Communicating with Slimes

When hunting the rat, System's original plan had been to ambush its eyes with [Corrosive Mucus], then, after it lost its vision, harass it incessantly with dead branches and loose stones. Once the rat was utterly exhausted, he would finish it off with his mandibles.

But after testing his flying strength and discovering that he could fly while gripping a half-meter-long stick with his tentacles, he adopted the method he had just used.

He carried the rat high into the sky, then let it fall to its death.

Though the rat weighed slightly less than the stick, a constantly struggling rat was clearly far more difficult to handle, and took more effort to carry in flight.

Fortunately, his original plan had more or less succeeded. The rat had fallen from high in the air.

Perhaps because of the fallen leaves and dead branches in the forest, the rat that had dropped from such a height did not die immediately. Its body convulsed as it twitched ceaselessly on the ground, already incapable of moving.

Blood trickled from the corner of the rat's mouth. Seeing System approach, its one remaining eye showed what seemed to be fear.

"Hmm? With injuries this severe, it still hasn't lost consciousness?"

System opened his mandibles, intending to give the rat its final end, but he quickly stopped.

System recalled how the rat had eaten Shawa's severed leg. He used his remaining three tentacles to dip into the blood flowing from the rat's mouth, then tasted its blood right in front of it.

The rat's blood tasted roughly like the bird blood he had tasted long ago. After the milky flavor came something like tea leaves, leaving an endless aftertaste in his mouth.

But after tasting the blood on all three tentacles in succession, System discovered that the blood on each tentacle tasted different.

The blood on one tentacle carried an especially rich coffee flavor. As he tasted that coffee-like flavor, his stomach experienced a faint prickling pain along with an indescribable sense of comfort.

The experience gained from the blood on that tentacle was fully four times that of the others.

"Why did that flavor appear?"

System dipped all three tentacles into the blood at the corner of the rat's mouth again, then put them into his mouth and tasted them one by one.

System found that it was still the same tentacle whose blood tasted different, carrying that coffee flavor, though this time the flavor was much fainter than before.

Staring at the rat's eyes as their light gradually faded, System suddenly understood why he could taste that coffee-like flavor.

System's body began to tremble faintly without his realizing it.

Though he had already decided to treat it with caution.

The liquid from the spider's venom glands had still entered his body by accident, mixed with the rat's blood through his tentacles.

He even felt as though he had accidentally eaten rat poison and was about to die.

Fortunately, judging from how his body felt now, stronger spider venom was hard to say, but no matter how much venom from this black-gray spider he consumed, it would not cause a problem. It would even bring his body quite a few benefits.

Watching the rat's body after it had stopped twitching, System picked up the corpse and began returning to the temporary nest.

If System had to choose the person most suited to eating this rat, it would undoubtedly be the soldier ant Shawa.

But after System drove away the worker ants patrolling near the nest and laboriously stuffed the rat into it.

Shawa still had not awakened from her slumber. It seemed that using his tentacles during the day had indeed drained much of Shawa's energy, and she needed to rest for a while longer.

System moved the rat's corpse into an empty chamber, checked Shawa's condition, then crawled out of the temporary nest once more.

Spreading his wings, System flew toward the swamp he remembered from the daytime. Two slimes were there.

While clearing the faintly glowing mushrooms from the nest, an idea had suddenly occurred to System.

Now that he could perceive the emotions of mushrooms, could he perceive the emotions of slimes as well?

Slimes could split into several individuals, and each individual possessed an independent consciousness.

System felt that slimes were essentially a collective life-form, similar to fungi or bacteria. In theory, their emotions could be perceived through his Mind Transfer.

Perhaps he could even communicate with them.

Flying swiftly, System found a slime quietly resting in the swamp, near the place he had viewed from the clouds during the day.

This slime's gelatinous body was dark green, somewhat different in color from the brown slime System had once known.

System continued circling the area, but did not find the other slime he had seen back then. He had no idea where it had gone.

After searching fruitlessly, System gave up and returned to the swamp where the slime was.

Picking up a dead branch from the ground, System flew directly above the slime and dropped it.

System wanted to test this slime's reaction.

Just like his old slime friend had reacted in the past, the slime's gelatinous body trembled violently and swallowed the stick System had thrown down.

As the slime swallowed the branch, System sensed the emotion it gave off—the desire to devour food.

It seemed that through Mind Transfer and [Mental Link], he truly could sense a slime's emotions.

The emotions produced by the slime seemed to be a collection of many faint consciousnesses. They influenced one another, ultimately forming a shared emotion.

Clearly, slimes were life-forms akin to a collection of fungi, bacteria, or microorganisms.

Compared to mushrooms, the emotional fluctuations emitted by the slime were stronger and more concentrated. Its emotions were integrated from countless faint consciousnesses, unlike the fungi within mushrooms, which possessed no collective consciousness.

System continued throwing branches to test the slime several more times.

He discovered that this form of life, the slime, seemed even simpler than he had imagined.

When it swallowed the branch, the slime clearly conveyed a feeling of excitement. That excitement lasted for about three seconds before fading away.

A few seconds later, the slime would feel that there was a foreign object inside its body. After some time, it would expel the indigestible dead branch.

System discovered that slimes possessed even less intelligence than insects and could only act according to their bodily instincts.

After testing the slime for a while longer, System began trying to communicate with it.

"Jump!"

After System sent the mental message, the slime truly jumped two seconds later.

This slime was a complete replica of Big Fool, the soldier ant from back then. Once System sent out a mental command, the slime would respond to it.

However, unlike Big Fool, who had simply trusted him back then, the slime obeyed System's commands only as an instinctive reaction.

A slime's body resembled a collection of countless tiny life-consciousnesses. Once System sent a mental message to the slime, as long as even one of the many consciousnesses within its body responded, the others would be affected as well, setting off a chain reaction that completed the message System had conveyed.

Thus, System could use Mind Transfer to control the slime.

However, controlling slimes this way was far from ideal.

This kind of life-form could not understand System's overly complicated commands. He could only make it move and jump.

Moreover, the slime seemed to possess only a few seconds of memory. Even if he ordered it to keep moving in one direction, after three to five seconds, it would stop on its own after losing its memory.