Calculating Experience...

Resolving Attributes...

Congratulations! You have achieved Level 1.

Just as I suspected, the system needed me to actually perform certain actions before it could properly measure my stats. Though, it kind of sucked to think that taking about three minutes to kill a slime counted as enough experience to go from the imaginary level 0 to level 1. Three minutes might not sound like a lot of time, but in reality, combat rarely lasts so long. Everything is usually decided in half a minute on average, at least when looking at one on one combat where the participants are trying their best to kill each other. Large scale battles are a bit different, but still not nearly as long lasting as many would think. Considering that, between myself and the slime, I was the only one not trying my very best to kill the other, three minutes was somewhat understandable. I couldn’t take that luxury with the rest of the horde, though. Soon, they would all finish digesting their victims, and then I would have dozens of blue balls, bouncing off both the ground and walls, trying to snare me in their thralls - and I did not mean to rhyme at all. Wait…

Random literary brilliance aside, I took a quick look at the core in my hand, still pondering what the first system message said. Later I will reflect on the fact that I do get system messages in this world, but at the moment I had more tangible issues to attend to. Such as the fact that I now seem to be holding what could be a useful item, but I have no place to store it.

Thinking quickly, while having a thankful side thought that these slime cores won’t reconstruct new slimes out of the blue - and no, I am not going to make a color pun here - I decided to place the core exactly where I picked up the club. After all, who else is here to grab it? I mean, it is entirely possible that the mastermind behind this attack, if such a person exists, could come along and snatch my future haul, but...let me not activate Murphy’s Law right now. Funny, I could vaguely remember what a baseball bat was, but philosophical ideas never seem to go away, as much as I would sometimes like them to…

Right, thinking is not acting, and inaction equals death.

The spot in question was not too far away, I made certain to keep the fight as close to my starting point as possible so as to not get lost. I would have relied on the open door as the indicator, but in my excessive dodging I noticed a few other open doors, and I didn’t trust my sense of direction quite just yet. An exposed core would be much more suitable to the task.

I took a quick glance at my updated status screen just so that I could see what I was dealing with before gaining any more levels.

Name:

---

Age:

???

Titles:

Master of One’s Soul

Fame:

---

Level:

1

Class:

---

Health:

50/50

Health Regen:

0.05/s

Mana:

---

Mana Regen:

---

Stamina:

60/100

Stamina Regen:

0.1/s

Strength:

10

Intelligence:

25

Vitality:

5

Wisdom:

25

Agility:

12

Charisma:

5

Dexterity:

10

Luck:

10

Soul Force:

MAX

Soul Resilience:

MAX

...Almost what I expected, really. I’ll have to watch my movements to reduce my stamina consumption, but I know that the large loss is from my earliest uncoordinated movements. Now that I am more adjusted to this body I should be losing stamina much less.

As for my health, it looks like it is tied directly into my vitality at a ten to one ratio, but it could be pure coincidence. I’ll find out when the stat increases or when I level up again. Still, I could at least safely assume that both values are so low in comparison to the rest of my stats because this is an entirely new body that has not been consciously developed into adulthood. I should be able to fix this easily enough with proper nutrition and exercise, hopefully. Actually, shouldn’t my strength be lower too in that case? Or maybe that is more of a descriptor of how much force I could put out when I try? I really need to look into how these stats work later.

It’s a bit strange that I don’t see any mana value, but then again, I didn’t use any magical abilities. A part of me wonders if I will bother to do so in the future, my stance regarding magic changes a bit in each iteration. However, as I had mused before my fight with the slime, it is unlikely that I will pick up a magical ability right here and now, so I decided to leave that thought to the side.

Dismissing the status screen for now, I take another look at my surroundings. My introspection only took a few seconds, but coupled with the time I spent coming up with a course of action for storing the core, it was enough time for the first of the ‘fed’ slimes to become active again. It was a good distance away, so even if it had finished digesting its victim before I could finish my earlier battle, I would have still been able to keep my fight one on one. Unfortunately, I had no idea when the others would start moving again, so instead of waiting for this one to come to me, I approached it at a quick pace.

Mindful of my stamina this time, now that I have an indicator of how much I have left, I gripped my club in a two handed grip as the slime and I closed the distance. I took a quick glance around to get my bearings, then waited for the slime to jump. This time I won’t need to dodge.

Bounce...bounce...and...there! The slime jumped straight towards me at chest height, and I was ready with a wind up swing. Giving the slime a good horizontal whack, I watched as it flew into the wall at a slight downward angle, only to slam right into the floor. It didn’t get the chance to move beyond that point since I transferred the motion of my horizontal swing into an upwards stance, then repeating the same killing blow I gave the first slime.

See, what most people don’t realize is that while the membrane slimes do bounce, they have to make a willful effort to do so. This is not to say that they are fully sentient or intelligent, they just have the barest amount of willpower necessary to move and to select its food. If it is bouncing then it can’t eat. If it is eating then it can’t bounce. A little basic, perhaps, but that should be enough to explain why smacking it around, with the correct timing of course, will leave it vulnerable to a finishing strike.

And I have long since gotten used to their timing.

Another gooey explosion, another quick flick of the core, and my second slime is down for the day. Barely one point of stamina used this time too, excellent.

Calculating Experience...

Resolving Attributes...

Congratulations! You have achieved Level 2.

...Wait, what now?

That shouldn’t have happened so quickly. Do slimes really give that much experience here? I doubt it, otherwise I could expect that stronger monsters will push people into levels that reach the thousands; which might be the case, but that’s rather unlikely. So then, what -

Ah...this one had just ‘ate’. My first slime didn’t get a victim, as far as I could tell, but the rest of these did. In that case, these slimes can provide a greater amount of experience, as they are already ‘experienced’ in the world.

This is not to say that these slimes have never eaten before, just that the first one I killed likely ate slightly less than its brethren. There may also be other slimes in the village that has not eaten anyone yet, but my instincts tell me that there was exactly one slime per resident, whether by coincidence (highly unlikely) or by guidance (quite likely). However, that brings up the question, was that ‘last’ slime meant for me?

The time to consider such questions will come later, right now I have a slime horde to kill. At least , that’s what the next bouncing ball of death is telling me.

***

The next half hour or so was a test of endurance. I barely got a moment’s rest between fights, as each slime seemed to finish their meals in almost sequential order. At least, that what it looked like to me, but for all I knew, whole groups of them could have finished at a time out of my line of sight and I would have never known. A few times I was attacked by a pair of slimes, and once there was a trio, but the longer I fought the more my battle awareness asserted itself over this body. While having a new body meant that I did not retain the muscle memory of previous iterations, the fact that the motions were embedded into my mind and soul instead allowed me to overcome the biological factor. In the midst of all the fighting, I mused that this was probably how the system determined my Soul Resilience to be maxed out, though I will still have to learn exactly what the system defines this attribute as later. I have my suspicions, but hard facts are better than assumptions on any day.

Each slime also took varying degrees of effort to kill. Many were easy, taken down by a similar combination swing that I used in my first two fights, but when I engaged two or three I had to take a few more moments to find the optimal positions. I was nearly caught a few times, but the close calls only served to heighten my focus and make me more determined to win.

Eventually the battles ended. The surrounding area was nearly as soaked in slimey remains as my body, and I almost caught myself slipping a couple of times. Thankfully, it seemed that once the cores were knocked away from the original body, that specific entity could no longer be formed; even better, the knocked out cores were treated as items, so they did not combine with other patches of goo to mucous to create new slimes. Otherwise I would have had much more trouble and I doubted the battle would have ever ended. I hope to never live through that particular nightmare again…

Panting slightly, I plopped my exhausted body on the ground to recuperate. I was down to 10 stamina, and had no intention of going anywhere until that was restored. Trying not to think about what I will do when my hunger and thirst settle in, I try to look again at my status screen, only to see the calculating message again. Odd, I didn’t notice any level gain messages throughout the whole slaughter...I wonder what that was about?

Contemplating how the level system works in this world, I wait for the calculating message to finish so that I could see what I gained.