Volume 1 - CH 5

FINAL CHAPTER 

THE INHERITED FORM 

Shizu was gone now—gone, after giving me one final goal to strive for. 

Up to now, I had largely taken things as they’d arrived, fighting to keep my head above water. Now, though, I had a motivation to gather some intel on this “demon lord” guy. It was a job I readily accepted, but it was also a promise. And I’m a man who keeps his promises. 

Besides, I wasn’t empty-handed. She left me with a few new abilities—the unique skill Deviant and the extra skill Control Flame. 

Oh, right. I ate Ifrit, too, didn’t I? 

He wasn’t much of a match for me, but it turned out he was a tough character—rated beyond an A, in fact. No way some snake or wolf could handle him, to be sure, given that none of their attacks could even faze him. It took a lot to make it past an A, and now I could see why. 

There was still a lot of research to be done on my abilities. But! Before that! There was something even more important I needed to check up on. 

That’s right—transforming into an actual person! 

I ventured inside the new tent the hobgobs had set up for me, making doubly sure to have all visitors turned away before I closed the door. 

Heh-heh-heh… Hah-hah… Ah-ha-ha-ha-hah! Three levels of laughing, and then… 

“…Transform!” 

It wasn’t accompanied by any cool sound effects, but I executed Mimic: Human on myself nonetheless. But… 

…Huh? Whoa, whoa, whoa. 

There was none of the usual black smoke I was expecting. What the heck? I thought, as I realized that my field of vision was only a little higher than usual. 

I had grown arms and legs, and my usual light-blue shade had morphed into a flesh tone. 

Hmmmm? I wasn’t sure what had happened, but something told me it wasn’t what I had planned. I didn’t have a mirror on hand, which was a pain. But— 

I kinda didn’t want to admit it, but I actually was familiar with this form after all. It was from a long time ago, maybe thirty years or so. 

This was how the world looked to me back when I was still bumbling around in elementary school. 

Hang on a sec. I was too excited to notice at first, but there was one key difference. 

It wasn’t there. 

My should-have-been newly born manhood, that is, which I was expecting to see down below. It wasn’t there! What the hell? I internally shuddered as I took another close look at my crotch. It only confirmed the worst. It was smooth as the hypothetical baby’s bottom. 

Thinking back, this wasn’t something I had bothered to check up on when transforming into other monster types. But I supposed it made sense. If I never had to eliminate waste from my body, what use would I have for the associated organs? And if I didn’t need to reproduce—I was still fuzzy on that, but if I didn’t, then why bother with genitals at all? 

That was just who I was now, was all. It was strangely convincing, even as it drove me into a deep sense of mourning. 

Suddenly, I was taken by an urge to touch the top of my head. I felt soft hair up there. It made me breathe a sigh of relief. At least I wasn’t shaped like a space alien! That’s a step forward! And, come to think of it, I was a giant ball of fur in wolf form. I don’t even want to imagine what that’d look like without hair. Nope. That’s a dangerous line of thought. 

Really, though, I thought I’d keep a cooler head than this. Why was I letting myself get in such a panic? I’d just have to accept the truth about what happened down there. It was hard to swallow, but at least I wasn’t a slime any longer. 

Too bad I can’t check up on my whole body, I thought. What about the Replication skill I just picked up from Ifrit? Seemed like a nice idea. Good job, me. I didn’t know if it’d work, but it was worth a shot. 

Black mist darted out of my body, forming a human figure in front of me. Looked like it was a success after all. It was completed in an instant, only to reveal— 

—Oh, crap. Bad news. 

First off, my appearance. The hair was a silvery gray with a light tinge of blue to it, topping off a pair of wide-open eyes and a charming, young… Feminine? Masculine? The lack of genitals made it fairly irrelevant, but in terms of appearance, I looked closer to a girl than a boy. This was probably thanks to Shizu; there were no features that I could identify as my own. 

But it wasn’t a perfect recreation of Shizu’s genes, either. The hair color was one thing, but the golden eyes were quite another. Veldora had gold eyes, too, which was a common trait among the higher monsters, perhaps. And hang on, didn’t Ranga’s eyes go from a blood red to gold as well? Although they also changed depending on his excitement level. Still, maybe they changed because of my influence on him as his name giver. 

Either way, nothing about this form was from me. In this world, the only thing that was truly mine was my soul, it seemed. This was mostly Shizu, and man, she must’ve been one darling little girl… My skin was tremendously smooth, too, with none of the rubbery bounciness of my slime form. 

So this cute girl was just standing there in front of me, butt naked. Not that there was anything that really required hiding, but it still presented certain ethical issues. If the police existed here, which they didn’t, I’d be in serious trouble. 

But that face was cute. I had to hand it to Shizu. She was blessed with a lot of gifts. I wasn’t too hideous when I was young, either, but nobody would ever describe me as beautiful, no matter how much I padded my memories. 

I really have to thank her, I thought to myself as I wrapped a blanket around my body, taking the time to hand one to my doppelgänger. Now I really needed to figure out some clothing. 

Right. Back to the main topic—the real reason I thought Oh, crap at first. That all came down to this human form’s abilities. 

Something I hadn’t considered with this replica of mine before actually conjuring it was that my enhanced thought processes allowed me a complete, real-time link with my copy. It and I were both “me” in a way—there were no appreciable differences between us. If anything, Ifrit’s Replication skills couldn’t hold a candle to mine—his copies were clearly imitations, but mine wasn’t at all. 

All right. Almost not at all. One big difference was my copy’s capacity for magicules—it held only whatever I cast upon it when creating it, although I was free to “install” more inside if I wanted to. I had a fair amount of magic to work with, so depending on the application, I could probably do a lot with it. The other issue was that, while Ifrit could generate ten or so copies without breaking a sweat, my Replication skills were so intricate and detail oriented that a single copy was the best I could manage. 

Still, I could make a copy of myself with all the same attack and defense abilities. Any foe who ran into this skill would think I was cheating. 

The third and final “oh, crap” reason: the way it seemed so breezily natural to me, taking this form. That was something I noticed when I realized no dark mist had surrounded my body. 

Take my black wolf form, for instance. 

I definitely used the mist to create that form, although it made for weaker results compared to my slime self. 

It was hard to notice thanks to the limited movement available to a form without limbs, but a slime’s cells were powerful things—each one could serve as a muscle cell or a brain cell or a nerve cell. See the streamlining effect this makes? Seeing things with the eyes, relaying the information to the nervous system, bringing it to the brain—I could skip all of that. Even without the Sage’s upgrading effects, my reaction speed was far above the average person’s. 

Transforming with the black mist, however, created a slight time lag between thinking something and moving my body in reaction to it. That, I figured, was what made the replication “inferior,” if anything, to the real thing. 

As for this mist-free human transformation? 

You guessed it—it had the exact same reaction speed as my regular slime form. No wonder it felt so natural. Having limbs also improved my mobility immensely. Even in child form, it was so much easier to get around than as a slime, although it tired me out more quickly. 

The biggest thing, though, was that the lack of black-mist usage meant turning human cost me zero magic. Talk about convenient! I figured I’d be taking this form for most of my future activity. 

It was time to try something else. I gave an order to my replica—and it was a totally smooth process, just like moving my own body. Black mist welled around it…and the copy began maturing! A trim figure; long, flowing gray hair; and an androgynous sort of appearance. Perfect! I could then mold this figure to look more feminine or masculine—go all macho, or obese, or in the prime of my life, or elderly. 

As I soon discovered, I could transform into all kinds of figures—using magic to cover for anything I didn’t have, just like with monster transformations. That might be a good way to give me some more strength as a human. It hurt my reaction times, but the bigger I was, the more powerful it’d make me. Speed was the most important element of any battle, I knew, but striking a good balance was something I could experiment with in the days to come. 

And so Satoru Mikami, an average middle-aged man living a perfectly unexceptional life, came to enjoy his unexpected reincarnation as a slime. After acquiring the form and the emotions of a certain woman, he also gained a mission in his new life. 

And before long, this single slime named Rimuru would play a central role in some of the most tumultuous times this world had ever seen.