Depthless Hunger

Technically Kai was supposed to be thinking about how to kill the immortal slime, but mostly he sat at the edge of the abandoned town and ruminated. It was unusual to run into a monster that so totally resisted brute force - instead of being frustrated, he was more intrigued than anything.

What captured his attention was the way that monsters at the Frontier were subtly different from others in a manner that seemed to stand outside the normal hierarchy. They distorted the world, twisting out of the way of some attacks and resisting others. When he'd been younger, that was just the way things were, but now he wondered if he couldn't figure out the underlying principle.

It was possible that they had some advantage that lay outside conventional power, or that they inherited something special from the abyss. He wondered if it had anything to do with phases and had spent a while trying to attain a power phase, but it was just too early. Despite all his training, phases were still beyond him.

But they were running out of time, so he needed to find some way to kill the damn slime.

Abruptly it popped up in his path, beginning to vibrate and shoot pain into his skull. Kai fixed it with Void Gaze, even though he knew that wouldn't work: if he kept the slime pinned long enough, it eventually died on its own, burning up in his gaze. And then it popped up somewhere else as if nothing had happened. That had been one of his first attempts to eat it.

Soon it burned away again, leaving him in peace. The vibration actually wasn't too painful now, because Behemoth's Heart had somewhat adapted his body to it. That had been one of his only areas of progress in an assignment that had otherwise been frustrating.

Chopping the slime only produced more, which could rapidly become a threat. Blunt force had no effect unless he brought enough of it to bear, in which case the slime was crushed but reappeared later. Torching a whole region of the town with Baleful Breath had made the slime disappear for much longer and he'd almost started to hope when it popped back up again.

For a day he'd attempted stranger solutions, such as trying to find some source in the town or lure it away. As far as he could tell, its persistence didn't have any gimmick and it only lurked in the abandoned town because it felt like it. The thing just seemed to exist no matter what.

Maybe the best answer was the simplest one: consuming the slime. Isulfr's Bite had always been his most potent technique, piercing through defenses that resisted his other skills. The only question was how to get close enough.

And once he thought about that, it wasn't a particularly hard problem either - he hadn't used Mutefang's Stealth in a while, but it was still in his soul and it should be good enough for a slime. Kai got out of sight outside the town before drawing the ability into his soul, finding some shadows, and slipping inward.

The greatest difficulty would actually be finding the slime, since he usually only spotted it when it showed up to attack him. As he moved, Kai was once again reminded that Mutefang's Stealth was a weak ability, nothing like the strong fusion he'd created with Thunderbird's Wings, or even Sahagin's Soul. Still, it was the best he had, so he'd have to hope it was good enough.

In the end he almost stumbled over the slime sitting in the entrance of a half-destroyed building. When it wasn't attacking the blob didn't vibrate, didn't move, didn't seem to do anything. What a strange monster. Kai focused on moving as stealthily as possible, crept closer, and opened his maw.

One bite later, the slime was gone. Kai immediately felt its essence in his soul, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. He removed Mutefang's Stealth and looked around, waiting for another slime to pop up again.

Nothing. Could it really be that easy? Apparently so, because he found its essence in his soul easily enough.

Immortal Slime (???)

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While the task had been easy for him, it would have been a real challenge for others, even Frontier-trained warriors. They were lucky that he'd come along, though he wondered whether the slime's apparent immortality could have stood up to a destruction phase. It probably depended on whether it simply recovered from damage or whether it somehow recreated itself after being destroyed.

Kai turned back toward the Adobe Retreat, considering his next move - and suddenly fell to one knee as something twisted inside him.

His confusion only lasted for a moment because he knew the truth: the slime was vibrating inside his soul, trying to kill him from within. In all the years since his hunger had awakened, he'd never once consumed a monster and had it be anything other than inert essence. But the slime seemed to reassert itself, over and over, and apparently that could happen even inside his soul.

What the hell could he do? Kai thrust away the essence, rejecting it and alleviating the pain... and it came back not long after.

He grimaced and clutched at his chest, but the pain didn't really originate there. For once Behemoth's Heart was silent, unable to resist such a spiritual threat. Maybe if he'd incorporated more monsters like the Shademonger... but there was no time to second-guess that, not when he had a threat deep inside his soul.

Kai tasted blood and realized it was his own. There was something trickling from his nose and when he touched it his hand came away red. Now Behemoth's Heart began working, restoring him physically, but it couldn't erase the source of the problem and it couldn't last forever. After forcefully swallowing his panic, Kai lowered himself into a meditation position to think.

Inside his soul visualization he didn't see any slime statue. That suggested that it was inside his soul, but he hadn't truly consumed it. The immortal slime recovering from his bite attack made more sense than it inexplicably being able to harm him as monster essence, so he went with that theory. He had a foreign entity killing him from within, so what could he do about that?

The slime definitely felt like it was part of his soul and he could manipulate it to some degree. There didn't seem to be any willpower to push against, it just kept existing and vibrating. If rejecting it didn't work, maybe he needed to try merging it.

First Kai tried with one of the weakest essences he still had, a Deathvine from the jungles. He'd merge the two together into a useless random ability that he could hopefully purge. It seemed to work well enough and he ended up with a new ability called Immortal Vine.

Immortal Vine - I (alpha)

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Useless as the result might be, it wasn't harming him. Kai considered whether to feed it to another ability or reject it. The essence itself wasn't powerful enough to be worth preserving, so perhaps it was best to-

Pain shot through his body as the slime returned. It took longer this time, and the slime essence had been distorted by the merger, but it still recreated itself. Kai grimaced and felt blood trickling from one eye. How much longer could he survive this? His body could endure a lot, but the constant distortion was beginning to take a toll on his soul.

Purging or destroying it was clearly useless, so his only other option was control. The Deathvine had created a small effect and he'd almost controlled it for a while, so maybe he needed essence that was more compatible. Except what did he have available? Kai returned to his old compatibility exercises, this time with efficiency borne of desperation.

One jumped out at him immediately: the Crystal Slime he'd eaten back in the Krysali mines. He immediately sensed the compatibility, but would that be enough? Given how this slime returned, he couldn't afford to fall short. Kai didn't have any other slimes, but he realized that he did have another spiritual essence: the Dreamleech that had attacked in the Blood Current. Beyond that he only saw the Banchlain as an option, but that was too powerful an essence to sacrifice for this and he wasn't even sure its aura of fear would help.

Kai took a deep breath, which hurt more than he expected, and prepared the three traits. He had to grasp hold of the essence and control it. Willpower alone wouldn't be enough, but if he used that edge to merge the slime with dead essence, hopefully the result wouldn't be able to operate independently.

He forced all three together and the monsters devoured one another. The pain ceased completely, but that didn't mean much on its own. After so many false starts, Kai didn't dare to hope, he just peered inside his visualization. Finally he saw a slime statue, apparently harmless and as under his control as all the rest. The essence had taken on a new form in his soul, too.

Slime's Immortality - I (alpha)

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Finally, after his body fully recovered, Kai began to accept that the slime wasn't going to pop up again and kill him. That had been close, much closer than he expected for a random little blob. Despite all the power he'd gained, the Frontier was dangerous.

As far as he could tell, the result did him no good at all. When he moved it into his soul he didn't feel any stronger or more enduring and he couldn't activate the same vibration ability. Most likely whatever other qualities the slime had possessed had been consumed when he forced it into a discrete ability. He considered eliminating the result, just in case, but in the end decided to keep it in his soul.

When he finally got to his feet, he saw the Prince of Pebbles looking at him.

"Holy shit, you did it."

"Did you expect me to die?" Kai asked. "I could have used a warning."

"I had no idea it was as bad as that." The Prince of Pebbles shrugged strangely, then grinned. "But good work! Now we have to hurry, or we'll be late!"