I woke to the sounds of warnings I wished I could ignore. The Voice of the Creator sounded as if the warnings hadn’t stopped ever since I passed out in the boss room. The constant droning was impossible to push away, and it slowly dragged me back to irritable consciousness.

  [Warning: Injury Index at 2.

  Maximum health at critically low levels.

  Maximum mana at critically low levels.

  Seek aid immediately.

  Health and mana regeneration insufficient]

  She began to repeat the message as soon as it finished. I tried dismissing it, only for the Voice to ignore me and continue giving the endless warning.

  “How low is it?” I finally asked, trying to stop her before she repeated the warning for yet another time.

  [Health: 5/11

  Mana: 11/23

  Injury Index: 2 - Core damaged through mana exhaustion.

  Health and mana regeneration reduced]

  This was…bad. There was no other way to put it. My mana was reduced to the point that I couldn’t even use Wild Magic Wave if I tried. If it came to it, I’d be forced to reserve my mana stores for Soothing Touch in order to maximize my effective health at a time when my maximum health was so low. Any fight under those conditions, and I’d be better off running away than sticking around to fight.

  “Suri?” It was Dorin.

  At some point while I was unconscious, he’d scooped up my slime and put me in a bowl. I poked a pseudopod up and over the edge, taking a quick look around. Wherever we’d ended up, there were many beds arranged in neat little rows. Dorin sat on one, his back leaned against the wall as he cradled the bowl in his lap. On the nearby bed table, four empty glass bottles rested.

  “You’re looking better than before,” he muttered sleepily. He raised a hand to cover his mouth as he yawned.

  “You are, too,” I answered.

  It was the truth. Dorin’s inner fire had been stoked into an even stronger blaze than before. The flame that was once only a small core within him was now an inferno that filled every vein and muscle. In my arcane sight, I could see every strand of his hair, every outline of his body, and even the places where his magic had rubbed off on his clothes and armor.

  “Yeah, about that…how are you feeling?”

  I wobbled weakly. “Miserable. My health and mana are low.”

  “Well, we’re out of potions again. I raided this place for everything I could find. Even dropped you on a pile of slimes trying to get into the infirmary cabinet—” He grimaced— “Only to find out that you weren’t strong enough to eat them, and they were eating you instead, so I shooed them away myself.”

  “Oh.” I made a mental note to eat any slime I came across nearby. Not only were they good for restoring my extremely limited mana, but it was slightly personal that lesser slimes like them would dare attempt to eat a greater slime like me.

  “Regardless, I’m glad you’re awake. I was worried your efforts to save me would be in vain, given that I can’t get out without you.”

  As if on cue, his stomach growled, and he looked away. I wondered when the last time he’d eaten was. I’d been munching away on everything I could get my slime on ever since I got to the dungeon, but he couldn’t eat rocks and slimes like I could.

  “How long can humans go without eating?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure something will eat me before I starve.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Besides, I’m not human anymore, so the question is moot.”

  “You’re…not?”

  Dorin nodded, showing me the scales on his arms, the fangs in his mouth, and a set of horns that had grown from his hairline which only served to make his visage even more majestic. He even said that his eyes had changed color, but I couldn’t tell with arcane senses.

  I pondered the development with extreme care. As a draken, Dorin was a monster with a monster’s stats and tags. I could heal him, but given that I couldn’t before, it must have been something I’d done while trying to save his life. To make sure, I asked the Voice of the Creator to explain Soothing Touch and Healer’s Bearing again, but she revealed nothing that I hadn’t known already. That left only one thing.

  “Before I passed out, Consumer of the Fourth Anchor triggered,” I told Dorin.

  “What does that do?”

  I wobbled in a non-committal answer. The truth was that I had no idea what the tag was, what it did, or where it came from. Even asking the Voice of the Creator gave very little. For the rest of my tags, she gave clear answers:

  [Available Tags:

  Monster, Slime: A monster made entirely of slime around a central core.

  Arcane Entity: A monster comprised of magic rather than organic material

  Dungeon Born: A monster created by the natural processes of a dungeon]

  But when it got to Consumer of the Fourth Anchor, it didn’t have much to say.

  [Consumer of the Fourth Anchor: Details unknown. Tag has been observed altering known abilities to increase damage while in Slayer’s Stance. Cases in Healer’s Bearing have been observed, but are lacking data to form definitive conclusions as to its function.]

  Stolen novel; please report.

  When was Consumer of the Fourth Anchor created? I asked the Voice, trying to at least get something worth telling Dorin.

  [Tag: Consumer of the Fourth Anchor was attributed at the time of advancement from Tier 1 to Tier 2.]

  Anything more, and the Voice of the Creator gave up. No further details were known either about its function or what I might have eaten to get the tag. Given that I remembered very little about my time as a Tier 1 slime, I was at a loss.

  “I don’t know anything else,” I answered.

  “How can you not know your own tags!?” he growled. His magic flared, and despite his relaxed position on the bed, I suddenly was overwhelmed by flashes of heat and magic rolling off of him in waves. Fight or flight filled my mind, but the choice was clear.

  I shrieked in fright, hurling myself from the bowl and onto the floor. The tiles below, and I squeezed myself between them, finding a comfortable, hollow space beneath the floor.

  “Wait! Suri!” The ground vibrated as Dorin leapt to his feet and began searching for me.

  He hated me. I was sure of it. All that work to become his friend, to forge tight bonds of battle, and now he hated me. I didn’t mean to turn him into a monster. I didn’t even know how I did it! But now, he was even more fearsome than before, and the power gap that kept me safe before had vanished into smoke. Dorin was Tier 2. Under normal conditions, we’d be evenly matched, but I was weak. My injuries were great, and if I couldn’t even challenge a lesser slime, how could I possibly challenge a great and mighty draken like him!? He’d eat me for sure…

  “Suri?” Dorin’s voice was soft, but I could still feel his heat through the tiles. “Come out! What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry!” I squeaked, tucking myself beneath something rectangular inside the hollow space. It tasted like leather and stone, but the familiar tastes did very little to ease my fear.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “I-I’m sorry I turned you into…into a m-monster! Please don’t eat me! I didn’t mean it!”

  There was a pause as Dorin shifted his weight above me. When he spoke next, his voice was softer. “Why would you think that I’d eat you?”

  “Monsters eat monsters all the time. It’s nature.”

  “Somehow I doubt that eating a slime would be healthy, even for a draken.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Slimes were made of magic, after all. Surely other species could benefit from eating mana-dense creatures like me.

  I made myself small beneath the leather slab. Maybe he wouldn’t notice, or he’d forget that I was there. I could wallow in my pain and self-pity by myself…all alone…again.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

  “And flared your magic?”

  “And…what?” he paused, and I could imagine the confused expression he must have been wearing. “I didn’t even notice. I’m sorry I flared my magic, too. You must be terribly frightened, but I promise I won’t hurt you. Take your time. I’ll be here when you’re ready to come out.”

  My core still pounded, and I could still feel the residual heat from his mana in the tiles. I waited in the hollow space for several minutes before I reached out from under the leather thing and pushed the tile up just enough to peer out.

  Dorin sat on the floor, hands in his lap and back against the wall. When he saw me, he smiled.

  “I’m surprised,” he said. “Samri usually takes a half hour to come out after he’s been yelled at by an adult, longer if it was me.”

  “It’s my fault, though. It’s only right that I be the one eaten for it.”

  Dorin’s laugh was deep but gentle. “Suri, I’m not going to eat you for a mistake like this. I’m upset. I’m uncertain about what to do, but I know you didn’t mean it. Your apology is unnecessary.” He paused and took a deep breath. “If anything, I’m sorry for lashing out. I didn’t consider that you see differently, and I didn’t know you’d see the magical flare when I didn’t even know it happened.”

  Even as a draken, his arcane awareness was poor. I wondered if that was normal for creatures with eyes. Did the ability to see light make one oblivious to the world in motion around them? If so, then I was glad I couldn’t see the way mortals could. Mine was a more complete view of the world.

  I gingerly pushed the tile aside and crawled out. “I forgive you if you forgive me.”

  “I do.”

  Dorin offered the bowl, and I let myself be scooped into it. Then, he reached down into the space where I’d hid and pulled out the leather slab.

  “Seems the soldier who bedded here was an academic,” he noted before setting it on the bed.

  “What is it?” I peered over the edge of the bowl.

  “It’s a textbook called ‘Gems and Stones: a Draken’s Guide to Geology’ by Rilin Coppertail.” He paused, looking down at me. “Didn’t you say you liked rocks?”

  “It’s about rocks?” I was astonished that he got all of that from the leather. I couldn’t see any differences in the cover at all.

  Dorin opened to a random page and began reading. “‘Basalt. A grayish form of igneous rock formed from fast running lava flows.’”

  “I wonder what it tastes like.”

  He lifted both the book and my bowl and sat back on the bed. “It doesn’t say.”

  [Evolution path: Unknown, Tier 3

  Requirements:

  Consume Rocks 8/10

  Consume dungeon bronze: 2/10

  Catalogue unique types of rock: 0/5

  Unknown: 0/5

  Unknown: 0/3]

  Now that was a evolution path I could get behind. Something that would increase my closeness with rocks?! It was perfect!

  “What’s another one?”

  “Diopsine,” he said, opening to another page. “‘A green, semi-precious gemstone formed in volcanic deposits.’” He turned the book to show me the page. “It’s kind of the same color as you.”

  “It is?” I reached out, trying to discern the means by which Dorin was reading the information. The paper had the taste of ink, but the blots were so fine and detailed that I couldn’t differentiate any symbols from the whole. The whole thing was a blank mass to my senses. “What else does it say about the green rock?”

  “It says it’s a gemstone that is often confused with emeralds, and the crystals inside it don’t break evenly.”

  “So, this Diopside thing wouldn’t break like the rock you used to skin the drake before?”

  “Supposedly not, but I don’t know much about this sort of thing.”

  I touched the page gently, almost reverently. As a slime, I considered myself an expert on rocks. I was born amidst the cracks, and I’d eaten so many rocks that I could tell fire rocks from earth rocks and the rocks that still carried the tastes of water. But in this book, there were even more kinds of rocks than just fire rocks and earth rocks, and I didn’t know anything about them. My pride as a rock expert slime was at stake!

  “Do you want to read more?” Dorin asked. “We could probably spend a few hours here while you recover.”

  “Yes!” I answered immediately.

  The draken knight laughed and turned to another page. “This one is mica.”

  Dorin read to me for an hour before my mind was so stuffed full of facts that I didn’t think I’d ever remember it all. My core began to throb again, and I didn’t know if it was because of my injuries or because of all the new things I’d learned about rocks giving me a significant core-ache. There was just so much, and we’d barely scratched the surface of the subject. In the end, all I could do was make Dorin promise to take the book with us and read it to me whenever we got the chance.

  We rested for a while longer, and by the time we were up again, my health and mana were at their current maximum values…though thanks to my injuries, I still felt miserable. I stayed in my bowl as Dorin picked me up and we began searching the outpost for the emergency exit. Though my companion wasn’t convinced the exit was actually real, he still helped me around until I spied a patch of wall that glowed bright in my arcane sight.

  “There’s nothing there, Suri,” he insisted, even as we approached.

  “And as far as I know, the book is filled with blank paper,” I countered. It wasn’t quite true, since I could taste that the ink on the page existed even if I couldn’t read it. Dorin, however, didn’t need to know that.

  “Fine, here you are.” He held out the bowl to the indicated stretch of wall.

  With a single pod, I reached out and touched the magically charged section. My slime tingled and the wall shuddered before splitting into two and shifting to either side.

  “See, I told you there was something here.”

  Dorin leaned his head in, minding his horns so as to keep them from scraping against the low roof. “Smells fresher than in here, at least.”

  Then, he stepped into the dark tunnel, and the stones sealed shut behind us.