Syl [A Slime Evolution LitRPG]

”Couldn’t resist and spent the point I see?” Vee asked smugly.

”Huh? No way, I need to be frugal with what I’ve got,” I replied.

”There’s no way you got it in less than a day!”

”With [Prodigy] and [Elven Legacy], I get quite a few experience bonuses, and I did create a custom spell even if it wasn’t that impressive!”

”You’re honestly telling me that your silly temperature spell gave you that much experience?”

”Yeah? The first-time bonus is huge! And it was only the first level. I was honestly surprised I didn’t get it immediately.”

”Then why didn’t I get anything for creating my portals?”

”That’s a good question…” I mumbled and paused to think a bit. ”Maybe it’s because you didn’t create a new spell?”

”Can you tell me someone else used [Rift Thread] to create a portal?” Vee whined.

”Not [Rift Thread] specifically, but I assume they have their own portals. Perhaps through enchanting? Either way, you didn’t exactly create something new from [Position] or [Positioning] and effectively were using them for their intended purposes. If anything, I’d assume you’d get bonus experience towards your [Rift Thread] or [Thread Mastery]?”

Vee went silent for a while, then sighed, ”Actually, I think you’re right… I did get a big bonus toward my thread traits when I first did it…”

”See! I didn’t get special treatment; you just didn’t apply it magically.”

”Fine…” Vee sighed. ”I guess at the end of the day, this was what I wanted in the first place. You’re willing to brute force and mess with dangerous spells, and I can just copy your homework.”

”Assuming I don’t mix it with something you can’t do… Although we both have [Corrosion Magic], so the debuff is high on my list, it probably would have been easier to change someone’s coordinates if I had to hazard a guess.”

”That sounds useful,” Vee admitted. ”Assuming I can’t get someone to step through a portal, it would be a good fallback. Then again, I could also just attack them with [Rift Thread] directly.”

”It will also give you a bunch of experience. Probably not as much as me discovering it, but you’d still get a personal first-time bonus.”

”Then what are you waiting for! Get cracking!” Vee said impatiently.

”Hey, I still want to try out this [Positioning] spell—I just got it! At least let me teleport a book or something!”

”Okay, sure… Let me try to help you out a bit,” Vee replied.

We spent quite some time with me, trying out the spell with some tidbits from Vee and her usage of it. For my first time casting it, Vee helped me go through the steps and use the combination of two [Position] spells before ultimately casting [Positioning] to change the coordinates. It required a lot of mental coordination if I didn’t cheat and had a [Sub-Core] hold the spell for me.

This would be amazing [Multitasking] training, I bet.

Once you’d set up the prep work, applying the coordinates through [Positioning] was actually relatively simple. In almost no time, I had teleported the book from the edge of the room to the table.

”Congrats!” Vee cheered.

”It’s not as tough as I thought it would be; the biggest downside is needing to cast [Position] twice,” I replied.

”Yeah, trying to manipulate the coordinates directly without copying them over from [Position] is not fun,” Vee explained. ”I’ve tried it a few times, but it’s so slow and cumbersome that you save so much time by just casting the spell and saving yourself the trouble.”

Per Vee’s advice, I tried it out manually and saw what she was talking about. You could only change the coordinates in increments rather than all at once by copying them over and replacing them.

”I guess I could just set up a routine of casting [Position] through my [Sub-Cores],” I pondered aloud.

”Cheater…” Vee grumbled. ”I just have to hope there’s a better way through a skill or later spell—or maybe you can invent one for me.”

I chuckled and agreed as I certainly wasn’t averse to messing with spells as I had quite a few lifelines in case things went pear-shaped.

”Oh! Maybe this will help; there’s one more interaction I forgot to mention,” Vee said enthusiastically. ”There is one exception from copying over from [Position], and that’s using [Spatial Sense]. It takes more effort than [Position], but you can sort of add the numbers from the sense to [Positioning] to get a much larger change in coordinates.”

I activated the skill and looked at the various objects with floating numbers in relation to myself. The trait was still abysmally low, so I barely had any range to it.

”It can be used to fetch things,” Vee continued her explanation. ”You just apply the difference between your coordinates, and it teleports it to you. That’s sadly as far as I’ve gotten with it, but in theory, if you’re quick enough with the math, you could use [Spatial Sense] to replace [Position]. The big downside is you’re limited by your [Spatial Sense] levels, but you can just leave it on permanently like me and get used to it. As for the quick math… Well… I haven’t gotten any better at that.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

My [Sub-Cores] could probably handle the math… But still, this seems exceptionally inconvenient. With how helpful so many system skills and traits are, I have to bet there’s one later on that lets you store or work out coordinates on the fly, and the only reason Vee hasn’t gotten it is that she hasn’t unlocked the Riftmancer class yet.

”Couldn’t you also use this to teleport yourself? Since everything within [Spatial Sense] relates to you, you could just add that amount to your coordinates and teleport to that spot.”

”You could, but I obviously didn’t want to risk teleporting myself,” Vee said. ”I did try that with rocks that I was holding since they occupied the same coordinates. But I still found it easier to just copy coordinates with [Position].”

We spent some time chatting while I shared my theories about the Riftmancer class, probably having solutions to our problems. I eventually admitted that my [Sub-Cores] could likely handle the math.

After Vee ranted and raved for a bit, we decided to try it out. Within my limited range of [Spatial Sense], I ordered Beta to calculate the coordinates between two spots and then apply the result to my next casting of [Position]. Startling us both, it worked! Although there was a notable delay, Vee beat my timing by simply casting two [Position] spells simultaneously.

”I guess you save on Mana, but it’s probably not worth the effort, and [Position] costs almost nothing,” Vee replied. ”And I say that as just a spider and not the infinite crazy Mana slime. For you, the cost is probably barely even a rounding error.”

”But what if I ask all my [Sub-Cores] to work together to calculate it?”

”First, I’ll give you the obligatory—that’s cheating!” Vee whined. ”But if you can do that, maybe you can work it out. Hell, maybe if you do it enough times, you’ll unlock the skill without needing to wait for the Riftmancer class?”

I nodded and tried it out, ordering all my linked [Sub-Cores] to work together to produce the dimensional coordinates. When I cast [Positioning], the coordinates were almost instantaneously provided, and the book was teleported again.

”Cheater! You dirty, dirty cheater!” Vee fumed.

”Sorry?” I replied sheepishly and fought to suppress my giggles.

”I can’t believe you have a neural network supercomputer or some shit; that’s absurd!”

”Hey, it was my last evolution that did this!” I defended myself. ”Considering all the crazy things your evolution gave, I don’t think you have any right to complain. Plus, it’s only this good because I spent so many trait points increasing my [Sub-Core] count!”

”Ugh, I hate when you bring facts and logic to refute my emotional outbursts,” Vee grumbled. ”But if your next evolution gives you something even more absurd, I hold full rights to bitch and moan!”

”I’m not even halfway…” I sighed. ”That [Companion Growth] skill they mentioned will probably speed things up, at least.”

”It’s mentioned in the book,” Vee said, pointing to the book we weren’t teleporting around. ”It sounded awesome; you get it at the fifth tamer level, assuming your bond is good enough with your companion, although it mentioned asking your mentor to provide it earlier to not waste experience and also start leveling up the skill early.”

”I’m guessing the skill can only level up when it’s providing the bonus experience to us, so it makes sense to want it as early as possible. I want to go hunting tomorrow, so maybe we can get someone to share it before then?”

”Sounds good to me,” Vee agreed.

”Now I want to try out teleporting myself!” I said with brimming excitement.

”Crazy suicidal slime…” Vee muttered.

”Oh, come on, it has to be safe! It’s my own spell for crying out loud.”

Vee shook her head, ”Not everyone has multiple lives like you. I guess on the positive side, at least you won’t be exploding into an ocean of slime if you screw up!”

”Bah! It’ll be fine!”

I began casting the spell, opting to use the tried-and-true method of two [Position] spells before finally casting [Positioning] and applying the coordinates. Since this was my own spell, I didn’t get that sense of needing to confirm the teleport and soon found myself across the room.

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

The sound of thirteen objects falling and hitting the wooden floor echoed throughout the room, followed by the sound of rolling. But I had hardly any time to investigate the noise as a flurry of notifications interrupted me.

…

”Syl, what the hell!?” Vee frantically cried out.

I rushed over and began scooping up all my [Sub-Cores] as quickly as possible. Most of them were unscathed, but my four newest additions looked scuffed with minor cracks, as I hadn’t enchanted them for durability yet.

I grumbled as I swallowed them up into my form one by one and felt some of my slime mass diminishing to begin to repair the four injured cores.

”Okay… So teleportation works, but it looks like I only targeted my own core,” I explained.

”Holy shit, just be thankful you didn’t teleport your own core out of your slime!” Vee said scoldingly.

I sighed and nodded. She was right in some respects, and it was something I should have considered. Fortunately, my primary core seemed to have complete ownership of all the slime I was using to hold my body together.

”I guess if I teleport, I have to allocate my [Sub-Cores] too… Or maybe I need to have a collective set of coordinates? I’m honestly not entirely sure.”

”Well, I certainly hope you figure it out before pulling a stunt like that again,” Vee sighed. ”At least this proves I was right about being worried about it! Imagine if I teleported and left my lungs behind!”

I chuckled, ”I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about that.”

”I’ll do my own worrying, thank you very much,” she snorted.

”But at least this proves one thing—skills help out a ton!”

”I mean, we already knew this?” Vee replied confusedly. ”Since when have we thought skills were useless?”

I sighed, shaking my head, ”No… What I mean is that the skills are doing a lot more behind the scenes than we give them credit for. I teleported using magic, and even though the system helped me, I didn’t consider that my [Sub-Cores] were being considered separate entities. But when you used [Warp], it doesn’t have to take that into consideration; it was handled automatically.”

”I think you’re overthinking it,” Vee eventually replied. ”But if you’re right, that just means that magic isn’t as cool as traits or skills if it needs you to worry about these minor details or risk teleporting without all your organs or limbs attached.”

”If you keep saying that, I’m going to get another quest to slap you,” I teased.

”You wouldn’t dare!” Vee said with feigned outrage before staring at the ceiling. ”Both of you!”

With such a direct provocation, I had almost expected something to happen, but either the gods weren’t watching, or Mother had already expanded all of her interference budget after discounting my locked affinity.