[SS] Chapter 6: Who's got skills? Me, that's who! HAHA!

I was selecting my skills. Already, I had chosen the literal bare basics and they had cost the appropriate amount. Honestly, universal speech alone seemed worth its weight in gold. All languages? If anything was more than a mindless beast, a dialogue could now be opened.

But then my eyes had landed on True Sight while I had been skimming.

True Sight - You become able to see even if the race or circumstances does not permit you to see. You see from the point of view you subconsciously believe to be where your eyes are at. With enough practice you will be able to move your vision, in order to look up that cute girl’s skirt for example.

Ignoring the last part, this was exactly perfect. It was exactly what I need. What was my major problem all of this time? Well, besides dealing with so much in such a short time frame that I’m pretty sure I’d need literal months to decompress. It was that I was starting out weak and helpless. Literally blind. With this, that issue was fixed and I just needed something for combat and defense. It was an instant buy. I started to scan the rest of skills and some were strange.

A H.U.D. and minimap for example. Good but not something I’d want to buy over other things. I could purchase magic skills but they were costly the higher up in tiers I went. If I sacrifice literally all of my other skills, I could get a Tier 8 magic skill in, well, anything. I didn’t like that. It would be permanently stuck at that level and that just didn’t sit right with me when that was going to be part of my soul.

An appraisal skill I mentally marked and might come back to. More information was always good, even if I’d probably never really make use of most of it. It wouldn’t give me a supreme memory after all.

Dark vision was redundant. True Sight seemed like it would allow me to see perfectly fine anywhere. Maybe it was affected by the dark but if it wasn’t affected by me literally being blind and not having eyes, I doubted light level mattered.

There were medical skills I mentally marked but none of them were straight up healing. More like advanced magical degrees in being a doctor and a nurse. Useful, especially good combinations with my life authority I felt, but ehh. Enhanced regeneration already made me heal at 4x speed.

The physical skills were, well, they clearly weren’t designed with a slime in mind. What was I going to craft for example? What body part or limb was I going to “enhance”? I didn’t have any body parts. To say nothing of the Strong Bones Skill. Enhanced organ, enhanced internal regeneration, extra limbs, etc etc etc and so on. All useless to a slime. The only thing I was tempted by was the physical resistance but it was far too expensive for a T5 or T4.

I kept reading and found a pretty good one. I was still sticking by my philosophy gained from multiple fantasy books I’ve read:

Only take what you can’t do on your own.

The fact of the matter was, I had a really long life span now. I could probably, eventually, get T5 resistance in all 4 physical resistance skills. I could learn magic on my own and eventually reach those insane heights without any issue. Anything that I could do on my own, eventually, wasn’t going to be chosen. Universal speech not withstanding because that saved me incredible amounts of time and I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that I actually could or would, learn every language ever.

I saw a skill called Elemental Resistance that made you, well, resistant to any element depending on how much mana you pumped in and I was sorely tempted but I had to pass it up. It had a time limit of an hour so it would be way too situational.

I did grab Magic Diet though.

Magic Diet - Able to suck out magic from magic enchantments and magic in general. You can eat magic spells with practice. Beware, eating too much Magic Power at once may cause you to explode or mutate.

Honestly, it was perfect. It was a skill in the pure definition of the word. I could now do something I couldn’t before and I, through my own power, could get better at that something. The Skill itself would remain stagnant forever but I could practice to train myself to easily eat magic spells or possibly eat faster. Hopeful on that last one but either way, this might allow me to be a mage’s worst nightmare. If I ever get all of the Physical Resistance skills and get good enough with this, I’d be a nightmare to fight. All your magic, eaten before it ever reached me. All your physical attacks, at only 20% effectiveness. It was a good skill.

Next were spells that were truly out of left field. For example, I could telepathically talk to the Gods if I wanted. I mean, yeah, being able to have a phone call with these people would be kinda nice but why? Well, I knew why. It said as much.

Telepathic Link - You gain a link to the God Realm, allowing you to talk to the gods every now and again if you’re feeling lonely.

Amusingly enough, I wasn’t looking forward to being a god. The eternal sense of loneliness might have something to do with it. Still, on the other hand, it seemed like the Gods and Goddesses were working on it as hard as possible. I wonder what the Divine Realm would be like after everyone had enough people in it? Wait, hell, I don’t really know what it’s like now besides having a bunch of Gods wanting me to join them. Questions for literally thousands of years later. Hopefully sooner. It’d be pretty funny if I beat the God of Time’s record.

Another Skill was literally just to turn into a skeleton. Oh but don’t worry, you also had a similar thing for a strumpet (a kind of sex crazed succubus). Weird skills. I did pick up a skill called spirit hands as honestly, I didn’t believe I’d quite get something like it from any other Skills or Evolutions.

Spirit Hands - Able to summon ghostly hands that can pass through walls and objects that are not warded, enchanted, or made of a special material. You can cast spells through these hands, you also have a vague sense of touch. Can make the hands corporeal in order to grab objects and other things.

The synergy with True Sight was amazing. As long as I could see, I could make these hands anywhere I pleased. Blasting an enemy a thousand miles away with a meteor sounded pretty great. Also, well, I was going to be a slime and having hands sounded pretty useful for literally everything.

I kept reading and my breath hitched, hard.

“Oi. Breathe there my boy.”

The God of Crafts knocked me on my back and I could breathe again. I kept reading, shaking like a leaf in sandstorm. It only got worse as I went to the next few skills in the “lineup”.

This!

This!

This is, no way! This, this is, how can this be a skill that’s offered?! No, no way, even more than that, how can these skills be offered?

The feeling of being absolutely ridiculously strong struck me again but this time, there wasn’t the cold dread of someone having tried it before. That, I had to calm down. My mind was a mess. The skills in front of me were so unbelievable, they literally changed my entire life, my entire reality. I could feel like a string of fate had been plucked.

“Oi. Annoying. Who let fate in here? Shoo. Shoo!”

I took deep, deep calming breaths and re-read the skills that would change my whole life.

Astra Acclimation - Astra has less of a negative affect on you, making you age twice as slow now.

Astra Manipulation (Req: Astra Acclimation) - Able to interact with and manipulate astra in ways extremely rarely seen. Able to absorb Astra from other creatures and shoot out Astra to make them Age. There are a plethora of ways for one to use Astra.

Increased Astra Accumulation (Req: Astra Acclimation) - You now generate twice as much Astra than normal. Double per purchase.

I had to take these. No, let’s think this through. Yes, I had to take these but my mind was already swimming with ideas. What was my time limit? Why couldn’t I just hunker down in a bunker somewhere and be safe forever, slowly working on myself? Nothing. The only real threat was the entire rest of the world and that I would need to evolve, eventually, or I’d explode due to Astra. This eliminated that issue, which was nice, but that was never a major concern.

No, more than that, it let me control Astra. Astra was life energy, it was why people aged, it gave people and monsters a certain kind of ethereal and very non-ethereal strength. It made your stats a bit more. How much more was variable but that wasn’t the main point. Astra was also Evolution Energy. It was a very, very low threshold early on, while getting higher the further you went down the line. But I had a sneaking suspicion, a light dread in my heart. Look at, say, one of the second evolutions of a Goblin, a Hob-Goblin. It cost 45 Astra. I didn’t know this, but somehow I felt my early idea of just rapidly switching generations was even stupider than I thought.

It only cost 45 Astra to go from Goblin to Hob-Goblin. If I went all the way through 7 generations of slime, became a goblin for my 8th, would Hob-Goblin still only cost 45?

It should, there was literally nothing telling me it wouldn’t. It was the basic requirement after all. And yet, I felt like Generation really did mean Generation. You were improving your whole body and form. And that meant that sure, you could be a Goblin or Hob-Goblin further down the line instead of at the beginning, but to hold that kind of power, to evolve into a Goblin that was that strong? That took more energy. More Astra.

But let’s ignore even that. It wasn’t all about the amount. Astra was Evolution Energy. I literally couldn’t imagine what being able to control Evolution itself could do to me. What I could become. Some idea’s flashed in my head though. Could I “naturally” increase my strength? Put more Evolution Energy in when I evolve and become a stronger monster at base? Use Astra to go further down a line that has reached its end, creating new, unique, never before seen monsters? After all, I might even unlock some hidden options that way, though I personally doubted that. The power was endless and unknowable.

But there was one thing it definitely could do.

It could affect time. Well, no, it could affect age. If I shoot out Astra at people, I could age them up, till they died. More effective on already old people or monsters with short lifespans…. Like a slime… but still. And on top of that… I could suck Astra out of people and things. This wouldn’t necessarily make them de-age. But it would make them live longer, for sure. With this set of skills alone, anyone I wanted was now immortal.

A seed of an idea bloomed in my heart and I squashed it ruthlessly. If I ever got to that point, I was inviting a calamity on my head.

Anyway, having an immortal kingdom sounded pretty great. There was exactly one way, to get Loyalty. And that was Trust. People had to Trust you. That was it. It’s why even hardened criminals typically had a code or kept their word. Because without it, no one could Trust you and all of your enemies would now be enemies that were afraid of you, in the wrong way. If I made anyone who came to my Kingdom immortal?

Well, that was a hell of a way to earn Trust. Thus Loyalty. I grimaced. Those were a weird mixing of my thoughts and my enlightened thoughts via Authority. They still hadn’t fully meshed together yet because I hadn’t the time to unpack everything but yeah, I was going to be a king and rule a kingdom and yeah, it’d be pretty helpful if all my people were happy and strong and them being immortal would make them incredibly strong over time. I just had to not get my ass utterly wrecked by pissing off the powers that be. I groaned. One angry dragon or mad King and I’d be doomed.

Even those thoughts weren’t enough to dull my enthusiasm.

Astra Manipulation paid so many dividends in the short and long term that it was insane. Sure, long term, immortal kingdom. Medium term, probably cool powers. But short term? I could age certain things to dust. Well, maybe. Probably not. It would probably take a while, even with Accumulation. I picked up all of the skills, spending all my extra points in Astra Accumulation to get a x8 multiplier. Sure, there were plenty of other great skills. From a magical inventory to being able to redistribute stats to even being able to combine magic together and more and more.

But I knew where I wanted to focus.

As a slime, with an Astra generation of uhh, 4 I think? That meant at x8, that was 32 astra day. If I had to guess, a slime would probably only live a year or two. Hedging my bets, maybe 3 years. So that was around a 1000 astra ‘cap’ which I didn’t follow. But there was still a limit. Wait, even if I was a monster, Astra Acclimation made the negative effects of Astra halved for me. So, we could say I had at least a ‘cap’ somewhere between 2000 and 2500. Maybe a little higher.

I stared at my Astra Accumulation, feeling bitter. 32 Astra a day was, fine. But it wasn’t what I wanted. At the higher end, my natural cap would skyrocket. If I survived the first few Gen’s, I might even have a higher Cap than some humans. That meant over 100,000 Astra, before any other effects. Astra Accumulation doubled every purchase but, I was out of points. I couldn’t buy it anymore.

I grumbled to myself.

“I wish I had more points.”

“Hmm? Oh! Right!”

I looked up, startled. The God of Crafts was looking at me.

“Remember that little thing I said about bending a few rules ey? Well I forgot to mention, but you can get some more points from allowing yourself to be cursed. Ey, but don’t worry, these are all temporary misfortunes, but just one of them can kill you if you aren’t careful.”

I looked up at him. That sounded… scary, horrifying, and perfect. I needed every scrap of power. Inviting challenge into my life so early on sounded like a recipe for instant death but, well, it depended on the curse.

“That sounds awesome. Thanks. So, what are the curses?”

“Oh, uh, wait, hold on a minute. I don’t do curses. Hold still godling, I’m gonna go Godnap someone Ho Ho Ho.”

The God of Crafts just, vanished, which gave me whiplash considering he was like a mountain in my vision from just how freaking big he was.

Moments later, he had returned with someone. This someone made me take a step back out of pure instinct. I knew that I had been told that Earth was weird for not having futanari and only having one race but I had only seen two Angelic esk Goddesses, one Goddess with wolf ears, and one human God so far. This person was not any of that.

They were completely naked just like the Goddess of Knowledge but looking at them was a completely different experience. For starters, they were a futanari. Secondly, they had a horse cock. They looked like a satyr fused with a demon. They were, admittedly, very attractive as they had a female form. Pale skin, except for their entire legs and arms and the sides of their necks, which were covered in a very light black with even lighter markings going across all around. Like someone had done a nearly full body tribal tattooing. They had what seemed like ram horns on their head, going back and then curving upwards slightly near the very back, past their head. Their face seemed like a face of innocence and their blond hair only added to that.

It was below the stomach where things got, odd.

They had what I could describe as a Womb Tattoo of a heart. And not the cute ones but the kind you’d expect on a succubus. Then there was their giant horse cock. Order and the God of Knowledge had warned me but it was still, insane, to see actual Futa’s and actual people with non-human genitalia. According to both of them, animal genitals weren’t the only options out there either. The rest of the multiverse was scary. Going even further below, was hooven feet, like a satyr.

“Here they are Godling, worry not I hav-”

“Silence you fiend. Ah, greetings Godling to be, I ^#@#$$%%, A God of Misfortune and Curses, am exceedingly glad that I get to make The Wandering Soul’s new life a literal hell of pain, for the promise of power. Now, let’s get down to what omens you will be cursed with.”

I felt a shiver of horror go up my spine. The God had said all of that with a gentle smile on her face. As if it brought her the utmost peace and pleasure. I wanted to run away right then and there but, no, this is exactly what I needed. I’d do anything for more power. I just needed to survive it. I firmed my will.

“Alright. I’m game.”

“Ho Ho Ho, well, I’ll still be here if you need me Godling. We can finish your forging after you select your curses.”

With that, the God of Misfortune walked towards me and I had to resist two different impulses to run away. The first out of fear of her, the second because her massive fucking cock was coming with her towards me. I’m sorry okay?! I was getting a really bad vibe from her!

“Let us begin. These will not be tied to your soul, as it is a curse that bends your fate ever so slightly to cause bad things to happen to you. Once the Omen happens, it might not happen again, although Fate truly is a harsh mistress. Take as many as you like but even one can end you and multiple can make your starting situation an unsurvivable one. So please, choose a lot for me~.”

Holy crap, she was an evil God. Of course they had to exist but this was the first one I had met. Wait, no, maybe I’m reading too much into this. Maybe she’s just a sadist?

As she flicked her wrist and screens with curses appeared in front of me, I knew I was dead wrong about that. She was bad to the bone. The first curse alone guaranteed that.

[Omen of Rape:

+20 skill points.

An exceedingly powerful creature, like a dragon, has seen a vision involving you and now will hunt you down in hopes of you or it conceiving a child. It won’t stop until a child is conceived between you, or it dies. The creature is always a Futanari. My, how fun~.]