Chapter 12: Reen
There was no exchange of words. Eren and slime could communicate with each other on a fundamental level. They could read each other’s thoughts and that helped Eren understand one thing about the slime’s current condition:
It was hungry.
And Eren knew the location of just the kind of food his new familiar would love to have.
The slime plopped onto Eren’s right shoulder like it was the most obvious thing in the world for it. Its volume had shrunk tremendously and now it only looked as if a magic beast’s condensed saliva had been dropped on Eren’s shoulder.
Eren had dislocated his shoulder. That’s why he felt some strain when the slime plopped over it. But soon the familiar did something that made Eren open his eyes wide in utter surprise.
The colourless ma.s.s of slime suddenly started exuding a milky white glow. The magical glow covered Eren’s shoulder and started fixing it up. It took only a few moments for Eren to feel that his shoulder had gotten back to normal.
Eren tried moving his arm and confirmed that to be the case. Not only his arms but his other minor injuries were also getting fixed rapidly as the white glow spread across the body.
The ma.s.s of slime seemed weak after finis.h.i.+ng his stellar medical treatment. Its hunger had increased as a result.
Eren could feel the beast’s concern for him when it treated his injuries. He could also feel its fatigue after doing that. It was hungrier than before. Eren caressed the ball of slime and it responded to his touch affectionately.
Eren started walking to the place where he had come from. There were two bodies his beast companion could eat, one alive and one dead.
Eren sent those thoughts to the beast and it couldn’t help spreading across his whole torso as a form of hugging him in joy.
While they were walking towards Dom, Eren kept exchanging thoughts with his beast. The beast’s thoughts were very primal. And it couldn’t understand the complex thoughts and emotions of Eren completely. But they were both making steady progress in getting to know each other.
Eren introduced his name to the beast. The beast didn’t get the concept of naming so Eren had to explain it in basic terms for him. The demon slime too wanted a name for itself when it fully grasped the purpose of having it.
Eren thought of a name for his pet for some time before coming up with Reen. It was an anagram of his name. The beast didn’t mind having that name. It didn’t understand the concept of having a good or bad name so it accepted Eren’s name right away.
Eren came up with that name because it seemed gender-neutral, just like the beast. It didn’t seem to have gender as well. So Reen was a perfect name for it.
Eren a.s.sumed Reen to be a ‘she’ for his convenience. As the duo decided all that while walking, it reached an open area in the cave where a man could be seen talking to a wall in a threatening way.
He seemed to be on his guard the way he had raised both his hands in front of him. One could see a knife lodged in one of his glutes upon looking keenly.
This man was Dom. He thought Eren still hadn’t left the place and was only pretending to be absent. Therefore, Dom had tried baiting him multiple times, thinking Eren would try to make the same mistake of deciding to use his bait against him.
Dom’s thinking had gotten complicated after that. The hunter was ‘Inception-izing’ his a.s.sault plans. He had also gotten creative with his jeers and taunts aimed at Eren. Too bad there was no audience to his performance. If Dom knew about this, he’d get madder on Eren than he already was. He might die from having too much anger built within his system.
Although Eren was still a rankless lad, he had nothing to fear anymore. His companion Reen was a C Rank demon beast. Although Reen didn’t excel in battle, she was still enough to take care of a minor E Rank guy like Dom.
Dom could finally hear some disturbance due to Eren’s faint footsteps. He guessed Eren had decided to come out of hiding and was planning to make a move on him. Dom couldn’t control his laughter at this thought:
“Looks like you’ve run out of patience. I was going to stop trying, thinking you are more cunning and shameless than I thought you are. But at the end of the day, you are still an immature brat. Your end is near you while are…”
Dom was going to cuss and curse Eren much more. But then he felt some slimy stuff getting in contact with his right leg and then spreading across his body soon after.
Before Dom could figure out the thing that climbed upon his body, he felt like his skin was burning. Like he had suddenly taken an acid bath.
Reen had covered Dom from head to toe by now. His clothes had been dissolved, and he could be seen naked and covered in some gooey stuff that was releasing faint steams.
Reen was digesting Dom up at an accelerated rate. It took her more time than the bodies she had just eaten for her evolution, due to Dom being an E Rank and having more mana to deploy as a sorry excuse of defence against her. But she was a C Rank herself.
Dom couldn’t help sharing the same fate as his dead comrades. His bones were dissolved after his flesh, and there was no trace of him left in this world. Elena’s body outside joined their ranks after Dom.
And like this, Eren had obtained what was going to be Dom’s. Reen was a capable demon beast even when she didn’t excel in battle strength. She had a lot of other abilities that compensated for that.
With Reen by his side, Eren could modify his plans to get better results. Eren was glad he did what he did at this point. There was no point pondering over the past.
Eren was about to head out of that area when Reen shared something with him regarding the cave. She told him that she had come here after feeling the existence of a treasure that could help her rank up quickly.
Reen was thinking of using that treasure and the bodies that magic beasts will supposedly hunt for her in future to rank up slowly when she came to the cave. She didn’t expect there would be enough bodies here for her rank up. All she needed was a push that the treasure had offered her by Reen coming in its vicinity.
Reen insisted on eating the bodies first to stabilize her promotion. Her hunger came first. That’s why she didn’t think about getting the treasure when they were inside the cave. Her instincts were screaming at her to feed on something for sustenance before eyeing for something that was not part of survival.
Now that she had her fill, she conveyed the same information to her master. Eren immediately went in after understanding what that news implied. So it was true that Dom had another lucky encounter in the cave. The one that he made sure not to go public at any cost.