The woman that came into view was a beast kin, a breed of humanoids that took on animal traits. They had been a staple in the omni-verse since their inception, and many gods saw it as their goal in life to think of new animals just to cross them with humanoids and see which resulting female had the cutest ears. There was a figurative war in heaven whether anybody could even challenge the cat girls in that regard. It had actually been literal for a little bit, but that was a story few ever talked about.
This particular specimen was of the dog variety. Wolfish ears peeked out of her brown hair and her deep tanned body moved over the ground on all fours as she continued sniffing her way around. A fluffy tail wagged at her lower back. Judging by the light leather armour and the crossbow strapped to her back, she was a ranger.
She was also a cute young thing, in her early twenties, with a round face and lively brown eyes. Her body was lean and athletic, she didn’t have a killer-figure but because of how good of a shape she was in there were few men who would have scorned her. Unluckily for most guys, she had too much energy to be chased after.
The man accompanying her was one of those men who didn’t care about her, namely because her personality was way too much upkeep for him. Also, because he was her instructor from the Brancher’s Guild, the organization that was out to explore the leaves of the omni-verse.
He was strict, stood tall and wielded the unorthodox combination of a sorcerer’s staff and plate armour. Being somebody who liked his life and often went on solo-quests in his youth, he had specialized in a way that was versatile. On his face, showing the beginning of wrinkles, was a near constant scowl and he checked the sky every few seconds. Every other second he used to check if his gelled back black hair was still sitting in place.
“What are you looking for, Hemle?” the dog girl, Hizulu, asked.
“Either an eagle or a vulture, that’s what we are here for, remember?” Hemle asked. His job was to protect that energetic girl as she went out to tame her first proper pet.
“Ah, right!” Hizulu perked up for a moment, “I completely forgot!”
Hemle shook his head, why was he stuck with this kind of airhead again? Right, because he needed to finance his son’s magical college tuition. ‘Do it for him,’ Hemle thought, he generally liked his job as an instructor, but days like these made him wish he was stuck in a pencil-pusher profession instead. “Just what are you after though?” Hemle asked, sniffing. “Huh, now I actually smell something nice too.” His human nose finally picked up on the pheromones.
That was what Aclysia picked up from her position in the tree.
The slime noticed two giants heading for it and, in response, flattened itself next to a tree. There was no way it was going to fight those titans. For a moment, it cursed just how huge it was in comparison to its original droplet state. It would have had no problem hiding from those oddly-shaped things back then. Come to think of it, weren’t they shaped like Aclysia, but just scaled up? Also, they were continuously letting out growl sounds.
It took a few more sentences out of the two before the slime finally got that they were communicating with those sounds. In other words, the metal fairy had tried to inform it of things. Now the slime felt like an idiot.
An idiot that was also confused by the humanoid body shape. Two of the three he had met so far moved on two legs, the only steadily approaching him on four. Where was the logic in that? Were the metal fairy and the metal-skinned one hurt and somehow managed to keep their balance on just two legs? Seemed unlikely, but that was the best the slime could come up with at its current sample size.
Either way, the tailed one was steadily approaching and it did not like that. Moving would have immediately given away its position. Then, the immense quivering of the creature’s likely nose finally made the slime realize what was at fault there. Immediately, it ceased pheromone production.
“Gotcha!” the brunette shouted as she grabbed the slime.
“Hizulu, are you insane?!” her instructor immediately scolded her as she raised the blob of amorphous slime off the floor. “Grabbing a slime is the quickest way to get ones gloves dissolved! Have you forgotten the lectures already? Always poke a slime with a stick first to see if it is a biting, non-biting or sinkers species!”
The difference between them being whether it was a slime that immediately tried to gnaw on what was touching it or not. Alternatively, there were slimes that didn’t have an outer membrane, thus having the hand ‘sink’ right in. Usually those weren’t acidic, but it was still a worthwhile thing to check.
Didn’t quite work for this specimen, since it was sapient and could make the decision every time it was encountered, but still.
“Yes, yes, sure, but look, I think he likes me!” Hizulu answered, waving around the kitten-sized unmoving blob in her leather-clad hands. “If it is a he, could be a she, are you a she?”
The slime had opted not to attack the enormous creature just yet. If they tried to eat it, the acidic blob would try what had worked with the eagle, namely sacrificing some of its current mass to burn the inside of their mouths and then flee when they lost interest.
Hopefully they weren’t as vengeful as ants, otherwise that plan would be turn into a pile of shambles quicker than its nucleus would.
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“It’s a slime, it’s an it!” Hemle kept lecturing the beast kin. “Which is weird enough in and of itself, Ctania is an explored leaf and slimes are only reported to have been seen on the watery continent north of here.”
“Must have swam a long way then,” Hizulu guessed. The slime was wondering if it could jump off and used a bounce to run away.
“Impossible, if it lives here its not a saltwater slime, it would have never survived,” came the prompt answer. “It must be one of the chaotic aligned deities trying to change up this leaf.”
“Didn’t you lecture us repeatedly about how this is a safe world?” asked Hizulu. “The covenant would prevent all gods aside from the original thirty-three from getting involved with it, would it not?”
“Uhm…”
“And the original thirty-three usually announce changes to safe worlds, do they not?”
Hemle quietly cursed the girl for remembering the one thing of his many classes that smashed his best theory. “Well then, I am as clueless as you are,” he admitted and went back to scowling. “Anyhow, kill or leave it, we should continue searching for an eagle.”
“How about I try taming this instead?” asked the dog girl. While the smell was slowly waning, it was still fresh and pleasant in her nose. Very alluring, she wanted to cuddle this soft thing and use it as a pillow.
“…mhm,” the battle mage didn’t put it aside immediately, he thought of the practical implications. “It is a rare occasion, so you may get yourself something good if you do. Or it might be a regular old, green slime that does nothing special and you will have to hire me for help a second time.”
“That’s fine,” Hizulu decided. Even if the slime did turn out to be useless, she would just keep it at home or in the ranger’s farm. At her level of aptitude, she could only keep up one mental connection to an animal or monster. She put her eyes intensely on the thing.
The slime, only sensing that things were suddenly silent, kept standing still. An anticipating gust rolled over the mountainside, causing the leaves of nearby trees to rustle with the whispers of a fateful meeting. The sun peeked through the clouds, even the sparrows kept their quiet.
“Uhm…I can’t seem to do it,” Hizulu stated.
Must have been a fateful meeting elsewhere.
“Are you sure you are applying your mana correctly?” the instructor asked, crossing his arms over his crystal-tipped spear-staff hybrid.
“Channelling it through its nucleus, should be easier than the normal application,” usually the process of taming involved the difficult act of channelling a ranger’s mana through an animal’s heart and brain at the same time. With slimes only possessing a nucleus, which was usually a pretty basic brain, there had been training animals that should have been harder to tame. “It just straight-up doesn’t work.”
“Greetings,” Aclysia finally made her entrance by flying in front of the ranger’s face. “My name is…” she was interrupted by the dog girl shouting in surprise and falling backwards, tossing the slime into the air in the process. “…Aclysia,” she continued all the same. “You are incapable of taming this slime due to its status as a sapient being.”
“Oh, okay… that’s weird,” Hizulu said, rubbing her shapely butt while looking at the metal fairy. The slime, in the meanwhile bounced twice from the excess force. It did not like the feeling of its nucleus being catapulted through its body whatsoever. If it could, it would have puked. “I mean, I know there are slime people, but I haven’t heard of a sentient slime yet.”
“Sapient, she said sapient,” corrected Hemle. “Sentient means that it can perceive and feel things, all slimes are sentient to some degree. Sapient beings are able to think and plan.” He looked at the metal fairy. “Nevermind all of that, did you say Aclysia?”
“That is my designation, correct.”
“The divine quest sent by the 33rd god, Hashahin?”
“That is one of the names my, usually bored, creator goes by, correct.”
“…It has been 64 years since your arrival on this world has been announced, ceaseless Brancher’s, Walker’s and Climber’s have tried to find you and now you appear before us randomly,” Hemle shook his head in disbelief. “I will take your divine quest!”
Divine quests didn’t have their name for show. They were of unparalleled difficulty, length but also reward. Whether it be legendary weapons, favours from the gods, complete control over one of the many leaves of the dimensional trunk of the god’s home dimension in the omni-verse, even immortality wasn’t out of the picture.
As such, they were immensely coveted. Sadly, getting to be on one was more often random than per will. If one was lucky, they got picked by a god and put on the path. Others were given by walking through a door at the right time. Some gods just wanted to see who could give them a certain amount of tribute first before handing out the quest.
So, when one had been announced to have its starting point in a safe world, everyone had scrambled to get there. In his youth, Hemle himself had tried to find it, hence why he had a greedy look in his eyes now.
“I have to disappoint you, my existence is already marked with the mana of the slime,” Aclysia informed the instructor, leaving both him and the beast kin dumbfounded.
“You want to tell me, that a slime that nobody knows where it came from is strolling around this place,” Hizulu began.
“Affirmative.”
“And that it is a sapient creature.”
“Affirmative.”
“And…” that was Hemle talking, “that it took the divine quest that people have been searching for, for over sixty years.”
“Affirmative,” Aclysia’s answers kept coming somewhat monotonous. She had wished for a conversation, but her serving nature kept her words to simple confirmations.
“If I kill the slime, does it become open again?” Hemle asked.
“Affirmative, albeit I rather you wouldn’t,” the metal fairy answered.
“I don’t care!” the instructor opened his folded arms and gripped his weapon tight. Killing a small green sapient slime or foregoing a divine quest, even for an ex-adventurer the choice there was pretty obvious. “Where is that thing?!”
The slime was pretty close, just a few metres ahead to be exact, sitting in the hole where a grab-root had been before and disguising itself as the same. It had taken the first opportunity to do that, as everyone seemed to be distracted talking to each other.
Being an experienced instructor, Hemle dodged the annoying plants for the whole hour he ran in circles in search of the slime, before Hizulu finally convinced him that he had another job to do. Luckily, the slime had disabled its pheromone track and it would be more careful with that thing in the future.
“I’ll be back,” the battle mage guaranteed and then went back to watching the sky. Aclysia waved him goodbye.