Iris darted through the lower canopy of the redwood forest, leaping off branches and blipping across gaps. She wore dark green and brown robes cinched tight with a brown leather belt. On her head was the newest wizard hat she had added to her growing collection, it was dark green with a brown band to match her robes. In one hand she held the enchanted walking stick her mother had given her, which she occasionally jabbed down at a branch as she kicked off to release a blast of kinetic force that launched her forward.
Over her robes she wore a leather cuirass and matching leather bracers, a condition Eli had insisted on when she broached the topic of going out into the forest on her own. The cuirass pressed too tightly against her chest and the edges sometimes rubbed her underarm as she moved -- and that was to say nothing of the sweat that gathered beneath it. The bracers were less bothersome, but they still caused sweat to soak the sleeves of her robe underneath. She had tried to argue against wearing the armor, anticipating exactly these annoyances, but she had quickly lost the argument when Eli started listing injuries she had sustained which armor might have mitigated.
It had been a few weeks since the death of the Matriarch, the capture of the Hydra, and the abduction of the Wyvern. These events marked the end of the major expeditions, but the Grand Hunt continued even in the wake of the wizard attack and subsequent appearance of a dragon. Now, attention turned towards many smaller, yet still quite dangerous threats scattered across Central Giantrock. Iris and her party had yet to take on any of these threats for themselves, instead taking leave from daily adventuring to focus on personal endeavors. That hadn't stopped Iris from training and finding trouble where she could, however, and she was now on the verge of crossing over into Level 10, with the hopes that her current quest would be the final push she needed.
Up ahead she spotted a small crevice in the forest floor, and glimpsed the creek running through it. The end of her stick hit the next branch before her feet, absorbing her momentum and storing it in the stick, which slowed her to a gentle stop over the course of only a second and allowed her feet to lightly touch down on the branch. Daring to lean forward, she looked down past the branch to the ground below and traced the path of the creek with her eyes. To her left, it babbled between trunks and carved tunnels under roots until it deposited into the glistening Giantrock Lake, glimpses of which were visible through the trees. To her right, the creek extended deeper into the forest from an unknown source. After a moment she felt her mana pool top off, and leapt from the branch. She blipped across the creek and kicked off a trunk, orienting herself upstream and continuing her journey through the trees.
A short while later she came upon a small pool cradled between twisting and curving roots that acted as the walls of a basin, interrupting the stream like a dam until it overflowed and continued onwards. It was one such pool she was searching for, but after a few moments of observation, she discerned this wasn't the one and blipped onwards. Further upstream she came across another pool, this one with a deposit of gravel on one side that resembled a small, rocky beach. The inhabitants of that small beach made this pool instantly recognizable as the one she sought.
On the miniature shore were three blobs of translucent blue goop. They were distinctly not puddles, as one might expect of goop, but were instead formed into distinct, almost spherical shapes that bulged and sagged from their own weight like large bubbles of water that refused to pop. Leaves, twigs, and small rocks clung to their sticky underside, and various larger objects were suspended inside the blobs. These were the slimes she was looking for, but where was her target?
She dropped from the branch, blipping across much of the gap between herself and the forest floor. When she reappeared behind a tree and just above the ground, she reached down with the stick to arrest her momentum and once again come to a slow, gentle landing. Another blip brought her next to a root slightly shorter than she was, which she peered over to observe the slimes more closely. The slimes failed to notice her, despite the cone of her wizard hat poking high above the root.
The three slimes were about two feet in diameter and undulated gently as they appeared to rest beside the pool. They were facing away from her, towards the water, which Iris could only discern because through their translucent bodies she could see the silhouettes of various objects -- mostly sticks and rocks -- that floated near the surface of their bubble-like bodies in the shape of crudely drawn faces. From what she could find in the library, no one actually knew why slimes tended to have faces, the most obvious answer to Iris was that they simply enjoyed having faces and made them on purpose. Scholars seemed particularly heated about applying the concept of sentience to the strange little creatures, however, and the consensus seemed to be that they were for some reason crudely mirroring the appearance of creatures around them by unintentional, automatic means -- no actual reason was agreed upon, only that it wasn't caused by sentience, which Iris found ridiculous.
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Another hole in the understanding of slimes was how they perceived the world around them. Most agreed it was unlikely the faces actually had anything to do with it, as there was no reason rocks that held the place of eyes would actually function as eyes in any way. Some suggested that slimes could see by sensing vibrations in the ground and even the air around them, which made sense given that they had been observed reacting to nearby movement in all directions but seemed oblivious to movement further away regardless of direction. However the creatures perceived the world, it clearly worked for them, as Iris observed one of the slimes stretch and shoot out a portion of its body into the water with a splash, snatching up a small fish and absorbing it into the goop before retracting back to its bloblike shape. After a moment, the slime convulsed and ejected a splash of water in a process not unlike a burp.
As fascinating as it was to watch the creatures, they weren't actually the slimes she was here for. The quest was simple, recover a runaway pet slime named Bell. Bell belonged to a nice old woman Iris had met in the city after blipping across her balcony and accidentally knocking over a potted plant. After Iris profusely apologized, the woman -- Miss Beal -- had laughed it off and offered Iris tea. As they spoke, Iris learned about Miss Beal's missing pet, and agreed to find him for her to make up for the damaged plant.
According to Miss Beal, Bell the Slime was about the size of the bottomless bag on Iris's waist, vibrant green in color, and had a distinctive bell suspended in his goop just above his left eye. Miss Beal had gone on to explain that Bell had always been well behaved growing up, but had recently reached the dreaded rebellious stage that she claimed all slimes eventually went through, and had since fallen in with a bad crowd of mana slimes that hung out by the creek just outside the city. Apparently the woman had hiked out here herself a week prior in an effort to bring Bell back home, but hadn't been able to convince the slime to come home before she was chased off by the angry mana slimes. Iris had found the old woman's characterization of the slimes amusing and absolutely charming, and was more than happy to help her recover a pet she clearly cared a lot about.
Iris waited and watched for quite some time, long enough for two more fish to drop into the pool from upstream and get gobbled up by the slimes, but there was no sign of Bell. A pit of worry was growing in her stomach, until the sun had shifted just enough that the rays cutting through the canopy glinted off something under a pile of twigs and branches on the back edge of the tiny shore. With a squint, she could barely make out glimpses of bright green beneath the litter.
Assuming she was looking at Bell beneath those branches, she would have to do a decent amount of work to get him out of there, which would without question alert the nearby slimes by the water. She could perhaps coax him into coming out on his own, but that still presented the same problem. If the slimes wanted a fight, then she really only had one option, but she didn't feel right sucker punching them before she knew for sure they would attack. So, despite how stupid she felt for doing it, she blipped atop the root, hopped down and slowly approached the mana slimes.
"Uh, hello," she said with a sheepish smile and wave.
The largest of the slimes twisted around to stare at her with eyes made of two small white rocks, a straight twig for a mouth, and redwood leaves for eyebrows. At first it was expressionless -- or perhaps slightly shocked, Iris couldn't tell -- then the leaves angled into an undeniably negative expression, and the slime twisted back towards the water.
"Okaaay," Iris said, inching closer to the pile of branches, "I'm just gonna mess with some stuff over here, then."
She reached the pile without any further attention from the mana slimes, and crouched down to inspect the glimpses of bright green while careful to keep the mana slimes in her peripheral. After moving a few twigs and dried leaves aside, she saw the delightful face of a small green slime staring back at her. He had two black pebbles for eyes, both slightly misshapen, a W-shaped twig for a mouth, and a bell floating above and behind his left eye. He was squished back into a crevice and Iris got the impression he was hiding.
"Aw, what's the matter little guy?" she said softly, then whispered, "new friends turn out not so nice?"
The slime inched towards her, then quickly slinked back into his hidey-hole. At the same time, Iris saw movement in her periphery and blipped. As she reappeared, one of the large blue slimes crashed down where she had just been standing, and was now undulating angrily as it turned to face her.
"Whoa, guys," Iris held up her hands, still holding her stick in one of them, "we don't have to fight."
The other two slimes were now facing her, too. One of them scrunched up as if trying to squeeze itself into a smaller shape and began to undulate aggressively. Iris watched with a disgusted and confused expression. After a few seconds, there was a flash of light from within the slime, and a small bolt of zigzagging magic shot out and zapped Iris on the hand.
"Ow!" she yelped, shaking her hand that now bore a blackened scorch mark between the thumb and forefinger.
The slimes began to inch closer to her.
"Okay," she sighed, "so we're doing this."