Chapter 1 - How to live from now on
In conclusion, it was not a dream. That was the undeniable reality of it.
I was somehow reincarnated in this jelly like liquid form. No, seriously.
I had no idea what this body was made of but I could walk if I focused my mind on that. Strictly speaking I had no legs, so I was bouncing rather than walking.
This body was almost perfectly spherical in shape, it was a cloudy white in color, its two eyes were like black dots, it just had a gap for a mouth and, though I didn’t understand how it worked, I could sense smell so there was probably a nose too.
Looking closely between the mouth and the eyes I could see a small hole even a needle wouldn’t fit through. It was so small that the naked eye could barely see it..
I tried to retrace my memory but as expected I didn’t remember anything from after that accident had happened and I’d lost consciousness. There was nothing like G.o.d appearing before me and telling me about a reincarnation -- it simply felt like I’d just been sleeping and then woke up.
But even so who would have thought that something like reincarnation, something I only ever believed to happen in stories, had just happened to me? Life… You never can know what’s gonna happen in life.
Regardless, just the fact I was alive was better than dying like that so I wasn’t gonna complain...... No, there was still something to complain about.
“Why’d it have to be something this difficult?”
Shouldn"t I normally be reincarnated as a human who was picked up by someone incredible and had been training since a young age to become some sort of superhuman? At least I never heard anything about ending up some clearly weak monster.
I felt like resenting G.o.d -- I just saved someone’s life so why didn’t I get rewarded with a better existence than this? I didn’t even know if I was reincarnated because of G.o.d though.
"Haa... What am I gonna do now?"
By the way I was supposed to have been talking to myself there but in fact, nothing resembling a voice came out. What did come out was just something like a cry. Honestly, it was like “What did you even say?”.
I took some time to look at the state of my surroundings and search around but there still wasn’t a sign of anything. And forget people; there wasn’t even any other jelly thing like me around. No, I would’ve been troubled if there was.
There were two main things I understood now. That this place where this strange creature exists and I reincarnated was a different world than my own and...
[Status, huh...]
...I had come to a world where something I’d only thought to be in games was being displayed to me. It was a status window, though it wasn’t like any HP or MP was on it.
It only showed race, level, name and skills. This was something that appeared by itself upon thinking about it. It appeared by my intention and moved around freely but couldn’t be touched. This was exactly like a status window.
By the way, my current display was:
Name: None
Species: Slime (level 1)
Skills: [Body Hit] [Potential of Unknown Evolution]
That was it.
It seemed that this jelly-like organism was called a Slime. That sounded like the sort of name you’d give to something created out of a science experiment.
I was impressed that there even was a level, but it was only a mere level 1. And normally when an enemy appears and it’s such a smallfry character like this, A or B is all it usually gets displayed as so there was no way there’d be a name. That sure seemed a reasonable enough a.s.sumption.
I kinda understood [Body Hit]. It was probably the only method of attack.
However, that last “Evolution Potential” thing was something I couldn’t even guess at. I wondered what kind of effect it even had, since nothing actually happened when I tried thinking about it. As a test I thought about the [Body Hit] and my body immediately moved towards the tree I’d set as a target and hit it, so it seemed trying to use it that way wasn’t the problem..
I wondered if there were any conditions for using it if that was the case. After a good while of struggling with trial and error, I still didn’t know anything so I decided to postpone it.
With all the time that had pa.s.sed bouncing around like that I found I had now gotten hungry. It seemed this jelly-like organism - calling it a slime now - could get hungry too.
Having become a slime so suddenly, I of course didn’t have any food ingredients or any convenient items in my possession. In other words, I would have to go obtain food with my own power.
I wondered if there was anyone who’d fall prey to something that looked this powerless.
This just didn’t feel like the start of things at all.. No matter how I thought about it me dying in the immediate future was all I could see happening..
"Haa..."
My stomach certainly wouldn’t fill no matter how much I complained so I stopped grumbling and started looking around for food.
Even if I’d reincarnated as a slime I didn’t want to just give up. I died in the end anyway, so even getting to live like this was better. And it could just be possible for me to live on even water alone now. I was a slime after all..
Then I had an idea.
(Is this thing a carnivore? Herbivore?)
I had been convinced that I would’ve had to go hunt prey, but that wasn’t necessarily true. If this was a herbivore then all this gra.s.s would be good enough. If it was like that then even a slime would be able to live well.
With that said I began tugging at the nearest blade of gra.s.s with my mouth. That gave me the feeling I might actually be able to eat it, and so somehow, I opened my mouth, prepared for the worst, and then tried eating it.
And then the taste was...
"Bad!"
Bitter. My mouth started tingling horribly and the taste was in all honesty nauseating. But I could just barely eat it. And I mean just barely.
There sure wasn’t anything else around to eat so I kept munching away at that gra.s.s. I couldn’t go to war on an empty stomach. Well, I was seriously doubting slimes even had wars to go to.
And like that I hanged in there and kept stuffing myself with gra.s.s till my stomach was full. I felt like throwing up most of the way through but I held it in. I really didn’t want to find out what sort of stuff a slime would puke out.
I now had a full stomach but my physical condition got considerably worse. My consciousness had gotten somewhat faint too. Oh wait, gulping down all that gra.s.s without a second thought I’d simply forgotten to consider that it could’ve actually been poisonous. Well, it was too late now that I’d already eaten it.
I was completely paralyzed. This was looking straight up dangerous now.
(This… might be it...)
Like that, I lost consciousness once again.
(￣^￣)ゞ