I'm green slime.
Bright little slime? Nah. More like a dull, translucent green — moss soaked in stagnant water that's been sitting too long. Light passes through me unevenly, bending and warping, showing darker clumps inside where the mana pools thicker. My surface never stays still; it quivers constantly, like exposed nerves twitching at every breeze, every sound, every shift in pressure.
That's my body now.
Roughly the size of a human head when I gather myself fully. Smaller when I panic-compress. Larger when I spread thin and try to disappear into the dirt. No face. No organs. Just a semi-liquid mass glued together by whatever stubborn instinct and willpower I still have left.
I am weak.
That monster wolf guy was *far* — FAR — more powerful than me. His mana was so dense it felt like standing next to a sun made of knives. Maybe that's why part of me wanted to eat it…
Fuck. Stop. That's just the slime brain talking. I don't actually want to die. If I'd gotten any closer he would've squashed me without even noticing. At least I ate that insect. It was… tasty? Not like I *like* eating insects. I mean eating their *mana*. There's a difference.
I try to sense how much mana I have now. I can "see" farther — not with eyes, but with my whole damn body. The world feels a tiny bit sharper at the edges.
Barely stronger.
But enough to notice.
> [Grand Design acknowledged.]
The voice slides back in. Calm. Cold. Female. Indifferent as a gravestone.
> Assimilation detected.
> Mana density increased: negligible.
> Willpower: stable.
Fuck. Hey, lady, what the hell are you talking about? What *is* this?
…
No answer. Of course.
Whatever. I'll figure it out myself.
Mana density — so she's tracking my mana and she noticed it went up even a little? That means she's some kind of system, right? Like those isekai interfaces? And willpower… I don't even know if I have that anymore, but apparently it's "stable." Cool. Thanks for the participation trophy.
Still — something's different now.
Most slimes in fantasy stories are brain-dead puddles. Mindless blobs. Except a few. Rimuru, obviously — OP ultimate slime. Then… uh… Seu? From that one series? Shit, I'm blanking. And the third one… DB? Some guy who got one-shotted by Goku? Whatever. Point is, almost no slimes get to think. I do.
Lucky me.
---
Being a slime means there's no distance between me and the world.
No skin to keep anything out. Heat soaks straight into my core. Cold clings like wet fingers. Pressure presses from every direction at once. I *feel* everything.
And right now I feel something terrifying.
Stronger — much stronger — than even that wolf monster.
I don't wait to see what it is. I just move.
I slide — slowly, painfully — into a shallow dip beneath a tangle of roots. The roots are thick, bark dark and dripping, veined with faint greenish threads of natural mana. Not enough to draw big predators, but enough to sting when I brush against them.
I compress hard.
Force my body inward. Shrink surface area. Thicken my core. My dull green darkens as light struggles to pass through the denser jelly. I push tiny pseudopods into cracks in the soil, anchoring myself like a terrified animal digging in.
Okay. I think I'm safe.
(If this forest is only monsters… that means they're feeding on *something*. Eating each other. Weak ones hide or they're already dead. But if they eat each other, why didn't that wolf even glance at me? Whatever. I'm safe. For now.)
I wait. Minutes drag.
Nothing attacks. Nothing notices. The forest breathes — wind rattling leaves high above, distant thuds of something small moving far off. Insects skitter past my hiding spot. A few brush my edge.
Fuck you, want to die? Like your friend? Fine.
One gets too close.
I don't "jump" — slimes don't jump — but I surge. A fast ripple of my body flows over it before it can react. It thrashes inside me, legs scraping, mandibles snapping. Pointless. It's already trapped in jelly.
Absorption starts.
Not sharp. Not dramatic. Just a slow, constant draining, like water leaking from a cracked cup in reverse. Mana seeps from the insect into me. Tiny wisps of it leak back out into the soil — I can feel myself losing microscopic amounts even as I gain.
(Huh… 😮💨 Guess my theory was half wrong. If this many weak insects can survive here, that wolf really *was* special. My luck is dogshit. Fuck.)
Still… now I can chill. A little.
My mind drifts back to white ceilings. Beeping machines. A doctor's strained voice telling my family my organs were shutting down one by one. That even if I lived, I wouldn't be *me* anymore.
I remember him talking to me sometimes — weird bastard. "Your body is so strange. Normal humans can't survive damage like this… but you? You did. Still, I think you'll never talk, walk, eat, even move your hands again. This test-version machine is the only reason you're still breathing."
He kept praising that damn prototype machine like it was his child.
I died because of it. I saw it explode in my last moment — sparks, smoke, alarms screaming. I hated that thing.
Huh… 😮💨
Enough nostalgia.
I force myself to focus. Try to do *something* with this pathetic body.
I move.
Not far. Just… forward. A slow, quivering crawl along the root tangle, staying low, staying small.
Where to next?
I don't know.
But staying still feels like giving up.
And I already decided — fuck that.
I won't die twice.