Syl

Chapter 114: Old Tactics

After the scream came the panicked attempts at escape from the alicorn prince, but I had ensured I was tightly wrapped around his barrel with my arm and an accompanying tendril.

"No! Unhand me, foul beast!" He demanded as he slammed a golden sword deep into the orcish face.

The orc head had no core inside, so there was no real risk to me, and once again, I felt obligated to put on a bit of a performance. Either [Acting] wanted an encore, or Trixie was seriously rubbing off on me as a bad influence. I had the head grin maniacally despite having a sword embedded in it and licking its lips.

The prince, in a state of panic, continued to cast spells and make frantic attempts to dislodge me. But I had already enveloped his entire body in slime, firmly establishing my hold. In the past, when I had covered monsters, they had been more than willing to harm themselves in an attempt to kill or remove me. But the alicorn prince was different. His golden weapons of light swiped at me with extreme hesitancy, his fear of self-inflicted injury palpable.

Just as I was about to unleash the full force of my [Acid Slime], a stern reminder from [Dissection] halted me. This prince was a treasure trove to be harvested, not a mere enemy to be dissolved. Reluctantly, I had to resort to the old suffocating invasion, a method my low-level self would have been proud of.

My tendrils and slime sought any and all available entry inside the alicorn; once again, he screamed in mental outrage and panic. He begged and pleaded, offering me riches, mares, if I only spared him. He cast multiple healing spells on himself as [Life Sight] showed me how much he bounced between death and life.

I had introduced some Bloodrot poison to hinder his healing, which caused even more panic from the prince. There were accusations of being a pestilence demon, and he seemed to swap to another form of magic that didn't seem to do anything. I was trying my hardest to just block him out, and at some point, Trixie cut off the connection, which I was grateful for, as I didn't want to hear him mentally screaming until the very end.

Unsurprisingly, he began to plummet, unable to maintain airborne through the pain and near-death state even with his magical flight, which was when I fully enveloped his wings to protect them for [Dissection] and withdrew a mass amount of slime to provide enough cushioning to protect the resources; I didn't dare risk the ire of [Dissection] after failing twice with the griffins.

My [Life Sight] must have leveled up, but I ignored the notifications for now, as I could see the alicorn's in much more detail. As each second went by, a large chunk would suddenly vanish until nothing was left. Our landing was much bouncier than I expected, and I partially reduced my outer density between each bounce in the hope of slowing us down.

Fate must have hated my positive attitude as I noticed our current trajectory heading off the floating island. Seeing the inevitable outcome, I quickly made plans, withdrawing more and more slime mass. Once we crossed the edge, I'd form as many wings as possible. I'd be a giant fat blob of slime with wings! It would be very stupid-looking, but hopefully enough to keep myself and my prize from plummeting to the ground below.

Bouncing off the side, I put my plan into action, and with a little bit of strain and perhaps a few wings too many, I stabilized and flapped myself back towards the island like a massively overweight bird. When I landed, I let out a sigh of relief and let [Dissection] get to work by assigning it to my [Sub-Cores]. I sighed deeply.

"Wow, Syl, you're pretty scary, you know," Trixie said, finally reappearing before me. "Remind me not to get on your bad side."

"Sure... I hope it was worth it." I responded. I wasn't tired or hurt per se, more just emotionally and mentally drained or perhaps coming down from a combat high.

"Oh, definitely. That orc bit you did was outstanding! I thought I would die of laughter," Trixie responded, giving me a standing ovation.

"Are all royals and nobles like that?" I asked. Admittedly, I didn't have the greatest sample size.

Trixie shrugged, "Ehh... I think it differs from race to race and person to person. The fairy queen is a real pleasure. The dwarf king is cheery as long as he isn't sober. All the elves are pretty friendly to my kind. I've always avoided humans and got captured the one time I didn't, so I can't help you there. This assumes none of the thrones have changed while I've been stuck here."

Trixie knew a surprising lot, and I wanted to poke for more information, but I could almost feel the mental glee oozing from her as if she was just waiting to deny me. The way my emblem behaved around her also made me suspicious that she was more than what she appeared to be. Or maybe she was just really old and had lots of random tidbits rattling around in her head.

Deciding to ignore the pixie for now, I turned to the vast wall of text from all the notifications. The first thing I did was look at my proficiency increases. I was eager to see if I had finally reached the next level of [Ice Magic].

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These gains were welcomed; getting a direct line of sight to the alicorn flip-flopping between life and death must have been great for experience. Multitasking going up was not surprising after so many spell barrages.

Magic LV 4].>

Finally, I reached the next level of [Ice Magic], which contained the powerful concept of ice that I had been looking for—the ability to freeze things directly. I immediately knew I could increase its power by adding [Chill] to it, which would increase the speed, but I was more concerned with adding it to another spell form to get around its current melee form.

I partially shifted a torso, leaving a large blob of attached slime to continue dissecting the alicorn and cast the spell. As the spell settled in place, almost my entire arm was coated in an extreme amount of ice mana. I grasped a nearby rock and watched the whole thing freeze solid. When I had cast [Frostbite] on a rock previously, it coated it in ice and did not actually freeze it, but now, this rock was frozen to its core.

Trixie looked at me and sighed, "I know the spell has Grasp in its name, but you don't have to cast it on your arm as the medium."

I stared at her, letting her words settle in. From the spell name and the bare minimum knowledge of casting it installed into me, I automatically assumed I had to use it on a hand. I tried casting it again a few times until an icy, ethereal hand eventually formed near me and metaphorically grasped another rock, rapidly freezing it.

"Adequately sufficient!" Trixie said sternly, "I already think my reward for your stellar acting performance will be a magic boot camp. Even if you are her natural counter, I cannot throw you at her like this. It would be disgraceful."

I blinked, surprised by the suggestion, "Thanks, Trixie. I'd appreciate that."

She smiled friendly and sat on my head again, clearly waiting for me to finish what I had started. When I started going through the kill notifications, I was genuinely shocked at the quantity, I knew I wasn't paying attention to the pegasi, but the sheer amount that my [Sub-Cores] had dealt with was startling.

...

...

...

'Ugh... Really? That's all you're going to offer me, class?' I grumbled.

I knew that the class wasn't specifically tailored for me and that any normal person would be happy about either of these, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I was also sitting on many skill points, and now I was very close to level twenty, which Trixie said would offer me a solution if I had three elements at five.

'At this rate, there's no way I'll get [Ice Magic] to five before I hit twenty. Should I just buy it?'

"Hmm, you could. But I think we could do it." Trixie suddenly said.

"Okay, seriously, can you read my mind?" I demanded an answer.

"No, you just have a habit of reading things aloud in your head, not to mention frequently talking to yourself," Trixie giggled. "You have to be a little mindful when using telepathy."

"Well, that's one mystery solved."

I looked over the two new profiles I had gained. Both the unicorn and alicorn updated the [Equine] profile. It was the natural evolution path of either unicorns or pegasi, which made me wonder why the unicorns were put above them. Not wanting to dive into horse politics, I looked for any traits or skills I would want.

Anything the unicorn had was in the alicorn profile, so I promptly ignored it and looked over the alicorn in more detail. It had quite a few traits I had never seen before; [Enchanted Horn], [Curse Resistance], [Divine-Touched], [Telepathy (Lesser)], and a familiar friend [Magic Resistance (Lesser)]. Over in skills, it had [Light Magic], [Recovery Magic], and [Holy Magic], and I failed to meet the prerequisite for any of them.

[Divine-Touched] raised the efficacy of [Light Magic], [Recovery Magic], and [Holy Magic] and raised resistance against [Dark Magic]. None of that applied to me, so I could ignore it unless I needed a half-effective dark resistance.

[Curse Resistance] seemed interesting. I prodded Trixie for an answer, to which she frowned and replied, "Basically, everything you are doing with [Corrosion Magic] and more. It's good to have if ever fighting warlocks or demons."

Remembering warlock and Krutz and his attempted enslavement, I hastily bought it.

[Enchanted Horn] was amazing, and I wish I could have bought it, so it would have to be a prime candidate for borrowing instead.

Raises spell power by 5% per trait rank.

Spells focused through the horn become more real.>

"What the hell does more real even mean?" I questioned Trixie.

"Oh, that's pretty easy to explain. So, anything created by magic would be more substantial. Like his swords of light, they had a sort of weight to them despite being made entirely of light mana." Trixie explained. "Now, it's not going to make it actually a sword, but you can surely understand the benefit. You're using ice, which is already pretty substantial, so you probably never realized it, but if you tried to do the same with fire, it'd go right through."

"Huh... Thanks, that actually weirdly makes sense. At the time, I thought, 'Well, that's magic,' but I didn't think further about it."

"Yeah... No need to think too hard on it." Trixie chuckled.

Mentally communicate to 1 target per trait rank within visual range.

If the mind is unwilling, mental resistance must be overcome to establish a connection.>

"Well, that's pretty simple. Although I'll probably stick to borrowing it, I don't know if I trust myself to talk to people mentally."

"Yeah... You're kind of an open book in that regard." She patted my head before fluttering off, "Now, let's go claim our new tree fort before someone else steals it!"