Marrow stared at the slime in front of him. All those brains lost in the sticky goop – it made Marrow kind of… sad? He did not quite know how to describe or even understand the feeling, but it was definitely there.

He had also learned that he did not care for being entrapped in a slime. In fact, he realized that he did not like slimes.

It was still strange for Marrow to have any emotions at all. After all, he had been in a closet for hundreds of years without feeling pretty much anything. And then suddenly he had been almost overwhelmed with sentiments, passions, and desires.

Not that it was comparable to an average human by any means – he experienced an emotion once every few hours… but for a skeleton that was still the equivalent of raging hormones like in puberty. The suddenness of the onset of those feelings sometimes surprised Marrow, as much as their impact. If it had been something physical, he might consider it some sort of attack, but this… it actually seemed to come from inside of him.

Rather than ponder about the mysteries of the world, Marrow decided to do what he knew how to do. He started slashing into the slime to get at the brains. And if the slime was cut into pieces in the process, all the better.

And now Marrow knew to avoid touching the sticky amorphous cube with his bones, lest he got caught again. Rather than slashing into the slime to no effect, Marrow began to carve chunks of the goop off the gelatinous blob. At first, this did not do much, but rather soon, Marrow had shaved off a substantial pile of wobbling bits and pieces that visibly reduced the volume of the slimy creature.

Initially, the slime did not even seem to notice what was going on, busy as it was with digesting more than a dozen kobolds at the same time. But eventually, it realized that it was losing mass quicker than it was gaining. And the skeleton was, quite obviously, the culprit.

So the slime shot out tendrils of its body, trying to ensnare the pesky, and inedible bone-creature, but Marrow either sidestepped them with surprising agility or simply cut them off with his sword.

Marrow did not really have to think overly much about what he was doing. After figuring out that cutting things off the blob was better than stabbing or just slashing at the main body, the rest was reasonably elementary for him – hack, slash, sidestep, and slash again.

And he was not aimlessly cutting off slime-parts either… he was aiming to retrieve the heads of the kobolds from the gooey clutches of the monster. And there was the first one. Marrow felt satisfaction when he managed to cut out the first semi-digested kobold, and it fell to the floor.

By then, the slime was wobbling around in obvious alarm, slowly moving away, while lashing out with thick tendrils, trying to ward off Marrow’s persistent attacks.

But Marrow did not relent. Faster and faster, he cut out the remaining kobolds, in no small part aided by the lack of energy the slime possessed after trying to digest that many bodies all at once.

Eventually, the slime was whittled down to a fraction of its original size and started looking more like a harmless pudding than a threatening slime-monster. Not that it mattered to Marrow – cute or not, non-threatening or not, he did not like slimes and kept on chopping.

He noticed that Borgar, Gamul, and Catlyn stood a bit further away and watched with somewhat strange expressions on their faces what he was doing, but that was of no concern to him either. He wanted two things – brains, and a dead slime if a slime could actually die. And if not, then at least a small slime.

And die it did.

As the slime got smaller and smaller, it began to wobble around more and more vigorously, in the futile attempt to either escape or ensnare Marrow. And then, the slime was by then the size of a cat, it stopped moving. For good measure, Marrow cut it a few more times and even stomped on it, but no more changes happened.

And then, the voice spoke up.

“[Level up: Level 6; Two new characteristic points available. Would you like to spend them now?]”

Marrow had realized that it was better to know what was being said, rather than randomly saying things just because they fit past patterns. There were words out there, and meaning, beyond the wildest patterns he had learned so far, of that Marrow was convinced.

But perhaps… Marrow swiveled his head around to look at Catlyn.

Maybe it was possible to learn about the meaning.

“[Level up: Level 6; Two new characteristic points available. Would you like to spend them now?]” he said with a bony imitation of the voice toward the adventurers.

“W..what?”Borgar stammered.

“Seriously, this skeleton sometimes gives me the creeps,” Gamul complained, while cautiously picking his way through the slime-covered floor to retrieve his hammer. “But I have to give him that… he is helpful! Got me back my baby!”

“I think it is asking for help… Is that right, Marrow?” Catlyn asked.

Marrow could make neither head nor tail of what they were talking about, so he just repeated the message. “[Level up: Level 6; Two new characteristic points available. Would you like to spend them now?]”

“Marrow, say yes,” Catlyn said, talking slowly and highly articulated like to an imbecile.

“Marrow, say yes,” Marrow said.

“Ungh, Marrow, not like that. Just say ‘yes,’ not everything else I am saying,” Catlyn chided Marrow impatiently.

“Ungh, Marrow, not like that. Just say ‘yes,’ not everything else I am saying,” Marrow repeated dutifully.

“It is so weird to hear your words in the system voice, Catlyn,” Ikarius chuckled. “It actually gives it some gravitas.”

Catlyn frowned. “What do you mean, by that?”

“What do you mean, by that?” Marrow asked as well.

“Oh, you know, like deep, not like squeaking, high pitched, and frivolous.”

“He means silly,” Gamul threw in helpfully.

“Squeaking? High pitched? Frivolous? Silly?” Catlyn repeated at first bewildered and then with growing outrage.

“Squeaking? High pitched? Frivolous? Silly?” Marrow helpfully repeated.

Catlyn turned angrily toward the skeleton. “Shut up, Marrow!”

“Shut up, Marrow!”

Ignoring Marrow for the moment, Catlyn glared at Gamul and Ikarius. “So you don’t like my voice, huh? If that is t-.”

“I was just teasing, Catlyn,” Ikarius interrupted. “You voice is quite lovely.”

Somewhat mollified, Catlyn mumbled, “Lovely, huh?”

Ikarius could not help, but quip: “Even if your voice IS a bit high pitched.”

“You!” Catlyn grumbled, but could not help to grin a bit at the good-natured ribbing. As most catfolk, her voice did have a somewhat higher pitch, so it was not something that she took that personal.

“Guys, this is too good. Let me try something.”

With a twinkle in her eyes, she turned back to Marrow, who, in the meantime, had kept on repeating whatever Catlyn had been saying. To no avail. Nothing had happened at all. So he was starting to doubt his plan of asking for help. Maybe they did not, after all, know what the message meant? If so, there was no point in repeating things, so he decided to stop doing that.

“Catlyn is the best!” Catlyn said triumphantly, giving Ikarius and Gamul a smirk.

“.”

“Marrow!” Catlyn repeated a little bit annoyed. “Catlyn is the best!”

“.”

“Marrow, what the heck? Repeat what I say!”

“.”

Ikarius, Gamul, and Borgar could not suppress their snickers any longer, and Catlyn flushed a deep shade of red.

------------------------------------------------

Marrow wasn’t sure why all the others made those strange noises. He had once tried to copy them, but it turned out to be much harder than imitating language. Even to his own ears, or earholes as they were, it sounded different, somehow darker. So he did not try to imitate it.

And then the voice talked again.

“[You have 10 free characteristic points available; Do you want to spend them now?]”

Reluctantly, Marrow tried once more to get help from Catlyn, and this time she acted strangely. First, she slapped a hand in front of her mouth, and then she scrunched her forehead before responding.

“Yes.”

And when Marrow repeated the word, the voice spoke up again.

“What do you want to spend your points on, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, or Intelligence?”

This time, when Marrow repeated what the voice had said, Catlyn did not immediately respond. Instead, she looked imploringly at Ikarius, Gamul, and Borgar and raised her shoulders briefly.

Borgar immediately said, “Strength,” while Gamul shouted “Wisdom,” and Ikarius proposed “Dexterity.”

Catlyn considered briefly, but then, turning to Marrow said: “Status!”

Repeating this, made the voice say a lot, which delighted Marrow quite a bit.

Name: Marrow Class: No Class Type: Basic Azkera’t Skeleton

Level: 6 Experience: 4350

Strength: 8 Stamina: ∞

Dexterity: 5 Health: 48

Constitution: 8 Mana: 36

Wisdom: 3 Divine Favor: 18

Intelligence: 6

Free Points: 10

Skills:

[Skill absorber; R4]

[Forceful Punch; C4]

[Devastating Bite; U5]

[Penetrating Stare; C3]

[Ultrasonic Hearing; U1]

[Obstinance of a Cat; U1]

Spells: NA

Marrow started repeating what he had heard, but Catlyn interrupted him after only a few of the words.

“What is a Basic Azkera’t Skeleton? And what do you mean by ‘no class’?” Catlyn turned to the others. “Guys, did you hear that?”

Marrow dutifully repeated what Catlyn had said, but the voice did not say anything. Was Catlyn just trying random words, just as he had done all this time?

Since Marrow did not, or could not, volunteer any information, Catlyn sighed and said again: “Status.”

That, Marrow was happy to repeat as it had given him plenty of words by the voice, and he liked that.

This time, Catlyn let Marrow repeat more of his status, until they arrived at the ‘free points’, after which she immediately said: “Increase Intelligence by 10 points.”

Repeating those words, suddenly brought an onslaught of new concepts and ideas into Marrow’s brain. So many new patterns that now seemed obvious!

Curious, he said “status” again, and, lo and behold, the voice said that he had intelligence of 16 now. It was obvious then that his previous words had been a command that increased that number, and since his understanding and insights had gone up, the numbers had to somehow correspond to that. Which, in turn, implied that all the other number reflected different things. What those were he was not sure yet, but at least he now knew what to find out.

“Strength?” he asked.

And Catlyn made some weird movements, lifting a kobold up, apparently trying to illustrate the concept of strength. Was strength taking away brains from him? Marrow grew a bit concerned.

But since Catlyn, and after a little while, Ikarius, used various examples to explain the characteristics, Marrow’s increased intelligence allowed him to deduce reasonably quickly what the first few words represented.

And it did not take him long to understand some other simple words and what they actually meant, such as yes, no, don’t, what, how, and so forth. Added to the vocabulary of simple words he had known instinctively, he soon was able to piece together a whole lot more of what the others were talking about. He still had huge gaps, of course, but it was night and day compared to what it had been previously. It certainly helped that Marrow had to hear a new word only once, and he would remember it perfectly – something about his brain being a pocket dimension, perhaps.

Eventually, Borgar was bored out of his mind and interrupted the teaching session with a rather profound statement. “I am hungry.”

Which stopped Ikarius and Catlyn cold.

“What is hunger?” Marrow asked curiously.

Catlyn tried to explain the concept to him, but he did not quite fully understand it. The chewing motion she did was easy enough… but why not do it? There were plenty of kobolds laying around, so they could grab one and chew on it any time.

Speaking of, Marrow realized that he had forgotten entirely about the kobold brains.

One after another he crunched their skulls, which were kind of mushy after being partially digested by the slime. To Marrow’s dismay, no messages came forth. At first, he chalked it down to chance. Maybe there was something different about the first few he had chewed on. But then he started to panic. What if this was a permanent change? What if putting characteristic points into intelligence or calling on the status made the voice disappear?

Just to test if the voice was still there, he said: “Status.” To his relief, the voice still talked to him in response. So something else was going on… but there were simply too many variables that had changed for him to determine conclusively what had happened. The most likely explanation was that he had not been involved in fighting the kobolds or that too much time had passed since their death. But perhaps it was instead that the kobolds had been already partially digested…

Since he had upgraded his intelligence, he felt much more capable in understanding patterns, and so it was even more frustrating not to be able to figure out what was going on. It was almost depressing. Could it be something about the kobolds instead? Or being in this new part of the dungeon, or that he w-.

“Marrow, what are you doing?” Catlyn asked with a somewhat concerned voice. “Why are you cracking all the skulls? And why have you been standing there for the last five minutes without moving?”

Marow did not appreciate having his train of thoughts be disrupted like that. It was not as if he had been on the verge of finding things out. But still. His superior intellect should be eno-.

“Marrow! Hey, can you hear me?” Catlyn asked again. “Knock, knock!”

Marrow wondered why this silly creature kept on interrupting him. But before he could formulate a reasonable hypothesis, he heard something from down the corridor.

He snapped his head around and got his sword ready.

Immediately, Catlyn and the others drew their weapons and arranged themselves in their typical fighting position, with Borgar up front, Gamul next to him, Ikarius hiding in what few shadows he could find, and Catlyn taking the rear.

Marrow stood next to them, and felt slightly… left out. Apparently, getting into some type of formation was what one did. Yet, he was not part of it. And he, by himself, could not get into any formation either. So perhaps he could join the formation of the others? But where would he put himself?

Before he could decide on what to do, a large group of kobolds came into view, at least forty strong. Most of them were the basic type from the first encounter, but behind them were three kobolds wielding staves with slightly glowing gemstones inserted into the top.