Syl

Chapter 26: Wolf-Eat-Slime

Mana: Overflowing

Waking up to the highest level of mana despite my dutiful [Sub-Core] working throughout the night was a glorious way to start the day, proving that I could fully maintain reinforcing my core without draining mana.

Before heading out, I shapeshifted between the four creatures I had mastered before finally shifting into the boar. It was good practice but made me realize that the other forms were taking up less of my mental capacity to hold, and the wolf, which I had spent almost the entire day as was slightly more efficient than even the other three with their completed profiles.

Knowledge, trait rank, and practice all played a critical role in not only the form's transformation accuracy and shifting speed but also its upkeep cost - I needed to keep a nose out for another boar. Interestingly, I also tried shifting into the Blade Wolf, but my body refused to take the shape. It perplexed me because I had full knowledge of the evolved wolf as it amended itself to my existing profile rather than adding its own entry. I could only assume I lacked a minimum trait level in either [Shapeshifting Mimicry] or [Shape Slime], a combination of the two, or maybe even a minimum race level.

With [Shapeshifting Mimicry] reaching level two, I now had access to a higher trait version of [Enhanced Nose], so I hoped I could find that final boar and complete the profile. I could also add another trait to the mimicked form, but from some experimenting, I discovered that each trait had a mental upkeep depending on its copied rank. I'd need to expand my mind, refine my core, or add cores because if I ever reached max for [Shapeshifting Mimicry] upkeeping ten skills, all at rank ten sounded mindblowing in the literal sense.

The occasional foraging was mandatory, as I loved the rush of information whenever I completed a profile, and I got a bunch of facts stuffed into my core about healing herbs and poisonous mushrooms.

I started heading west wearing my wolf form while looping between different colors, and my nose working as I traveled, so I wasn't too worried about any humans seeing a rainbow wolf. During the downtime of travel, I also experimented a bit with my shapeshifting, which led to me discovering that I could not mix and match mimicked transformations for reasons beyond my understanding. I could swap between slime and wolf and a seemingly endless amount of partials between the two forms, but I could not give my wolf form antlers or tusks. My mad scientist's idea of picking the best parts from every creature would have to wait until I discovered what prevented me.

Another sad conclusion was while I could naturally enlarge my slime form, I could not just make a "bigger wolf" without spending considerable effort and mental upkeep. My only assumption was that [Shapeshifting Mimicry] truly wanted me to copy the form exactly, being quite a snobby perfectionist of a trait, and wasn't happy about me making any modifications.

After fooling around with transformations, I reinforced my legs and sprinted slightly south while maintaining my westerly approach. I detoured a good portion of the morning, and it was turning to the afternoon when my effort finally paid off.

I confirmed my earlier theory by transforming it into a boar and found much less mental tax for the form. My inner completionist satisfied, I continued heading west in wolf form again and decided to put my mental processing to mixing up the colors of different body parts.

It finally increased, and thankfully, before I reached my destination. Filled with excitement, I rushed to change the opacity of my slime, and my vision abruptly went dark.

'Wha-!?'

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'Maybe I should have seen that coming... Pun intended. I see through my core and not my slime. Interestingly, or worryingly, my false profile shows my title, and isn't being above level ten suspicious for a normal wolf?'

Turning my slime transparent brought back my sight, but now I had a predicament to solve. At first, I created a tendril and placed my [Sub-Core] inside it, then swapped vision and admired the finally non-transparent wolf proudly. While this fixed my vision, wolves didn't have tendrils, so I needed another solution.

I tried making some transparent holes throughout my wolf body, and while that solved the vision issue, I could tell it was hampering my disguise.

'Even Gramps hates it.' I sulked, then continued trying to think of a solution, 'What I really need is eyes... Could I get an eye trait or something? Wait...?'

I moved my [Sub-Core] to the head of the wolf and then started experimenting with lowering the transparency of the eyeballs. It was a lot of trial and error, but eventually, I could finally see and meet the conditioning.

The head being a common weak point for basically everything, I decided it would be safer to use my [Sub-Core] and keep my actual core hidden within the body. Finally, I continued my journey, which gave me time to get used to my narrower field of vision.

As I broke the forest edge, I saw a tall wall in the distance, then as I got closer, I saw a familiar stream, and lastly, I saw plenty of bouncing blue slimes. My wolf nose couldn't detect anything nearby, so I strolled over.

'I can't believe I willingly came back here, but I'm hoping to learn some more about myself by completing a slime profile.'

Then, the feasting began.

'Did that last slime have the compression trait, which gave my own trait some experience? Not that I'm complaining... Despite being my second trait, it somehow fell behind some of my newer traits in levels.'

I did not expect it to level up already and could only assume that fully completing a profile gave me a lot of trait experience.

'I have been eating a lot of things lately purely for the profile, even stuff I can't transform into - no wonder I earned the Gluttonous evolution...'

The slime profile was disappointing, but I didn't expect much from ordinary blue slimes. I did hope that with the profile complete, I could get a lot more information from any evolved or subspecies consumed in the future. The two new traits I did learn about were intriguing, and I could imagine applications for both.

Allows increasing or reducing the elasticity of slime mass.

This trait has no levels.

Compatible with other slime traits.>

Another trait with slime compatibility was always welcome. I couldn't think of anything offhand on the reducing elasticity portion and becoming rigid. However, by increasing elasticity, I could avoid gravity splattering me across the ground and instead bounce.

Spend mana to generate slime mass.

There is a daily conversion limit, scaling with trait level.>

Meanwhile, with this trait, I could avoid inevitably turning into a puddle of water if I ever ran out of things to eat. Apparently, this was a very rare trait that blue slimes would develop. Although it sounded almost too good to be true, it didn't offer me any immediate benefit, as I had plenty of slime mass saved away and was likely close to hitting my storage limit. I wondered how low the daily limit was per level.

Now that I had so many completed profiles, I also puzzled together a bit of an understanding of how ordinary monsters develop. There was no way a dumb wolf carefully selects its traits when it levels.

Most monsters are born with an innate trait, and the majority of points will be allocated randomly amongst them. There is a chance a new trait is picked randomly out of a pool instead of improving an existing one. When no more traits have available levels, then the probability is guaranteed.

The traits are divided into pools, common and rare. Using a blue slime, for example, its common traits are [Elastic Slime], [Adhesive Slime], and [Slime Density], while its rare traits are [Slime Conversion] and [Pseudopod]. I could assume a green slime has [Slime Shot] in its trait pool. It did make me wonder how intelligent monsters developed; would they tell their children to "make sure to get [Enhanced Strength]"?

Satisfied with having two more traits on my shopping list, I started to head back into the forest.