The quill furiously scratched against the paper, jolting down Violet’s memories of the day and her records of her precious slime.
Keeping a diary was an important habit for someone as old as Violet, since her memories grew cluttered.
It also helped her think, as she wrote down Slade’s skills to understand their uses.
“Let’s see the skills that were revealed during my nap… Symbiosis: share senses, beneficial, and negative effects with a target in contact. I guess that’s how he shared the effect of ‘Regeneration’ with me.”
Violet envisioned many ways to make use of Slade’s skills. The most straightforward one was to support a combatant and heal them or restore mana. Maybe he could wrap around someone’s body and help the motions. But he could perhaps poison himself and use symbiosis on enemies.
She had given up converting into a fighter after her physical condition deteriorated, but with Slade’s support, she could perhaps beat enemies with her own two hands.
She imagined herself, wrapped by Slade in a muscle-like weave, tearing an army apart.
“I’d be so cool…” She muttered deep in thoughts before her stomach interrupted her brainstorming session with a loud rumbling.
“I guess I should get myself a meal.” She beckoned Slade, who wiped spilled wine from the floor.
She crouched down to speak. “Can you make me something to eat?”
A look of confusion flitted across the slime’s face. Resolved to fulfill her command, he climbed onto the cauldron and saluted Violet before jumping inside it.
“I didn’t mean for you to cook yourself, moron!” Violet fished Slade out of the cauldron.
She placed an egg in front of him. “I meant producing food with skills like ‘Synthesize’ or laying eggs. Look, Lorely laid an egg at the start of the spring- Hey! It was my emergency food!” She yelled as Slade gobbled Lorely’s egg.
The slime hesitated, then spat a few round balls.
Upon inspection, a system window informed Violet of its uses.
[Slime Egg
After a week-long maturation in a warm environment, hatch the egg by offering your mana (at least 150 spell points).
Can be eaten raw.
Its kernel can be consumed separately. If swallowed, the kernel grants a corrupted blessing.]
‘Corrupted blessing? Is that what I think it is?‘ Violet sat down, feeling faint. A maniacal laughter escaped her throat. The Dungeon’s mage guild would lose their mind if they knew that her slime could spit something that they couldn’t produce in centuries of effort.
It would be the funniest thing if Slade could turn anyone into pseudo-heroes.
“Anyway, let’s have a taste.” She didn’t hesitate to sink her teeth in the egg, breaking its skin and spilling its content all over her face.
“Hmm… Could use some salt.” Apart from how messy the slime egg was, it was an easy snack that could easily fill Violet’s belly if she could get a couple more from him.
After slurping the egg’s content, Violet was left with a small engraved bead that looked similar to the original ingredient that made up Slade’s core. Unable to make sense of its patterns, she just swallowed it.
’It would be great if it could alleviate the side effects of my experimental blessing.’ Violet prayed, but it could also go horribly wrong and worsen her state.
Heat spread through her body, making her yelp in surprise. She folded in helplessness and held her burning abdomen.
Time passed in the blink of an eye.
She woke up, feeling the cold floor against her cheek, relieved to be alive.
Slade had been licking her forehead while she was passed out.
“How long did I sleep?” Violet groaned as she checked her body in front of a mirror, worried about traces of burns.
She raised her robe, exposing a shocking sight. The skin underneath her navel displayed patterns of fleshcarving.
Violet had a hunch that the pattern took root deeper inside her body, intricately weaving around her mana core. The sigils tattooed on her skin were unlike anything she had seen before. She felt like they stored a large amount of mana, separate from her mana core.
“Fascinating! I want to study it so much, but uh… That location is a bit weird.”
Appraising the sigils with her skills revealed its inner workings.
[Corrupted Blessing
Similar to classic blessings, the corrupted blessing greatly reinforces up to nine abilities of the user’s choosing in an altered form. The extent of the reinforcement scales with the attack, defense, spellpower, and attunement accumulated by the user.
This cannot stack with other blessings.
The power supply of the corrupted blessing is stored locally in the sigils, and can only be replenished through ‘mana transfer’.
The alteration of the nine main skills are dependent on the sigils of the fleshcarving.
Current fleshcarving: The Union
Description: The great Principle that holds the world together. It enhances the aspects of restoration and continuation.
Passive: Increase the hitpoint of the warding aura by 5 hp per defense points.]
Violet’s face drooped in disappointment upon discovering the limitation of this weaker blessing. The user had to be constantly supplied with mana from Slade to keep the blessing up.
However, the fleshcarving looked pretty solid in Violet’s opinion. She had never heard of the Union sigil or great Principle thing, yet its effect looked on par with the sigils taught in the mage guild.
She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious after eating the egg’s kernel, but exhaustion caught her up during her investigations. She devoured the slime eggs and kept one as an emergency ration, then she slept with Slade, testing out all the ways she could use him as a pillow.
Over the next few days, she kept researching the corrupted blessing and Slade’s skills. She would often talk with him even though he couldn’t reply, but the slime seemed to understand her stories and showed interesting reactions.
Finally, it was time to test an idea to conquer the ore mine that Lorely had found days ago.
Violet checked her magic seals, opened her spellbook, and summoned the golem with the least mana consumption she could.
