I was left alone for only a few lingering seconds before my vision slowly faded in and the darkness of my mentality fell to the background. Greeted not by the mana light revealing my surroundings but by the dim glow shining in from a passage on the far side of a wide cave, I peered around another unfamiliar environment. My bucket had been placed off to the side, and the familiar wooden platform rested a inch below the floor's surface, taking up the space of a rather large square hole. The elevator's significant coil of rope took up the majority of the room's back region, and then some as a cylindrical imprint had been dug out of the ceiling to make room for its might. The floor had been carved and dug up, replaced with dried mud bricks for a mostly flat surface. The carts with smallish wheels on the opposing wall suggest the reason why. One full of debris and another full of a white powdery rock that gave off the faintest of a glow. Sitting at a desk behind a privacy divider in the corner with a candle for light was the now obviously female powerhouse of a woman. She was writing with calloused hands on what I assume to be a form of paper. My point of view was too low to the ground to make out things flush with the desk's surface.

As much as I would like to just sit comfortably in my bucket, wasting the day away, I lack the patience to just sit around waiting to be acknowledged. Considering that I'd been told it would take close to that of a quarter day to reach the surface, we'd either just arrived or I had been in a slumber, and it had been some amount of time later that I awoke. 'Hello again...' I reached out,, seeking the attention of the intimidating lady. A rock sitting on the corner of her desk, glowing slightly red upon my inquiry.

Quickly she stood, glancing around for what caused the reaction. Resting her eyes on me, she relaxed a little. "You've awoken once again! Its been a couple of days! I thought I'd lost you or something!" She exclaimed excitedly, showing a softer side of herself. Her reaction quickly darkened, though she seemingly realized something. "Right, you don't understand what I'm saying..." Walking over to a smaller cart with a familiar short tower sitting on its lower shelf.

I jiggled in protest, not yet able to convey my denial of misunderstanding clearly yet. This more abrupt sloshing was a little stronger than anticipated and tipped my bucket over, and surprisingly I didn't slosh out. I had tensed from the sudden 90-degree reorientation, and this had made me more akin to that of cold molasses than grade A syrup.

She abruptly jogged over, expecting there to be another mess to clean up, and quickly re-orientated the bucket to an upright position. The look on her face when I was in my entirety still in the bucket as she had looked around trying to spot my spilled self. "You stayed in the bucket!" she cheered again, excited like a young girl. Truly a sight to behold.

I didn't really know how to take her odd personality and range of maturity. One moment she looked like a battle-hardened warrior just retired and working in a mine to make good use of her strength, and another she was a soft angel floating in the wind comparable to a butterfly. As much floating as a probably 200-plus-pound hulk of muscle could float. Now curious, she flipped the bucket over, and now, intentionally, instead of out of surprise, I tensed once more. Staying in near-perfect shape, pushing myself against the walls of the bucket to use the mechanic of suction to keep myself in place. My ability to manipulate my gel was now close to flawless; I felt as though I could reform my appearance to be any shape I desired so long as I had clear enough of a mental image to replicate.

Yet another advantage to being non-human, I was learning, was my mental fog, as what I had assumed to be normal being a human was in fact far less clear than the state I was in now. My mental space was so much wider and capable of holding much more complex ideas in my head. So I did just that. Upon yet another orientation change, I started to grow a tree from my surface—leafless at that because that was still too detailed—and got to about the size of a miniaturized small bush 3 inches tall before I reached my limit. This perturbed the girl, who was originally holding a bucket of slime and now was holding a bucket of slime with a few-inch slime twig bush growing out of textured slime ground in a very normal bucket.

"Is that a plant?" is all she managed before noticing the now very bright red glow from the rock earlier. Hurriedly setting me down and rushing out the entrance.

I figured since the rock had reacted to my mental probing earlier I had subconsciously used some form of energy. Be it some kind of telepathic or magic power—I didn't yet know. Also, judging its intensity, it was picking up on something other than me. Based off the information I've gathered about the odd rock, I can only assume a trespasser, someone using magic where their not supposed to, or maybe a third party listening/looking in on this presumably private and secure area caused the glow. But what do I know, I'm a slime and I have a more functional body of which I can use for locomotion now!

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Crawling out of the bucket and keeping myself somewhat in the shape of a very plump pancake, I pull myself together a little more and start to roll about purely under the influence of gravity. A more uniform blob's moving about is not effortless, to say the least, as maintaining a near-sphere did take some effort. As for some actual directed movement, the best way to describe it is like having an arm without joints turn in the opposite direction of whichever direction you want to move. I have to push my main body around with my tail-like tentacle pressing down and letting some of my mass slump forward and slip under myself to remove friction. And keeping my vision upright is also challenging.

Eventually I decide that I'm doing it wrong and start rolling around in 2 layers. Like a hamster ball. I have full control over my body so just moving a sphere around my main mass works really well on this flat surface. This troubleshooting session leads me to how I'd move if on uneven terrain, and I decide that something akin to that of a tank track would work better. I hold most of my body in a semi-stable, cuboid prism and move a strip of myself like a track around it. This worked wonders until I ran into trouble turning. It was either 2 separate tracks—too hard to hold focus on—or another solution.

Several ideas and failed attempts later settling on a kind of caterpillar or wormlike movement was best until I could either take a more humanoid shape and just walk or become capable of any of the ideas too complex to hold myself in the shape of. Most likely the prior.

I had been too deep in thought and sprung up to the ceiling in surprise when the only face I knew appeared right in front of me.

"Learning to get around, I see." She said coolly, staring up at my ceiling-suctioning self. "I don't imagine you'd want to stay up there, would ya?"

'No, I'd rather just morph into a humanoid shape and converse with ease if it were an option,' I proactively thought while dropping down to the floor again, snagging the bucket and getting relaxed again. She again stared with mouth agape. I'd done something unusual hadn't I...

"You can comprehend me? Wait, before that, you can hear me for the matter?"

'Uh yeah, I guess I can... Is it that odd?' I noticed the pedestal had been set up again while I was busy thinking.

"It's a little more than odd! I didn't believe the bastard when he'd said you had spoken to him in his mind!"

'I'm speaking to you in your mind? Like all my thoughts or just when I try to?' I do like my privacy...

"Only when you wish to convey something can I hear your intent. Its like another voice in my head that isn't my internal dialogue! So cool!"

Speech LVL: 1 → 2

Telekinesis LVL: 23 → 24

Oh neat... I'll have to look into these levels and whatnot later. One seemed a little high. Dismissing the window, 'What's the pedestal thing for then?'

"Well, under normal circumstances, it'd be for people to talk back to you, but you understand me!" She said as she went over to start disassembling the contraption. "Not to mention your voice sounds very smooth... its hard to describe when only the meaning of the words you say are accurately conveyed. It still sounds like its in a foreign tongue. I didn't know that slime had a tongue though. Pun intended."

So it turns out I'm straight up shoving my words into people's minds when I converse with them. I get the feeling that if I wanted to, I'd be able to shout into someone's mind and make them pass out from sudden overstimulation or maybe just a little pain or discomfort. Something to test if I ever come into such an encounter where it'd be appropriate. I hope not, though.

"As for everything else, its like a mumbling of random jumbled gargle with no conveyed meaning and its so quiet that If I hadn't been intentionally listening to you think just now, I wouldn't have even noticed."

'At least I have my mental privacy'

"Yes, I suppose that's quite a desirable thing. You want me to turn on the mana light so you can see?"

'No thanks; I can see quite well, actually.' It was true. My vision had been immaculate even in this low-light environment. Someone was worthy of many thanks in the future.

For the last time that evening, she stared at me in disbelief. "I have someone I think I'd like you to meet. They know a whole lot more than I do about monsters and weird slime variants such as yourself."

I recalled something about people wanting to kill reincarnates. Something I think I'd struggle to hide, at least from someone with a degree in the field of my body. This can't possibly go well...

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| Name: N/A |

Title: Sentre Acuaintance |

| Date & Time: Calendar Downloading | 17:44 |

| Location: Subterranean, Benchak Amrill Mine Entrance |

| Status: Stable, Low Control Confinement, Minimal Exhaustion, Regenerating |