“I--” Sean began, before thinking better of it. He needed to move quickly otherwise he’d be finding out if his racial trait of being an undead could dampen excessive embarrassment.
“You need to eat me before you can share any of the mana you get from those rats, right?” Sean said, quickly changing the subject.
“Before any more of you falls off, preferably.” Gel said. “But I can’t say for sure how much will–"
Sean lunged forward and grabbed Gel’s jar. With a motion more swift than he had managed thus far, Sean unceremoniously dumped the slime over his head with a hefty plop, interrupting the slime mid-sentence. Clear fluid dripped steadily past his eyes as the slime oozed its way over his shoulders. Instead of falling to the floor however, the slime simply extended itself, following the contours of Sean's 'body' all the way down to his feet.
Then, Gel began to eat him.
Despite everything that had transpired, Sean still expected to feel pain in the process of literally being eaten alive. Instead, the feeling was quite pleasant. Similar to that of a hot shower mixed with the results of a 6-month fasting program. Sean could literally feel the weight sliding off of… well, off of all of him.
His pale, sickly skin melted off and the muscle beneath it was lifted off his bones in large, meaty chunks that suddenly felt blessedly lighter. Like he’d been straining himself against bonds and now Gel was cutting away the ropes. A metaphor that worked rather well as Sean watched the veins all across his body vanish into nothing, sucked away alongside each of his organs – which was, itself, a surreal experience – as they were consumed into Gel’s clear form.
Heh. Slime shower. Sean thought, somehow amused instead of appalled. It was hard to deny how much better he was feeling the more of his old body Gel disintegrated off.
Then clear slime oozed its way inside Sean’s ear canals and it took everything in him not to claw at his own ears. The sensation of invasion was overwhelming, but those feelings were coming from the still-human parts of his mind. His skeleton instincts were completely unconcerned at the slime’s presence in his skull. As if there were nothing worth protecting in there anyway.
With a faint sizzle, a low headache that Sean hadn’t even noticed faded away. A weight inside his own head melted as if it had never been there, and a sense of ease swept through him. The closest sensation Sean could liken it to was when he had finally caved on paying to try a professional massage. The relief in his head was the same as it had been back then, when the masseuse had given a hard knot in his back the flying knee.
Absently, Sean realized what the sensation meant. Gel had just consumed his brain.
And yet, he could still think. Sean wondered what that said about his mental capacity.
Still, talk about a once in a lifetime experience. How many people survive being eaten alive?
Looking down, Sean could see that he no longer had a chest, heart, or even any lungs. He raised the thick bones that now constituted his actual arms, amazed at how free he felt now. A few exploratory steps about the room only increased his excitement, and Sean marveled at how easily he could now move about. All of the strain he’d slowly grown accustomed to since arriving here. All of that lugging around extra weight and halfway-limping around was simply… gone.
I feel… fantastic. Like I’m finally getting used to this place. Sean marveled, before a wry smile stretched across his skeletal face. Just had to melt my baggage off.
As soon as he had the thought, a black-and-gold bordered prompt flashed in the center of Sean’s vision just as Gel finished his meal. This one accompanied by the same celebratory shouting Sean had heard before.
Congratulations! Your whole-body and cerebral sacrifices have been accepted. You are now 100% flesh-bound to: Sentient Gel Slime, Level 2. You are now both considered as a single creature for the purposes of determining effects.
‘Considered a single creature’? Sean thought, unsure as to how helpful that might eventually be. It made sense for experience, but… He tried to focus on the prompt to get a deeper explanation, but none came. Shrugging, Sean figured he’d find out soon enough.
Maybe it means we can share buffs or something. Assuming this world even has buffs. Though, considering the other game-like aspects this world has, that’s probably a safe bet.
Gel dripped off Sean’s face and retreated up from his legs, forming an amorphous blob within the confines of the skeleton’s ribcage. The slime was now large enough to fill the entire space where Sean’s organs had been just moments prior, and it bubbled in a distinctly pleased fashion.
“That… was the best meal I have had yet. Maybe ever.” Gel said in his mind. “You were literally ‘fall off the bone’ tender, there. My compliments to the chef, because I am stuffed.”
“Thanks, I uh… grew it myself.” Sean said, shaking his head in amusement and wondering briefly at Gel’s use of that particular phrase. Then he glanced down at the slime resting in his chest before gesturing at the giant rat carcasses on the ground before them.
“Need a break before we move on to dessert?”
“Break?” Gel asked, sounding thoroughly offended. “Not on your unlife. If there’s more food to be had, I am literally always ready to go.”
Gel’s body vibrated, as if the slime were trying to rattle Sean’s ribcage. “So, let’s do this.”
Chuckling, Sean knelt beside the carcasses. Reaching both hands into the void where his stomach used to be, he began scooping Gel out by the double-handful and spreading the slime’s body over first one corpse, then the other. Then he sat back in the thin green muck, and watched Gel work.
It wasn’t long before another prompt, clear-blue this time, appeared in Sean’s vision alongside the ringing of a soft bell.
Gel has absorbed Giant Rat x2, earning 4 mana and 20 experience points. Due to the ‘Flesh Bonding’ trait, you have been granted the same boon. You have gained 4 mana and 20 experience points!
Colorful fireworks shot off in Sean’s vision, spiraling into the air as a new prompt appeared. Its interior was a bright, transparent gold with silver trim and the words were written in thick, black lettering.
Congratulations, through spreading death to the lives of other creatures you have reached level 2! As a skeleton you gain 1 point of Might and Toughness with every level.
You now have access to manasphere nodes! You have gained one node point!
“Hey-hey! Congratulations, Pinky!” Gel crowed. “You’re finally moving up in the world. It’s enough to make a grown slime cry.”
Sean cocked his head down at the slime, then at his now pristine-white skeletal body.
“Exactly what part of me is still pink?” Sean asked. “And what do you mean ‘grown’? Aren’t you still level two?”
“You’ll always be pink in my heart, Sean.” Gel said, ignoring Sean’s other questions entirely. “Well, in your heart. The one I just ate. Our heart? Whatever, it’s gone now.”
“Uh-huh. Careful, keep calling me that and I’ll find a nickname for you too, little buddy.” Sean warned, wagging a metacarpal finger at the slime.
“I feel like we’re getting off track here.” Gel said quickly. “Have you picked your node choice yet? Find any tasty options?”
“I was just about to look at that, actually.” Sean said, about to check his prompt again – before he paused and checked something else. “Wait, you are still level two. How do you know about nodes?”
“Huh? Oh.” Gel seemed genuinely surprised by the question. “Well, a bit of a long story there…”
For the first time since Sean had met him, the slime’s voice sounded almost unsure as he trailed off. Like Gel was actually trying to find words, rather than just responding off-hand.
“I spent a few years on Bancroft’s shelf before he finally gave up and threw me down here.” Gel paused for a moment, then added derisively. “The idiot kept feeding me the brains of people he had killed and wondering why my marvelous self never bonded to him.”
“Maybe he was trying to get the trait without having to sacrifice for it?” Sean suggested.
As a line of thinking, it made sense to him, but Gel’s voice was suddenly serious in Sean’s mind. The slime stared up at him with an unusually steady gaze.
“There is no power without sacrifice. Especially in necromancy.”
Sean stared back at the slime, a bit taken about by the intensity in Gel’s tone. “... Okay, fortune cookie much? What does that even mean? It sounds like a quote from something.”
“It means exactly what I said.” Gel responded, though he almost appeared to be talking to himself. “Or at least, I’m pretty sure it does. Some of the memories get a little fuzzy at times. More importantly, what’s a fortune cookie?”
“Memories?” Sean asked, latching on to what he sensed was a critical piece of information here. “As in the memories of those Bancroft fed you?”
“Obviously. Where did you think those were stored, in the heart? That’s silly. Don’t be silly.”
Before Sean could respond, Gel repeated his earlier question – perhaps similarly sensing that the slime might be missing out on a piece of critical information.
“What’s a fortune cookie?”
“It’s a thin, folded cookie with a piece of paper inside that has writing on it. People say it will tell you your fortune, but it usually just has some kind of ‘wise phrase’ written inside that you can apply to whatever you originally wanted to do in order to justify doing it. Most people don’t actually eat the cookie either, it’s kind of bland, so they just read whatever is inside and toss the rest away. My cousin Susan used to love them.” Sean said.
He could still remember his little cousin had spent weeks roaming the nearby houses after discovering her fortune and commanding the neighbor kids around thanks to it having told her she would be a ‘great leader’. Sean smiled at the memory, and spared a moment to hope Susan was still doing well, wherever she was.
“So… it doesn’t actually tell your fortune?” Gel asked, interrupting his reverise and clearly disappointed.
“It does not.”
“... And you’re not supposed to actually eat it.”
“I mean, you can, but it’s not great.” Sean shrugged, still enjoying the weight off of his shoulders now that they had been scoured clean of flesh. “Especially as cookies go, there are much better options out there.”
“You’ll have to share some of those better options later, then. I’ve never even had one of these ‘fortune cookies’, and I’m already disappointed in them.”
“Tell you what, if we find a kitchen. I’ll whip you up some.” Sean said, rather liking the idea, though he still wasn’t sure how he would eat one.
“Deal.” Gel acknowledged readily. “I still want a fortune cookie though, just to be clear. if we find any, I call dibs on the first one.”
Shaking his head in amusement at his gelatinous friend’s appetite, Sean let the topic drop. Then his mind circled back to the pressing question he’d had before they had gotten sidetracked by disappointing desserts.
“Did you happen to get any of my memories when you ate my brain?” Sean asked, unable to decide how he felt about the idea.
“It takes a while for new ones to sink in, so… no. Not yet, anyway. I’m hoping I get the one where your ass fell off soon though, that was priceless.”
Sighing, Sean pulled the level up prompt back to the forefront of his vision. Focusing first on the ‘manasphere nodes’ portion to learn more about the phrase. A rainbow prompt appeared.
Manasphere nodes are optional paths of development a creature can select to improve itself as it grows. New options are presented every level and are based on the creature’s traits, accomplishments, accumulation of the various mana types, and a variety of other factors.
Sounds simple enough. Sean thought, reading through. So they’re like free bonuses for every level. Neat.
Sean pulled his status back up, figuring there might be an option in there somewhere to spend the node point he had received. Sure enough, there it was. Right at the top was a small, gold-highlighted overlay enticing Sean to “Choose his growth path”. Selecting it, a small map unfolded itself from the overlay, slowly expanding to cover most of his vision.
The map depicted a massive network of interconnected, multicolored dots. As he watched, the map zoomed in on itself to center over a single black dot encircled by dozens of other colored dots floating nearby. It didn’t take a whole lot of brainpower to figure out that the dots represented nodes, but what was interesting to Sean was the connections between them. Each node visible on the map had a greyed-out line extending back to the central one.
That must be my starting point. Sean figured, staring at first the central node, then the greyed-out lines leading towards the floating nodes. And those are probably my options. Too easy.
Beyond those floating nodes, Sean could see almost nothing. The rest of the map was now shrouded in dark fog, the massive network he had seen before now almost completely concealed. There were hazy shapes shifting around in the fog, but Sean could see little else.
Sean sighed mentally at the less-than-convenient change. Guess that means I won’t be able to look ahead and plan my route.
Just to be sure, Sean focused on the grey area and tried to move the map around – but to no avail. He sighed again. It wasn’t too hard to figure out how this manasphere thing worked, but he had hoped to be able to search for the optimal path.
Probably won’t be able to see any further ahead than the next available options. Sean surmised. Ah well.
Focusing on the first of the black nodes connected to his center dot, Sean was able to bring up a pitch black-bordered prompt with the barest hints of azure blue visible at the corners.
Thick Bones
Description: Increases the weight, durability, and thickness of your skeletal structure.
Effect: Toughness attribute increased by 1.
Mana Aspect: Death
Alright, that doesn’t sound bad at all. Sean thought, though he still didn’t quite know what ‘toughness’ did for him – despite sounding like it could eventually make him some badass warrior. I could get down with chunky if it makes me hunky, too.
Examining the word ‘Toughness’ on his prompt, Sean discovered that it was actually one of several substats under the attributes he had noted earlier. He quickly pulled them all up to figure out what he was looking at.
Physical Attribute: 1. Mental Attribute: 3. Recovery Attribute: 2. Attributes are the average score of the substats within each attribute category.
Physical Substats:
* Might: Affects the potency of physical abilities as well as overall strength.
* Competency: Affects physical ability iteration and duration, as well as overall reflexes.
Mental Substats:
* Ego: Affects the potency of magical abilities as well as overall mental resistance.
* Cognition: Affects magical skill ability iteration and duration, as well as ability capacity.
Recovery Substats:
* Toughness: Affects HP regeneration as well as overall fortitude. For undead creatures without the capacity to regenerate, this attribute affects innate damage reduction instead.
* Adaptation: Affects MP regeneration as well as the duration of debilitating debuffs.
Seems easy enough. Sean thought as he read through the brief explanations of each. That last one was particularly interesting. It might be exactly what he needed.
Maybe if I can get enough adaptation, my MP regeneration will be high enough to where it covers that hourly cost? Not having to worry about a death clock would be metal.
Focusing in on ‘MP regeneration’ to see how it worked, Sean’s hopes were quickly dashed.
Current mana regeneration rate: 1 mana every 6 hours.
Well, damn. I’ll be dead twice over before that even comes into play. Sean wasn’t terribly surprised that there wasn’t a quick-and-easy loophole to his countdown-clock-of-doom problem, but he had hoped. Ah well. At least it’s something. Might be worth investing in adaptation later, just have to survive long enough for it to matter.
Closing those prompts, Sean returned to the various nodes he had available. A common theme quickly emerged from his available choices. Most of them went about it in different ways, but ultimately the effects of any single one only increased a single attribute by a solitary point. Interestingly, there were often several options for achieving the same functional outcomes. As an example, Sean found he could gain additional toughness from two other nodes as well:
Reinforced Skull
Description: Wraps your skull in reinforced bone plating.
Effect: Toughness attribute increased by 1.
Mana Aspect: Death
Dense Frame
Description: Condenses the material composition of your skeleton into a more robust form, increasing weight and durability without adding any additional bulk.
Effect: Toughness attribute increased by 1.
Mana Aspect: Death
Seeing as how toughness, on closer examination, was actually rather badass – Sean couldn’t help but grin at the spread before him. This one, singular attribute increased his natural damage reduction all by itself, and he had three different ways to up it. With all of them, it wasn’t hard to envision himself taking mighty blows and shrugging them off to the surprise of his soon-to-be-shattered enemies.
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Assuming that’s how it works, I don’t have a whole lot to compare to down here apart from the rats.
Reining his imagination in just a bit, Sean admitted to himself that an invulnerable future was unlikely for him. At least in the near term. Not to mention the fact that his smile was a good deal more ‘grim’ than ‘grin’ now, given the whole ‘lack of lips’ thing.
Still, considering how useful my ‘meatsuit’ flesh was at stopping damage earlier, one of these might actually do the trick. Despite the thought, Sean dismissed the prompts before him and started pulling up the rest of his node options one by one. Might as well check what else is on the table, now that I have an idea as to what all of this means.
Each of them branched off in different directions. Based on their names, these ‘nodes’ sounded more like mini-evolutions than anything. If that were true, then Sean would have to be careful with his selections. Evolution, at least as he understood it, was a one-way trip. If nodes worked along those lines, then it stood to reason that choosing one wasn’t something you could just undo.
Sean figured it was time to bring Gel into the conversation. Maybe the slime could shed some light on a few of the questions these new prompts had brought with them. He also figured it was time he took a closer look at the rest of this chamber he’d fallen into.
Maybe I’ll be able to find a weapon or something. Sean thought, glancing over at the mound of generally bare corpses that featured prominently in the center of the room. He looked over the absurd number of random bodies littering the rest of the floor, but as far as he could see none had anything even resembling clothes left, much less weaponry. There were, however, plenty of bones laying about.
Or… maybe I’ll have to make one. I don’t have any tools around but bones can be used as clubs by themselves, right? That’s what cavemen did back in the day. Yeah. Sean nodded to himself. That’ll work. Just have to find the right bone.
“Mind picking me back up?” Gel asked, interrupting Sean’s internal musings. “There’s nothing left to eat down here.”
“Huh? Oh, sure.” Sean scooped Gel back up. “Same place as before?”
“Yeah. Hitching a ride in your ribs is far better than being stuck inside that jar. You get the pleasure of my company, and I get a great view from your chest. It’s a win-win!”
Sean stifled a laugh as he carefully placed the slime back inside his own rib cage, letting Gel ooze around in there until the slime had formed what could almost pass for the torso of a ballistics dummy. If torsos were gelatinous, see-through blobs of translucent liquid that jiggled around when you walked. Pacing about the room experimentally, Sean couldn’t help but notice the slime bounce around a bit with each step. He had to wonder if this was how some women felt when their own assets bounced around.
“What are you doing?” Gel asked, almost immediately. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“You’re bouncing me around on purpose, I can feel it. It’s making me dizzy.”
Rolling his non-existent eyes, Sean ceased his bouncing and returned his steps to a normal pace in order to prevent excess bounce-age. He started checking out the corpses liberally strewn about the floor, looking for one that might have a solid enough bone that he could turn it into a weapon. Preferably one without any cracks in it, which was harder to find than Sean would have guessed.
He still didn’t want to spend too long down here, given his time limit, but if they could find a weapon to use then the effort would be worth it.
“That better?” Sean asked, looking down at Gel after they’d gone about halfway around the chamber.
“Much.” The slime’s eyes swirled up to meet his gaze. “Now, what’re we walking around here for?”
“I’m looking for a weapon. Did you happen to see any fall down here before I showed up?”
“I didn’t see anything before you showed up. I didn’t have any eyes.”
Sean resisted the urge to slap a hand to the front of his skull at the predictable response.
“Now that I do have some, though.” Gel continued. “I’d be happy to help look. Maybe one of the countless peasants Bancroft murdered in this village had one hidden on them before they died! He used to complain about how some of them had the audacity to fight back before he took control. We might get lucky and find the weapon they lost, only to stab him to death with it! Wouldn’t that be satisfying.”
“Delivering karmic justice would be rather satisfying.” Sean agreed, though he was starting to feel a little unnerved as they walked around looking at just how many people Bancroft had apparently killed. There had to be a hundred bodies down here, easily. Maybe two.
“Did he bring an army with him or something?” Sean asked. “Is that how he took out a whole village?”
“I’m a little fuzzy on the details.” Gel admitted. “I wasn’t there, you see, and all I have are memories from the people he fed me. Most of whom were killed when he took over, and the rest didn’t last much longer. I can tell you what I was able to piece together from conversation, though.”
“And what is that?”
“Bancroft didn’t come here with an army. He came here and made an army.”
Sean paused, eyeing the mostly-decayed corpse of a man whose thigh bone he had been reaching for as if the dead body were about to suddenly leap for him. He had played way too many horror games to be in the mood for jump scares.
The corpse, which was missing most of its jaw and nearly all of its flesh, did not move.
Sean took that as a positive sign and began attempting to separate the man’s thigh from the rest of the body using only his hands. It was surprisingly easy to do, the remaining muscles attaching it made a series of sick pops as he snapped the leg away.
“Was that the whole point then? Come out here, kill some peasants, and whip up an army of the dead to… what? Take over the world or something?” Sean asked, as he tore off the severed limb’s foot.
“How should I know?” Gel responded. “It’s not like he ever told me what his plans were. All he ever did was gloat about how great he was to those servants he brought with him, and talk about trying to read those stupid old books of his.”
“Old books?” Sean tapped the end of his newly-severed bone-bat to the ground, trying to decide whether the padding of decayed muscle and flesh hanging off it was worth the hassle of removing. Grisly as the task was, it’s not like he had a whole lot of options right now.
“Yeah… some books he stole from his family or something, had rituals in them. Rituals he apparently couldn’t figure out, which was why he made me. So I could enhance his brain and figure it out for him. But he ended up failing at that, too.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean grabbed one end of his improvised bat and, realizing that he had absolutely nothing to fear from germs anymore, began stripping the decayed flesh off the bone with his hands.
Femur. Sean mentally corrected himself in the long silence that followed. That’s what the thigh bone is.
While he worked, Sean mulled over his node options. When the femur was nearly ready for use and he was certain it wouldn’t just slip from his grip, he asked Gel another question that had been on his mind.
“What’s the deal with this ‘mana aspect’ thing on each of the node options? Most of mine have the ‘death’ aspect, but there are others. ‘Astral’, ‘Chaos’,’Nature’, and even some ‘Order’ ones. Does it matter which one I choose?”
“Which one you choose is up to you.” Gel replied, apparently happy to have a change in subject. “Normally the necromancer is the one doing the choosing, and I know it affects the options you’ll get later, but Bancroft wasn’t big on explanations. As for mana aspects, it makes sense that most of your choices are death - you’re a creature of death, after all. All undead are.”
“I– hu-uh.” Sean had to admit that being a ‘creature of death’ sounded rather badass, even if it was the most ominous thing he’d ever been called. “So, I should stick with death nodes, then?”
The idea of doing so felt right to him, though Sean couldn’t accurately have said why. It felt instinctual. Just the natural thing to do. Like putting oregano on scrambled eggs – it was just the way the world worked.
“Probably a safe bet for now.” Gel agreed. “Hard to go wrong sticking with your own aspect. It’s when you branch out that things get a little… weird.”
Sean glanced back at his node options, where the last one he’d read – a chaos aspect node – definitely seemed to back up the slime’s sentiment.
Crab Claw
Description: Transform the skeletal bones of one hand into the form of a crab’s claw. This transformation is permanent.
Effect: Grants the physical ability: “Pincer”.
Mana Aspect: Chaos
Why is that even an option? Sean wondered, staring at that last prompt. How many skeletons are out there running around with crab hands?
There was no way he would ever pick this. Not only was the very idea flat-out ridiculous – he would look like some kind of would-be Bond villain with a claw for a hand – but Sean had zero interest in becoming a crustacean no matter what the benefits were. The ‘Bone Carapace’ node next to it was also put firmly on the back shelf.
Actually, maybe that– No, nope. There’ll be no scuttling around for me, thanks.
Shaking his head, Sean refocused on his final few questions as he looked around the chamber one final time for anything else he might be able to add to his arsenal. The attribute rundown he’d read before had been fairly self-evident, no real surprises there, but there was always the chance he had missed something important. Maybe Gel knew something that would help. Then he could make his choice, they could work on leaving this place, and Sean could see about extending his dwindling lifespan.
It’d be the biggest bonehead move of all time if I wasted all my remaining time prepping for fights I never even made it to.
With that cheery thought in mind, Sean asked Gel for the slime’s take on what the attributes meant.
“Most attributes are just as obvious as their name implies, in terms of what they cover. Which is sort of the point.” Gel said, with a bit of a haughty tone that Sean didn’t particularly care for. “Might just increases your base strength, for example. You know what strength is, right?”
“Of course I do.” Sean said, keeping his voice light to get his point across. “That’s what determines how far I can chuck snarky little slimes who like questioning my intelligence.”
Gel coughed loudly in Sean’s mind before continuing on with his explanation.
“Right. So, uh, what may not be immediately obvious is that the numbers are all race-based.”
“What do you mean ‘race-based’?” Sean asked, kneeling down to consider a dead body that was more skeleton than corpse. Pity I don’t have anything to tie these pieces together. If I did, I could make a flail. Or maybe an axe.
Sean’s gaze fell on the skeleton’s pelvic bone, and his imagination immediately treated him to a completely impractical weapon option.
Heh. Pelvaxe.
“I mean.” Gel said, interrupting Sean’s ‘corpse-crafting catastrophes’ line of thought. “That the numbers reflect the average for your race. You have a might of ‘2’ right now, which isn’t high, but it means you’re still stronger than other skeletons with a ‘1’ in that attribute.”
“Makes sense.” Sean said, standing back up and abandoning his pelvaxe dreams… for now. “I’m guessing that means traditionally ‘strong’ creatures with the same might score as me will still be stronger?”
“Nope.” Gel responded smoothly. Before Sean could ask, the slime explained. “A giant is still a giant, so if a bunny goes up against it then that is still going to end with the giant enjoying a furry snack. Even if the bunny somehow had the same might as the giant, I’m still not betting on it.”
“If it did, then it would be just as strong as the giant then, no?” Sean pressed.
“Sure.” Gel allowed. “But how is that going to help it fight a giant? Strength isn’t everything.”
“Fair enough.” Sean conceded. “Would be an interesting fight though.”
“I’d pay to see it if I got to eat the winner. Though I’ve never seen bunny get anywhere near that strong before…” Gel’s voice turned introspective. “Well, technically, I’ve only ever seen one in a memory… do bunnies get really muscled when they get bigger? Is that a thing?”
The slime’s voice was so earnest in his curiosity that Sean didn’t even laugh at the question. Initially, anyway.
“No, no it is most definitely not a thing.” Sean chuckled in his mind. “At least, not where I’m from, anyway. You have bunnies here?”
“Not here here, but somewhere near the village, I think. I have memories of putting them in something called a ‘stew’, and while I know that doesn’t sound appetizing at all it was supposedly delicious.”
“Oh. Rabbit stew. I’ve had that before.” Sean was starting to wonder just how many similarities this world had to his own. Unless bunnies were multi-versally ubiquitous. Which sounded silly, but… there it is.
“Have you? What did it taste like? I’ve been wondering about that for a while now. Is it similar to blood, at all? No, probably not. It’s an entirely different color.”
“Tell you what, if we find some rabbits – or bunnies, whichever – then I’ll make you some.” Sean promised.
“You will? Perfect! I literally cannot wait. You’re done here, right? Got your new bone to beat our next meal up with?” Gel’s eyes peered out of Sean’s chest to stare at the weapon.
“Yep.” Sean hefted the club up onto one shoulder to let it rest. He felt better having a weapon now, even if there was little difference between it and his own fists. “I don’t see anything else down here we could use. We’ll have to just take whatever we can find on the way out for now.”
“Eat them all and let the stomach sort ‘em out!” Gel crowed, rattling Sean’s ribcage around in excitement. “I love this plan!”
“Because you’re the stomach in this plan? Is that why you love it?”
“Technically, I’m your stomach now, my femur-flaunting friend.”
“Hah, well, I just need to choose a node before we go. No point waiting on an upgrade that might help.” Sean said, pulling up his options for what he hoped was the final time until his next level up.
“This is true. I also have a policy to never wait on any decision that involves food. It’s a good policy to live by, one that will never let you down or let you miss a meal.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean answered, noncommittally. “Now, about the rest of those attributes. Anything else I should know before I make my decision?”
“Ehh… Ego makes your magic hit harder. Assuming you ever learn any spells, that is. Not many walking bones go that route.” Gel eyed Sean’s makeshift weapon again. “Most just hit stuff.”
“Wait, how does someone’s ‘Ego’ affect their magic spells?” Sean asked, still rather unsure how that worked out functionally despite what he had read on the prompt. “And what’s wrong with hitting stuff?”
“Simple.” Gel responded, ignoring Sean’s second question. “The more arrogant you are, the better you think your spells are, and thus the better they actually are. It’s how it works.”
“That… sounds like you’re making it up.” Sean said doubtfully. “Unless the whole ‘egomaniacal caster’ thing isn’t just an archetype here.”
“I’m not making it up.” Gel asserted defensively, before echoing Sean’s own thoughts. “A high Ego score is why most mages are just pompous pricks who don’t care at all about recognizing their greatest creations.”
“Like Bancroft?”
“Like Bancroft.” The omnivorous slime said with finality. “I told you. He’s a monster.”
“No arguments there.” Sean agreed readily. “Dude’s a loon.”
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds derogatory.”
“It is.”
“Then it absolutely fits.”
Sean chuckled. While a part of him was a little concerned that Gel had just low-key implied that he might become a villain someday just because one of his attributes went up, there was still every chance the slime just really hated casters. Given what the only caster Sean knew of had done to him, and the fact that Bancroft had abandoned Gel down what was effectively a sewer chute for expired parts – most of which were people – Sean didn’t blame him.
Still, it was best to keep the conversation – and their pace – moving. He began heading back towards the hallway where the rats had come from. Sean rolled his shoulder to adjust the femur’s position as he moved, but he quickly noticed there was no actual change in sensation. Even the motion of it had felt odd – like he was adjusting for discomforts that his body no longer had.
Just something else to get used to. Sean thought, putting the thought out of his mind. He had other things to worry about right now.
“How about ‘Cognition’?” Sean asked Gel, getting back on topic. “It says it affects ‘ability capacity’? Does that mean there’s a limit on how many I can have?”
“Yeah, and not a high one, either. But the ones you do have will get stronger as you do, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Just make sure you don’t pick any bad ones as we go and it’ll be fine.”
Sean absorbed that revelation for a moment, suddenly feeling quite a bit less than enthused that his only real ability was a basic-sounding attack like ‘Slash’. He wondered if this world handled abilities much like a game he’d once played as a kid about capturing pocket-sized monsters.
Would suck if I capped out at four of them. How is anyone supposed to believe that a creature capable of shooting hyper beams can only learn four things?
Sean shook his head, letting that particular childhood sore spot go. He went back to the node map, reviewing some of the non-attribute related ones he had skimmed past earlier. There had been relatively few, but some of them had offered new abilities.
Bone Fangs
Description: Extend several of your teeth into large fangs capable of sinking deeply into a target. Jaw flexibility is also increased in order to facilitate a wider range.
Effect: Grants the physical ability: “Chomp”.
Mana Aspect: Death
Not… bad. Sean mused. Bit too far on the whole ‘rabid skeleton’ vibe, though. Not really feeling going around snapping at everything just yet.
Sean pulled up the next option.
Lifeblood Sense
Description: Allows you to hear the sound of life’s blood flowing through nearby creatures. Recently spilled blood becomes easier to detect.
Effect: Upgrades your ‘Pulse Sense’ ability to: Lifeblood Sense.
Mana Aspect: Death
Alright, that sounds pretty badass. Sean thought, eyeballing the multiple obscured nodes that appeared to be connected to this one option. This would make tracking food a breeze.
Given that his future currently hung on the balance of whether or not he could find more prey for Gel to consume before the clock ran out, this option would almost certainly be a necessity later on. As it was however, they still hadn’t gotten out of Bancroft’s basement. Being able to track their enemies wasn’t a concern – being able to fight them was.
Which begged a particular sort of question.
“Hey, Gel?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ditch an old ability if I find a node with a better one later on? To get around that cognition limit, I mean.”
The slime was silent for a moment before responding. “I am… not really sure on that one, actually. I don’t have any memories of someone trying to forget about one of their abilities. So, I want to say… maybe?”
“Hmm.” Sean hmm’d.
If he was going to run into a hard limit on how many abilities he could have later, and there was a chance he wouldn’t even be able to replace one – only upgrade it – then it didn’t make sense to choose another right now. There were still too many things he didn’t know. Things he wasn’t likely to learn just from fighting giant rats.
Ah well. Sean gave a mental shrug. Guess I’ll just drop some points in cognition later if I need more abilities. Even if that’s not ‘optimal’ or whatever the equivalent would be here, it’s not like it matters that much.
"Any recommendations on what I should choose?" Sean asked his friend, now that they were almost back to the hallway.
"If you really want my advice on this, I say choose something that makes you harder to kill. We can share mana, but I can't heal any damage you take like I can for myself, so you’ll eventually get run down unless you have some sort of defense."
Sean considered the point. It was a surprisingly strong argument for its simplicity. Though, again, thinking about it prompted another question.
"How am I supposed to get health back then?" Sean asked, really hoping this wasn’t a stupid question here. He wasn’t hoping for ‘video game logic’ healing, but even back on Earth people were capable of healing from their wounds eventually.
Well, most wounds.
Broken bones aren’t off the table, either. And since I’m basically all bones now–
"You… don't." Gel said slowly after a moment of stunned silence, as if the slime were stating the most obvious thing in the world to the world’s slowest student. "The undead can't heal themselves, my friend. Not without magic or some kind of regeneration ability, at least. Neither of which imagine you have right now since, as a skeleton, you are basically the lowest class of undead there is.”
Something in Sean’s own silence seemed to convey his sudden onset curiosity about Gel’s theoretical aerodynamics, and the slime quickly added. “Not that I’m trying to make you feel bad or anything. You might get an ability like that eventually, it just won’t be for a while. A long while. Years, maybe.”
Sean stopped walking. He stared down at the slime in his rib cage.
"Are you telling me that any damage I take now might be with me forever? That there is seriously no way for me to get lost health back?" Sean asked, trying to keep the incredulity in his tone from turning into heat at something that was in no way the slime’s fault.
Gel just stared back up at him, sincere confusion evident in the slime's tone. "Did you think you would? You see a lot of undead pulling themselves back together down here?"
The slime’s eyes whirled around the room from his new vantage point, as if Gel had just considered they might need to check for that very thing.
Sean sighed and rubbed what would have been the bridge of his nose, but was now just a section of bone over the hole where his nose had been, with two hard, white fingers. The act made a faint grinding noise that was somehow calming.
"No… No, I do not." He admitted, before another thought struck him cold. "So, wait. Not only is any and all damage I take from now on permanent – you just ate my only set of armor!"
"... If it's any consolation, you were delicious." Gel consoled him, with utter sincerity.
Sean sighed again, then navigated back to 'Thick Bones' on the node map. If he had to choose an external modification, and get some level of defense right away, then at least he could choose the one that had some comedic value later.
Doubt many people are going to crack fat jokes at a walking skeleton. Sean admitted mentally, accepting the choice. But hey, at least I’ll have a decent comeback if anyone tries.
For a long moment afterwards, nothing happened. Silence stretched out before the pair, thick enough that you could almost touch it.
Glancing down at Gel, Sean said. "I don't get it. Isn’t something supposed to--"