In the anime, in the light novels, collecting materials was a montage.
A quick scene, a few seconds of cheerful foraging, the protagonist returning with armloads of herbs.
Nobody showed the reality of it: the tedious crawling, the trial and error, the frustration of finding the right plant and then having to figure out how to harvest it without hands, without tools, without anything except a gelatinous body that could absorb and store but could not cut or pluck or dig.
I absorbed everything.
Dissolved the moss, the fungi, the leaves, drawing them into my internal storage, breaking them down into their active compounds and holding them in solution.
It was like filling myself with medicine — a strange, alchemical process that the system handled automatically but that I could feel happening, a warmth and fullness in my core that grew with each addition.
This is hard, I thought, and the thought was tinged with a grudging respect for every protagonist I had ever written about.
This is genuinely, honestly, infuriatingly hard.
The stories never mentioned how hard it was.
When I returned to the cavern — an hour later, exhausted in a way I did not think slimes could be — See’s breathing had grown weaker.
The dissolution had spread to her chest, the skin above her breasts turning translucent, the pink of her nipples fading to gray.
I moved to her side.
I positioned myself above her body, and I released everything — every compound, every dissolved herb, every regenerative molecule I had gathered, pushing it out of my body and onto hers, coating her skin with a layer of healing solution that seeped into her dissolving flesh and began, slowly, to reverse the damage.
It took time.
More time.
I watched the gray retreat, watched the translucency fade, watched her skin slowly regain its color — pale but healthy, no longer transparent, no longer dissolving.
The process was gradual, cell by cell, the healing compounds knitting tissue back together at a molecular level.
When it was done, See’s body was stable.
Her breathing had steadied.
Her skin had returned to its natural pale tone, the blonde hair on her head and between her legs no longer matted with dissolving tissue.
She was still naked, still unconscious, still sprawled on the cavern floor with her legs apart and her breasts pressed against the cold stone — but she was alive.
「Subject condition stabilized.
Estimated time until consciousness returns: 24 hours.」
“Good,” I said.
Then I paused.
“Wait — 24 hours?”
「Correct.
The healing process has stabilized the dissolution, but the body requires time to recover from the extensive cellular damage.
Consciousness will return naturally within 24 hours.」
I looked at her.
I knew this woman.
I had written this woman.
I had described every detail of her — the blonde hair, the black mole above her collarbone, the full breasts with their pink nipples, the coarser blonde hair between her thighs.
I had given her a name and a cult and a death and a purpose, and now she was lying in front of me, alive, because I had decided to save her instead of letting her dissolve.
“See,” I said aloud, and the name felt strange in my mouth — or rather, in the vibrations of my body, since I still did not have a mouth.
“Her name is See.”
I recognized her.
Every detail matched.
This was the character I had created — the last worshipper of the Storm Dragon, the woman who had sacrificed two men to break the first seal, the woman who had died at the foot of Veldora’s ice prison.
And she was going to wake up in 24 hours, confused, naked, and likely violent.
I needed time.
Time to think, time to plan, time to figure out how to handle this situation before an angry, naked cultist woke up and tried to kill me.
I reached into my internal storage and found what I was looking for — a compound I had absorbed from one of the forest plants, a natural sedative.
I synthesized it, refined it, and applied it directly to See’s skin, pushing the compound through her pores and into her bloodstream.
「Sedative administered.
Estimated time until consciousness returns: 36 hours.」
Not enough.
I needed more time.
I synthesized another dose, stronger, and applied it.
「Sedative administered.
Estimated time until consciousness returns: 48 hours.」
Again.
「Sedative administered.
Estimated time until consciousness returns: 72 hours.」
Again.
「Sedative administered.
Estimated time until consciousness returns: approximately one week.」
I stopped.
One week.
That should be enough.
I sighed — a full-body deflation that made my surface ripple like a stone dropped in a pond.
Then I turned toward the ice wall.
Toward the dragon.
The ice was warm against my body when I pressed myself against it.
Not cold — warm, impossibly warm, radiating heat that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the sheer magical pressure of the entity sealed within.
The ice was not ice in the conventional sense.
It was condensed magic, crystallized will, a physical manifestation of the Hero’s power, and it hummed with energy that I could feel in every molecule of my slime body.
Through the ice, the golden eyes watched me.
Vast.
Ancient.
Intelligent.
Each pupil was a vertical slit, the iris a deep, burning gold that seemed to contain within it the memory of every storm that had ever crossed the sky.
The scaled face was dark — deep blue-black, almost black, with ridges and horns and a geometry that spoke of a creature designed not by evolution but by the raw forces of nature itself.
I was not afraid.
This surprised me.
By all rights, I should have been terrified — I was a dinner-plate-sized slime pressing myself against the prison of one of the most powerful beings in existence, a True Dragon, a creature capable of flattening cities and reshaping continents.
But I was not afraid, because I was a slime, and slimes did not have the biological hardware for fear, and because some part of me — the part that had written about this dragon, that had theorized about its personality and its loneliness and its desperate need for companionship — knew that this particular dragon was, at its core, a creature that craved connection.
“Hey,” I said.
My voice — the vibration-based projection that allowed me to speak — echoed through the cavern.
“Can you understand me?”
The eyes shifted.
The ice groaned.
A sound came from behind the barrier — deep, resonant, a voice that was less a voice and more a pressure wave, each word hitting my body like a gust of wind.
“…What manner of creature are you?
A slime?
You dare approach me?”
“Yeah, I’m a slime.
And you’re Veldora, right?
The Storm Dragon?”
Silence.
Then:
“You know my name.”
“I know a lot of things.
Hey — I have an idea.
Do you want to be friends?”
The silence that followed was the kind of silence that had weight.
It pressed down on the cavern, made the crystals on the walls dim, made the air itself seem to hold its breath.
“…Friends?” The word came out slow, uncertain, as though the dragon was tasting it, testing it, trying to remember what it meant.
“You — a slime — wish to be friends with me?
Veldora Tempest, the Storm Dragon?”
“Yeah.
Why not?
You look like you could use someone to talk to.
How long have you been sealed in here?”
A pause.
Longer this time.
“…Three hundred years.”
“Three hundred years.
Alone.
In the dark.
Yeah, you need a friend.
Come on — I’ll keep you company.”
And that was how it started.