I paced back and forth along the bank of the stream, trying to wrap my head around everything.
“So you’re the slime living inside me, and you replicated my consciousness to give yourself consciousness because when you stole all of my abilities, you evolved a bunch and became sapient?” I summarized, rubbing my hands over my face.
“Pretty much,” it replied.
“Okay, well… can you leave my body now?” I huffed.
“Nope, as I said, [Protagonist’s Progression] is super overpowered, and considering I need to grow as powerful as possible, I’m not giving that up.”
I shook my head. It was like arguing with a brick wall… or myself. “Right, but do you have to live inside me?” I grimaced. “I mean, where even are you? You get how that’s fucking weird, right?”
“Where else am I going to live? I’m even weaker than you,” It huffed. “Plus, a body is super useful. There’s a nice protective skeletal structure and a nervous system to provide all sorts of information. Once I grow a bit, you’ll be perfect for spawning slimes. We’ll get a big squishy hive built in no time.”
I shuddered. “What?” I managed weakly.
“What?”
“What does any of that mean?!” I seethed, kicking at a flower.
“I’m an empress slime,” it explained as if it were obvious. “I can’t exactly build a hive unless I have slimes to govern. And multiplying is literally my entire purpose. Ohhh, that’s weird. Humans don’t have purposes, but slimes do. How do you know what to do with your life? You have so many options, it must be exhausting.”
I opened my mouth and promptly closed it. I just…
“Hold on, why am I still here? The goblins said you puppets humans like meat suits,” I frowned.
“Yeah, that’s pretty useful, especially once you get in around the brain because then you really get to rearrange things,” It nodded telepathically.
I shuddered, feeling a familiar nausea rise. This thing was a monster. “Yeah. Okay. So why am I still here?”
“Cus I need your skill, duh. I can’t scoop out your brain when I need access to your system. Plus, it helps that I can focus on my purpose if I don't need to waste resources fully replacing you.”
“Wow… so generous,” I muttered. This was a nightmare, no, this was so much worse.
“Oh, get over yourself. I picked co-existence. You can use your body on… well, I guess I kinda always need it. But as long as I do what I tell you, then you can still do stuff,” I replied cheerily.
I stared up at the sky, possibly willing the sun to immolate me. “I honestly can’t tell if you’re just an idiot or like… pure evil.”
“Pff, my intelligence is higher than yours,” it telepathically rolled eyes it didn’t have. “And I’m not evil. My purpose is to eat, grow, and reproduce. That’s all life, man. Literally everything does that. And there’s nothing wrong with growing a hive, it’s my job.”
“Yeah, I think nature is pretty brutal and uncaring, actually,” I muttered. “You could not do that. You could choose not to do that with your new fancy sapience.”
“But it’s my purpose,” it replied with confusion. “It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
It was… actually that was kinda sad. “Yeah, but we get to do what we want with our lives. That's the beauty of it. Regardless of what was intended for us, it’s always us to us. Kinda…” I stopped myself. There was no need to dig into the nuances and philosophical considerations of free will.
“Yeah… I, wow…” it hummed.
I smiled, a glimmer of hope building in my chest. I tried to ignore what else might be somewhere in there. “Right? So forget your preconceived notions about destiny and purpose. What do you, now with your whole life ahead of you, want to do?”
“That’s a big question,” it sighed.
Again, a gesture that wasn’t possible to actually happen, but that’s what was transmitted to me. Telepathy was deeply strange.
“Anything you want, dream big,” I smiled.
“Well, okay, I want to build a dungeon,” it decided.
“Oh,” I blinked. “Okay. Um… sure. How uh… how do you go about doing that?”
“Ah, see well, first we need a nice big hive,” it telepathically grimaced. “But once that’s done, we can have them build it and defend it and all that stuff. Then we get to sit back and feed on funnelled mana, and any tasty creatures that come investigating.”
“Okay… uh,” I trailed off. “Well fuck. See, that’s kinda evil. You wanna do something that will hurt people.”
“Hmm, damn, I guess you’re right,” it hummed in consideration. “We should probably make the dungeon spooky or something, right? So it seems appropriately villainous?"
“Right,” I nodded, feeling like I was losing my mind. “Or we don’t do the dungeon.”
“But I wanna do a dungeon, it’s my ultimate purpose. The bigger I get, the more I can eat, the more I can spawn, and so on.”
Oh god, it was worse. It wasn’t malicious. It wanted to grow, that’s all it wanted. Infinite growth in a finite system. It was cancer. Magical, squishy, parasitic, cancer.
I pulled at my hair until the pain let me think clearly.
“Okay, well, let’s just put a pin in this discussion for now,” I suggested diplomatically, despite my internal screaming.
“Sounds good,” it chirped. “I should really get to growing anyway. Okay, Pamela, take us to a food source.”
I rolled out my neck. “Uh… I literally haven’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. I had no idea where to get food. I don’t even know where I am.”
“Hmm, good point, okay, never mind then. Go find food instead,” it decided.
“Yeah, I can’t magically do that,” I huffed. Honestly, this fucking slime was so absurd that it was hard to be terrified at times.
“Oh, right. But I’m hungry,” it whined. “How many of these fleshy masses do you need?”
“What?” I frowned.
“They keep expanding when you speak. Which you don’t need to do, telepathy, remember, hello? Anyway, you’ve got an extra one. Can I eat it?” It asked.
“My lungs?” I balked. “No, you cannot fucking eat my lungs, I will die! I need all my organs. Do not fucking eat me. I will die, I am very fragile. And then you will die because you suck!”
“Okay, jeez, I was just checking, just in case,” it grumbled.
Unbefuckinglievable.
“What about the goblins?” it suggested after a moment.
“No, they know I’m infected with you. They will kill me, which means they’ll kill you,” I quickly replied, shutting down that option. No eating goblins. Absolutely not.
“Okay, but then what am I supposed to eat then?” it whined, beginning the telepathic equivalent of a temper tantrum
I let out a deep sigh. I wasn’t sure my patience had ever been tested too much. This was… maddening.
“Okay, you need a name,” I decided.
“Food, I need food, not a stupid name,” I grumbled.
“Hmm, then I’m picking something,” I considered, sitting down in the grass and plucking at a few strands.
“Absolutely not. I don’t need a name. I’m a slime, we don’t debase ourselves with such things. Take me to the woods over there, maybe there are nuts or something.”
I ignored it. “How do you feel about gender?”
“What?”
“Are you a boy slime, a girl slime? A something else entirely slime?” I snorted, managing to find some amusement in this thing’s outrage.
“Pamela….” it sighed. “My species literally has no need for such things. We reproduce asexually, we don’t do icky social bonding as you fleshy-based things do. We're the perfect organism.”
“Up until you stole all my power, you literally couldn’t even access the system,” I laughed. I actually laughed. “You were a mindless ooze. The only reason you evolved is because you leeched all my experience, perfect my ass. You’re entirely reliant on other creatures.”
“How dare—“
“But I’ll put you down as a something else entirely slime,” I interrupted, again a strange motion when telepathy was involved, but it worked.
It sighed. “I suppose if I must debase myself, a girl slime would be more accurate, considering I am modelled after you. We are, in a sense, a single organism now.”
Despite the implications of now being permanently fused with this thing. It was a little cute. Was that a crazy thing to think? Yes, was I sleep deprived, still half dead, and starving? Also yes. I was allowed to be irrational.
Also, not very “perfect organism” of her to have an inclination towards a gender. It wasn’t the first contradiction that seemed to come from her slime instincts and her sapience, but well… maybe she could learn… at least a little bit. Maybe? Hopefully? Desperate hopefully?
“I think I’ll call you Candy,” I decided, tugging at another strand of grass.
“What an absurd name? I mean, really? Candy? What am I, a stripper? Whoah… strippers… You get to think about all of this always?”
She was like a hyperactive toddler on a sugar high.
Mythic Empress Slime has been named Candy.
“Wait, what? No! How did you do that!?” Candy exclaimed, panicked.
It was music to my ears.