Status
Name: Pamela Bishop/Candy
Evolution: Mythic Empress Slime Hybrid
Class: Royal Plort
Path: Symbiotic Dyad
Health Points (HP): 15
Mana Points (MP): 21
Stamina Points (SP): 8
Strength: 10
Agility: 11
Endurance: 11
Vitality: 12
Wisdom: 25
Intelligence: 30
Perception: 27
Willpower: 31
Titles: [Protagonist's Progression], [Symbiogenesis]
Evolution Skills: [Language Common], [Analysis], [Digest]
Path Skills: [Telepathic Link]
Fuck, the numbers had gone up. It was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes. And finally a new skill! A new fucking skill!
[Digest]
You may consciously slowly absorb organic material through direct contact, breaking it down into nutrients, energy, and mana.
Damage type: acid.
Huh, that was certainly… something. Somewhat anti-climactic given everything else. It just let me eat like a slime. Though… granted, I was kinda a slime now… that made sense.
Though I did have a mouth, so… I wasn’t entirely clear on its usefulness. But it could be used as an attack, and actually probably to consume stuff that I couldn’t eat.
“Is [Digest] better than me just eating stuff?” I asked, my mind swirling with numbers.
“Maybe?” Candy replied uncertainly. “But it’s better for sharing, since you don’t um… you’re not very attuned to mana.”
“What does that mean?” I frowned.
“It means you’re bad at storing mana, probably worse at using it. Now, can we please go already before they get back!” She pleaded.
I blinked. “But I was an archmage before.”
“Your old world didn’t even have mana,” Candy sighed. “That’s probably why you’re a… dead spot. But don’t feel too bad, because you can share mine. Because I care about you now,” she added proudly.
It made me smile even if that wasn’t really how any of this worked. But at least her wanting to improve seemed genuine. It hadn’t all been a ruse.
“Thanks, Candy,” I mumbled. “But I’m not just going to hobble out of town. I still feel like shit, I feel totally wiped out after… all that. Plus, they would certainly come after me. They are my friends, Candy, they are worried.”
“But they will try to remove me,” she whined. “And now it can’t be done. So they will kill the both of us.”
“No, they won’t,” I replied, though admittedly my conviction was starting to waver. But I literally couldn’t run. I needed at least a week of sleep before I could even consider the notion.
“They will!” Candy was adamant. “And you have to help because we are in the same boat.”
“In the same boat,” I corrected, bemused. “And I’m not going to let us be killed. I just don’t think running will do us any good. Let me talk to the others, and if they react super badly, then I will do my absolute best to run. Okay?”
“Fine,” Candy grumbled.
I shivered as something shifted inside me. I could feel it pressing from the inside.
“Candy?” I whispered.
“Sorry, getting comfortable,” she mumbled. “Have to put slime somewhere now that you protect my core.”
I squeezed my eyes tight shut and tried not to think about it. “Okay,” I muttered, looking up. “Y'all wanna hear about Candy?”
The remaining Tavern Crew looked up from their card game and scrambled over. They weren’t exactly subtle about their curiosity. I sighed. I couldn’t blame them.
They gathered around me in bed like I was some old dying aristocrat giving out my final words.
I left out the part about the afterlife, or whatever the hell that office was. So I started with the slime, and getting ambushed, and being too weak to fight it off. Then talked about my stint with the goblins, and my own stupidity in running from them and how the ogre giant had promptly bandaged me due to the slime. And the. Meeting Candy, and a vague explanation of our differences, and so on.
“So you didn’t get assimilated?” Petven frowned.
“I’m talking to you right now,” I snorted. “Aren’t I?”
“Could be the slime,” Martrix shrugged.
“Oh come on,” I grumbled. I didn’t have the energy for this.
“I’m just teasing ya,” Martrix grinned, handing a few coins to Petven.
He smiled triumphantly. “Pay up,” he told Kimrel, who also gave him a few shillings.
“Petven was adamant that you had a mythic skill,” Martrix explained.
“Okay, hold on, how do skill rarities work?” I frowned. I had yet to get an explanation on it, and it was beginning to make my head hurt.
“Monsters, skills, magic items, and so on, they’ve got a rarity based on their colours through analysis. White is common, blue is uncommon, rare is orange, epic is purple, mythic is red.” Martrix steamrolled, clearly not super interested in lecturing me.
“And the rarer the better?” I asked, which felt like a stupid question the moment it was out of my mouth.
“Pretty much,” she nodded.
“If you’ve got a mythic slime at your disposal, then you’ve got a mythic tier skill,” Petven explained. “Hah, I knew it,” he mumbled to himself. “Outworlders always have some kind of fancy skill. What was the one that the king had working for him again?” He frowned.
“Sir Estel,” Kinrel supplied. “The blade dancer. Apparently, he fought with six swords at a time.”
“What?” I frowned.
“Yeah,” Petven nodded. “That bastard took out an archdemon all by himself.”
“Sure, but he died right afterward,” Martrix pointed out.
“Well, he wasn’t immortal,” Petven shrugged. “The point is, outworlders always have a gimmick.”
“And mine is having a bitch of a slime?” I snorted.
Petven shrugged. “All I’m saying is, I’d be a lot more worried if any of us got parasitized by a mythic-tier monster. The fact that you’ve figured out how to control it is proof of that.”
“Right,” I mumbled.
“Sooo?” Martriz grinned. “What can you do with the power of a mythic slime? Don’t hold back on us now.”
“Well…” I sighed. “Nothing right now. She’s still a… plort. But… given I’m now stuck with her, hopefully something good.”
“Hey!” Candy grumbled.
Frida burst into the room, a wiry old man with light gray hair and wearing dark robes at her heels.
“Crisis averted,” I smiled weakly.
“What?” Frida frowned.
“Yeah, you missed a whole battle of wills,” Martrix nodded. “Pamela won, the slime is her mythic skill now. Petven was right.”
“I am more than a skill,” Candy sighed.
Frida and the stranger both hurried over. He wasn’t even introduced before Frida was scanning me again. “Oh, this is… very strange,” she frowned.
“We must remove it. We don’t know what it could incubate into,” the man said grimly.
“I can’t even find the core now,” Frida looked up.
“Sorry Mr Wizard guy,” I smiled. “You made the trip out here for nothing.”
He frowned at me. “You do understand the danger you currently pose to this city, let alone this entire continent?”
I blinked. What?
“She’s an outworlder,” Frida said. “She’s only just got here.”
The man hummed skeptically. “She should have virtually no mana signature then.”
“I have mana now,” I explained. “I took the slimes.”
It wasn’t really how it had gone. But framing the situation as my having asserted dominance and control over the monster seemed to be the narrative they all wanted to hear.
“Interesting,” the man muttered.
“What uh… are you?” I asked.
“Oh, right, of course,” Frida laughed nervously. “Pamela, this is Professor Andrew Ashmore. He’s… one of the professors at the Agocester Academy of Magical Arts.”
“Magic academy? Like a magical school?” I perked up, delight blooming within me. “Side note, can I go? How do I get in?”
Professor Ashmore just stared at me, as if stunned by my sudden excitement. “The… next semester does not start until the end of the summer… but given your outworlder status, you might be able to get admitted.”
Holy shit… Holy shit!
I was going to a magical school!