Drip-Fed Pt. 02

Nevertheless, it was quite lucky to have a deer running around these parts, to the best of the slime's observation these more often than not strolled around at the edge of the forest below. Then again, this little assembly of trees and grass was somewhat like a miniature forest. Either way, the vines did what the vines did and were keeping the deer in place.

"I really don't like this hunting strategy," Aclysia crossed her arms, looking at the poor animal, struggling against the gripping greenery.

After minutes of trying, the deer managed to free its front hoof and tried to dart away, but by then one of its back hoofs had also been grabbed. The dash thus ended rather abruptly with the slime getting halfway pulled out of its earthen hiding place and the deer losing its balance. Now on the ground, it had no chance of getting up again, especial with its liquid captor snuggling back under the lawn.

It would have met a slow death of exhaustion and famine, as the slime had no interest nor knowledge or tools to end its suffering quickly. Flying down to the struggling deer, Aclysia gently touched its neck, searching for the spine. The touch seemed to calm the much larger animal. "I will grant you quick sleep," the metal fairy promised and conjured magic.

Mana pulsated inside her god-crafted soul and filled this tiny vessel. It was impossible to wield a lot of it, it would break what she currently was. However, enough to give this sorry thing a quick death, that she could do.

That was when another unexpected thing happened, something that Aclysia should have seen coming but her inwards cast gaze failed to. There was a reason why Hemle had stepped towards the grab-roots field and that was carcasses. Every carcass attracted many things wanting an easy feast. Insects and rodents were among the unappetizing things, but there was a large bird that liked to take partake in it as well. One of the two that Hemle had been tasked to help find.

Vultures.

The grey-feathered bird landed on the immobilized deer, wary of the roots that had made its prey easy pickings. It had been circling its usual route in search of food, a route that took it around the entire mountain once per month or two, depending on the number of findings. Wherever grab-roots bloomed, these carcass devouring animals could not be far. Famished as this particular individual was, it didn't hesitate to dirty its own beak to end the deer.

The long neck descended, the thick fur at the base standing on edge. Red blood soon sullied that grass as the curved beak of the creature drew it fresh from the young life of the deer. The vulture drew back its head and shook it to get rid of the few spurts of vitae that had spurted out of the vein it had cut open. On blood and red meat, it planned to gorge today.

Unlucky for it that the magic Aclysia had already gathered needed some sort of outlet. "My awakener will surely appreciate a feast," she stated. She didn't feel animosity towards the vulture for doing what she planned to do, if in a bit more brutal a fashion. Like stated, her priority lay indeed only in helping the slime.

The pin-point blade of mana she had meant to conjure to sever the nerves at the deer's neck changed into a sharp gust of wind. Spread out like that, the force was too small to do more than cut a few feathers in twain. Aclysia's goal wasn't to cut, however, but for the still half-open wings of the massive bird to catch the wind. Under such conditions, the vulture lost its footing on top of the carcass, a less than optimal standing position in the first place.

Tumbling backwards, the bird fell on top of one of the unoccupied grab-roots of the slime. The creature that had taken advantage of these plants all its life now became victim to it. Nature couldn't just be cruel, it could also create sick irony. Or a large, several day lasting meal for a slime that was only vaguely aware what just happened.

It just hoped that the kill on the deer was still eligible for its consumption and emulation ability. Since it had caught it, it should count. Right?

It did.

Eating both of those animals, much larger than the slime currently was, had taken the blob quite some time. Regardless, there it was, belly full and with a whole array of new things. Number one object of appreciation: vulture eyes. These things were so good, it almost physically hurt the slime to use them. There was so much it could now see, it was astounding.

Most of all Aclysia.

She was really cute and sexy, and that was the first time the slime had thought of anything that way. Sure, she was small, even compared to it, but she had aesthetically pleasing curves. Her simple, no longer blurry, black-white colouration and pale skin made her definitely more pleasing to look at than the boring green everywhere. Her backwards flowing hair, way too orderly for this wild, made her look like a word the slime didn't know and would have no reference to, either 'civilized' or downright 'noble'.

Before the slime knew what it was doing, it was nomming on Aclysia. Not to eat her, but just because it felt like the right thing to do. "This is weirdly pleasant," the metal fairy said in a tone the slime thought was appreciating.

Feeling as if she got a full body massage, the divine quest giver let herself be devoured for a few minutes. Then the slime remembered that it had to go elsewhere. There would be more time to inspect her body later.

It rapidly tried out all new Growths it had, only stopping to eat off another grip-root, increasing its size and replenishing its energy. The deer's legs and mouth were pretty useful, but overall the vulture had easily the more useful features. Not only were its legs more suitable for the slimes current size, but the beak was better at ripping stuff apart than the herbivore's teeth were. The ability to grow antlers was kind of cool, however. Shame that, much like a shell, that would take time.

The king of all of these new acquisitions must have been the wings, however. At a total wingspan of over one and a half metres on a thirty-centimetre wide body. Sure, it was a translucent, drop shaped body, but they still managed to get the slime off the floor.

Its first attempts at flying sent it two feet forwards, fluttering and then splattering against a tree. It experienced a world of hurt when its nucleus clashed against bark from the momentum. Luckily, it stayed inside its body, so it was just like a human running their forehead against a doorframe.

It would have to experiment with that a bit more.

Above Mount Estania, the easternmost peak of the disk world leaf of Ctania, soared a creature. It was beyond strange to look at, even seasoned Branchers, the highest and most dangerous adventuring profession, would have stopped to look. Even the gods didn't erect such mockeries of nature that often.

Yet, there it was, a chimera of the strangest design. The most inoffensive parts of it were the large wings it carefully navigated the air with. Except there were four in total. The main body, however, was even weirder. Two pairs of vulture legs stuck out of a translucent body, which was stretched into the shape of an elongated egg. The wide tail end sported a sudden growth of feathers, a wide fan the slime had found necessary to properly navigate.

A long neck that seemed like it was a return to normalcy extended from the front. The grey pelt of a vulture leading up to the head and beak. Sadly, lowering one's eyes to the ears of a deer, surrounding the base of the neck, would make one realize rather quickly that they still weren't looking at a normal vulture.

They may not have liked it, but this was what current slime peak performance looked like. The slime was just too heavy to be lifted by one pair of wings and to make a stable landing and pick up enough speed it had found four legs much better than two. Feeling the air in them, the slime made a quick correction on the position of the deer ears.

It was nowhere near as nimble as other airborne creatures, but it could fly, and travelling via air was way faster than crawling. Also, it had found that its new, freakish appearance caused other animals to straight-up run away.

"This is certainly entertaining," a surprisingly light metal fairy announced, sitting on the slimes back and holding on to its current neck. Although it could now clearly discern what the words were, it still had no idea what she was saying.

The question of how that communication of hers worked had to be delayed until the slime felt it was safe. Obviously, it needed to go somewhere else before the metal-skinned one returned. Either that, or get strong enough to face that thing, which the slime doubted it could do in a short span of time.

However, just relocating at the current point felt like a waste. It had gnawed itself through most of the local food chain. True, it had never succeeded in eating a bunny, but if it just managed to get to the top here it would get another scaling attribute, a True Growth, whatever it should be called. It was direly needed as well, as the slime had a hard time remembering how to construct parts it acquired a while back.

Not consuming the source of something for a long time would eventually lead to the slime forgetting about how to replicate it. A very frustrating thing but ultimately it made sense. After all, the blob was aware that it was only borrowing structures, to truly make them its own it needed to keep on improving and strengthen its nucleus through becoming the apex predator of numerous biomes and risking danger every time. Just amassing lots of stolen attributes would do it no good in the long term.

In other words, to keep evolving it had to keep challenging itself.

Maybe because it was its nature, but the slime kind of liked that idea. It was rapidly developing a daredevil persona. It wasn't bad yet, however, nobody could know what kind of path the monster would eventually be walking down.

For the moment, it wasn't daredevil enough to challenge the eagles that dominated this area. Particularly the one whose beak the slimes acid had damaged was something it wanted to take out. Not out of vengeance, not mainly at least, but just to realize how far it had come since leaving its birthplace.

For now, it was hungry and its vulture eyes looked around. These things were criminally good, it could see better than the previous axolotl eyes by an order of magnitude. They were so good; the slime was happy again that it didn't choose the eyes of the axolotl. Then again, as they would have scaled with the slime, those wouldn't have been to terrible at the current time? Either way, the pheromones would certainly be good for something someday.

All of this and more crossed the slimes mind as it looked for food. It spotted something moving in the grass a kilometre below and began its dive. Well, dive was putting it quite harshly, more like four-winged sailing.

At first it thought it was approaching a rabbit, but it soon turned out that this was an entirely different creature. Something that that slime found to be quite odd indeed, if it was even allowed to think that. It was just... yeah, it was basically just a head on a tail. No legs, no arms no nothing.

"Awakener, you are not planning to crash again, are you?" Aclysia asked, she had seen the slime half-splatter against various surfaces at least twenty times over the last few days, trying to learn how to fly and figuring out which Growths it did and did not need.

Her human quality eyes were not quite good enough to spot the snake until the slime was already upon it. In turn, the snake only noticed when the two front talons of the slime were already nailing it to the ground. The flexible creature, even if pinned, had enough room to lash out at the slime.

Who now had its first meeting with the concept of poison. It was not a happy first date.

Instinctively going for its assailants' neck, the snake's twin fangs appeared only once its mouth was wide open and quickly vanished inside the flesh at the base of the long neck, where the Growth and the translucently green main body were melding together.

While the loss of a Growth was essentially non-important to the slime, it could just replace them after eating something new to replenish its mass, there was something very different about this time. A liquid was pumped into its body, not a lot of it, but something, and because the fangs had penetrated the neck at a downwards angle the poison was delivered to both the Growth and the slimes main body.

The effect in the main body spread quickly, being one liquid mixing with another. The slime developed a rather sudden and brutal nucleus-ache. It felt like its whole membrane was expanding only to collapse again, while at the same time not moving at all. Hot and cold washed over it and a sluggishness overcame it,the kind it hadn't known before.

As quickly as all that came, it was gone again. The acidity of its inner digestion fluid also made for a pretty good neutralizer of natural poison, purely because it quickly dissolved them into less dangerous parts. A feeling of bodily apathy remained, as if the slime's body just didn't feel like moving, but the pain and pulsating were gone.

The Growths, on the other hand, reacted like their proper biological sources would and went increasingly numb until the slime could not control them anymore and they simply limped to the floor. Now blind, without functioning ears and noses, the slime pulled those Growths back into its body.

An incredibly unwise decision, as it delivered into itself another batch of the poison and, together with it, another wave of torment. At that point the slime was 90% sure it knew what other animals felt like when trying to eat it and understood why the eagle had quickly discarded it like its own waste.

Afterwards, it felt just bad. Like, physically ill to the literal core. On one hand it wanted to get away from this odd, worm-like creature. On the other it was already done with the suffering and this poison stuff looked incredibly useful.

"Oh!" Aclysia made a sudden sound and, her hand on her awakener's back, began gathering magic. She felt a bit stupid for not realizing immediately what the limping of the slime's 'head' meant, especially with the snake still lodged in place. "You have been poisoned. I can fix that...if it is just a natural toxin, at least."

The slime felt something cool starting from the metal fairies hand and from there travelling through its entire body like a slowly unfolding ripple. It perked up, reinvigorated and freed from the sluggishness. Now it wished it hadn't pulled the Growths back in.

Whatever, the slime decided that it was time to eat this pesky thing and then give its helper some more slime cuddles.

Having finished its meal, the slime regrew its earlier discarded head construction, a vulture head save for the ears, and then added another right next to it. That second head was just a vulture's neck ending on the otherwise featureless maw of a snake. Testing, the slime opened its new appendage.

The tongueless mouth opened, revealing the successful reconstruction of the fangs. Reaching out of their hiding place in the flesh of the upper jaw. There was just a minor problem here.

Vulture Neck x2

Vulture Head

Vulture Eyes

Vulture Beak

Vulture Legs x2

Vulture Wings x2

Vulture Tail Feathers

Pheromone Glands

Vulture Nose

Snake Head

There were a total of fourteen Growths the slime was currently sustaining. As it so happened, that was also the upper limit of it. The annoying thing was that it still needed the poison bag for the fangs to pack the proper punch. Something had to go.

It couldn't make the pheromone glands vanish. While having the Growth become a part of its own body came with a slew of advantages, such as a wider and continuously relevant array of applications, it was also permanent. No getting rid of that one.

Going through the rest of the options, the slime ultimately decided that a sense of smell was not that important, so it got rid of the vulture nose and sported a poison bag. Now it only needed to produce the poison.

"I wish I knew what is going on inside there," the metal fairy, whose exterior was squeaky clean from getting a thorough cuddling session, poked at the slime's exterior. A less experienced Aclysia would have made a surprised noise when the slime suddenly started moving again, but at this point the suddenness of her awakener's decisions could not bother her. She was pretty good at going with the flow.

Galloping as best as the thin bird legs allowed it, the slime gained momentum. After a few metres, it spread its wings and beat all four of them at once, raising it off the ground just enough to give it time for a second beat. The back and front pair of grey feathered wings gradually went from large synchronized strokes to a tandem where the slime went from maintaining height to gaining it.

Taking advantage of the natural winds, it soon glided effortlessly and watched over the landscape.

It should have kept its eyes higher.

"Awakener!" the urgent tone fell on deaf ears and the slime suddenly found the winds underneath its wings ripped away by a magical gust from the opposite direction. Its whole world tumbled around and Aclysia was catapulted off its back. With a majestic screech and sporting its sickle-like talons, dark grey on yellow feet, an eagle was heading for the slime.

Not any eagle, but exactly the one the slime wanted to fight, given away by the acidic burn marks on the black-tipped yellow beak. The king of the air had tolerated this pretender in its domain long enough and now moved in to teach this creature a lesson. Unaware that it was facing its former prey, the Ctanian mountain eagle clashed into the chimera and then both of them turned into a kicking, scratching and biting assembly of limbs in free fall.

The slime did not like this whatsoever. It had planned to face the eagle, but it had wanted to do so on its own terms and with poison in hand. Instead, it had been the one who got ambushed, the eagle was now on its defenceless back. Even worse, with all the recent growing it had done, getting rid of the useless poison bag and replacing it with something more useful was not an option. It would only leave the slime famished and it shouldn't risk losing energy in the middle of a fight.

Not that the speed at which it all happened even allowed it to think about it in mid-combat adaptations. This was not an axolotl thrashing periodically, this was an eagle in full flight, picking its curved beak at the slime's eyes.

Picked and succeeded. At the same time as the talons ripped open the slimes outter membrane, it lost an eye. Acidic and faux blood spluttered into the air. The slime's only retaliation was to try and use its newly acquired fangs to deal some damage in return. It hit. Hit and bit into a mouthful of dense feathers, only barely reaching flesh with the tips.

Without poison, that wasn't enough.

The long neck of the vulture, which the slime thought was an advantage at first, turned out to be a massive weakness. Once the attack of its first head had been evaded by the skilled predator, the eagle moved in. As great as a long neck was for mobility, it was also a large and exposed weak spot. The eagle had killed more than one vulture in its days.

While it was true that the corpse eaters were generally bigger, the eagle was better in almost every other aspect. Its talons were sharper, its beak more dangerous, its sharp form allowed for quicker and more nimble flight and this particular breed even wielded minor air magic.

Torrents of electricity flooded the slimes body. Not a harmful amount, just enough to paralyze it for a few seconds. Which was all the eagle needed as it let go of the slime. Their fight had been about to end in a double suicide, the ground too close. Letting an enemy shatter on the rocky floor of the mountainside was a normal way to end prolonged battles in the air, be it by taking away their wings or paralyzing them.