Apexus felt different after consuming the demon.

Not better or worse. At least not in the sense of any mood. He was feeling more powerful, definitely. Faster, more acute, as if his slime itself had received an upgrade. This was a general trend from every thing he ate, but this time it just felt so much more pronounced. A noticeable jump in his basic power, what laid underneath all the Growths.

To which he now got to add a new one. Gizmo had been right, not that there was any doubt after seeing the monstrosity. Eating it, Apexus had understood quite a bit about the demon and its rather absurd lifecycle. There had been next to no internal organs to it, only a blood producing lump within the pitch-black main body, few sensory systems and a number of magical cortexes scattered throughout the body, usually one per skin segment.

Apexus didn’t need blood, especially not that odd stuff. For the sensory systems, he failed to make them work properly. They were based on magic, that much was clear, and the chimeric slime continued to be incompetent in that field. While he definitely wanted to change that at some point, now definitely wasn’t the time for experiments. Same reason he didn’t want that magical cortex, which he formed but failed to use in any way.

Choosing them as a Permanent Growth would have likely alleviated that problem, but not completely and there was no guarantee. This was, again, not the time for experiments and he didn’t want to get used to rather odd muscle structures.

On the outside, its skin was fascinating. It extended beyond the pitch-black exterior of the central body that Apexus had seen. The skin could grow on continuously, but, like Apexus’ slime, stopped working if too far removed from the creature’s head. That was, unless it had some sort of magical conductor. A magical conductor it attached to itself by the virtue of its skin being able to thin itself until blood poured through. Blood that turned into some sort of cohesive glue and centipede legs, in these, the right circumstances.

Apexus realized that the Skinwalker had flailed and worn all of those skins as a way to protect the vulnerable parts of itself. It was like a hermit crab in that sense. Except, rather than an extension of a hard shell, the demon needed flexible skin that could also work with magic to some degree, since the demon’s existence was seeped with it. Every piece of human skin added to its collective allowed the Skinwalker to get bigger, absorb more magic from the surroundings, and served as an extension of its central sensory system.

The slime was still opposed to the killing of anything sapient, so the demon’s particular prey he found disgusting, but overall it was a fascinating creature. Especially since it so clearly shouldn’t have been alive. It didn’t eat, it didn’t breathe, it didn’t drink, it just existed off the magic in the air and grew by flaying skin off careless humans.

Without a single human yet devoured, it would have been an armless torso on a fleshy, lightly bleeding lump of flesh, walking on the few centipede legs it could sustain. It would have been barely able to sense anything. On its own, the Skinwalker was short-sighted, could only hear the loudest noises, had a dull sense of touch and Apexus wasn’t even quite sure if it could pick up scents.

In other words, Apexus couldn’t see how these things managed to start-off on their own. The slime knew fairly little about Warlocks and how happy many of them were to feed a few humans to their demonic companions in exchange for power and loyalty.

All of that aside, Apexus knew instantaneously which part of the demon he wanted permanently. The skin wasn’t just good for him, it was a natural addition to Apexus’s own physique. It was malleable, which was always good when getting added to a largely liquid being. That it could thin itself out exactly like his membrane was also simply perfect.

Testing it a bit, it was actually quicker than his membrane in the whole opening and closing department. It was also more durable, despite being thinner, although Apexus still managed to puncture through it with a particularly sharp rock. As a side benefit, it ended the slime’s translucency.

Apexus wasn’t sure yet how important that was. Just on the face of it, having enemies not see what he possessed of internal organs and where they were located was already pretty great. If there was much usage beyond that, however, eluded him.

The choice was easily made just with knowing those things. Having picked the Skinwalker’s hide as his Permanent Growth for this victory, however, something unexpected happened. The skin didn’t just layer on top of Apexus’ membrane, it replaced it entirely. Things that became a lasting part of his body usually were modified in some fashion, this time it also modified his baseline.

‘Body must have noticed the superior option,’ Apexus analysed as he got used to that new feeling. Only to feel himself thicken up, particularly around the limbs, as the densed down membrane dissolved into normal slime again. ‘Nooooo…’ he whined internally, not looking forwards to looking for a solution to being too big again. However, it soon turned out to be no problem whatsoever. For two reasons.

One, Apexus found out, relatively quickly, that he could actually fuel slime into the new skin as well, slightly increasing its stability. And stability was the proper term there, because it didn’t really become harder or thicker. It just became harder to break through, while remaining just as flexible and thin. It was a longshot from something like the armours that guards were wearing, but it sure beat regular human skin.

Secondly, and that was even more interesting, like his bones, this new skin allowed control of his slime to be extended. This didn’t boost Apexus’ morphing ability itself in any tremendous way, neither in scope nor speed. What it did do, however, was that it allowed him to hold these shifts in shape for long times without developing a slime-ache over it, as he had before.

It was a Growth that was almost tailored to the slime’s needs. It boosted all of his current capabilities and functioned as a wonderful base for the future. He could feed excess mass into the skin, so the problem of growing uncontrollably was solved, for now. If there was a maximum to this, Apexus hadn’t found it yet. The limiting factor was that the increase in stability, just as the shift back, cost time and energy. It wasn’t something he could do quickly; it was also impossible to focus on chosen areas. It all increased in sturdiness equally.

As for the looks of it, Apexus hadn’t changed much. He was the same azure blue colour, he just wasn’t translucent anymore. His surface was largely smooth, except for the little bumps and depressions that came from the pheromone ducts. Whether that made him more or less nightmarish to the average person was, indeed, a matter between them fainting at his sight or just soiling themselves. After all, he was still an over two-metres long amalgam of different animals.

In summary, this skin was perfect for Apexus. More things could be layered on top of it or put underneath and it would be able to take new shapes as needed for them. Aside from those benefits in the future, there was one for now as well. The mass of normal slime that made up the limbs, so closely around a bone and surrounded by skin, was under pretty much perfect control now.

While it still didn’t reach the level of musculature, it came pretty close now. Apexus trotted out of the cave with smooth motions. He left behind a lake that would soon calm itself again and a huge spot of bare ground. All of those experimentations had cost a lot of moss to be fuelled.