While Atu began to make her own preparations to leave, Azotreh continued to look at the odd stone in their hand. The rabbit-kin always made quintessence in the same way, around the size of Atu's fist and covered in pentagonal facets. This crystal was large enough that Azotreh had to hold it in two hands and had hexagonal facets.
Ruby was also very excited with all the motion going on around the house, trying to be as involved as she could be. Atu mostly used her to store items, since the fox also had her own inventory.
Atu's home was not large by any estimation, about three rooms total, with some enchanted items, but nothing of grand importance. It was rather easy to clean up, and anything that Atu and Ruby couldn't fit into their inventories went to Azotreh, who seemed to have a nigh-unlimited inventory.
Of course, that was just because Nicholas had begun to pull the items out of the inventory the moment they entered, but neither fox nor rabbit-kin knew that.
Once everything they had was packed up, Atu turned back to Azotreh to make a strange request.
"Azotreh, can you eat the house?"
Azotreh was pulled away from the crystal to stare at her with wide eyes.
"Why?"
Atu leaned down to them before she explained, "I don't want there to be a trace of us. While I haven't found any dead skin or other material left behind by you, I know that I shed fur, as does Ruby."
When Azotreh only looked more confused, Atu continued, "Do you know what sympathetic spells are, Azotreh?"
Azotreh shook their head, even though the term rang a bell, they couldn't place it.
"A mage with knowledge of sympathetic spells can use the bonds between a living being and the waste they leave, or items they've touched. It's most commonly used with memorable keepsakes, but a single stray hair of mine or Ruby's could allow someone to track us."
"How? Does Asergia have any practitioners of it? Wouldn't they be coming with us?"
She nodded slowly, but then continued, "I think the amethyst rabbit-kin have some, and while Viket said they won't let anyone in, losing me and however many of the emerald rabbits would be a reason for my father to step in personally."
"Wouldn't they be able to track the others, then?"
"Yes, I think they could, but you can also fix that."
"...by eating everything there too…"
She nodded quietly. Azotreh shook their head. They couldn't just-
As the thought crossed their mind, they suddenly found themselves back in their old room again. Their parents' axe and sword no longer hung on the wall. They looked around as they realized where they were.
They were back in their soul. How was that even possible? Did someone shut them away?
Then the horrific idea of their body exploding into a mass of slime and swallowing Atu flashed in their mind. They had to believe that wasn't what happened.
Atu watched as Azotreh shook their head in refusal before their eyes suddenly shifted. It was something she'd noticed happened whenever that cold presence had washed through their aura, but this time it was different.
Instead of the previous iris, a swirling mix of red and black, Azotreh's eyes turned to a flat black with small white spots. It was like seeing the night sky reflected in their eyes, but without their eyes present to reflect them.
The cold presence washed through their aura, and their expression became utterly cold. She didn't know what this was, but it hadn't attacked her, so she decided to trust it, even if it was just for now.
She led it outside, along with Ruby, and then gestured for whatever this was to do its work. She watched Azotreh's body explode into a mass of semi-transparent cerulean slime. It was only about twice her size, so not nearly enough to entirely engulf her home, but she quickly watched the slime slither up to the roof.
It began to melt through the thatch and stone constituting her roof. It wasn't particularly fast, but it didn't have to be. She just needed it to leave no traces of her home or presence, and the acidic gel was nothing if not thorough.
As the slimy mass consumed her home, it grew larger to further encompass it. It grew and devoured faster, then grew and devoured some more.
When the other rabbit-kin arrived, they watched in a combination of horror and fascination as the mass of slime continued to deconstruct her home brick by brick, and then absorb that mass.
She turned to them and began to speak, telling them to mark a map of locations in the village they want purged. When they asked why, she simply told them that she had a theory that the amethyst rabbit-kin had a practitioner of sympathetic magic.
That got the scholars and mages alike to nod and pull out a large sheet of boar-hide used for paper. The fur had long been peeled away.
The page had a complete map of the village and all of its buildings. Assuming the slime knew where Asergia's home was, they simply began to mark the buildings they needed removed so as not to be tracked as they left.
Only when the mass of slime, now just slightly smaller than the house it finished devouring, finished doing exactly that did the rabbit-kin hand over the map.
One large starlit eye emerged from the slime mass and was quickly supplanted by an emerald iris in that same starry void. Neither the cold presence nor Nicholas bothered to return the prime avatar to its original state. They simply had too much mass to return to the form of the child.
Instead, the cold consciousness mapped it out and began to move towards the larger village.
Panicked screams cut through the night as the two guards at the village's proper gate, more of a large door set into a fence, really, saw the undulating mass of cerulean slime.
But as they called upon the mages to deal with the menace, no mages showed up. No farmers raised their scythes and hoes to fight, and no craftsman brought out the heavy artillery.
The villagers had left through the fields as the twilight sky grew dimmer. No guards had known they'd left until they were called upon and failed to respond.
Even more startling, the mass of slime simply barreled through the gate and into the village, not even bothering with the guards. In fact, as some of the acidic mass was about to touch one of the guards, it was suddenly retracted to continue on its way.
The guards watched in stunned silence as the mass of slime made its way into town, not attacking any of the sleeping villagers.
Even so, they couldn't stand by. They watched the slime encompass a building and begin to melt through it. The wooden walls and stone foundation melting slowly, but still melting.
The duo met eyes and slashed out with small waves of glimmering golden sword light. Their blades moved through the air with incredible speed as they attacked the giant mass.
Even so, they simply cut away some of the mass, leaving the majority behind unscathed.
Worse, the cut off bits quickly began to writhe themselves, but with a mindless ferocity the rabbits had already encountered in the sticky menaces.
But before they could even worry about the cut-off pieces of slime attacking them, the larger slime mass reached out with slight blue tendrils and reabsorbed the misbehaving parts of itself.
Then it simply moved on, not paying the guards any mind. It seemed to roll as it moved, a massive sphere that ate away at the cobblestones of the village.
The pair of guards called on their brothers and sisters, and while only about three-fourths of them responded, that was hopefully enough to contain the growing slime menace.
But it continued to just devour buildings without regard for the slashes of light. While the couple with high-level or high-ranking analysis powers did report that it was taking damage, and rather substantial damage at that, it was still regenerating faster than they could hurt it.
It was only when someone attacked it with a spear that any real and seemingly permanent damage was sustained by the nightmare of slime. While the slashes cut away parts of the slime, which were then recollected and regenerated, the spear left no such remnant. It simply removed a small portion of the slime.
Even so, as it devoured more of the village's structures, it still regenerated faster than a spear alone could damage it.
They fought the mass of slime through the night, but in the end didn't manage to kill the mass of regenerating gel. Even so, they left plenty of damage behind.
Come sunrise, and the devouring of the final building, the mass of slime, now towering over the village, suddenly began to shrink.
It was a long process, taking nearly an hour for the entire mass to shrink down to its original size, definitely helped by the villagers attacking it and ripping away small amounts of its mass, but it eventually reached about the size of a small cabin, and then simply left the village, back out through the gate.
They didn't try to stop it. The chaos it had caused, despite being a lower rank than most in the village, showed how dangerous such a creature could be. They let out a collective sigh of relief when they saw it move away and not even try to double back.
Nicholas had spent most of the night keeping the cold presence from eating the rabbit-kin and checking the almost constantly flowing system notifications. Azotreh had quickly rejoined after the apparent backlash of being forcefully transported into one's own soul.
They somehow seemed shaky despite not having a physical body. It was a little surreal to see them like that.
Even so, the gains were still extraordinary, specifically in the number of nodes they could create. That, and they'd gotten a couple of monster blueprints, and plenty of RM.
As they used Slime Compression to shrink down and finally leave the village after the long night of devastation, the cold presence took a back seat to allow Azotreh to regain complete control over the body. Nicholas could sense the new wariness the child had for the cold presence, but returned to the dungeon nexus soon after. He still had work to do.
[Gains from the Night of Slime:
New Nodes: Nightshade Oak Tree, Dark Slate, Poison Slate, Twilight Granite, Nightshade Granite, Swift Marble, Venom Marble, Starlit Marble, Dark Limestone, Fungal Limestone, Mycelial Granite, Heavy Basalt, Dark Basalt, Venom Basalt, Twilight Basalt, Dark Maple Tree, Nightshade Maple Tree, Frigid Spruce Tree, Nightshade Cypress Tree, Nightshade Cedar Tree, Darkwater Reed, Nightshade Reed.
New Monsters: Nightshade Rat, Nightshade Widow, Nightshade Recluse, Nightshade Bat.
Gained 239 RM, 14 BM
Acquired: Weapon Aura Resistance (0.03%), Weapon Light Resistance (0.02%), Sword Aura Resistance (0.08%), Sword Light Resistance (0.09%), Spear Aura Resistance (0.03%), Spear Light Resistance (0.07%), Axe Aura Resistance (0.02%)
Gelatinous Compression gained 9 levels, Inventory gained 1 level, Gelatinous Body gained 8 levels, Mana to Biomass gained 1 level, and Analyze gained 1 level.]