With humans now apparently walking around in his forest, JJ decided to forgo the comical appearances some of his other slimes had taken and lean towards a more realistic human form for Clarity. Dwayne's bodybuilder like appearance had ridiculously oversized muscles, and Aqua's form was ridiculously oversized in... other areas.
While it was true they were just slimes, and their appearances could be changed at a whim, he thought of them as characters he'd already grown attached to.
'First off, let's go with female. On the off chance the Empire is still keeping an eye out for Michael or myself, they'll be looking for young men. Also, I learned from my gaming days that people are much more likely to be generous to cute things, and much less likely to kill them for loot... It's definitely not just because I'm a fan of the goo girl trope... haha' JJ desperately tried to convince himself.
He finished shaping Clarity's nearly translucent body, as it took on a slender, regal look with moderately sized breasts, smooth curves, and long, gooey hair that flowed down to just over the shoulders.
From there, the first step to his goal of reestablishing contact with humanity was to once again explore the outside of his lake, in the exact opposite direction of where he'd last found said humanity.
He spent the next few days slaughtering the local goblin population, as well as a few overgrown rabbits and boars, though none as large as the first one he ran into. Seemingly normal wildlife also existed, but he avoided hunting them down, assuming the experience, or rather mana, from such creatures would be minimal at best.
With the extensive hunting spree, Clarity's body quickly grew to reach the point where it could support a slightly above average height for a human, after which JJ stopping scaling up the size and simply began to condense the goo instead, making it sturdier.
'It would be torture to passively absorb all this mana!' JJ felt a great deal of relief over finding a solution to Clarity's issue of gathering mana much more slowly than the other slimes.
While scouring the surroundings for prey, he came upon a completely unexpected prize. Slowly wandering through the forest floor, seemingly oblivious to its surroundings, rolled a small, shiny, dark gray slime.
'No way! Is that what I think it is?' JJ asked himself, shocked at the iconic slime that appeared before him.
Poking and prodding the small blob with the sturdy boar tusks he picked up from his first boar kill, he found the resistance was much greater than when he attempted to stab a goblin or even one of the forest's large boars, which had incredibly thick leathery hides.
'It's a super rare metal slime!' he cheered. 'Wait a second. Is that stereotype true here? I've never seen one of these before, so... maybe? In most games they drop great loot... but how am I supposed to get loot without killing it?'
JJ paused in thought as the slime continued crawling by at a snail's pace.
'Duh! I can just make my own loot!' he bent over and picked up the small slime as it tried to mindlessly wriggle away. 'But I don't have any metal, so how am I going to make something out of it? Creating my own isn't likely to be cheap, so I'll need lots of mana if I take that route.'
Clarity plodded back to the lake, carrying the metal slime like a pet cat, as JJ pondered the logistics of hunting down more corpses to feed his new slime so that it would have enough mana for him to use. 'Clarity is much more convenient to control. I doubt I'd be able to hunt very well with this thing'
'Mana really is my most important resource right now, but it's so hard to raise all of my slimes. Perhaps I should leave this metal slime alone until it grows more so that it will continue absorbing mana on its own.' JJ contemplated as Clarity got closer to his home lake.
Just as Clarity left the treeline along the lake shore, JJ vaguely noticed a small group of creatures standing upright outside his home.
'Hmm, more goblins?' he thought, glancing over towards the figures gathered around his shore, expecting to find another goblin patrol.
Instead, he saw three humans with their backs turned, leaning over the last remaining goblin statue he'd crafted, that was now half crumbled on the lake shore after he fought off the goblin shaman raid.
The figure on the right carried a small bow on their back, the one on the left clutched a large staff in their hands, and the one in the middle had a short sword attached to the hip. All three wore rough, worn leather armor.
What truly shocked him, however, was the voice he heard next.
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A young, masculine sounding voice rang out “I dunno, maybe to scare away the goblins?”
JJ still faithfully maintained the makeshift eardrums he'd formed earlier, as they could at least allow him to recognize when sounds were happening and give a vague sense of where they came from. Unfortunately, he was nowhere close to making sense of the different sounds. At least, that was the case until now.
Meaningless vibrations echoed from the figure on the right.
Then more random vibrations were added from the figure on the left.
Before, once again, the first voice exclaimed “Relax! If anything goes wrong, I'll protect you!”
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“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sarah muttered, clutching at her staff as her party followed an unknown trail leading deep into the Beginner Forest.
Specifically, it was now known as Beginner Forest #86 nowadays, one of the many weak spawning zones that had sprung up across Terra with the advent of mana. The plentiful supply of weak monsters provided a great training opportunity for those who wished to become stronger.
“Sure it is, there's nothing too dangerous around here” Ava, the party's scout, replied flippantly from the front.
Sarah felt confident she could follow a simple trail of X's, mysteriously carved into the line of trees, without Ava's direct oversight, allowing the scout to range ahead and watch for monsters, but Ava never liked doing any more work than necessary.
“Ava's right, and besides, the guild master promised 20 silver to anyone who brought back information on the mysterious intruder traipsing around here” their leader William declared, as he hacked away at an obstructing bush with his sword.
William may not have been particularly smart, or strong, but he had the confidence of ten men, and he never disagreed with Ava, so it was a simple two vs one vote to make William the nominal leader of the three man party. Not that Sarah had any great desire to be leader, she just wished her party would be more cautious sometimes.
“But Trainer Kevin said it could be dangerous, and that we shouldn't get involved. We're just beginners ourselves!” Sarah tried to point out.
“We're not here to fight with anyone.” William placated her. “We're just looking for information. Whoever it is, they aren't going to risk making an enemy of the adventurer's guild! The guild master said so”
“We've been fighting our way through this forest for over an hour, let's just cut our losses-” Sarah began, right before the trio broke through into the light of day. In front of them glistened a large, panoramic lake.
“Haha, I told you we were on the right track!” William crowed, pumping his fist over his head as he resheathed his sword.
Sarah looked left and right, expecting an enemy to pop out and attack them now that they'd reached the end of the trail, only to hear Ava call out “Hey guys, look at this! What do you think it is?”
Ava was crouched down in front of a stocky little goblin statue, half of its head crumbling into dust. The remaining half scowled fiercely at onlookers.
“This doesn't seem right” Sarah whispered, trembling “Goblins don't make art! What if there's hobgoblins around here?”
“Calm down, Sarah” William tried to soothe her fears. “This was probably just made by the intruder we're looking for.”
“Why the hell would some bandit, or scout, make a demonic little goblin yard gnome like this?” she nearly shouted at him in exasperation.
“I dunno” he replied casually. “Maybe to scare away the goblins?”
“William's right” Ava agreed “It must have been placed at the end of that path we followed for a reason.”
“Even so...” Sarah wanted to continue, before William cut her off with “Relax! If anything goes wrong, I'll protect you!” while flexing his arms confidently.
Sarah looked over at William in consternation. She found it hard to tell him off, when he'd proven time and again his willingness to come to her and Ava's aid in times of peril. She just wished that his own recklessness would stop leading them to more of those times of peril.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of pale blue behind her. Looking back, there stood a large, nearly transparent figure, staring at her party with a gaze filled with curiosity.
“AHHHHHHHH” Sarah yelled, jumping behind William and pointing at the figure “LOOK OUT! IT'S A GHOST!”
“This forest doesn't have gho- WHAT THE HELL?” Ava shouted as she too turned around.
William drew his sword and stood protectively in front of the two girls as he examined their foe.
“You...” he started, staring at the ethereally beautiful woman, ghost, slime, whatever it was in front of them. Sarah and Ava huddled together behind him, preparing to back him up to the best of their abilities.
“William, what do we do?” Ava whispered, her earlier confidence forgotten.
“William, you have a plan right?” Sarah added, hoping he wouldn't simply charge in like usual.
“I...” William stuttered, trying to put his thoughts into words. “I... think I'm in love. You, oh fair maiden, would you care to join us?” he practically sang out, extending his arm towards the creature in a gesture of invitation.
Neither Ava or Sarah could believe what they were witnessing, looking at their leader in shock. “Really, William, when you already have me?” Ava pouted, while Sarah desperately tried to turn her concentration back to their foe. If nobody else was going to pay attention, she would have to defend them herself until her party could pull themselves together.
To Sarah's surprise, the face of the creature in front of them also morphed into one of shock, looking at William like an odd, unwelcome visitor. Then, before anyone could make another move, it fled past them and dove into the lake, disappearing beneath the calm surface.
“Haa... ha... I guess you scared it away, William” Ava laughed in relief.
“Ah...” William sighed disappointedly.
“Guys... that thing was intelligent” Sarah stated seriously.
“Not necessarily” Ava tried to deny “some monsters will run away even if they aren't intelligent.”
Sarah refused to relent “No, it was definitely intelligent. It acted like it understood what William said. He does have our translation artifact on him, but it's a cheap one. We only spent 10 silver on it! Unlike an artifact of beast speak, it won't translate for anything incapable of higher thought.”
“So now we've got an unknown monster running around the forest, who thinks humans are trying to woo it?” Ava joked. “Do you think the guild master will be upset with us? Hehe...”