Rose

“Oh my gosh, you are the cutest blob of stuff! Yes, you are, aren’t you?”

The slime did not respond, as it wasn’t strictly capable of responding. It just slowly slithered forward, towards the young woman that crouched down in front of it.

“My name is Rose. Rose Flores. What’s your name, big guy? Or big girl? How do you tell on a... whatever you are? Maybe you’re both? Neither?”

When the slime got within arm’s reach, Rose tentatively reached an arm out and tried to pet it, which went as one would expect.

“Ouch, buddy! You’ve got an ouchy body... but that’s okay! Everyone is different, even you. You wanna play?”

For the next five minutes, Rose played a version of tag or follow the leader with the slime, she wasn’t sure which. She would crouch down in another part of the room until the slime ambled over to her, then she would hop up and move as it ponderously changed direction, like a tractor trailer at the end of a one way street.

Rose stood up and put her hands on her hips as the slime continued its slow roll forward. “Are you hungry, buddy? I don’t know if I have anything you can eat.” She looked down at her body and continued, “I’m a little... bare here. Oh! Let me see if there’s anything in that other room.”

The other room held very little in the way of food. Rose searched the room high and low, only coming up with a few rotten potatoes. “Hmm, I wouldn’t eat these, but maybe it’s different?”

The slime refocused on Rose when she re-entered the room. When it was within arm’s reach, she held out one of the rotten potatoes. The slime enveloped the potato, which began dissolving within it. Rose withdrew her hand when it had the equivalent of a sunburn from the slime’s insides.

“Feeding you is a bit tricky, huh?” Rose tried again with the second potato, but pulled her hand back just before touching the slime. “That’s it, that’s the trick. Hungry little one, aren’t you?” she cooed at it. “Here, one last potato.”

Once the slime had eaten the last potato, it stopped moving towards Rose, sitting still on the floor of the dungeon.

“Hey! You’re not mean at all! I thought I was going to have to fight you pretty soon, but you were just hungry!” Rose gushed at the slime. “You wanna come with me? Huh, buddy?”

Bind [Slime]? Y/N

Entity [Slime] agrees. [Slime] Bound.

Stage 1 Complete!

Rose dodged another stab from one of the goblins and countered with a 1 - 2 combo, a simple left jab - right cross. Her movements were graceful and fluid, concealing the brutal impact her fists left behind. A decade of boxing training will do that to a girl.

The goblin didn’t even attempt to evade or block, the punches just landed solidly on its green melon. After being rocked back twice, the goblin simply fell over and laid still.

“Holy cow, goblin-guy! That was just supposed to be to feel you out. You guys aren’t very sturdy, are you?”

A meaty smacking sound on the ground behind her alerted her to her Bound partner’s displeasure.

“Scooter, I said I was sorry!”

Scooter was the name Rose had come up for the slime after she selected a Perk for the creature on impulse. Rose had really been perusing the options for her gelatinous buddy with full intention of making a calm, rational decision for its well being. Then she saw Evolution: Manta Ray and selected it without a second thought. The second thought would have been, ‘Wait, that’s a massive sea creature, and I’m not likely to be in the middle of the ocean any time soon,’ and that would have been a good thought to have.

As it stood, Scooter, the absolutely harmless manta ray the size of her entire apartment in Manila, laid on the ground, flopping its pectoral fins around. This was the reason that Rose was attempting to rush this Stage, hoping that she could find another perk to help Scooter’s situation some.

Another of the goblins came in for a stab. Rose used her lead left arm to block the spear, striking the spear shaft with her forearm which pushed the stab wide. Then, she used her rear arm to finish with an uppercut which actually slightly lifted the little goblin off the ground and tossed it on its back.

“Woo! Putting that point in strength really gave my punches a little extra... punch!”

Scooter flapped his fins on the ground again in another meaty thump, which brought Rose back to the tast at hand. Instead of waiting on the last two goblins, having sufficiently weighed them and found them wanting, she advanced on the last two.

Rose slipped past the first stab and dropped the offending goblin with a pair of jabs. When the second goblin moved in, she tried something new, grabbing its spear right out of its hands and dropping it with a cross.

Stage 2 Complete!

“Okay, you still can’t move, but you can breathe now! That’s an improvement, right?”

If a manta ray could roll its eyes, Scooter would have. The second perk that Rose chose for it was No Breath, which allowed it to use a trickle of its mana to avoid the need to breathe.

Now, Scooter was a beached sea creature that was no longer suffocating.

Rose tried talking to the men who made up the village of the third Stage, but gave up just as quickly.

“Scooter, I don’t think these guys are real people,” she complained to her companion. “This whole place is giving me a real uncanny valley vibe. Like, they’re supposed to be people, but they didn’t quite hit the mark. Honestly, they remind me of NPC’s from a video game I used to play. The way their dialogue doesn’t quite match what you asked them is creepy, and who doesn’t even blink when a giant manta ray just plops in the middle of their village? Seriously? And another thing, this is no ‘village’,” Rose complained, making air quotes around the word village. “There’s like, one hut and a bunch of those fortification spikes. It’s like, where are the women? Children? Craftspeople? Where do they even store food? It’s more like the idea of a village without the actual village parts. You get what I mean?”

Scooter did what he had been doing all along, laid flat on the ground and stared.

“See, you get me. Thanks, Scooter,” Rose patted the great beast on the head. “Now, how do we move on from here? I already got your next Perk picked out. You’re going to love it.”

Scooter’s expectations were not high.

Stage 3 Complete!

“...so I told Scooter that these guys weren’t real, and he totally agreed with me. Then, I told the head Nordic guy to start the fight, or whatever, and these orcs came charging at the camp one at a time. One at a time! No strategy, whatsoever! Like, there were enough of them that if all of them had charged at once, they would have overwhelmed the defenders in seconds. Boom! Fight over! But, no! They come in one-at-a-flipping-time! All I had to do was run around and knock them around a little bit. The first guy tried to get me to take an axe or something, but I told him to buzz off! This girl only needs her fists to do some damage. I didn’t spend half my life training to be a world-class boxer for nothing. And those orc guys? Well, I call them orcs because that’s what they looked like, but nobody told me that's what they were. If this were a video game, I would like an identify spell or something, stat. Anyway, those orc guys were still not up to snuff! Those goblins from the second Stage were way, way too weak. They should have put up way more of a fight, but those orc guys would have been super heavyweight boxers. I mean, I’m a five-five flyweight boxer, I know how hard I can hit. I shouldn’t have been able to do a thing, and I was dropping those guys!”

The carbon copy of Rose that was sitting across from her, wide-eyed, just nodded her head, then closed her eyes and shook it. “Wait, no. I asked what you were planning to do with your Bonded creature. Not... all of that.” The copy Rose brought her hand to her chin and thought for a moment. “Actually, I think I have a use for your energy. We’re done here.”

Stage 4 Complete!

Silas

Silas Henry panicked. Everything around him was dissolving, fading away into nothingness. The grass, the sky, the shoes on his feet. Even his book. He wished with every ounce of his being that his book would not be taken away, and somehow, the world answered him.

He entered the first Stage with nothing but the skin on his back and his book. The book came with him, but it had changed. It still contained the story that he cherished so much, but now there was... more.

When he encountered the slime in the first Stage, he panicked again. If the slime truly dissolved all matter within its body, it would eat away at the book. Silas had charged back into the previous room and began throwing every weapon in the place at the slime.

It had only taken three to complete the stage.

Upon completing the first Stage, Silas discovered that he could... empower the book. Perusing the Perk options, Silas discovered Magic. There were all kinds. He envisioned throwing fireballs with Magic: Beginner Heat, but discarded the idea immediately. The thought of fireballs popping out of the book and setting the pages on fire nixed that idea. He almost skimmed past Magic: Beginner Electricity, then stopped. He remembered nights in the orphanage when the power would come and go, the lights coming and going with it. If he could master electrical magic, that would never happen again.

He chose it immediately.

Magic: Beginner Electricity

Allows the use of [Minor Electrical Bolt] and [Minor Shock Armor] through the Bound Entity.

Minor Electrical Bolt

Sends out a weak bolt of electricity. (Channeled Spell)

Minor Shock Armor

Covers the user in an electrical charge that will damage any who make physical contact, including through melee weapons. (Can only be cast on a single target at a time)

After making short work of the goblins with his Electrical Bolt spell, Silas was pleased to discover that he was able to upgrade the book again. This time, he chose Magic: Beginner Light.

Magic: Beginner Light

Allows the use of [Minor Invisibility] and [Magelight] through the Bound Entity.

Minor Invisibility

Renders the user invisible as long as they remain motionless. (Cannot be used in conjunction with other spells)

Magelight

Summon a mobile light that follows the user. (Must be within 1 meter of the user. Only 1 light may be active at a time.)

The fight against the orcs went much the same as the goblins. Every time an orc approached, it was struck by an arc of lightning from the boy standing still in the center of the village. The lightning wasn’t as powerful as a true lightning bolt from a storm cloud, but it still damaged the orcs as well as making them jerk and twitch while the villager they tried to attack finished them off.

In the end, not a single villager perished.

The man sitting across from Silas was weathered, but strong. His skin was as dark as Silas’s, but instead of the smoothness of the ten-year-old’s, his was riddled with scars and wrinkles. He was thin and wiry, someone who was always on the move, never resting. He looked to have seen countless battles and walked away stronger from each one, even if he left a piece of himself behind in some of those battles. Some of those pieces left him permanently changed, like the eyepatch over his left eye.

The two sat and stared at each other for a long time. Neither spoke. Silas clutched his book to his chest and stared at the floor, while the stranger kept his one good eye trained on the boy.

“Don’t worry, boy,” the older man finally spoke. “Your struggles won’t end, but you won’t be facing them alone much longer. Just hold on.”