Arcing through the air, finally able to make out the form of the vine streaking toward me, another part of myself huddles up next to {Mask} beneath our protective canopy of ferns. I don't know how I've done it, but my selves have separated, one tackling {Mask} out of the way, the other two, still in one body, facing down the ambusher.
Unfortunately, my mass has also been split in two. I'm now half the size I was, so when my Slam clashes with the tentacle-like vine, easily as thick around as my body, I knock it slightly off course but it takes little to no damage from the hit.
Conversely, I find myself caught in a sub-optimal situation. "Oi, let go!" Numerous thin, barbed strands covering the first foot or two of this vine react to my contact by latching onto me, digging into my membrane and making it next to impossible to escape. There are so many, wrapping me so completely, that there are barely any gaps to squeeze through, even if I could slip through the barbs without tearing my lightly perforated membrane to shreds.
Watching from my vantage point on the ground, the vine comes to a stop now that it's caught something. The ambush attacker retreats smoothly, giving me the chance to trace the source of the vine up, up, up; all the way to the roof.
"How the shit did that thing even see us?" I mutter, dumbfounded. "It must have some weird plant-y sense."
Up in the grabby vine, I retaliate. "Don't think I'm done just yet!" I cackle, cloaking myself in the Enlarge I just finished weaving, having finally found an inch or so of space between the lashings constraining me. My excess mass swells rapidly, shredding itself apart on the vines. My other self watching from below, the sight is somewhat reminiscent of a kid squishing a handful of jelly inside their fist. The important stuff though, my original mass, squeezes out of that couple-inch wide gap, protected from the barbs by a film of excess slime matter.
Dribbling out of the vine's grasp like an especially impressive string of snot, I'm glad I pumped everything I had into that weave. Whatever it is, that monster is way above my paygrade; I had no chance of slipping free without sacrificing almost all of my mass. Even with all that protection, I nearly didn't get out. Its grip didn't even twitch under the extra pressure, those vines must be seriously strong!
"Get over here!" I yell to my dribbling self, watching me drop to the grass, bounce, then roll into the ferns at speed. "That was too close," I sigh, relieved now that no one is in immediate danger. "Where the shit did that thing come from?!"
Looking at myself from two different perspectives is... less weird than I thought it might be, funnily enough. I don't really understand how it's happening, but at the least, my mind feels the same. I don't feel like I'm split up; I'm getting input from two bodies now, rather than the singular body I'm used to.
"Two Lukes." Glowing curiously, {Mask} inspects the pair of me where we sit, across from each other amongst the disturbed dirt of our recent meal. "Smaller. Still Luke. How?" they ask, their pulses growing hungry again.
"I don't know how it happened," I reply, both bodies pulsing in unison. "You were in danger, and I couldn't decide what to do. Then, when I forced myself to make a decision, I ended up going in two direction in once."
Looking between my bodies, {Mask} ripples thoughtfully. "This. Me. Not knowing. But," they gleam, "more slimes. More fun! Teach?"
Looking between my selves, I pulse apologetically. "Getting this Skill wasn't exactly... pleasant. I'm not sure I'd even be able to explain it to you in a way you'd understand with our ability to communicate where it is right now. Sorry. Maybe once you've evolved I can tell you about it, so you can decide for yourself?" I suggest.
Seemingly happy to accept the compromise, they glance through the thicket of stems into the clearing. "Okay. Later." Nudging forward to the edge of the ferns, they look up, trying to see what attacked us. "Monster. Gone?"
"Maybe," I mutter, unconvinced. "I don't know how it saw us in the first place, but I'm guessing that-"
Blech, watching myself speak in stereo is getting way too distracting! Enough of that!
Pausing mid sentence, the body on the left continues speaking. "I'm guessing that, so long as we stay in the ferns, we'll be safe."
"Why?"
"Because that thing was a lot stronger than the flower we just fought, and it hadn't been eaten yet. If that vine thing knew what was in the ferns, it would have taken our meal long before we did." Looking around our little hiding spot, I come to a decision.
"I think we should take a break here," the me on the right says. "I need to figure out what's going on with this new thing I can do, and I want to give Viney McVineFingers time to calm down before we try to leave." We could chance going out the back of the patch of ferns, where the canopy is a little denser, but I'd rather not take the risk.
"Alright. Will wait," {Mask} ripples, immediately sidling up against a nearby stalk and attempting to mimic its shape.
For my part, I move a short distance further in. Settling into the grass, I'm not entirely sure where I should start. Sigh, I guess I should just start with the obvious and move on from there. This would be much easier to figure out if I had a Skill description to work off of.
First off, I'm not actually 'in' either body, as such. Much like how my initial epiphany revealed that I wasn't one consciousness split in three, but rather three consciousness' forming one, I'm not anchored to either one of my bodies. My mind still has that sitting-on-the-surface feeling I've been enjoying lately, one of my selves below has just gotten their own vehicle and is driving around, seeing different sights.
As for the price tag on that vehicle...
[ Hit Points - 7/8 [15] ]
[Mana - 5]
My hit points have undergone a concerning, yet intriuging change. This says I only have eight max hp now, but thankfully my normal maximum is still off to the side in brackets. That one damage was likely from the vine's barbs, but when my maximum HP is only half of what it usually is, one is a much bigger number than I'm happy losing.
[ Hit Points - 7/7 [15] ]
[Mana - 5]
As for my self that tackled {Mask} out of the way, they only have seven max hit points, and the same bracketed fifteen. It's easy enough to guess why that might be; you can't halve fifteen evenly, so one self carried the one in the equation when I split.
As to how I split...
Honestly, I don't remember anything specific. It just kind of... happened. Focusing on my body that still houses two selves, I try just crawling away from myself-
Immediately, my perspective from that bubble of consciousness shifts from floating around my Heart aimlessly to becoming the core of another body, which takes half my mass with it when it crawls away. Watching my hit points intently, one moment this body has eight, the next I have four. I didn't even perceive the change; it's like I looked away for a millisecond and it had already changed once I looked back, despite it being impossible to 'look away' from something inside my own head.
Freaky.
My selves crawling around each other in a circle, I don't feel any kind of strain or anything like that. The combined perspectives aren't difficult to keep track of, what I'm seeing feels just as natural as if I were looking out of one 'pair of eyes' rather than three.
"I can probably do some pretty neat things with this," I giggle, imagining the confusion of the monsters I'm fighting when they think they've got me caught and I just split in two and run in opposite directions. "Hehehe, cool." I wonder how I...?
Ah, that's nice and simple. Full sized once more after crawling into myself like a droplet of water gathering more droplet friends on its way down a windshield, I double check to make sure my health is back to the way it should be.
[Hit Points - 14/15]
[Mana - 5]
"Brilliant!" And now I've finally got an opportunity to properly test Suture! Weaving together the complex braided pattern, I look for a place to anchor it. As a slime I can't really get wounds in the traditional sense, so instead I widen out a furrow in my membrane like the tracks left from spooning out a scoop of ice cream. "Hm... hopefully that counts." I'm not entirely convinced it does, but there's no point in not trying. Anchoring the loose braid to one side of the furrow, I thread it across to connect the two sides, the weave immediately pulling taut.
Immediately, the mana within the weave feeds into the sides of the artificial furrow I made in my membrane, new slime matter growing across it like the vines of a tomato plant climbing a scaffold. Only five seconds later the furrow is gone, leaving behind nothing but smooth membrane, the weave unravelling inside my body harmlessly .
[Hit Points - 15/15]
[Mana - 3]
"Woohoo! I can heal now!"
I hop around with giddy abandon, a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. The moment I learned that Suture was a spell that makes things 'grow' together, and that it could be used for healing, I was ecstatic. Then I found out that, unless I've actually got a wound for it to stitch back together, I can't use it. As much as it would be possible to just detach mass from myself like I did inside that monster a minute ago, it feels unnatural, like I'm pulling my own teeth out of my head. In case I couldn't get it right, or if there were unforeseen complications, I decided to hold off until I got hurt for real, rather than possibly going out hunting at less than one hundred percent.
It was a long debate with myself, but the risk wasn't worth it. I've survived consistently only because I pick my opponents carefully and make sure I have the upper hand if at all possible. {Mask} and I spotted at least three monsters before that Toothed Corpse Flower, but all of them either reacted when we went closer to investigate, were way bigger than us, or were up high, out of easy reach. Despite my huge gains in levels, Mutations and Skills since being born, I'm under no illusions that anything other than maintaining that vigilance will keep me and {Mask} alive until we can match up against other monsters one on one.
"With this, though..." The fact that I can heal, without needing to kill something first and eat it? Suture is going to be a game changer. My curious new ability to split myself into multiple bodies also has a lot of potential, once I figure out how to use it.
Well, I told {Mask} we'd be here for a bit. No time like the present.
It's experimentation time!
----------------------------------------
Converging on the location of one of my scouting selves, I'd be steepling my fingers and cackling like the villain in a Saturday morning cartoon if I had the requisite body parts. Instead, I settle for an equally self-satisfying wobble.
It sounds simple, but the discovery that I can choose how much mass I give to a new body was a massive breakthrough. Even better; with a little mental gymnastics, I've figured out how to split myself into bodies with specific amounts of health! I'm currently a 13/1/1 split, my biggest self staying close to {Mask}, while the other two scout around the peripheries of my radar, tripling my zone of awareness!
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
They can't be any bigger than a human nose, but they can see just as well as I can, the little dewdrops bouncing or rolling around like little ball bearings. Unfortunately, these bodies are almost uselessly weak for combat being so small, but they'll be great for reconnaissance. Not to mention the cuteness factor.
They're just so. Damn. Smol!
Since I'm covering so much ground, finding prey is easy. {Mask}, my other scout and I arriving at our destination, I reabsorb both my little scouting selves, only to immediately split evenly in two. My experimentation included seeing if I could raise or lower the number of consciousness' I have, but that didn't go anywhere, no matter how hard I pulled and prodded myself.
It felt like trying to lift a box with muscles I've never used, making my metaphorical brain ache. But the mere fact that I can flex those muscles at all makes me confident they can get stronger.
My scout self has been surveying the target on our way over, so I've already got a plan in mind. "{Mask}, I've never seen one of these before, but it doesn't look too strong. I want to try something, so this time I'll be the distraction, and you sneak up close. If it does something unexpected, or shows a bigger part of its body, hit it. Hard. And in the softest spot you can find."
With a pulse and a nod, {Mask} gets to checking out the target.
Covering a 10ft wide patch of ground and spreading over the roots of some very small trees close by, is a carpet of flowers. They look innocuous enough, but the mana making up its body immediately stood out to me as the unique signature of a monster. The pointy little flowers, the thick stems beneath them, the roots forming a tangled floor below; all of it reads as more than just normal plant. I can see a tiny bit of what's below the surface, but I'm too far away to get much more than the edge of it with my radar.
Whether it's one or several monsters, though, I have no clue. Either way, it's a stationary target (hopefully), and plant matter digests quickly.
"Alrighty, let's give this a shot," I say to myself, bobbing in response with my other body.
The pair of me thread together an Enlarge weave, one each, pulling mana from our Hearts. I have no idea how every one of my bodies has a Heart- even the little one HP scouts had one -but considering it lets me do this, I don't think the 'why' matters right now. Watching my mana closely, I see that despite only putting two points each into my respective weaves, I drop down to only one mana.
Ah. I guess all my bodies pull from the same mana reservoir. A little limiting, but I can deal with that. The pair of weaves pulling taut, both of me nudge forward.
Turning to my identical twin, then eyeing the carpet of flowers, I grin. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, B1?"
"I think I am, B2!" I reply, mischief in my membrane.
"It's lunch time!"
Casting the weave over ourselves simultaneously, we leap out of cover, increasing in size with every bounce until we land just past the outer edge of the monstrous flower patch. We're now two slimes a little smaller than my original, unsplit size, and we're not about to let that limited time advantage go to waste! Spreading my selves out as broad as possible, we eat tracts through the monster with voracious abandon; stalks and roots by the handful devoured whole in seconds.
Thankfully, whatever this thing is, it's slow on the uptake. The pair of me get in a full four seconds of uninterrupted eating before the roots start writhing, the carpet of life reaching from all around us to exact its wrathful vengeance...
...And utterly failing to do so.
"Aww, what's wrong? Come on, just get a grip!" I bubble haughtily. Sure; the roots are strong, much stronger than me, but they haven't got any thorns or barbs like that vine that nearly yoinked {Mask} earlier, leaving me free to slip from their grasp with ease. Even when a mess of the things manage to get a hold of me, trapping me beneath a dense thicket, I just eat my way out, their attempts to squeeze me to death laughably ineffective.
In the twelve to fifteen seconds it takes for Enlarge to run out, returning B1 and B2 (me and myself) to our normal size, we've eaten a full third of the flower patch, and it is ticked! Stems shake and sway wildly, roots wrap around us only to be slipped out of at the last second, the desperate monster being eaten all the while.
"This is almost too easy!" I laugh, revelling in this moment of triumph.
"Finally, a monster that can't overpower me! It's about damn time," I concur from the other side of a dense mound of twitching vines a couple feet away. "Granted, it's a literal patch of flowers, which dulls the excitement somewhat... but a win's a win!"
"Got that right! A win's a win!"
Mowing down the opposition takes less than a minute, all told. The flower began releasing some kind of pollen once we'd eaten about halfway through, which was a little concerning, but it didn't hurt or seem to do anything at all, even when I digested it directly, so I just kept on eating. If anything, the drifting pollen adds ambiance; I've never seen real snow before, but I imagine this is pretty close.
Rolling over the last flower-bearing stalk standing, I feel out the network of thick roots buried beneath the ground. I hope I won't have to dig out the deeper roots to finish this thing off. The flower breaks down first, followed by the stem, removing the last of the monster left on the surface.
...
...
Damn it.
Grumbling, I crawl back together, splitting into three smaller bodies now that the monster's defences- ineffective as they were -have been removed. "Hey, {Mask}!" I haven't seen them at all, but I'm glad they listened and stayed waiting in the sidelines in case anything went wrong. "Come help me eat this, I'm pretty sure this thing is on its last leg-roots!" Burrowing into one of the many exposed roots descending into the earth, I begin the likely tedious task of receiving my XP.
I really hate being right sometimes. Even split in three and with {Mask} helping, clearing the roots below takes us five times longer than clearing the surface, despite it trying to run interference when it could still do so.
[Congratulations, you have defeated a Level 6 Bed of Flowers]
[You have received XP.]
[You have reached Level 5. Due to reaching the maximum level for your Tier, you are granted the opportunity to evolve.]
[Note: Excess XP has been automatically converted into evolutionary mass.]
"Finally!" I crow to no one but myself. I've been eating for so damn long! The cleanup has had me working my way down the thickest root structures, so the press of soil hasn't been too tight, but I'm ever aware that a cave in would be mighty inconvenient. "Damn, held on to the very en-"
But the notifications aren't finished with me yet.
[You have consumed 10 Impurities]
[Organism detected. [Initial]Profile: Bed of Flowers unlocked.]
[A highly effective predator of both plants and ambulatory organic creatures. They choke out other plants by stealing all surrounding nutrients with their numerous, strong vines, while their flowers release a soporific pollen with anaesthetic effects when disturbed, allowing them to entrap and slowly digest any creatures unlucky enough to find this monster their final resting place.]
Woah! I thought it was weird I wasn't getting any Impurities despite digesting it to death, apparently I only qualify for them once the monster they come from is defeated. That's fair. I wouldn't want something to eat only half my mass yet walk away with half my Impurities. I'd be demanding a face to face with Sir Attenborough himself if something so blatantly bogus were to happen.
Educating myself on the monster I just shredded like so much green waste, I can't help but whistle silently to myself. Jeez, this plant is nasty! So that pollen was supposed to send me to sleep? I wonder why it didn't work? Maybe it only works on creatures with a respiratory system, or maybe whatever the flowers use to make things go sleepy-by isn't compatible with slime anatomy? In the end, it doesn't matter; that was a piece of cake! If these monsters are such 'highly effective predators', I should keep an eye out for more; this 'Bed of Flowers' was a great match up for me, you better believe I'll exploit the hell out of that to power level {Mask} and I through the roof!
Wriggling my way up and out of the twisting tunnels, my excitement wriggles up to the surface right along with me. Not only am I now able to evolve, I have some extra evolutionary mass and a boatload more Impurities than I anticipated! I don't know how much excess XP got converted; I could be close to full again, or I might have only gotten an extra percent or two. If I can find more of these plants though, I'll strongly consider filling my Heart before evolving. I'm almost painfully impatient to see what I can evolve into at this point, but I'm not gonna flub an obvious advantage when all I need to do is indulge in a couple more meals.
Dribbling up to the surface from three different points, {Mask} follows behind a short moment after I return to existing in just one body.
"Impurities. Two!" they hop, pleased with their haul.
Damn, I feel kinda bad now about hogging all the resources. I met up with them below ground to tell them to go slow so I can increase my chances of getting the kill, which I stand by... but their innocent excitement is tugging at my currents.
I can't help it, they're just too damn pure!
"That's great {Mask}. And I reached level five." Seeing their excited wobble, I flash my slimelight before they have a chance to explode. "I know I said we were gonna return to the cave so I could evolve right away," I explain quickly, pulsing at them to calm down, "but I think we should try to find more of these monsters. They're something we can both handle right now, which means I can fill up my Heart, and we can get you to level five as well." Who knows, we might even find a Heart {Mask} can use to refine themselves. "The Impurities alone are worth it as well. I got ten from eating most of it, and you still got two just from helping a bit. This could be huge for us."
{Mask}, who's been bobbing along to my explanation all the while, immediately agrees. "Trust Luke. Happy. Keep hunting. Next time. Help!" Gleaming, they hop over rapidly and lean up against me. "Evolutions! What??"
"Woah there, buddy!" I flash, startled by their sudden proximity. "I don't know if it's safe to check yet!" I eye the distracting notification stuck in the corner of my mind, trying to catch my attention like a half forgotten memory of something important I should really take a look at. "Once I open the menu, I'm not sure whether I can close it again or not." It feels different from the other prompts I've gotten before. "I don't want to take any chances."
Pressing themselves against me even harder, they ripple my worries away like they're swatting a fly. "Is okay. Can look. Me. Looked lots," they pulse eagerly. "Look! Me. Want knowing!"
They must've been looking at the menu a bunch on the journey back to the fort with the Hyena carcass. Can't say I blame 'em. "Well... if I'm not being locked into anything..." I can't deny my desire to take a peek is already the far side of difficult to manage. "What the heck, why not!" Gleaming, I pull the evolution prompt to the fore.
[Due to reaching the maximum level for your Tier, you are granted the opportunity to evolve. Access evolution process?]
Rereading out of habit, I've already 'clicked' the prompt to confirm my intent when I experience a sudden rush of nervousness. Is that what the prompt said last time? I don't remember needing to confirm just looking at it ei...ther...
The world around the prompt is getting all fuzzy and out of focus, the box's 'presence but not' pulling me into the depths of the background surrounding the words, my body getting further and further away.
"{M-Mask}," I flicker, my consciousness' fading. "Hide u-"
The lack of colour that is the prompt's background submerges me before I can finish my request. Man, I really hope we don't get eaten by a tree or something now that I'm finally evolving.
----------------------------------------
Blank.
Everything is blank. There's no white. No black. The nothing space I find myself in is supremely empty, nothing so much as an iota of something to break up the-
Oh hey, what's that?
My perception shifting around in a way not dissimilar to when I move my consciousness around my body, I finally notice the only feature of this weird not-place; a menu, hidden behind a couple of layered prompts.
[Mana Heart detected. Evolution Process [Manual] has been enabled.]
Glaring at the little box as hard as I can without a body with which to glare, I can't find it in me to do anything but sigh. Note to future me; having a Mana Heart 'increase the potency of the evolution process' apparently means it pulls you inside your own head to make choices manually. {Mask} didn't have one, so they thought it'd be fine, but they couldn't have known this would happen.
Closing the first notification, the second one is a good bit larger, still somehow blocking my perception of the menu behind it despite barely covering part of it.
[The process of evolving raises your Tier. Note; resources obtained from monsters outside your Tier are subject to increased Disparity Penalties/Rewards. This will decrease the XP and Impurities you gain from monsters of lower Tiers, while conversely increasing the rewards you obtain from monsters at higher Tiers.]
Well, that explains why that level seven Hyena and the Bed of Flowers have given us so much moolah. Since I can't even get past level five at my current Tier, both of them must have been at least one Tier higher than me and {Mask}, this Disparity mechanic kicking our rewards up a notch.
Annoying as it is to lose out on the easy mass I had the opportunity to procure, the feeling is rapidly washed away by my ever present excitement. I'm finally evolving! Moving up in the world! Becoming the best slime I can be!
Flicking the second notification out of the way, my evolution options are laid out before me. Come on David, show me the money!
[- Evolution Options -]
[Blue Slime]
[Green Slime]
[Red Slime]
[Purple Slime]
[Dense Blue Slime]
[Oozling]
[Slime Weaver]
[Many-Slime]
I swear I feel my body twitch from somewhere far away, my reaction too strong to be contained. Blue, Green, Red, and Purple? What's special about a Dense Slime? The fuck is an Oozling? Those last two sound cool as hell, I can't wait to find out what those do.
Let's fuckin' GOOO!