Dorin never ceased to amaze me with how fast he could move. It was nothing like my slow hops. Where I was just a blob of semi-fluid slime, he was a hardened athlete, and his physical prowess had only increased since his transformation into a draken.

  When we first left the harpy nest, he’d set out at a mild jog to keep a steady pace while still making good time towards Felsporo. I sat on his shoulder, entwining a pseudopod into his hair to keep my balance. The heat of the sun had faded from the air, but Dorin lit a small mote of fire in order to light his way in the darkness.

  “Wait, do you hear that?” Dorin asked after we’d been travelling for almost an hour.

  I paused, listening to the air, but my senses didn’t reach as far as his. Examining the air, I didn’t find any strands of mana that might cause him to hear something strange, but something else caught my attention instead. Strands of decayed magic seemed to drip off several of the nearby trees. For that alone, I tensed.

  “There’s decay here,” I murmured to Dorin. “It’s getting thicker.”

  “That would explain the bells,” he finished, drawing his war pick. “We have to hurry!”

  Dorin took off at a sprint. It didn’t take long before the sound of tolling bells finally reached my senses. We burst out of the trees and crested a hill overlooking the town. My arcane sensitivity barely extended to the walls, but even that was enough to strike fear into my heart.

  In just the small scene I could see on the edges of my senses, I could see dozens of shamblers stalking the base of the walls. Embers of fire mana danced through the air, but I couldn’t see the source.

  “I don’t think they’re just attacking the dryad,” I said. “I can’t see the town, though. What’s happening?”

  “Shamblers are surrounding the walls, and if I had to guess, the gates have been breached. I see two large fires by the northern wall.”

  “Probably tried burning the horde.”

  “Yeah. Unsuccessfully.” He took a deep breath and began moving again, skirting towards the right. “We need to find Samri, Tanev, and Samara.”

  “Get me to a wall! I’ll make us an entrance!”

  Dorin nodded. In a few seconds, the full picture of the walls came into view. They sparkled with defensive enchantments, but they seemed to have almost no effect on the shamblers. However, neither the few scrambling defenders on the walls nor the monsters themselves seemed to notice us.

  “You ready?”

  “What foooo-aaaaaah!!”

  The draken knight peeled me off his shoulder with his free hand before hurling me through the air. I flailed a pseudopod, trying to catch myself, but there was nothing in my grasp. I slammed into a shambler’s chest, my slime already sizzling through its skin as it screeched in surprise.

  Despite being just as surprised as it was, I recovered enough to start wrapping myself around it. Its torso was swiftly engulfed, followed by its head and shoulders. It took only a few seconds for it to become little more than a pair of stubby legs, at which point I jumped away.

  [Evolution requirement progressed:

  Consume Human Body: 4/5]

  Scorching flames warmed my membrane as Dorin breathed fire down one side of the wall, setting fire to every shambler in thirty feet. Before he’d even finished the attack, he spun, slamming his pick into the head of another shambler approaching from behind.

  “Get the wall open! I’ll cover you!” he shouted.

  I wobbled a nod and turned to the tall stones separating us from the inside of the town.

  It would be a tricky thing. It would not do to open another path of entry for the shamblers to swarm into the town, which immediately ruled out Wild Magic Wave as an option. The explosive ability lacked any form of control or restraint. Instead, I would have to eat a much smaller hole, one that only Dorin and I could fit through.

  Hopping forward, I placed a pseudopod against the stones. My slime tingled and the defensive magics flared in an iridescent array of color and light. It seemed that they weren’t entirely useless, after all. The pretty light show might not have stopped the shamblers, but it was certainly going to try to keep a mere monster from entering.

  Too bad it was little more than a light show.

  I pushed my pseudopod into the enchantment. It flared brighter, pushing back against me even as it began to give under the pressure applied by a stronger monster than it was designed to deal with. Triumphantly, I poured my mana into Sealing Touch, and the colorful lights shattered like glass. The shards fell around me, and I spent just a moment hopping around to gather them into my own mana before returning to the wall.

  [Enchantment consumed:

  Defensive enchantment: 2/3

  Evolution requirement progressed:

  Consume Human Defenses: 2/3]

  I ignored the message. Eating defensive enchantments was one of the requirements for my one yet unknown advancement path. That evolution seemed centered around destruction and carnage, and I wasn’t sure that was the kind of slime I wanted to be.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Instead, I hopped at the wall, plastering myself across the stones and letting my acid eat between them. These rocks didn’t taste anything like the stones of High Ridge. In fact, these rocks didn’t have any taste of fire mana left in them at all. Instead, they were like sand held together by even more sand. If it bore any resemblance to any rock I’d eaten before, it would be the rock amalgamation that rested on top of the higher caves at High Ridge. Even then, those rocks were made of large crystals held together, whereas these were just sand.

  Was there a type of rock that was just compacted forms of sand and other rocks? I would need to ask Dorin to read something about that in the book we pulled from Dragon’s Gate. This felt like a discovery that I was keen to investigate further, even if now was definitely not the time.

  Cataloguing every taste that came from the soft and sandy stones, I pushed my way into the wall. Against my acid, the hole widened further and further until it was just big enough for a human to fit through, and low enough to the ground that most shamblers probably wouldn’t see it.

  “Dorin! It’s ready!” I shouted, hopping out of the wall to take his place in the battle.

  The grass around the wall was scorched, and I spotted a number of crispy corpses from the knight’s attacks. Dorin caved in the head of a shambler before turning to dive into the hole. I slammed a pseudopod into the knees of a shambler approaching from the other side. With a sickening CRACK the shambler tumbled to the ground, tripping the monster behind it, too.

  Flesh beings are so fragile. Their crunchy insides damage their squishy insides, I thought as I ate through the foot of another of them, sending that one to join its companions flailing on the ground.

  “Benefit of not having limbs, my friends,” I said to them. “You can’t break bones if you don’t have any.”

  “Suri! I’m through!” Dorin shouted.

  I threw myself at the nearest shambler before using it to leap back to the wall. The force of the jump sent it stumbling back into its companions as I darted for the hole. For me, it was spacious, though I did notice scratches in the stones where Dorin’s horns might not have fully fit in the small space.

  Just as I exited the hole, Dorin shoved a large boulder over the hole, preventing any shamblers, even the crawling ones, from following. Only after it was fully in place did I allow myself a few core-pulses to relax and center my mana.

  “How are you doing?” I asked Dorin. The draken was covered in traces of decay, but none of them seemed to penetrate through the thick wall of flames emanating from his being.

  “Fine, you?”

  “Good. But you’ll have to lead the way through town,” I said, gesturing back at the buildings. “I’ve never been.”

  He huffed. “Well, don’t expect the grand tour. We’re not here to sight see.”

  I hopped onto his belt and began working my way to his shoulder as he began running through the cobblestone streets.

  The town had seen better days, that much was clear. Screams and the growling cries of shamblers filled the air. Several fires raged in buildings where the guard had tried to burn the shamblers, only for them to spread the flames to the buildings before they finally died, but even more buildings had collapsed after supports were destroyed.

  “They’ve upped their tactics since the battle at the gates,” I muttered, not sure if Dorin could even hear me over the chaos around us.

  We rounded a corner, only to be faced with some kind of market square. Colorful tents lay in tattered heaps of cloth and splinters as several of the guard desperately tried fighting a large troll-like shambler at the center. If the Big One from the gate fight was aptly named, then this would have been a Huge One. It was at least twice Dorin’s height, and every so often it threw a fist through a building, taking whole parts of the wall with it.

  “It seems the whole troll tribe is defeated, since that’s their chief,” explained Dorin.

  “The guards look like they need help.”

  “Maybe they can fit me with a half-decent weapon once it's dead.”

  I readied myself on Dorin’s shoulder, not wanting to be taken by surprise again. I’d do my own hopping onto the enemy, thank you very much. Flying through the air felt entirely too much like falling.

  The troll swung a fist into the gathered soldiers. They scrambled back before trying to poke at its sides with their spears. The few blows that actually landed did little to actually bring down the creature, instead causing it to flail its arms around even more.

  “Stand back!” Dorin shouted. “We’ll handle this!”

  He ran straight for the monster, throwing his bone pick aside and snatching a halberd from the hands of one of the guards. The troll swung its mighty fist through the air. Dorin ducked, letting his feet slide out from under him as he slid straight between the troll’s feet.

  “Suri? You ready?”

  “Please don’t throw me again. I’ll be just fine on my own!” To punctuate the words, I jumped at the troll’s other fist as it punched toward Dorin.

  Dorin lit the end of his halberd on fire as he parried the blow just enough to spin out of its reach. Then he lunged forward, striking at the beast’s stomach with the spiked end of the blade.

  Meanwhile, I began to climb. While Dorin harried its feet, I would eat at its head. Or at least…that was the plan. As soon as I reached the beast’s shoulder, I recoiled. The decay was one thing, but there was something else about the monster that made my slime itch.

  Warning: Salt detected on outer membrane. Immediate attention required.

  It was far stronger than when I’d tasted the salt on Tanev’s skin during their frantic escape. This was a creature that had let the salt from its skin sink into its flesh like a bad marinade. Where my slime touched, it sizzled and itched, as if the creature were eating me just as much as I was eating it.

  “Dorin, I don’t like this one,” I complained. “It’s too salty.”

  “Yeah? Well, tough.”

  He sliced through the troll’s ragged loin cloth, and the tattered fabric immediately caught fire. It flailed and roared in fury, slamming its fist at the draken knight who simply ducked out of the way, being far smaller and nimbler than the troll.

  I tried to poke at the creature, doing my best to limit the amount of skin I touched. I could feel the drain on my slime. If I had to guess, this was the one thing that Slime Sacrifice didn’t help me with.

  “Suri! Just eat it!”

  “I can’t!” I shouted back. “I told you! It’s too salty!”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  I wobbled a frustrated gesture. “Salt is anti-magical! It hurts to eat!”

  Dorin paused for a moment, taking a moment to look down at himself as he finally understood the full meaning behind my words. “It’s the creature’s sweat! From when it was alive! Try eating it from inside!”

  I did not like where that thought was going. Where exactly was I supposed to enter the creature if not through its skin? I was not about to enter its mouth. Who knows what kind of magic-draining properties it could have in its decay-riddled mouth?! That would be like asking to be eaten.

  As if he’d heard my resistance, he rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll help.”

  His mana glowed with fury as he raced forward, poking at the troll with his spiked halberd before ducking to avoid the creature’s retaliatory punch. It was wide open after the blow, and Dorin leapt up, dragging the axe-blade on his weapon down across the troll’s chest.

  It bled decay, and while that was unsettling on its own, it was better than the salty surface of its skin. I lunged down the creature’s body before plunging a pseudopod into its wound. Determining that it was far less salty inside the creature than outside, I slipped inside to fight the battle from within.