Cedric frowned as Micah descended into baby-talking the jiggly slime. It was refreshing that he had somehow corrupted the slime and prevented it from being augmented by its master. The thought left him with a smile, but it quickly faded as he turned and checked up on his companions. Both were heavily injured, but rapidly recovering. Arty’s shields were slowly healing and both should be back in fighting condition by the end of the day. Two days tops.

“Alright, I’d like to get going. The sooner we find another dungeon with a monster I can tame the better.”

“Oh, right,” Micah blanched, her hand freezing mid-pet. “Isn’t the Hartebeast Behemoth pretty strong by now?”

“And the longer we wait the harder it will be to defeat it,” Cedric said.

They swiftly gathered their belongings and exited the dungeon. Along the way, Becca found the last augment which Micah gave to Cedric.

Absorbed Augment: Life Defense: While augmented skill is active, gain 20% increased regeneration when hit by a damaging attack or ability.

Hydroformed Sewers cleared!

It was a pretty good augment and actually one of the augments Micah had wanted to apply to Droplet. Cedric couldn’t directly apply it himself, so he just added it to his growing library of augments and moved on.

They stepped into the forest, momentarily blinded by the dappled noonday light filtering through the rustling canopy.

“Ok, so how do we find another dungeon? Is there no other way than a Dungeon Locator?”

“Why can’t we just go back to town and ask to use their Locator?” Micah asked.

“Somehow I doubt they’d just let us use it for free if we show up with three monsters that are far stronger than the average monster in Gnollan,” Cedric said dryly. Micah frowned, then reluctantly nodded.

“Vorahr might even challenge me,” Micah said quietly, hugging Droplet to her chest until the small slime bulged above and below her arms.

“Which leads me back to my question. If the dungeons in Gnollan are either weak or already looted, is there another way of finding good dungeons? Maybe outside Gnollan? I know you haven’t ever left, but if it is close by we could try our luck outside.”

“That might work,” Micah paused, shuddering. “We could also, like, probably try for a dungeon in the In-Between.”

Cedric glanced at the young gnoll, waiting for her to elaborate. “Alright, I’ll bite. What is the ‘In Between’?”

“It’s the area between zones. It’s actually not far from here and it should be easy to find the dungeons since it's completely empty, but the monsters are usually...corrupted somehow. I don’t know, I’ve only heard stories.”

“Hmm,” Cedric chewed on his lip. “My system is already broken. How much worse could getting a corrupted creature to be?”

“Um,” Micah shot him a worried glance.

“I’m joking. Mostly,” Cedric smiled. “How about this, we head over to the border, eh... In Between, and if we find a dungeon on the way, great. Otherwise, we can poke our heads outside and see what's what.”

Micah was hesitant but eventually agreed. They set out but didn’t take the most direct route out of Gnollan. Micah insisted on taking a snaking path that maximized the chances of finding a decent dungeon. The day passed and they slept. Once more their companions sleeplessly handled any aggressive forest denizens and they woke rested and fully healed.

They reached the border that day. It was an unnerving thing. A black wall of swirling mist cut across the forest in a perfectly straight line. The trees grew right up to the border, but their leaves shied away from actually touching the barrier. If that wasn’t ominous enough, the forest was perfectly quiet this close to the border. No wildlife bothered them or even approached.

They followed the border for a time at Micah’s insistence. Despite their companions fanning out in search of another dungeon, they didn’t find anything. Eventually, Cedric’s patience ran out, and he pulled Micah aside.

“We searched enough. There aren’t any dungeons around here. Let’s just poke our heads out into the In-Between and see what we can see.”

“Ok, fine. Yes. but, like. You have to promise me not to try and tame anything while we are in the In-Between.”

“Oh?” Cedric raised a brow at that. “Is there a tamable zone boss in the In-Between?”

“Her name is Godbeast Tahlia, the Forsaken,” Micah said, eyes staring fearfully into the black mist. “The stories say she doesn’t appreciate being tamed, even if the tame is guaranteed to fail.”

“Alright, I promise, no taming until we actually enter a dungeon,” Cedric agreed easily. There was a chance that the Gnoll’s fables were wrong but there was little reason to put that to the test at the moment. Besides, oral tradition was almost always based on a kernel of truth.

“Ok, we’ll need a light,” Micah nodded firmly, pulling out a stack of torches from her pack. She then turned to the black mist and stepped through with a deep, shuddering breath. Cedric followed and found himself and a disturbing hellscape.

The ground was a smooth plane of polished steel. Blistering cold radiated from underneath as if the unnaturally flat metal was attempting to suck the very vitality from his bones. Above, a black sky with no sun meant that no light filtered into the zone. This was the first zone Cedric had entered without some form of illumination. The only reason he could see anything at all was that a faint, distorted light filtered through from the Gnollan barrier.

In the far, far distance, unshrouded by mist or other obstacles, another massive bubble glowed with an inner light. It looked blue and cold, with a hint of green, as if the land behind the barrier was a glacier or an evergreen tundra.

“That’s Avion,” Micah whispered, her voice carrying unnaturally far in the stillness. “Hielo is red, I think.”

Cedric turned from the far-off zone and looked at the space in between. Dungeon portals dotted the steel landscape. Dozens of them. Their colors ranged from a brilliant blue to a disturbing maroon and every color in between. Distance was hard to judge in the In-Between, however, as even the closest dungeon was easily an entire mile away from the border of Gnollan.

Cedric shivered as the chill stole past his torn clothes. He really needed better clothes.

“Nothing for it. Let’s go,” Cedric said and set out.

The walk was nerve-wracking, but ultimately uneventful. No beasts lived in the In-Between to waylay them. Except presumably Godbeast Tahlia, but it was nowhere in sight if it really existed. They arrived at the dungeon portal soon enough. It was a swirling gray with specks of hot pink and green traveling listlessly to the edges.

Enter Dungeon Subdomain: Mindshatter Tear?

“Good grief,” Cedric pursed his lips. “Even the name is ominous.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Micah whispered back, vanishing a moment later through the portal. Cedric hopped through and instantly triggered Tame.

No target selected...attempting to tame nearest creature

Taming Abyssal Eyebeast...Failed, reduce distance to begin taming.