His skin began to peel back, shredding into thin ribbons, then unraveling further into long, twisting chains of DNA. Oddly, the sensation didn't hurt, but it was deeply unsettling.
He screamed the entire time, until even his mouth was gone and all that remained was raw, genetic material.
His strands intertwined with those of the trapper slime, weaving together and fusing into a single entity.
There was warmth.... and a strange comfort. A memory surfaced, one long forgotten. He had felt this once before, years and an entire life ago, back in his mother's womb.
He let himself fall into that sensation, letting his awareness fade.
'This… isn't so bad.'
*
[Congratulations, Merge Complete!]
[Genetic code has been rewritten.]
[Skill attachment: [Human Sentience] has been added to Merge Library.]
[You are now a Slimling!]
Flan woke up to the chimes of notifications. He yawned, brushing his fingers over grass as if waking from a nap.
[Skill Tree has been rewritten.]
[New innate abilities have been stitched to system.]
"A few more minutes, Mom… the nurses said I don't have to be awake for the treatment," he muttered groggily.
[You are now an Ev1 being.]
"Wait... I'm not in the hospital anymore," he realized, bolting upright.
He was back in the forest. The sunlit grass around him glowed with the same soft green he remembered, but something felt different.
He blinked, rubbing his eyes.
The slimes were all surrounding him as if quietly examining him.
"Who?" The voice was soft and wet, with a strange echoing wobble.
Flan blinked, confused. "What?"
"What?" the same voice replied, as if mimicking him.
He narrowed his eyes. "Did you just… talk?"
One of the slimes replied. "What?"
"You did!" he shouted in realization.
The slimes seemed to get excited at his shouting. "You did!"
The excitement spread through the entire commune of slimes. Soon all twenty-something slimes were shouting "you did" like toddlers who had just learned a new word swear word.
Flan stared in amazement. "What's going on here?"
'Where did they learn how to speak?' The thought barely formed before the memory hit him. The trapper slime... He had merged with it.
His head snapped downward. "Don't tell me I'm a sli..."
But when he checked his skin, it was still pale, human.
He let out a sigh of relief. "Thank god…"
Still, it was clear something inside him had changed. He pulled up his interface.
━━━━⊱༒︎ 『User Interface』 ༒︎⊰━━━━
User: [Unnamed]
Rank: [Ev1 Soul Entity]
━━━━⊱༒︎ 『Stats』 ༒︎⊰━━━━
Vitality: [Magnitude 1.2×]
Agility: [Magnitude 1.2×]
━⊱༒︎ 『Unlocked System Triggers』 ༒︎⊰━
Merge Realm [First Evolution]
Skill Tree
━━━━⊱༒︎•༒︎⊰━━━━
'The only thing different here is my rank,' he realized, before opening the skill tree.
Just then, something bumped his side. One of the slimes had wandered up and was bouncing beside him.
"What now?" he asked.
The slime turned to another and repeated, "What now?"
It bounced over, asking again. Then another. Soon they were all saying it.
'There has to be a way to turn whatever this is off,' Flan thought. It was fascinating that they could actually speak, but it was going to be an annoyance if they repeated every word he said. And especially weird, since he knew he didn't have it in him to kill something he could understand.
The skill tree loaded. But unlike before, there were no branching nodes, just a single glowing tab.
[Slime Innates]
"No!" he shouted in frustration. "Where did all my skills go?!"
The slimes picked up on his voice. "No!" they shouted gleefully, echoing him.
"Shut up!" he screamed, before slowly calming down. He started laughing, a sad, tired sort of chuckle.
'Look at me, shouting at them like it's their fault I messed up and lost all my skills.'
He sighed. "I'm sorry about—"
"Shut up!" a slime interrupted.
"Shut up!" another followed.
Flan gritted his teeth. A wave of rage washed over him. It was illogical, but even knowing that didn't stop the anger.
"Why you little—"
He swiped at the nearest one.
But instead of hitting it, a bolt of blue slime shot from his palm. It latched onto the slime, burrowing into it like a parasite. Just like the trapper slime had done to him.
Flan stepped back, staring at his hands.
"…Cool."
[Skill attachments: [True Form], [Trapper], and [Human Sentience] have been shared.]
"What?"
He looked up. The slime he'd hit had turned completely blue, morphing slightly...like a trapper.
"Wait… I can turn you guys into trappers?" He took another step back. Trapper slimes weren't creatures he wanted to mess with. If not for the merging, that thing would've suffocated him in the Merge Realm.
The other slimes crowded around the changed one, intrigued by their comrade's evolution.
"Don't get close to it!" Flan shouted.
However it was too late.
The trapper pounced on a nearby slime, infecting it with the same blue material. Then two became four. Four became eight. The number doubled again and again.
[External entities linked to system have been detected…]
[Processing…]
"Don't get close to it!" the trappers echoed, now mimicking him perfectly.
Flan stumbled back, tripping over a branch.
The slimes...no, the trappers, started fusing together. Their blue bodies darkened, growing more intense in color.
[External Merge has been detected…]
[Processing…]
"What have I done."
Flan could do nothing but watch on in silence. He knew he'd ought to run, but he wanted to see what they became. And besides, he couldn't just unleash a plague on the world and leave it. He worried he'd just started a slime apocalypse.
Eventually, only three slimes remained. Each a distinct shade: deep lapis lazuli, ocean blue, and soft sky blue.
[Processing Complete!]
[An anomaly was detected.]
[System Innate: Soul Commune has been added to system.]
[Warning: system extensions are highly experimental. Please consult divine supervisor for all changes.]
"Soul Commune…?"
Textboxes appeared above the new slimes.
The one in lapis lazuli had a label:[Ev3 True Trapper Slime]
Flan furrowed his brows. "Ev3? How are you a higher level than me?" He asked, frustrated that an accident had surpassed him.
The slime began doing something odd.
It stretched upward, its form shifting… until it resembled him. A slimy mirror image of Flan.
"Ev3? How are you higher level than me?" it repeated.
"How are you doing that?" Flan asked, stepping back.
The other two watched. Then, after a moment, they morphed as well. And again, they replied in chorus.
"How are you doing that?"