NOVEL NEXT Zanzibat
Whether due to her shrill screaming, or her last minute pancake-duck against the ground, the shadow missed. Barely clipping her, it crashed into the sand with a soft 'thud', bouncing up into the dust cloud of its own creation, it sprang towards her with flashing jaws.
By now, Cas had already dissolved her vocal chords, redirecting those resources into a hardened exterior.
Needle-like fangs stabbed into the doughy armor. The creature snapped and lunged and circled around her. Its frantic, jerky feints kept kicking up dust- until she could see nothing but the barest glimpses of its fangs.
Cas tried to run, but no luck. Her underside, normally an undulating wave that crawled her along every surface, had lost its flexibility with the addition of armor.
Seeing the obvious solution, she removed the hardness from her underside and booked it.
The fox was a twitching mass of lightning compared to her, however. Noticing her motion, it dashed forward, sprang down, and dug its nose into the dirt against her soft underbelly. Bracing its legs, with a practiced motion –
The world flipped, and Cas stared up through her naked underbelly at the dark silhouette, lit up by bright eyes and white teeth.
Springing forward, it stabbed into her unprotected underside, digging into her guts with a watery squelch.
…
Kiee! Kiee! Kiee!
Just as quickly, the fox pulled away.
Squealing and crying and pawing at its own nose, it made for a pitiful sight as it snorted and staggered about like it was trying not to fail a sobriety test. Occasionally, it stopped and hunched over, sticking its tongue out like a sick dog.
After two seconds of this, it turned around and–
WHHHAM!
A powerful beat of its forelimbs took it into the air. An explosion of dust trailed it like a spear.
Cas, still disoriented, saw only a glimpse of its tawny wings as it flew back over the cliff.
Sharon and Tara had been uncharacteristically quiet since the attack, leaving her with no distractions except her own thoughts and the ever-present unease of having almost been killed.
Cas couldn't really take a breather, so she distracted herself by reading.
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–
[Acid Immunity]: Level 4
[Inherent immunity to all poisons.]
–
Like all her skill blurbs, it was obvious to the point of tautology. Not that Cas needed a blurb. She'd been abusing this skill the entire time in this cave.
Immunity to all poisons? The whole world was her buffer.
Of course, this was an ability common to all slimes, but Cas was the only slime in this cave with enough smarts to track the Ants to their hidden colony, and she'd been eating a lot of ants lately.
With that in mind, she imagined that, at this point, she probably tasted like rubbing alcohol, or piss, or draft beer.
Quite a shock for an unsuspecting fox!
It was a shock for Cas as well, to be fair.
Formic acid – assuming that was that the 'ants' of this world used – could last up to a year if kept in lab conditions, but Cas was not living in lab conditions right now. She was a transparent container walking around desert sunlight for hours at a time, and digesting random crap she found on cave floors. Most of the acid in her should have evaporated away by now, unless…
Suddenly, the message on the screen transformed.
The skill [Acid Immunity] morphed before her eyes, changing into [Absorption].
The description changed to match.
–
[Absorption]: Level 4
Absorb and safely store materials. No damage incurred by ingesting poisonous substances.
–
Cas didn't feel any different with the change. But, this wasn't a new skill, was it? It was the same skill as always, just that she knew more about itt.
The screen must have changed to reflect her current knowledge about the matter.
The fact that her status screen could be so incomplete was... a point of interest, to put it politely. She wondered if any of her other skills had surprises in store.
…
The fox returned at mid-day.
Cas, feeling braver, elected to take a look. Changing shape, she stretched a thick stalk over the rock she'd been hiding behind. Floating her eye up into that stalk, she panned her makeshift periscope and focused to get her first good look of the creature.
It was a shock in more ways than one.
A mixture of fox, bat, and reptile, it somehow reflected the appearance of a dozen different animals while looking nothing at all like any of them.
Its forelimbs were like folded umbrellas, wings packed tightly against the skeletal limbs. They front limbs were splayed, obviously designed to favor a flapping motion, and it trundled along with an awkward gait, flashing its gaze as if seeing through everything.
It had bright eyes, ruddy fur, and a dark stripe that ran along its spine.
And Cas recognized it immediately for what it was.
It was a Zanzibat from Siablo III.
The video game...