By the time Sean pulled the sledgehammer they had taken from the farm what felt like so long ago – but had only really been two days – out of their pack, the Feather Up potion had done its work.
A pair of raven black wings now sprouted out of his back, covered in thousands of dark feathers. With the wings had come the physical structure to use them properly, thick cords of muscle that ran tightly through the slime warrior's very bones. Since Sean had no skin to contain them the muscles were exposed to the air and detritus throughout the room, but that was fine. There was no pain, even as he flexed them.
Holy shit, it really gave me wings! Sean thought in wonder as he stretched each out to their fullest extent. And after all that money I spent on energy drinks…
Instinctual knowledge accompanied the transformation, and Sean leapt forward into the open air. He flapped his powerful new wings to support them as information filled his mind. To Sean, it felt like he had downloaded the potion equivalent of a "How To Fly For Fools" manual directly into his brain. He knew right away that advanced maneuvers were beyond him, but he didn't need those right now.
He could fly!
"Haha-haaa!" Sean shouted in pure, mental triumph. "I can fly, baby!"
"Melted flesh on the moon, it worked!" Gel said in open amazement as they flew towards the horde of mushrooms still charging the queen. "Hahaha! I can't believe it worked!"
"Wha– what do you mean you can't believe it, you told me it would!"
"That potion is for humans, I wasn't sure it would work for us. You don't have any musculature for it to build off of, after all. It might have just covered your whole body in feathers or something, but hey! It didn't!"
"Covered my whole body in–" Sean would have gotten annoyed at his friend, but he couldn't quite spare the mental attention. Flying in a straight line while ascending towards the ceiling was a lot of work. Still, he decided to at least address the issue. "Gel, those are the kinds of warnings I need before downing magically transformative substances in the midst of battle!"
"Hahaha, look at us go!" Gel cackled, purposefully oblivious to the chiding. "Whoooohooooo!"
"Can you still make a whip?" Sean asked as they closed in on their targets.
"Yep!" The slime rapidly formed another length of semi-solid clear fluid from Sean's shoulder socket, which waved about in the wind as he flew. "Can't do weapons right now, though. Not unless you want to hold them."
"Nah, it's fine. I've already got one." Sean reported, hefting the notched sledgehammer in his midnight black hand by way of demonstration. "Now, grab some of those jars from our pack. The ones we got from Moopsies farm, not the potion vials."
"The glass jars?"
"Yeah, those." Sean was loath to waste good containers they might be able to use later, but it wasn't like they had a lot of options. "When we get close enough, throw 'em at the bulging ones."
"The bulging ones? You mean the ones that blow themselves up as a defense mechanism?" Gel asked dubiously, though to his credit the slime didn't hesitate in retrieving one. "I feel compelled to remind you that just one of those going off was enough to blow holes in the ground and take off that lizard guy's leg for being too close."
"Then we'll just have to make sure we don't get too close." Sean stated dryly. "Besides, can you think of a better way to thin their numbers?”
“Not while enjoying the majesty of flight, no.”
“Then get ready.” Sean said, preparing to dive down and over the heads of their enemies. “Because it's time to teach these shrooms what a strafing run looks like."
The wind rushed past Sean’s face as they dove down, and the slime warrior couldn’t suppress a grin as Gel threw a glass jar at the first of the bulging shroom bombs. It landed with almost perfect accuracy, pinging the bulbous mushroom-thing right in what was most likely its head. A shiver ran through the creature’s fungal flesh from top to bottom and then it blew apart, taking many of its fellows with it.
Sean’s satisfaction at their plan succeeding lasted only half a second before the shockwave from the blast caught up with them even as they flew past. The wave of force rapidly accelerated their trajectory, crumpling his black wings forward over him like they were made of paper. Unable to correct, they slammed into the nearby wall like a drunken man attempting a cannonball – face first. Gel let out a pained grunt of confusion on impact, and then they tumbled the twenty or so remaining feet to the ground.
The slime warrior shook his head as he picked himself up and shakily dismissed the prompt telling him that his toughness had once again prevented any damage. The tumble had been more disorienting than anything, thankfully. Sean checked over his wings as some of the shroom horde turned to charge towards them, and was relieved to see they hadn’t broken.
“Alright, that one was my bad.” Gel began, but Sean cut him off.
“No, nope. That one’s on me.” Sean said, jumping and taking off into the air once more with a powerful thrust of his new wings. “Should’ve been higher up.”
“In fairness to you, who knew that explosions could be so damaging for birds? You’d think they would be fine all up in the air like that.” Gel said, reforming his slime whip that Sean only now noticed must have been splattered against the wall. “We’ll get the hang of this sometime. Preferably before slamming into the rock wall really starts to hurt.”
Sean had known that large blasts could take down birds, of course. He just hadn’t thought of it. It was his first time flying, after all. He supposed Gel had earned that comment.
“Ready to try again?” Sean asked, once they had gotten some elevation under them. The horde had focused in on their flying opponent, ceasing their charge towards the ant matriarch to circle underneath. Which was good, as the queen wasn’t that much further away and still digging her way into the earth.
“Always.” Gel affirmed, and the slime warrior swooped down once more.
Their next few strafing runs varied in efficacy. Gel wasn’t always accurate with his throwing, and they quickly ran out of glass jars. By the time only a few of the bomb-shrooms remained, they were down to throwing farm tools. Sean inwardly mourned the loss, but there was nothing for it.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Pity we never found arrows for that bow. Sean thought, watching a pickaxe fall as if in slow motion down towards another bulbous form. He veered away, ensuring that they weren’t caught in the resulting explosion.
“That’s the last one!” Gel reported brightly. “Pity we couldn’t eat them. I’ll admit I’m dying to taste the flesh of something that can blow itself to pieces. Do you think it’ll crackle as it goes down, like oil does when you’re cooking something with it?”
“Tell you what, you figure out how to eat one without getting me blasted into bone dust, and I’ll feed it to you myself.”
“Deal. Now, how do you want to handle the rest of them. Are you planning to– oh, right. The hammer.”
“The hammer.” Sean agreed with satisfaction, swooping down to splatter the head of one of the lesser fungaloids all over the ground as he flew by.
The ease of it was gratifying, and though several others reached for him they were only met by Gel’s whip. A glancing blow from that wasn’t enough to kill any of them, but it was enough to start replenishing their mass. Sean banked around for another pass, double-checking to confirm that their hulking undead problem was still occupied. It was, which was good as he still didn’t have a fool-proof plan for taking it out yet.
One of the lumbering network core mushrooms lurched for him, reminding Sean that there were still enemies nearby that he had to be cautious about. He banked to the side, dodging the blow, and took a quick count. Although their explosive comrades had taken several down with them, three of the overly large mushrooms remained.
Sean gripped his sledgehammer, and adjusted his trajectory towards one of them. Despite what he had told Gel earlier, these foes were the ones who had convinced him to bring the hammer. The slime warrior flew directly at the nearest one, swinging his sledgehammer in a mighty arcing blow right as he passed.
Spongy mass exploded out in front of them. Gel’s whip lashed out multiple times, trying to catch each individual piece before they fell out of reach. Internally, Sean whooped in triumph. He had been worried that wouldn’t work. Worried that he had underestimated the network cores as foes, that their skin would be hardened somehow more than their predecessor, or that one of them would be fast enough to simply swat him from the sky.
Blessedly, none of that proved true.
The lumbering fungal creatures attacked with the same sloth they moved with, and Sean found it almost child’s play to dodge now that he was airborne. Within a few brutal minutes, the fight was over. Cleaning up the smaller ones had taken hardly any time at all
Well, this fight. Cleaning up the smaller ones had taken hardly any time at all. They didn’t count. The real fight they were preparing for was currently cleaning up the last of the ants on the other side of the cavern. Time to ask the hard questions.
“Gel?” Sean asked, in all seriousness and solemnity. He hovered them in place above the ruined and splattered forms of what he dearly hoped were the last mobile mushrooms in this cave system.
“Yes, Sean?”
“How fast can you eat–” Sean gestured at what had to be nearly a hundred fungaloid fallen below them. “--all of this?”
The slime’s voice was choked with emotion, but he responded immediately anyway.
“I thought you would never ask.”
Sean landed, and Gel’s whip arm immediately began lashing out to take whole chunks of mass in all at once. The slime warrior rushed towards one of the network cores he had battered to pieces and began shoveling as much of it down his throat as he could manage. Time was against them, and they both knew it. They needed mass. They needed to evolve… and they needed to do so as quickly as possible.
The next several minutes were the most feral of Sean’s undead life – at least the parts he had been conscious for, that is. He gulped down mushroom flesh like a fish drank water, consuming every ounce of spongy mass that he could. Gel reported their progress as they went, and whenever he got the chance Sean peered over at the battle across the cavern. At their hulking undead rival who was winding down the last dregs of his own fight.
It was a daunting sight to witness. There were hundreds of slain ants piled in no particular order around the hole they had fallen from. Some had fought amongst themselves, and not all had survived the fall, but none – it would seem – could survive trading blows with the gruesome undead and its fell blade.
Its style never changed, no matter how long Sean watched. Casual swipes of its sword obliterated enemies, and those that managed to close the gap were met with its free hand only to be torn apart. Whenever one of the ranged ‘shooter’ variants took aim, the undead would either bear the attack head-on or throw one of its own fellows towards it like a bowler knocking down pins.
If sheer strength were its only noteworthy trait, Sean had no doubt the undead would have been borne down under the tide already. It wasn’t invulnerable. There was no way to fight that many opponents and remain untouched. Attacks landed and pierced flesh, even if they were the last ditch efforts of the dying. Acid splashed across its body with regularity, bubbling across the undead’s pale skin and melting away flesh.
But each time, the hulking undead’s form appeared to darken and then its wounds would heal. Flesh would knit itself together and exposed bones would be covered anew.
There has to be a limit to it. Sean thought, his mind racing even as his hand shoveled ever more food into his mouth. Unless it’s feeding off of them somehow?
No matter how long Sean watched, he never saw the undead pause to eat. Whatever method it was using to rejuvenate itself – if that was truly what it was doing – there was simply no way to tell at this distance.
Hopefully we can figure it out when we get up close. Sean thought, resolving to keep an eye out for that during their impending battle and have Gel do the same.
Their long-time pursuer was nearly done with his fight, so it wouldn’t be long now. There were barely half a dozen ants left. It would be done in minutes. Given the glances the menacing creature had stolen back over at them during its fight, as if checking to see whether they were still there, the slime warrior had no doubt it would be after them next.
“What percentage are we at over the evolution cap?” Sean asked, as he rushed over to one of the network cores they had partially hollowed out. He had cut the thing nearly in half during the battle, and now its corpse could serve a second use. “How fast can we make this go?”
“56 percent.” Gel reported, and the slime sounded as if he were six plates deep at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Sean couldn’t tell if his friend was getting full or drunk. “No idea how fast, but it’ll be in a little less than half the normal time.”
“That’ll have to do.” Sean said, grabbing the body of a slain fungaloid and dragging it over to the hollowed out core.
When their enemy had its back turned, he knelt inside the network core and draped the fungaloid’s bruised and oozing body over them. It was gross, but not nearly as unsanitary as the last place they had evolved in.
Next time we need our own lair. The slime warrior mused. Or at least somewhere without fecal matter or mystery fluids.
Pushing that thought from his mind, Sean pulled up the evolution prompt once more and made his choice.
“Alright, I’m ready.” He reported to his friend, easing the both of them down under the body. If their evolution took too long, maybe their temporary hiding spot would give them the extra time they needed.
“Let’s do this.”
“Way ahead of you!” Gel affirmed, before shouting out-loud in a slightly tipsy-cheery sort of way as the prompt appeared for both of them.
Evolution commencing.
The slime’s words were the last Sean heard before darkness took him.
“Gelatooooooooon! Here. We. COME!”