The slime sisters spent the first week crying.
They trained through the tears, going through the forms Pinky had taught them, but everything felt hollow. Empty. What was the point of being strong if the person who made them strong was gone?
Then the adventurers came.
Three men. Dirty armor. Familiar cruel smiles.
"Heard the armored guy finally left," one of them said. "Been waiting for months. Time to have some fun."
The slime sisters looked at each other.
Then they reached for their weapons.
It was over in seconds.
Too easy. Pathetically easy. The men who had seemed so terrifying before were nothing against their training. Lizy's sword took the first one's throat. Wixi's arrow found the second one's eye. Mimi's axe split the third one from shoulder to hip.
They stood over the corpses, breathing hard, weapons dripping.
"We did it," Mimi whispered.
"We're strong now," Wixi said, her voice cracking.
"But he's not here to see it," Lizy finished.
The victory felt hollow.
***
Days passed. More adventurers came. More adventurers died.
Word spread quickly: the slime territory was no longer easy prey. The weak, helpless monsters were gone, replaced by armored warriors who showed no mercy to those who came with ill intent.
But the sisters still felt empty.
"What if we followed him?" Mimi asked one night.
"Don't be stupid," Wixi snapped. "We're slimes. We don't leave our territory. We've never left. The outside world is dangerous."
"We're dangerous now," Lizy pointed out quietly.
Silence.
"I don't want to stay here anymore," Mimi said. "Everything reminds me of him. The training grounds. The campfire. The cliff where he first found us."
"It's our home," Wixi argued. "We've lived here for a hundred years."
"Is it home if it's just... existing?" Lizy asked. "Or is home where we feel alive?"
They argued for days. Back and forth. Fear versus longing. Safety versus meaning.
In the end, longing won.
They left everything behind.
The cliff shelter where they had hidden for decades. The stream where they gathered water. The training ground where they had learned to fight.
They followed Pinky's trail as best they could, but they had never been outside their territory before. Every tree looked the same. Every path led nowhere.
Within hours, they were lost.
But they kept walking. Because somewhere out there, a pink-haired knight was heading toward certain death. And they wanted to see him one more time before the end.