The slimes keep growing, some of the smaller ones turned into small opaque crystals with a faint glow, but the majority continue to grow, the ones attached to the corpse pile turning a red or white. I have been having trouble with only one hand, not with stabbing things, the blade slightly sticks out without the hand, but with cooking, I have been trying to hollow out rocks to cook the corpses in, but they slip out of my grasp, so instead, I have been building a hand out of my threads and the corpses themselves.

I have connected my threads to every individual nerve and muscle in my stump, but I was having trouble finding a compatible hand, meaning an aesthetically pleasing hand, its ability doesn't matter to me, so I went into the forest and searched for a monster to use, eventually my search lead me to a desert, in which I found a bunch of Joint scorpions, with very 'finger-like' stingers, I also found a singular Sand harpy, who's clawed feet would do well as my palms, so I dragged in back alive and left it hanging by its soon to be stumped feet.

I sewed the individual jointed stingers on to the Sand harpies previously clawed foot, playing with the nerves a bit to get it right, then placing the poison secretion glands into the foot and connecting them back to the jointed stinger, finally connecting all the muscles and nerves to my own and healing the new hand to complete the process.

[Skill achieved: Surgery Lvl 1]

[Perk achieved: It's Alive!]

[Title achieved: Chimera Creator]

[Title achieved: Chimera]

[Skill gained: Poison secretion (Claws) lvl 30]

[Skill gained: Poison Resistance Lvl 30]

[Skill gained: Heat Resistance Lvl 30]

I flexed the considerably dexterous fingers, getting accustom to the new range of movement that they offered, the hand seemed to have blended better into my body when it was connected, perhaps as a result of my skills, or something else, the palm and stinger fingers became darker and sleeker, matching the size of my other hand, the rough palms skin becoming smoother and changing the skin around my wrist to become like a colour gradient leading towards it, the hand that was previously a sandy colour was now closer to a dark grey or black.

And now I had a live test subject to experiment on, with a missing limb, I had not been paying attention to her begging and screaming before, but now I was listening, and from what I could gather, she was the chiefs daughter of a Sand harpy clan, I didn't know if that was important or not, so I gagged her with a goblins loincloth and used the slimes to strap her to the floor, I had many ideas for this experiment.

I could merge her torso with a large Sand scorpion and make her into a a sort of 'sand arachnid', or I could capture a few more harpies and give her giant wings, replacing her hands with talons, of course, or, and this would probably be the riskiest experiment out of the lot, I try to replace a slimes core with her brain, or trying to merge her with multiple slimes so that she has a vaguely similar shape to her previous form, I would have to think on this.

In the meantime, I had just discovered a desert, and I wanted to test a new skill, I started walking to the desert, secreting the sand scorpion poison from my left hand into a quivering goblin as its insides bubbled and melted, the poison, at first glance acted as an acid, but on closer inspection, it simply released an extremely hot liquid, that also caused minor nausia and had a aphrodisiac like effect if used on myself, luckily only lasting a few seconds, but making my imp suit uncomfortably wet.

I could also secrete the poison from the claws on my feet and right hand, although to a lesser extent, and when I used my right hand the goblins skin on bubbled and exploded, it didn't melt, although the goblin screamed a lot more, but there's nothing wrong with that. I reached the desert, it was a perfect dividing line that separated the two environments, no sand breached the forest and no leaves floated into the desert, it was disconcerting, but nothing to particularly worry about.

The first creature I encountered was a Sandstone worm, well, less encountered, more eaten by, its stomach, despite its name, was very wet, or perhaps slimy would be a better descriptor, although the stomach lining was extremely hard, as the name suggests, I could see scorpions stabbing at it, slowly melting, fruitlessly trying to escape, there was also a dead harpy wearing armour, although they were both too far gone to recover, but not the necklace around their neck, which curiously went missing as my pockets became heavier.

The worms stomach was filled with gas, it was corrosive and highly flammable, I know this because I tried igniting a spark and found myself covered in light red blood and chunks of delicious crispy flesh, and then was buried in sand, as it turns out, Sandstone worms spent their time in the sand, surprisingly deep in the sand, I had essentially trapped myself in an ocean of sand, forced to slowly dig away at it with my threads, seemingly without a point.

I spread out my threads all around me, and I found something, the downside was that I had to dig down, what I found was a cavern or a cave, now, this wasn't very impressive or worth digging myself deeper for alone, but that wasn't all I found, my threads were picking up faint voices, although they were not in the cave I had found, but somewhere off in the distance, maybe in a conjoined cave. I started digging down, turning my threads into a makeshift drill, digging further into the sand, it was getting wet and very cold, and sand had fallen into the dissolved patches in my suit.

I finally reached the cave, although I misjudged the height, I fell fifty metres and broke my left arm, a sharp, black, bone stuck out of my shoulder and elbow, it would probably require a few minutes to set back into place and I was currently surrounded by sandy scaled lizard people holding spears and equally sandy coloured mouse men and women holding cocked bows, I had not just misjudged the height, but the location and number of people below

[Achieved skill: Impact resistance Lvl 1]

I really wish I had my wings right now, I lifted my hands in surrender and one of the sandy looking mouse women came forwards and placed a pair of sealing bracelets on me, they were enchanted to both stop me from using any magic and supress my strength back to its base, unfortunately this also disabled my illusion magic, leaving me with an arrow in my breast, shoulder and eye, all on my left side, partially blinding me. But before I could be killed, one of the lizards spoke in a language they likely assumed I didn't understand telling off those who fired.

"STOP!, you foolss~ could have killed the girl! ~sshe ~ssurrendered willingly and now look what happened, honestly, this is why I don't trust mice" He spoke in a tone like that of a disappointed father, reprimanding the mice by taking their bows and hitting the back of their heads, and ending it with "Her recovery iss~ coming out of your saleriess~"

Which was funny to me, I could heal everything, except my eye, even without magic, I just had to pull the arrows out and wait a few seconds, they only pierced about three centimetres to begin with, I would defiinitely have problems with my eye, but I'm sure I would be able to find a willing donor until I possessed the magic to regrow my own, of course, I would usually be able to regrow limbs with ease, if I had a few days and a small area concentrated with mana, but eyes are different, something about them stops them from regrowing properly, same with the brain.

The mouse that placed the bracelts on me pulled the arrows out, including the one in my eye, unfortunately it also ripped my eye out with it, the mouse woman let go of the arrow and proceeded to throw up on one of the cave walls, forcing me to pick up the arrow and cut off the eye myself. I burned the stem that used to connect to my left eye with a little bit of poison, and creating a makeshift eye-patch to put over the wound out of a bit of chitin I cut down into the shape of my eye socket and sewed to my face with some leftover thread.

After a few more vomiting fits, I was escorted through large stone gates at the end of the ravine-like cave, nothing particularly impressive or worth mentioning, it was basically just stone slabs and wooden doors, but the place beyond the gates was certainly not. It was a city of sandstone built upon a giant pillar descending further in the abyss below, the walls that made up the cylinder the city was built inside, were smooth, but covered in holes, some with sandy, riveted and tube-like bodies moving through them, and the group was moving towards the city on one of the few bridges I could see leading towards the city.

We entered into a considerably packed street, market stands and people making music through strange instruments lined the streets, brightly coloured fabrics of hundreds of colours and spicy food that made my nose go dry and burn, even a few stands that sold the instruments that were being played around them, these made up the majority of what I saw on my way to, what I could only guess was, the completely red, cuboid building market with an emblem of a coiling worm with a spear through the centre.

I had a feeling this was going to be fun.