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Chapter 3: Well this is an Unexpected Turn of Events.

  After she spoke her last words everything went dark, like inky no hint of light blackness. The sudden lack of light was followed by the feeling of being stretched. At first, it was a pleasant sensation, like stretching after waking up in the morning. Then it started to feel like the dull burning pain you get when you try and touch your toes with your hands. That swiftly changed to feeling like my extremities were being ripped from their sockets, followed by the body shuddering shock of my arms and legs actually being ripped out of their sockets. I howled in pain as the muscles in my body started to pull apart, tendons snapping as they disconnected from my joints, muscles shredding as the pulling continued.

  Suddenly the pain changed, the force stretching and pulling reversed and I felt myself being compressed and crushed. It felt as if I was a hunk of clay, and a child was molding and rolling me into a ball. New painful sensations of pressure followed by the snapping of my bones entered my consciousness. The snapped bones stabbed into my organs as the pressure continued. The bones themselves began being ground down being mashed into the pulp that was once my organs, and all the while I remained conscious and aware of each piece of destruction and accompanying pain.

  And then it was over.

  That hurt a lot, I mean there doesn't exist words in the English language to truly express how bad that was. I was still mentally wallowing in how painful my previous experience was I didn't even bother to read the large blue box taking up a third of my vision.

  I think mistakes were made, yeah I'm almost certain I'm going to get screwed I thought as I read the text. After I fully read the text the box disappeared from in front of me. My vision cleared I looked at my surroundings.

  There seemed to be a soft green glow in the area that illuminated my surroundings. I was lying on the ground, which was covered in dirt, pebbles, and an assortment of rocks. In front and behind me a path extended, lit enough that I could see a good distance before everything became dark. To my sides of the path I was on, there were rock walls, giving off little sparkles in the dull green light, as granite does in the sunlight. At the base of the walls were large mushrooms some of which were larger than I was. The ceiling of the tunnel was high enough that the green glow gave way to darkness.

  Random sounds, that I could feel in my body as if I was holding a speaker up to my chest, came farther along each direction in the tunnel. The sounds themselves were not loud and did not seem near to me but it was disconcerting. The faint trickling of water was coming from the walls of the tunnel, probably water traveling down the rocks and providing the only source of liquid for the mushrooms to grow. The fact that I could hear so much, beyond what I remember from my previous body made me think I may be some sort of elf or other race with superior hearing.

  I decided to get up and explore my immediate surroundings and get a good look at where and who I was, but there was a problem. My body wouldn't respond, attempt to move my neck, arms, legs anything really beyond my eyes didn't seem to work. Just my luck, I thought. I arrive in a place of magic and adventure a quadriplegic. I was destined to die lying on the floor of a tunnel either from dehydration and starvation, or being eaten by some roving monster.

  I remembered part of my wish was a help system. I tried to call out the word help, but no sound came out. Now even more worried I tried to think a command.

  Help

  Ok, at least that worked. If I'm paralyzed or something that should be a status. Let's try that command first.

  Status

  That's rude, anyone in their right mind would be upset after going through that torture and finding themselves unable to move.

  Fantastic, stuck alone in the dark, paralyzed with only a jackass to keep me company. Ok, so still can't move but it doesn't look like it's a status affliction. Maybe the Character Sheet may clear things up.

  Character Sheet

  If I could scream I would trust me I tried for about 5 minutes but no sound came out and screaming in your head isn't remotely cathartic. I'm screwed, like bend me over the counter forget the lube say thank you to the large man named Bubba screwed. Somewhere I messed up on my wishlist because slime was not an outcome I had considered. I knew Merielle had to follow the list, but apparently, I'm not as smart as I thought though looking at my stats perhaps I should say I'm not as wise as I thought. All right, as much as I would like to continue to wallow in my own self-pity let's see what I've gotten myself into.

  Help Slime

  So I did get exactly what I asked for. I requested a long-lived raced and I got one, in fact, if one of my other items on the list didn't get messed up I am immortal. Immortality stuck as an intelligent blob of acid which currently seems to lack any perks. Maybe my abilities will make up somewhat, for this.

  Abilities

  Wishlist item fulfilled, I can at least understand other languages. If I'm a slime and have no mouth, then it stands to reason I have no ears either. How am I hearing the noises around me without ears? If I'm acidic, but also able to hold a shape, then I must have some sort of membrane holding my insides inside and preventing me from forming a puddle of goo on the floor. So if I'm surrounded by a membrane and an ear essentially works by air vibrations impacting a membrane and the brain translating those signals into a recognizable sound, does that mean that the sounds I'm hearing are simply vibrations impacting my membrane and being translated by my mind? How much control do I have over my outer membrane?

  Assuming from the description I can eat then the membrane must be semi-permeable otherwise I'd be full of rocks and dirt by now. So the fact that I'm not full of trash makes me think that my membrane can at least allow the passage of objects which is most likely done by instinct, but since I'm intelligent can I control what I ingest? If I'm capable of fine control of my membrane enough to mold my body and ingest only certain items can I manipulate it in other ways? A speaker is a membrane that vibrates causing sound, can I vibrate my membrane (giggity) and produce sound as well? Can I talk without a mouth then?

  Right now it might be hard, trying to move my body the old way doesn't seem to have worked out. How do slimes even move, do I extend a pseudopod and creep forward? Do I roll around like a ball?

  I concentrated for a bit, attempting to reach out with my body as if crawling forward. I watched as a single thick pseudopod stretched out in front of me reaching a small distance away. I continued to focus and tried to flow toward the extension moving my mass from one part of my body to the extended part, and in a rush, my body flowed into the extension moving me forward. I practiced for a bit, until moving about didn't require concentration on my part and became instinctual. It wasn't a fast way to travel, but when you are a slime you have to work with what you have.

  Knowing that with concentration I was able to manipulate my body, I tried something different. Concentrating on a portion of my membrane I tried to move it quickly in place, essentially vibrating it in a hope to produce a sound. After several minutes I had succeeded in producing a humming sound, with a small amount of variation. I'd also succeeded in giving myself a massive headache in the process. Considering my current progress I felt it was good enough for now and I needed a break and returned to reviewing my character sheet.

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  First let's see about intelligence. It was one of my highest stats and it was curious about what it exactly did. I didn't feel any more intelligent than before, but it was so far beyond most of my stats

  Help Intelligence

  High School education is apparently worth something. If the base if 5 intelligence and there is no upper limit where does that put me in regards to the rest of the intelligent population? I'm I a genius, a moron, average?

  Help High School Graduate

  At least the help system has good taste in movies. Four years in high school didn't make me a genius, I am SHOCKED. It improved my intelligence and concentration but the big bonus is that my knowledge of science and math is beyond the majority of this world's population. That's not saying they aren't intelligent, it's just their knowledge is in different areas. I'm confused about the attribute system. This skill obviously impacted intelligence, but did the second attribute impact Concentration?

  Help Concentration

  A skills second attribute is divided in half, and I'm assuming if it had a third attribute it would be divided by a third. How many attributes can a skill have? Can it have no attributes?

  Help Attributes

  Well, that's not that helpful at all. I decided to take the rest of the time to quickly review the rest of the stats and items on my character sheet. Only two things stood out one of which was that I was apparently never going to get anything in the Beauty stat due to my race, Not really all that upsetting as I'm used to Charisma and the like being dump stats, only losers choose bards. The other item was the save command:

  It looks like there is only one save space, so I have to be careful to save often and preferably not in a spot that would have me die over and over again due to poor planning. I've played a few games that my poor planning made me have to start from the beginning losing hours of progress. This was worse as there was no starting over, either I spend eternity reliving the same death or...die permanently. I quickly saved now while I had the chance. Using the setting function I put my HP and Mana at the very top of my screen and added a combat log and status log to the right of my screen minimized so it wouldn't be a distraction. Now it's time to explore!

  Character Sheet:

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