If I were being honest with myself, a slime being buried alive wasn’t that big of a concern. Thanks to the slimy, goopy nature of my body, I could fit almost anywhere. Even my core could flatten itself to a certain extent, allowing me to slip into nooks and crannies in otherwise impenetrable rock.

  Though I was relatively fine being swallowed by the earth, the same could not be said for Dorin. We tumbled through the shifting earth until a large rock ripped part of my slime away, and I lost my grip. It wouldn’t be the last slime I’d lose.

  By the time the earth stopped quaking, I quivered in pain. Between the fights on the surface, and being dragged through tumbling earth, much of my slime had been pulled from me. I didn’t dare move. Warnings went off in my mind, provided by the Voice of the Creator.

  [Warning: Health at 15%. Seek aid immediately.

  Warning: Dungeon detected.

  You have entered Dragon’s Gate; Floor 1

  Dungeon-Born tag activated.]

  I stayed perfectly still. Dungeons were nothing to joke about, this I knew instinctually. They were dangerous places where monsters spilled from the walls to destroy intruders and consume their mana. I would know. I was born here.

  The rubble was dense and pressed in from all sides. Yet, for the moment, I was relatively safe. I swapped my arcane stance to Healer’s Bearing and focused my remaining mana on Soothing Touch.

  Immediately, I felt better. The warnings about my health faded, leaving behind a message reading “Health: 12/22.” I might have been tapped dry on mana, but at least I wasn’t on the brink of death. Silver linings.

  Piece by piece, I pulled myself through the rubble. I twisted and turned around rocks both big and small, eating as I went. Most of the rocks held the earthy taste of soil, mixed as they were with the topsoil of the forest above, but one shard was more metallic in nature. It must have broken off from the strange metal spikes uprooted during the collapse. That one piece of metal tasted like fire, steel, and magic and the Voice of the Creator chimed into to my thoughts.

  [Substance Eaten:

  Stone: 6/10 to ability unlock

  Dungeon Bronze: 1/20 to ability unlock]

  I thanked the Voice of the Creator briefly before continuing my escape. There would be time for eating rocks. After all, this was my high [Versatility] stat in action to bring out the true potential of a slime. With Efficient Eater, I could turn meals into abilities, so long as I had enough of them.

  Yet, as much as I would have loved to sift through the pile for more bronze, there was a bigger concern. Dorin would not survive the collapse as well as I had. Humans simply weren’t built for tight spaces the same way slimes were. He wasn’t born underground, and he certainly wasn’t born in a dungeon.

  He was my friend! My only friend, really. We’d forged the bonds of battle! Surely, that meant something to the man. I owed it to him to see him to safety…or at the very least to see his body back to his children. I didn’t know the likelihood that he’d survived such a disastrous fall, especially with how weak he was compared to me. He didn’t have many of those weird Levels that humans used instead of Tiers. For all I knew, he was already dead.

  But, even if he was dead and gone, I would find him and bring him back. Such was my mission.

  I sifted through the rubble, searching for any trace of the knight. A remnant of his fire magic, a scrap of his clothes, or even a strand of the intimidating mane of hair attached to his head would go a long way towards finding him.

  No threads of magic illuminated my arcane sight save for thick copper lines that flowed in either direction. They outlined a hallway beyond the endless sea of rocks through which I twisted.

  Rocks would have filled the hallway, I reasoned. Dorin is bigger than most of them, meaning he should be closer to the top than me. But, was he close enough to the edge that he would have fallen into the tunnel first?

  It was a gamble. There was every chance that his skull had been crushed, or a sizeable hole pierced in his chest. Despite their appearances, humans were so fragile. At least my slime was meant to break away when injured. It still hurt, and with enough slime lost, I’d be in serious danger. At least I wasn’t worried about being crushed or injured under a metric ton of stone and sediment.

  I shifted my search upward, climbing rock after rock until I found a familiar taste on a nearby rock. The rock held a deep-seated fire. It was born in the deep earth before its time as part of the Dragon’s Gate bedrock, but what was interesting about it wasn’t the rock itself. Traces of human skin and fire magic lingered, nearly overwhelmed by the taste of the rock’s origin.

  Reaching out, I found another rock with the taste of human on it. Then another. The trail led upward, fed by rocks that had passed by Dorin during the shifting quake, until soon my slime encountered the leather of a boot.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “I found you!” I shouted.

  There was no response. His magic was cold and spent, but the stones were warm with his dwindling body heat. Time was of the essence. With all the speed I could muster, I shifted through the rocks beneath him. They were packed tight, but I moved through them like water through the earth, swiftly—or as swiftly as any slime could really manage—reaching first Dorin’s chest, then his head.

  He wasn’t breathing. There wasn’t any room for it.

  Squishy humans and their fragile systems…

  With the tiniest bit of slime I could muster, I ate away at the rock around his face. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could do without burning the human. As the rock melted into my body, the surrounding pebbles shifted, and a tiny breeze graced my slime.

  There was an open space nearby. I followed the fresher air past Dorin’s head. A few yards through shifting rubble, the earth opened up into a tunnel, one lined with the dungeon’s copper magic.

  I turned at once, swapping my arcane signature to match Slayer’s Stance. My acid increased in strength, and I dove into the rubble. Dorin’s time was limited, and I would not let him be buried alive, not on my watch.

  [Substance eaten:

  Stone: 7/10

  Dungeon Bronze: 2/20]

  “Stay there, I’m coming!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me through the pile that threatened to become his tomb.

  [Substance eaten:

  Stone: 8/10]

  Pebbles melted before my touch. For every stone I ate, ten more took its place as the rubble shifted and slid further into the hallway. Inch by inch, the stones moved, and soon, a head slid into view on a sea of tiny stones. After a brief attempt to pull Dorin directly from the stone, I continued eating away at the stones beneath him until gravity pulled him free. He slid down the pile, coughing out the dust that filled his lungs.

  “You’re alive!” I cried.

  Though there was no response, I was relieved beyond words. My only friend still breathed, even as blood oozed from myriad cuts on his forehead and exposed skin. The outer armor he wore during the battle did much to protect him from the sharper stones, which was probably the only reason he lived at all.

  Healer’s Bearing took hold of my magic, and I reached out gently to touch the gash on his forehead. I could fix it. He’d be right as rain…as soon as I recharged more mana. I didn’t have nearly enough to fix him now, but with the change in my arcane stance, Cleansing Aura came into effect. Green wisps of my own magic dancing around the hallway confirmed the aura’s presence.

  For now, that was all I could do. Dorin was breathing. He would be okay. I just needed to make sure no dungeon monsters ate him before my mana recharged enough for Soothing Touch, and all would be well.

  Yes…it’ll all be just fine…

  It was definitely not just fine.

  I must have drifted off while on watch, because I woke to a solid wall of white obscuring my senses. My slime tingled with an uncomfortable itching that reminded me of…

  What’s my health?

  [Health: 20/22

  Mana: 9/42]

  That was fine. The rest provided the chance to recover, thus restoring my health nearly to full. Nearly…but the itching hurt as it tried to pull at bits of my membrane and slime.

  Panic filled me, and without thinking, I switched to Slayer’s Stance. The white wall was eating me! I was sure of it! But, if it thought that I would just take it laying down, then it had another thing coming. It’s an eat or be eaten world, and I was positively starving.

  Acid ate through the wall of white as I lashed out with everything I had. It melted in the face of my power, leaving behind spots of darkness where my senses could reach the outside world. Seeing beyond, the wall wasn’t all that thick. I redoubled my efforts, eating through it with giddy glee.

  [Creatures consumed:

  Lesser Slimes: 15/10

  Ability unlocked: Enhanced Eater]

  There was not a doubt in my mind that something like Enhanced Eater would benefit me in the long run. After all, a slime’s most important skill is eating, and one should always tend to their most important skills first in order to ensure their survival.

  [Ability selected: Enhanced Eater

  5 ability slots remain.

  Enhanced Eater - Your ability to dissolve and consume things has increased. Consuming creatures and objects with high mana density will allow you to draw that mana into yourself, restoring your mana pool.]

  The benefits of being a slime are many. Not every monster had as many ability slots as I did. [Versatility] was a blessing, one that allowed me to grow in ways other monsters would never be able to.

  [Creature eaten:

  Lesser slimes: 27/100

  +12 mana]

  I sighed in relief as the wall of white slime finally dissipated before my vastly superior strength. Once they were gone, I cast my senses around me. Dorin still rested against the wall, looking just as poorly off as he had been before.

  That doesn’t make any sense?

  Hopping over to the knight, I gently touched his hand with a pseudopod. His skin was cold, but I could still feel the soft pulse of blood inside him. The fire of his magic still burned, sending heat through his body as it tried desperately to repair itself after the fight and the fall.

  Yet, it wasn’t as fast as I’d expected. My Cleansing Aura should have made him heal faster, yet it didn’t seem to have any effect at all. In the end, the obvious conclusion was that the magic from Cleansing Aura wasn’t enough to kick-start Dorin’s own healing. With the extra mana from the lesser slimes, I had enough to spare on Soothing Touch. But, before the mana within me could react, the Voice of the Creator stopped me.

  [Invalid Target

  Target does not have the monster tag]

  Eh? I paused, trying to process the words.

  What was the point of being a healer if I couldn’t heal the people who needed it?! What made humans less deserving than monsters? Sure, humans had their own system with their own weird levels or something like that, but mana is mana…right?

  Apparently not. My mana was not compatible with Dorin’s. I oozed back on my slime, watching Dorin carefully. He wasn’t healing any faster with Cleansing Aura or without, meaning the aura probably also required the target to have the monster tag. Eventually, I shut my aura down completely, resting in Slayer’s Stance to maximize my own mana restoration. Cleansing Aura was costly, and I wouldn’t recover as fast with it active.

  I checked the numbers as my mana increased one by one, rising painfully slowly until it reached twenty-eight…twenty-nine…thirty.

  A grating SCREEEEE! echoed down the corridor, sending a shudder through my slime. The ground began to shake, and I turned, senses scanning for any sign of the coming danger.

  The thundering footsteps in the ground heralded the creature as it tore around the corner in a flurry of teeth, claws, and scaley hide. I barely had time to register anything at all before it was upon me, but what I did recognize was that it was big and very, very angry.