"What is your name?"
The question hung heavy in the humid morning air, competing only with the distant, rhythmic sounds of the forest and the rustling of the dense canopy above.
The girl, who had been walking ahead with a newfound eager energy, halted completely in her tracks and slowly turned around to look at him.
She was still covered head to toe in smeared dirt and mud, her wild red hair framing a face that currently twisted through a rapid series of emotions.
A look of genuine surprise first flickered across her dirty features, as if no one had ever bothered to ask her such a simple thing before.
Then, the surprise melted into a deep-rooted, profound confusion. She began to look off to both sides, her feral eyes darting through the surrounding trees as if the answer was somehow hidden in the damp foliage.
Then, after a long, drawn-out while, she finally responded.
"I do not know. I never had the chance to get a name like the rest of the beasts here."
Lucius frowned a bit at her statement, his pale brow furrowing.
’What does that mean? She does not have a name?’ he wondered in his head, his crimson eyes analyzing her posture.
Normally, he would have dug deeper.
He would have asked her about her past, about why she lived entirely alone in this hostile forest wearing stitched animal skins.
But in that exact moment, his only true goal was to get stronger and find a way to survive the harsh reality he had been thrust into.
Building a deep, personal familiarity with a feral girl who had literally just tried to plunge a heavy blade through his neck was not part of his immediate survival plan.
"Okay then, I will refer to you as you want. Lets go." he stated flatly. He began to walk forward, his boots squelching slightly in the damp earth as he moved past her without giving a single backward glance.
"Ah- wait, you do not even know the way there!"
The girl suddenly snapped out of her confusion and ran past him, her bare feet making soft, rapid thuds against the ground so she could catch up to his long strides.
They walked for a while in relative silence. The dense, shadowy woods slowly began to open up, the smell of stale swamp water fading into something much fresher.
Eventually, she took him to a secluded part of the forest where a small, crystal-clear river was flowing rapidly at the side, spreading out into two different paths around a collection of large, mossy rocks.
She bent down at the edge of a small cliff overlooking the water, pointing a mud-caked finger downward.
"There they are, water dwellers," she announced.
Standing tall at the edge of the drop, Lucius turned his glowing red gaze down to see what she was talking about.
Down below, dancing erratically around the wet edges of the flowing river, were small, strange monsters.
They looked entirely transparent, their bodies almost completely liquid. They possessed the wobbly, unstable form of a melting slime, shifting and bubbling as they moved across the smooth stones.
Deep within their translucent bodies, bright, glowing blue orbs could be seen floating directly at the center, pulsing with a faint magical rhythm.
"Those are the monsters i hunt and eat, they do not look very good at first, but i promise, when ate raw, it taste just like meat," the girl explained, a hungry smile creeping onto her face.
Lucius made a deeply disgusted look. The idea of putting raw, pulsating slime into his mouth made his stomach churn, despite his new undead physiology.
"You eat that raw?" he asked, unable to hide the absolute judgment in his voice.
"Well yeah, i have tried roasting them before, but it tested very wrong. Raw feels better, i guarantee you that," she defended quickly, crossing her arms over her chest.
Lucius for one was not feeling confident about doing such a thing, but he knew better than to argue with someone who seemed like they had spent years living and surviving off the land in this dangerous forest. She knew what was edible, and he was currently starving.
So, he went along with it.
"Very well, so how do we go about that?"
"That is the fun part! We hunt!"
Without any further words or warning, the girl leaped gracefully down from the rocky cliff. She had a sharp wooden spear tight in her hand.
As soon as her bare feet landed softly on the muddy bank below, she immediately took off towards the water dwellers with a massive, thrilled smile, her spear pulled back and ready to poke.
Lucius watched from above with a deadpan look as the wild girl charged towards the monsters, screaming a feral battle cry.
The sudden noise caused the slimes to panic and scatter, their liquid bodies vibrating as they intended to run away into the deeper waters.
As he stared at the chaotic scene unfolding below, the ethereal blue system notification suddenly flashed directly before his eyes, giving him a much-needed hint of what he was dealing with.
[Name: Water dwellers, also known as water slimes.]
[Rank: D rank.]
’D rank? They should not be that hard to take care of,’ he reasoned internally, reading the floating brackets of text.
Though he did not have a proper weapon of his own, he still deeply wanted to fight.
He intrinsically understood that engaging in combat and defeating enemies was the only true way he could farm blood points and grow stronger in this world. So, he decided to join the fray.
He slid quickly down the wet rock face, his boots scraping against the stone.
Once on the riverbank, he reached down and grabbed a nearby, thick piece of broken wood, gripping it tightly to use as a blunt blade. With his jaw clenched, he charged towards the scattering monsters with full force.
At the other side of the riverbank, the wild girl had already begun to slaughter the water dwellers with terrifying efficiency.
She moved like a predator, using the wooden spear in her hand to stab cleanly through their liquid chests, striking directly into their glowing blue cores with perfect, lethal precision.
However, for Lucius, it was a bit different.
As he tried to near the closest slime, bringing his wooden club down for a crushing blow, the monster suddenly leaped forward with surprising elasticity.
Its wet, heavy body slammed directly into his chest, knocking him completely off balance and forcing him to stumble back. Every single attempt he tried to stab or smash their glowing cores resulted in a direct miss. The blunt wood would either just soak harmlessly into the thick, jelly-like slime, absorbing all his physical force, or completely miss the shifting target as they bounced away.
For a while, it kept happening exactly like that. He was swinging wildly, splashing river water everywhere, while the girl in question had already managed to murder the rest of the slimes on her side without a single fail.
Eventually, there was leaving just one slime left on the riverbank, bouncing mockingly just out of Lucius’s reach.
"Damnit you bastard, just die already!!!"
Lucius yelled at the top of his voice, his human frustration completely boiling over as he charged forward one last time.
Instead of swinging the useless wood, he used his high agility to close the distance instantly. He stepped heavily onto the slime with one of his boots, pinning its slippery, shifting body against the hard river stones.
Then, with absolute rage and total, unblinking focus, he managed to sink his wooden weapon deep into the slime’s gelatinous body and smash its glowing blue core entirely from the inside out.
The slime burst into a puddle of harmless, clear water, leaving only the shattered remnants of its core behind.
’I did it.’ A small, victorious smile showed on his pale face as he stood there panting, his chest heaving while staring at the single water dweller he had managed to painstakingly kill.
Then, the familiar blue light of his system flared into his vision.
[You have killed a D rank water dweller.]
[You have leveled up.]
[25 blood points has been obtained.]
[10 agility has been obtained.]
[10 strength has been obtained.]
[Not even blood points for a god mark to appear on traget.]
Lucius stared at the system text for a long while.
He focused on the sheer influx of power.
In truth, just from the sudden update, he could already feel himself physically getting stronger. The numbers slotted into his being perfectly.
For starters, the heavy wooden weapon he carried suddenly felt significantly lighter in his grip. Even he himself felt a sudden, incredible weightlessness, as if he could leap right to the top of the towering tree branches above without breaking a single sweat. His strength and agility were growing rapidly.
"Wow you managed to kill just one? Eh? Are humans that weak or is it just you?" The girl uttered with a heavily mocking tone, stepping over the puddles of dead slimes and covering her mouth just a bit to hide her amusement.
Lucius completely ignored her taunt, his glowing red eyes scanning the riverbank.
"Are we supposed to gather and eat them all? I feel like you killed way more than we need for a single meal."
"Eh? Of course we are not eating them all, human; i leave some for the other humans that always come to pick them up," she explained casually, resting her wooden spear on her shoulder.
’Pick them up?’ Lucius echoed in his mind.
He wondered why people from the capital city would travel all the way into the dangerous forest just to find dead slimes. Since their magical cores were already smashed to pieces, it would be absurd to think adventurers just came to take the wet slime and claim a price at the guild.
But then he realized, if they were truly valuable enough for city humans to scavenge, then he could easily sell them as well. He desperately needed money to survive and build his foundation.
So, without thinking much more about it, he looked around and found a massive, sturdy green leaf growing near the trees. He walked over, gathered some of the dead, liquid remains of the water dwellers, and began to shove them carefully into the makeshift pouch.
"What are you doing? We need to wash them first before we can eat," the girl said, raising a dirty red brow at his strange action.
"I know. I am not taking these ones for eating," Lucius replied smoothly.
"Oh? Then what for?"
"I am going to sell them. At the city." he replied, standing fully to his feet after picking up the very last remnant of the slime.
The girl paused entirely at his comment, her body freezing in place.
"You are going back to the city?"
She asked the question slowly. Her entire demeanor, which had just been playful and mocking, changed completely in the blink of an eye, replaced by a sudden, intense shadow that Lucius could not immediately decipher.
.