After hours of wandering, the little jelly finally found a wide-open space underneath the roots of a large tree. Here it can finally take its time with its prize.

If it could curse or understood the very concept of it, it would have been swearing loudly at the heavens for the torture it had to endure on its journey.

Many times it was attacked by the forest slimes hoping to claim the corpse it carried as their own. Not only did they come in vast numbers, they also showed no fear despite the number of times it had devoured their brethren. The creatures simply showed no concern for their well-being and threw their numbers at it to almost no end.

Nearly driven mad and almost leaving its prize to go commit slime genocide, it suddenly had a thought and immediately altered its properties to match the forest slimes. As soon as it made the changes, the effects were almost immediate. The forest slimes, sensing that one of their own has completely engulfed the corpse, stopped their pursuit and scampered off to find another meal.

Raising two lumps on its body as if they were appendages, it waived them in the air as if it was doing a little celebratory dance.

As it carried on, it would soon come to know that it wasn’t even close to the end of its misery.

It soon found the existence of tiny red six-legged monsters that had large mandibles and tiny stingers. The worst part was that they seemed to have an organized system and attacked in swarms.

To protect the corpse, it had to find a way to fight off the attackers while carrying it since it couldn’t protect it from all sides. Under pressure, it finally managed to find a solution by making the lower part of its body produce digestive acid. Simply, as it rolled along, when its lower body would turn towards the ground, it secreted powerful digestive enzymes that trapped and melted the little monsters as it steamrolled over them.

When things seemed to finally settle down, another kind of monster attacked and it was the worst yet. It was also a swarm of them, but this one could fly so they attacked from all angles. They didn’t really cause as much physical harm as the slimes and the tiny red monster swarm since they possessed no mandibles, acid, nor stingers, but their constant buzzing was annoying and whenever they latched onto the corpse they increased the weight.

They flew fast and always out of reach, so the little jelly couldn’t do much against them. For the remainder of the final hours of its journey, they swarmed, buzzed, crawled and caused no end of torture for the poor blob. It wasn’t until it crossed a vast field of white flowers that the swarm finally let off. Consuming some flowers, the little jelly found the properties of its scent and applied it all around its membrane. Suffice to say, this little action did wonders against the flying monsters and the rest of its journey remained peaceful.

Now that it’s here finally alone with its prize, it gleefully pried open the cocoon to enjoy its meal. Only, it was left with a different kind of surprise.

Managing to consume a few of the fliers and learning their physiology, it now finally understood why those flying monsters latched onto the corpse despite it being encased in protective membrane to prevent it from being eaten. The slimes and the tiny monsters must’ve been able to break through parts of the casing as now it was filled to the brim with tiny white worm-like things.

In the hours that it was left encased, the worm-like things have already managed to eat through more than half of the remaining corpse.

Enraged at its prize being violated, the little jelly expanded itself to cover as much of the corpse as it could. Once it reached almost a meter across, it covered the bottom end of the corpse and started digesting it like mad. Consequentially, the method it chose would cause it to expend as much energy as it gained if it were to consume it normally, but its angered state caused it to overlook this detail.

An hour or so later, the corpse was finally fully consumed along with the small worm things. Outwardly, its volume hasn’t changed, but inwardly its mass had grown. Satisfied at the result but not fully satiated by the process, the little fellow got its first experience of mixed feelings. Deciding not to let it bother it, it then decided to look at the new abilities it gained.

First, it ignored the physiology of the slimes since they weren’t just similar, but a regressed version of itself. The slimes had inferior digestive capabilities and even lacked its cognition. They also relied on a biological core or heart which exuded a mysterious energy for their continued existence, which was a massive drawback considering the little jelly only needed a few of its own cells to be able to grow back completely.

The only benefit it could find was forming this core to be able to utilize the said energy, but it still lacked understanding on how to process the energy and how it could be used. The slimes exuded it out of instinct simply because it required it to hold itself together and function as a living entity. On the other hand, the amount of energy it radiated was so little, the jelly couldn’t even begin to imagine what it could be used for.

Next, it looked towards the tiny red monsters’ properties. It found that there were at least two types of the creature, a small one whose purpose appeared to be for labor along with small mandibles, and a larger one with larger mandibles and a stinger. The second type made it believe that it was a type of fighter to protect the smaller ones as they worked.

Looking through its genealogy, it found a missing biological strand that would’ve linked it to at least two other types that served a different purpose in the functioning society of these creatures. It concluded that one of these types must’ve been the reproductive heart of these creatures as it couldn’t find the means of reproduction between the two types it consumed.

Looking back at the slimes, it knew that if they consumed enough matter, they would form a new core and expel a portion of themselves to form a new slime. On the other hand, these tiny red creatures moved as a vast swarm, so it only made sense that if the ones it consumed didn’t have a means to reproduce then another of its archetype must exist as a means of reproduction for the swarm.

Since it lacked the genetic code for it, it could only access the forms of the two types it consumed. Willing its body to change, it found that while it could turn into the creature, its physiology was designed for the size it existed in. This means that while it could borrow its form, it couldn’t mimic most of its functions simply because it lacked accurate biological data to make the organs function in a larger size.

An example of this is while its in the form of the red monster, despite its larger size, the denseness of its exoskeleton still matched that of the original version of the tiny red creature. A simple rock falling on top of it could easily squish it. Worse still, its larger form consumed more energy than how its body was originally designed, so moving any limbs actually took a lot of effort.

Changing back, the little jelly concluded that it needed to consume a similar creature of greater volume and mass if it wanted to mimic the properties of the tiny red creature. Another way was for it to somehow learn the correlation of physics, mass, volume, gravity, energy consumption, and more if it wanted to transform without the need of consuming a similar but larger creature, but considering it was in the middle of a forest and lacks a certain level of scientific understanding, it can only learn via the hard way.

Other than being able to manipulate emitted pheromones and chemicals that would allow it to communicate with the tiny red creatures, it again shelved its properties for the time being for a lack of anything it could find useful.

Now looking at the flying creature, it lowered its expectations considering their size is almost as tiny as the red ones and so far, it hasn’t shown any appealing abilities other than being annoying. It would’ve appreciated the means to fly, but knowing the results from its previous experiment, it knew it was pointless to even try.

The only thing notable it discovered was that it was the first creature it consumed that possessed two genders. This gave it an idea on how it reproduced and was honestly curious about it. It shelved the idea, however, when it realized that the creature was another kind of bottom feeder and possessed another annoying property as having to exist as a helpless worm for a large fraction of its existence, only to transform if it managed to survive into adulthood and turn into its annoying form that had a lifespan of only several days.

Its defense mechanism, other than its flight and reaction time, was ridiculously to breed quickly and spawn as many offspring as it could in its scant life.

Knowing this, it was definitely against turning into such a creature if it ever ran into a desperate choice.

After going through much disappointment and wasted energy, it didn’t have much expectations as it hoped that the last creature it consumed offered better properties. After all, it was a corpse of a great beast that possessed so much mass, so there was no way it would possess useless attributes, right?

***