Gara was going to die because of Tamu's slime farm idea. Somehow his friend had managed to talk him into digging a whole mud field for the round multi-colored creatures. They'd begged the local earth mage to create a solid stone fence for them in exchange for owing a hefty favor. A wooden fence would've had too many gaps for the slimes to slip through. They didn't even have a gate, instead using a stone stair on the outside and a ladder on the inside. The ladder was a favor from the local woodworker.

As for the slimes, they'd caught a few wild slimes in buckets with the tops covered with stones then dumped them into the enclosure. After that, it was just a matter of feeding the slimes with castoffs from the other farmers. Things had gone well at first, with the slimes multiplying well, not to mention them changing from displaying [Wild] in their status to displaying [Tame].

But the resulting slimes turned out to not produce anything valuable. The idea was that the slimes would create valuable mana gems and other byproducts, but it seemed like the conditions for that wasn't so easy to meet.

Gara'd done some research with Tamu's help. Turns out the slimes needed access to at least a minimum concentration of mana. Tamu'd been up for messing around with feeding them different things with mana in them, mostly random shit picked up off the wilder sections of the fields, with varying results.

But eventually the feckless guy had gotten bored and started talking about some other wild project. Something about importing steel-wool sheep. That'd turned into an unpleasant argument resulting in Tamu leaving to work on his project. For a short while, Gara had thought of his friend as that damn fool, always haring off after one idea or other. Though eventually Gara'd regretted the way the whole thing turned out. It wasn't like Tamu didn't have his good points. They'd had many fun times together, working on interesting and creative projects and pranks. But after that argument, things had became awkward between then. And, to be honest, Gara used to have a crush on him. Something of that still lingered.

Gara had kept going with the whole project, getting very familiar with the slimes, how they behaved, what effects various foods had on them, how to create the best conditions for them to split off new slimes. And also very familiar with the assorted gooey messes slimes could leave. He'd basically became the local slime expert and people were beginning to come to him for knowledge on them. Mostly related to getting the darn things out of their fields, but Gara was able to give good advice on how to repulse them, what methods of extermination worked best with least mess, and so on.

Slimes, slimes, and more slimes. At this point, Gara wasn't even tired of them. He had long since gotten past that stage. Now it was simply his life. And he was content with it.

Eventually, he'd managed to source some drake dung from the family raising them in the next town over. He didn't envy them, not after he'd seen how many scars they had. That dung was great stuff, though. Made the slimes begin producing mana gems at a rapid clip.

Just when it was beginning to look like he was going to be able to pay off his assorted debts associated with getting the slime farm up and running, one of the slimes turned into a monster and started attacking the more tame slimes. He had waded in with his mucking rake to stop it.

Now he was lying in the mud after it had headbutted him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. As he tried to regain his breath, the thing slowly approached him. Damn, damn, he was going to die. At nearly the last second, he recovered enough to swing his rake at it.

It bounced right out of the way and rammed into him again. Where it touched him, his skin was burning with pain. Screaming, he managed to grab the knife he kept at his waist for general utility and stab it into the slime. The fluid that leaked out seared his hand, but he kept stabbing, only for the creature to barely dodge out of the way. A tendril whipped out, grabbing his knife arm and jerking it away.

But Gara managed to keep a death grip on the knife despite the slime's acid burning his wrist. He began frantically kicking at the slime and its tendril. Then he grabbed the rake he had dropped and slammed its handle into the monster, managing to loosen its grip on his wrist.

His stabbing resumed as the slime began wildly whipping him with its tendrils, hitting hard time that pain erupted across his body. But it wasn't enough to stop him. By the end, his hand was swollen and covered with acid burns, no longer able to hold the knife. However, the damage was already done as fluids leaked out of the dying slime.

As he laid there sobbing from the pain, words entered his mind.

His mind numb with shock, he noticed that his body no longer hurt as much and he could move his left hand again. So this was SYSTEM's gift of on-levelup healing that he had heard about. It didn't completely wipe away the many pains and aches or the burns, but they were all reduced to insignificant injuries.

He reviewed his own status to see what had changed. He was no longer level 0 and he had options to spend his new points. And one to pick his class. Excitement filled him, but he had cleanup to do first. He went and got his tongs and cleanup bucket and scoop. With a careful application of his tongs, he pried out the abnormally large mana gem that had formed in the monster slime. He had trained his slimes to spit out their mana gems whenever he tickled them. It was harmless to them and new gems would form soon. But tongs were still necessary to handle the slime-covered gems after they were spat out.

He dropped the oversized mana gem in his belt bag, the one with the acid-resistant lining. He would wash it later. As for the corpses of the monster and its victims, he scooped them up, making sure to get all the fluids that had spilled out. They would go to feeding that weird pig the neighbor had who loved eating acidic things.

With the pen tidied up and the bucket settled down outside the fence, he sat on the stone stairs and mentally activated class selection. Immediately, a list appeared in his mind, with the special classes he had unlocked at the top and the basic classes being listed below.

Basic classes were ones anyone could get regardless of their life experiences and he wasn't interested. They weren't as strong generally as special classes, though you could upgrade them into special classes. They were more for people whose life experiences didn't allow them to get a special class they wanted, like someone who wanted to be a warrior but was unable to get the training and martial experience necessary for the warrior special classes.

He didn't have that many special classes available to him. He just was someone who grew up on a farm and got talked into dumb stuff by his former friend. There was the Harvester, a class commonly available to farmers. The Trickster class available to him was likely because of the pranks his ex-friend had talked him into doing. But then there was a particularly interesting option. Slime Friend.

Its perquisites were ones most people wouldn't have, unless they got really into slimes like he had. They were an intimate knowledge of slimes, considerable time spent around and in contact with slime, and having tamed slimes. And... honestly, he liked working with slimes. They were easy to handle, affectionate, literally bouncy, just generally cute.

The beginning abilities looked good for someone who made a living as a slime farmer. Slime Understanding, which gave a deeper understanding of slimes and allowed you to see more information in their statuses. Slime Affinity that enhanced all slime-based abilities and increased your affinity with slime creatures. There was also Slime Summoning, which wasn't that interesting to him since he had plenty of slimes around. Still, it could be upgraded with ability points to summon stronger slimes.

More abilities would show up once he selected his stats, so he accepted the class and moved on to his stats. There were six, all currently at 0, the baseline for Folk. The maximum he could raise each stat to was equal to his level, so he would choose three stats to specialize in.

The stats were divided into three categories of Physical, Spiritual, and Resilience, each with a power-based stat and a finesse-based stat. Physical and Spiritual would mainly raise his offensive potential but also his defense to a lesser degree. Resilience would mainly raise his defensive potential but also benefit his offense to a smaller degree.

He decided to place one each into the Physical, Spiritual, and Resilience categories to give him a well-rounded build. He'd heard some things were weaker to physical attacks and other weaker to spiritual. As for Resilience, it was good to improve his own survivability. A powerful offense would do him no good if he was dead. Some people went for a more lopsided build which had its own benefits, but he liked having more broad options.

Strength was not appealing at all to him. He didn't want to become a mass of muscles. It was possible for high strength to manifest in a more subtle way, but he preferred a more delicate approach so he went for Agility.

The choice between Aura and Control was more of a toss-up. The idea of large-scale powerful spiritual attacks was appealing. But you could do all kinds of fun tricks with Control's more nimble approach to spiritual attacks and in the end that was more interesting to him than big explosions.

Finally, he went for Resolve over Luck. There were benefits to going all-in on finesse stats but he wanted a little more reliability to his defenses.

Having sorted out his stats, he reviewed his abilities. He now had Slime Tendril for his Agility ability, which would allow him to pull enemies off balance, whip them rapidly, and so on. Testing it out, he found he could extend a slimy tendril from any part of his body, even the parts covered with clothing.

As for his Control ability, he had gotten Slime Bullet, which would fire a high-precision bullet of slime. Resolve gave him Slime Regeneration, a passive ability with the option to activate it for a burst of rapider healing. Already, his soreness was beginning to fade.

The final choice was which ability to spend his ability point on. Just spending an ability point on an ability would make it stronger and would also allow him to add an optional upgrade whenever he made use of the ability. Slime Affinity and Slime Understanding weren't upgradeable abilities but the rest were. He could also use one to pick an additional ability but that was only available from level 2 onward.

Slime Summoning's upgrade options included unlocking elemental slimes, slimes with specialized classes, and summoning multiple at one time, while Slime Bullet had options such as more intense acid, better piercing ability, and the ability to ricochet. Slime Regeneration's options included an even quicker and stronger burst of healing, adding either an offensive or defensive buff to the active healing, and even the ability to regrow lost limbs and other significant body parts. But that last one required level 10, a rather high level.

In the end, though, the upgrade he chose was one for Slime Tendril, which would allow him to add a bladed edge to the tendril. It seemed like the option most likely to be useful against another monster slime.

Taking a glance at his status, he was satisfied.

...Huh. CREATURE was a god he hadn't had a blessing from before. Did his choice of class have something to do with it? Reviewing his messages, he saw that, yes, there was one about CREATURE blessing him for his choice of class.

Re-entering the pen and petting his slimes while checking their statuses, he found himself able to see their full information. Normally he would only see their names (he had named every one to make it easier to tell them apart), species, level, class (just Slime), and accomplishments. Now he could see everything.

Including the mana overload condition all of them had. Shit. He had fed them too much drake dung. At best, mana overload was uncomfortable. At worst, it could be harmful or even turn the victim into a monster if the excess mana was chaotic enough. That explained why one of them had turned into a monster. He would have to dilute the drake dung more, which would reduce their mana gem production rate but would be better for his slimes' welfare. And that was more important to him.

With a sigh, Gara turned and walked back toward home, carrying the bucket with him. He would have to take a bath then report his levelup to the community head, so he could be assigned periodic guard and monster-killing duty. That would cut into his time with his slimes.

After reporting he could spend some time as Aono. He liked being her. It was a welcome change from being Gara. Just some makeup and a change of clothes, and he could be Aono in the privacy of his own home. It wasn't something he could do permanently, though. Everyone would give him weird looks and he already had a whole life as Gara. Even if being Gara wasn't as fun.

He found himself looking forward to being done with the report.