Slime dishes? Check.

Three tanks each of Bang and Boom? Check.

Whatever little coin I had left on me? Check.

Slime-bro?

Uhh… I craned my neck over to where he was enjoying his last dunk in Slime-broth, repeatedly expanding and shrinking in size as he made a sound that seemed like a cross between innocent laughter, and oh-God-I’m-about-to-kill-you cackling.

Come to think of it, wasn’t this kind of analogous to those old mad people of legend who somehow concluded that soaking themselves in the blood of a hundred virgins would rejuvenate their skin or something? Slime-broth was derived from Slimes…

Ehh, whatever. Slime-bro could do no wrong. Check.

Satisfied, I nodded at what remained of my little home laboratory. Back on Earth, I’d been notoriously untidy in managing my bench space (much to the consternation of my lab-mates). Looking at the state of things now, they’d probably wish they could reserve some of their harsher words for this exact moment.

In the end, I decided against convincing Prisca to try setting up the Fire Eel breeding programme. Simply put, it wasn’t cost effective: there was no guarantee that I’d return to Hawksmoor if Aksal could actually manage to hook me up with a sweet new laboratory in Grynasar, and I was starting to think that the Fire Eel market might not be as lucrative as I originally thought.

Fire Oil was good and all, but I crunched the numbers. With how I needed to gather up or otherwise clone Slimes in order to provide culture broth, the opportunity cost simply didn’t make gathering of oils in culture a worthwhile venture.

Bang and Boom were promising, but thus far, I wasn’t convinced I could safely find a means to distribute it widely. With the way that the grenades were designed, they were always in a volatile state, just a single step from disaster. I considered reshaping the way it worked, perhaps by using an exothermic reaction of another means, but none seemed to be easily achievable. Without a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry, and with how the entirety of their technology was circumvented through [Artificer] magic rather than good old materials science, even something as simple as trying to create calcium oxide out of limestone was unfeasible: they didn’t even know what limestone was.

Therefore, I compromised. For now, I would tentatively use my current designs, with the reduced firepower than what it could fully be capable of, at least until I rigged something together that didn’t risk blowing me apart. Whether that was something purely biological, or a mix of mechanical parts with biological ones, or some mix of chemicals more akin to the grenades back on earth was still unclear.

The pair of Fire Eels had been killed, dissected, and their glands used to culture more of Bang and Boom. At current operational capacity, I could generate three grenades a day – not too shabby, considering that that was supposed to be a last-ditch resort. Chances were, if I got into a combat situation, I’d be no match to my would-be opponent. Hiding behind Aksal, though some might call it a cowardly manoeuvre, was my best option.

“We’ve made quite some memories here, huh, Slime-bro?”

He chirped in response, bouncing above the surface of his Slime-tank, before sinking down below out of sight. I chuckled. It seemed that even Slime-bro was excited at the thought of this extended field trip.

Now, there was nothing to do but wait. For just over a month, this place had been my home and life. And though it had been a genuine joy picking apart the secrets that hid within Slime membranes, Aksal was right: I yearned for so much more. Questions I simply couldn’t answer with the tools I had plagued my every thought.

There were the basic: What even were Slimes? They behaved almost as though highly metastatic, grossly-undifferentiated tumour cells, and yet there was an inherent order to them. Biology couldn’t explain this inherent organisation, which pointed toward magic being responsible for such behaviour.

Then there was the more profound, questions layering and weaving upon each other: Magic was the crux of everything. Whether the question was how Slimes worked, how Bang and Boom interacted with each other, why I never once got bacterial contamination in my cultures despite not working in an aseptic environment, or how additional energy was generated through conversion of mana that continually replenished over time, thus seemingly violating the First Law of Thermodynamics… they all boiled down to magic in the end.

…unless, of course, energy somehow converted back into mana in the end, and thus wasn’t a strict violation of the constancy of total internal energy within a closed system. Damn it; now that the thought struck me, I knew that it wasn’t about to leave any time soon. Curse you, high school physics.

I didn’t know much about Grynasar, save for what Aksal told me. It sounded promising, though: an entire society built upon tradesmen that created tools with functions similar to those of Earth, only they used magic instead, almost like a form of convergent evolution. I vaguely recalled Grynas being the last name of the part-elf in Shinya’s party, too, which further cemented the deal – perhaps at some point, I could take a biological sample from one of her relatives in the city and definitively conclude whether humans were in fact biologically the same species as elves, and if not, how in Darwin’s name that could even possibly work.

Precisely at noon, I spotted the carriage approaching in the distance, the familiar figure of Aksal taking the reins. I was about to call out to Slime-bro, but to my surprise, he had already made his way out of his long bath in the pool. Thickened layers of membranes shrunk down to a travel-ready size as he hopped his way over, excess liquid spewing out from microscopic pores.

“My friend!” Aksal greeted, halting the horses by the door of my house. Even Aksal seemed eager for the journey ahead, and in a way, it was almost like a lab retreat to a science symposium, only I now had Slime-bro and Aksal with me. Boy, wasn’t that a nostalgic thought?

“Heya, Aksal.” I shoved a handful of extra Slime dishes for the road into his hands. “Mind loading this up into the boot?”

“The boot?”

“The – uhh – storage… cavern… thing,” I corrected. “Sorry. Figure of speech back from my world. Goes by boot, or trunk, or compartment, depending on where in the world you come from.”

“You people store alchemical supplies in your boots?” Aksal’s voice strained with confusion, before he shook his head. “Ah, whatever, there is plenty of space inside. Here, friend – let me take that for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. I turned back to collect the next set of items, but paused at the sight before me.

Slime-bro had wrapped himself around a tank containing a culture of Bang, crawling at a remarkable speed toward me. Once he reached my feet, he paused for a moment, straining and stiffening, before raising himself vertically, somehow keeping the tank completely stable throughout the entire process.

It was official. As soon as I could, Slime-bro was getting a promotion and becoming my official assistant once Aksal set me up in Grynasar. He did agree to let me have first pick of my laboratory staff, after all. Perhaps even a lab mascot for science outreach day, if I could manage that.

“Thanks, Slime-bro.”

He squealed in excitement, before rushing off to grab another tank. I had no idea how his body could support such a mass – perhaps I should start performing experiments with a makeshift force-gauge while observing him with [Bio-analysis] – but I wouldn’t complain, not when it allowed me to Science to my heart’s content without doing any of the heavy lifting.

The carriage itself had two sections: much like a car that I was used to back on Earth, there was a boot meant for storage of items, although with the smallpox vaccine samples that were kept under a pile of ice, three tanks of Boom and Bang, and the items that Aksal had brought with him, the trunk was already full. That left the section meant for passengers, and Aksal began loading the remaining lab equipment I had deemed necessary into that space.

“Wha –“

I turned toward where the sound had come from, as Aksal had been about to load the dishes into the carriage. He stumbled on the spot for a moment, and I called out to him.

“Something wrong, Aksal?”

“No,” he said, sounding deep in thought. “Eric… these dishes of yours… they’re simply fascinating!”

I raised a brow in silent enquiry. Aksal hadn’t seemed all that interested in the subject back at his place, when I’d prepared all those plates for serial passage of the smallpox vaccine. Why the sudden change in behaviour –

Ah.

I grinned. Had he been hit by the science bug? If so, I couldn’t blame him. Biology was addictive stuff.

“You can keep that one, if you want,” I said. From what he’d told me, Grynasar sounded like it was quite some distance away, and even though we would be making several stops along the way, he’d be riding outside the interior of the carriage to guide us to our destination. A lone culture of Slime-bro’s membrane did not a good companion make, but it was better than nothing.

“Yes…” he said distractedly. “Most intriguing indeed…”

Kind of odd that Aksal would behave like that, but hey, science could change anyone. I would know.

“I’ll get the rest of the stuff loaded,” I told Aksal. Already, Slime-bro was hauling the last tank of Boom, maintaining perfect balance all the while with grace only an amorphous blob could pull off. “You can start getting the horses moving once I get in, Aksal. Thanks, Slime-bro. Here, I’ll take that.”

He nodded his little head, before squirming, and faster than I could react, slid his way into my garment. Ever since he’d learnt that little trick, if he wasn’t spending his days relaxing in Slime broth, he’d been attempting to nestle up against me. A source of warmth, probably. It was perhaps an unhealthy habit to ingrain into him, but with the help he’d pulled off, I decided he deserved a little treat for once.

Balancing the last tank in my arms as Slime-bro shifted himself beneath my shirt, I opened the door to the cabin. I was about to place it onto the floor, when I noticed that something was wrong.

There was a passenger already in the cabin, even though Aksal made no mention of anyone else coming along with us. Oh, and of course, he was also lying underneath the long set of chairs that were set up as part of the carriage’s structure, trying his best to hide from view with his chest pressed against the floor of the cabin.

He was a boy, probably in his mid-late teens, tall and thin, with dark hair, a lean physique, and a tanned complexion similar to that of Aksal’s. For an instant, we merely stared at each other. If I were being honest, I was more bewildered than considering him as a possible threat, given that he seemed to be extraordinarily nervous.

“Um,” I said intelligently. “Hello?”

Then he waved his hand, scrunched up his brows, and –

Man, Boom and Bang really are interesting, I thought. If only I could get a trigger mechanism to work…

I could maybe build it up upon a biological source of heat, perhaps uncouple the electron transport chain within the mitochondria of Slime membranes and drive it far beyond normal physiological levels. If it allowed for generation of heat in brown adipose tissue for even arctic animals, it should allow enough heat to trigger the detonation of Boom and Bang, right? That idea deserved further thought…

Oh! What about futile cycles? My biochemistry wasn’t exactly the best, but I vaguely recalled how bidirectional futile substrate cycles that drove a reaction both ways, giving no net product save for the release of thermal energy, were said to produce immense amounts of heat in the flight muscles of bumble bees. Could I engineer that into something for my own designs?

And! And! What about calcium fluxes?! What I wanted was an all-or-nothing response with clearly defined conditions under which the grenade would detonate, and there was no better biological equivalent of that than the firing of neurones! Maybe if I played around with some of Slime-bro’s samples enough, I could rig together something useful? Maybe –

Ho boy! Another excellent idea! If I could just decrease flexibility of the outer shell, containment would be so much easier; so what if I based it off the structure of scales or exoskeleton of arthropods to mimic their stiffness? I could use chitin as a base material, and that was a fairly simple polymer of polysaccharides chained together that it wouldn’t blow my head off trying to comprehend the structure –

With so many ideas coming into my head at once, I didn’t even question why they suddenly popped up. There were just so many possibilities lying in wait, that I couldn’t possibly care any less about the intruder in the carriage anymore, simply climbing my way up to a seat, staring at the tank of Boom as I laid it on my lap, thoughts racing and building upon each other all the while.

Lost in my thoughts as I was, I heard the next words being said in an entirely deadpan voice, but just didn’t attribute any meaningful value to them.

“Umm…” a voice said. “What the fuck?”

-o-o-o-

Kylan Shan, Level 14 [Trickster], stared uncomprehendingly at the man who had been important enough for Uncle Aksal to uproot his life in Hawksmoor, leave Kylan behind, and travel back to Grynasar despite living a contented life here for over a decade.

Aksal had been sparse with the details: two days ago, he had come home as he always did, promptly told Kylan that he was going on a long trip, that he was explicitly forbidden from journeying to Everach and joining the Adventurer’s Guild, and that he was instead to wait for him patiently in Hawksmoor even though he refused to give a definite date by which he would return.

Oh, and he’d also used a needle and injected him with something he claimed could cure the Blighted Curse. His immediate reaction then had been to accuse Aksal of having been subjected to an [Insanity] skill from a [Witch Doctor], but with the explanation that came next from a rush of words, Kylan doubted even that was true. Why?

The answer was easy: there was far too much nonsense there for it to be a fabricated lie.

Aksal had claimed that he was journeying north to Grynasar with a [Biologist] named Eric, who was supposedly someone summoned along with the [Sword Saint] Shinya Haruto. When pressed on why he would even do that, Aksal had replied that the man had found a cure to the Blighted Curse, and that the Alchemist’s Guild had to be informed at once.

Kylan didn’t actually believe that, of course. He thought that Aksal was finally having a secret little rendezvous with a lady that had caught his fancy after babying Kylan for all these years since his parents had died. Naturally, he had immediately decided to tail Aksal on the day that he was set to depart, because he wouldn’t want to miss potential blackmail material – uhh, information on his dearly beloved uncle, he meant – and a chance to possibly wrangle (ahem, convince with facts and pertinent information) his way into becoming an adventurer. He was a [Trickster], and honestly speaking, Aksal should really have anticipated him doing as such.

He had slipped into the carriage when Aksal wasn’t looking. Each time he was about to check in on him, he had just used a [Distract] skill, diverting attention away from himself in the way that most people his level of the [Rogue] archetype could. Aksal must have been extremely excited, because he had gone along with the sudden influence of the skill with remarkable ease. Kylan had been expecting to have been found out before his uncle had even departed from the house.

Excitement increased when it seemed that his plan might actually work. The carriage had begun moving, and when he stopped at the place where Kylan assumed his lady-friend would be picked up, excitement and nervousness grew in equal amounts. It had taken another [Distract], but he had foiled Aksal’s almost-discovery of him. His reaction had been a little strange, but hey, maybe Uncle Aksal was just enthusiastic that his lady-friend had gifted him something for his alchemical use.

The plan had actually worked. For a moment, he had been ecstatic. Aksal had gone to the front of the carriage, outside the main compartment, where he would be seated to guide the horses’ reins. He’d be left alone with the mysterious lady, and Kylan could dig up all the juicy information on his uncle that had eluded him for years.

Except, of course, that it turned out that everything Uncle Aksal claimed was not only absolutely true, it was starting to sound like this Eric the [Biologist] was, in fact, the one hit by an [Insanity] curse.

“But if we consider the calcium ion fluxes… no; that wouldn’t be sufficient, and besides, I would need to completely remodel the vesicular trafficking system and that’s way too much of a pain –“

Ever since Kylan used a [Distract] on Aksal’s friend, he just. Wouldn’t. Shut. Up.

“Hmm… maybe then a piggy-back system? How, though? Think, Eric, think! We want Boom and Bang to mix first, and then heat to come second… alright, let’s break down the problem: we model the Slime-bag as a perfect sphere, and I’m not an engineer, but let’s assume pi equals three –“

With the way [Distract] worked, all Kylan needed to do was anchor a second object along with the target the skill was directed to, and magic would do the rest for him. In most cases, if the target wasn’t aware that he was using the skill, they would be distracted by the subject or object he had chosen, as the skill’s name suggested.

Kylan had absolutely zero fucking idea why the tank of something that looked like it was pilfered from Aksal’s store would result in him mumbling like an insane madman plucked from a particularly grim corner street of Everach.

And so it was, that he lay flat underneath the seats of the carriage, listening to a madman drone on and on about words he likely couldn’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of – and that was even assuming that he stopped speaking at a pace of hundreds of words a minute. Each sentence seemed to be incoherently related to the previous one as well. With how completely detached from reality Eric seemed to currently be, Kylan half-suspected that he could wave a hand in front of his eyes, and he’d continue on with the endless tirade spewing forth from his lips.

Despite his very copious use of [Distract] over the years, the bread and butter skill of [Tricksters], he’d never once seen someone react to the skill in the way Eric currently was. Stumbling like a drunk, a confused frown or scratch of the head, perhaps even a shout of fascination at whatever his target’s attention was altered toward, he had seen them all.

This – well, this was different.

“But assuming that Slime-bro behaves like a Pokémon… would he be capable of evolution? Come to think of it, isn’t Slime-bro basically Grimer? Hey, maybe someone in Grynasar could sell me a couple TMs or –“

It had seemed like a good idea to tag along with Aksal initially. Almost exciting, even; perhaps akin to a scouting and infiltration mission that [Rogues] of the Adventurer’s Guild tended to do.

“Wait, couldn’t I just load Boom and Bang and boiling water into Slime-mix and create a bunch of Slimes each containing a bit of them? It’d be like – suicide Slimes, or something… maybe a bit like neutrophils – oh, and now that’s an idea; hell yeah Immunology! Alright, so if I extend that analogy, I’d need some PAMPs and DAMPs or something and –”

Now, though, he was reconsidering his life choices. Perhaps he really should have listened to Aksal, lived a nice happy life and allowed himself to Reclass, rather than adamantly continuing on as a [Trickster] in the hopes of one day becoming an adventurer.

And so, chest pressed against the floor, trapped inside the wooden carriage cabin with no route of escape available, Kylan continued enduring the endless stream of words. All he could do was hope that Aksal would take mercy on him in light of his current torture session once they finally took their first stop on the journey to Grynasar.