Many called the third floor Hell, but Killa could only call it a buffet. She’ll admit that the first few bav’varst she fought caught her off guard, but she still killed them and ate them. What truly surprised her was how much mass she received whenever she ate one.
As a slime, Killa could eat anything, but living organisms always provided the most sustenance. Her mass had exploded almost as fast as her levels. The beginning of a dungeon not only recuperated all the lost mass she had from before she met Rina, but gave her a bit more. With a satisfying sense of bloatedness, she returned to the town.
She had found the tower city Rina had stayed in for a short time. When she heard that there was a huge swarm of those creatures that attacked, she frantically asked around to see if anyone had seen her. After hearing that some had seen her leave with a beast woman, she relaxed and decided that she could take one more dungeon before catching up.
After all, a buffet like this wasn’t going to come around anytime soon.
An unusual bout of greed struck her as she contemplated what kind of dungeon she wished to challenge.
“You know, I’m feeling extra hungry,” she mused to herself. “Give me the biggest one you have.”
She walked off to the next zone and was greeted by a massive strip mine. The entire place was crawling with sleeping bav’varsts. Killa rubbed her hands together as she walked up to the smaller ones to start as a quality appetizer.
Killa didn’t spare any magic to kill the little ones. As she depleted her mana reserves, she swallowed up one of the hedgehog monstrosities and pulled the mana out of it. There was a surprising amount of mana in each of them. However, she needed to move quickly, as the mana would dissipate rapidly once it died.
The other reason she needed to kill and eat quickly was because the commotion she made alerted the entire mine to her. A sea of swarming bav’varst funneled towards her. The little ones died without much effort, and she would distribute her points as she acquired them, using a small portion of her mind split off on such occasions.
Name: Killa Level: 25 Agility: 215 Arcane: 215 Power: 215 Quickness: 215 Resilience: 215 Toughness: 215 Unassigned Points: 0 Shards: 89540
Killa was strong enough to kill them with either magic or her body. She had just stabbed another bav’varst through the ear while her hand was shaped into a needle as the first of the larger creatures rumbled towards her. During the melee, her body had grown large enough to fit two of the smaller ones inside as she devoured them.
Killa rolled her eyes as she let herself bulk up even larger. “This is going to be a pain to condense later, but right now I need to be larger.”
The conversion of food into mass was borderline absurd. The slime woman had never felt such an influx of nutrients from any other creature she had consumed before. Part of her wanted to know why, but her curiosity had to wait as she caught the large bav’varst’s claw with her hand.
Several of the little ones were swiping at her lower half, which she didn’t bother forming into humanoid legs. She let out a sigh as the humanoid form she was so accustomed to was grossly inefficient for the fight she found herself in.
Her body lost all definition as tendrils reached out to strangle the small creatures while the thickest slammed into the large one’s face. The monster’s jaw hung loosely as it glared at the slime that was pulling in several smaller ones into the gelatinous devourer.
The green slime didn’t pause as magical blue tentacles slammed into the creature’s ribs, collapsing them just before she enveloped its face, immediately eating it. All the small bav’varst’s attacks did nothing to Killa’s body. Even though she had killed almost two dozen, more were coming her way.
She pushed her sense of self back and focused on blind consumption. Anything and everything that touched her gelatinous body instantly sizzled as her acid ate at it. More nutrients meant more mass. More mass meant she could eat more.
The cycle of consuming more so that she could consume more fed itself until every bav’varst in the mine had thrown itself at her to be devoured. Killa had grown larger than even the largest of the creatures as she searched for more.
She needed more—more to consume—so she could devour everything that stood in her way. It was hard to think. All she could think about was eating everything that was a threat to her and someone else.
Who? The errant thought floated through her foggy consciousness.
The slime’s undulating body slid down to the center of the mine, looking for more food. She wanted more to consume, but she didn’t know why. And the nagging of something in the back of her mind was incomprehensible. That only made it more unbearable, since she couldn’t figure out a way to get it to stop.
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Maybe more food will help. If I’m not hungry, then I can think better.
Killa had remembered that, as a slime, she did not need to eat. She did not need to breathe or do anything else to survive. She shouldn’t have felt hunger in the first place, yet she felt it all the same. It worried her, but all she could think of to remove the feeling was to feed whatever hunger had taken hold of her.
However, as she looked around, there was no more food. Sure, there was dirt and rocks, but that wasn’t food. Metal was better in a pinch, but proper food was plants and animals. The longer she went without food, the worse her hunger got and the harder it got to think.
A giant forty-foot blob of green slime wandered around the mine, looking for anything to eat. But there was nothing left. She couldn’t see anything to eat, no matter where she went. She would move up one side and back down to the center, forgetting that she had already checked that spot.
For days, this went on until one little name burst through the ravenous haze that was her hunger.
“Rina!”
Killa cobbled together enough control to speak the name. It was the name of her friend she needed to catch up to. She needed to make sure she was safe, yet the entire time she had been wandering in circles for days.
The memories from before her mentor found her resurfaced. She lost control again. The monster inside took control and ate everything. She wasn’t as large as then, but she knew that if her hunger had figured out how to leave, nothing would’ve stopped her from eating everything on the floor.
“I’m disappointed in you, Killa.” Killa could hear the kraken’s waterlogged voice. “I made you my disciple to grow beyond such baser instincts.”
Killa’s body deflated and spread out. “You’re right. I failed to do as you taught me. I didn’t think; I only acted. Please forgive me, Aquantula.”
“It is not my place to forgive you for nothing.” Killa shrank even further from Aquantula’s words. “What would drive you to put yourself in a situation where you would lose control?”
Killa couldn’t figure out how, but she was speaking to her mentor for the first time in years. For her to have awakened her mentor through her actions, she didn’t think it was possible. But her curiosity had to wait. Aquantula must be answered.
“It was my greed,” Killa admitted.
There was no point in lying to her. Aquantula already knew the answer, but her favorite punishments were utilized when anyone lied to her. And Killa didn’t want to find out if her mentor’s reach could influence the Nexus. After all, they were speaking to each other.
“And I wanted to help a friend by recovering my strength,” Killa finished.
The air around Killa grew darker as if she were sinking to the bottom of the ocean. “This friend, would she condone what you’ve become? Would you recognize her or would you have eaten her?”
Her? She knows. “Rina,” Killa fell into her thoughts, as she could only guess what her friend would’ve done. “She would’ve run away, and she would’ve been right to.”
Killa could feel Aquantula’s icy gaze through the darkness. “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
Killa attempted to reform her body into her humanoid shape. But there was too much to control.
“How sorry are you?” Aquantula’s voice swirled around Killa. “You ask for forgiveness but haven’t shown a sign of repentance. Now, how sorry are you?”
Killa stopped attempting to condense her body down to a normal size. If there was too much, that left only one solution. Her greed got her into this situation; she needed to prove that she could let go of her greed.
It started with a small spark. She ignited some of the magic she held within her body, forcing it to burn away her mass. More and more, she fed her body into the flame. The roaring flame couldn’t illuminate the darkness that surrounded Killa.
But that wasn’t important to Killa. What was important was proving herself to her mentor and Rina. She needed to prove that she was in control and that she wasn’t the monster she let take control. After three-quarters of her mass had been fed to the flame and it grew into a gargantuan conflagration, it was snuffed out like a candle.
“Your apology is accepted.” Aquantula cooed. Killa looked around at the surrounding darkness. A single mammoth-size crystal blue orb appeared. Aquantula looked at her disciple. “Now, I know you’re brimming with questions; I’ll answer a few of them for you.”
Killa focused and reformed her body back to that of a human. “How are you doing all this? I didn’t know your reach extended to this world.”
Aquantula chuckled, which sounded like a torrent of bubbles bursting on the surface of the water. “It’s cute to think that this Soul Nexus is the all-powerful being that it is. But I will tell you, it is not. It is powerful and capable of magic I can’t, but it is not infallible. And as a demi-god, I have certain privileges; let’s call them privileges. This is one of them.”
Killa folded her hands together so tightly that they melded into each other. “So you’re not mad at me for coming here?”
“Not even in the slightest."
Killa relaxed so much that she lost the definition of her legs.
“Seeking to fulfill one’s dreams, that’s admirable.” Aquantula’s eye grew larger and closer. “However, if you should perish, it would be regrettable. After all, the soul I granted you should return to me. If the Soul Nexus knows what’s good for it, it will provide it as a peace offering.”
A dark purple tentacle slithered out of the darkness and curled around Killa. “After all, you’re mine. And I care for those that belong to me.” Killa let the tentacle hug her and even let her body mold around it as a way to hug Aquantula back. “Now, be a good girl and earn your wish. There are so many things I want to see you taste when you get back.”
The tentacle gave Killa a soft pat on the head before slithering back into the darkness. Once Aquantula shut her eye, the darkness receded, returning Killa to the strip mine. She pulled up her status and silently berated herself for not putting the other three hundred and twenty-five points down during her lapse in judgment.
Name: Killa Level: 38 Agility: 320 Arcane: 319 Power: 319 Quickness: 319 Resilience: 319 Toughness: 319 Unassigned Points: 0 Shards: 160525
She hummed as she headed to the sphinx of the floor. It was high time she caught up with Rina. She couldn’t have gotten that far ahead.