Drip-Fed

The slime indeed managed to find something interesting. It was a predatory plant. Disguising itself as part of the grass, a network of earthbound vines waited patiently. If a deer, a bunny or anything suitable in size happened upon it, the vines grappled onto the creature’s legs. Then, it proceeded to just hold them until they died. Accordingly, this plant was called grip-root. Adventurers weren’t known for their naming sense, even if they had a doctorate in biology at the side.

Afterwards, the vines covered the animal and just let it rot away. As this was simply a strategy the grip-root had developed to increase soil quality, getting regular food wasn’t necessary. Which was good for it, since only young, unlucky or inexperienced animals would fall for the obvious traps.

“What a ghastly way of digestion,” Aclysia commented for herself, looking at the resulting boneyard. Feeling like she would go crazy if she didn’t hear some voice every now and again, she had picked up the habit of monologuing.

The slime was slowly coming to the idea that there were different things expressed by the change in tone in the metal fairy's growling. It had yet to decipher what though. It also didn’t try particularly often, feeling that, without ears, that was a lost cause.

“I wonder…” Aclysia flew over to the site of a grip-root and plucked one rabbit’s skull off the floor. The grip-root moved out of instinctual response, but was unable to find the flying fairy itself. Taking off with the skull, she dropped the acquisition in front of her awakener. “…could you eat that and get one of your new Growths?” she had spent the last few days deciphering the slime’s abilities and, unorthodox as they were, found them to be rather simple to understand. At least the base of it.

The slime, wondering the same independently, began its encapsulation of the mortal remains. For a start, it found that the rotting flesh bits tasted most foul. It recoiled a bit at the taste, almost tempted to just not eat this and get something different. However, since the taste was already in its everything, it might as well buckle up and get done with it. For science.

At least the bone tasted okay. Not particularly intensive, but the steady, slightly sweet taste washed out the bitter, disgustingly sweet but also sour mixture of rot. It was like rinsing down a serving of putrid fish with honey mixed with water.

The result was nothing. While the slime felt sated, no new Growths revealed themselves to its mind. Eating corpses was, apparently, not an option. To be more exact, eating things it hadn’t killed itself wasn’t, the slime had continued growing from the tree long after the lack of branches had finished it off.

It wasn’t growing anymore though, so a stationary plant like this was pretty welcome. Also, those vines looked like they would be of help. There were varying sizes of them, so the slime could hopefully get something that grew with it for a bit.

“What are you doing, awakener?” Aclysia asked as the slime simply crawled over to the vines. “Should you really…. Right, there is no reason for me to worry,” she scolded herself for being silly, having forgotten for a moment that her awakener was a blob with only one internal organ.

The grip-root had absolutely no way of harming the slime, even as it dragged itself within its reach. The green vines wrapped themselves around the amorphous creature, but failed to grapple anything. In return, one of those very vines got stuck in the slime, who then proceeded to slurp it up like spaghetti, only very slowly.

Because that put its membrane into a peculiar state of vulnerability, the slime was very careful in this process. If the grip-root had pain receptors, it could have sensed what was happening now and jerked away, leaving a giant hole in the slimes side. Because the goop creature was aware that such a wound would have been devastating to recuperate from, even though not impossible, it limited the amount of root inside it any time so that, if the worst-case scenario came about, the wound would be shallow.

Luckily, the plant stayed blissfully unaware about its ongoing digestion. Noticing this, the slime soon sped up by pulling more of the vines inside it, increasing the ongoing digestion.

Despite this it took the slime over three days to eat the entire plant down to the roots. Hours spent repeating the same process. Start at one vine, slowly dissolving it towards the centre, move back out, get onto the next vine. The longest ones were easily triple the slimes size, putting them at around a metre, but only a few centimeters thick.

“I notice that you are done,” Aclysia spoke up, having spent the time whirling around the surrounding area and keeping watch. She was pretty weak in her current stage, but she could take care of some pests that would interrupt her awakener.

The slime grew out a vine appropriate for its size and attempted to use it as an arm. Only it couldn’t. Confused, it grew a second one, the result being the same. They simply flopped around. Aclysia fluttered down and folded her moth-like wings, black and white like most of her, behind her back, making it seem like she had a fuzzy cape.

“Are you not able to use these?” the metal fairy wondered, touching vine. In response, it coiled around her, or attempted to as Aclysia took to the air again, the wings beating so fast they became a mere grey blur behind her back. The vines were quick enough to secure a grip on a trotting animal’s foot, not on an alert fairy.

Realizing that it couldn’t control the plant part, the slime quivered in frustration. The indication here was pretty clear, Growths based on greenery could only do what they were supposed to instinctively. That made them inherently less useful to the slime.

At least it got a nice size boost out of it, so eating a second one would be worth it. Even if only to finally grow beyond what those pesky eagles would try to take on a surprise and deadly flight on.

Aclysia, a bit confused as to why her awakener had tried to grab her, but not upset in any way, saw the slime pulling the green vines back into its body. Then it went to search something. When that something turned out to be another grip-root, which it began to devour in much the same process, she resigned herself to another few days of boredom.

Luckily, she was a patient girl.

“Yo, Hizulu, watch out!” a different voice ripped her out of her thoughts. It was berating, deep enough to be identified as male and generally annoyed. “If you run too fast around here you may break your ankle! Grip-root and all that.”

“Sure, sure,” a second, upbeat and clearly female voice answered. A sniffing sound accompanied her approach. “I am just smelling something amazing, I tell you!”