Slimes were a subspecies of the Starry Sky race known as Shugus. Like Shugus, they had shapeless bodies, glowing eyes that could break down and regenerate, and slime that dripped from head to toe. They could mimic all kinds of forms and organs, and moved by wriggling.
But unlike the foul, tar-like slime that coated Shugus, a slime's coating was translucent and gelatinous, and it smelled rather fresher. In other words, a slime was a "cleaner," "cuter" Shugus.
The monster before Zhu Si and the others had a slime-like body, but it also had two legs—one long and one short, one thick and one thin. It stumbled as it ran. With every step, a chunk of "flesh" seemed to slide off its body. Its eyeballs kept rolling out of their sockets too, bouncing across the ground until its enormous feet caught them. Splat. Each eye flattened into a puddle of slime and merged back into its body.
"—What kind of monster is that?"
Hermione knew the others were aware of her background, so she had no qualms about admitting what she did not know. Whenever she saw an unfamiliar creature, she was the first to ask about it.
Li Meng said nothing.
Zhu Si slowly shrank as she pondered, becoming a Little Witch almost without noticing. "It looks a bit like a slime variant?" she said, sounding uncertain.
"I thought I'd got it wrong!"
Li Meng let out a huge sigh of relief, then explained herself. "I saw that faint blue-green glow around it, and its body seemed to be somewhere between real and illusory. It didn't look like a low-level Magical Creature such as a slime..."
"That isn't a glow." Zhu Si narrowed her eyes, her hand already resting on the spellbook at her waist. "...It's a membrane."
"A