‘Aclysia,’ that was Apexus first thought when he broke out of the confines of the city. ‘Where could you be? Reysha, where did they take you?’ Those thoughts were delayed by the immediate need for more food. He was still a good bit away from his former size, quite hungry and could go for more water.

Obviously, he couldn’t land anywhere close to the city. For all he knew, the Hunter was still around. Not that the normal city guard wouldn’t be able to end him, if given the opportunity. He considered the cliffside cave, but that was too close for comfort. Although he had gotten out of the city, he was still a clearly visible spot in the sky. He would best land somewhere in the vast forest. There was enough food and water there.

Apexus came across a small pond eventually, a couple of animals, predominantly cats and deer, sipping from the water on this hot day. The former were too nimble and compact a target, so Apexus picked his prey from the deer. One healthy, large looking male with large antlers was currently standing with its head down. Ideal conditions for a dive.

The impact of the slime alone was devastating. The full, highly accelerated mass of Apexus rammed into the upper back of the deer, causing its front legs to give and the head of the overwhelmed creature to sink under the shallow water. Thusly brought into an awkward position, the struggles of the animal were diminished in their effectiveness.

That wasn’t to say, however, that they weren’t wild.

The deer was throwing around in sudden and erratic movements. A larger Apexus would have been able to rely on his weight alone to make these movements entirely useless, but right now it could have still succeeded in throwing him off. The slime had already anticipated this, however, and used his new bones in the same manner that he had used clam shells in the past. In a sort of hug, the arm and leg bones of his humanoid skeleton spread around as much of the deer as they could reach and pressed. At the same time, Apexus fixated himself with a weak bite at the neck.

His prey was forcefully exhausted, just as its back progressively dissolved as more and more of the slime spread over it. Eventually, the large animal collapsed, half of it landing in the water, and died, leaving Apexus to enjoy the rest of his meal. The other animals around the pond had run away, searching for a more secure watering hole.

That meal and plenty of liquid later, Apexus felt at least largely restored. He had escaped from death’s grasp. ‘What now?’ he thought as he looked at his reflection in the still pond. Back looked a pretty odd creature.

Blue fox ears sat on top of a human skull, a layer of slime separating and connecting both of them. Eyes of a cyan colour had found their place in the sockets meant for the humanoid counterpart. Teeth, sharper than normal but overall quite human, sat along the jaw, the speech plate inside the mouth as Apexus had feared it would make odd noises if it rubbed against the inside of the armour.

His torso looked pretty normal, all things considered. Sure, the bones visible through the translucent, dark blue slime was unnatural, but from the dimensions, from the ribcage over the spine down to the hips, looked all around average. Apexus realized that his core was localized in that boneless middle where humanoids, and a bunch of other animals really, kept the majority of their internal organs.

‘Not a good place for that,’ Apexus thought, shifting on the excess mass that gathered around his folded legs like a blob and raised one of his arms to test the new bones more accurately. Formerly, his elliptic shape had come from all parts of his body mass being most effective at a roughly equal distance from the core, combined with the dictate of gravity. Now, despite being stretched into several directions, and quite asymmetrical at that, he didn’t feel any of that unpleasant sense he got when changing out of the base shape.

Apexus made a fist, slowly. Muscles and sinews were still necessary to make the skeleton work optimally, designed to pull parts of the body at increased rates, but he could move as it was. He opened the palm again, looking at the slime that spread between the different fingers like webbing. That had, albeit much lesser, that same feeling of long-clenched muscles. When he stopped holding it, the webbing flowed back and the slime surrounded the segments of the finger bones.

It seemed the skeleton acted as an extension of his core in some ways. Slime could rest around it without a problem. Which, combined with the fact that this was a humanoid Apexus had permanently acquired, opened a whole lot of possibilities. He could, after all, rearrange the size and length of the individual bones and, in a more limited capacity, the place.

It was impossible to grow a third leg, a tail or any other extra limb, just as it was impossible to exchange the places of the upper thigh’s bone with the lower one. However, things like putting the shoulders down to the hips were, while wholly ineffective, entirely possible.

Apexus stared at his reflection for a few moments. It would take time to figure out all of the things he could do now. Time he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to invest. He desperately wanted to find out what happened with Reysha and Aclysia. ‘What if I find them and I am just as helpless as before though?’ he caught himself thinking.

That was, irrefutably, a concern he needed to wrestle with. Aclysia was an angel, so she was probably in the custody of the Church. The exact implications of that were something that Apexus had no idea about. Reysha, on the other hand, was likely in some sort of prison. Neither were places that the slime could just waltz into and expect to have any chance of success in getting his beloved party members out.

It was, therefore, entirely necessary to get as strong as he realistically could right now.

What didn’t help was that Apexus had no idea how long he had been in his stasis. It could have been a few hours, days or weeks for all he knew. Maybe even months or years. He doubted it was too long, the core shrinking had never been something that had taken too long to occur, but he had no real precedent to reference this with.

They may have been dead already.

‘Should have asked the other guard before getting unmasked,’ Apexus scolded himself. In the moment, he hadn’t thought about it, the survival instincts, guilt and panic that his voice may give him away at any second had been at the front of his core. Hindsight wouldn’t get him anywhere though.

He made up his mind after a few more moments. For the moment, he was going to assume that both of the girls were still alive and somewhere on the leaf. Which meant his first priority had to be to prop himself up.

He concentrated on his insides. The first act was to move his nucleus to a more secure position. The inside of the head, maybe? It was a pretty thick construction, even better, it protected from basically all directions.

It was also the most obvious weak point, shared amongst all humanoids and most animals. It was where his ears and eyes also where. Maybe putting all the organs in one bone basket wasn’t the smartest thing. Limbs were obviously out. That only left the torso. Granted, that was also a common weak spot, but was a lot broader and, after Apexus caused the ribs to expand and meld together into an almost solid wall of bone, moved his nucleus to sit a bit behind the sternum. There, it couldn’t be seen from almost all angles and was pretty safe from attacks. Unlike other animals, he had no need for a highly flexible ribcage, mostly because he didn’t have lungs that expanded underneath.

With that out of the way, there were a number of details to work out. First of all was the issue with the teeth. So far, he hadn’t had the time to attach them to his jaw, but it was theoretically possible. Apexus hadn’t combined two Growths before, only arranged their proper existence next to each other.

It came as a pleasant surprise when the process was as natural as moving an arm. A detailed, guiding thought where which teeth was supposed to go, and their bases attached to the empty jawbones like swords into sheathes. Testing, Apexus opened his makeshift mouth. That was also a lot easier now. With all the bone surrounding that area, creating a rift in the surface that exposed the teeth was pretty easy. The humanoid head shape wasn’t optimal for biting, sadly, with its flat face and all that, but it was good enough.

To make sure he understood everything correctly, Apexus tried to dislodge his teeth again. If combining two Growths in such a manner was a permanent thing, he would need to know that in the future. It turned out that he could indeed separate permanent Growths again after having combined them. Although that endeavour left him quite hungry again. The amount of energy this internal managing consumed, despite the little amount of biomass being used, was insane.

Apexus wasn’t too afraid right now. ‘I can just eat a few trees, here,’ he thought. ‘Should be careful about it in the future though.’

The next few question were a bit more difficult. First, should he move the speaking plates currently in his mouth? After rationilizing for a few moments, he decided to keep them where they were, even going further and integrating them to the mouth, attached to the upper jaw. It had turned out to be awful protection and, more importantly, having it break during combat limited his communication abilities, which seemed rather important to have.

He didn’t like having it in the head, but the surfaces were out and this was the space he was most used to opening and closing quickly, so it should work quite nicely. Having it melded to the bone would hopefully prevent it from breaking or sliding around inside when he was biting something that was violently struggling.

Getting the wings attached to the spine, ribs and shoulder blades was a decision Apexus made only out of curiosity at first. With the knowledge that he could detach them, he had just wanted to know what difference it would make. Just from a few testing flaps he could say: quite a bit. Having the muscle strings tethered to a proper, rigid place gave them a whole lot more stability and a bit more power. Not that Apexus had troubles with flying in the past, but there was little speaking against having more ability in that area.

He tried the same for eyes and ears. There was no noticeable difference there in terms of perception, but the speed at which he could turn his ears or move his eyes improved slightly. It was something that he took, but that he didn’t think was vital.

That then covered all of his current permanent Growths, which only left the problem of his shape. During the flight a short while ago, he had folded himself back together to an ellipsis, because that was the shape he knew and that he was comfortable with. Now that he wasn’t trying to escape anymore, at least not from immediate danger, the question was whether or not he wanted to go back to that.

The question was a pretty obvious no. Although having been useful for a long time, being a formable blob had a set of crippling disadvantages. First and foremost: on the ground, he was incredibly slow. Having a pair of legs was the best way to alleviate that problem. Arms had a good amount of reach and were easier to control than tentacles.

However, Apexus wasn’t quite sure if he agreed with a few things about the whole layout. First off, did he really want a neck? Past experiences had taught him that necks were more cumbersome weak points than all that useful. On inspection, however, he found that turning his head was pretty useful to look around more quickly.

‘Its pretty short, so its probably going to be fine?’ the slime thought. Unlike normal animals, he wasn’t going to die just because something bit him in the throat anyway. ‘Don’t think two-legged works best… bipedal is proper word, I think,’ the slime continued to analyse, lengthening his spine a bit and balancing the span of arms and legs until they were all roughly equal.

The ends still looked different, but Apexus didn’t really mind. He just kept the fingers close together and kept the slime fused so the hands formed sort of pseudo-feet. The result was a pretty alien mixture of a translucent human, a bird and a wolf. The chimeric slime walked on his four limbs, quite happy with the result.

Then he began to run as quickly as he could. Not nearly as fast a wolf, but still at a decent speed all things considered. Humans would still be able to catch up to him, but this new speed would buy him a few precious seconds. Enough to hopefully spread his wings and fly away. Just as Apexus was doing right now.