[SS] Chapter 16: Progress and Evolution

A pack of wolves were prowling the area. Scent markers from other wolves in the area had not been renewed recently and that was both welcome and suspicious. The pack of seven had moved in to claim the territory but the lack of others had their hackles raised. They knew something was wrong but not what. They got their answer when they came across something entirely unnatural in a forest. It looked like a giant wooden cube, with a single tunnel stretching far out from it. The wolves were immediately suspicious and smart enough to circle this strange thing. Even going so far as to climb on top of it. It was a truly massive cube that had taken up this part of the forest. They could find no entrances besides the tunnel leading in.

The wolves weren’t about to enter a tunnel, normally, but something was wrong. They felt a pull towards it. A desire. Something was in there and their senses were telling them it was something good. Eventually, desire broke animalistic reasoning and they cautiously walked in.

The tunnel was large but only enough for three wolves to stand shoulder to shoulder. It was also dark and soon, all seven wolves could only see through the light coming from the door. They were alert, ready to attack or bolt in a moment’s notice. Yet still, they all walked in. Something was calling for them. Every instinct they had was screaming danger and opportunity.

Thump.

The wolves turned back around in panic, their surroundings suddenly going pitch black. Where there used to be light, there was now only darkness. The reason was simple, the doorway was gone. it had suddenly vanished, leaving them in total darkness. The wolves panicked, trying to find the door and leave. They found only a wooden wall.

They heard a yelp from one of their pack and quickly turned toward the noise. The scent that drifted over to them, however, had each of them ready to attack. Blood, they smelled blood. A predator, something had attacked their kin in total darkness.

Panic began to set in. Sounds of a sort they had never heard before were coming from the source of the scent and they backed up out of fear. Suddenly, one of the wolves felt something land on top of him and panicked, yelping like crazy. A blurble was heard.

The wolf ran down the dark tunnel, his pack following behind. What had only moments ago been a curiosity and sense of desire had become sheer terror. The wolf had the lead but was soon outsped by its faster pack members. That was the only reason it survived as it heard its pack member make a terrible noise and come to dead stop in front of it.

The wolf crashed into its brethren, only to feel something sharp begin to stab at it from where it crashed into.

It leap back but its heart froze in terror as it could no longer hear or smell its pack members nearby. It saw a brief ray of light and what it saw was death. Floating in the darkness was a creature of yellow surrounded by ghostly hands. Before it could do more than scream, it felt its limbs be grabbed and saw the creature leap towards it. Its world became pain.

And then its world became nothing.

.

.

.

Being an [Acid Slime] was so cool! Visually, it wasn’t all that crazy, I thought. From anyone who saw me, I went from blue to yellow. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was now an [Acid Slime].

[Acid Slime:

Gain 3 Astra a day

+2 END

+1 CON

Requirements:

70 Astra

Melt 30 Unique Items

Skill Gains:

Enhanced Melt

Devour

Skill Losses:

Melt]

The +3 to every stat was very, very welcome but it was the skills I was really interested in.

[Enhanced Melt - Use your slime to corrode through materials, can melt through adamantite tier items and gold.]

[Devour - Your Absorb skill is enhanced and able to eat objects at an increased rate]

I keep forgetting how powerful certain monster lines can be. My Melting and Devour skills are strong enough to be used in combat now. But that wasn’t all that had changed in the last few…. weeks?

I’m going to be honest with myself, I have completely and utterly lost track of how many days have passed.

But that’s not my fault! I mean, I forgot to keep track, sure, but it’s hard. There’s almost no point. Work during the day, sleep during the night, it’s really easy to lose track. But I’m pretty sure it’s only been a few weeks.

For starters, I evolved. Tada! And what an evolution. For starters, +3 stats across the board, +2 END and +1 CON. A great stat boost. Being able to actually be a threat if something wants to attack me was a great stress reliever. But more than that, it felt like I had made real substantial progress. And it was not nearly the only source of it.

It was kinda, it was significant but not. On one hand, everything about me had changed. On the other hand, that literally happened like less than a few weeks ago and my [natural instincts] skill made it where my new body was, well, as natural as it should be. So in the end, I was kinda left at a loss. I should feel more about it but I don’t? Except for the realization of what it could do for me. Also, fear. Fear for what I could become. I hadn’t looked at it, but I could now see the next step above. I worried it’d be something super insane and only at Gen 3. At Gen 7 it’s probably something insane like “Super Omega God Slime.” I didn’t need that kind of pressure on me right now.

Anyway, there had been plenty of significant progress outside of just my evolution.

I fell into a routine.

For the first few days, I spent the first few hours or so working on my evolution. That really didn’t take long. It only required me melting a bunch of stuff. Sadly, what counted as a “Unique Item” was really annoying. It took a while before I was able to complete that. A stick and a wooden spear are apparently too close together, for example.

But after that, I’d pour mana into the Dungeon Core, not overdoing it this time. And I had put that mana to use. But more on that later.

After the Dungeon pouring, I’d dedicate the rest of my morning to magic. Which was great. I fucking loved magic. I could now make shapes and things pretty easily and was able to have some control over my dark bolts in mid flight. Enough to curve a bit. Any more progress was slow going. I didn’t know what I could or just couldn’t do. Ultimately, after reading my magic skill for the hundredth time and trying to think about it, I realized I was trying to, basically, be too fancy. Take Fire magic. It allows you to manipulate fire. Sure, maybe you could make fire versions of yourself or fire whips, but at its core, you’re basically a fire bender.

With that realization, I started trying to work purely on two things. Control and Quantity. Thinking of myself as a “Darkness” bender, then what became the most important was, more or less, acknowledging that this was it. Dark was dark, same as water was water. So I had to learn the properties of darkness itself. The first few were easy. It’s dark. Big shocker there. But it was also cold. It wasn’t a gas or a liquid or a solid or even a plasma, it was darkness. That led me to stop trying to think about it as magic at all. What does actual darkness do? It makes it harder to see, it makes you colder because of the absence of light and warmth being able to reach you, and it isolates you in a way. I wasn’t a scholar and I wasn’t a physicist. I knew darkness was just the absence of light so being able to summon and control it directly shouldn’t have made sense.

Yet here we are. And I don’t know how true it was for actual dark, but I had discovered a new property. Isolation. Being completely covered in darkness blocked out the rest of the world. It wasn’t just sight. Sound and smell were affected too. Nothing got past the layer of darkness.

I think I was really starting to understand Darkness better. Maybe one day, I’ll find a ton of combat or defensive applications but until then, it seemed like it was almost entirely geared towards disorientation.

Anyway, after I’d spend my morning working on that, I’d shift gears and work on Astra training for a while. Progress in that field had been achingly slow. But I can confirm a few things. I have, along with probably nearly everything alive, an Astra Aura. I was able to expand it by the smallest amounts and that took a great deal of effort. I also have focused on refining what I’m already able to do. Basically, more control over the process of expelling and taking in Astra. That way I don’t try to take from a tree and explode or expel all of my life force and die. I have focused mainly on pulling from grass, to the point I had to use some mana from my Dungeon Core to make new grass. That helped my studies tremendously because that grass didn’t have Astra. It was a complete fake. My Dungeon Core can make things but those things are made out of mana in a special way. Meaning they aren’t alive. Studying a non-living entity made by mana, that same thing sucked dry of Astra, another version of it overloaded with astra to the point of death, and its completely normal version all side by side to each other helped me get a feel for the energy tremendously. That small patch in my yard was advancing how well I could feel the energy by leaps and bounds.

Still, the most practical applications I’ve done is get better at what I can already do and very very slightly expand my aura. Good but nothing to write home about yet, despite how proud of myself I am already for managing to progress anywhere at all with it.

After a few hours of that, well into the afternoon, I would start my next stage of training. Senses expansion and brain rewiring. Basically, being able to summon more [Spirit Hands] and change how I think I can see for [True Sight]. I can now hold up to six hands at once. My brain is still rebelling hard against it, especially when I each have them do different things. Annoyingly, I think I’ll hit a natural limit unless I start putting more points into INT. WIS helps with the headaches and SPI with focus but INT is probably what I need a lot in order to actually control more than six hands at once. Even six seems so incredibly taxing. It’s just a lot of stimulus going out. I have no idea if a human can actually control so many limbs. Still, even without tons of INT, I intend to keep working on it.

And that brings me to [True Sight]. It is by far, the most frustrating skill to train. I have to convince my subconscious that I can do stuff and simply willing it to happen doesn’t give very good results. I have however come up with a method that seems to be working. Chanting.

“I can see in the dark. I can see in the dark. I can see in the dark. I can see in the da…”

Etc etc. I have to ingrain the ideas so deeply that I truly, truly believe them. And there has been some progress there. I can now, well, somewhat see in the dark. It’s at best mediocre but still, it’s a noticeable improvement. I can’t see in pitch black darkness or through my own spells but I can kinda make out a few shapes, ish, maybe? I’ve also been able to “zoom” my eyes in, just a tiny bit, which isn’t really the same as being able to actually move my eyes but I’ll take it for now.

Then after that and the day is winding down, I’d work on my dungeon and oh boy, has the work progressed there. For starters, I’m no builder. I suck at building. I was never going to make a fancy base with multiple floors or anything crazy. Instead I built a massive fucking block that covers my entire area. A giant wooden cube that covers the cave, the top of the cave and the land all around it. It’s horribly ugly. But it works, as in, I no longer go to sleep worrying about getting attacked and killed during it. Sad thing I realized though, you can’t block off a Dungeon Core. I don’t get the reasoning exactly but I know trying to do it causes the Dungeon Core to get really pissy and glow red and cause you to feel like it’s going to attack you or something, so I have decided to never try and do that again. That’s why I built a Death Tunnel.

Because here’s the sad second thing I realized, for some reason, I’m pretty sure anything that enters my Dungeon Core range? Domain? Gets drawn in. Like moths to a fire. I kinda feel guilty about that. It’s one thing to murder wolves trying to actually genuinely kill me. It’s another to murder wolves that would have left me alone if my Dungeon Core wasn’t acting like some kinda beacon. And more than once, I’ve been tempted to show mercy and just let them all go and leave and never come back.

But I can’t. I tried to do that. I either scare them off for a little while but then they come back, again and again and again. If they came in groups, killing one of them to scare the rest off never works. They go into a rage after they get over their terror and just kept coming back.

Honestly, it’s kinda scary. Both the Dungeon Core and just how many wolves there actually are in this damn forest. Via falling spike traps, pit traps, pendulums that one time I tried them, and spike walls, I’ve killed a few dozen wolves. And it shows.

[General/Crown/Evolution/Dungeon

Name: Slimy Slime

Free stat points: 0

HP: 278/278

MP: 160/160

STR: 27

AGI: 27

DEX: 27

CON: 26

END: 27

INT: 26

WIS: 26

SPI: 26]

I decided to just focus on my main stats for now. I’ve been getting really, really worried the stronger I get. This was after like, less than two dozen wolves. I get stats weren’t everything but I was starting to hope there was kind of natural drop off. Sure, if I had 1000 strength, it would take killing and eating 100 wolves to raise it by 10%. But that suggests I would have 1000 strength. I just don’t get stats and maybe I never will.

Oh yeah, the wolf slaying. Honestly, I had kinda gone all in on traps. The door I just spent mana closing every time more than one wolf came in. I guess I didn’t need to but it made things easier if they were blind. Earlier today, a pack of seven had shown up. Largest group yet by far. I had activated a simple trap that jabbed a wooden spear straight down. I spent a stupid amount of mana trying to figure out a good method for it to actually go fast enough to pierce something before the dungeon finally gave me a break. That spike slammed down, killing one and I tried to throw a wooden spear using my ghostly hands at another, but my stupid Omen of The Fool activated.

[Omen of The Fool - Unable to use weapons or armor without fumbling. Lasts 6 months.]

I had completely forgotten about that stupid curse. One ran through the tunnel, another followed, and I hurried to follow. After that, well, it was a slaughter. A surprised wolf vs an overpowered [Acid Slime] was no contest. The rest died in traps. It kinda pissed me off. Somehow, two wolves had managed to skip over all of my traps, up to my spike wall. The actual tunnel didn’t go anywhere, not anymore. It was a false entrance and led to just a dead end. I had managed to carve out a small tunnel in the back of my cave that let out of the ground. The perfect size for a slime. Luckily, my Dungeon Core didn’t get mad about doors so hopefully no wolf would easily get in that way. Right now I was working on something a little special. I was saving up 1000 mana for my dungeon to buy something special.

My first Dungeon Monster.