We ran—if you could call two blobs of living jelly sliding downhill "running."Leaves slapped our bodies; dew streaked like glass veins. Elina was a blur of silver beside me.
"Don't tell me you're actually going to do this," she said, voice trembling through our shared link.
"Do what?" I puffed, bouncing over a root. "Commit mild homicide for fashion reasons? Absolutely."
Her silence said everything. Mine said trust me and maybe regret it later.
We reached the foot of the hill and paused. From here, the jungle opened into ruinous stone corridors—columns half-eaten by vines, mana glimmering like fireflies. The humans were somewhere beyond, their laughter echoing faintly.
"Another day, another questionable moral choice," I muttered. "Let's see what powers I can farm before lunch."
Elina sighed. "You make evolution sound like a child's game."
"Technically, it is," I said. "We just have worse graphics."
We crawled through the undergrowth, whispering in between cautious hops. When small beasts—fangboars, vine serpents, redhounds—lunged at us, we dispatched them like a seasoned co-op team.I darted in with Rabbit Speed, blasting Poison Bullets to blind, and Elina followed with mana bursts that knocked enemies off balance.
By the time the ruins appeared through the mist, we were breathing rhythm instead of words.
Below us, five humans camped around a broken obelisk. Light from their torches painted shifting gold across their armor. They looked nothing like heroes—tired, muddy, laughing at bad jokes.
Elina whispered, "They look so… ordinary. How are you planning to kill them?"
"Strategically and with questionable ethics."
Her tone cooled. "They're still people."
"People who'd harvest us for potions if they found us." I tilted what passed for a head. "Survival's ugly. I'm just trying to make it stylish."
For a long moment, neither of us moved. Then she said quietly, "Do it quickly."
The Hunt
I slipped into the memory of the Savannah Bee—the wings, the stinger, the way the world snapped into sharp angles. A faint hum built in my chest as my body re-formed into something small, fast, and cruel.
System > Transformation: Wasp Form activated.
Poison gathered beneath my shell until it shimmered in violet droplets. I rose above the camp, wings whispering.
Below, the adventurers chatted."Air feels heavy," one grumbled."Stop whining. Drink, then sleep."Another coughed. "Wait—what's that smell?"
I released the poison mist.
It rolled outward in slow waves, invisible at first, then luminous under the firelight. Coughs turned to shouts.
"Poison! Mages—purify the air!""I can't see! There's something in the fog—!"
I dived. Wind Scythe! Air ripped in crescents, slicing through confusion and smoke. The first man went down before realizing he was under attack. I moved again—quick, methodical, impersonal. The mist did the rest.
From the treeline, Elina watched in silence. I could feel her tension humming through our link—half horror, half awe.
Inside the haze, I fought the guilt clawing at my ribs. Killing monsters had been abstract; they didn't scream like this. These were real voices. But the Slaughter System didn't care about philosophy. It cared about results.
When the last cry faded, I landed on shaky legs. The mist thinned, revealing five bodies scattered across the ruin floor.
Elina approached slowly. "You really pulled it off."
I forced a grin. "Heh. Yeah… easy peasy." My laugh came out brittle. "Let's not waste time. Systems like to be fed."
We began to absorb. Threads of light rose from the corpses and coiled into us—warm, dizzying streams of memory and mana.
Then the System's tone shifted.
[Multiple Humanoid Lifeforms Absorbed][Physical manifestation will mirror dominant essence within host memory]
"Huh?" I managed.
Before I could blink, Elina glowed—pure white fire reshaping into the outline of a woman. Limbs, hair, light: an echo of who she'd been. Her aura spilled through the clearing like moonlight reborn.
I stared, stunned, as my own form followed—jelly hardening, limbs unfurling, bone and muscle remembered from another life or maybe from a game I'd once lost sleep over. When the glow dimmed, I was standing, human again.
I looked down at my hands—broad, strong, scarred in the exact way my old avatar's had been. "So I've apparently spent more hours gaming than being alive," I said to no one. "Guess it paid off."
Then I turned—and froze.
Elina stood there, still half in light, the aura wrapping her like silk. Her hair shimmered silver-white, her eyes gold and unguarded. For a heartbeat we simply stared, both realizing how completely human we looked—and how completely unprepared we were for modesty.
She gasped and whirled away.
I yelped, tripping over a fallen sword. "Right! Clothes! We need those!"
"I—yes!" she stammered. Were human malesthat.....big, she thought.
I rummaged through the remnants of the camp, grabbed what fabric I could, and activated a skill I'd nearly forgotten.
System > Skill used: Spider Thread.
Fine strands spun from my fingertips. I stitched scraps into something roughly clothing-shaped—tunics, belts, the bare minimum of decency.
"Don't look," I muttered while working. "I'm the fashion designer of doom."
When we finally dressed, the silence between us was painfully awkward. She adjusted a sleeve; I studied a pebble like it was fascinating.
I flexed a hand again, marvelling. "This body… real muscles, real breath. Wow."
[Body registered: Evans (Thunder Legion IV)]
I couldn't help a grin. "Of all the forms to get, my favorite raid character. Handsome, dangerous, slightly unhinged—fits me perfectly."
Elina examined her reflection in a shard of broken armor. The regal poise of a queen had already returned to her shoulders.
"Was I always this tall?" she murmured, then met my eyes. "You're staring."
"Observation," I said lightly. "Pure scientific observation."
She rolled her eyes but smiled despite herself.
For a while we stood among the quiet bodies. The laughter of minutes ago had gone to ash.
Elina knelt, hands trembling. "They were alive. And now… I can feel them inside me. Their essence."
I crouched beside her. "Welcome to being abnormal."
She looked up. "You joke to hide it."
"Yeah," I admitted. "But if I stop joking, I start remembering."
Together we dragged the bodies into a shallow trench and covered them with stone. It wasn't forgiveness, but it was something like respect.
When we turned to leave, the ruins pulsed faintly—the obelisk they had been studying flickering to life. Runes crawled across its surface, whispering in a voice only the System seemed to hear.
[World Notice — Anomaly Detected][Unregistered Divine Signal located: Theon and Elina von Ashborn]
I exhaled. "Great. Now even rocks gossip about us."
We walked until dawn peeled silver across the canopy. Every movement felt strange—muscles unused for so long protesting the weight of reality.
Elina moved with instinctive grace; I moved like someone who'd just discovered ankles.
She laughed quietly. "For a so-called god, you trip a lot."
"Divine balance takes practice," I said. "Give it a few centuries."
We talked as we went—about mana currents, about finding the nearest human settlement, about how to train these new bodies before someone trained us instead. The jungle thinned into golden plains, and the horizon smelled of smoke and civilization.
Two silhouettes walked side by side where there had once been slime and silence.
"Two monsters wearing human skin," I said, smiling sideways at her.
Elina glanced at me, the faintest spark of amusement in her golden eyes. "Then let's make sure we wear it better than they did."
[Experience Gained + 4,500 EP][Skill Unlocked — Poison Mist Lv 2][Title Progression — God of Abnormality (1 %) → (4 %)][World Notice: Entity Status Raised to "Lesser Divine Type"]
And so the gods of slime took their first steps as something more—no longer blobs of curiosity, but beings that the world itself had begun to notice.
End of Chapter 3