Finally a human face

To Anthony's disappointment the stairs were collapsed, to the point where even he couldn't maneuver through the rubble. He had looked forward to actually seeing a person again, though he wasn't to sure why.

But he quickly found something, that lifted his spirit: torches, or more precisely: new torches. The mini-moose didn't seem to like fires too much and shot them out, shortly after whoever put them there had left. This broke the torches into pieces, only the smallest of which were still stuck to the wall and with what destroyed them being an icicle, meaning water, it didn't take long for the torches to rot away. Finding remnants of torches further away from the cave-in suggested they were put there recently. After the cave-in.

And so Anthony continued his journey as well as his study of magic. He had found out, why there was only a small number of mini-moose predating on slimes on the lower level, while they were more common here: They didn't need that much mana.

It started out with his curiosity, of how the various animals stored the mana they ingested. The bugs did not store it all, using it up, as soon as they ingested it. The frogs could saturate their skin with mana to a small degree, but the mammals got the closest to his ability to store mana: their fat cells were almost as effective as his slime body. As soon as a neuronal impulse got into the saturated tissue it would release it's stored potential, which could be either mana or anti-mana. The animals had to be mindfull of which it was the ingested.

The mini-moose had an additional trick: A special part of their stomach could store the magical plants, without releasing their potential. When they wanted to shoot an icicle, they started digesting it and used the mana in their body fat to control the release. To do that they had to get an initial supply of mana, which they got from eating slimes. After that they could get all the mana they could want from the magical plants.

The important takeaway here was, that mana could be used by stimulating fat tissue. Something that was very much in the realm of plausibility for humans. Humans could very well be able to use magic!

Then there was the trick, that was apparently common among slimes: straight up bending space. At first he had attributed the inconsistency of his volume and the size of his core, to himself making mistakes measuring, but after watching several slimes dying and killing a few himself, he noticed, that most of them ballooned out the instant they ceased to live. Combining that with his ability to store any substance in molecular form and Anthony could easily transport about one cubic meter of carbon, magic plant fiber and crystal dust. This way he could survive weeks without encountering any mana or carbon, if he needed to. Only water remained a problem, since he couldn't really store it. Water seemed to be incompressible even if there was space-bending magic involved

Anthony saw a torch. Or more accurately he registered the electromagnetic radiation of a fire of mostly carbon at about two meters height. The presumed torch was around the corner moving away from him.

Time to test something new: by pulsing the surface of his body Anthony created a wave at a frequency that should be imperceptible to anything other than a bat and himself of course. As expected the echo reached him staggered due to the shapes the wave was reflected from.

Now if only he had years of experience interpreting this echo. His echolocation needed some work.

So Anthony decided to round the corner. The person carrying the torch appeared to be a prospector in his thirties or forties. He wore a metal helmet and a lever get-up that looked straight out of a wild-west photo, carried a toolbox in one hand and a torch in the other and on his back was a bag, that appeared to be mostly empty. He either was just at the start of his tour, or he wasn't particularly lucky.

Then Anthony observed him lighting up, as he freed one of the magic crystals from the ground, that in comparison to those on the lowest levels was absolutely tiny, no bigger than the man's finger. So apparently these were really valuable.

Seeing how many precautions he used to transport even this tiny one, it stood to reason, that even though he was likely aware of the large ones down below, they were simply not worth the risk.

Logical. They were nothing if not volatile. However to Anthony they were a LOT easier to handle. In his head he started to formulate a plan to initiate contact with the prospector. There was no doubt, that establishing contact was a necessity. A normal slime was somewhere between an environmental hazard, a resource and a pest. If a creature was not careful a slime could digest its hair and upper skin layers, as well as teeth and claws. In theory a slime could even pose a threat to a creatures life directly, but that would require the victim to not fight back, while the slime either clogged up its airways or digested flesh, which could take hours.

To a human, the most likely threat a slime posed was damage to equipment. That was the easiest explanation for the absence of any metal in the cave. No nails in the support beams, no left behind tools and no iron fittings to hold the torches.

Since the prospector was carrying plenty of metal, it stood to reason, that availability was not the reason.

Back in the present Anthony was still deep in though about how exactly he could avoid getting killed by humans, when he tried to leave this cave, when his body picked up on vibrations in the air.

The prospector was cursing under his breath.

Anthony had been following him in the middle of the tunnel towards an elevator. An elevator with a cage that had to be closed, before it could be moved up and so he had seen him. The old man reached into a pocket started strewing something out, taking great care to make a continuous line in front of the elevator, before he decided that he had done enough about Anthony and started turning the crank moving the elevator up.

The reaction was pretty close to what Anthony expected: A slime could damage the elevator, meaning the old prospector could no longer do his work down here.

Anthony carefully analyzed the substance. It was salt. Of course. A normal slime was so stupid, it was extremely likely to be killed by it's source of sustenance. No doubt it would absorb the salt without registering how it would affect its body.

Since Anthony had realized, that he could simply choose not to chemically interact with his surroundings, he could simply pick up the salt. Now the question was what to do with it.

He had expected the prospector to come back. Instead it was two girls. One could be his very young wife, the other was most likely his daughter. The older one was tall enough to be believably fully grown and small or pubescent and tall. Beneath old the work clothes it was hard to make a statement about her body type. In these clothes anything but the extremes would look the same.

What he could say with certainty was, that they were related. The two girls had similar features, the same black curly hair and green eyes that the prospector had had as well.

Anthony settled on the assumption, that the two were sisters and the prospectors daughters, until he'd receive contrary evidence. Now it was time for them to find his message. They split up with the younger one was walking towards him, while the older one examined the elevator for signs of damage.

“ANTHONY”

The salt had been barely enough and he had to write very thin, but the girl was on the lookout for a translucent creature so she was paying close attention to the floor.

She saw it, saw Anthony right behind the writing and called out to her sister: “Liha! Naffk stok algb dägk'he!”

God dammit. On the bright side the girl seemed to be happily exited rather than scared. The sister's annoyed answer confirmed, that Anthony had absolutely no clue, as to what language they were speaking. Which had always been a possibility. After all England did not have magical creatures. At least not that he knew of.

Learning a new language was not too hard and he even had involuntarily gotten some experience with communicating with people who did not understand a word of English during a few holidays his sister had dragged him along. It would just make it harder to convince these people that he was sentient.

While he was contemplating what to write, the girl reached into her bag and retrieved a large empty glass container. She placed it on the ground with the opening facing him letting out a stream of sounds no doubt encouraging him to enter.

She wanted him as a pet. Anthony considered it. It would get him out of here and if she kept up the habit of talking to him, he would pick up the language over time. However without any attempts to actually teach him or showing him, what words meant, it would take ages.

Then there was the issue of moving on. She would most certainly keep him in a sealed container. After all he had gotten her interest, by displaying his ability to circumvent the normal forms of slime-proofing.

Anthony picked up the salt and used it to draw a skull in a box. Or rather, he tried to. He made the box, by drawing three lines making a cross section of the glass she wanted him to crawl into. However halfway through the skull he ran out of salt.

The girl laughed and grabbed a pouch on her belt. She poured it out next to where Anthony was drawing and was absolutely delighted to see him use it.

Until he was finished.

“Hem! Hem! Hem!”

She started talking, no doubt protesting, that the box was dangerous, until she caught herself, apparently sure, that slimes couldn't listen and tried to draw her answer instead. It was a stick figure of her and a smiley, presumably representing him, next to each other.

Lucky for her Anthony was not just an intelligent slime but had actually experienced culture overarching human phenomena and was therefor able to guess, that she was offering her friendship.

Instead of writing an answer Anthony shaped his body into a child-sized hand with an arm and the girl beamed as she took it. Before Anthony could think of a way to protest the girl began to pull, completely forgetting the glass container and the salt.

“Liha! Omkle ern glüakg varlacht!”

The annoyed sister turned the corner just in time to see Anthony finishing up hoovering the salt from the floor into the glass container and then picking up the container to follow the little girl.

Not too surprisingly her reaction was more on the scared side of surprised. She grabbed her little sister: “Pierun! Glukli prem kuftlya!”

The girl complained as the older sibling pulled her behind her without taking her eyes off of Anthony. He set down the container and thought about how to get her trust. He made a decision. With mentally clenched teeth he got into the container, being **** to put some effort into not reacting with the salt. Then he picked some of it up and formed an arrow atop himself. It pointed at the older sister and he vibrated his surface to create sound within the audible range of humans: “WWLLiiiifhhhAAaaa”

Anthony was filled with pride as the older girl looked completely stomped, while the younger one was tugging her arm and shouting excitedly into her ear. He actually had managed to more or less speak. He slightly turned the arrow to point at his new friend and said, what he assumed was her name: “Phiiieeerrrruunnnnn?”

She laughed as she came over: “Hem! Floka Pierun! P! P! Pierun!” she tried once more to pick him up, though with him cooperating this time much more successful. He clung to her shirt as her arms sank into him, trying to hug him. Liha still had her mouth hanging open as she picked up the container and went after her sister.

While Liha turned the crank to move the elevator up Pierun continued to talk to Anthony who tried to communicate with her, that he did not actually understand a word of what she said. The mechanism must have been extremely efficient, because after only half a minute she stopped and opened the cage, and it wasn't like they were going only a few meters. Anthony could feel the acceleration with which they were going up.

Then something odd happened. Anthony had expected that what the people wore down in the cave was protective clothing. But now they were putting something on that looked like a cross between armor and these heat resistant suits people wore when going close to furnaces or inspecting volcanoes. Pierun complained impatiently as Liha checked, that she was covered properly. Before she could run forward, Liha called her back, pointing at him and Pierun got a worried expression. Liha said something, that seemed to calm her down. They took the salt from the glass container and put it back into pouches, which thanks to Anthony's help went rather quickly.

Then Liha went into what seemed to be a janitor closet and came back with a bucket full of a dark gray paste. Even though the bucket was fairly small and half empty she seemed to struggle quite a bit with it. She set it down next to him and mimed putting its content on her skin. He extended a tendril to analyze it. It appeared to be a paste made of fat and lead powder. Was the exit of the cave next to a nuclear reactor. He put those musings aside and did as instructed covering his surface in a thick layer of lead. Then he got into the emptied out container, which Liha put in her back pack.

The last thing he saw, before his surroundings were cut off was the heavy metal gate, that blocked the exit with only a button on the side as any indicator on how it was operated.

He could feel Liha getting into a stance, a bit lower than normal, like she was waiting on a starting pistol and then he heard the door opening suddenly with a bang and Liha took off, with Pierun's voice right next to her.

Anthony could feel the instant the door opened, why it was there. He was assaulted by an absurd amount of energy. Electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, rumbling like an earth quake and a storm of mana which had him feel supercharged within seconds, even though the also supercharged lead paste reflected the majority of it. If he had not spent his time in the tunnels experimenting with magic and learned to reflexively put up a shield he would have died quickly despite being in a glass box, in a thick leather bag and covered in lead paste.

He had to assume that the suits the girls were wearing also had some kind of protective enchantment. Those magic crystals had to be stupid valuable!

At least now he had an idea, where they came from. He had already observed that in the presence of mana matter could spontaneously create itself. In this storm it was straight up a miracle, that they were not assaulted by rocks forming in midair.

And after about two minutes of running, it suddenly stopped. The last he felt was the sound of another heavy door closing. Liha slowed down and Anthony could practically see Pierun as she said something to him, though the bag was not opened, so he stayed inside. He did however get rid of his lead coat, so he could get a better impression of his surroundings. Not that it helped much. Without something emitting high powered radiation there was not much getting into the bag.

Anthony could hear other children talking with Pierun and Liha cutting her off, no doubt to prevent her from mentioning her new friend. Some complaining and then he felt the bag being taken of Liha's back and dropping a bit. A small voice said something and he could feel the bag getting slung back onto Liha's back. Taking an educated guess Liha had denied the other kids a longer conversation by complaining how heavy her backpack was. Which was totally justified. Slimes were slightly denser than water and the lead paste added easily five more kilos to Anthony. So when she handed the backpack over to one of the kids, it had **** but to amdmit, that yes, they could play later.

Liha gave Pierun some hushed instructions, before opening a normal sounding door. They were home Liha was talking to you, presumably instructing you to keep your head down, while she started opening the bag until: “Dada! Tlulk broe üples!”

Liha clamped the bag shut.

Anthony's guess had been right: The prospector was their father. While the girls did their best to draw his attention away from the bag Anthony slithered out. Their home looked mostly, like it had come right from a steam-punk art page, though instead of boilers and valves there were juicers for magical plants and receptacles for the magic crystals. Right now he was in the main room of the house, which worked as entrance, kitchen and living room. There was a hatch in the only otherwise free corner and three doors opposite to the entry. The girls were pulling their father into one room and so Anthony opted for now to go in the one on the other side.

It was a bedroom. And it wasn't empty on it was a woman, judging by looks the girls mother. And she wasn't looking good. She was pale and covered in sweat and her gaze was absent and unfocused. Without even fully entering Anthony could tell, she was running a fever. He slithered up the bet and covered her forehead with his cool body.

She mumbled something in an appreciative tone. From this point he could see the cause of her suffering better: embedded in her left shoulder was a bent thin piece of metal. It might have been a spring, but most of it had been cut of, to reduce the stress on the wound, which was infected, no doubt because the object was still for a large part inside.

He thought about what to do. First aid 101 dictated to keep your fingers off of any injuries you were not trained to treat beyond keeping the wound clean. The average person did not have the skill to remove a foreign object without making it worse, so in most cases it was best practice to simply cover a wound and call an actual doctor.

Since this seemed to be some kind of frontier, with the magical storm right around the corner, the doctor could have a response time of 40 days instead of minutes. In that amount of time the wound infection could proof fatal.

So what to do? The problem of accidentally damaging surrounding tissue, when removing a foreign object was a non-issue for Anthony, as he could coat the piece of metal and make it slide out exactly the way it came in, even bending it if necessary. Bleeding was not much of a concern either. The wound was already old enough to have stopped bleeding and even if he restarted it, he could easily enough cover block the blood flow with his body. This in turn would also act as disinfecting the wound. His normal enzyme wasn't particularly damaging to flesh, but single cell organisms and viruses would be broken down almost instantly. It was impossible for any new infectants to pass through his body, if he didn't want them to.

Only when the bent spring rolled down the bed, Anthony remembered, that he couldn't keep covering the wound, until the woman recovered. Even if somehow only the kids saw him, they likely didn't know what he was doing and to them it probably looked, like was trying to eat their mother.

He quickly tore into the blanket. It was wool, so he could easily dissolve it into fine fiber. Using his individual cells he weaved it into a piece of cloth with a thread count, that was probably inconceivable to the residents of this world. It looked like a silk handkerchief, it was even white, because he had not kept any of the coloring, when he had re-weaved it.

Now for a way to make sure it stayed in place. In the very short term he could use water, to moisten the edges, which would make it stick in place, though if the woman's shoulder was moved, it would surely shift out of position and after a few minutes the woman's sweat would make water irrelevant.

No, he'd need some actual, non soluble glue.

He was sitting on her head, cooling it again, while thinking, when the door opened. Of course. The spring hitting the floor might have been to quiet to draw anybody's attention, but the family would check up on the mother at some point and Liha must've noticed he was no longer in the bag.

It was her and her father, who were standing in the door. Pierun was behind them. Judging by the tone Anthony took a guess at what happened. The father had noticed, that his daughters were hiding something, either when Liha kept trying to draw him away from her bag, or when she noticed the glass container was now empty.

Either way he probably did not have a hard time guessing, that they had picked up a pet in the cave. One that was now loose in the house. With their bedridden mother in the next room and the door ajar. Pierun was probably trying to defend Anthony, by explaining how nice and smart he was, but what Liha and her father saw, was a creature, notorious for being able to eat absolutely everything, given enough time, was now on the mother's forehead.

Anthony made a snap decision. Hoping, that neither of them would stomp on his “core” on instinct, he rolled over to them and did his best to nudge Liha towards the bed. While her and her father were now looking the woman over for any additional injuries, Anthony went beneath the bed and picked up the spring, he had removed from her shoulder. Than he slithered back up on the bed and wagged it at the two, who were reaching out to the patch you had made to cover the wound.

Liha was again frozen in surprise, but the father still reached out to the patch. He lifted it tentatively and confirmed that indeed the slime was holding the very thing, that had been lodged in his wives shoulder. Then he reached for her head and seemingly inspected her hair. It took Anthony a moment to understand. Of course. The prospector knew, that slimes could extremely easily dissolve hair. But the woman's was still as it had been, the last time he had checked in on her. He took a knife from his belt and cut a few strands from his beard and held it out to the slime. He said something, no doubt explaining his thought process to his daughters, without taking his eyes off him.

Anthony did not reach out for the hairs, that were offered to him. He enveloped the strands, when the father dropped them on him and only did he digest them. He hoped to show this way, that he had enough self control to be trusted.

Then Pierun stormed in with a salt pouch exclaiming, probably along the lines of “watch this!”

“Pierun, hem!”, two human voices and one that was pretty close exclaimed.

Anthony rolled off the bed again and Liha took the pouch from her sister pouring it on the floor slowly. Anthony got to work making a stick figure picture of a small figure pouring something over a bed with a normal sized figure in it and then crossing it out.

Pierun gave a diminutive “oh” as she understood, why she had been stopped. Anthony got back to demonstrating his intelligence. An arrow at the little girl: “PhPHP pp ierun”

One at the teenager: “Liha”

One at the father: “Dada?”

He nodded, but said: “Floka Rietor.”

“Rietor”

One arrow into the room and the slime got the point: “Ando... Anto … Anthony”

“Anthy!”, Pierun overruled the slime and once again tried to pick him up.

She looked a bit disappointed, when instead Anthy drew an arrow to the mother: “Mama?”

Pierun nodded: “Il, flokley Mama.”

Rietor introduced her properly: “Flokley Wanka.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, then Rietor nodded, apparently to himself and something, which judging by Pierun's reaction was, that you could stay.

Rietor left and came back with the glass container and Anthony made a sighing noise and resigned himself to spending a lot of time in the box as his new home. Not to surprising Pierun protested, but Rietor explained something, that seemed to placate her. She knelt down, no doubt having already forgotten, that his first attempt at communication had been by scribbling something, that to her must've been total gibberish. While he was still thinking, there was a knock on the door and Pierun alternated between making shushing noises and whispering instructions or explanations to him, while she tried to help him get into the container, which was more of a hindrance than help, since he could not roll, while her digits were in his body. As soon as he was inside Liha put a cutting board on top as a lid then shoved a few books aside so she could place you on the bookshelf, pretending like you were just decoration. All this time Rietor spent holding up, whoever was at the door, until Liha shouted something and he and the guest came in. The elderly woman was presumably a doctor. She used something that could best be described as glass-chopsticks to pick up the patch and examine the wound. She made some comments in an approving tone and Rietor said something, no doubt making up a story, how he himself had found a way to remove the spring from Wanka's shoulder. The doctor looked at the bookshelf. She laughed, pointed at Anthy and explained something. From Pierun's barely restrained reaction she seemed to have offered to buy the slime, though Rietor made an excuse in an unsure voice. The doctor said something in a reassuring tone and got a vial from her bag.

Liha's eyes darted around the room until she practically dived under her mother's bed. The doctor gave an odd look, when she came back up with a dust ball. She gave an excuse and pointed at it while staring intently at the slime and he understood. Luckily the lead paste was still in the box. When the doctor took the sample it was mostly poisonous metal. She looked astonished and said something to Rietor in an appreciative tone. Maybe thanking her, for warning her?

She then got back to a serious tone. She produced a bottle from her bag and explained something, then she produced a different bottle. Then she did some calculations with her fingers, before holding up three. Rietor gave a firm answer and the doctor poured the second bottle carefully into Wanka's wound, which instantly started to heal up. Then she took the second bottle and dripped a little bit into her mouth setting the rest down on the bedside table. Then she repeated a bit of the explanation from earlier word for word and made Rietor and Liha repeat them, before leaving.

Rietor slumped down on the bed next to his wive and Liha sat down next to him to hug him, murmuring encouragement into his ear. Anthy made his way down the shelf and from what he guessed the girl had offered to help him in the cave and he had refused.

Anthy tried his best to make sure he understood the situation correctly. He used the absorbed salt and lead to draw the bottle and an arrow pointing from the bottle to three coins. Liha glanced down. She seemed to have understood, that he didn't understand the language and held up three fingers, with her other hand pointing at the slime: “Hem!”

“Anthy? Hem Anthy?”, he asked tried to draw a slime with a name tag with his name crossed out, though before he could finish, she confirmed: “Hem Anthy.”

You pointed at the glass box. You didn't trust yourself to carry it down the shelf. Then he formed three pseudo-pods and held them up.

It took a while but eventually she understood, that you wanted to help them capture the three slimes the doctor wanted as payment.

It took even longer to explain, that without you the slimes wouldn't survive the transport through the magical storm, with Pierun eventually figuring out the slimes gesticulation at a pile of salt and a drawing with a slime with crossed out eyes.

Anthy also managed to ask about simply harvesting a large crystal from the lower caves, but Reitor, who was luckily very good at drawing, managed to convey, that while a few fist sized crystals were worth more than enough, he wouldn't be able to find a buyer in time.

Luring a slime into a bottle was really easy. Anthy simply brought the bottle down to where the slimes spawned, put the tiniest bit of water together with a few donated hairs into the bottle, aimed the opening at the nearest slime and blasted mana through the glass.

The slime slithered in, Anthy put the cork in and rolled the bottle back towards the elevator. The transport was the hardest part, as he had protect both himself and the three bottles. Sure, the slimes were smaller right now than promised, but fattening up a slime was really easy, when you had the mana to spare. It turned out, that magical plants were not actually that rare on the surface either, with Pierun tending to a garden full of herbs some of which had that very familiar behavior Anthy had first seen in the cave.

The doctor came back a few days later, surprised that Rietor already had the three slimes offered as alternative payment. Wanka was recovering well, now mostly awake and only waiting for the doctor's okay to leave her bed. As soon as the door closed she asked her daughters about Anthy, while pointing at the glass container on her bookshelf.