Drip-Fed Pt. 01

Synopsis

A slime randomly falls into existence. Sapient and born with the ability to recreate parts of the things it preys upon, the highly confused drop of primordial soup decides that the only real thing it can do is become the being at the top of the food chain. A task of longevity in the leaves of the Omniverse.

Cover Art by MonoriRogue, commissioned and owned by me.

Note : This is very much a slow-burn story, there will be erotic content of course but not as much as WAKMD or Welldark.

Although this is a Harem story, I would like to warn everyone that it is slightly different since the MC will not beat the odds every time.

Also there's zero non-con/dub-con content.

___________________________________________________________

Drip-drop...drip-drop...drip-drop...

The sound of water falling from the tips of stalactites and into the lake was all that filled the cave. Keener ears could have heard the life buzzing around, but there were no such ears in this ecosystem.

It was a completely isolated cavity, a pocket inside the earth. The air was humid from a nearby magma chamber, an ample heat source, walls were covered in condensation, and a pale, glowing moss that had taken hold in the soft stone. Some small patches also blossomed on the ceiling, but those were the rare exception and destined to fall off eventually. The moss' roots simply didn't bury deep enough to reliably hold upside down.

Drip-drop...drip-drop...drip-drop...

That left the ceiling with ample room to grow more dripping stones. That should have provided the moss some different opportunity to cling on somewhere else, but when it reached a stalactite, the added weight would eventually cause them to break off. That would cause organic matter to fall into the water, giving the little fish and bacteria inside the lake a feast.

Drip-drop...drip-drop...drip-drop...

It was a minimal ecosystem, created randomly by volcanic activity shifting earth around dozens of years ago and trapping in it a multitude of species. Most of them hadn't survived, those that did adapted and created their own circle of life.

Moss grew. If there was too much moss, it fell into the lake. The fallen moss was eaten by the tiny organic lifeforms there, arranged in schools or swarms. They, or their predators, eventually died. Their remains floated to the narrow shore between walls and lake. There tiny eusocial insects, nesting in the moss, then picked them apart. Their defecations and corpses in turn were broken down by the moss and other bacteria. It was a stable system that could have lasted forever if left alone.

Drip-drop...drip-drop...drip-drop...drip...Falling...

It was a chance that was so infinitesimal, so close to zero, it should have been an impossibility. Maybe it was a powerful god that twisted the world a little bit. Maybe it was just a random probability of natural movement. Maybe the actions of an insane magician somewhere had caused the magical veins of the world to shift for just a moment. Maybe it was an insane magician battling a powerful god at the advent of a natural shift in the natural veins of magic. Maybe it was none of those things at all.

Fact was, that just one drop of water fell past, crossing invisible streams of different elemental properties at exactly the right moment. A tiny spark, nothing more than a single ember raising from a campfire, flared up in the cave. Then it was gone again. In that tiny moment, the minerals carried within that miniscule bit of water changed and rearranged themselves in the shape of a hardened core, what had been water became part of another liquid, one more viscous and able to stay as one.

With a drop, the new-born creature fell into the water. The very first thought crossed through the being's mind and it was a majorly confused one. It had been suddenly thrown into the world at a part where there was not but sentience while itself having full sapience. With no idea what to do with it.

It sunk to the ground, wondering about that very thing. Without any language it couldn't have known how to speak, its thoughts were an assembly of feelings, shapes and colours.

It was a slime, a monster known in this and other connected worlds, as a common life form with little power that digested things smaller than itself. A simple being indeed, consisting of two parts: the name giving, usually acidic jelly and a nucleus. Basically, nothing more than an oversized bacterium.

It settled on the bottom of the lake and just sat there. Sat there for a long time, learning how to sense and still wondering. Slimes didn't have eyes or ears or any other perceiving organs. Lesser slimes could perceive the world through vibrations only. Their larger, more powerful cousins could also sense from the magical flow that permeated everything. At that point, it was as if they had sight, smell and hearing but better, only limited by range.

It wasn't a lesser slime, it was something with an ability hidden deep in its nucleus. It knew that. It wasn't quite sure how it knew that, or what exactly it was that it knew, but it knew that it knew that it should know. It was a memory not yet made, but one to be rediscovered. It was to be one of the truly powerful creatures of the Leaves.

Potentially.

For now, it was stuck with only sensing vibrations like the lowest of its kin.

A feeling of emptiness set in, an urgent one -- hunger. Even as a lifeform primarily based on water, the tiny slime had to eat. It tried to move, extending parts of it forward and pulling the rest behind. It was slow at first, but soon the movement became routinized, and it slugged at a steady pace. However, it still wasn't fast. For sure, not fast enough to catch anything. It was only the fact that it was nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding water that let it approach its prey.

That first meal was to be an elongated insect, judging by the feeling of the hard surface moving through the water. It was busy scratching some gunk off a nearby pebble with its pincers and getting whatever nutrition it still could. It was working quickly, with high energy and vitality. A healthy snack, despite the insect's own diet, that much was certain.

As careful as the slime could, trusting entirely in the innate hunting instinct it had, it stretched around its prey. For as long as the translucent predator remained unnoticed, it should take the opportunity to cut off as many paths of flight as possible. All that could give it away was moving too fast and giving its presence away to the prey through the sudden movement of water. Even an animal with a basically non-existent brain would instinctively flee if it sensed a sudden change going on around it.

The insect noticed that something was up at the last moment. The outstretched jelly rushed towards the prey and missed. Missed by such a wide margin that the slime stopped moving in confusion. Sensing for the insect that should have been there, that something should have been satiating the hunger right now, it sat still. It found a tunnel of vibrations from something moving at an immense speed, the settling insect by the end of it.

It seemed these little prey animals had some sort of trick to dash from potential dangers. While frustrating, that also taught the slime that there was something else hunting in these waters. Otherwise, there was no reason for them to have that skill.

The slime sensed for an easier prey and eventually found one of those insects feeding nearby. Extremely close, to be exact, as the slime wouldn't have been able to really sense it otherwise. Feeling the tapping of the cleaning insect's tiny feet, the slime knew it to be missing one of its six legs. It also worked with little energy, compared to the earlier specimen. This one was either old, or crippled, or both. Whatever it was, this ought to be easier.

The slime bridged the little distance between them carefully. What wasn't even a step for a wolf was a minute-long stalking path for the slime. Once it was in range, it repeated the earlier strategy and then attacked.

This weaker insect did not get away, the front half of its body getting immediately surrounded by the slime. The stilt-like legs of the creature tried to dig it out, but it was only treading inside water, tiring it out rather than removing it. Waving desperately with its long behind uselessly soon ceased, as the insect completely exhausted itself.

The slime soon covered its entire surface, and then the newly successful hunter in these waters sat there digesting. From the feel of it, this one hunt would feed it for quite a while, but aside from the satisfaction there was something different. As more and more flesh of the insect inside it dissolved, the slime understood how all of it worked. How tissue was connected to the exoskeleton, how an immense lash of that long tail allowed it to dart away, how the legs could move. Even more than that, it could reconstruct parts of it that it wanted.

First, the slime grew the legs, sick of crawling around. Six healthy legs with a carapace. Those allowed for easier movement over the floor. Then it tried to grow the elongated tail. As the slime attempted to do so, the legs disappeared again. It seemed there was only so many stolen attributes it could maintain at one time and growing them took quite some energy. It was already hungry again.

It was time to hunt for some more food and tools. The goal: drip-feeding to become this biomes apex predator, thus securing its own existence. Then? Well, the slime didn't know. Hopefully something new would be beyond this pond and the cave surrounding it.

The hours went on. Maybe they were days. Even if the slime knew what the sun was, down where he was there no such thing as a day night cycle. There were no hours. The moss that illuminated the cave didn't stop or dim at any point. Therefore, without anyway to gauge it, the slime had no idea what hours or days even were. It just carried on like usual, eating when it was hungry and wondering about things when not.

It began to form something like a list of things it wanted to explore and do. It had eaten a couple of other organisms at this point, gaining nothing of real value in the process, but it hadn't tried eating what they ate yet. Well, except for the scraped together gunk. It had tried that.

The slime had not been aware that it had the ability to be disgusted, but that was horrendous to its taste. Because there was an ample amount of it and it was a basically uncontested source of (somewhat poor) nourishment, the slime still had to consider it as a food source in less advantageous times. Those hadn't come about yet, though, for which it was grateful.

It was in a moment like any other, with the slime just invisibly sitting nearby a clam bank where it was quiet, that an enormous shock went through the pond. Something had just dropped in, something large. Most animals darted away from the source, pure instinct to stay clear of large predators that only their ancestors had to content with, but their genetic structure still primed them to flee from. The slime, however, had the ability to learn, observe, and reach conclusions. Creating the long tail of its very first prey, it dashed towards the source.

The large stalactites overhead were still in the slimes memory from its spawning, including the moss covering some of them. That knowledge combined with the shape of the object that was now slowly descending to the floor of the pond told him that this was not a predator. Indeed, it was clear that soon enough other of the herbivores sharing this ecosystem with him would begin to approach the falling mass of moss and rock and begin disassembling what they could digest.

Being the first there would prove to some advantage. For a start, the slime could try to find the freshest pieces of the plant, albeit it didn't really have the tools to do so other than tasting around. While it could have replaced its tail with a pair of eyes, that would be a sacrifice of its mobility for the minimal gain of seeing things it had no idea how to judge in the first place. It didn't know what moss was fresh or old. Would it turn paler or darker with age? Were there other factors? It, therefore, decided that right then was not the time to bet on eyesight.

The second thing was that, if the plants proved to be indigestible for some reason, it could hide within the moss for one of its standard prey animals to come along and ambush it. It was a win-win situation.

The odd sight of a single insect tail attached to an almost invisible, fingernail sized blob would have met anyone who would have been able to observe the happenings and probably caused some confusion. With the water around still clear, the slime went to smaller strokes, instead of continuously using the heavily stamina draining dash.

Landing on a barren piece of rock that recently settled, it sensed around. If there was one reason why the slime didn't like being blind, it was that it had a hard time tracking things that were not in motion. If only it had the ability to generate some sort of vibration that returned to it without alerting anything else. That would have been a genius application of evolution.

But alas, the slime was not capable of aimed evolution, it could only acquire what already existed. So, unless it one day found something that had echolocation, of which it knew not that it was real, it could not get it. If it could have sighed and knew what the general agreement of such a motion's meaning was, it would have. Instead, it sat there slightly annoyed with its lot in life, of which's start it had stopped pondering about as it was an endless circle without answers.

Thankfully, a nearby piece settled in a slightly more cushioned way, indicating that there was moss on the downside of it. The slime made its way over. The range of sensations was interesting, the water sliding over its surface, then the hard and rough texture of the rock as it landed again and crawled on, finally the soft and fuzzy feeling of the moss.

There was a lot of it, several times the slime's current mass in fact, and so the slime began feasting. It did find that it could indeed digest these plants. As it did, a new pocket of its instinctual knowledge unfolded. Eating animals gave the slime a large boost in new tools it could develop, but did the increase in its body size was marginal. On the opposite end of things, eating plants increased the slimes body size by quite a lot, the fibre was quickly digested and converted into the viscous liquid that made up most of its body, while granting minimal or useless evolutionary tools.

It was vaguely aware that it could now change something minor about its substance. To an outside onlooker, its colouration changed from just translucent to whitely translucent. The slime struck this as useless.

The other thing, slightly less useless, was the ability to act like the moss did and grow roots and leaves to absorb water, air and light from the surroundings and create nourishment for itself that way. Problem was that the slime had to go on land for that, which it still hadn't even attempted, and have two different growths active at that time.

Although, maybe now that it was a bit bigger, maybe it should try that again? The slime had earlier decided that having eyes wasn't worth slugging around for, but if it could have both, why not try? If it failed, there was an absurd amount of food around, as the prey animals finally closed in as well.

It formed the shape of the eyes and willed the organ into existence. It was a process that it was aware was deeply more complicated than that but, much like a human flexing a muscle, it didn't really think about it how it functioned while doing it.

Suddenly, it could see. The pale moss surrounding it, the beige limestone it was attached to, and the clear waters surrounding them. The floor was made out of the broken down remains of former stalactites, slowly ground down by animals trying to ripe the very last roots out of the stone and then just naturally dissolving further.

The slime wagged its tail to confirm it was still there and it was indeed. If it had known that was common expression amongst dogs and dog people it would have wagged its tail harder. Anyhow, it now knew that an increase in size meant that it could maintain more evolutions at once. If it grew bigger, maybe it could start eating some bigger, more interesting stuff. The gargantuan clams that lay totally defenceless but were too large to encapsulate sprang to mind.

Or the shadow that descended over the surrounding area at that moment. The slime hid under its rock as it saw the pale body of what it perceived to be a water dragon swim through the water. The gilled antenna that grew out of either side of the creature's head were of a light red. It was this pond's apex predator and it dropped down on one of the slow, shield shaped herbivores that had come out to consume the plant matter.

Then the herbivore was gone. The water dragon had opened its mouth and a sudden suction had transported it right into the beast's jaw. Thankfully, these monstrosities had very predictable behaviour and were short-sighted, relying mostly on their sense of smell. As long as the slime stayed aware, which was quite easy with its ability to sense vibrations, and kept its distance, it was safe from them, smelling mostly like the water. Just to be safe it dissolved its tail though. It had enough moss to feed itself, so there was no need to move around for now.

Instead, it began to feed with utmost fervour. There was no telling when the next load of moss would arrive and it had to grow as big as possible in order to rise up the food chain. The quicker it was at the top, the less time it had to spent being afraid.

Despite its best efforts, the slime did need another two stalactites to fall before it was big enough to snowball down (or rather up) the food chain. How long did it take for two more stalactites to fall? Well, about as long as it took to actively watch grass grow.

In other words, it didn't know, but it didn't matter either because it was just too damn long. A felt eternity was spent just sitting around. Literally, as the slime had found the perfect hunting strategy. By disguising itself as a piece of tasty, tasty moss it attracted the shield like bugs that consumed it. They thought they were on their way to an easy meal, in truth the slime had spread itself thin in the surrounding area. Once they were close enough to try and eat the moss, and they could eat it since it was a perfect copy, it rolled up from behind them while raising up its main body from underneath the moss.

It was effective, but it was boring, but it was very effective. The only downside was that it had to move every now and again. The slime's prey was just smart enough to realize that this bush of stationary moss was no good after a couple of their kin were lost to it. They were not smart enough to realize that the slightly different shaped moss that appeared elsewhere could not be trusted either. With all of that in mind, and the goal to gain biomass, this was the most meaningful way to spend the time between downing moss.

Now, however, after cleaning off the last bit of scrap moss from the latest deliverance of fate, the slime had reached the size of an average human's palm. That had several advantages, it could now maintain up to four different outgrowths at a time. However, it also discovered a problem. The growths didn't scale. The tail that had allowed it to dash initially was entirely useless at this point. An attempt at the 'just grow multiple ones' had come out as an unnavigable mess.

It didn't have to go back to crawling thanks to using two sets of the six insect legs, moving essentially like a centipede, but its new weight-class wasn't a 100% positive improvement. Rather than moving straight up in power, the slime felt more like it was moving diagonally. Until it ate a creature with better legs, what it improvised had to make due.