It Started with Slime - Part 1

Chapter 56 - Flight Path

Aarav was just unsure of what he was willing to do at this time. Did he want to fall into old habits from his past life? No, this was a fresh start and he would treat it as such.

His reward was more than he had expected, he wasn't sure if it was his complete immersion and the feeling that he had from the experience but his hearing had received a very large boost. He would assume that his concentration was responsible, based on that it should be possible with a more focused mind to exponentially strengthen all of his Talents and therefore Skills.

Aarav knew that he was very weak at the moment on the grand scale of things, compared to when he was a human, weak as he was then; this form was weaker and smaller. The fastest way to regain the stat points lost and become stronger was gaining experience, fighting strong monsters and assimilating their traits. He would grow stronger and eat as much as he could.

If he wanted to be human again would he need to Consume and Assimilate Humans? He assumed the answer to that was yes but it was not clear but everything he Assimilated was already dead, he had killed it immediately before...maybe, I wouldn't need to kill any humans just find already dead ones. There must be graveyards here as well.

It might have been an inconsequential thought right now but had the potential to be incredible in the future. Why wouldn't he want to regain a semblance of his old body, he knew how to be human. Not very well but still better than he knew how to be a Slime...maybe...all his memories as Resh were very unusual, like looking at memories of a different person projected on a screen. Like seeing videos of yourself as a baby and then remembering them as video clips from your perspective instead of actual memories of your own.

Not that he had ever had videos of himself as a child, being abandoned at the steps of an orphanage would do that to you though I guess. It had always been the same as a child; trust someone and they inevitably disappointed you. He knew it was nothing new or unique about his situation, many people had been in the same circumstances as he had. It was not a complaint on his part, he knew better than to think that would achieve anything. The world was for the doers, not the complainers.

Anyway, stop thinking about it and feeling sorry for yourself. You have never felt sorry for yourself in your life. Snap out of it! ­There was nothing he could do about being a Slime except find humans to harvest. Evolve and grow stronger and he would eventually be able to remedy the situation. Second, he was in a new and strange world. His priorities needed to be first survival and then figure out what was going. Right now being too weak meant that the first took major precedent.

Aarav unfurled wings that had only been used once in the last few days and marvelled at the idea of people able to fly. When he had used them earlier he had not had a chance to enjoy the fact. The dire situation coupled with the fact that he had been an Earth Slime and therefore against the idea of flight. Now it seemed entirely too easy. He did not feel nauseous at the idea of flying and most importantly it did not fill him with fear or revulsion as it had before.

Doing all the regular pre-flight checks, he made sure that wings, legs, fins and tails were all ready and present, it would be useful to funnel the flow of air. Maybe even coax a little extra speed out of this tiny body. He would be damned if he didn't squeeze as much experience as he could from his time. Consuming more would be a good way to grow and see if that made things work better but the restriction on Weight would need to be worked on as well. The best way to do that was eating a flying creature...all this mental gymnastics is giving me a headache. I always learnt best by doing...

The flimsy wings that were from insects looked see-through and weak, called Strong Insectoid Wings but it was relative. A maximum carrying capacity of only 300g made them...annoying more than anything. Flapping those wings to gain altitude made a countdown for distance appear in his field of view. That has never come up before...maybe my extensive experience with gaming then... The amount must have read thirty-nine metres to start and then gradually went down as he rose into the air. It had first appeared when he was running from the Panther but the situation had been so chaotic at the time that he hadn't noticed. Now it read 34.6m since it had only been a few metres to the low branches where he landed then up through the leaves getting to the canopy alone though was more than he could do in this hour...unless!

There were a lot of ways to improve this ability to fly through Talents, the most limiting at the moment though was distance, only being able to do 39m per hour was ridiculous. How could that be improved? The clarity and focus of the idea in his mind was key to the greatest success of the Talent created. Therefore his first step would be to focus hard on what he wanted before actually doing it. Once he had the picture clear in his mind...Okay, here we go!

It started with the focus on the wing joints, at the moment there was a limit to how much stamina could be channelled to the wing joints and therefore how long the wing joints could sustain flight for and then his muscles grew tired requiring a rest, that was the reason that gliding was still possible even if the muscles were too tired to flap. This meant that if more stamina were funnelled to the wing muscles and joints then the distance that could be travelled would grow. However, it was exponentially more expensive to continue flying as more and more of the wings burden would be taken by stamina instead of the wings inherent capability. A Talent was the result; as long as Aarav had the stamina to spend he could effectively keep flying...

You have gained your second World Talent Infinite Flight, each additional metre beyond your initial Skill capability you will gain an additional +20% Exp cumulatively up to a maximum of 500%. However, each additional metre will also require 100% additional cumulative stamina to travel with no upper limit. Evolve this Talent to get greater bonuses. This World Talent can work with other Active Skills and Talents that can be employed while using this talent. Does not require additional focus you can just continue to fly.

So it means that the first 39m costs 0.1 SP each but then the next metre is 0.2, then 0.3 and so on. Hmm, that would get expensive fast, but each metre also adds 20% to the experience so 1 Exp, then 1.2, 1.4 etc. A couple of minutes of testing confirmed his expectations to be true. This was going to be interesting, especially with only 10% recovery available to him. Maybe something could be done about that massive countdown timer that had appeared at his thought indicating his handicap. 26 days left and only a few minutes after fully regaining cognisance he was already tired of the limitation.

Checking his flying capabilities again it also looked like the experience boost and stamina cost only reset at the top of each hour so as long as he didn't fly for the rest of the hour according to his indicator no more stamina would be lost.

He would be able to do about 140m instead of 39m on a full tank. But the cost became unreasonable well before that, 20m after the initial 39m the experience gain would cap at 5 Exp per meter. Testing it out until he had flow seventy meters straight up to the canopy gave a very clear picture of the limitations and costs of the Talent. It helps that because it was a passive Talent; he just needed to keep flying and could focus on another Talent at the same time. He would count it an unintended bonus.

That flight had wiped out much of his strength and now he was resting on the top foliage staring around him at the sea of grey, trees that he knew should have been green and yellow with the lack of rain were drained of colour by his lack of capable eyesight. Can't wait until get better eyes as well, these are so annoying.