First things first, I need to get my Health up, Resh thought.

Not moving and with Meditation and Natural Plant Healing active, Resh was able to get its HP Regen up to over 32 HP/hour. It would have to sit still until it got at least half its health back. Otherwise, it was playing with dangerous elements trying to not get killed by some of the larger predators in the water. The significant boost that Resh had received from gaining a brain was also nothing to sneeze at, it was just a measure of how much had happened that the Water Slime was only getting round to checking this now.

Resh would need to test out its new capabilities once it had recovered some. The recent transformation had been the most draining so far, not only health but stamina and mana had also been bottomed out with this. Without Natural Plant Healing, if Resh stayed still and just used Meditate its health and mana would take over 2 days to heal while stamina was faster taking only one day. Resh would need to see if there was something it could do about that as well. It would need to wait until later though. Also, Resh had not considered its natural healing in its calculations so it would take less than that.

If Resh wanted to be efficient and recover everything as quickly as possible it needed to divide Natural Plant Healing between Mana and Health. Health first though. That was more important, Resh didn’t plan on slinging spells anytime soon…at least not until its Health was up!

A day later Resh was in much better shape. It had recovered a lot and not only that but with its stats having been boosted it had also gained a lot of HP, MP and SP as well. Brain function wasn’t bad either. The rest had done a lot of good and since it could Meditate and use Natural Plant Healing while asleep as well it did not have to be partially awake.

You have just received +0.1 Luck!

Natural Plant Healing has increased to Level 15!

Ears of the Field Grole has increased to Level 6!

Nose of the Darter Fish has increased to Level 2!

Fins of the Darter Fish has increased to Level 2!

Strong Legs of the Squitter has increased to Level 14!

Strong Camouflage has increased to Level 16!

Lots of skills levelling were what Resh liked to see! Even though things were not moving quickly Resh had just got a massive boost in Magical damage as well as its physical ability to survive. It was now time for Resh to test out its new abilities.

First, it started with the Darter Fish that were all over its body. Resh had made itself smell like Fresh Grass to attract the fish before it went to sleep and so they had been nibbling away, part of the reason it was still not at its maximum health despite many hours of healing. As it had done before Resh sealed the fish to itself and started hammering away with both Magic and Melee attacks. Water Gun played a role even with a 50% damage reduction. But the heavy hitters were Slime Club and Slightly Poisonous Crushing Jaws, the poison damage from the second one was fun, even if it was pretty low, it was still something! 1% was nothing to sneeze at, over 10 sec that was still 10% of damage. The only thing was that Resh did not manage to poison the fish with every single bite, sometimes it would not work but it worked often enough! Resh wanted all of its abilities to poison enemies, without having to attack it could still take off health! That was great as far as Resh was concerned.

Resh was a little disappointed that it could not poison the same fish for double poison damage but once poisoned the fish did not seems to get poisoned again, it just reset the time each time it was successfully poisoned. Resh still wasn’t complaining! This was awesome!

The other huge difference that Resh noticed is that with its new neural pathways it was able to React much more quickly, since that had caused its Reaction to improve so much it showed how quickly it could attack the enemy where before it would sometimes take over a second to pull back and attack again, now Resh was easily able to get 2 attacks in each second. This gave the fish, less time to do damage to Resh. It was amazing!

One bite from its Poisonous mouth, with a little poison damage, was enough for each of these little tiny fish. So it would use Water Gun and then wait for the cooldown to expire it only managed to get one more shot before the fight was done. Meanwhile, the Melee Skills were going to town.

You have Consumed 28 Darter Fish! You have gained a total of 210 Exp!

YOU HAVE REACHED Water Slime Level 4! CONGRATULATIONS! +1 Strength, +1 Reaction, +1 Accuracy, Talent Water Born+2 has increased to Water Born +3, Water Resistance +10%

YOU HAVE REACHED Water Slime Level 5! CONGRATULATIONS! +1 Vitality, +1

Command, +1 Focus, Talent Water Born +3 has increased to Water Born +4, Water Resistance +10%

YOU HAVE REACHED Water Slime Level 6! CONGRATULATIONS! +1 Strength, +1 Reaction, +1 Accuracy, Talent Water Born+4 has increased to Water Born +5, Water Resistance +10%

Slime Club has increased to Level 5!

Slightly Poisonous Crushing Jaws has increased to Level 10!

Congratulations on reaching Level 10! Slightly Poisonous Crushing Jaws has evolved into Poisonous Jaws. Poisonous Jaws does +30% Poison Damage to the target over the next 20 seconds. The chance of poisoning the target has increased to 40%. You can stack up to 5 times the Poison effect on any target and the timer will still reset on each successful poison attack.

Resh decided to Consume the fish, it did not want to miss out on the 50% bonus that it got from water creatures that it consumed! Besides, Consolidate was a powerful ability and it would need the benefits it provided. However, it had now exceeded the weight limit of its fins so it would not be able to use their bonus for now, not until it Consolidated or shed some weight.

What it needed to work on though was combat prowess. It needed that aspect to get stronger and Consolidate had not given it much in the way of strength. It wanted to be able to challenge those Fanged Carp, they looked like serious contenders and it wanted some mean fangs of its own!

While Resh had liked the idea of Magic initially it was starting to realise, quite frustratingly, that the cooldown was just too long, prohibitively so. It would need another way to get its magic stronger, and there was the penalty for non-combative targets so that would slow things down further. For the time being, it decided to try to aim at any small fish it could find with Water Gun since it did so little damage there wouldn’t be a good chance to destroying any enemies but at least it would gain experience and its MP Regen would not go to waste either. It was a good idea!

And so, with Resh feeling stronger than ever it began casting Water Gun as fast as it could, every minute without fail Resh would cast that ability. Until it ran out of Mana, then it would allow its Mana to recharge and start again. Just as it had been doing with Sonic Boom. At the same time, Resh continued to explore its surrounding and incredibly lush environment. It would just sit and get bored working on getting stronger, Resh was able to multi-task! Nothing was stopping Resh from doing both at the same time.

Resh was able to move through the water swimming very easily so it could move with the river current and keep shooting Water Gun off at the little fish. Sometimes it even hit one but none of the hits was anything impressive and with their strength against Water it didn’t do much damage either. The Darter Fish might have been weak and easily destroyed but Resh’s Water Gun was even weaker!

Water Gun has increased to Level 6!

Water Gun has increased to Level 7!

Before Resh even depleted its Mana pool Water Gun had levelled twice to Level 7! It just showed Resh that it had a lot of room to improve. With its Health now manageable Resh started healing its Mana pool, or rather, improving its regeneration. This would allow it to cast more spells quickly since it was severely lacking in that department.

Resh was just thinking this when it passed through a dark shadow in the water. Resh had not seen a shadow so large before so it must have been a huge creature even larger than the Panther or the Human (Male) this thing spanned the entire width of the river and did not seem to be moving. Resh looked up with trepidation and fear in its newly acquired brain. What could this incredibly massive creature be? Then, the Water Slime saw it.