#4. This is Jirisan Baemsagol!
#4. This is Jirisan Baemsagol!
I rolled on for a long while, fleeing the howling. At one point I passed a signpost, but it had been so weathered by the years that I couldn't make it out even with Observation.
The setting of this world was Earth a few decades on — a world half-ruined and still crumbling, where the emergence of monsters had halted scientific progress and toppled nation after nation.
In a world like this, who would be hiking up a mountain? Of course no one was maintaining the facilities. It was more surprising that a signpost remained at all.
The howling... honestly, I wasn't sure if there were even any wolves left in Korea. Could have been a feral dog. Dogs howl sometimes too.
Either way, the important thing was that wolf or dog, I stood absolutely no chance against it. A chicken I could manage. That was about my limit for now.
Wolf or dog, the right call was to run. No matter how fast I could roll around, I had no confidence I could shake a pursuer. At some point, my Transformation proficiency had maxed out and hit Level 2. Made sense — I'd been using it all day.
A sound caught my attention. I used Presence Detection and found a frog. Heat Sense hadn't picked it up — probably because its body temperature ran low. The skill reads heat, so anything cooler than me might be hard to detect.
'Come to think of it, I've never eaten an amphibian before.'
Now that I considered it, I hadn't run into a single cold-blooded animal.
I'd heard once that frog legs taste similar to chicken legs. I was a little intrigued. I unspooled my round body and returned to my original shape, then activated Stealth. The frog took an immediate interest and hopped closer.
Frankly, I was starting to lose track of whether this skill was Stealth or Provocation. But the frog was definitely coming my way. I lunged over it, and it twisted in distress.
'Don't amphibians use both lung and skin respiration?'
I was pretty sure they died if their skin dried out. Sure enough, the frog didn't last long. It went still, and I drew it into my food vacuole to digest.
[Consumed: Northern Mountain Frog. Satiety and Experience Points increased.]
Once again, satiety came before experience. Frogs alone weren't going to give me much EXP. I checked my status window — EXP was up from 133 to 201.
68 EXP per frog. That meant I needed at least five more to level up.
If there were frogs, there was probably a stream or some kind of water source nearby. If I could get there and feed on fish, wouldn't that be an easier way to level?
My stomach hollowed out a few times along the way, but I kept myself going on leaves and insects. After rolling for a long stretch, I spotted another signpost.
'That looks like Hangul, but I can't read it...'
This was exactly what Observation was for. At least this one wasn't totally disintegrated like the last — just broken. I used the skill on it and made out the word: Baemsagol.
Baemsagol. Sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. It was definitely Korean, though — Observation didn't seem to have any translation function. At least I hadn't been dropped in some foreign country.
When I reached Baemsagol, I found a wide valley, and my senses lit up with an overwhelming number of life signs.
Well, no human had likely set foot here in decades. Made sense it'd be teeming like this. Back in the real world, hadn't there been studies showing how quickly ecosystems rebounded during the pandemic lockdowns?
The problem was, I wasn't the only one who'd noticed. Presence Detection had already picked up the fish, and Heat Sense showed me a considerable variety of animals in the area. Unfortunately, most of them were bigger than me.
One of the shapes Presence Detection had picked up was, unmistakably, a bear. The only kind of bear that lived in Korea was the Asiatic black bear... yeah, I was probably on Jirisan after all.
But bear or no bear, as long as I didn't get spotted, it didn't matter. If I got spotted, I might as well just accept death and get comfortable with the idea.
Out of the wolf's path and into the bear's — something like that. Still, with so many other animals around, I doubted the bear would go out of its way to make a meal of me as long as I was careful.
My one real concern: would I dissolve if I touched the water?
Careful not to draw the bear's ire, I extended a very thin tentacle and dipped it into the stream. I counted to thirty. Nothing happened. I let myself relax — but actually getting in still felt too risky.
If the current swept me away, there'd be no coming back from that. Instead of entering the water, I stretched out several strands of tentacles and wiggled them like fishing lines. The fish showed interest almost immediately and nipped at the tips.
'......!'
All I had to do was pull them up at the right moment.
.......
[Consumed: Stone Loach. Satiety and Experience Points increased.]
[Consumed: Korean Shiner. Satiety and Experience Points increased.]
[Consumed: Korean Dark Sleeper. Satiety and Experience Points increased.]
[Satiety at maximum. Converted to Experience Points by Predation (F) Lv.6.]
[Predation (F) Lv.6 proficiency at maximum. Predation (F) Lv.6 → Predation (F) Lv.7.]
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.3 → Lv.4.]
[Tentacle (F) Lv.5 proficiency at maximum. Tentacle (F) Lv.5 → Tentacle (F) Lv.6.]
The System messages cascaded over each other. I'd been fishing with such greedy delight that the end result was Level 4.
I was still cheerfully devouring fish when something suddenly bit me from behind.
'......?'
I turned around to look. Something thin and long. I used Observation.
[Tiger Keelback Snake. 410 g, 73 cm. Non-venomous, relatively docile snake.]
I vaguely recalled hearing a notification that Observation had hit Level 5. The difference was now I could see body length. The snake must have decided I was prey, but that was a serious miscalculation.
The keelback cocked its head, puzzled. It probably hadn't counted on me having Physical Damage Reduction. In simple terms, it had picked the wrong slime.
I unfurled my body and struck back. The snake seemed startled — it hadn't expected a mere slime to counterattack — but it composed itself quickly, reared up, and hissed a threat.
When teeth fail, gums will do.
Realizing its bite wasn't working, the keelback tried to coil around me and squeeze me to death instead. That was a miscalculation on top of a miscalculation.
I hadn't been planning to chase anything that might aggravate the bear, but if it was going to come at me like this, that changed things. I spread myself out in an instant like a net and covered it completely.
"Sssssshhk!"
It thrashed its elongated body, but I'd already stretched wide and blanketed it. It was longer than me — true — but in terms of total body surface area, I was larger.
[Transformation (F) Lv.2 proficiency at maximum. Transformation (F) Lv.2 → Transformation (F) Lv.3.]
Now I'd suffocate it.
The keelback squirmed in distress, but shaking off a four-kilogram mass like me was a tall order. Its head and the first half of its body were sealed shut. It suffocated and went still.
Strictly speaking, I wasn't a slime anymore — I was an Amorphous Mucus Body. Still, just how little did the world think of slimes that they kept mistaking me for something they could run down? Praise be to my slime ancestors, guiding me from beyond.
[Consumed: Tiger Keelback Snake. Experience Points and Satiety increased.]
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.4 → Lv.5.]
[Additional Status window unlocked.]
[Evolution Available List unlocked.]
First, I checked my status.
[Amorphous Mucus Body Lv.5] [EXP 231/866]
[72.5 cm, 5 kg] [STR: Lacking] [AGI: Very Low] [VIT: Very High]
So now it was public. I'd been hoping for numerical values, but "lacking" and "very low" sounded like a parent nagging me. What exactly was the benchmark for these vague descriptors?
I used Observation and found out.
[STR: Lacking 'relative to animals of similar size.']
'Relative...'
I supposed an animal around five kilos would be something like a cat or a small dog. Compared to them — yeah. That was fair.
'Not sure why the numbers are relative and not absolute...'
At any rate, none of the animals in this valley were pushovers. The lower links of the food chain had probably all been eaten by the predators packed in here. The same way that keelback had tried to eat me.
'Baemsagol, where the strong devour the weak. The half-hearted don't survive.'
The bear finished drinking and lumbered away from the stream. Through Heat Sense, I could feel the animals clustered nearby parting around it like the Red Sea. It strode off with the unhurried poise of a monarch and vanished from view.
'I thought wild bears were supposed to be starving...'
Starving? It was so plump I almost mistook it for a pig.
The mountain had clearly become the bear's domain in the absence of human interference. I'd always heard Asiatic black bears weren't that big, but this one looked easily two meters long. Probably grown massive on the abundance of prey. As soon as it was gone, the other animals hurried to the water's edge to drink, and a few of them became my meal.
The rabbits I remembered were cute things, like something out of a cartoon. This one was lean and sharp. The keelback had only been long — this rabbit was just big all around.
'What... the rabbit looks like a wildcat.'
[Mountain Hare. 3 kg, 58 cm. Exceptionally large specimen.]
A moment later, it bounded away with light, springing leaps.
Back when I was human, rats and rabbits had all looked basically the same. Now I could see the difference with brutal clarity. Even if I shifted into a tire and rolled after it, I didn't think I could catch it — let alone beat it. I turned my attention to other prey instead.
[Consumed: Squirrel. Experience Points and Satiety increased.]
[Consumed: Korean Fire-bellied Toad. Satiety and Experience Points increased.]
[Acquired: Faint Poison Resistance (F) Lv.1.]
A squirrel, and then a fire-bellied toad. I'd known the toad was toxic, and eating it gave me Poison Resistance. I'd eaten dozens of red fire ants without getting anything, but one toad and it popped up. Did that mean the toad's venom was that much stronger?
It felt a little strange to gain a resistance when my slime body wasn't even affected by poison, but...
Come to think of it, if I started eating toxic creatures now, that resistance might come in handy later.
I didn't know if I'd still be a slime later. After enough evolutions, maybe I wouldn't be. Building up Poison Resistance early seemed like a decent investment.
Speaking of which — the System had mentioned unlocking an evolution list. I'd gotten so absorbed in my status window that I'd forgotten.
[Evolution Available List]
1. —
'......?'
There was nothing there. Puzzled, I checked with Observation.
[Amorphous Mucus Body Evolution Available List: You may evolve into any target you have consumed.]
Evolve into anything I'd consumed? So if I ate a human...
'.......'
I shook my head. A thought I hadn't meant to have. That wasn't going to happen, and it shouldn't. No matter how badly I wanted to be human again, there were lines I couldn't cross.
Just imagining eating human flesh made me feel like I was going to throw up.
I forced my thoughts elsewhere. If the condition was consumption, did that mean I couldn't evolve into that snake I'd just eaten? The moment I had the thought, the tiger keelback appeared as the first option. I hurriedly shook my head, and it vanished.
Why would I go through all this suffering just to turn into a keelback?
It hit me anew: I truly could evolve into whatever I wanted.
I'd wondered why Sixth Sense had picked an evolution on its own, but if this was the reason, then I welcomed it wholeheartedly. It was on a completely different level from Poison Slime. The consumption condition was a hurdle, but once I grew strong enough, that wouldn't be a problem.
Sixth Sense hadn't betrayed me. An Amorphous Mucus Body was worth it.
I doubted I'd ever get an evolution this absurdly good again. This was probably a one-time chance. I needed to consume the strongest animal I could — or better yet, a monster, if I could manage it.
A path to becoming human was right in front of me, and I had to give it up. Did that sting because I was trash? No — the System was the cruel one. Anyone would have thought of it. This had to be a test.
I steadied myself.
For now, I wasn't even sure I could beat a rabbit. There was still a long way to my next evolution. I needed to focus on growing.
[Consumed: Korean Shiner. Satiety and Experience Points increased.]
Baemsagol was the absolute best!