After me and Lizz manage to wake up, admittedly only due to one of the quartets helping us, we go and talk to Hannah.

Hey, Hannah?

“Myeah? What is it?” She says while chewing on something.

I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find some goblins, a few slimes and a treant?

“Goblins and slimes both exist in excess around the border of the mountain forest, the treants however tend to oddly enough prefer areas where there aren’t any normal trees, some researcher said it was something about the ground having more energy. So if you wanna find a treant I’d recommend just climbing something and looking for a clearing with one single tree in the middle. ”

Alright… Oh! And do you know where I could find some caves and lakes as well?

I ask as I remember where I was supposed to be able to find the resources I needed.

“Yes actually, follow the edge of the forest to the north and you should find a lake next to a small hill, that hill also happens to have a cave in it.”

Huh… That’s convenient. Well, thanks a bunch, see ya later.

And as I say that last part I turn around and walk back to my room and out the window.

After I run across the roofs for a bit I get to the wall, however seeing as there would probably be a lot of troubles if I go through one of the gates I instead simply scale one of the walls, as far away as I can get from the gates within a reasonable time.

After I scale the wall I slide down it and jump after I get close to the ground.

“Hii!”

Eliciting a response from Lizz who was holding onto my hair in order to keep up.

I then keep on runni-

“Wait! Wait! Stop!” Lizz shouts just as I start speeding up.

I come to a halt and ask her:

‘What’s the matter?’

“Just… Just hang on a bit…”

Shen then unsteadily flies behind my back, and ,with a blue light appearing behind me, she goes into the book.

I shrug my shoulders and dash off again.

When I get to the forest I follow it to the left.

‘Let’s see… Slimes and goblins were common along the edge of the forest, the flower and the treant could both be found in clearings, and if I follow the forest further I’ll find a lake with the herbs and a cave with the mushrooms… Say, Lizz.’

‘Do you know if goblins have weapons?’

And I could practically hear her smile widen as she asked that.

I look down at my claws as I answer her.

‘Well I don’t really have a lot lot of range, so it would be really bad if they were to have spears.’

‘Really?’

‘They grow up with clubs? But you said only half of them have clubs?’

After having felt relieved about this for a while, I then come across a lake.

Around the lake I can see small green creatures.

‘Are those goblins?’

(AN: Nose goblin= Boogers for those who don’t know.)

‘Well all I knew about them was you calling them “Green fucks”.’

‘I dunno, I was thinking maybe it was like how I use phasing? I mean the look soft enough to stick the hilt of a sword inside.’

'Oh yeah, that did hapen didn't it...'

And as I heard her shout that I could also hear the sound of her ruffling her hair frantically.

I leave her to her own devices and take out the quest note.

On it it says that I need to subjugate three of these things.

I put the note back and approach the green globs of sticky looking goop.

As I got closer and could see them more clearly I could see that they all looked to have different viscosity, some looked almost like solid green balls and some looked like green oil spills with a small rock inside, however most of them were somewhere in between.

‘Why are they so different?’ I ask Lizz.

However she’s still too busy ripping out her hair to answer.

I then grab a stick that I find on the ground and poke one of the oily ones, two things happen.

The first is that Lizz starts screaming even louder, and the second is that it pokes a hole in the slime, making liquid flow out of it.

‘Well, nothing bad happened, right?’

‘But I think I killed it, so what do I do now?’

She responds, seemingly finally having calmed down.

I then go and poke one of the half liquid slime.

This time, instead of poking a hole in it and spilling its insides, the slime grabs my stick and tries to pull it inside of itself, only succeeding to do to after I let go.

I then pick up another stick, this time however, I swipe at the slime with it rather than poke it.

When I do that Lizz freaks out again, and there's now a long vertical gash going across the slime, with goop dripping out, and unlike the oily slimes goop which was like, well, oil, this guy’s goop seemed to be the consistency of porridge, very slowly dripping and kinda chunky.

I press down with my hands onto the still solid parts of the slime to make it empty quicker.

‘Flesh eating?’

I then walk towards where the goop spilled out and poke it with my foot.

‘See? No flesh.’

I then keep emptying the slime and grab the stone, immediately as I do so all of the porridge like goop becomes as liquidy as the oily ones.

I then turn towards one of the really solid ball shaped slimes that can be seen rolling about.

It’s radius seems to be slightly smaller than my arm.

I immediately swing my stick at it.

*crack*

Only to have i break on me.

Seeing as the slimes can’t seem to dissolve me I touch it to see just how hard it is.

‘It’s just like plastic…’

Ignoring Lizz I use hunting claws on my hands and try slashing at it, however it only leaves shallow scratches on it, not even a millimeter deep.

Feeling a bit annoyed that my attack didn’t do anything I decide to play unfair.

How unfair? well how about just phasing my arm into it and grabbing the stone immediately? Then again I have no idea if this is actually going to work, but it’s worth a shot.

And thus a dark green light starts covering my arm and I stick it into the slime.

Then while my hand was inside it I activate Hunting Claws to try and have my claws solidify without bouncing back out like my feet when I jump across roofs.

And the result? A success! Kinda… You see although I did kill the slime, but since the entire insides of the slime was as hard as the outside I couldn’t actually pull the rock around and instead had to break it into a few pieces, though it seems to have worked just as well.

And a side effect of these results is that everything below my shoulders is covered in green oil.

Not having learnt the lesson that Lizz seems to want to teach me, I keep ignoring her and open the pouch to put in the rocks and rock pieces.

Before I can do that however, a blue hand comes out of the pouch carrying a blue note, reading the note it says:

Solidification

Due to using a skill that makes you incorporeal while also using a skill that lets you

solidify yourself as well as possessing a ghostly disposition you have been given this ability.

This ability will let you solidify non-solid objects that come into contact with you, whether you’re corporeal or not.

If you let go of the solidified objects they will slowly begin to turn back to normal

With enough practice you will be able to freeze objects you have solidified in spatial position for as long as you remain in contact with them as well as prolong how long it takes for an object to turn back to normal.

‘Okay?’

I stare at the blue piece of paper dumbfoundedly for a while, until it goes back into the pouch and I snap back to reality.

‘but how do I even use it?’

Thinking I might as well try it, I focus both of the skills on the palm of my hands.

At first my palm starts glowing green, then the glow disappears and my palm instead hardens like bone. It keeps alternating between the two abilities for a while, until I notice that in between glowing green and being white there's an orange glow for a fraction of a second.

I try to focus, and I try to keep the orange glow for as long as possible, eventually succeeding in stabilizing it.

I then touch the orange glow with my other hand and see that I can’t actually move my hand through it, as though the air solidified.

In fact I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what happened.

I focus on the orange glow and try to mold it, try to elongate it, until I’m holding a long cylindrical orange pole of light.

I swing the pole at a nearby tree and with a *thwack*...

Nothing happens…

Neither the tree nor the pole broke so it’s probably just me not being strong enough…

I then head to the cave while I continue to experiment with this new ability, almost forgetting to pick up the herbs that I needed on the way.