It took me a few minutes to recover from the backlash of using so much mana in one go. I must've condensed at least three hundred particles into that one shot, but it seemed necessary given the circumstances.

The girl I had saved was sitting quietly under the emerald glow of the sanctuary, still recovering from her recent ordeal. After she told me that her name was Coffee, she smiled briefly and turned to look at her assailant, assuming an illegible expression. I couldn't find the words to break the silence. 

She had chestnut brown hair, big ruby eyes, and pale white skin. Her canines protruded like tiny fangs when she smiled. However, her messy hair and grimy face suggested that she hadn't washed in several days. There was dried blood on her face from when she had bit her assailant's fingers. My stare lingered for a second at her clothing before looking away abruptly. The oversized shirt she was wearing draped all the way to her knees, but it hung slanted from one shoulder and exposed the skin around her right collarbone and breast. There was some kind of tattoo on her upper right torso, but I didn't look for long enough to make out the details.

Any normal child might have been crying in her position.

But Coffee, she just... sat there. Contemplating something far too heavy for her tiny shoulders. Whatever it was, she looked incredibly lonely. Perhaps she wasn't looking at her assailant after all.

'Coffee, are you okay?'

She blinked a few times before turning towards me.

'Yeah. I was just thinking about how ugly that guy is.'

Eh? I almost choked.

She was right, though. 

The shady man I shot before was slowly rebuilding the upper half of its face. He had created the basic mold for one, but appeared to be struggling to grasp the specific details. Currently, he seemed to be debating whether his eyes and ears were below or above the nose. 

To be honest, I had aimed for his leg to injure him, but my face itched at the last moment and my pseudopod involuntarily tilted upwards. At the time, I was afraid that I had killed him accidentally; little did I know that moments later, I'd be afraid that he'd kill me instead.

For now, though, it didn't seem like he had noticed us. Rather, he appeared frustrated with his current predicament. After all, his newly formed head looked like a yellow lump without hair.

'Kind of like a hot potato.' I muttered.

'Hmm? Did you say something?'

'Ah, nevermind. By the way, are you... a vampire? I haven't seen anyone with fangs before.' I recalled what the dungeon hive had mentioned previously about there being four races in the dungeon, one of them being the vampire. It was the most likely option, given that she wasn't a monstrous chest or wrinkley little green person, if my assumptions about mimics and goblins were correct. She definitely wasn’t a slime, or else she would be blobby like me.

'...Yes,' she hesitated.

'Sorry, I didn't mean to probe.'

'No worries.'

She obviously didn't want to talk about her race, but I had so many questions. Since she was a vampire, how did she get here? Were there other vampires present in the Slime Kingdom? I mean, I hadn't met anyone who wasn't a slime since I was reincarnated, but perhaps other races co-existed within the Kingdom? After all, the furthest I'd ventured was to the trading post yesterday, and even that was only a ten-minute walk from the village. 

I sighed. Now wasn't the time for this, anyway. I had to liven the mood somehow though. The silence was suffocating. In desperation, I tried cracking a joke.

'So... is that your boyfriend?' I asked.

She returned a blank stare.

…

…

…

...

This even more awkward silence was killing me.

‘AGHHHHHHH!’ I screamed internally.

I mentally rolled around on the ground in shame.

Was my joke too insensitive? It was, wasn't it. Did I screw things up?

'Former boyfriend. He didn't take the break up very well,' came the reply.

Oh?

‘I tried to let him down easy, but, you know, men.' Coffee stated as a matter of fact. I laughed inwardly. I had initially wanted to tease her and see her all flustered, but it seemed that she had some wit to her. Save for the momentary awkwardness, her response was refreshing. Not something that I expected from a kid, but maybe she was older than she looked?

I was reminded of my childhood friend back in the day. We would joke around all the time while jamming to music and studying together. Not that the circumstances were exactly the same....

I stared at the monster again. It was currently working on the right length for the eyebrows.

‘Seriously, though. What is that monster?'

'I’m not really sure. I just woke up two days ago and he was there. I ran away from him, but he eventually caught up. He's a real pervert. Hentai. Pedophile. Lolicon. Freak,’ she ranted, raising several questions and red flags in my mind.

'Wait.... He didn't happen to do anything—’ I began, worried.

'No.' Coffee firmly replied. I sighed in relief.

'But I did penetrate his ass pretty vigorously. He didn't like that too much,’ she continued.

‘?!’

Before I could ask, the man suddenly went limp, and the half-reformed upper head deflated back into the hole that I had blasted. He didn't move for several seconds.

…

‘…Is he dead?’ I asked.

Twitch. Krick. Crack.

‘…Don’t think so.’

A long, wooden plank burst out from the hole in his head, and hung loosely from one end by a piece of pink flesh. We stared blankly, disgusted but also curious at the same time. One by one, wooden planks emerged from the ever widening hole in the monster's head, and fused together lengthwise via tendrils of sinewy muscle. Eventually, it had formed a barrel-like structure around its body. The barrel began to tilt.

Thud. Krick.

The fallen barrel grew slightly in size as it rapidly reorganized its wooden planks to form a chest-like shape, metal planks beginning to grow out from the edges. A latch formed on the lid.

On the surface, it appeared to have finished its distasteful transformation, but Coffee and I sensed that there was more to come. The black mana that flowed through its body behaved like static, all twitchy and jumpy. Its core pulsated like a sac of eggs that threatened to give birth to a million crawling spiders. Each time it pulsed, it discharged mana throughout its chesty body.

We waited with bated breath.

Kacha.

Its latch unlocked and lid parted slightly, unleashing four squirming tongues that lashed out to taste the air. Long, lanky and hairy legs lifted the chest at least 4 meters into the air, and two black arms protruded from either side of the body, each terminating in a hand with three clawed fingers. Eight eyeballs randomly located on the surface of the lid popped open and swiveled 360 degrees.

I guessed he was tired of trying to form a new head, and reverted to its original form. It was a very recognizable monster from classic RPGs. The mimic.

I turned to Coffee.

‘You penetrated that thing?!’

‘Uh. I take it back. I stabbed it with a dagger. Please don’t accuse me of doing anything weird with a mimic. I’d rather die,’ Coffee said rather hurriedly.

The mimic rotated his body clockwise and counterclockwise, letting his four tongues whip around and trail behind. Thick saliva ran down these tongues, which he would slurp up periodically. It was like watching a 3D rendition of everyone’s least favorite tentacle porn flick come to life. To make things worse, his eyeballs were constantly moving and without coordination; one would dart back and forth while another would spin around and around. He was clearly searching for us and I should’ve been terrified, but all I could wish for was to un-see what I had just seen.

Actually, scratch that. What would’ve been better was if I hadn’t left the berries on the cart below us. Dammit. The mimic was currently fixating all eight of its eyes on them and beginning to approach the tree.

Should I try attacking him pre-emptively?

No, that was a bad idea. It wouldn’t be stupid enough to let down its guard after what had happened. It would definitely be prepared this time, and attempting to shoot him with my new skill would only confirm our position. Better to wait and hope for the best. I looked over to my fellow refugee.

Unlike me, Coffee still seemed to be working her mental gears. She was deep in thought with a single, curled finger on her chin.

‘Do you have a plan?’ I inquired.

‘Not yet. I wish I could use my mana,’ she complained.

Now that she mentioned it, Coffee had a mana core too. It looked like a literal, medically-accurate heart, except it appeared to be restrained by something like a chain. I wondered why that was. Her expression then brightened like she had figured something out.

‘Wait, quick! Is there a magic seal on my back? If there is, pull it off!’ Coffee asked, turning around and lifting her shirt to show me her back. I turned away sharply, but sighed and resigned myself to the task she had assigned me. She was a lady for goodness sake. How shameless could she be?

In any case, indeed, there was a magic seal. It was a piece of paper with a complicated diagram drawn on it, and it seemed to be fused with her skin save for a little tab on the top left corner. I tried to pull on it, but couldn’t get it to release.

‘It’s not working,’ I said. ‘It’s stuck,’

‘Damn, your mana capacity must suck if you can’t pull that off.’

‘Of course it sucks. I’ve only just developed my mana core today.’

‘Pfft, that joke isn’t even funny.’

‘It’s true! Anyway, it doesn’t matter...' I reconsidered my initial plan. 'Should I fire an air bullet at it?’

‘...No. He’s being cautious. That barrier is at least ten times as dense as it was when you broke through it last time,’ Coffee said, pointing at the mimic’s body.

A dense cloud of dark mana surrounded the chest.

‘That must be the barrier,’ I told myself. So much for my 'plan'.

‘...What’s it doing now?’ I asked.

Below us, the mimic was licking one of the berries that Coffee had bit into using two of its meter-long tongues. The image caused a shiver to run down my spine. Coffee’s face paled further, probably because it had essentially kissed her indirectly. She was telling the truth. This thing was a hardcore pervert. There wasn’t any other reason for it to lick the berries, or so I thought.

‘Shit, mimics have taste receptors that can sense flavours up to 100 meters away!’ Coffee exclaimed. Now you tell me?! But…

‘It should be fine, right? He wasn’t able to see us, so he shouldn’t be able to taste us. This tree seems to have some kind of stealth ability against adults.’

‘…I don’t know…’ Coffee sounded nervous as the mimic’s eyes curiously travelled upwards to where we were watching him from. His tongues licked the air ominously.

Hwinggg!

Out of nowhere, two spears of ice flew at the mimic from behind, which exploded into a mist of water vapor upon colliding with the mimic's black aura. The mimic turned around to see who its attacker was, but the mist swirled and condensed, forming a thick fog and obscuring its view. Using mana perception, I sensed a source about a hundred meters away gathering blue mana particles towards itself. 

Then the flow of mana changed.

It was hard to describe, but the mana itself behaved differently. Initially, the light seemed to radiate outwards from each particle, but now it was absorbing light towards it instead. Interesting.

The particles rapidly oriented and distanced themselves into an organized pattern that resembled a hexagon-based crystal lattice. The blue mana became eerily still once its structure was complete: a two-meter long jagged icicle with a conical base.

A second source of mana, this time green, honed in on that base and began to flow along the perimeter. The green mana quickly formed a donut-shaped ring that hovered just behind the icicle, every particle moving synchronously in one direction. As it did so, some of the particles then purposefully disassociated themselves to rotate around edge of the ring. This rotation accelerated and achieved lightning speed, generating tremendous positive pressure before the ring made contact with the spear.

Fffhwinggg!

The ice spear burst forward with tremendous velocity towards the mimic's body. It was much larger and faster than the first two.

Unfortunately, the mimic looked like it was fully prepared. Black specks of mana thrust forward from its chesty body and expanded to form hundreds of rectangular layers stacked on top of each other like a pyramid, the apex pointed towards the incoming spear.

The spear pierced the first few layers, but caused the others to stretch inwards, like an arrow notched on a bowstring. Before it could fire the spear back, it shattered into millions of miniature crystals, tearing up the elastic connections between the black mana to shreds. In that instant, the mimic used the cover of chaos to fling two barely noticeable daggers at its assailants using its tongues.

BOOM.

A bullet of air traveling at least five times as fast as mine immediately followed the same trajectory of the previous ice spear, ignoring the daggers and ripping through the mimic's black aura. The mimic didn't even have time to howl before the bullet razed through its pulsating, black core, causing it to shatter and dissipate like sand in the wind.

Thud.

The mimic fell to the ground and twitched a couple times.

Then it moved no more.

When the fog cleared and the dust settled, two females could be seen in the distance, sweating and panting behind a clear, blue-tinted, lens-shaped shield. Two dagger hilts were visible on the shield with long cracks radiating from each puncture.

'Mom! Auntie!' I hopped out of the tree.

"Bell?! Bell!" Ellie disabled the shield and ran towards me, quickly followed by Jean, Andrea, and other villagers, some of whom were holding sticks with bright mana crystals at the end. It looked like a search party.

"We were so worried..." Ellie picked me up and hugged me tightly, relief washing over her face despite her obvious fatigue. 

"Are you okay? Why didn't you come home earlier?" Jean demanded.

'Yeah mom, I'm fine. Err... a lot of things happened.' I hesitated. I didn't know how much information to divulge. What would they think about Coffee? Should I mention the dungeon hive? How would they react to my mana core? Well, for that last one, they would probably realize sooner or later so there wasn't much point hiding it.

A brief summary would have to do for now.

‘Well… it all started when something called a dungeon hive gave me a mana core and it caused me to fall asleep. When I woke up, that thing over there was attacking--' 

"Mana core?!' Ellie exclaimed. She held me out with outstretched arms and gave me a scrutinizing look. Her mouth made a small 'o' shape. "Jean, look! Our Bell has a mana core!"

"What?! That's impossible..." Jean was shocked. She stared at my nucleus. "Wow, you weren't kidding."

Andrea, too, was surprised, but her shoulders slumped a little as she mumbled, "Mana core at three? I didn't awaken till I was 13..."

"Uh. So, who's this dungeon hive?" Ellie quickly got over her initial excitement and brought her attention back to what I was saying. 

'I-I'm... not really sure. I can tell you about it later though,' I said, wanting to continue my story. 'Like I was saying, when I woke up, that monster-like thing was attacking a girl my age, and I tried to save her. I managed to blast its face off with an air bullet and hid her in the tree. That's when you guys showed up and defeated it.’

““Girl?”” Jean and Andrea both inquired.

‘You can come out Coffee, these are my parents and my auntie. I think they’ll be willing to help you,’ I thought at the girl still hiding in the tree.

‘…Are you sure?’ Coffee hesitated.

‘They’re all very nice people,’ I insisted.

Slowly, she climbed down from the tree and gave a small curtsey, lightly grasping the hem of her ragged shirt.

“XXXX XX XXXX XXX,” She said.

...

The adults fell silent.

Ah, that’s right.

‘Coffee, they probably don’t understand your language. You have to think it at them,’ I reminded her.

“No, Bell. We can understand Vampires perfectly well,” Ellie said coldly.

‘Mom?’

“Who are you, and why are you here?” Jean demanded.

Coffee stiffened and didn’t respond. Her hair fell over her face, casting her eyes in a dark shadow. I couldn’t tell what her expression looked like.

‘I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding,’ I said, trying to quell the tense atmosphere. My parents were always so kind and accepting. What was the reason for this hostility?

“No misunderstanding here, Bell. Vampires hurt many slimes in the past,” Andrea took a threatening step forward. “They are conniving, immoral creatures that have only brought us pain and suffering.”

“You are too young to understand,” Jean said. “Vampires are one of the main reasons why your mom comes home injured sometimes. They’re why I continue to make weapons and armor.”

‘Mom—‘

“NO BUTS. You aren’t to speak to her or associate with her in any way. Do you hear me?” Jean’s tone was lined with hatred. It was like nothing I had seen before.

Anger began to bubble up from within me. This was wrong. Coffee was only a child. They surely couldn’t lump her in with all of the other vampires. She was the victim here. We should be trying to help her!

To my parents’ benefit, a question floated into my mind. Didn’t she sound much older than what she looked like? Maybe she wasn’t a child?

I shook my head. No. It didn’t matter. It was absolutely wrong to assume that she was guilty without being proven innocent. Therefore, the best course of action right now would be to get her side of the story and go from there. That would prove her innocence and we could get her the help she needed, right?

‘Coff—‘ 

‘So you’ve all found out,’ Coffee’s voice sounded disappointed and ominous at the same time. ‘That’s too bad. I was looking forward to tricking you all and then slaughtering you in your sleep.’

...

No one said a word as her face cracked a mocking grin. My eyes widened.

She slowly backed up towards the woods.

‘Tsk tsk. It’s sad, but we won’t be seeing each other again. Ah, and by the way. If you DARE follow me, I will kill you, and then I will kill that foolish little girl of yours.’

With these words, she vanished from sight into the darkness.

Broken from her trance, Ellie shouted, “Oh no you don’t!”, keeping one arm curled around my body while lifting the other one to prepare some sort of spell.

‘STOP, MOM.’ I broke free from her grip, and jumped towards the woods where Coffee went. I turned around and glared at my parents who were expressing a mix of confusion and anger.

Before Coffee disappeared, she whispered something to me and me only.

<'Thank you, Bell.'>

“BELL, GET HERE THIS—“

'No. I expected better from you two,' I said coolly.

I dashed after Coffee.

Wait... 'girl?'