Will struggled to turn his head, and the pupils in his fading eyes suddenly contracted.
Right in front of him was a... a very large lump of blue, round, semi-transparent jelly, bouncing its way toward him.
It looked nothing like a mutant, nor like any xenos he had ever seen in textbooks.
If anything, it was giving off a strange... fruity scent?
"Am... am I hallucinating?" Will muttered.
The blue blob stopped in front of him. Ripples spread across its surface, and then two black dots like tiny beans appeared where its "face" should be, followed by a smiling mouth splitting open beneath them.
"Young man."
A voice rang out—somewhat unserious, yet oddly reassuring.
"I can see at a glance that your bones are extraordinary. You're a once-in-ten-thousand prodigy fit for martial arts—ah, no, wait. I mean, a first-rate lackey."
Will froze.
He had imagined that before death he might see an angel, or perhaps a demon.
But never, under any circumstances, had he imagined seeing a giant talking jelly.
"Hm? Didn't hear me? Or do you just not want to talk to a xenos like me?"
Seeing Will sit there dumbstruck, Zhou Yuan raised a nonexistent eyebrow.
"Fine, then. I'll switch to a skin you can accept."
Before the words had even finished, the blue jelly suddenly began to tremble violently.
Then a brilliant, warm golden light bursting with holy radiance erupted from within it, instantly illuminating the filthy dump.
Within that light, the round little slime rapidly transformed.
Golden armor materialized out of thin air. A great halo slowly revolved behind him. It was a figure so majestic that any mortal would have fallen to their knees in worship—
a towering golden giant.
Will's eyes widened. In that instant, even the pain wracking his body seemed to vanish.
That appearance looked exactly like the statue in town—
No, more sacred than that. More real.
"God... God-Emperor..."
Hot tears streamed from his eyes at once. Will struggled to kneel.
"You... you finally heard my prayers?"
"Pfft—"
Before Will could kowtow, the golden giant deflated like a punctured balloon with a soft pop, instantly reverting to that lump of blue jelly.
"Sadly, young man," Zhou Yuan said, returning to his lazy tone, "I'm not that constipated corpse who sits on a toilet all day. I'm a slime."
"Your God-Emperor can't hear your prayers. In this universe, he's too busy—too busy acting as a lighthouse for that bunch of disappointing descendants. What he loves is the grand concept known as humanity, not an individual like you."
Zhou Yuan wriggled closer until his little black bean eyes were staring straight into the boy's.
"But I'm different. I've got plenty of free time. I can save you, and I can save your sister too. Of course, if you're squeamish and don't want help from a xenos, I can leave right now."
"But if that happens, you'll rot here and turn into fertilizer, and your sister..." He smacked his lips. "She probably won't last much longer either."
"What... what do you want from me?" Will asked.
"I don't want your soul, and I don't care about your faith. I only want your loyalty."
Those words gave Will the only hope he had left.
"I... I want to live!"
Will stared fixedly at the blue creature before him.
"If you can save my sister... even if you're a devil, I'll sell my soul to you! I'm willing to offer you everything!"
"Hey, don't casually compare me to those Chaos ugly mugs. Do I look that cheap?" Zhou Yuan wobbled happily. "Deal. Since you're one of my people now, let's start by healing you. Come on, open wide—say ahhh—"
"Ah?" Will opened his mouth on reflex.
"Might be a little hard to swallow. Bear with it."
Before he could react, a fist-sized lump of dark blue slime suddenly split off from Zhou Yuan's body and shot straight into Will's mouth.
"Mmph! Mmghhh!"
Will's eyes flew wide open. The sensation of a foreign object invading his body made him instinctively want to gag, but the cool, slippery mass seemed alive. It slid down his throat, instantly filling his shriveled stomach, then transformed into countless tiny tendrils that frantically burrowed into his blood vessels, organs, and bone marrow.
The suffocating feeling lasted only a second.
Then it was replaced by an indescribable mix of numb tingling and agonizing pain.
"Don't move around. Construction is underway."
Zhou Yuan continued,
"Whoa, what happened to these lungs? They're black as hell. Cut 'em out, cut 'em out. Let's swap in a higher-output version."
"These ribs are broken clean through. Tch. Too brittle. I'll reinforce them a bit."
"And this heart's no good either. Not enough power. Let me give you a premium upgraded model."
As Zhou Yuan muttered to himself, Will could feel his body changing at a terrifying speed.
Inside him, the slime offshoot was devouring all the necrotic tissue, then using its Mimicry and Division abilities to simulate stronger, more efficient human organs to replace them.
His bones crackled as they regenerated. His muscle fibers were torn apart and reassembled by force, becoming denser and thicker than before.
His body, once withered from chronic malnutrition, was visibly swelling with new vitality, as if being inflated from within.
After an unknown span of time, the transformation was finally complete.
"Whew. Done! Go on, inspect the goods!"
At Zhou Yuan's command, Will suddenly drew in a deep breath—
the smoothest breath he had ever taken in his life. Even the filthy air of the garbage dump felt like clear spring water in his lungs.
He rose to his feet blankly.
He had once been little more than a scrawny boy.
Now he had to look down at his own body.
What filled his sight was a physique comparable to that of an Astartes aspirant. He had shot up to two meters tall, and his once-loose miner's clothes had split apart, exposing muscles hard and sharply defined as carved stone.
And that was not all.
He felt as though the entire world had changed.
The faint clatter of wind brushing against scrap metal in the distance, the sound of rats skittering several kilometers away, the subtle trace of sulfur in the air—
every sense had been magnified several times over.
Will clenched a fist experimentally, and a savage strength he had never possessed before surged through his veins, as though a single punch could shatter rock.
"This... this is me?"
He stared at his own thick hands in disbelief. Beneath his skin was a faint blue sheen, proof that slime cells had fused with his body.
"So, how does it feel, Test Subject Number One... uh, I mean, little brother Will? Not bad, right? My slime-version gene modification surgery is pretty impressive, if I do say so myself."
Zhou Yuan bounced around him once, his tone full of satisfaction.
"This is my exclusive craftsmanship. Right now, you're still human... but not completely human anymore. At the very least, taking on two or three mutants in a fight will be child's play."
"Th... thank you..."
Will turned, dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.
"My life belongs to you now."
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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