[SS] Chapter 18: Awareness and the first meeting

I felt like a dried out husk as I rolled back to my bunker. I wasn’t okay, but I was doing a little better. I felt more here. And I hated it. Whereas before I’d almost been on autopilot, now I noticed the trees around me, green leaves and brown bark. I felt the leaves weirdly flow through me as I rolled over them. I took more notice of how I didn’t have ears yet could hear birds chirping and didn’t have a nose yet could smell pine. I felt the weird strength I had and yet the lack of muscles or any kind of way that should be possible to use it. And yet I could. I felt the mana flowing through my body, a kind of energy that reminded me of air or water, and Astra, that I could only describe as feeling like Life itself. And I noticed how weird both of things were, especially how I could feel them, especially how I could feel them through my slime body.

Everything was so much more vibrant now and I hated it. It was physically, mentally, and emotionally painful. A word came to mind. Dissociation. Feeling like you’re looking at your body from third person, like it wasn’t really you doing the actions or having these things happening to you. That was how I had been feeling for, for all of this time. Hell, maybe I was still feeling that kind of way. But now everything felt more present. And I hated it. It all just hurt. It wasn’t like the headaches I got from trying to have six, fucking six hands. Fucking, hell, that was freaky. I can summon motherfucking hands and I just never really questioned it. Even when I tried to examine all of my skills, it was with a sense of awe. Not with a sense of how freaky or unnerving or inhuman that was. I summoned one and it was as simple as breathing. And I flinched. I could feel the hand and feel my body. That was a human hand, this was a slime body. I knew that weird feeling of disconnection had been there before but now it was, it was worse. I slowly moved my hand to my own body and slowly felt myself. It was, an intense experience. It was like touching your face for the first time.

I was slime. A slime. Barely solid, closer to a liquid. I felt how I was all one thing. There was no center of me. No piece of my slime was more than any other piece. I poked a finger into myself and it felt, weird. Odd. My skill translated the feeling to well, getting poked. But something was inside me right now, even if only slightly.

I had to stop. I was getting that sensation of being overwhelmed again. I just, stop and took a breath. But I couldn’t breathe. I was a slime. I ignored that and took a deep breath anyway.

There’s nothing wrong with being a slime or having magic or anything like that. It was awesome but it was also, unearthly. I had to stop and just let myself breathe to not have a panic attack or start dissociating again. My plans and desires and goals had all been, fine. But they were missing the most human element. Care. Why did I care? No, what did I care about? What did I really want? What was my end goal and game? I had latched onto being a God because it was all I had after everything that had happened. It was a simple, set goal. A way forward. I was a man suffering from trauma and shock given a word game and I had played that word game like it was all that mattered, thinking about nothing else. Now, I had to do a bit more than that.

None of my goals were really going to change, probably. But I didn’t know that, because I didn’t know what my goals were. And I wasn’t going to know what my goals were for a long time because I am a man that horribly died twice within the span of a single day and I am not okay.

I was not okay. I was not alright. Pretending I was was going to break me. So the first thing I wanted to do was just, acknowledge it all I guess. To feel better. Accept the reality I’m in a bit more. Not just mindlessly do everything because it helps me pretend that all of it didn’t happen. The more I looked at my past actions, the more I could see how I was breaking. What was the color of the wolves fur? The ones I had killed. Any of them. That was the question that had been pinging around in my brain. And the reason was simple, because I didn’t know. I had no idea. Not just the first two, but all of them. I had killed probably around 25 wolves. Why couldn’t I answer what color their fur was?

If you asked me yesterday what kind of trees were around me, I don’t think I could have answered. I looked at one. I wasn’t a tree expert but it reminded me of oak. Why couldn’t I have told you that yesterday? It could have been birch trees for all I knew then. Why couldn’t I once remember hearing a bird chirping in a forest, despite hearing them right now?

It was because I hadn’t been there all the way. I was like the Hob-Goblin I had summoned. Missing a part of my life. I didn’t want to be like that anymore. But the me that was fully here, fully alive, had no idea what to do. No idea what he, ha, Slimy Slime wanted. I still didn’t regret the name choice. It was a joke and my own cry of victory from conquering a few of my demons and I still agreed with that sentiment. That it was funny and fun to have a silly name, and a good thing to try and get better by conquering your demons. Except maybe, hopefully, with less wolf slaying.

Sigh

I still didn’t know what I wanted and it was kinda bothering me. When I had first seen slime, I had chosen it so that I could one day be a [Prince] or [Princess] Slime. So I could continue down that line. Because they had the ability to effectively be their own 1 slime armies and that sounded really cool. It still did sound really cool, it sounds amazing and awe-inspiring but that was an outsider's perspective. We weren’t talking about a cool character in an anime or a show, we weren’t talking about a fun cool thought idea. We were talking about me, myself, and I. My body becoming essentially a million slimes at once. That was horrifyingly amazing. I couldn’t shake, nor did I really want to, how amazing and cool that sounded. I was still that same guy who liked to do crazy shit every now and again and do things just for fun. If you had offered to let me become a slime back when I was a human, I’d have probably said yes if you promised eyes and hands. Because it was cool and I liked to do really cool things. And also because I didn’t always really think things through in the long term despite being able to. Clearly.

But it was also horrifying. I couldn’t imagine being more than one body, having multiple bodies worth of awareness, fighting as a giant mass of creatures. It all sounded so far away and in many ways it was. It would take me a long, long time before I got there, to that point. And even when I did, would it be great or awful? Fun or creepy and alien? I just had no idea.

I was feeling like garbage. I was melancholy. Sad. Maybe even depressed. But I didn’t even really know what I needed. Gods, I wish I had taken that stupid telepathic link. Talking to an actual person would help me tremendously right now.

As if in answer, the bushes nearby me rustled and I turned in fear, ready to put my internal matters aside and deal with whatever was coming to attack me. My slimy non-existent heart was racing a mile a minute. Danger sense hadn’t warned me at all!

Out walked… my Hob-Goblin.

Oh. Well, that was confusing. I knew it didn’t have any life in it. Why on earth had it come over here? And then I noticed something. I had been more than a bit unaware earlier in the day, but, didn’t my Hob-Goblin have a club and not a wooden axe?

“EeeK Grrr Gggg!”

[Goblin Language detected.]

“What’s a Slime doing out here?”

I froze, panic overtaking me.

This wasn’t my Hob-Goblin.