Chapter 17: Hello Again Old Friend
Milim's hands shook as she pressed the glowing Aetheric Regulator against the surface of the marbled slime. "Come on, come on! Stabilize! Re-form! Do something!"
The orb didn't pulse. It didn't flash. Instead, the gray-and-blue jelly let out a wet shloop sound and simply... absorbed it. The orb sank into the center of the mass like a stone in a pond, glowing faintly from within the blubbering core of the creature, but the slime remained a wobbling, brainless heap.
"Oh... oh no," Milim whispered, her voice climbing an octave into pure hysteria.
She stood there in the middle of the room, a Goddess of the Labyrinth standing in her underwear, staring at a pile of sentient jelly that used to be her Master and a Holy Saint. A nervous, high-pitched giggle escaped her lips.
"Okay. Okay! This is fine. This is just... a temporary setback!"
She scrambled to grab her clothes, throwing her white dress on backward in her haste. She didn't have time for buttons or elegance. She scooped up the heavy, vibrating "Blubb" into her arms. It was surprisingly heavy—like carrying a waterbed filled with lead—and it let out a rhythmic, gurgling blub-blub every time she took a step. Milim burst out of the guest suite, her four tails puffed out to three times their normal size from sheer anxiety. She sprinted down the hallway, the gray-blue slime sloshing in her arms.
"Excuse me! Out of the way! Divine Emergency!" she shrieked at a group of terrified laundry maids.
She had to find Alice. The "experiment" wasn't in four days anymore; it was the only thing that could save Rin and Finn from becoming a permanent floor decoration.
As she rounded the corner toward the East Wing, she saw Princess Fern walking toward her, looking deeply suspicious.
"Milim? Why are you running, and why is there a glowing, bicolored... thing... in your arms?" Fern asked, her tail twitching with irritation. "And where is my fiancé?"
Milim stopped, her boots skidding on the marble. The Slime let out a particularly loud, wet gurgle and pulsed a bright, neon blue.
"He's... uh... he's having a very intense meditation session!" Milim squeaked, hugging the Slime tighter to hide the glowing orb inside it. "This is just his... astral projection! It needs to see Alice! Immediately!"Milim's brain went into overdrive. She knew she couldn't outrun the Princess, especially not while hauling a thirty-pound, vibrating waterbed of soul-jelly. She sucked in a breath, forced her face into a mask of "Divine Solemnity," and looked Fern dead in the eye.
"Princess! Thank the Heavens you're here!" Milim cried, her voice trembling with just enough fake religious fervor. "The Saint... he's reached the Lustrous Ascension! It's a rare, high-level Holy Transformation where the physical body sheds its shell to undergo a total mana-recalibration!"
Fern stopped, her tail going rigid. She looked at the wobbling, marbled gray-and-blue mass in Milim's arms. The slime let out a particularly loud glub-squish and pulsed a rhythmic, glowing violet.
"That... thing... is my fiancé?" Fern asked, her voice flat with disbelief.
"Yes! Look at the gray swirls—that's his Iron Will! And the blue—that's his... uh... Saintly Purity!" Milim babbled, thrusting the heavy blob toward Fern. "But he's too heavy for my spirit-form to carry alone! If he doesn't reach Lady Alice's specialized stabilization chamber in the next three minutes, his soul might... leak! Do you want a fiancé who is literally a puddle?!"
Fern, driven by a mix of horror and duty, reached out and caught the other side of the slime. "He's... he's surprisingly warm," she whispered, her face pale. Together, the Princess and the Goddess began a frantic sprint down the East Wing corridor.
"MOVE! ROYAL EMERGENCY!" Fern roared at a group of terrified knights. Seeing their Princess hauling a glowing, gelatinous orb alongside a disheveled Goddess, the guards scrambled to open the heavy iron doors leading to the private laboratory.
They burst through the final set of doors, the Slime let out a wet thwack as they slammed it onto Alice's primary examination table.
Alice Silver was already standing there, wearing a pair of heavy leather gloves and holding a glowing glass syringe. She didn't look surprised; she looked like a kid on Christmas morning.
"Oh, marvelous!" Alice chirped, leaning over the table to poke the marbled jelly. "I felt the mana-snap from across the wing. It seems the 'Resonance' and the 'Pill' had a bit of a chemical disagreement."
"Alice, fix him!" Fern demanded, her hands covered in slime residue. "He's... he's blubbering! Make him stop blubbering!"
"Don't worry, sister," Alice said, her red ears twitching with excitement. "I have just the thing. But I'll need both of you to hold him down. When the soul-reintegration starts, this 'Blubb' is going to get very... energetic."
The Reality: Rin's consciousness was currently a swirling mess of gray fog inside the slime. He could hear Fern's voice, but it sounded like she was underwater. If Alice messes this up, he thought dimly, I'm going to be the world's most elegant floor wax.Alice didn't hesitate. She plunged the glowing glass syringe into the center of the quivering mass. "Stabilization fluid, don't fail me now!"
The reaction was immediate, but not what she intended. The gray-and-blue marbled slime didn't turn back into a man—it turned a violent, neon Hot Pink.
"Well, shit," Alice whispered, her ears pinning back as she frantically checked her charts. "That's... that's the color of a complete ego-meltdown. That'snot supposed to happened!"
While the girls were panicking in the physical world, the "Blubb" was a silent, infinite expanse of white sand under a burning, eternal sun.
Rin stood there, his silver hair shimmering in the light. Across from him stood Finn. The Saint wasn't wearing his armor; he looked just like Rin, only taller, broader, and wearing that same earnest, slightly confused smile.
"I've been waiting for you, Rin ," Finn said, his voice echoing in the stillness.
"Finn... wait," Rin started, his voice cracking. "If we do this, the 'Saint' is gone. You're a person, Finn. You have a life, a fiancé, a future. I'm just a ghost from the past trying to stay alive."
Finn shook his head, his blue eyes filled with a peace that Rin found terrifying. "I am the vessel; you are the soul. I was never whole without you, and you are dying without me. Let the 'Hero' return to the 'Mind'."
Finn stepped forward and placed his hands on Rin's shoulders. As they touched, Finn's physical form dissolved into pure, golden light, rushing into Rin's chest like a tidal wave.
Rin fell to his knees as the "Heroic Essence" flooded his core. The mana poisoning vanished instantly. The weakness in his limbs was replaced by a terrifying, boundless strength. He was whole. He was the Saint of Steel once again.
But as the golden light settled, Rin stared at his hands, a crushing guilt washing over him. I just killed him, Rin thought. Finn is gone. He gave up his entire existence just so I could be a 'Complete' person again.
"Are you sad?" A voice echoed in Rin's mind
"Am I sad!? You're student just died, and thats all you have to say?"
" it was inevitable for me and you to reunite as one", the echoing voice said coldly.
"You're supposed to be the hero! The better half of me and your just cool with this?" Rin shouted pain in his voice.
"People die all the time rin, its what happens, be grateful that you're the one in control and not me"
Before rin could express his opinion to his other half, he spoke afew finally words. "Good bye Rin"
Rin stood there in silence, his other half was gone; and so was Finn.
"Hey... Rin?"
Rin froze. He slowly turned his head and looked down at the white sand.
There, sitting by his foot, was a Tiny Blue Slime. It was no bigger than a grapefruit, wobbling slightly and looking up at him with two little black dot-eyes.
"I think I was supposed to have died when your soul became one," the little slime said, its voice sounding exactly like a high-pitched, squeaky version of Finn. "So... why am I still here?"
Rin stared at the little blue blob, utterly lost for words. Did my other half not fuse with Finn's soul? How the hell is he still here right now?
It seemed that while Rin's ego and skills merged with the power, Finn's simple, pure consciousness couldn't be deleted. Instead of vanishing, the "excess" personality was kicked out of the human body and forced into the only available vessel: the Slime core.
"Rin?" the little Finn-Slime squeaked, bouncing once. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost. Also, why am I so squishy? I feel like a grape."
The pink slime on the table suddenly exploded in a burst of steam. As the mist cleared, a tall, silver-haired man in a tattered gray dress stood there, looking down at his own massive, armored hands.
"Finn?" Fern gasped, stepping forward.
Rin looked at her, his mind reeling. He was in the "Hero" body, he was whole, but finn was currently a tiny blue puddle on the floor behind him.