The next morning, we were up nice and early. It was time to explore and have an adventure, just like Vespera had said. After a quick breakfast of fish, which I found quite pleasant compared to the empty sweetness of the cereal I ate in my old life, we moved out. With no way to carry them, the bear pelts remained behind.
That was okay with me. Last night's activities were bound to have left some trace, after all. I said nothing about it, pretending to keep the secret that Elyra didn't know what Vespera and I had been up to.
"I think I saw bags of holding for sale back in Perseverance's End," I mused as we walked. "They might come in handy, especially with my [Matter Reclamation] skill."
"Oh! We definitely need to get ourselves one!" Vespera said immediately. "That way you can spam your skill and we can farm infinite money."
The gamer lingo hit me like physical blows and I almost regretted sharing it with her.
"I seem to recall that they were priced in gold coins. They must be expensive." Elyra added.
Vespera shrugged. "Then we must make a lot of money! It's that easy."
The hidden mechanism was debt. People needed bags of holding to do work outside of the city walls, and in order to buy them they went into debt. Debt slowly accumulated, turning them into slaves. Or alcoholics, like the man at the guild with the slave dog creature. It was almost ironic, how everyone had slave beasts with them, but was probably a slave themselves.
We, on the other hand, did not need such a bag. Or did we? If the high beast tide rolled in, and we were forced to live inside the city, we were going to need money. To make money, we needed to trade materials. To do so, we needed one such bag of holding.
Or we could hide in the caves.
"It is not a good idea," Elyra said after I shared my thoughts with them.
"She's right," Vespera added. "I hate the city, but the caves aren't safe, spacer boy. We lucked out big time, but what if we get swarmed?"
Debt, then. We agreed to return to the city in the afternoon to get a storage bag and, if the beast tide meter allowed us, sleep outside again.
We also needed to grow in power. I was still at level 3 in the General and level 2 the Class levels, and the fight with the bear showed that we were still amateurs at these sorts of things. From what I gathered back at the Guild, we had been lucky so far, but this place was supposed to be dangerous. We needed to train and learn how to use the bond between us to give us an edge no amount of speaking and coordination could ever replicate.
Instead of going back towards the mountains where the ravine had been, we decided to explore the valley around the city while staying as far away from it as possible. Here and there we saw people harvesting things, chopping down trees or hunting animals and monsters. They became a rarer sight the further away we moved, fortunately. We didn't like having a potential audience.
Around noon, we had our first encounter.
Vespera pointed at a small clearing between trees, and her eyes narrowed. "What's that?"
A small blue blob was bouncing up and down. "A slime!" I exclaimed. Finally, a low level encounter and not a huge bear that could easily kill us.
Excited, the demon woman lunged at the blob, her claws of darkness already extending past her knuckles. She dove down from above, plunging her blades into the soft gel of the creature. They sunk inside and—
"Nothing?" she cried, stabbing again and again.
Each time, the claws penetrated the outer membrane and sunk into the main body of the slime, but when she took them out the membrane simply sealed itself back together.
I laughed and decided to encourage her. "Come on, Vespera, you can do it!"
She growled at me, straddling the creature and stabbing furiously. "It's not funny, spacer boy! What the heavens is this thing? A sort of immortal blob?"
I could see its core from a distance, but it was just slightly out of reach of her claws, and the slime was quite nimble at moving it around to dodge Vespera's stabs. Next to me, I felt Elyra shake with barely suppressed giggles, but even as she laughed she was readying her magic just in case Vespera needed help.
"It stings!" the demon woman cried out. "It's sticky and it stings!"
"Why did you have to straddle it, then?" I asked.
"It was easier this way!" she shouted back. "I regret it now!"
Elyra and I slowly walked towards her. "Slimes are corrosive, you might not want to get their gel on your skin," the angel said.
Vespera jumped down, and took two steps back away from the creature, so fast she almost stumbled. Then she looked at herself with horror in her eyes, noticing how her mostly bare skin was completely covered in goo that had splashed from the slime when she stabbed it.
"Now you tell me? Guh, it even got under the armor… Sol! She didn't tell me, she's evil!" she whined.
I suppressed the urge to laugh, knowing that it would not end well for me. Instead, I tried to reassure her. "Don't worry. If it was dangerous, you'd be feeling it."
"But why didn't you two tell me!!!"
"I know nothing about this world, demon girl."
She shook her head in disbelief. "Me neither, spacer boy!"
"Then why did you jump straight into a fight with a creature you know nothing about?"
She paused, humming. "It uh… it looked weak?"
I shook my head. "You excuse looks weak."
This pushed Elyra over the edge, and she failed to suppress her laughter.
"What you laughing at, angel woman?" Vespera asked, shaking her head animatedly. Through the bond, I could feel the challenging tone was actually playful banter.
Witnessing their chemistry filled me with happiness. For a moment, I felt like I was the odd one out, the outsider between us. I knew their chemistry came from millennia of shared suffering, so I pushed my envy to the side, knowing that it was irrational. We were building something together now, taking little steps.
Well, last night might not have been so little.
Meanwhile, Elyra and Vespera were still bantering. The angel woman rolled her shoulders, her halo glowing with power.
"Very well, clumsy demon," she said, hiding a grin. "Let me show you how it is done."
She kept a good distance away, just to be sure, and channeled her magic. A beam of light erupted from her halo, hitting the slime dead on. While aimed at the creature's core, it failed to immediately pierce the membrane. Instead, I could see bubbles beginning to form under the surface.
"Oh no—"
Was all I managed to say before the slime literally exploded and covered us in sticky, and slightly stinging goo.
You have defeated a Level 1 [Slime].
Vespera growled. "Oh, now you've done it!"
Elyra stuttered. "A-apologies, I did not think it would—"
But, instead of getting angry, the demon broke down laughing. "Now we are all covered with it! Even Sol! Poor, poor spacer boy, unwilling victim of the consequence of our bantering."
She walked up to the angel, sliding a finger over her plastic jacket and noticing that it wasn't being attacked by the slight acid.
"Hm, I think I want this back," she mused.
"I do not know…" Elyra said.
She pretended to think about it by putting a finger under her chin. Before she replied, light magic enveloped her and removed all traces of the slime's goo. Instead of dissipating like I had expected, it jumped over to me and cleaned me as well.
"I think I am going to keep it," she finally said. "It is not compatible with your style, going all close and personal. Besides, I feel like you have taken plenty of things already." She blinked, turned and then winked at me. "Leave some for me, will you?"
Vespera was utterly stunned. She did not move when the angel woman sidestepped her and went to gather the slime's shattered core. Only when her glassy wings, which did not feel like glass at all, brushed against her skin did she move, a shiver running down her still wet body.
"Crazy," she muttered to herself, disbelief in her voice. She summoned her magic of chaos and darkness and made the goo evaporate. "An angel is teasing me. The world's gone crazy."
◈◈◈
After finding the first slime, it was as if we had unleashed a veritable torrent of them. They came at us from all directions, bouncing up and down the forest and slowly dissolving grass and twigs inside their gelatinous bodies. They advanced lazily, not really interested in us but somewhat attracted by our magic.
Elyra sniped them from a distance, slowly trying to improve her beam of light. She worked on her control, making the beam tighter and more precise.
"Can't you help her with your knowledge of the physical sciences, spacer boy?" Vespera said.
She was playing with her claws, trying to get that tiny bit of length she needed to be able to reach the slimes' cores without making a mess.
"I don't know what the beam is made of. Light is a part of it, but there's more."
The demon shrugged. "Still, it's better than just lazing around while we do all the work, right?"
Locking eyes with her, I saw that she was smirking. And yet, I couldn't help but take the bait.
"I don't have a weapon!"
"Strength user with no dexterity. Just throw rocks or swing big logs, big boy."
The way she ran a finger on my chest, even though I was clothed, made me shiver a bit. Elyra coughed.
"I would very much like some guidance on light, Sol. Can you help me?"
Aww, she was looking all cute. Of course I could help her. I moved over, while Vespera shook her head and went back to playing with her magic. Now and then she would make a little victory noise, but so far they were all followed by a sigh when the longer claw collapsed on itself. It did not deter her, of course. In fact, it did the opposite.
She squared up against a slime, and grinned. "One versus one, little fucker," she announced.
She summoned her claws, lunged and manipulated them so that they grew longer right at the last moment. Her timing was off, however, and the claws returned to how they were before she hit the slime. The result was more of the usual, with her growing frustrated and tearing the thing apart.
You have defeated a Level 2 [Slime].
Interesting. I looked up to see what happened. It seemed that in the end, she won by overwhelming its regeneration. Her brute approach left her covered head to toe with goo, though.
"Arg!" she cursed. "I don't have mana to cleanse myself!"
We laughed. Then, before I could turn my attention back on Elyra to help her with her not-laser beam of light, I decided to check the guild token.
BTNO 12% (low tide.)
Nice. It was safe to stay outside. Then the System stirred and I got a pleasant surprise.
General Level 3 → 4
+1 to all stats.
+1 General skill point.
Insufficient energy.
◈◈◈
Status: Sol Nightguard
General Level 4
[Bound to the Fallen] Level 2
Str: 38
Dex: 13
Vit: 43
Int: 13
Wis: 13
General Skills:
[Matter Reclamation] 1
Class Skills: