“I hope the nights here aren’t too cold.” I muttered as I was lighting the brazier thing with some logs with Phoenix being the lighter.

“It probably shouldn’t get too low since during the day we were at a decent temperature and the creatures didn’t seem to need huge fur coats like the goblizard” Phoenix mentioned.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

It was dark and I had only the lighting of the stone brazier which didn’t help as it was small and only gave off a bit of heat. I figured I could get some rest as a lot happened these past few days and I wasn’t really too sure I’ve been myself since I kind of just went along with it considering it may all just be a dream.

I walked over to the fur bedding and just lied down while Phoenix had me leave the notes near the bed so it could continue to examine before it got its rest. Slime god also sleeps apparently but we didn’t have to worry too much about abrupt visits as Phoenix had some killer ability that allowed it to sense hostile presences within a three meter diameter. Not much but better than anything and I kept my weapons close.

The night silently passed and I didn’t know how long I slept for when I woke up but the sun was already shining which made me realize that this was really happening to me and this was really where I was.

‘Sigh, I really thought this might have been some elaborately lucid dream.’

Well, I couldn’t be too upset since I still had my space travelling slime with me with the possibility of turning into some super saiyan Jupiter one day so can’t be that bad.

“Morning Phoenix, made any sense of those notes last night?” I asked yawning.

“Morning and yes and no. I managed to get a few words potentially deciphered but having only two pages is a real pain as I don’t know if it’s a contextual thing or if they are nouns. It’s really frustrating!” Phoenix cried.

‘Well, seems like you’re not omnipotent at least. Leaves me some space to not feel completely bad about myself.’ Unfortunately for Phoenix, my priority was ego and I was just happy I didn’t look that bad next to it.

I grabbed a small breakfast of cooked goblizard while getting off the fur rags when I noticed a weird little line in the wood where the rag was covering. I probably moved it in my sleep, I looked closer and got the rags off the floor and I found what seemed to be a trap door but it was clearly well covered unless you looked for it. My eyes shot open with no trace of having just woken up showing.

“Phoenix, you see this?” I almost yelled as it was clearly a trap door which meant there was more to the place than I thought!

Phoenix just stared at it for a bit before understanding there was probably another passage available to which it just said “Open it!”

‘Hehe, what goodies await me now?’ I grin as I use the knife to open the trap door and get it lifted. It was just a dark shallow hole.

I was clearly upset at the turn of events but I didn’t really want to think there was absolutely nothing, I mean we found a dagger so whoever lived here must have left in a hurry or didn’t come back.

I grabbed a stick and wrapped a piece of the rags I tore off onto it and asked Phoenix to light it which was just Phoenix sticking out a tentacle and poof little fire starting to burn the rag on my makeshift torch.

“There has to be something” I muttered as I lowered the torch and started looking around the hole before I sighed as I couldn’t see anything.

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Just when I was about to pull the torch out of the hole Phoenix yelled “ Jupiter! Look in the corner there, there’s something sticking out!”

‘YES! God slime eyesight is nothing to scoff at.’ I silently praised.

I reach down with my other hand and start trying to move the dirt around the little dark red object Phoenix spotted. I wasn’t really able to do much but I did see there was something. Eventually, I stepped into the hole as I couldn’t pull it out. I had phoenix hold my little torch with a tentacle and started using my knife when my fingers couldn’t get the dirt to move.

20 minutes of digging later.

“THUD”

I drop a small chest with dark red metal lining the box and dark blue wood making its body. It was also locked to my surprise.

‘Now I know you must have a special goody for me!’ My eyes burned with desire for whatever this box held.

“Phoenix, you have any way to open this thing?” I asked as even now I hadn’t understood the full capabilities of the slime overlord over here.

“I’m not sure let me try.”

So Phoenix sent some tentacles inspecting the box and the supposed keyhole before it got shocked by some small red sparks when messing with the keyhole itself.

“Ow! It shocked me!” Phoenix cried in pain.

I was almost going to burst into laughter as that’s exactly what it did to me when I met him.

“How did it shock you?” I asked barely holding the laughter.

“It has some sort of residual energy rune on its lock that shocked me. Hmpf! Watch what I do to you! Shock me? Huh!” Phoenix seemed mad as next thing it did was literally destroy the box with about 5 tentacles popping out of my arms and withering the shit out of the wood.

“Ha! How does it feel to be broken by the great me?”

I just nervously laughed seeing Phoenix angry as I wouldn’t want to imagine what it would do if I pissed it off.

My excitement for goodies coming back, I pick up my knife and say “Well, that seemed to solve the problem. Let’s see what goodies we got.”

Using the knife to crack apart the wood we finally get the contents out of the box.

I didn’t really know what to make of it as it was a small journal with a scary looking wolf bear beast carved into its leather cover and a palm size green crystal with a dark emerald glow at its center. It was unique to say the least.

“What’s this” I pick up the crystal and look at it for a bit and I noticed it strangely attracted my attention and I didn’t want to look away. It was in the shape of a rhombus and its outer edge seemed to be made of an emerald type gem but inside was a dark ball of green just shining with a pulse like glow.

“Let me take a look.” Phoenix asked and it broke the little trance I ended up in. I actually got a little nervous to look at it again so I warned Phoenix of what happened to which Phoenix seemed slightly excited to hear as it wiggled a little in my head again.

‘That crystal almost felt alive in that trance for a moment there, wonder where it came from.’ I mused as I pick up the journal and get a good look at the beast that was drawn on the cover.

It looked like a giant bear with razor sharp claws and a wolf life face with four horns curving towards its back on its head. It also had a small horn in the shape of a diamond growing on its forehead and a giant mouth with even sharper fangs. The ears shot straight up and it had a long furry tail with what looked like a scarf like mane hanging from its neck on both sides. The whole thing looked like it was probably huge and could eat me whole in a second which left me silently praying to never meet this thing.

I flipped through the pages and saw a bunch of notes with a few drawn pictures of creatures I never seen and some plants which made me think this may have belonged to a hunter of sorts. I was going to keep looking through before Phoenix suddenly started yelling at me in excitement.

“Jupiter! Jupiter! JUPITER!!!!! This thing is so amazing!” It yelled in an almost schoolgirl voice just missing the high pitch scream at the beginning or end.

“Okay! OKAY! What is it?” I asked a little rudely as it really wasn’t necessary to yell when you live in my brain.

Which Phoenix didn’t even notice from its excitement.

“This thing seems to be an energy core! We are so lucky to even see one of these things right now!!!” It yelled again.

“ENOUGH with the yelling! I’m right here, okay? Okay. Now what’s an energy core?”

Still not giving any care about what I said while being just as loud as before I get another answer:

“This can help us out soo much! These things are only produced in rare mines, super strong beasts which have created cores or with energy compression technology! We could get a significant boosts to all our abilities with the energy this thing contains! We can maybe even get a proper evolution of one of our innate abilities!” Phoenix was too happy and just kept shouting but by this point even I got excited as it seemed to rub off Phoenix and when it said we could get an evolution of abilities I straight up thought about my energy levels.