Lio’s eyes snapped open, greeted by a cold snowy forest that stretched as far as the eye can see. The first thing he tried was to attempt to stand up, but to his horror, he found himself with no limbs to work with. He tried flailing his arms and stretching his leg to no avail, his body was telling him that no such limbs exists. The only thing he could do was to slowly rotate his body, allowing him to look around. Snow covered most of the lush landscape, turning everything into a indistinguishable blanket of white. Lio squinted, staring at the faraway mountains and recognizing the distinct terrain as the vast demonic forest he was wandering in after his “epic” battle with the demon king.

Status He tried to conjure the hero console to no avail. It seemed whatever condition he was in had prevented the hero console passive magic from activating. It was not particularly surprising since the spell itself wasn’t reliable in the first place. Heroes often reported it not working during bad weather, inside magic jamming areas, and on Mondays.

Numerous theories started to take root in his mind as he began to take more notice of himself and his surroundings. He appeared to completely loose controls of his limbs, yet at the same time able to remain conscious, calm, and without pain. He was aware of a few obvious facts:

1-He was alive, conscious, and still living (good)

2-His passive calmness mental clarity skill was still in effect, allowing him to stay calm in such a worrying situation (good)

3-After some more observations and rolling around, his current body appeared to have absolutely zero limbs, the only method of locomotion available to him was to roll about (not good)

4-HOLY CRAP, he had no limbs! His strong capable arms and legs were gone, he couldn’t stand up, couldn’t use his hands with oposable thumbs to hold anything. he couldn’t even rub one off anymore without his arm, and it wasn’t like he had any evidence of manhood left to utilize. What the absolute shat? How did this happen? He rolled around in agony, questioning his fate.

5-Observation #2 wasn’t quite right

6-It was winter, which was clearly not right as summer was the last season he remembered being in.

It seemed during his previous walk, something slippery caused his feet to slip and slammed his head on something hard. Then the realization finally hit him in the head, Did I die?

His memories ended so abruptly that he either went unconscious or died on the spot, since slumbering in such a dangerous demonic forest was a great way to get eaten by the nearest thing with teeth, he doubted that he ever lived to tell the tale.

Then he remembered a small message he received upon being summoned to this world as a hero. It said something about an emergency backup spell that will activate when a hero’s life was about to be extinguished. The spell was designed to evacuate the soul to a nearby safe vessel until a rescue party can come, retrieve the soul vessel and with adequate resource, and perform the nessesary rituals to revive the hero.

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Unfortunately, the success rate of that spell was abysmal and heroes should never rely on it to save their lives.

The spell was fickle, and even if it worked, the result was unpredictable, sometimes it would pick a chamber pot as a soul vessel and other times it would send souls over extreme distances making recovery nearly impossible, and in Lio’s case as he presumed, sending his soul through time and into another season. He had no way to know how much time had passed, or even reversed.

Stuck in a demonic forest in a tiny body with no limbs, Lio couldn’t careless about what time of year it was. He had to find a way to make it back to civilization and get his soul revived in a proper hero body.

Lio took a deep breath, only to realize that he had no mouth to breathe or talk either. What cursed body did I find myself into?

With much effort, he managed to slowly roll towards a set of heavy bushes and away from the open to avoid the gaze of any predators. In his sluggish rolling, Lio noticed that his new body was surprisingly squishy, it seemed to change shape and was able to compress and expand at will, as if the entire composition was that of a liquid.

Then everything clicked, his body had no limbs, mouth, or nose and was very squishy and liquid-like, and there was a constant jiggly feeling as if he himself was made out of water. I’m a slime?

Slimes were extremely simple creatures, they had no intelligence nor capability to do anything. They were simply the manifestation of the dense mana surrounding an area, they would spend their exceedingly short lives absorbing the surrounding vegetation and the occasional insect or rodent, mating with other slimes to make cute little slime babies, or making the occasional unlucky hero slip to his death. So pathetic and useless were their existence that even young children wouldn’t waste time on them as practice targets.

Despite such an unfortunate event - dying suddenly and becoming a weak puny slime, Lio didn’t mind, he actually found the development very interesting to be able to experience having a liquid body. At least he now knew what exactly that he had turned into, and that he could jump rather than roll for faster movement.

With some effort, he managed to compress his entire body into a flatter shape, generating potential kenetic energy. With a quick release, the pressure released by his body caused it to spring high into the open air. Lio had misjudged his compression and found himself barreling uncontrollably high. Slimes’ bodies were naturally greatly compressible, allowing it to spring very high up. But the same can’t be said about substaining a landing on the cold hard ground. Luckily his stunt was caught by a large bush, absorbing the force of his reckless jump.

For the next few hours, he familiarized himself with his new slimy body, gauging his jumps carefully and exploring the surroundings. Occasionally he would run into some predators, but thankfully slimes weren’t part of many creatures diet due to their extremely bland taste and while slimes do have a magic core, it was tiny and unappetizing.

But Lio still prefered to be on the safe side, his new body was very weak fragile, and hungry desperate predators weren’t picky eaters.

The cold unforgiving snow also started to harden his outer liquid membranes, threatening to freeze him solid. He had to take frequent breaks by nestling in or on large bushes to prevent contact with the snow on the ground.

But after nearly a day, his exploration finally bore fruit as he found a slime herd huddling against each other for warmth.