Mother:
“Now that you are merely a slime with human appearance instead of human, you should be able to feel the power within you, and the possibility it offers. The first thing you should do with that, is build an ability that helps you understand and use that power.
“Any ability you can imagine can be made, however there are rules to learn and use, making knowledge and understanding of what you can do, and how it will all work, very important for optimizing your use of your power.
“For example: The style of magic I use requires preparation. Time must be spent creating the magic circles before they can be used. This limitation makes the ability require less power than it would if I could simply will magical spells into existence.
“Additionally, there are space requirements, limiting how many such spell inscriptions I can have within my body at the same time. While it is quite high, it further limits my spell casting ability, and further reduces the power cost of having it.”
Girl:
“So, I need to develop an interface for creating abilities. It needs to contain good information. It needs to be limited enough to not cost too much. I can sorta feel it."
The first limitation feels obvious: limiting it to displaying information about ideas I have already thought of and am current contemplating. Even without a proper interface, I can feel that trying to know about all possible options is well beyond my power.
As a second limitation, creating a visual interface that relies heavily upon text to convey information, means I’m limited by my reading comprehension and my skill with numbers. Thankfully I already know a language, and know quite a bit of math…"
“I only know one language, is it the language I knew before? Do the humanoid races of this world speak it?”
Mother:
“I do not know what language you spoke before. You probably forgot it when I imprinted this world’s language upon you. In time, as your soul heals, you might remember, or if you encounter something to trigger those old memories they might return. The humanoids of this world all speak the same language.”
Girl:
“I see. I guess weak memories can easily be forgotten without something to help me recall them. Somehow, I feel like I’m better off without strong memories of my past life. Remembering all the people I’ll never see again isn’t going to help.”
Mother:
“If you ever decide you want a different appearance, you can change it. It works just like any other power you want. As a monster, you can change the very nature of how your body works. Appearance is relatively easy to modify.”
Girl:
“That’s good to know. Maybe I’ll take a look at that first with my new User Interface."
It works! It’s a little funny seeing bright information windows in pitch darkness like this. Now I need to build a numerical system for measurements. Maybe I can just use the cost of this UI as the base. Call it a cost of 1.
Now to use it to take a look at myself… ah right, that’s technically an expansion of it beyond what I initially built… oh, that doubles the cost. Making it able to display good information on my current state is pretty important though.
“Woah, why does limiting information on others to those weaker than me provide such a huge cost reduction?”
Mother:
“Information on monsters weaker than you is of little real help in a fight, since they can easily be defeated without any. It is information on equal or stronger foes that is valuable.”
Girl:
“Maybe I shouldn’t bother with information of others yet. At least not beyond some very basic info… oh, just knowing if they are stronger or weaker in a general sense is free?”
Mother:
“Try to feel the power within you, can you feel that it’s growing?”
Girl:
“Hmmm… yeah, it’s like there’s a constant pressure from one side… it’s from you! Are you pouring power into me?”
Mother:
“No, it’s an inherent part of being a monster. Every monster creates a field of power around them. Anyone weaker will feel it, and can tell where it comes from. So it’s very easy to tell when someone is stronger than you. Likewise, it’s a fairly simple matter to detect anyone within the range of your field, and to tell how big the power difference is.
“Try to focus your attention on your surroundings. Feel the power, feel the aura, feel the field around you.”
Girl:
“Oh! I can actually sense the floor, and you! I don’t detect any walls or ceiling though. Do I just not have enough range?”
Mother:
“That’s correct. You’ll need to get stronger to improve the range on it. Simply staying here while I teach you should be sufficient for you to grow much stronger. I am one of the lords of the Monster Continent. You won’t find a stronger monster to grow from.”
Girl:
“How many monster lords are there?”
Mother:
“Oh, I don’t know, I never really tried to find them all. I know of six near me. We fight sometimes. Before the humans arrived, our fights were our main source of entertainment. Nowadays I and several others enjoy watching the humans in their daily struggles. Unlike with monsters, we can’t easily see how strong they are, so it’s much harder for us to tell who will win in a fight.
“Now that you have the basics down, it’s time for me to teach you how to create a proper spell casting ability.”
