Drip-Fed Pt. 08

Apexus wasn't too afraid right now. 'I can just eat a few trees, here,' he thought. 'Should be careful about it in the future though.'

The next few question were a bit more difficult. First, should he move the speaking plates currently in his mouth? After rationilizing for a few moments, he decided to keep them where they were, even going further and integrating them to the mouth, attached to the upper jaw. It had turned out to be awful protection and, more importantly, having it break during combat limited his communication abilities, which seemed rather important to have.

He didn't like having it in the head, but the surfaces were out and this was the space he was most used to opening and closing quickly, so it should work quite nicely. Having it melded to the bone would hopefully prevent it from breaking or sliding around inside when he was biting something that was violently struggling.

Getting the wings attached to the spine, ribs and shoulder blades was a decision Apexus made only out of curiosity at first. With the knowledge that he could detach them, he had just wanted to know what difference it would make. Just from a few testing flaps he could say: quite a bit. Having the muscle strings tethered to a proper, rigid place gave them a whole lot more stability and a bit more power. Not that Apexus had troubles with flying in the past, but there was little speaking against having more ability in that area.

He tried the same for eyes and ears. There was no noticeable difference there in terms of perception, but the speed at which he could turn his ears or move his eyes improved slightly. It was something that he took, but that he didn't think was vital.

That then covered all of his current permanent Growths, which only left the problem of his shape. During the flight a short while ago, he had folded himself back together to an ellipsis, because that was the shape he knew and that he was comfortable with. Now that he wasn't trying to escape anymore, at least not from immediate danger, the question was whether or not he wanted to go back to that.

The question was a pretty obvious no. Although having been useful for a long time, being a formable blob had a set of crippling disadvantages. First and foremost: on the ground, he was incredibly slow. Having a pair of legs was the best way to alleviate that problem. Arms had a good amount of reach and were easier to control than tentacles.

However, Apexus wasn't quite sure if he agreed with a few things about the whole layout. First off, did he really want a neck? Past experiences had taught him that necks were more cumbersome weak points than all that useful. On inspection, however, he found that turning his head was pretty useful to look around more quickly.

'Its pretty short, so its probably going to be fine?' the slime thought. Unlike normal animals, he wasn't going to die just because something bit him in the throat anyway. 'Don't think two-legged works best... bipedal is proper word, I think,' the slime continued to analyse, lengthening his spine a bit and balancing the span of arms and legs until they were all roughly equal.

The ends still looked different, but Apexus didn't really mind. He just kept the fingers close together and kept the slime fused so the hands formed sort of pseudo-feet. The result was a pretty alien mixture of a translucent human, a bird and a wolf. The chimeric slime walked on his four limbs, quite happy with the result.

Then he began to run as quickly as he could. Not nearly as fast a wolf, but still at a decent speed all things considered. Humans would still be able to catch up to him, but this new speed would buy him a few precious seconds. Enough to hopefully spread his wings and fly away. Just as Apexus was doing right now.

The new form turned out to have a new problem. One that only really crystallized as Apexus continued to eat and get back up to his former size and then a bit beyond that. Having devoured a member of the human species had given Apexus a boost in his potential, unsurprisingly. Although that boost was only a difference of a few centimetres. Growth had been slowing for a while. Apexus himself didn't know if there was some point at which he would top out.

All of those were expected, however, while this new problem was a surprising nuisance. All of the extra slime he now had was impossible to properly control around the bones. Basically, he had a lot more mass than surface that he wanted to cover with it. There were three solutions he had found so far, but none of them were satisfying and now that he had restocked all of his energy reserves, about a day of munching down one and a half trees later, the superfluous amount was downright crippling.

The first solution Apexus had worked with was to keep the extra slime close to the core. That did make it easy to control, to the same extent as Apexus had over all of his body before. However, it soon became unworkable. Thanks to the regained mass, a massive blue bag was soon hanging from his chest, making walking a chore and creating a dangling centre of gravity where he was just getting used to his new weight distribution. So that had to be dismissed.

Second off was trying to distribute the slime equally over the bones anyway. This worked, for a limited time. Control over mass that was more than a few centimetres from the bones was hard or downright impossible, depending on the distance. It culminated in that extra slime 'sliding' down Apexus' form whenever he wasn't paying attention, all gathering at the feet, causing him to slow down or (much more annoyingly) to just drop off slime in medium sized chunks from his stomach. If it wasn't getting stuck in the influence zone of the nucleus anyway, which looped right back to the problem of the first solution.

Then, the third thing Apexus managed to come up with, was to just upsize the bones. More surface area meant more place to control the slime. This created a whole new set of problems with the environment, however. Getting thicker bones made him slower again, longer ones created a body that was hard to manoeuvre through the dense woodwork of the forest.

A balance of the two was the best way Apexus had found to go about it so far, but now that he was at his current maximum size again, he was almost three metres from hands to feet. He was much narrower than before, courtesy of giving up the elliptic shape, and it showed in that length. It was absolutely impossible to keep this size, unless Apexus aimed to adopt some slow lifestyle like the Forester Dragons. It was too easy to spot for any sort of ambush and, more importantly, couldn't manoeuvre very well.

So, now that he had a moment and was no longer craving food to stock up on his reserves, Apexus sat down and dealt with that problem. Sitting on the stony shore of a river, the deformed humanoid of a slime sorted a couple of stones into random patterns, as he thought. A simple exercise he had taken to in order to train more with his new hands. An incredibly needed thing, since his fingers had become as thick as the fangs of some dungeon spiders he had eaten. They were almost impractically stubby.

'I have two ideas,' Apexus managed to scramble his thoughts together, literally turning his nucleus upside down in order to shake out a few thoughts. Not that the organ cared about the way it was aligned with gravity. 'First...' the slime then tried to exercise even more influence over his nucleus, in an attempt to forcefully convert some of the slime into extra layers of his core. Essentially, he was trying to reverse the process that had allowed his own 'revival' to occur.

With absolutely no success whatsoever.

It was like a human trying to slim down by just thinking a lot. There was just no way that was going to work. Apexus had no control over the process and just severely limited experience with the actual regeneration. No matter how hard he concentrated on his core, slimming down this way was impossible for this slime.

'Other thing, then,' the chimeric creature thought, not resigning even at the seemingly inedible problem. If he couldn't store the extra slime elsewhere, he just had to make what was there denser. Easier said than done. It was another area that the slime hadn't experimented with before, but his mass was an area he had considerably more control over than his core.

From all that Apexus knew, his slime was mostly water. Not just water, as evident by Reysha once wondering if she could drink his separated slime and finding it to taste salty and metallic. Overall unpleasant and unfit for hydration, but still water, as she hadn't complained about the usual foul taste she experienced when eating proper things.

The acidic parts of it all came from being part of the (somewhat) solid unit that was Apexus himself. A sort of magical solution that dissolved what was inside it as long as the slime's mana pulsated along. Something that also allowed him to digest selectively, like corroding a hole into a clamshell.

Following that logic, it should have been possible to reduce the amount of water in the slime, shaving a good amount of overall weight and size off. There was even precedence in his own body for this. The membrane, as thin as it was, that separated the highly liquid acid from the outside world had a different makeup to it. Which was good most of the time, Apexus didn't want his trails to be even easier to find by accidentally eating the plant life every step or crawl along the way. Also, without that surface tension, holding any shape that didn't look like puddle would have been difficult.

Obviously getting a thicker membrane had its own problems. First and foremost, that Apexus would need a longer time to open it to swallow something. As far as he was concerned, however, that was less of a problem, since he was less favourable towards eating live prey whole anyway. The bigger, more powerful his food got, the higher the risk they would struggle inside of him to a degree that hurt his nucleus. Better to kill, then swallow, and in those situations the speed at which he did that was pretty unimportant anyway.

'Only matters, if I manage to do it, though,' Apexus told himself, as he continued to shift this or that. A nearby group of wild cats spotted the incredibly odd creature, sitting still aside from the hands, on the incredibly long arms, that still toyed with stones, and decided to go somewhere further up the river to drink.

A decision they took with double the speed when the thing suddenly opened its mouth imperfectly, strands of goo connecting the upper and lower jaw, stretching over the teeth of the translucent, blue creature. A skeletal nightmare straight out of the land that should not be. Throwing his hands into the air, Apexus let out a triumphant little, "Yay!" before feeling incredibly odd at his mimicking of such human expressions. "Not like anyone is around that can understand me anyway," it echoed out of the unmoving (and practically non-existent) lips, all speech being formed by the vibrating plate attached to the skull.

The reason for this joy was a simple success. Apexus raised his hand and looked at it. The index finger looked incredibly odd in comparison to its neighbour. A shade darker in its blue, from azure closer to midnight, thanks to the higher density, the slime sat much closer to the bone, also removing the problem of his fingers being too stubby for purpose.

The following hour was spent giving the rest of his body that treatment and shrinking down a fair bit. Bones were sized down again, both in length and thickness, while Apexus covered all of his limbs in this new, thicker membrane. Around the torso, he kept the membrane thinner, while he didn't change anything about the head. Logic being that these were the areas he ate and spoke with. The limbs being largely unused for that purpose, them covered almost entirely by membrane, only a bit of actual slime around the bone, was no problem.

Overall, it reduced Apexus' size by about half a metre, measured again from the fingertips to the toes. More importantly, it made him a good bit leaner. It also dawned on the slime that there would be other advantages to having a thicker hide. Namely that he wouldn't be hurt as easily and that he would need less water to survive. The question was, if he could maintain this state for long periods without it naturally converting back.

Time would tell, the slime had to get moving. All this internal shifting had made him hungry again.

'And now?' Apexus wondered, once he had filled up on leaves. The new form had one drawback he had discovered, namely that melting his fingers together was practically impossible. That was something he had only done for the ease of walking on four limbs, however, and was not even necessary for that. Walking on a clenched fist was, while less comfortable, just as possible.

He walked around, testing and thinking. There seemed to be no improvements or degradation of his movement from this change, save the one brought by being slimmer. For all intents and purposes, he was now at the height of his strength. Was it already time to assault the Church? 'Is there anything else,' Apexus wondered, 'that I can eat to get stronger?'

His head passed through something invisible, a flash of light accompanying the penetration of the invisible barrier, as the slimes desire for something wove into the spell hiding a small house in the forest. At the sight of the metal fence, animalistic instincts immediately kicked in. Between fight, flight or freeze, Apexus subconscious chose the last option, as his blue eyes spotted the old man in the brown robe.

Who stared back just as frozen. "Apexus...?" Gizmo's voice was trembling as he slowly rose from the stump the slime used to sit on and stumbled towards the fence. "Is that you? You... you're... you're alive!" his hands hit the invisible barrier, which flared up with green fire, connected to the spikes of the fence through lines of magic. "I met..." suddenly, he shut up, his open mouth snapped close as if clenched by an invisible force. "...A member of the church came here to taunt me over your death," he continued, now calm despite the tears rolling down his face.

The slime wasn't clear on how to react. There were no red eyes, filled with monstrous greed for the lifeforce of others, that had burned themselves into Apexus' memory like a fire into a growing tree. "Is it really you, Gizmo?" the slime asked.

"You can talk!" the old man exclaimed, so happy about this. "You sound well but..." Blinking away the tears, the slime's former mentor more closely examined the chimeric creature's appearance. "Apexus, how many have you killed?"

"Just one," the slime said, walking slowly up the fence and sitting down more than a hand's reach away even from the barrier, from which Gizmo now took a forceful step back. "One too many..." Apexus added, regretfully, "...but I had no choice, it was either to do it or die."

"I see," Gizmo sat down in the grass opposite of Apexus, the two of them silent for a long time, hanging their heads in shame. For what they had done and for what they were powerless to change. The old man attempted to speak several times, each time his open mouth produced no words. Tears welled up again, although Apexus was unable to discern why. Finally, he pressed something out. "The man... the monster that you ran from, Apotho... Apexus, he is the original inhabitant of this body. I am just a crack in his psyche, born from trauma. Every day I am fading more and the change is only accelerating. Even now he..." an odd pause, but Apexus didn't think too much of it, "...is taking back control."

Apexus was unnerved knowing that, but had no idea what to do with that information. "Can I help?"

"No," the answer was immediate and harsh. "Don't cross this fence. I might absorb your lifeforce." The old man swallowed his tears and asked. "What brings you to me, Apexus? What reason do you have to return to me?"

"I am... I'm trying to become stronger," the slime responded and then quickly reported what had happened since he had last seen the old man. He nodded along, listening eagerly, commenting with a headshake towards the actions of the Inquisition, how illogical they acted, and voiced surprise that a Hunter of this level was on the leaf.

"I am able to help you," Gizmo said, after having heard everything. "Listen, there are two things you must know. Under the mountain to the east, they imprisoned a demon that Apotho summoned once upon a time. It lives in one of the many caves underneath. Killing it might allow you to grow a little more."

Apexus listened carefully to that. It sounded almost too good to be true. A worthwhile opponent as far away from the city was possible. Presumably well-hidden, nevertheless exactly what the slime needed. "Is he bad because he is a demon?" the slime nevertheless had to ask, not wanting to kill anymore sapient things if he could avoid it.

"He is practically an animal," Gizmo assured with a nod. "Capable of little more speech than the Archwood Maggots you encountered. He also killed more than a few people himself." The old man's voice again hardened, but in a different, resolute way than the hardness from before, "He is being tolerated because contact with an Impreh level demon is essential for the early training of Warlocks. Killing him will give less people the chance to even attempt their hand at this best forgotten Class. Just look out for his hide, he is a Skinwalker type."

Apexus had barely any idea what that meant. Before he could ask, however, Gizmo suddenly reached to his head, groaning in pain. Nervously, Apexus stumbled over his words. "Happening what is you okay? Need tea?"

"He is... just being a pain..." the smooth-voiced Warlock growled. "Listen, the second thing. In a week's time, the Day of the First Ascension will be held. A person with a three-coloured robe will attend, for just a few minutes, between city and church, when the sun is about to set. Approach him, mention my name if you must to keep his attention, and he will lead you to Aclysia, you understand? Only on that day and only at that time can you ask him. It's a human tradition."

Apexus found that incredibly odd, but between the building of streets, their nonsensical language structures, their love for squares and bloated communication systems, it wasn't surprising for the slime to hear about some odd rule that you could only approach people in three-coloured robes at certain times and then they had to oblige.

"Now go!" the ancient sorcerer suddenly shouted. "Don't come back here! I can't hold him back much longer!"

Apexus was once more confused, wasn't he secure on the other side of this fence? Why would that matter? 'Gizmo sounds very urgent, I should listen,' the slime, however, trusted his old mentor enough to follow his words, despite his doubts, especially after he had just been told of another way to become stronger in the waiting time. Even if that strength might not matter.

"Thank you," Apexus said as he quickly turned around. Walking through the barrier, he found himself back where he had been, close to the river, an endless distance away from the real location of the barrier. As such, the slime had no hope of hearing the mixture of sobbing and laughter the old Warlock let out.

"Blessed be the liar who stumbles upon the naïve, for his manipulation still holds weight before they learn," Apotho mused to himself.

"Has she talked yet?" the Cardinal asked, causing Mehily to shake her head wordlessly. All Remezan could do was sigh and scratch his bald head. "This is just one giant disaster," he mumbled, not for the first time in the week, "The monster-tainted Rogue flees the night we captured her, killing several people on her way out. Then the monster we aimed to catch somehow comes back to life a week later, eats another one of the guards, flees for everyone to see and the Hunter able to track that thing has already left. All the while, an angel refuses to speak to the priesthood. We learned nothing, lost control over one beast and may have created a second one."