No Step On Slime

Chapter 19.5: Ethanol-Induced Rambling

"What are you doing, exactly?" Rimuru asked.

He had walked in on the Automaton pulling herself up on a bar that was hanging off the ceiling.

"Enjoyin' this bod of mine, of course!" she replied, hopping down from the pull-up bar. She rolled her arm in its socket, before stretching both arms above her head.

"How do you 'enjoy your body' with exercise?" Rimuru asked.

"Rimmy, I dunno about you," Talleigh replied. "But I ain't a stick in my past life. Worked out a bit to keep myself fit, though I wasn't anything close to a bodybuilder."

"Well... I was physically active in my past life a lot, too, since I was a general contractor," the humanoid slime replied. "But why do you ask?"

"Why do I ask?" she repeated. "Well, just look at how fuckin' strong I am now!"

The Automaton emphasized this by grabbing ahold of one of the metal workbenches and effortlessly lifted it with just one hand.

"All this really feels unearned, if I gotta be honest. But it's addicting as hell to flex when you're ten times stronger than how you used to be."

Rimuru had to admit... that was somewhat true. He didn't doubt that his physical strength was much higher now, but didn't exactly know how strong he was now compared to his previous life.

Talleigh grabbed ahold of the pull-up bar above her again and started a few reps.

"One-handed pull-ups. I can do a hundred in a minute, breaking world records right here—"

The Automaton suddenly fell to the ground as her grip on the pull-up bar slipped. Rimuru winced at the very painful-sounding impact her body made on the ground.

"Talleigh, are you alright?" he asked, looking over the Automaton.

There wasn't a response.

"Talleigh!" the humanoid slime asked again, louder this time. He hurried over to where she fell, kneeling to check on the fallen Automaton.

She was out cold. Rimuru slapped her lightly in the face once, trying to get a reaction out of her. The Automaton remained still.

That was when Rimuru began to worry. 

He could still feel a faint magicule signature coming from her, but not much else. She wasn't dead, just fainted.

...But it wasn't like Talleigh was a human. The humanoid slime was very sure they couldn't faint.

Could they?

Rimuru promptly picked up the Automaton to lay her on a nearby bench. Keeping her on the ground would be terribly rude, after all.

. . . . .

"She just suddenly fainted?" Kaijin asked.

"Has it ever happened when she was working before?"

The Dwarf scratched the back of his head. "Not that I'm aware, no."

Rimuru was trying to figure out what was wrong. Except for that one time...

"Think I just got it," Rimuru said, hitting himself in the forehead. "It was a while ago, so you wouldn't know. But Talleigh once lowered the amount of magicules in her body to almost zero. That got her to pass out for a few moments."

"Really?" Kaijin asked. "What is the purpose of it? I can't imagine how draining yourself of magicules would give you an advantage."

"Stealth, supposedly. She was able to use it against Milim once, with mild amounts of success. Either way, the only time I remembered her fainting was when her magicules were completely exhausted."