Once they had cleared their way out, Sean crawled out of the still-warm corpse and pushed his working hand onto his knee to stand up. It felt harder than normal, thicker, and there was more room for his hand. Confused, Sean looked down at his knee and, for the first time since evolving, got a real look at the lower half of his new body. His jaw twisted into the widest caricature of a smile he could muster, and Sean shifted around as he examined the myriad improvements that had come with his new form.
The first and most obvious change was his height. Sean had to be at least a foot taller now, based on how far away the ground was and how short the bushes had become. He had only been about 5’10 before, and Sean really didn’t know how much height he had lost after being reduced to his bones, but as he hopped from one foot to the other he felt easily tall enough to be NBA material. Not that he had ever aspired to shoot hoops for a living, but who didn’t want a sneaker deal?
Speaking of…
Sean lifted one foot, revealing bones now thick enough that they almost resembled shoes in the center. Even his ankles had grown denser, and his legs. There was a nearly metallic sheen to them now, and each leg was nearly as thick as they had been when he was alive. It was fascinating to watch the way they bent when he knelt and stood back up. His knees rotated without the slightest concern, and Sean could make out thin strings of black connecting each bone if he looked hard enough.
Moving up, his pelvis appeared to have sealed most of the holes that had been there previously, and his chest cavity had clearly attempted to do the same. New ribs had grown where none had been before, extending his rib cage all the way down to where his waist had been. His arms hadn’t grown any thicker, but each and every bone along both of his upper limbs appeared to be harder. Denser. He felt like someone had redesigned his body from the ground-up to protect itself rather than the flesh and organs he no longer had. There were even hardened plates of bone on his shoulders. They weren’t much now, but he had grown the beginnings of pauldrons!
Can’t have a tank build without the pauldrons. Sean couldn’t help but think with amusement. Gods above, these had better not grow to ridiculous proportions.
Like nearly everyone who had joined the military around the time he had, or who had lived in the single dorms before moving off-post, Sean had played his own fair share of ‘World of Thorcraft’. He hadn’t gotten terribly far, just long enough to realize that the cooking options in the game hadn’t required any actual cooking skill, but the memories were still there. Memories of shoulder plates extending four feet or more off to the side, twice again the size of the person wearing them.
If the next evolution grows me a pair of those, I’m snapping them off. Sean promised himself. Appearances be damned, that shit was beyond impractical. I’m not going to run around bouncing off of doorways because I can’t fold my fake-wings.
Hmm… Can I grow wings?
That rather intriguing line of thinking was interrupted when Sean realized that he hadn’t seen Gel’s new form yet. When they had gone in to evolve, the slime had more than filled up Sean’s chest cavity. Gel had even started filling out his limbs. Now, though? Now Sean had to crane his neck and stare into his chest to get a good look at his insatiable friend.
“Did you get… smaller?” Sean asked, his eyes trying to reconcile his memory of the massive weight in his chest with the hand-sized core of crystal-clear liquid that now made up the slime. Where had the axe come from? There didn’t look to be enough of Gel in there to make one, let alone one as large as they had struck the deer with.
“I’d prefer the term ‘better’.” Gel responded, his eyes staring a challenge back at Sean.
“Not ‘denser’? More ‘compact’?” Sean hazarded.
“Nope, better.” Gel asserted firmly once more. “A thousand percent better… and maybe 50% smaller.”
“How about travel-sized for my convenience?” Sean asked, doing his best to keep his own amusement out of his voice. “I do carry you around everywhere.”
“You do.” Gel acknowledged. “While I do all the eating around here. Which is the way friendship should be.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean remained unconvinced on that particular point, but he wasn’t about to argue it. At least not right now. “Speaking of, are you going to finish your meal there or just leave it for the bugs?”
“I will not leave a meal on the ground, and I resent the implication that I ever would.” Gel harrumphed in his mind. “Now, since you’re done admiring how magnificent we’ve both become, let’s put that food-scooper back to the task and finish what we started.”
Sean tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, staring at the dire buck’s corpse. He almost leaned down to show Gel the expression, but decided to just share his confusion through his mental tone.
“You’re… not going to eat it yourself? Just plop down there and slurp it all down?”
“Would love to, but I can’t.” Gel said, as if that were explanation enough. Sean waited, but when the slime didn’t add anything further he asked again. “You’ll have to bring it to me, like you were doing before.
“Wait, hold up. What do you mean you can’t just eat it?” Sean asked incredulously as the pair of them stared down at the hollowed-out, but still mostly-intact carcass. He waved at it. “Isn’t that like, your entire thing? You love eating stuff!”
“I can’t, it is, and I do.” Gel said, with a finality in his tone that made it evident how much their current situation pained him. “But now that we’re symbiotes, I am literally attached to you forever. I can’t let go, not even to eat all of this delicious meat.”
Gel’s body stretched towards the corpse as if to prove his point, and Sean didn’t even bother trying to separate the slime from his ribs. If there was one subject he could rely on Gel always being upfront with him about: it was food.
“So no more vacuum-corpse?” Sean clarified. “We’re just going to have to eat this the old-fashioned way?”
“I don’t know what a vacuum is, but it sounds intriguing.” Gel said, though the prospect of more food seemed to perk him up. “Look. Anything you can get me, I can still eat – we’re just going to have to scoop it to me now. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds. Maybe the anticipation will add flavor.”
“You’re trying to make the best of this, aren’t you?” Sean asked, as he reached over and began unceremoniously tearing chunks of fur and flesh away from the body to swallow whole.
“Yes, I am.” Gel’s body oozed along Sean’s now twice-broken right arm and started aiding him in his efforts. Several minutes passed as the two rapidly tore their way through the remaining pieces the slime could digest, leaving only bone.
“You hate how slow that was, don’t you?” Sean asked when they were done.
“Yes, I do.” Gel responded dully, before exclaiming in tone mixed with equal parts horror and despair. “Just look at all the blood we missed. This stupid grass drank nearly all of it! Quick, scoop that big puddle up before we lose it, too!”
“Yeah, I’m not doing that.” Sean said, as he straightened up and headed towards the outhouse. “You got most of it, you’ll be fine.”
Sean had no desire to spend the next thirty minutes scooping bloodied mud out of the ground, and he certainly didn’t want to set a precedent of doing so for future kills. He could easily imagine the slime getting more neurotic about that in the future, and that wasn’t a healthy path for either of them. Besides, he had just gotten the prompt he’d been waiting for.
Gel has absorbed a Stone-Shoulder Buck, earning 6 total mana and 25 experience points. Due to the ‘Flesh Bonding’ trait, you have been granted the same boon. You have gained 4 mana and 25 experience points!
We earned six mana, but I only got four? Sean stared down at the fairly large bones the creature had left behind, not to mention its bush-sized antlers. Even six feels a bit… low, but that’s still a refill of my entire pool so, at least this kill kicked the clock all the way back.
“Am I overthinking this, or should that thing have been worth more mana?” Sean asked as he jogged back towards the outhouse to pick up their gear. “Also, why did I only get four? A pair of those giant rats gave us that much, but we only got six from tall, dark, and stoney back there and he was way bigger than two rats.”
“Hmmm.” Gel pondered the question, though Sean got the distinct impression the slime had not forgotten his unwillingness to scoop up the leftover blood. “Well, the reason you got four was because I gave you the rest after I was full up. No point wasting mana. As for why we only got six, I mean, I can guess, but this is the first one I’ve eaten so I really don’t know. I can tell you it’s not a size thing, though. Not entirely, anyway.”
“Oh? Have you been tossing me the extra this whole time?” Sean scooped the few bits of stolen loot that had fallen out back into their satchel and slung it around his shoulder. The fit of the sling was tighter than he remembered, so he stopped to adjust it.
“Sure have.” Gel acknowledged as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Gotta keep you full up too, and besides, friends share don’t they?”
Sean was momentarily taken aback at that. The way he had been reading the prompts, he had figured Gel was getting the same amount he was. Now it looked like the slime had been trying to help as much as he could from the very beginning. Sean was touched, and not for the first time, reflected on just how lucky he had been to run into the insatiable little slime.
“They do indeed.” Sean answered, before his inner reflections made the silence stretch on too long. “But that brings up another thing I’ve been wondering about. That gigantic slime had been feeding on things forever, and I’ve watched you grow a bit every time you eat, too. Shouldn’t bigger kills give you more mana and mass, then?”
“Mass, yes, you’re absolutely right. The more meaty they are, the more leftovers I have to fuel my own growth. Mana is a different story, though…” Gel’s eyes swiveled back towards the woods, clearly hoping the deer would return. “As far as getting that… I’m fairly sure that just depends on whatever mana was left in their body when they died. I take what’s left, assuming there is any, and that it hasn’t dissipated.”
“So you’re saying if we fought something and it managed to use all its mana before we took it down…” Sean finished messing with the buckle and patted the bag twice for comfort. He felt better now that they had their stuff back, even if he wasn’t really using any of it right now.
“Then neither of us are getting any mana from that kill.” Gel finished for him.
“And if we wait too long, then the mana just dissipates? We won’t get any for eating it?” Sean hadn’t seen any wisps of smoke or magical-hazes rising from any of the bodies they had come across yet, though admittedly he didn’t know if that’s what leftover mana leaving a body would look like. “Where does it all go?”
Gel sent back the mental equivalent of a shrug. “Wherever mana goes, I guess. Into the earth, the air, the plants… who knows? We should still eat the bodies, though. If they haven’t decayed too much.”
“Right, so you can get bigger.”
“Well yeah, but also for the flavor.”
Sean chuckled and stepped back out into the clearing. Once he was there, he realized that he didn’t actually have any idea where they were going next. He was just about to ask Gel that very question, when he noticed something off about the nearby grass. Or rather, his new instincts did. Something about his surroundings was different, and it was apparently important enough that he could feel them trying to tell him what it was. Intrigued, Sean stood still and stared into the wind rushing through the clearing, trying to figure out what was going on.
It didn’t feel like an attack was coming, and the sensation was subtly different from how it felt to suddenly realize you were being watched. In fact, it almost felt like the opposite. Like he needed to be watching out for something.
Or tracking it. Sean realized with a flash of insight, and with that realization the clearing came alive.
The tracks the fleeing deer had made as they ran suddenly stood out in stark contrast for him against the rest of the landscape. Instead of a simple trampled field, he could now see what felt like every single step marking each taken path. At first it was almost like the steps themselves glowed in his vision, though that was clearly not the case. On further investigation, he found it wasn’t a ‘glow’ so much as his orbs were simply drawn to certain patterns that now made sense to him. Patterns he wouldn’t have even known were patterns before.
In the soft light of multiple moons, Sean could now distinguish between every crushed patch of grass, every flung clump of mud, and every rushed footfall (hoof-fall?) that had recently disturbed the clearing. He could pull dozens of coherent sets of tracks out of the random chaos as easily as if he were following hand-drawn lines. It was exhilarating. There were even older tracks, tracks that must have been weeks old, and Sean was surprised to find that while many of them didn’t belong to the deer, at least half of them were unmistakably human.
Which makes sense, given what’s behind me. Sean shook his head at himself, a little embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed all of this before. From where he stood now, with the new hunting instincts instilled in him by his evolution, the tracks in the muddy grass were now almost painfully obvious. It was startling. He may have lost his eyes, but when had he become so blind?
At least I can track my way back to town now. Sean reassured himself, picking the largest concentration of human tracks and following them out of the clearing. Between this and Gel’s memories, there’s no way we’re getting lost now.
Sean felt stress he hadn’t even noticed he’d had wash away with the arrival of this new, instinctual knowledge. Military he may have been once, but he had never actually needed to survive solely on his survival skills. Land Nav training and deployments were about the closest he had ever come to that, and even then the average person would be surprised by how readily available food was out in the sands. Say what you want about the military, but Sean had almost never gone hungry while he’d been in.
Of course, the prospect of having to rely solely on nature for food wasn’t entirely foreign to him – everyone had that one uncle who would drop off a cooler’s worth of meat for the right price during game season – but that had never been his job. Like most Americans, Sean picked his meat up from the refrigerated section. Or maybe from a specialty butcher’s shop whenever he felt like treating himself. His uncle Randy had made it a point to take him on a few hunts one summer, but the man conserved his words like the government was trying to take them from him, too. Most of their communication at the time had been through sharp gestures directed at fallen leaves, twigs, or occasionally the birds, and always followed by deep-throated grunts. It had taken Sean nearly a week to realize that his uncle was actually trying to teach him something through grunting, rather than just being gruff about the fact there was another ‘city boy’ in ‘his’ forest.
The fact that ‘his’ forest was actually on public land shared by several counties meant nothing to Randy, and Sean had quickly learned not to bring that particular topic up. Being a smartass in the south got ya brain dusted. At least, according to his uncle, who conveniently never seemed to have the ‘permit’ for his trips on him when they went out. Dodging the game wardens had apparently also been a skill Randy had decided to pass on.
What Sean had taken away from all that had been a hodgepodge of tips, tricks, and – if he was honest with himself – nearly forgotten knowledge that hadn’t been much help in the concrete jungle of his latter years. Given his eventual turn to programming, it was a wonder there was any semblance of it left at all. His uncle wouldn’t have cared for that, but it was the truth.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
With his new instincts, that truth was changing.
The details he was able to pick out now astounded him. Every patch of grass held a story. Every bent leaf and broken twig told a tale. Looking around, Sean could read a hundred different stories unraveling in a thousand different ways – and that was only as far as he could see. There were undoubtedly more. Which begged the question.
Why am I in such a rush? Sean looked down, slowly flexing his newly-reinforced fist open and closed. Bancroft doesn’t even know what we look like any more.
There were no birds singing – there hadn’t been any in this forest, at least none he had seen – and yet, somehow, Sean felt like he could suddenly hear music playing off in the distance. He glanced around and, once again, was astonished by just how much he could see now. There was a whole world here, and he hadn’t yet spent any time taking it in. Forget stopping to smell the flowers, they had barely even stopped to eat. He had been worried about finding food but, based on what he was seeing now, that shouldn’t be terribly hard.
The realization that they now had actual time to explore a world full of magic crashed over Sean like an avalanche. They were free now. Bancroft might not even know they were gone, but even if he was pissed about the stables, what was the sorry bastard going to do about it? Chase them? Send some minions after them? They must have gone miles into this forest, and the only patrols they had seen hadn’t given them so much as a sharp look.
Two. Whole. Hours. Sean reflected, feeling like the sun should be coming up to witness this glorious new dawn. A man – Sean mentally corrected himself – a skeleton can get a lot done in two hours.
They could hit the village later, Sean decided suddenly. For now he had dozens of sets of tracks, a recently-condensed slime to feed, and a sword of Damocles hanging over his head that he would probably need a level or two for if he wanted to push it back. They also needed to practice their techniques, and Sean was practically itching to try actually hunting something for once. Being the ‘hunted’ had gotten real old. It was time to swap roles.
“Hey, Gel?” Sean asked, picking the most interesting trail in the grass ahead of them and stepping forward to follow it. “How do you feel about a snack before we head into town?”
“If I ever turn that down, I want you to know that you have lost your most precious friend, and whatever has taken my place is a despicable imposter.”
Sean chuckled, the sound of his now-stronger bones smacking together bouncing dull clacking sounds off the nearby silver trees.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I only have one question.” Gel responded, and the slime’s voice sounded suddenly concerned to the point that Sean almost wondered if he had missed something important while he had been focused inward.
“What’s that, bud?”
“Does it have to be only one snack?”
Sean’s silent laughter clacked his jaws and teeth together once more as he made his own trail through the woods, and this time he felt Gel’s own amusement bubbled up from within his chest. Overhead, the three massive moons in the sky passed merrily above a nearly cloudless night as they searched for whatever poor beast had left the tracks they were now following.
Occasionally, Sean would glance up hoping to use the positions of those same lunar objects to figure out how much time had passed. Best as he could tell, dawn would be approaching soon.
“So, what’s with the three moon thing?” Sean asked as he stooped to examine a bush of bright red berries their quarry had clearly foraged at recently. “Do they all have names, or do you just call them all ‘moon’?”
“Hmm?” Gel tore his gaze away from the berries and swiveled to look up at the sky. “Oh, yeah. The tiny amaranthine one is ‘Neamhai’, the large virid one is ‘Nadur’, and the sparkling ball of gloom between them is ‘Bas’.”
“Just… ‘Bas’? Seems a little short for a name, but I guess we just called ours ‘moon’ so we weren’t terribly creative either” Sean reached out, grabbing a handful of the gleaming red raspberry-look-alikes and tossing them at the slime. He looked up at the moons, and based off their sizes it was easy to tell which ones Gel meant were which, even if he had never heard the words ‘amarinthine’ or ‘virid’ before.That last one sounded like it belonged in a commercial featuring little blue pills.
“You know you can just say ‘purple’ and ‘green’ too, right?” Sean pointed out, once he had mentally affixed the names for each of the lunar bodies above in his mind. “You don’t have to get all fancy with it.”
“Oooh, that’s got a kick to it. Nice and sharp. Juicy, too.” Gel mumbled, ignoring Sean’s lack of color sophistication in light of the apparently exciting new flavor of the berries. His right hand shot out and ripped a branch right off the bush. The slime began eagerly stuffing his face full of his new prizes, burbling happily as he responded. “These taste like eyes. Dozens of tiny little eyes, it’s amazing! Who knew bushes could grow tiny little body parts?”
“They taste like eyes?” Sean had never considered comparing fruit to ocular bits, but the more he thought about it, the more he could see it.
I’ll bet it has more to do with texture and mouthfeel (slimefeel?) than actual taste. Or maybe that’s just his favorite comparison?
“Tiny eyes.” Gel amended. “Not human-sized. Those are different. Rat eyes, maybe? These are juicier, but the texture is roughly along the same vein. Only without any actual veins. You would think that would take points away, but it really doesn’t.”
Sean’s arm tossed the berry-less branch onto the ground, snapped off another one, and stuffed the whole head of it into Gel’s body for a second helping.
“So… good. Like chilled blood, but tangy… and it hasn’t gone all solid yet. No congealing whatsoever. It could use some congealing. Do berries congeal?” Gel made exaggerated munching sounds in his mind, and Sean was sure the slime was purposefully trying to mimic a human this time.
“Not really, but you can mirror the effect. Sort of, at least. It takes some effort though, and more than a little sugar.” Sean was starting to wonder if the first thing they should try and loot from the village should be a frying pan. “I can show you how if we ever come across a kitchen.”
“Deal.” Gel said, and the pair continued scouring the bush free of fruit.
As they worked, Sean couldn’t help but keep glancing up at the sky. The light coming off the three lunar bodies had shifted angles a bit, and some of the trees were casting longer shadows now. Morning would come soon, but that wasn’t why he was stuck on the topic. The names Gel had used for the moons tickled his memory. But for the unlife of him, Sean couldn’t quite put a finger on why.
Neamhai, Nadur, and Bas… is there some kind of theme I’m missing here?
“So, what’s their deal?” Sean asked after they had stripped about half the bush’s branches clean off. “The moons, I mean. Are they magic or something?”
“Of course they are!” Gel said brightly, his tone suddenly taking on an air of great reverence. “They’re the great slimes of the past, watching over us until we grow big enough to join them amongst the stars… so that we may feast on such delights for ourselves.”
“‘Great slimes of the past’?” Sean echoed in disbelief. “Are you making that up? Because it sounds like you’re making that up.”
“Hey, you got to share a story, and now it’s my turn! Do you want to hear about the moons or not?”
“Fine, fine.” Sean held up one hand in mock surrender. “I would love to hear about the great slimes. Enlighten me, o’mighty slime sage.”
“You know, I know you’re mocking me, but I love the way that sounds. Call me that from now on. Now…” Gel wobbled excitedly in Sean’s stomach as the slime prepared himself. “Long ago, before the first ooze had ever taken shape…”
Sean settled himself on the ground at a better angle to grab branches while he listened to Gel’s mythical, and possibly entirely fabricated, moon genesis story.
Moons* genesis story. He mentally corrected himself, glancing up at the night sky once more. It may have been his imagination, but watching Bas gave him a sense of comfort. The dark, spherical orb’s glimmer in the heavens felt like it emanated a sense of security. Much like the sun back on Earth, Sean had the irrational urge to lay down and just soak up its rays – even though he knew the light coming off it was just a reflection of whatever sun this planet was currently orbiting.
Maybe they have more than one sun? Sean had zero idea how the physics worked out for something like that, but he supposed he would find out more in the morning. Assuming more than one sun rose with the day here.
He drifted off into other inner musings for a while, keeping one proverbial ear on Gel’s story and the other on his pulse sense to keep tabs on any potentially approaching dangers. They had almost cleared the bush entirely, and Gel was just about reaching the crescendo of his crafted tale, when something caught Sean’s eye. He moved another branch of berries from the bush to get a better look, and the place on his skull where his eyebrows had been felt like it tried to crawl upwards.
There were tracks running under the bush. Tracks that led into partially collapsed holes dug into the surrounding roots and mud. The most recent footfalls leading in came from the opposite side of the bush, but they couldn’t be more than an hour old. Next to them, just below the last branch Gel had ripped off, were what looked like brown popcorn kernels growing out of black dirt.
Curious, Sean reached out and scooped some up. Rubbing his forefingers and thumb together, the kernels popped easily under his new strength. Bursting like tiny crisped, sticky marshmallows filled with dark powder. Nothing about his instincts told him what these strange kernels were, so Sean popped another one. Dark powder puffed out, and Gel interrupted his grandiose tale mid-sentence.
“Which is how Slimenificent transformed into a– hey, what is that? It smells like intestines, did you kill something when I wasn’t looking? If so, I’m impressed. You barely even moved.”
“Intestines?” High school biology came rushing back to him, pairing the function of a body’s intestines with the kernel’s position next to a source of food and fresh tracks. “Oh, oh god damnit.”
Sean wiped his hand in the grass, doing his best to clean the mystery poop off his fingers and cursing his inability to smell. If the tracks were as fresh as he guessed, there’s no way he wouldn’t have noticed what the kernels were sooner.
“So that’s a no, you didn’t kill anything.” Gel sounded disappointed, but then he brightened. “Ooh, but you found something! Great job! Now hurry up and kill it before it takes my berries!”
“Huh?”
That was the only thought Sean was able to muster before his right arm lurched suddenly forward. Before he had a chance to look up, the night went suddenly black as something large and furry crashed belly-first onto his skull. Teeth ground against the back of his skull, and paws with sharp edges scraped against his jaw even as the creature scrambled for purchase on his shoulders with its forelegs.
Blood-red combat prompts filled the darkness of his vision, but Sean didn’t even glance at them. He was too busy struggling to stand up as his right arm flung in random directions and his new ‘passenger’ frenzied its way across his face.
The next several minutes were some of the most comedically frantic of Sean’s new unlife. Angry growls and surprised squeals filled the night as the small creature attached to his head did its absolute best to kill him for good, while Sean did his best to rip the thing off him. No matter how many times he grabbed at it, the creature’s fur slid through his grip and it just bit at him again. At one point the thing was literally gnawing on his chin like a possessed demon – which was when Sean finally recognized what was attacking him.
The creature’s furious, hate-filled face was marked by striking black and white fur that raced from its nose back across its entire face, only to join rings of the same alternating colors across its body. It was muscled to a greater degree than any Earth variety Sean had ever seen, and its coat was covered in an oily sheen, but there was no mistaking it: It was a badger! He had been attacked by a freaking badger!
“Wh-how–get this thing off of me!” Sean roared at Gel, as the badger’s paws continued to scramble for clearance and it managed – somehow – to put its rear directly on his orbs. “Stop flailing around and help!”
“I’m trying!” Gel shouted back. “It won’t stay still!”
“Of course it won’t–mphff.” Sean’s mental stream of communication was interrupted when the badger’s paw managed to shove his jaw open and began scrambling inside his mouth.
That’s it.
Sean bit down as hard as he could, eliciting a squeal from the creature that he now finally had a firm hold of. Gel reached up through his throat, gelatinous tendrils beginning to melt into the creature. The badger began to panic, but Sean dug his skeletal fingers into the creature’s leg and stumbled over to one of the silver trees. Then he did the only thing he could think of. He headbutted it into the trunk.
Once, twice, three times. The badger’s squeal hit a higher pitch each time, and on the fourth blow it finally fell silent. Growling mentally, Sean didn’t even bother to wait on the death prompt. He grabbed its split-open chest and shoved the badger’s entire body into the small space beneath his enlarged ribs towards its end. Then he looked wildly around, daring whatever was coming next to give him their best as his hand dripped with bloodied clumps of fur.
A breeze blew through the small clearing where they had found the bush. Apart from the disturbed mud of their scuffle, there were no signs that anything had even happened. The woods were silent and still, though a patch of dark-grey grass near him looked like it was leaning his way. A cold shiver ran down Sean’s spine, and his anger cooled.
Pulling up his prompts, Sean discovered that despite the severe hit to his dignity from becoming a cartoon sketch for a second, he hadn’t actually taken any damage.
You have been bitten by Dark Badger for 0 damage (2 total, minus 2 due to toughness).
You have been scratched by Dark Badger for 0 damage (2 total, minus 2 due to toughness).
You have been bitten by —
You have been scratched by –
Sean shook his head and cleared the rest of those prompts out, glad that – for once – he hadn’t lost himself to mindless rage in the fight. Though he had to wonder why that was. He had been attacked to no real effect before thanks to the ‘armor’ of his flesh, so what had been different this time?
Was it the evolution? He wondered. Or because it wasn’t really a threat?
Unlike the rats, if two damage was all the badger had been capable of putting out – then the creature stood absolutely no chance against him. It had clawed its way all over his skull multiple times and even gnawed on his head, and yet Sean could feel that the creature’s teeth hadn’t taken off so much as a sliver of bone.
Guess it has to be an actual danger, then. Which brought up another question. Badgers weren’t stupid, and Sean didn’t have an ounce of meat on him. Attacking him made no sense. Unless…
Sean walked back over to the bush and knelt down, he reached down into the partially collapsed holes with his good arm, searching. After a moment or two of exploration however, he didn’t find anything.
No nest. Sean looked around, double-checking the tracks he had followed to this bush and looking for a smaller pair accompanying them. He found nothing. No kids, either.
“What’re you doing?” Gel asked, as the badger’s freshly scoured bones fell out of Sean’s chest.
Two prompts appeared, one for defeating the dark badger and another for the slime absorbing it, netting the pair of them a whopping 0 experience and a single point of mana. Sean rolled his orbs at the prompts, unsurprised. It looked like experience really was based on difficulty. The single point of mana was nice, but he would need another badger to make this little hunt worthwhile.
“Trying to figure out why it attacked us.” Sean responded, retreating back from under the bush. “It wasn’t protecting anything.”
“Maybe it was sleeping?” Gel offered.
“Are you saying this thing just woke up and chose violence?” Sean wondered if the ‘honey badger don’t give no fucks’ memes had been more accurate than he knew.
“Wouldn’t you? Violence is the answer, Sean. It’s never a question. If you have two options, you pick that one.”
“Against something more than five times your size?” Sean countered. “Seems like a great way to eat dirt.”
“You mean it seems like a great way to eat more. Bigger they are, the better they taste!” Gel crowed. “Besides, we killed something more than five times my size not twenty minutes ago.”
Sean ceded the point with a dismissive gesture. “Fair enough. But if there’s one there has got to be… ah, there we go.”
“Another one?” Gel asked hastily, raising his right arm into a defensive position. “I’m ready!”
“Not yet, just the tracks.” Sean said, following the freshest pair of what he now recognized as badger footprints through the grass. “What I really want to know is how come I didn’t hear it coming.”
He hadn’t heard a single heartbeat before the badger had attacked them. Considering Sean was relying on that particular sense to warn him against exactly that sort of ambush, he was rather miffed about it.
“Probably because you were enthralled by my enchanting storytelling.” Gel guessed, sounding royally unconcerned. “Besides, it turned out fine. What are you worried about?”
Had that been it? Pulse sense acted like just another sense after all, near as he had been able to tell, so had Sean really just zoned it out? Or had the badger been able to hide due to some ability it had? The thing had only had a single mana left when it died. Maybe it had some way to conceal itself against potential predators.
Sean gave a mental shrug and decided to chalk the experience up as a reminder to do better.
“Nothing. Let’s go find the other one, it should be around here somewhere.” Sean said, picking up the pace. “We’ll snatch that up and hit town next, that work for you?”
Sean didn’t add the real reason he was after the other badger. A knot of concern had settled into his non-existent stomach, despite the nothingburger the ‘fight’ had turned out to be.
If I can’t rely on pulse sense to warn me without paying attention to it, or if these things have a way to hide from it, then I’ll need to work on keeping a sharper orb out for hostiles. Or find some way to mitigate their mitigation.
“Works great for me!” Gel said immediately. “I’m hoping one of the kitchens survived, if we find any of this ‘sugar’ then you owe me some congealed blood berries.”
“We’ll have to bring some to town with us.” Sean pointed out. “Which means you can’t eat them until we get there.”
Gel was silent for a long moment as they ran forward, then in a tone of complete sincerity Gel asked: “What if I want to have my berries and eat them, too?”
“Can’t.” Sean said with no remorse whatsoever. “You’re just going to have to wait.”
“You know, waiting is why people don’t like cooking. Why delay eating your food?”
“Because patience is rewarded by even better food.” Sean explained. “Also, anticipation does wonders for flavor profiles.”
“It had better, because right now I don’t like it at all.”