If I wanted to play with my new toys in peace, I needed someplace where people wouldn’t show up and bother me. I could only experiment so much inside my own tent, which prevented me from unleashing too much power.
So I told Rigurd I’d be out, ordered him to make sure nobody followed me, and moved off—from the center of the village to the Sealed Cave. It was the place I first met Veldora, inside his vast underground space—pretty sturdily built and completely devoid of other people. Even the cave’s monsters didn’t dare draw near, as they were still so afraid at even the thought of Veldora.
Once I arrived, I got straight to business. Consuming Shizu had earned me the unique skill Deviant and the extra skill Control Flame, both attacks that were already heavily associated with her in my memories. Beyond that, I had Ifrit’s trio of moves: Replication, Flame Transform, and Ranged Barrier. I had already used Replication to check out my human form, so that seemed to work well enough.
So what to try first? Might as well start with Ifrit this time. First off, Flame Transform.
Oops! Turns out that doesn’t work in slime form. That wasn’t the first time a skill was shut away from me due to some sort of incompatibility. I was starting to wonder what the reasoning for that was.
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Understood. Ifrit is a spirit, a being who lives off spiritual energy. Its Flame Transform uses its own body as a source of magical energy to unleash its full force. It thus cannot be used while in physical form.
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Mmm? So I can’t cast it if I’m still made of flesh or whatever? Would it work if I went into black-mist mode and gave myself a magical body, then? Let’s try it out.
I turned myself into Ifrit and attempted to use it. This time, it worked without problem, although my core—the thing that houses me—didn’t seem to transform at all.
So I needed to be magical, then, to make it work. But that didn’t mean I had to turn into Ifrit himself, necessarily, right? I turned myself into a grown figure and tried Flame Transform once more. This time, flame extended out from the tips of my fingers and toes.
That seemed to prove it. I couldn’t work it very much in regular form, but if I temporarily made myself magical in style, at least, I could manage the Flame Transform well enough. And at temperatures upward of 1,200 degrees Celsius, too, just like Ifrit. What’s more, I could focus the magic on particular areas for extra heat.
As an attack, it seemed pretty powerful. The only issue was that I’d have to use it inside a barrier; otherwise the energy outflow would be so huge I’d immediately drain myself of magic. It was hard to regulate. I’d need some more practice.
Good thing I had Control Flame, too; that ought to help keep me out of trouble. Spiritual creatures like Ifrit couldn’t last long in the physical world thanks to all the magic they ate up, but with my physical form and Control Flame, a little practice should allow me to cap and unleash the flames as needed.
That brought me to Ranged Barrier. This skill locked the heat of flames within a barrier, which I presumed prevented heat energy from leaking out—and, as my theory went, allowed spirits to manifest themselves for longer without wasting magic. Another unique property was that it contained certain physical durability, in case you wanted to keep anyone inside the barrier.
I thought of ways I could use this. The largest barrier I could make with it extended out in a semicircle three hundred feet or so in diameter, although it didn’t affect anything beneath the ground’s surface. I could shrink it down until it was covering nothing but my own body, which didn’t reduce its effect at all and kept magic consumption at a minimum. This free control meant I could wear it like a sort of light protective layer. It could also prevent magic leakage during a Flame Transform—not that it would be much help, given that the flames never went beyond the barrier itself.
So was heat leakage kind of like losing energy? Was that the reason it sapped my magic?
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Understood. Flame Transform consumes magicules and generates warmth in order to preserve a certain level of heat. The conversion of magic to heat means that leakage of either one essentially causes the same result.
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All right. I think I understand, a little. So if I keep the flames locked inside the seal, I don’t have to waste any energy because it’ll stay active without any further work? I’m pretty sure what I learned in physics class on Earth said something a tad different, but—hey—Newton didn’t have to theorize anything about magic over there. He had it easy compared to me. If I started asking questions like “How does it fully enclose the fire?” or “Won’t it burn out once it consumes all the oxygen in the barrier?” I wouldn’t get anywhere in this world.
Besides, for now, the Flame Transform wasn’t as important as the Ranged Barrier as a form of self-defense. Would that work if I had it cover me alone, a form I decided to just call my Barrier for brevity’s sake? I had the perfect skill to test that with. Yep: Time for another Replication.
I had been a little reticent to test certain aspects of my skill set, just in case I damaged myself in the process, but Replication provided an efficient answer for that. My copies, after all, had the exact same abilities I did, except for the unique skills. Those were exclusive to me, I guess, and while I could have my copies use those while they were close by, once they went out of my sight, that was it for uniques. All except for my consuming skills, which were closely entwined enough with my slime identity that even my copies could use them a little.
As long as I was half a mile or so away from my copies, I had full control over them. Anything beyond that, and they wouldn’t be able to parse anything except for very simple commands. I still had an insight into their line of view, however, and my Thought Communication skill let me give new commands anytime I wanted. The perfect spy tool, in other words, but that was beside the point of this test run.
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So I created a clone of myself and cast a Barrier on it. Then I shot one of my Water Blades at it. It was sharp as a knife—I could see that much as it ripped through the air—but it shattered into nothing in front of my copy. A perfect block by the Barrier. Pretty strong, then. Just like I expected.
I then tried practicing to see if I could fire off Water Blades while keeping the Barrier on myself. That turned out to be simpler than I thought. I just had to create a little jet shooter out of my finger and fire away. These shots, in turn, would be enclosed in their own miniature Barrier, a bit like a large soap bubble splitting into two smaller ones. That these tiny force fields expanded the Blades’ strength and range was another unexpected benefit.
The testing continued with Poisonous Breath and Paralyzing Breath, and along the way, I realized that taking damage while under a Barrier consumed my magic. Not with Paralyzing Breath—the Barrier did a fine job absorbing that—but Poison Mist drained it immediately, dismantling the whole Barrier once the magic was gone. Of course, this also meant that as long as I charged up the Barrier with enough magic, it would provide some temporary poison protection.
I applied more magic to the next barrier and placed it on my clone. A few more shots of Poison Mist confirmed it—the more magic I laid on, the longer the Barrier would hold up. It proved to be pretty damn durable, in fact. Even more so if the Barrier was covering the original instead of a clone, I assumed, to the point that Poison Mist–style attacks were likely nothing to worry about. Now that’s armor I could count on.