Chapter 12: Giving Lessons

Sam:
“I’m back. I brought help.”

Boy:
“Woah!” Is this real? She’s gorgeous!

Girl:
“How did you get to be so pretty?”

Ariel:
“That’s something I intend to teach you. I’ve already taught Sam a bunch of things, and came here to teach you all.”

Some time later…

Boy:
“What’s with the ranks?”

Ariel:
“It’s just how I measure overall power for monsters and their abilities. In general, a lower rank monster will always lose to a higher rank one. I am rank 4. The monster lords are all rank 10. Most of you are rank 1, or will be soon. The slimes in the plains to the west are rank 0.

“The early ranks can be climbed with just raw power, but getting to rank 5 is not simply a matter of power. Rank 5 monsters and higher, all have some sort of insanely unfair ability. As such, anyone who isn’t rank 5, has no real hope of defeating one who is.”

Boy:
“What kind of abilities would that be?”

Ariel:
“Oh, like immunity to physical damage, or immunity to magic. Some just have such high evasion that they are near impossible to hit with ordinary means. Others can fade in and out of reality at will, letting them avoid injury from any attack they can react to. It’s really not fair.”

Girl:
“Will we be that strong someday?”

Ariel:
“If you live long enough, yeah. It will likely take a long time though. Unless you get lucky and manage to stay near a much stronger monster for while. Oh, right, I forgot to explain that.

“Just being near a stronger monster helps you grow in power yourself. The larger the difference in power, the faster the gain in growth. Because of this, it’s probably best if all of you sleep with me until you’ve gained some strength. It will take a while to teach you and help you with establishing a life for yourselves anyway.”

Sam:
“Are you going to invite them to your room?”

Ariel:
“No, I was thinking of making a big bed and we could all share it. Though we’d need a big enough room.”

Sam:
“I don’t think any of us have a place that isn’t already crowded.”

Boy:
*notices Ariel poking at the air* “What are you doing?”

Ariel:
“Looking for a way to make a room myself. Interdimensional spaces are weirdly easy it seems. I expected that to be higher ranked.”

Boy:
“Inter-what?”

Ariel:
“Well, you’ll see. I’m gonna make a room that takes far less space on the outside, than on the inside.”

Ariel’s View

Later I also met Sam’s mother and the mothers of the other kids. Sam’s mom seemed to be the oldest of the group, and she seemed to be sick and unable to work. This was clearly a big part of why Sam had been panicking before.

Sadly, while my magic was good enough to heal injuries, it wasn’t good enough to cure sickness. To do that I think I’d need to get creative and learn some new tricks.

That night was spent with Sam back in my room again at the inn, as I hadn’t yet devised solutions to all the issues I needed to solve.

Chapter 11: A Dream?

I think I spent a few hours figuring out how exactly I wanted to structure my new ability. It lets me focus clearly on optimizing my existing abilities according to my desires while I sleep. Since this ability only works while sleeping, and I added a condition of only being able to sleep if in the company of someone else whom is sleeping, it wasn’t expensive. A nice side effect: if the person I’m with wakes up, I should wake too.

Content with my final setup, I closed my eyes to sleep.

...What is this nonsense?! Slimes have inherently good self-modification, yet I tacked on a messy trait crafting system on top, to do item creation? Then tacked on minion creation to add low level logic to the result? This is a horrible mess. I should clean this up.

Tossing out that mess, let’s start over. As a slime, by default I’ve got a weak consumption power… Oh, that’s why cum tastes good. Anytime I absorb something with good energy content I can keep some of that energy for myself. Sadly, the amount gained is so small, as to be almost meaningless right now.

I want to be able to learn more about others. Understanding the properties of other items and/or the properties of other beings is going to be important for optimizing designs for my creations. Physical contact is a reasonable limitation.

Proposal: Analysis quality impacted by range of contact from barely touching to consumed (absorbed). Prolonged contact would improve contact rating for analysis. Knowledge level limited to basic information. Exploitable information: restricted (no learning secret weak points).
Overall power rating: Rank 1. Cost: Very Low.

Slimes already start with good self-modification. It is a key part of their basic attacks and defenses. This should be maxed out (Rank 4; cost: High). The ability to reshape my body, as well as harden or soften it at will is going to be a key element of later creation skills. The trait system employed before is stupid. It limited options with little real gain. The cost savings was entirely too small considering the difference in difficulty of use.

To create things that have included logic systems, I should employ the cloning ability, and unconscious actions. Making physical clones with full capability is very expensive. To keep costs down, I’ll have to add some limits. I don’t want to limit the maximum number of clones, so I’ll have to restrict the power of them, and limit mid combat usability.

Proposal: Can create clones. Clones are created inside internal storage (so I can’t make them appear behind someone in a fight). Controlling a clone directly requires concentration (preventing other actions from being taken by the main body at the same time) and only one clone can be controlled at a time (though unconscious actions are still possible). Clones are limited to a maximum of rank 3 power. If the main body dies, a clone will become the new main body.
Overall power rating: Rank 3. Cost: High

Despite costing as much as a rank 4 power, it’s really only rank 3, because nothing it makes will be strong enough to be much threat to anything above rank 3. Since my clones retain my self-modification ability, I can make clones into almost anything, and since they retain the cloning ability, they can even self-replicate.

Creating programmable unconscious behavior patterns for myself and my clones will enable magical items and defenses to be made that act autonomously. As this doesn’t actually enable actions that can’t normally be done (with proper training and practice) this ability is fairly cheap (Rank 1; cost: very low).

With this, my power is consolidated into two main powers: Self-modification, and clones. Now I just need to update my existing enchantments with the new unconscious action system to make them all work right, and construct a proper user interface for the new features. After that… I should look into improving my ability research capabilities. Knowing what’s possible is super important.

---

As I wake up, my memories of what I did while sleeping fade away like a dream. I can tell now though, Sam is clearly half human and half monster. The monster half is animal type. I think animal and human probably have good affinity for each other. Other monster types are less likely to be able to make offspring with humans without deliberately trying.

Smiling as I hold Sam close to me, I whisper: “Good morning, love.”

He looks at me with his eyes open wide, which I answer by giving him a kiss on the lips and a smile, that he returns.

Sam:
“Hey, if you can modify your appearance, does that mean you can be even more beautiful?”

Ariel:
“I can. I didn’t before because I figured it’d just draw more attention.”

Sam:
“You already draw a lot of attention. An even more beautiful you is something I’d like to see.”

Ariel:
“Alright.”

I still have some spare power to spend on abilities after last night, and a little bit of beauty is pretty cheap.

Ariel:
“There, Rank 1 beauty.”

After setting it, I took a look at my self-view in the UI I built. I look like someone from a cosmetics commercial. It’s not obvious to me exactly what’s changed, but it’s very obvious that I look way more beautiful than before. My now flawless skin is the most obvious change. Not being able to tell exactly what made a face beautiful or not is why I never dared tinker much with settings for faces in character creators for games. Too easy to just end up making things worse.

Sam:
“Wow, you look amazing!”

He hugs me and seems to start crying. Confused I ask him, “Are you okay?” as I wrap my hands around him and hold him.

Sam:
“Yeah, just overwhelmed by how awesome this is. Yesterday I thought I and my friends were all doomed to starve, and now I’ve got this amazing woman with me, and I feel like there’s really hope!”

I just held him and let him cry himself out.

Sam:
“You don’t think I’m a sissy for crying?”

Ariel:
“No. I’m glad you feel safe enough to cry with me. I don’t have any special ability to understand your feelings, so I’m happy to have you share them with me.”

Sam:
*sniff* “You’re awesome. I’m so glad I met you.” *sniff*

Ariel:
“Is there anything you want to do today?”

Sam:
“Um, I’d like to have you meet the rest of my family and friends. The other beastkin like me would probably benefit a lot from learning about monster abilities. Even if we can’t get normal jobs, with this we might be able to become hunters.”

Ariel:
“Unless you invest heavily in concealment abilities, you might find hunting difficult. Monsters usually find it easy to tell how powerful other monsters are, so normally weaker monsters would flee from you.”

Sam:
“Huh? I’ve never heard of monsters avoiding or fleeing people before.”

Ariel:
“That’s because a monster’s power sensing method doesn’t work on humans and registers all humans as powerless. So unless a monster is smart, it won’t know when not to attack, and the dumber ones will continue attacking until slain thinking the human is a weakling.”

Sam’s Stomach:
“Grrwl”

Ariel:
“I guess we should get breakfast.”

After breakfast, Sam took me to see his friends and family.

---

Innkeeper’s view

Having a noble lady staying here makes me nervous. It’s dangerous to upset a noble, and here in the east district, there’s no shortage of terrible hooligans. Then she invited a beastkin to her room! When the two finally left, I could swear she looked even more beautiful than before. Did I misremember her appearance? Or, is it true that love makes a lady even more beautiful? To love a beastkin of all things… this lady must be crazy. Surely insanity can be the only reason for her to be here.

Chapter 10: A new view

My name is Sam, I was the first of the beastkin children to be born. At first, there was no such name for us, but someone eventually started calling us that and it stuck. Each of us had animal traits and stood out as different from normal humans. We were children of prostitutes. We stuck together because everyone else discriminated against us.

We had mothers that treated us kindly, knowing it wasn’t our fault we ended up like this. Unfortunately, there was a big problem coming up, that as the eldest, I started to realize first: We couldn’t work. No one would hire me, or any others of us. No one would buy from us either if we tried to sell things on our own. We had no way to earn money. Our mothers wouldn’t be able to support us forever.

Thus, when rumors of an Angel visiting town came, I listened. I don’t really know what I expected, but I was desperate. If nothing changed, we had no future. So after finding out where she was staying, I waited for her to come out. She came out a lot later than I expected.

“Please help us!” *grrrl*

My stomach added emphasis with it’s own noise.

I wasn’t wrong. She smiled at me and took me in to eat. I’ve got the ears and tail of a cat, covered in black fur that matches my black hair. When people see them, I usually see signs of disgust, yet this angel smiled. Thank you god above, for sending us someone to help!

Ariel’s View

Wasn’t expecting to find a catboy. He’s about the same size I am, so probably mid to late teens, assuming ages still work here like they did in my old life. From the sound of his story, he knows it’s normal for people his age to be working in this world. The big question for me is: What exactly is he? Mother only mentioned the human-like races in passing, but beastkin were not among them. I guess I do need a proper analysis skill after all.

My best guess, is that since this town has monsters living in it, pretending to be human, it’s likely these beastkin must be offspring of monsters and humans. They do all seem to be the children of prostitutes, the most likely humans to end up having sex with monsters in this kind of town.

After lunch, and making sure Sam had plenty to eat, I brought him to my room to explain my theory, and to test it. If Sam was a half-monster, he should be able to access monster abilities.

Hours later:

Custom ability creation? Confirmed.

Self-analysis? Confirmed.

Self-modification? Limited. - It seems that being half human locks in certain traits and some minimal amount of stat growth based on their available point totals. Taking on limitations to reduce costs and free up points does not appear to be restricted much.

One other minor detailed confirmed: I like him. He’s cute, courageous, and concerned about others. My settings for arousal, attraction, and affection are all getting set off. So, while he experimented and studied what he could do, I contemplated my emotions.

My feelings didn’t feel like they’d get in the way, and I saw no reason to not want to feel this way about him. I don’t have to worry about STDs or pregnancy either as a slime, so even if it goes that far, it’s not something to worry about. I’m probably overthinking things anyway. There was a minor impact on my magical enchantments being activated unconsciously by my emotions, but it didn’t seem like a large enough effect to be concerned.

When I invited him to stay the night after we had dinner, Sam was quite excited, yet I was still caught a little by surprise when he offered his confession:

Sam:
“Um, Ariel? I’ve been feeling really aroused around you… a-and my analysis says it’s not just me. There’s something else causing it.”

Ariel:
“Ah, that might be my fault, sorry. I have a spell circle for putting mind-affecting spells into my scent. It seems to respond to my emotions when I’m not actively using it, and kinda pushing my feelings onto others.”

Sam:
“Eh? It’s your feelings?” *sniffs deeply at my neck* “So, what your scent makes me feel, is what you feel? Really?”

Ariel:
“Yeah, it should be. Though the effect shouldn’t be very strong. The effective range is pretty short too.”

Sam:
“Then I won’t hold back!” As he says this, he pushes me down onto the bed and begins making out with me. *pant* “You’re the best thing to ever happen to me. I want you. I love you.”

I quietly accepted him, and loved him too. Pants got pulled down, my dress pulled up, and my legs wrapped around him as I pulled him into me… I guess I wasn’t overthinking things earlier… I think I might be drunk on love.

Later:

Sam:
“I want to love you forever.”

Ariel:
“I'll accept your love, and love you in turn.” *kiss*

Mysterious Voice:
“Contract established”

Ariel & Sam:
“Huh? You heard that too?”

Upon checking my status information I found a new entry: “Married to Sam”

… that’s a contracts and titles section. Other entries are “Otherworlder”, and “Pioneer in Love”. It’s a section I can’t manually edit. Only god can mess with those entries, though Mother assumed most of it was automatic. That simple promise to love each other counted as a marriage vow before god? What’s this Pioneer in Love business? “Pioneer in Love: First monster to love and marry another.”

I asked Sam if he had an entry, and he said he did: “Married to Ariel” and “Monster Lover”. Seemed “Monster Lover” was for marrying a monster.

Sam:
“What are you nervous about?”

Ariel:
“Um… I’m not confident I can be a faithful wife.”

Sam:
“What do you mean?”

Ariel:
“You’re the first person I’ve fallen in love with in this world. I’m not certain you’ll be the last.”

Sam:
“Does that mean you might stop loving me?”

Ariel:
“No, I’ll still love you.” *kiss*

Sam:
“Even if you love someone else?”

Ariel:
“I won’t stop loving you. I’ll love you for as long as you love me, and likely longer. At worst, I might have to ask you to share.” *kiss*

Sam:
“I… I might be able to do that. I… I can share. I can’t say I like the idea, but I’d rather share you than lose you.” *kiss* “And I won’t stop loving you.”

Ariel:
“Well, there’s a good chance you’ll die before I do, unless you’ve inherited a monster’s unlimited lifespan. So I’ll be the one who loves longest.” *kiss*

Sam:
“I’ll find a way to live forever too, and be the one to love you more.” *kiss*

After conveying our love to each other a few more times, and distracting each other with sex, Sam eventually fell asleep, and I started working on an ability to let me sleep, so I could more easily keep Sam company at night without getting bored. Additionally, need to figure out: Why does cum taste delicious?

Chapter 9: Developing new ideas

Ariel’s view

While I traveled to reach this town, I thought a lot about what I might do in the future. I realized there was no way for me to duplicate the computers and circuits of my old world, and that if I wanted devices with any real feature complexity, I’d have to get creative.

My creative solution was to learn to make minions. Gaining the ability to make minions from my own body, and mixing that with my item creation skill, I can make items with minds. This should enable more complex devices, such as locks that will only open for the right keyphrase, or in the presence of the right key.

Since more complex items means I may need to do more trial and error testing, I also expanded my item and minion creation to include item and minion modification. It’s limited to touch range on items and minions I’ve made, but it should still be very useful.

With a full night to experiment and make use of my growth in power I learned how to make some basic things like throwing daggers that will home in on my target. This required some weak wind magic so they can alter their flight path. They could even use the wind magic to accelerate in flight. Might be a good ranged weapon.

Then, while experimenting I realized the intelligence can be used to make my existing ideas even stronger. Just as limitations can make my abilities cost less, and let me be stronger overall, limitations can make items stronger too. A simple limit is to give an effect a short duration with a short cooldown. Making a weapon intelligent means I can have it only trigger it’s sharpening effect when it hits something. If the effect isn’t always active, I can make it much stronger at the cost of cooldown times. This should let me make far more effective weapons and armors.

For improving my own self-enchantments, I developed a trick for making minions that are a part of me, enabling unconscious control over enchantments, and creating automated magic. Because they are so specialized, they can react faster than I do. I then automated as many of my spells as I could.

An extra detail that’s probably not important: Creating minions is vastly more affordable when it’s limited to weaker versions of the same creature type. Since I wanted to mix it with item creation, I needed to have my items share the same sort of limit. As a result, everything I make now will actually be a slime, even if the properties are very different from what people expect from a slime.

---

The next day, I was invited to join them for breakfast, and then escorted out of the palace. It seems I’ll not be able to stay in the castle anymore. A shame really, it was very helpful to be so close to the lord. I guess that’s two lords whom have kicked me out of their home after inviting me in now. Is this gonna happen everywhere I go?

As I wandered about town, I found myself thinking about what I wanted to do with my new life. If I understood things correctly, it was going to be a very long life. Far longer than my previous one.

I remember being pretty depressed in my past life, because of all the problems I could see but had no idea how to fix. I remember having few people I really felt close to, and feeling like there was little reason to keep living. Now? Now I feel like there’s so much to see and learn, that I have no desire for it to end. I do feel a bit lonely though.

Hmmm… how to fix problems… Well, I know the wolf lord wants tasty food. For that I’d need to learn how to make spices. An analysis ability paired with duplication of some sort might work. I can already copy basic shapes. Full analysis can be expensive though. Maybe if I have to eat something to analyze it, that can reduce cost a bunch. Duplication of spices would require expanding the range of things I can create. Keeping the production rate low might help…, but I don’t think this is a good solution.

Instead of trying to create tasty food myself, I should learn how to grow it or something. Ah! If I can make seeds that grow and replicate, I can provide spices as a crop! That’s a minion skill paired with an analysis skill instead of crafting based. I don’t really have enough spare power to make that change yet though. I only just gained minion creation. If only I could stay in the palace for a few more weeks. The hard part is it requires expanding the range of minion types I can create. Keeping it limited to seed type things that take time to grow, and are super weak may help.

---

I eventually found myself in a part of town that looked a lot less well kept than the rest.

Big Man:
“Hey, lady, there’s a toll to pay here.”

Other Men:
*chuckles and laughter*

Seems I got myself surrounded by some no good thugs. After my upgrades, I’m wary of trying to knock them out. If I use too much force it could smash their jaws, and if I use too little, it’d just escalate things into a bigger mess instead of ending it fast. I really need to expand my non-lethal options.

Big Man:
“You deaf or something?”

They’ve gotten even closer now. Ugh. A sleep spell put into a breath attack should work. Normally breath+elemental magic is used for things like fire-breathing, but a sleep spell should work too.

With a little magic and a *puff* of air, the man in my face blinks a few times and then collapses to the floor. While the rest of the men stare confused, I simply walk past them and continue on my way. It’s a weak spell, they’ll be able to wake him back up pretty easily. Hopefully that’s enough to keep them out of the way for now.

---

After spending the day exploring the town and figuring out where everything is, I picked an inn to stay at in a poor part of town, thinking it’d help me keep my costs down. I’d like to avoid running out of money anytime soon.

While sitting in my room and thinking about my day, I realized something: I had seen quite a few pretty ladies and handsome men, but didn’t react at all to it. No arousal, no disgust, no envy. When I tried imagining some sexy scenes, I didn’t really feel anything. I don’t seem to have any sex drive.

Deciding I needed to learn more about my body, I spent much of that night exploring and experimenting with myself. It was the first time I’d properly done such a thing, and I decided to be thorough about it.

What I discovered, is that everything felt fully functional, except that I had better control over my reactions than I expected. I only got as aroused as I wanted to, and could make it end instantly. It felt pretty weird. I remember arousal being something I had very limited control over in my previous life. Having control seemed weird… though also tempting. It would be pretty easy to lose myself in hedonism I think… from what I remember of myself, I’d expect to get bored of it eventually, but I don’t want to test that theory, too dangerous.

While I can’t say that my current state is bad, I feel like I should make some adjustments to my emotions and feelings and reactions to things. Getting a little closer to the human norm (or at least closer to what I remember from my previous life) is probably something that would make living in human society easier. I think it might also be more enjoyable to bring back some of my old feelings (how I felt about things in my past life).

Even though it was morning already I decided to mess around with my emotion settings, and as I did so I realized it can free up more power for other abilities. Apparently reducing control over my emotions and increasing their effect counts as a weakness. Being attracted to people also counts as a weakness… I can actually choose my sexual orientation.

If I actually have a choice, I think I’d favor having physical appearance not matter a whole lot, and instead make a person’s behavior and personality matter more. I’m pretty sure this is how I was in my past life too, but my memories are unclear on that. I’d like to fall in love with someone caring and kind, not someone who will treat people badly.

By the time I finished, it was noon.