A sentient slime, apparently

You were no longer in your pond. All around you was darkness. But you were not dead.

“Nimis? Are you alright? Did it work?”, Athariel asked. Thankfully the communication between tamer and pet wasn't really influenced by physics, so you could hear her clear as day.

“Where am I?”

“...” Someone else tried to say something, but it was hard to understand.

There was now more light, though it appeared you were inside a skin-bag.

“...” The muffling was now way better, you could tell, that it was Helga speaking. On the side where the light shone into your new prison the wall blurred and suddenly became translucent, with a strong red hue.

You were at around hip-height of a normal human, which meant you were face to face with Helga, Ariadne and Joylanda, since they were so tiny. Your 'mistress' was giving you a good view of her abs through her female armor (TM). Schlch was nowhere to be seen, than you realized, what it was, that was obstructing your peripheral view: You were in his stomach.

“How?”

Luckily it was Athariel, who answered your question: “He used 'engulf' on the cubic meter of water you were in! I bet there was an American involved there...”

“Is that a joke? I consider it suspension of disbelieve.”

“He's two cubic meters big, can take a shape, that is only about 0.2 cubic meters [for reference a 75 kg man would be about 0.075 m^3, she's being very generous about his shape beneath the armor] at most and in this shape can carry four times one cubic meter! My only guess is that 'engulf' used to be a gallon and the person who had to change it to metric didn't bother with conversion.”

You look up the description of the ability in the wiki:

Engulf: Envelop a space of up to 1 m^3 and store all that is within it into your form. Requires a free large storage slot to use.

Storage slots were a resource creatures like slimes, water elementals and other creatures with mostly liquid bodies had. In addition to the obvious there were several abilities, that could be cast depending on available slots. A small slot one was gained for an every dm^3 and allowed the direct storage of one-handed weapons, helmets, gauntlets, boots and any non-equippable objects.

5 dm^3 were a medium storage slott and could hold two pieces of leg or chest armor or 6 items, which could fit into a small slot.

A large slot was 0.45 m^3. It could hold 999 times as much as a medium slot.

While the numbers somewhat added up, it was astounding, that representing the storage visibly in the world, instead of just handling it as inventory, was not only attempted, but somehow also implemented.

When you spotted one of the treasure chests from your pond, you realized, how it worked: in relation to you it looked normal, however in comparison to the slimes 'hip' it wasn't even half as big as it should be; the engulfed objects, and probably all stored objects, were simply shrunk down to fit inside the slime.

Schlch being a slime explained, why you couldn't see his race and class: he used a bucket of paint to use a mimicry like ability. It was a known exploit, the developers never bothered to fix: When a slime absorbed a liquid, it gained the relevant boost in form of a new active or passive ability (speed potions gave the ability 'leap', poisons simply added poison damage to their attacks) for as long as the potion would last if drank by a hero. If the absorbed liquid however was not a drinkable potion, but say a bucket of acid, lava, paint, etc. the effect lasted until the slime died and respawned.

While you were musing, your new party had emptied your pond of the remaining treasures and gone through the exit portal. For the first time in your life you actually saw the world you were placed into.

It was beautiful. It was brilliant. It was Clearwater Lake. You finally got use out of the map function. You told your party as much and were shocked, when you got a crystal clear answer from Joylanda: “Great! Isn't that a pretty low level area? We can find some hostile mobs we can restrain so you can get yourself some xp!”

“How can I understand you?”

“Didn't you pay attention? We've patched you into the voice to text chat via Susan's”, Helga started explaining, before she realized, she had used the beastmistress' real name and spoken in terms, that were not compatible with the game world. She looked at you in shock.

“Please, just pretend it didn't happen. I am aware I'm just a program in a game, but I like being Nimis...”, you said, calming most of the crew down.

“Don't worry were usually better role-players than this”, Joylanda said. The text was in context innocent enough, but her aggressive winking and the way the others blushed, suggested, that they had not only fought together in their current roles.

“Stupid question: Why can't your slime talk?”

“Because he isn't touching an Echo-scarf, duh?”, Ariadne said.

“Like the one the pet in his stomach is holding?”, I fired back.

The group turned their gaze to Schlch's 'head'.

“Don't want talk.”

“At least that way only one is talking from that position. Would be annoying to explain the situation every time, you two spoke at once”, Helga said pragmatically.

“Uhm, you shouldn't tell this story to anyone you don't trust, like ever!”

“You mean we should hide you? Why?”

“First of all the world doesn't want heroes to be friendly with 'monsters'. While the universe won't punish you directly most civilians will dislike you for doing so and the other heroes are encouraged to ostracize you.

Second: When other heroes realize, why you brought me out of that cave, or that I am from the cave at all, they will try to rob you. I think the best option would be for me to pretend to be Schlch until I either can move independently or no longer fit inside of him, even if that means, I won't be able to see.”

Schlch took that to mean, that you immediately wanted to be hidden again.

“Okay, we can agree on what we won't do, but what are we going to do?”, Ariadne asked.

Helga took charge: “We're going to make our way to the next settlement, where we can go through our loot in peace, sell what we can't use and get a room for a night. On the way there we'll try to give Nimis as many enemies to fight as possible.”

And that's what you did. Being carried around by a creature, that was immune to most physical attacks made it extremely easy for low level mobs to be held in place for you to bite and before you made it one of the tutorial towns you reached level 2:

Duodecipus;

Level: 2;

HP: 25/25;

MP: 10/10;

---ATTACKS---

Melee Attack: 3

Melee Damage: 2

Ranged Attack: 3

Ranged Damage: 1

Weaknesses: all elemental damage; piercing; slashing;

Strength: none;

Resistances: bludgeoning;

---Special Abilities---

Mucucutaneous Skin: All negative status effects and elemental damages are applied with an up to 3 + [lvl] second delay. If elemental damage is not applied consistently until end of delay no damage is applied and delay starts over. Scales logarithmically with Hydration.

Regrowth: Regenerates HP at up to 10%/second. Crippled status effect has a chance to heal randomly with a chance of [(1+lvl.) * (max_limbs/curr_limbs) /200] % every second. Scales linear with Hydration.

Grapple: Pass a d20 [victim.strength-strength] or a d6 [victim.mass - mass] to fully incapacitate a your victim. Pass a d50 [victim.strength-strength] or a d12 [victim.mass - mass] to disable a limb of the victim.

Poisonous: If attacked by a bite attack cause [attacker.max_HP*1.1] poison damage to the attacker. Inflict paralyzed on attacker.

Venemous bite: Takes 2 seconds to cast. Cast on contact. Cause [victim.max_HP*1.3] poison damage to the victim. Inflict paralyzed on victim.

Spit in the face: Use your ranged attack on an enemies face or weakspot to draw aggro. All your attacks on an aggroed enemy have a chance of [lvl/200] to cause stagger. Cast from Hydration.

Camouflage: Use your ability to change color to become invisible.

Mimicry: Use your ability to change color to disguise yourself as any creature of lower level as you.

Ink-cloud: Ranged attack with a range of [lvl -1] meters. Decreases Ranged Attack of victim by 95%. Decreases Melee Attack of victim 70%. Cast from Hydration. Gains new effect depending on growth choices.

Hydration: All base stats as well as some Special Abilities scale with Hydration. Hydration increases while exposed to water and decreases while outside of water (decreasing Hydration is a status effect and is effected by everything that effects status effects; Heat and Fire damage can inflict Fast Dehydration, when already subjected to decreasing Hydration). When Hydration reaches 0 causes [1+lvl.] damage per second to self.

You've also grown. You were certain, that if you left Schlch, you'd be bigger than Helga by now. Naturally these musing made you picture your arms over her, happy, that most of your party was fun-sized. With a total of 41 seconds of airtime, there wasn't much more than fantasize.

Schlch slowed down his movement. You must have reached the town. None of you cared for it's name or it's quests. What you cared about was the distribution of the party's earnings. The merchants sold gear that was appropriate up to level 15, mainly to show new players what was to come, but also to give the experienced players a reason to stop and interact with NPCs and the noobs, as they sped by. While none of the heroes was in need of new equipment, they all had reasons to go shopping:

Ariadne wanted to look for a way for you to see out of Schlch. This way could require alchemy, spell items, which the wizard had to hold to cast special spells or rituals, or in the worst case: single-use scrolls.

Helga wanted to stock up on potions for the party and could always use a better armor for herself and Schlch. She also wanted to see an 'armor-tailor' if she could. Apparently her god was more likely to give her more and stronger favors if her armor had a certain type of design.

Athariel was always on the lookout for special arrows and wanted to test out different melee weapons.

Joylanda wanted to by the kinds of supplies Helga would neglect, like buffing potions, lock-picks, glue, rope and grease and oil. The last three could be incredibly useful during an adventure, not only to interact with the environment but also in combat, as they could be used to make the enemy unable to move effectively and much more susceptible to fire. But of course the halfling made it as clear as she non-verbally could, that that was not what she intended to use them for. Judging by Helga's reaction this use had been tried and found good. Athariel had other ideas: “Don't come near me with your stone-age methods. You're welcome to join me, if you find you don't have the time to scrape that stuff off of you the morning after.”

The plan was for everybody to browse the shops and make a shopping list. Than you would meet up to get a room, look through the loot for usefull items, sell the rest and lastly buy what you could

Schlch only required regular top ups of intelligence potions, which both Ariadne and Helga were on the lookout for, and was willing to carry you wherever you wanted, though with the passenger unable to perceive his environment that still meant following one of the girls.