Chương 243: (238) 4.17. An Explorer’s Decision

It had been late in the afternoon when they first entered the lightning fragment, and it had taken them most of the evening in order to actually make their way to the center and find Umine's spire. The dark cloud layer already did wonders for blocking out what little light the fragment had, but now that night had actually fallen, it was pitch black, only illuminated by the frequent strikes of lightning.

Ironically, the near-constant flashes were more of a hindrance than any actual help, as none of their eyes could actually adjust to the darkness with the constant lightning. Alka was the only one unfazed by it, and the rest of them couldn't exactly search for the missing schlime blind as they were. The group made an executive decision to make camp for the night and hunker down within a small stone building Vin created until morning before continuing their search.

Even with his shimmerwing mattress, sleep didn't come easy with the never-ending barrage of thunder and lightning. When morning finally came and Alka woke them all with a light tap of her warpick to the head, Vin felt a bit groggy for the first time in ages. Note to self, ear plugs might not be another bad pick up at some point.

"Big fan of the mattress, Vin." Scule yawned, getting up from the corner of the shimmerwing mattress he'd claimed for himself and Reginald last night.

"Glad you ended up taking it." Reginald squeaked out his agreement, stretching and sleepily nodding at him.

"Anytime. Not like you guys actually take up any space." He chuckled, making the mattress vanish once more with Dimensional Sheath.

"Who's got the rations?" After a less than exciting breakfast of hardtack and some dried jerky, Vin dismantled their temporary shelter and the group took off in search of the missing schlime. Curiously, he ended up getting some help from one of his lesser-used skills. Tracking increased to lvl 9! 900 exp gained.

Despite the fact that his 'tracking' consisted of little more than wandering around and sending out giant pulses of Sense Magic while searching for signs of slime on the ground, the System seemed to decide that was good enough to count toward his Tracking skill.

He didn't know if the System was simply throwing him a bone, or if it was because the skill helped give him the sense of when he was in position to cast his spell again without overlapping an area he'd already searched, therefore saving him time and mana, but he certainly wasn't going to complain. By the time he finally got a hit, a good couple of hours later, his Tracking skill had increased two more times to level 11.

"I got something," he announced, much to the excitement of his friends who had been wandering around behind him all morning without much more to do than look up at the lightning storm over their heads, wondering if each bolt of lightning would be the one to finally bypass the giant spires and strike them instead.

"Something other than Alka and our own artifacts, I mean."

"Let's hope it didn't get itself eaten already," Alka said, wiping the blood off her sword from the third elite monster she'd killed that morning. They were still keeping up the strategy of avoiding the smaller spires and using Sense Earth when doing so was impossible, allowing her to kill the hidden monsters before they could even attack.

"If it lost its shard, I don't think I would get any feedback from my spell at all," he pointed out, changing their direction and heading toward the source of magic.

"I'm pretty certain it's alive!" It didn't take long for him to bring them to the location his spell had indicated, and Vin found himself standing before the saddest spire in the entire fragment. Unlike the other rock spires that stretched up dozens of feet into the sky, here was a tiny nub of rock that barely reached up to his waist.

"... I think we found it," Scule said, staring at the tiny spire.

"Well, come on then, let's get it out of there. Sooner we bring it back to Umine, the sooner we can get out of here before we're all turned into crispy barbeque by an errant lightning strike."

"Should I..?" Alka asked, raising her warpick and motioning toward the tiny spire.

"Let me," Vin said, deciding there wasn't any need to freak out the poor schlime any more than necessary. While he doubted Alka's warpick could actually harm the creature, not unless she ended up striking its magical core, there wasn't any need to scare it. Moving closer, he laid his hands on the rock spire.

"We're friends of Umine," he said loudly, hoping the schlime within could hear them.

"I'm going to open the spire now!" After giving advance warning, Vin threw together the runic formation for Stone Shape and got to work. In only a few seconds, he'd melted away the top half of the spire, revealing a quivering ball of slime nearly identical to how Umine had looked when it first fell out of its hole. Immediately, the schlime morphed into a tiny replica of him, and he realized this one was actually quite a bit smaller than Umine.

A one-foot-tall replica of himself was even more adorable to look at than a three-foot-tall one was, even if his own face was filled with fear. Based on how it was using his body to shy away from them, this schlime seemed far more timid than Umine was.

"Friends?" it asked, staring up at him and using that same, warbling voice that Umine had, if slightly higher pitched.

"Umine?"

"Yes, Umine asked us to come get you." He nodded, wondering just why the second schlime had left the giant spire in the first place.

"Are you hurt or anything? Why did you leave the spire?"

"Leave." It nodded, in a shocking imitation of himself, still trembling slightly in fear.

"Travel."

"You're kidding me… You left because you want to travel?" Scule scoffed, staring at the schlime like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Yes." It nodded again, morphing into Scule instead. Hilariously, this new, tinier schlime was still twice as tall as Scule, and Vin had a sneaking suspicion Scule wasn't a fan of seeing what he might have looked like at a foot tall as opposed to his current six inches based on the grumbling under the petian's breath.

"You don't want to go back?" Shia asked, tapping her chin.

"What's your name, anyway?"

"No," the schlime confirmed quietly, morphing into an action-figure-sized Druid as it tapped its chin in turn.

"Epli." If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Well now what?" Scule huffed, gesturing angrily down at Epli as Alka stepped forward and received a tiny version of herself for her troubles. For whatever reason, the small schlime seemed less scared of Alka than the rest of them, and it finally stopped trembling as the two of them started chatting.

"Are you going to grab it and force it back to the spire it doesn't want to go back to? Hells, are you sure this thing wasn't trying to escape for its own safety? What if Umine wants to eat it and grow bigger or something? We don't know how these things work!"

"I'm pretty sure my Common Ally title would have warned me about something like that if that was the case." Vin frowned, wondering the same thing as Scule while Alka played with the schlime. They'd promised Umine they'd bring Epli back, but he wasn't about to force Epli to do something it didn't want to do. Even if this was a more primitive species, they clearly had their own thoughts and free will.

"Alka…" he began, coming up with a quick solution.

"Would you mind guarding over Epli for a bit while we head back to the spire? It doesn't seem scared of you like the rest of us for whatever reason. Now that I have this location on my Mental Map, it won't take us long to go from here to the grand spire and back. We can explain to Umine that Epli is safe and doesn't want to come back, and then I guess I can reform the rock spire I melted away and we'll just leave Epli to its own devices."

"Sure." Alka shrugged, surprising Vin when her voice contained that same warbling sound that the schlimes spoke with. He knew her voice emanated from the space around her head somehow, seeing as she didn't exactly have lungs or even a mouth, but he hadn't realized she could change it to such a degree.

"Take your time. Epli and I are getting along just fine!" Nodding, Vin began heading back toward the large spire with Shia and Scule at his side. Reginald was still snoozing in his front pocket as per usual, the rat needing his sixteen hours of beauty sleep each day. With his Mental Map, it didn't take them long to find the spire once more, and Vin was surprised to find that Umine was no longer alone.

Four more schlimes had descended from their holes leading up into the massive spire, and he got to experience the strange sight of four different copies of himself turning to face them.

"Hello," Umine said again, the greeting echoed by the three other schlimes. They were all of various heights between two and three feet tall, but none were nearly as small as Epli had been.

"Help?"

"Yes, we found Epli," he confirmed, choosing his next words carefully.

"The thing is… Epli doesn't want to come back to the spire. They want to travel. As a fellow traveler, I can't go against their wishes. I just wanted to inform you that Epli is doing fine, and isn't planning on returning anytime soon." As Vin explained what they'd found, the four schlimes all shuddered at the news, the sight of his own miniaturized body rippling four times over being one of the stranger things he'd ever seen, even across all of Edregon.

He didn't know how schlime seniority worked or anything, but the other three remained silent as Umine spoke.

"Danger," it said, using his face to frown as it pointed outside.

"Spire-death."

"You mean the monsters?" Shia asked, getting a nod from herself as Umine shifted forms in an instant.

"Danger," Umine repeated.

"I guess the hidden monsters like to feast on the schlimes," Scule surmised, frowning as Umine morphed into a three-foot-tall version of himself again.

"You know, I don't think I like these things very much."

"Even if it's dangerous, leaving is Epli's choice," Vin said, hurriedly talking over Scule before he could anger the schlimes.

"While the monsters are definitely dangerous, there aren't that many of them. Epli will be fine on their own. Probably."

"Food," Umine argued, pointing up toward the roof of the spire, before turning to point outside once more.

"Death."

"The schlimes need energy to live, and they get that from the lightning strikes," Shia reminded him, frowning at the realization of what that meant for their wayward traveler.

"Even if Epli doesn't get eaten by the monsters, they'll starve to death. Their spire isn't tall enough to attract lightning."

"Epli had to know that when it left," Vin argued, warring with the decision to save the life of a fellow explorer if it meant trampling over their own freedom and choices.

"For all we know, it has a plan for that already. We can relay Umine's warnings and reminders to it, but that's all I'm willing to do. We can't force it to come home. I'm sorry." At the very least, Umine seemed to understand his inner conflict, as the schlime simply nodded, before using his finger to point outside once more.

"Relay. Friend."

"I will," he promised, motioning for his friends to follow him. The trek back to where they'd left Alka and Epli didn't take long at all, and as they approached, Vin's heart sank when he realized Alka was waiting for them by the half-melted spire. Alone.

"Alka…" he began, looking around for any size of a small, one-foot-tall version of himself.

"Where is Epli?"

"It thought you would try and force it to return home to the others, so it took off," she said, shrugging as she leaned back against the tiny nub of rock with her arms crossed.

"I told it you weren't that kind of guy, but it didn't want to take any chances."

"Damn it, Alka, I promised Umine I'd at least relay its warning." Vin frowned, casting one more Sense Magic pulse. The schlimes didn't look particularly fast, which meant it couldn't have gotten far. Yet to his surprise, just like the first three hours of his search that morning, the only hits he got back were from their wide assortment of artifacts and Alka, who was herself a complex conglomeration of artifacts working in tandem.

"I told Epli how you were tracking it," Alka admitted, not sounding the slightest bit sorry.

"It probably entered some sort of hibernative state to hide from your magic or something, like how the Dryads can do. If Epli wants to cut all ties between it and the other schlimes, that's its decision. Seems to me like it doesn't want to hear whatever message Umine asked you to relay to it."

"I'm just trying to help keep it alive!" Vin snapped, before realizing their discussion was getting a bit too heated.

"Sorry… I think I'm just tired of seeing other Explorers die as they try to venture out into Edregon. After finding the bodies of the dwarf brothers and the occasional random skeleton…"

"It's alright, what's done is done," Shia said, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"If it can in fact hibernate like Alka thinks, that means it has an even better chance of surviving until lightning strikes it, right? It will be fine."

"Yeah… Yeah, I suppose you're right," he conceded.

"I'm sorry, Alka, I didn't mean to snap at you like that."

"Eh, no biggie," she said, waving a hand dismissively.

"You can make it up to me by helping me find the dungeon so we can venture back to Terra. We've been gone for nearly three days now, and I want to check in on my Slayers."

"A check in with Terra is probably a good idea," he agreed, turning to look at Shia as yet another bolt of lightning hit the spire right beside all of them, causing them to collectively flinch.

"Any chance you might want to use your divine boon this time around?"

"I think that might be for the best," she admitted, looking warily up at the sky.

"It's been a bit since I last spoke with my master anyway, so this is some good timing."" Please, get us out of this lightning nightmare," Scule begged, having already hopped down to the ground to be the furthest one from the sky.

"Let's go!"

"Glad you're so excited." She snorted, her eyes briefly flaring gold as she triggered her divine boon and received the location of this fragment's dungeon. She'd have to wait an entire week before she could use it again, but it was definitely worth it to get out of here sooner than later.

"Alright, I have the location for the dungeon," she said, turning and starting off toward it.

"Follow me everyone, we'll be back in Terra by lunchtime."