Sean had been expecting the dune giant to sneer or act defiant to the end, but it turned out having a pissed-off, five-foot tall force of nature truss you up like a Thanksgiving turkey made you talkative.

“New chief.” Rumbled the ensnared giant, and the gelaton heard a sense of pride coming from the monstrous humanoid. Even in defeat. “Strong. Took over from old chief. Old chief weak. Bow to small ones.”

Sean felt the eyebrow raise on Auntie Ta’s face. She didn’t strike him for the obvious insult however, nor did she point out the hypocrisy of that statement given the giant’s predicament. But she did respond. By spitting directly onto the giant’s forehead.

“Your chiefs have changed before, fool. Several times. None have ever broken the terms of our original pact, and so I have allowed your people to continue to drink from my waters without charge. To shelter against the elements in this haven, under my shade for years. Years!” Auntie Ta’s voice rose to a thunderous volume, her staff flickering with ominous light as the clouds overhead swirled. When she spoke next, her words were a chilling near-whisper. “You didn’t come to negotiate. Your people came for something. They attacked me and mine for it, without provocation.”

Whatever bravado the giant had held onto, fled in that moment as the vines around him suddenly tightened. He grunted, baring his teeth in pain, and Sean heard several painful-sounding pops as limbs bent in ways they were not designed to.

“You will tell me what your people came here for. What was worth the price paid today.” The still-soft voice of the druid whispered. “Then, and only then, will I allow you to die.”

Incredibly, the giant laughed. Well, attempted to. It was a struggle to get any sound out through a mouthful of blood, but the brutish creature still managed it.

“Me die, yes. But you lose, witch.” The dune giant spat back at her, though a vine intercepted the bloody loogie. He rested his head back into the grass. “Chief won. Went in pond. Took shiny. Now tribe drink much as tribe want, no need wait in line. No need only take handful. No more bow to small ones.”

“You didn’t.” Warabe’s quiet, ragged voice was filled with horror. He exhaled a pained breath, struggling to stand as the turtle-man reached towards the oasis. Sean followed his gaze, as did Gel and Auntie Ta.

The oasis’s crystal-clear waters were murky. Dirt, gore, and random vegetation swirled around its center, the waters still moving about in the same spiral patterns the druid’s mini-tornados had left behind. At first, Sean couldn’t tell what was wrong. Aside from the devastation of battle, on the surface, the oasis felt fine. Then, it hit him.

The feel was off. There was normally a certain weight in the air of this place. In the grass. Even in the fruits, but especially in the soil and water of the oasis itself. Sean had felt it before, when he had first arrived. A vibrant presence humming just below the surface. What he had thought was a wellspring of nature mana. One feeding each root and leaf above it with excessive vigor. One the gelaton had felt thrum far below his feet once or twice, though he had dismissed the sensation each time.

Only now its absence was obvious. A presence that had faded into the background of his awareness the longer he and Gel had stayed, was now just… gone. It was like he could feel the mana leaching into the sands below the oasis. As if the entire area was dissipating, moment by moment.

How? Sean wondered, but then he realized it didn’t matter how. The wellspring, or whatever that was, was now gone.

And the oasis was going to go with it.

“If she lets us eat him.” Sean told Gel, his mind racing ahead. “We might be able to pull more details from his memories. We can find wherever they are taking it.”

Gel relayed the idea, only for the druid to continue staring off into the oasis, her expression unreadable.

“Tell her we can get it back.” Sean pressed, taking a step forward to emphasize his point. “There may be more memories in the others. If we hurry, we may be able to get more he isn’t telling you.”

Gel complied, and Sean thought he saw a subtle change run through her posture.

“You only need its brain, yes?” She asked, after a moment.

“Yep!” Gel responded immediately. Sean’s left hand emanated a faint resonance as the druid before him moved, but he hadn’t needed it to tell him what was coming next.

“No-!!”

The fallen dune giant never finished its final outcry.

Auntie Ta raised her right hand in a resolute gesture, before clenching it into a tight fist. The vines wrapped around the monstrous humanoid’s neck wrenched his head sharply to the right, just as the rest of them twisted his entire body in the opposite direction. Multiple vertebrae snapped with a series of sickening pops, and the druid dropped her hand to her side. Grey blood leaked out onto the grass.

“Wow, she is cold-blooded.” Gel commented, using their mental connection instead of speaking out loud. “I didn’t understand the expression before, because every flesh-sack I’ve ever met has warm blood unless you let it cool for some silly reason, but now I get it. Can we keep her around? She’s fun.”

Sean watched the relatively small, yet incredibly powerful woman casually – almost absently – wipe a spray of grey blood off her chin. She flicked it to the ground, her eyes distant.

If she wanted to, she could keep us. He didn’t share that thought with his friend, but deep down?

Sean wanted that level of power.

“Eat as many as you can stomach.” Auntie Ta said flatly, tapping the bottom of her staff to the ground. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

A pulse echoed out from it, and the bodies of each and every slain giant on the battlefield was raised slightly. Another tap, and they oriented in Sean’s direction, the grass beneath moving as one. Gel’s attention had been locked on the druid this entire time, but now Sean felt it rapidly shift towards the slime’s swiftly approaching meals.

Auntie Ta turned back towards Rastegar, helping the still-struggling Warabe into a more comfortable sitting position. The turtle-man managed another pained “No…” before she shushed him. The pair started talking quietly, but Sean had already started moving.

And Gel had already started feasting.

—------------------------

Sean learned a few things as they ate their way through the ranks of the slain giantfolk.

The first was that neither of them earned any experience for consuming enemies they had no part in defeating. There was still plenty of mana to go around, thankfully. An abundance of mass, too. Which brought him to the second thing.

Gel didn’t appear to actually have a limit on how much mass the slime could consume. Giants gave considerably more effective mass per kill than even dozens of slaver ants combined had, and Auntie Ta had brought them a total of fifteen enormous corpses. Before they had left the ant tunnels, the slime had transferred enough mass over to increase Sean’s original body size by 150%.

Now I’m at almost 200%. Sean thought, looking down at his considerably broader physique.

Networks of crimson ‘veins’ layered over one another in places, while other parts of his skeletal frame were simply encased inside sections of the ever-moving, deep-red fluid. The slime’s body undulated in various places as Gel continued gorging on another of his meals, the increased mass proving a noticeable difference from before.

Stolen story; please report.

Almost looks like I have muscles now. Sean pulled up his status, checking to see if his health or attributes had gone up… but it appeared none had. His health was still at a mere 4 points out of his 27 total, and even the additional mass Gel had given him had clear cracks in it. There goes the hope of an ‘easy fix’. If the pattern holds, we’re only one level from another evolution… and it can’t come soon enough.

He was starting to get a little cavalier about the constant mana cost he had to pay to keep unliving, and staying next to a seemingly endless free source of it hadn’t helped. His health however, was a truly exhaustible resource. Once that dried up, he was toast.

And I still can’t fucking heal. Not outside of evolutions, anyway. Sean rolled his shoulders to relax, trying to suspend some of his irritation at this rather brutal drawback of his undead form. It hadn’t seemed too bad early on, but now… I’ll figure something out. Maybe there’s a node somewhere I need to reach first. I do have those three points to spend.

“If we weren’t planning on assaulting a giant enclave after this, I’d vote we stay here – braap – forever.” Gel said, belching out the last word. The slime sighed in true contentment as he left yet-another pile of discarded bones on the ground, before amping himself up for the next one. “These guys don’t have the most flavor, but it is wild how different they all are from humans. It’s not just size, they taste completely different. Like their organs are all sun-baked! I don’t know how they do it, but I am here for all of it.”

“Glad you’re having fun.” Sean thought back at his friend. “Pull any memories out yet?”

“Not… quite.” Gel admitted, and Sean’s hopes fell. “You saw how that last one spoke, though. These guys aren’t exactly mental powerhouses. I might not be able to do it as quickly as I did with the fungal-heads, but I should have something we can use soon.”

“Wait, their intelligence matters?” Sean asked, before following the logic himself. “Do you mean it’s harder to pull back memories with more context and clarity, or are you saying that because they’re stupid, they just have less in there?”

“Both.”

“Ah.” Sean replied, walking over to their next mountainous meal. “Well, don’t let me keep you. We owe Auntie Ta an answer as soon as possible. Only two left.”

“Only two for now! I don’t know much yet, but I do know there’s plenty more where these guys came from!” Gel exclaimed brightly, right before digging in with his characteristic gusto. Flesh and fur melting together as the slime consumed both the dune giant and its hide armor.

Of course there are. Sean thought, wondering just how much experience it would take to get them to the next level. If he was right, then 15 was the magic number. When they would earn the right to evolve again. Just gotta melt our way there.

The gelaton’s burning orbs fell on the spot where their juvenile ant-butler had perished in the fight, the gear it had held for so long littering the ground like discarded trinkets. He glanced over to where the few who had survived the fight stood off to the side, watching. Then, finally, to the rapidly dissolving corpse laying at his feet in the raised grass.

No matter how many of your buddies it takes.

Deciding to save thoughts of what retaliation would look like for later, Sean pulled up his manasphere map. The endless network of interconnected dots rose up in his vision, rapidly zooming over and down to his unlocked section of it. There were dozens of new connections branching off across different paths, many of which he hadn’t seen before. Reading through just the first few brought a smile to his skull.

Looks like grabbing all this extra mass was worth it. Thinking quickly, Sean mentally sorted the newly unlocked nodes into three categories.

He put all ‘ability’ type nodes into the first, all ‘attribute’-related ones into the second, and tossed anything else that didn’t fit cleanly within those two into the last category. When it was done, Sean found he had a much more manageable list to work with. His reasoning for the change was simple:

Another few attribute points won’t help us right now. I need a way to regain health, and if I can’t find that… then we’re going to need more defense. Sean dove into his new options, starting with the last. Hoping to find some kind of wildcard option that fit the bill. Some kind of armor-granting trait, or…

… or that.

Calcification

Description: Gain the ‘Calcification’ trait.

Effect: Allows a skeletal undead to voluntarily decrease its mass to power an internal compression effect to harden its bones for a short time. This grants temporary health that, once lost, cannot be regained without another expenditure of mass. Health received is commensurate with mass expended.

Mana Aspect: Death, Nature

Bone Etching

Description: Gain the ‘Bone Etching’ trait.

Effect: Allows a skeletal undead to etch lines of mana directly onto its form.

Mana Aspect: Death, Order

Sean grabbed the first option, ‘Calcification’, without a second thought. It was exactly what he needed to survive right now. No matter how bad the conversion rate was, more health was still more health. A thin line branched off from his newly purchased node, but it extended out into the fog and he couldn’t tell how far.

Bet that’s an advanced form of the trait. He thought to himself, before turning his attention back to the second ‘trait’ node he had unlocked and speaking to it like it was one of his old coworkers at the water cooler. Now what is it exactly, would you say that you… do?

The ‘effect’ listed for ‘Bone Etching’ had to be simultaneously the least descriptive, and most intriguing, one Sean had ever seen. He could draw mana on himself? Did that mean he could cover himself in protective runes? Draw traps rigged to shoot fire at his enemies across his ribs? Over his knuckles?

Like that chest Barry had under the stables? Come to think of it, we never got to see what it could actually do. Sean read through the prompt again, trying to examine each word for more information. Nothing came up. The gelaton raised his burning orbs up to look at the still-stormy sky.

Really, universe? He thought. You’re just going to tease me like that?

Apparently, the universe was.

Sean filed that option away for later. He was already up to his orbs in things to learn with magical cooking right now, he could save figuring out whatever ‘bone etching’ meant for another day. If it’s like anything else in this world, there’s probably a whole system behind it. I can’t even write in ‘Peasant’ yet, probably best I don’t go trying to draw runes all over myself.

Filing the need for more information at about the halfway point in his ‘to-do’ list, Sean swapped over to the ability nodes he had unlocked. There were, admittedly, far fewer of these. He had the feeling that he would need to unlock more attribute nodes and explore further down some of the paths he already had available before that would change. Still, what was there brought a merry glint to his orbs.

The first node was a rolling sphere with an emerald hue, dotted here and there with wisps of smoking black. It gave off a wild feeling that Sean associated with the vibe Auntie Ta had been putting out recently. A purple haze contained within a semi-translucent black ball marked the next, and it gave off a serene, calming feel. The last was a jet black void with an unmarred surface. Sean felt nothing in particular from the obviously death-aspected node, but he felt drawn inexplicably towards it.

As he read, Sean couldn’t help but feel his jaw start to slowly drop open.

Fury of the Dead

Description: Gain the ‘Fury of the Dead’ ability.

Effect: Passively increase might and competency attributes by up to 25% while enraged, in exchange for a commensurate drop in the user’s ego and cognition attributes.

Mana Aspect: Nature, Death

Confusing Grasp

Description: Gain the ‘Confusing Grasp’ ability.

Effect: Grants a high chance for similarly leveled targets to succumb to confusion, temporarily mistaking nearby allies for enemies and nearby enemies for allies. Requires the user to make physical contact with the target. Efficacy drops against higher level targets, increasing commensurately against targets of lower level.

Mana Aspect: Astral, Death

Drain

Description: Gain the ‘Drain’ ability.

Effect: Passively siphon off some of the natural death mana exuded by the newly dead. Additional benefits may be discovered, mana siphoned is not automatically applied to the user’s total mana and may infuse the user’s body instead.

Mana Aspect: Death

Ho-ly shit. Sean thought, sending a mental ‘thank you’ to whoever upstairs was looking out for him. This is, these are–

“Ready for our final meal!” Gel announced suddenly. Sean hadn’t even noticed the slime had finished. “I don’t know if you were counting – I was – but that was the fastest I’ve eaten one of these brute-sacks so far by a whole second! Truly, I am a sight to behold.”

Sean’s gaze remained locked on the last ability. He re-read it even as he stepped over to their final meal, mind almost frozen with sheer, overwhelming relief. His burning orbs rising up to the sky once more. If he could, he would have closed his eyes to bask in that moment.

Fucking… finally.