I'm hurt and the lizard isn't planning on stopping. After pulling back its tail that is covered in some of my gelatinous body it starts to wildly claw at me.
Every time its claws hit me a small part of my body is scraped off and my mind begins to race even faster. I know how detrimental this amount of neural stimulation is but this seems to be a natural response of a slime to getting hurt.
I pull myself together and gather enough mental capacity to launch a desperate attack at the lizard. I use alchemy to reshape part of the wall behind me into a spike and launch it through my body at the lizard.
*Puchi*
With a squelching sound, the spike is driven into the lizard's body. It continues to claw at me but its movements quickly lose all strength. The lizard stares at me with bloodshot eyes as its life sizzles away while blood seeps out of the wound and pools at the lizard's feet.
Excitement washes over me and is intensified many times by my heightened neural activity. My core feels like an engine that is overheating due to being forced to perform above its capacity. Then, to make everything worse, dreadful nausea hits me and makes my vision begin to spin and fade.
The symptoms are similar to those of strong drugs or mana overuse. Since I brute-forced that spike with my level 1 alchemy skill I am probably suffering from said mana overuse.
The world starts to spin faster and faster, black spots appear in my vision like blots of ink on glass, and I can barely see the lizard before me. Despite all these adverse effects my thoughts are clear and barely affected by the overuse.
The only explanation I can think of is that my core has a very different structure compared to human brains thus alleviating part of the symptoms.
Whatever. I should eat the lizard before anything is attracted by the scent of blood. I carefully pull the lizard's corpse and the blood on the ground inside of myself and begin to use my dissolve skill.
The corpse is barely affected at first but the blood quickly disappears and makes me feel energized. I slowly dissolve the corpse to regain my lost substance and mana while moving along the cave wall. After a while, I find a crevice in the wall that is large enough for me to squeeze into and finish dissolving the lizard.
By the time I'm done my vision has been fully restored and I've recovered from the overuse. After how disastrous my first fight went I think it's safer to stay here and review my abilities. If there had been multiple enemies I would have died due to the effects of the mana overuse.
Using alchemy to make weapons at my level can only be used as a last resort. I might be able to do it if I took it slowly but is that really my only option?
Wait, I just killed a monster! As a monster, did I level up from that? I quickly open my status.
Status Lv. 2 lesser slime
Mp 10+1
Strength 1+1
Constitution 7+1
Speed 1+1
Magic ability 3+1
Skills:
Dissolving lv. 1; claw resistance lv. 1
Appraisal lv. 1; synthesis lv. 1; diagnosis lv. 1; alchemy lv. 2
So interesting! Lesser slimes are known to mankind as a terribly weak monster. And yet I as a lesser slime had learned a new skill after just my first battle.
Claw resistance is a skill that humans sadly can't learn. As it reaches higher levels it can evolve to claw immunity and if that hits max level the monster will not take any damage from ordinary claw attacks. At level 1 claw resistance won't do much but it's still a rapid improvement.
Additionally, my alchemy skill leveled up! I think the overuse of mana and the spike I made helped boost its level. If memory serves me right, when I began to train the alchemy skill all those years ago I started by doing simple changes to common materials.
Going by that logic I start to mold the rock in the crevice I'm currently resting. I smooth out all the edges and rough spots I find until the crevice is more of a circular fishbowl filled with my gelatinous self.
I focus on one part of the wall and condense myself another spike while taking great care not to get mana overuse again. The creation of the spike is painfully slow but eventually, I get it done. I check my status again but there have been no changes.
All I can do now is to wait for another monster to come past by its lonesome so I can hopefully kill it. The spike is halfway sunk into my body so I can push it out and into the monster.
I truly look forward to evolving since a slime gains the ability to morph and thus will allow me to use tools I make using alchemy. Also, I can finally test the hypothesis that a slime needs to consume a certain number of monster corpses of the same species to be able to morph into it.
But first I have to survive and evolve. What was the level a lesser slime evolved at again? I don't quite remember but I'm sure it won't be higher than level 10. But how many monsters do I need to kill to get there?
To this day the research community is completely oblivious as to how monsters level up. Many theorize that it is through killing other monsters as we humans do but tests are pretty impossible.
Just thinking of all the discoveries I've made is making me giddy with joy. I'm sure I'll get the national research prize this year. Maybe I'll even get the international one and be famous throughout the alpha plane. I'll be honored and invited to dine with many other famous researchers while talking about the deeper mysteries of the dungeons.