Hey! Have you ever wondered how a slime works? I do. I’m not sure if anyone else does though.. For the most part, a slime is exactly what you imagine it to be. Essentially, it’s just a giant moving blob of “slime”. If you know what a jellyfish looks like, it’s sort of like that minus the tentacles.
Oh. But I completely forgot. I’m still alive! As it turns out, slimes in fact, do not dissolve their prey. Or maybe they do. Just as I thought they were going to suffocate me, the enormous mass of grouped up slimes started moving. So, they’re probably taking me somewhere.
To be honest I’ve kind of stopped worrying about what’s going to happen to me. I can’t say I like this sticky feeling covering my entire body though.
A-aahn~
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You heard nothing.
Anyhow, back to talking about slimes. The outside layer of a slime is actually a semi-permeable liquid bilayer. Sound familiar? It might if you’ve taken a biology class. It’s the exact same thing that human cells use to protect their interiors. It’s a selective protective measure to take in things you need and deflect things you don’t. For example, as these slimes carry me through the sewer pathways, the trash and rubble they pass over isn’t absorbed into them, but is simply passed over. On the other hand, I’m quite stuck inside of all these slimes. Which is an important point, as the bilayer also prevents things already inside it from leaving.
Of course, the entirety of the slime isn’t made up of this membrane though. Although the outside is tough enough to retain a shape, the inside is all liquid. If I were to theorize on the same line of reasoning as an animal cell, the inner contents of a slime are a nutrient rich water-based fluid that supplies everything that is needed for it to survive.
There’s just one thing I couldn’t figure out. Although it has a bilayer to control resource acquirement and fluid storage (and possibly material digestion?), just where does its survival instincts come from? Even the smallest living organisms have a nerve bundle that handles its movements and gives out instructions.
<<Ping*>>
Huh? What was that? Ehhh? Oh. I got too engrossed with thinking about how a slime works, that I regained 1 stamina point. I hadn’t even realized since I forgot about it. It’s probably a part of the slime’s evolutionary adaptations, but the inner fluids probably excrete a numbing agent or anesthetic to calm down their prey and reduce the amount of struggling.
They might also inject some kind of hallucinogenic to placate the target.
<<The skill “Intuition Lv. 1” has been acquired.>>
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… Sorry. I lost myself for a second there. It felt like there should be something I should be worried about, but I can’t remember. More importantly! I have stamina again! However, the slimes are a little too strong to break free from. The most I can do is move my limbs around slowly inside my liquid prison. I’m certain that my hand brushed against something though, so I’ll try and grab it.
“@#$%!”
Whoops. A short and terse scream is echoed through my arm and into my head causing me to quickly release my grip on the hard object. The pace of the entire group starts to quicken, and we start to noticeably move faster. I didn’t cause that did I?
What was in my hand… it was probably a core. In other words, the slime’s brain or consciousness. I’m sure anything would be freaked out if you grabbed that. This fills the missing hole in my explanation for a slime as an organism. Not that I know anything with a rock-like brain, but I suppose I just have to give up on that point and accept it as part of the fantasy world.
Suddenly, the group of slimes grind to a halt.
“KiKiKiKiKi!”
That’s not a spider is it?! Oh wait, I don’t think spiders can even verbalize. I tilt my head back to try and see, but all I find is a squat rat-man wearing a torn, dirty cape holding a rusty dagger. It has red beady eyes, a thin fur covering, and a sectioned tail that dragged on the grimy floor.
“Kiiiiiiiii!” it screeches as it starts to make wild motions with its arms.
The cohesive slime group starts to sway back and forth, causing the rat-man to become more and more agitated. What does this thing want? Are the slimes actually communicating with it? What would a rat-man want from a group of slimes?
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Oh. Duh. It probably wants me. It took me a while to realize I’m not just a bystander in this exchange. In a matter of seconds, the atmosphere of the exchange changes, with the rat-man adopting a stance to leap towards us. The slimes move toward the water’s edge slowly, but then the rat jumps upward, intending to stab down at me.
What happened next was terrifying. The slime mass tensed itself up, then smashed itself away from the water and into the walls of the sewer. I almost thought the wall would collapse, but it stayed together. The rat’s dagger clanged onto hard stone, but it turned it’s head towards us, clearly confident that since the slime was against a wall, there was no escape for it. The toothy grin it wore was an odd mockery of what a human smile would have looked like.
The only way to describe the situation was…
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Baited.
A massive maw erupted out of the murkiness of the water’s edge and snapped shut onto the rat’s body. Flying out of the shallow depths, it landed on the ledge, its jaws closed shut on its prey. The rat was still struggling until when, with just a flick, it snapped the rat-man’s neck. The rusty dagger clattered to the grimy floor soon followed by an even more tattered cloak. The limbs of the prey fell lifelessly to its side while inside the mouth of its predator. It looks like a crocodile but… is that fur it has? It also has a much shorter snout and wider mouth then I would expect of a crocodile. After flinging the dead corpse of the rat-man a few times to get a better grip, one of its small eyes centers on us, but for whatever reason, it just takes its prey and slips back into the water, the ripples as it enters disappearing in just a few seconds.
Did it just ignore us? I suppose slimes just aren’t on its menu of things to eat. Even if my face was sticking out of the group. The slimes quickly return to their task of transporting me to someplace, although they do absorb the dagger and torn up cloak as they pass over it, the only things that prove a rat-men used to be here. The surprising thing here is, were slimes the type of monster that were intelligent enough to use that kind of feint-like strategy on an enemy?
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I can’t tell how much time has passed since the slimes captured me. It’s not like I’m some super meticulous genius that can continually count seconds and record all kinds of doubtless useful and precious information that would aid me in escaping. There were no further incidents like the rat-man, though I’m making an effort not to fall to the psychological effects of the slime fluids. It’s difficult to.. stay awake. And remember things.
Ahhh. Why was I trying to stay awake again? It so comf-
No! I can’t! This is dangerous!
But.. a little nap shouldn’t hurt right?
Maybe. Maybe just a little then.
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“My, my. She fell asleep on the journey here, did she? Of course, I keep all my promises. I’ll simply wake her, then we can begin.”
Recastdev 