"Dammit!" the slime cried out along the way as he absentmindedly walked forward.
"What's wrong?" Ori asked from the side.
"I'm trying to learn what powers exactly I got from Frost, but I can't seem to find it," he said.
"Don't you just... know?" she asked.
"Usually, yes, but not when you have 1700 other beasts who also give you multiple spells. It gets hard to tell what is what," the slime said.
"You have 1700 beasts bonded?" Ori looked with wide eyes.
"Don't judge him by normal standards," Ning said from the side.
"Teacher, I'm getting hungry," the princess said from atop the bear that was walking along with them.
"Oh, right. You guys must all be getting hungry. Let's stop to eat," Ning said.
"Yes, please. I was seriously about to faint," Tessa said.
"I can do with some food," Trevain mentioned.
They sat around, beneath a tree and Ning gave them some sandwiches to eat and some water to drink.
The rain continued relentlessly, and it felt like the forest might flood. But, for some reason, no matter how much it rained, the water always went away somewhere.
After eating, they stood up and walked again.
As soon as they moved, Ning looked to the side and instantly came eye to eye with a young man wearing a red uniform.
He was standing in the rain without anything to protect himself, but there was no water touching him for some reason. He wasn't wet at all.
"Can we help you?" Ning asked from far away, but the young man kept staring for a while before pointing towards the slime.
"That spirit, did you bond it?" he asked.
"I did," the slime said loudly.
"Give it to me," the young man said without hesitation.
"No, I won't," the slime said, obviously not accepting the young man's demands.
"Then I will take it from your corpse," he said and ran towards them.
Ning got ready to attack, and Saphandra was already using her power when the slime spoke up. "Wait, let me do it."
The two of them stopped and let the slime take charge on this one. "I just learned that I got more than just one simple skill from Frost," he said.
The young man brought out some sort of sharp spike from somewhere and jumped at the slime, intending to pierce him with it.
"Stop!" the slime ordered.
The young man's pupils dilated as all emotions vanished from his face. The slime moved aside, and the young man fell onto the forest ground with a rather large thud.
He stayed there on the ground doing nothing but simply breathing, and trying to move, but he couldn't.
It was as if the slime's orders were something he couldn't disobey.
"So, turns out, aside from reading minds, I can also speak directly into other people's minds. And the best part is, if their mental strength is weaker than mine, then I can even control them with my thoughts," the slime said.
"Stand up," he suddenly said to the young man, who stumbled to quickly get up. The young man tried to force out some other movement, but he could only do what the slime ordered.
"Turn around and run. Keep running until you hit the barrier of the island. Only then are you free to do whatever you want," the slime said.
The young man turned around and dashed. Before anyone could take in what had happened, the young man vanished into the rain and forest.
"That's... a scary skill," Trevain said.
"It's only as scary as its user," the slime said. "And lucky for you, I am a rather good person."
"You're a slime, not a person, Slimy," the princess said from the side.
"Haha, lucky for me, I can make you stop saying that now," the slime said. "You will never call me Slimy again." The slime used his powers on the little princess.
"What's wrong with calling you Slimy? That's your name," the princess said.
"Huh? What? Why did my skill not work?" the slime looked confused.
BONK~!
Ning hit the slime on the head rather hard. "Stop using weird skills on my student. You think a mere mind control will be able to do anything to her?" he asked.
"It was you. Dammit! I don't want to be called Slimy. Look, I look like a human right now," the slime said.
"Uhh... the eyes make you look like anything but human," Ning said.
"What? Screw it then. I won't wear it," the slime said angrily and got rid of his fleshy body and became a blob of violet gloop.
"I'll be honest, you look better this way," Tessa said from the side.
"Yes, so cute," Ori said.
"Re-really?" the slime asked bashfully.
"Keep moving," Ning said and they continued.
After walking for a while, or in the princess's case, just sitting on top of the bear, they finally reached the edge of the forest.
"Finally, here we are," Ning said as he started in front of him at the massive mountain that continuously spewed magma.
The smoke from the volcano reached sky high and there were no rainclouds around it.
"Weird, the rain doesn't go beyond here," Tessa said when she noticed the rain not falling on the lake in front of them.
The lake spanned nearly a kilometer from where they stood and on the other side was the mountain.
"We should cross the lake right?" Saphandra asked.
"There are some beasts on the other side," Ning said when he zoomed his vision to see far away.
"Really? Let me go and take care of them," the slime said. He slowly rolled forward and plopped into the water. In the second, he appeared on the other side of the lake, nearly a kilometer away.
"How did he do that?" Tessa asked when she saw it using her eye skill.
"Water Teleportation. He has a lot of skills at his disposal," Ning said.
Ning watched the slime say something to the beasts there, and when words didn't work, it fought them off and killed some of them. After devouring the beast he killed, he turned around to tell them it was okay to go over.
"Let's go."
