"You're not going to teach me anymore?" the princess asked with a blank look. "Are you not going to visit me anymore?"
"I will have to leave this country in a week," Ning said. "But that doesn't mean I won't come to visit you. It will just be… a little longer each time."
The princess wasn't exactly sad, but she was still feeling bad about the news.
"Your teacher has his own life, Janice," the king said. "He will now go and teach other students just like you."
"Is that so?" the princess asked.
Ning nodded.
"Okay," the princess said. "But you have to fulfill your promise first."
"My promise?" Ning asked.
"You said I could meet with slimy today," she said.
Ning sighed and chuckled a bit. "Okay, I will go get him. You go stay in your room."
Ning left the palace and disappeared into the night. When he reappeared, he was on the island with the beasts and saw the slime speak with the beasts.
"Oh you're back?" the slime said. He didn't think Ning would return so quickly.
"The little girl wants to see you. Do you have the time?" Ning asked.
"Uhh… I guess so. I don't have anything particular going on," the slime said.
"Let's go then," Ning said. He touched the slime and they. Ning appeared directly in the princess's room, scaring Joann to the side.
She had been feeling a little jumpy since the princess disappeared on her own, but she calmed herself quickly.
However, when she saw the floating piece of a blue blob, a pair of daggers appeared in her hands as she got ready to attack.
"Calm down," Ning said when she saw her stance. "This is the slime."
"SLIMY!" the princess shouted and grabbed onto the slime. Her hands practically sunk into the slimy, but the slime managed to manipulate itself so that her hands were now outside of it.
"Oh, hello little girl. We meet again," the slime spoke in perfectly understandable words. He was a little glad that he still understood the language despite not being bonded with the princess.
"Teacher, thank you," the little girl said and started laughing as she played with him for a while.
Ning looked at the princess and smiled.
The slime, having an adult soul with relatively adult memories, didn't like playing with a little girl, but he did accept it for now as this was the only way to interact with the humans.
"Come, let me show you to my parents," she said and jumped off the bed before running away out into the hall.
Ning wanted to stop her, but when he thought about it, it was perhaps better for the slime to talk to them. So, when the slime did eventually come around, here again, he would have someone to rely on.
In a way, they would have someone to rely on too.
Ning didn't want to leave them just like that without protection, and he couldn't think of better protection than a Rank 10 beast.
The princess returned not long after with the slime floating by her side. Ning looked at the blob-like slime and thought for a moment.
The slime was going to be with the princes for a while, and it didn't look like he would enter Rank 10 anytime soon, so he decided to help it a little to interact with the humans.
He talked with the system for a bit and created something.
As the others focused on their own things, Ning had something emerge on his hands.
"Joann, can you take the princes out for a bit?" he asked.
Joann didn't understand why he had said that, but she did as he asked. She took the princess outside and left Ning and the slime together.
"Here, wear this," Ning said as he dropped something on the bed.
When the slime saw what it was, his first instinct was to vomit. Human flesh and bones lay in front of the slime on the bed like a dead body.
The lean and thin body had barely any muscles from what the slime could see, and worse of all, it was the corpse of a child.
"What is this?" he asked seriously.
"Something I made for you," Ning said and was surprised to see a look of disgust on the slime's face.
Only then did he realize what it must have looked like from the slime's perspective.
"Oh, don't misunderstand. It's not a corpse. It's a body I made. You can go in there and puppeteer it from the inside. I made it exactly to fit your body," he said.
"So you didn't kill anyone?" the slime asked.
"No," Ning said. "In fact, this body you see of mine is similar to this to a certain degree."
"Is that so?" the slime asked, before slowly moving towards the body in front of it.
When it saw its face, the slime hesitated a bit. This was the body of a child.
"Why a child?" the slime asked.
"Your body volume isn't big enough otherwise," Ning said. "I can't give you an adult body. You will have to rely on your Rank 10 reward for that."
The slime still hesitated, but the explanation for the body was acceptable, so he shrunk his body and went in.
The slime entered through the mouth, sliding throughout the entire body as the lifeless husk slowly started standing up straight.
Ning watched uncomfortably as the body moved unnaturally before the slime fully got in and took over it completely.
A slight blue hue permeated throughout the skin like the child was sick or something, but other than that, it looked like a normal child.
That was until the child opened his eyes and the translucent blue slime body was visible through it.
"This… this is good. I can move like a human," the slime said as it moved around in its new body.
He turned to Ning. "Thank you."
"It's alright," Ning said. "Try not to keep your eyes open when you can though."
