Back in the day, special skills were seen as a blessing given by the goddesses Iah and Elyon.
—by Kjeld Povlsen, “How to Learn a Special Skill Without Too Much Hassle,” Discover Monthly, vol. 15, no. 18
Asteria
The cerneans proved to be easy hunting, and we spent a fruitful two hours harvesting ten anima cores. Some cerneans turned out to be resistant to electricity. The first time a monster shrugged off my bolt attack and charged at me with its head lowered and wickedly sharp horns at the ready, I accidentally fired off a bolt spell that was stronger than the ones I had been using. The cernean was blown back two feet by the force of my spell. Oren and Katja whooped in encouragement and attacked the cerean.
“Go, little girl, hit it harder!” said Katja.
“You can do it!” said Oren.
Oh well, this was a good opportunity for me to “level up” my ability in their eyes. As a newbie, it would have been strange for me to be too powerful, so I had been holding back, but it should be okay to learn how to cast better in a pinch.
“Bolt!” I put a little more anima into my spell this time. We made short work of that cernean and continued to hunt more of them until noon when Oren declared that it was time for lunch.
“What is this delicious thing? It’s crunchy, juicy, and spicy all at once,” said Katja.
“It’s just a croquette,” I said. “Minced eadive mushrooms with flour, onions, milk, and a little spice rolled into patties, covered in breadcrumbs then deep fried.”
It wasn’t the healthiest type of food, but it was cheap, easy to cook, and delicious.
“Please marry me,” said Katja.
“The last time Katja tried to cook something, we tried to use the ‘food’ as bait for the hupir traps, but even the hupir wouldn’t eat it,” said Oren.
The three of us had worked up an appetite and polished off the meal in no time. Oren insisted that I take off my boots and show him the state of my feet. They were bleeding a little.
“Heal.” I cast a spell to heal my sore feet. “See, they’re fine now.”
I showed them the healed skin of my feet. Heal was an extremely convenient spell. I’d used it a lot on my solo trip from Lieceni to Kraej City.
“No. Skin is more delicate right after it's healed. We’d better go back to the city,” said Oren.
“We still have about an hour left before we need to leave. Why don’t the two of you continue hunting? I’ll rest here.”
“Are you sure?” asked Katja.
“It’s fine. I did a lot better than I thought I would. I never managed to hit anything when I trained back home,” I said. Those golden slimes back home had always bounced around faster than I could hit them.
“What? But you’re really good!” said Katja. She got up and stretched. She never liked to sit still if she could help it.
“That’s weird because I thought I sucked at combat.” I started putting away the lunch things.
“You don’t suck at all. In fact, you’re very talented,” said Oren. He helped me with the plates and cutlery.
Aw, how nice! The hero was clearly a boy who’d been brought up well by his parents. He wasn’t one of those dark and edgy types of heroes with a tragic backstory that were popular on Earth.
“What did you train on?” asked Katja.
“Slimes,” I said.
“What?!” Katja, who had been stretching by touching the tips of her fingers to her toes, straightened up and turned to me in shock.
“Golden slimes. That’s what the other kids told me I should train on.”
Katja and Oren exchanged glances. Oren scratched his head and said, “They were joking. No one trains on slimes.”
“Huh? But they said slimes were perfect for beginners,” I said. That was a lie. No one had told me to train on slimes, but they were what players used to grind levels in “Tales of Vesterland” in the beginning part of the game.
“Slimes are terrible for beginners! They’re resistant to edged weapons and magic,” said Katja.
They were? No one told me that. I couldn’t remember if they were like that in the game, too.
“Even if they weren’t resistant, they’re too small and fast for beginners to hit,” said Oren. “You want to practice on big, slow-moving targets first. Like the cernean.”
“No way! Cernean are too scary!” I said. “Slimes are harmless.”
Oren shook his head at my stubbornness. “It’s okay, you can train with us. You’ll get much better at bolt very soon.”
“Okay, you guys go and train some more while I rest,” I said.
Wow, so I actually didn’t suck at combat? That was good to know.
The two fighters went off to kill more cernean while I sat under the shade of a tree, content to watch the hero and his companion for the next hour. It would take five hours to get back home so Oren and Katja ended the monster hunt in the middle of the afternoon.
The trip back to the city was spent in pleasant conversation. We planned to make another monster hunting trip ten days later when all three of us had free time.
It was late evening when we parted at the same place we had met earlier that day. Oren had to rush back to the barracks in time for curfew.
“See you next Tuesday!” I said to Katja. I was planning to have lunch at the dinette as usual. “Bye, Oren!”
The three of us hugged and said our goodbyes, pockets bulging with credits. It wasn’t a lot, but it was the first time I’d earned money from monster hunting. As I walked home, I regretted the fact that I was too old to skip my way home to my apartment.
I thought that things were really looking up for me, but that was just the calm before the storm.
A black van screeched to a halt beside me on the sidewalk. Three large men in dark suits and sunglasses piled out of the van and surrounded me. Without a word, the biggest one grabbed me and pulled me into the van before I could protest.
Damn, I’ve just been kidnapped by Lifers!
Umm...if you look at D&D content, slimes are almost instant death level threats. Most especially for low level individuals. Its not an exaggeration that if a village were to find itself attacked by slimes, it would be destroyed.
Honestly, I find myself believing the thought that this whole 'slime is weak' concept came from a D&D player with a grudge against his DM who loved flinging slimes at them.
Whoa. Yeah, slimes are ssoo scary if you ever think about it seriously. Those guys are small, fast, and tough
The real reason for the idea that slimes are weak is Dragonquest. They are always the first monsters you encounter in the beginner areas, and they are pretty weak. Dragonquest is only really popular in Japan, so it's only really a known misconception due to Japanese web novels being the primary source of fantasy webnovels up until fairly recently.
It just so happened that Kono-suba was the first series to bring up the subject of slimes, and kono-suba slimes were stronger than D&D slimes. So, it was an inversion on the Japanese misconception about the handling of the creatures. Ever since, it has become popular in Japanese webnovels to make slimes freaking OP if they are used at all. However, this is more as a subversion. They still seem to have the belief about slimes being weak as a popular thing in their worlds.
It's the west, which had our exposure to slimes via D&D, who know the true terror of those creatures.
@Jemini Agreed 100x.
A villain destined to die. A girl reborn. A slime in need of killing...
I'm working on my blurb right now. :)
@Jemini I never really paid attention to dragonquest references and I never looked it up...
Thanks for the heads up.
@IllOmened
Also in the show or book
Reincarnated as a slime
That guy is insanely powerful
@Shadowlord0474
You're right...except it's JUST Rimuru who is powerful. Also, Rimuru is one of the first Japanese character base that empowers A slime character. We're talking about slimes in general. Slimes being 100x more powerful than they are made out to be. Also their height closer to 5 ft. On average.
@IllOmened that I can believe
@Shadowlord0474 but I have yet to see any other slime then rimuru so maybe slime are strong just to dumb to use their body effectively
@Shadowlord0474
After all a slime body dont seem like its ment to have a brain
So slime probably have very bad instincts that make them seem soo weak
@Shadowlord0474 You somehow seem like someone who might enjoy the first couple games of the Mana series, Atelier Iris 1 and 2. The first game especially, there are these creatures called "puni," (Japanese word for squishy or bouncy.) They are basically that game's equivalent of slimes.
They have a lot of variety and personality, and the game has an overall comedic overtone. The punis especially get hilarious. Then, in the 2nd game, that game has some frustratingly hard to beat punies. Especially this one post-game content one called Emerald puni that requires some serious strategy and max levels in order to beat. (The freaking thing has high stats, and heals for 999 HP per turn. That's just unfair! For reference, even end-game attacks do not exceed 1,000 by much. And those are max-tier attacks. The only way to even reach 2K damage in the 1st game was to use some of the most powerful consumable items in the game, and in the 2nd game where this creature is those items have been taken out of the game.)
@Shadowlord0474
Actually, their instincts are top notch for a non sentient amalgamation of acid. The best excuse that I've found for their intelligence is that they are spawn of an evil god that imparts...purpose? Intent?...
Anyway, they do not have a centralized nerve that allows thought, but are - in essence - a living, instinct driven, eldritch nightmare.
For more information Google:
D&D slime monster.
P.s. I forgot this, but the origin monster of a slime is called an ooze. I got reminded when I googled it.
@IllOmened Oh yes. Alpha and 1st ED for the win. I still remember playing through the Whiteplume Mountain campaign and there was that set of stairs where a green ooze had completely conformed itself to the stairs and anyone who tried to climb them thinking they were just slimy with algae or something (since the room also had a lot of water) would wind up getting their feet dissolved.
@Shadowlord0474 Yes, good slime isekai! I watched that.
I see people are interested in slimes. There's more slime monster content in the future.
@meili it really depends on the rules of their sliminess. If they are blind, deaf, and stupid, and simply clean debris off the ground, and die from having their core hit, then they are pretty weak. If they are large, virtually unkillable without hitting their weakness, and very acidic, they are very troublsome. Then if they are reincarnations, then RUN
On this subject, I actually remember this one D&D campaign I ran where the party had to storm a decrepit ruin to disrupt a ritual. This ruin also happened to be home to a gelatinous cube. The defending cultists knew about the cube. They didn't have control over it, they just situated themselves in places the cube didn't go while they were fighting off the party and hoping they would get caught in it.
The party turned out knocking the head cultists into the cube. The entire party cheered it on as it dissolved the guy, and then they decided to leave the cube alone after all the cultists were dead. That was a pretty fun game.
@drakensji True, true. There are easy to kill slimes and hard to kill ones.
@Jemini At least gelatinous cubes aren't too fast or bouncy, right? Are they aggressive? Like, would they chase you if you ran away?
@meili they shouldnt be fast. though im not sure of their intelligence
@meili It's a D&D slime. All D&D slimes are slow-moving stealth predators. They all have some means by which to be almost completely invisible until the moment they hit you, at which point they are sticky and adhesive and can pull you inside their bodies to begin dissolving and suffocating you at the same time.
Gelatinous cubes have about the highest strength ratting among the D&D slimes, however they are actually the easiest to deal with because they are the easiest to hit once you know they are there.
Other slimes like the Green ooze lay flat on the ground in moist regions, and look absolutely no different from algae which makes a person more on guard for the possibility on slipping on it rather than getting their feet dissolved which is what will really happen.
Yellow ooze is easily the hardest slime to deal with in the early editions though. It lets off poisonous gasses that knock out it's prey before it then just slithers over them when they are already dead or unconscious.
TL;DR, D&D slimes are not bouncy, small, or fast. They are huge, sticky, goopy, and slow. However, that does not stop them from being absolutely terrifying.
@Jemini Whoa so they are trap monsters! Thanks for the info.
@drakensji But they eat people, I know that much!
@meili Yeah, if D&D slimes could move fast, it would mean the freaking apocalypse. All other life would go extinct.
@Jemini I see~ Yeah, they would be OP.
@Jemini my theory is that rather than the small bouncy ones being weak, it's that they are low level babies.
From what I remember, d&d slimes come in the cube type that don't congregate past a certain point and puddle type that do congregate sometimes but are primarily ambush predators. Cubes are too slow too compete for food that manages to escape, the puddle ones mainly prefer food that walks into them so they can conserve energy and just wait. Neither type is all that fond of forests and such since that's not an advantageous terrain for them. I could be wrong though, my memory is a bit fuzzy.
So, in theory, slimes could spawn in larger groups of the small bouncy ones, like you find in forests and plains, but most of those get killed off but various threats, at that stage they're pretty weak still having not had time to absorb much. The ones that survive and absorb stuff get bigger and thus shower... They get more gelatinous if they have a more solid diet, maybe the puddle type come from wet environments or mana biased diets. Since they lose forest competitive qualities as they grow, they tend to migrate to caves and ruins leaving the packs in the open to the little ones. They probably become more aggressive and hungry as they accumulate some residue of whatever from their food, like malice or miasma turns them nasty.
And there we are, both ends properly unified.. maybe over time slime splitting and lack of life expectancy caused an evolutionary divergence, resulting in only one of three being present in a world. It's plausible enough, either way.
@kaithar So Asteria got beaten up by a bunch of babies!
@LinMeili something like that
Nah, it's weird to me how do many game systems make enemies stay still and let you but them. Slimes of the bouncy kind, in particular, should be as hard to bit as you made them. Self preservation instincts really should be more of a pain for video game heroes lol
@kaithar I like this theory. The small weak slimes famous for being weak being babies, and the large terrifying trap-predator oozes of D&D settings being the adult form. This really would fit in very nicely with both tropes.
This could also make for a good slime equivalent to goblin slayer. They see all those little bouncy slimes and, even though they are weak monsters, the entire town goes on high alert and starts launching massive slime extermination campaigns because it would be a disaster if those things are allowed to grow up into their adult forms.
@Jemini there is actually a novel where there's a yearly slime culling to get rid of them before they can damage crops. The issue in that world is that the slimes get bigger as they level up. By the time you get to Emperor Slimes they're a disaster class but still of the bouncy kind, only you feel the tremors from their landing before you see them.
@Jemini Is that the reason the immortal witch got OP by killing slimes for 300 years???
@Bellaluin she got OP because of pure math ... 300 years is a long time to maintain a daily average like she did, and that novel has absolute experience values such that a slime gives you the same amount of xp regardless of the level difference.