The monster loomed, its enormous teeth gnashing as it searched for prey with its beady red eyes. It was massive, easily fifty times my size, and with enough slavering rage to intimidate a dragon. In fact, it was a lot like one, with four great scaley legs ending in lance-like claws. If it had wings, it would have been the perfect monster for burning villages and hunting down fleeing civilians for its meal.

  Its eyes locked on Dorin’s sleeping form, and panic ignited in me. The knight was in no condition to fight anything. He wasn’t even awake!

  I flared my magic, trying to catch the drake’s attention, but it didn’t even cast a glance my way. No doubt it thought that the slime wasn’t a threat, but it would swiftly learn the error of that mistake. I wasn’t about to let it take the easy meal, not when that meal was my closest friend and ally!

  The drake lunged at my sleeping friend. Before it could cross the distance between them, I threw myself at its face, spreading my slime wide. Slayer’s Stance enhanced the strength of my acid, and the monster howled in fury. Its claws skidded across the ground with a sound that would have made a human flinch in pain, but such things have little effect on me.

  “I’m. Not. Letting. Go!” I shouted.

  Acid ate through scales, reaching the flesh and bone beneath. The drake tossed its head back and forth. I curled my slime around its horns, holding on for dear life as it fought to dislodge me from its head.

  Pain dazzled my senses and rocks dissolved into my slime. It slammed its head into the wall, and me along with it. My grip loosened. Great claws reached up and tore at my slime. I desperately clung to the drake’s horns, but its strength was too much. With a vengeful growl, it hurled me down the tunnel.

  I bounced several times before coming to a halt. The drake turned, whipping its long tail around as it opened its razor-sharp maw. A furious roar ricocheted around the enclosed space with enough force to knock a lesser creature back.

  But I was no lesser creature. I was a paragon among slimes; the fiercest, strongest, and most determined one in all the land!

  Magic flared out of me in challenge as the drake raked the ground with its claws. It had correctly determined that I was a far greater threat than Dorin’s sleeping form, for which I had to give some credit. It was far smarter than the shamblers roaming the surface above. Perhaps this fight would be more difficult.

  I checked my health. After being slammed into a wall and clawed off the drake’s face, my health sat at 15/22. My slime wobbled, and my magic flared even brighter. It had given a good effort, but with those numbers, there was no way that my opponent was on my level. It was probably a Tier 1 monster, and thus, it was time to end the threat promptly.

  “What? Are you scared of a cute little slime like me?” I mocked. “You should be! Because I’m both adorable and strong!”

  Whether or not the drake understood, I wasn’t sure. It was clearly more intelligent than the glowing white slimes oozing from the walls, but that wasn’t a high bar, given that rocks had more intelligence than the average slime. I chose to believe it could understand and my taunting was worthwhile.

  Its claws dug into the rocky floor. The drake leapt forward, teeth bared and eager to snap my slime in two. It never made it.

  Before it was even halfway across the distance between us, my mana condensed into a single spark before erupting outward with all the light and fury of an exploding star.

  The drake howled as magic scorched its scales, burning straight through its skin and melting its flesh from the inside. It was only Tier 1. It never stood a chance.

  It fell in a heap on the damaged stone of the floor. I looked around. Lesser slimes had been burned from the walls, which were now several inches further away from me on all sides than they’d been previously.

  Whoops, I thought. I briefly wondered if Dragon’s Gate punished its creations for damaging its halls, but in the end, the Voice of the Creator had nothing to say.

  I hopped to the corpse, taking one last look at its size and mass before throwing myself on it. I wouldn’t say that it tasted fantastic, but after two battles, it was nice to have something more substantial than slimes and tastier than rocks. The mana-scorched drake meat was like coming home to a delightful, homecooked meal after a long day…or at least, I imagined it was. No one had ever made me a homecooked meal, and I knew better than to get my hopes up for ever receiving one. Slimes don’t get home cooking.

  “An…impressive battle.” The words were followed by a ragged cough.

  My attention focused on Dorin, who’s eyes were open and alert. He still looked like death itself, leaning back against the dungeon wall as if holding his head up took more energy than he had, but it was heartening to see him awake after his ordeal trapped in stone.

  “It was nothing,” I answered. “Just a Tier 1 monster.”

  “Right, and you’re way stronger than the average slime.”

  I wobbled the word for “pride” before hopping closer to examine him. Using Wild Magic Wave had automatically shifted me into Healer’s Bearing, and I almost tried to use Soothing Touch on the knight before remembering both that I was out of mana and that the ability would have no effect on the very human knight. Instead, I crawled onto his leg, trying to get a closer look at the fire that burned within him.

  “Your mana is recovering, I think,” I offered gently.

  He nodded and raised his left arm. With a flick of his wrist, a small magical projection appeared before him, a visual display for that which I only had the Creator for. The magic in the projection shifted into dozens of small colored symbols which seemed to make sense to Dorin, even if they didn’t to me.

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  “It’s not good, but I’m alive,” he reported. Then he sighed. “Damn, I used to be stronger than this.”

  “What happened?”

  “The level drain happened.” He let his arm fall to the ground and the projection faded. “I was Level 31 before moving here, but the level drain took it all.”

  I wobbled, trying to wrap my head around what he’d just said. “Why did you come here, then?” He stared at me in confusion, so I continued. “The drain took your magic and your power. Why come to this place at all? Samri said it was tied to the region.”

  He looked down, his brows knit together as he recalled his reasons. “We retired. Moved away from the city so the kids could grow up away from it all.”

  That…didn’t make any sense. If he wanted his kids to grow up happy and healthy, why do it in a place where they couldn’t ever grow beyond how they were born? If I had been stuck as a Tier 1 slime forever, I probably would have been eaten by another slime by now. I would never have become a Guardian Slime, never would have met Samri, Tanev, and Jaden, and never would have fought alongside Dorin. I never would have tasted all the delicious rocks in the rubble pile, nor the meat of the drake. To miss out on all that experience; it seemed like a waste.

  “Must be a human thing,” I muttered. After all, slimes don’t have parents to raise them or care for them. A slime must take care of itself. It’s eat or be eaten.

  Dorin stared at the wall opposite him. “Just…complicated.” He took a deep breath and leaned his head back. “The level drain vanished about three weeks ago. I felt it and was worried it meant something bad. I started regaining what I lost, but six levels doesn’t even equate to the smallest Tier 2 monster.”

  “Your system is weird.”

  His laughter quickly turned to a grimace of pain. “I think the same thing about monsters. How you advance makes no sense.”

  “Oh yes, and killing endless things for meaningless numbers makes sense.”

  “And you know that, how?” Dorin raised an eyebrow, but his lips were curled into a friendly smile.

  “The Creator gave me knowledge.”

  “And opinions, apparently.”

  I wobbled in mild irritation. “Enough to know that the human system is pointless. At least a monster has to do something to earn Tiers, and most of the time it’s more than just ‘kill 100 things in the woods.’”

  “Fine, fine, I concede that does seem better, but it’s not like I can just become a monster overnight.”

  “I wish you could,” I admitted, flattening my slime in shame. “I could help you if you were a monster.”

  Dorin’s expression softened. I focused my senses elsewhere rather than looking him in the face. The copper veins of magic that wove through the dungeon were already hard at work mending the damage my Wild Magic Wave had caused, and lesser slimes had started oozing from the rubble behind us. However, they instinctively knew better than to try attacking a greater slime without an advantage. I’d been sleeping the last time and the attacking force was eaten in its entirety. They remained a safe distance away, wobbling the word for “danger” back and forth like the word would somehow gain more meaning if they repeated it enough times.

  A weary hand came to rest on my top, and my first instinct was to try and eat it. I swiftly fought that urge back. Dorin was staring at me with a softness in his eyes.

  “What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

  I wobbled at him, confusion enveloping my core. “What do you mean?”

  “What should I call you,” he repeated, narrowing his eyes again with concern.

  “I don’t have a name.”

  Dorin blinked in surprise before sighing. “Do you want one?”

  Did I want one? I let my slime wobble idly as I contemplated the possibility. I didn’t know of any slimes who had names, and the Voice of the Creator didn’t deign to provide any examples to contradict the theory. Yet, did that matter? Just because slimes weren’t meant to think didn’t mean I was like them. I did a lot of thinking. I also spoke, made friends, and saved people, all things that slimes were not built to do naturally. At the end of the day, I was a unique specimen among my kind, the cutest and most magnificent slime in the area. Why shouldn’t I have a name to match?

  “Tanev called me Greenbean, but I’m not sure I like that,” I admitted. “I’ve never tasted greenbeans, but rocks are better than plants for eating.”

  “Is that so?” Dorin reached up and rubbed his chin, a grimace springing to his face from the movement. “My name is draconic, just like Samri and Tanev. I may not know much of the language, but I can give it a shot.” He thought deeply for a long moment. “You like rocks, right? Kashkised is a word for a type of stone, but I don’t know which one.”

  I let the name roll around in my mind for a moment before wobbling my slime. “No, that is too complicated. I’m just a slime. I’m cute, but not that smart.”

  “Smartest slime I know,” he muttered before thinking hard once more. “What about Suri? It means ‘friend of the people.’”

  “Suri…” I said aloud, testing it out.

  It was simple, just two quick syllables with a simple meaning. It was truthful. I was a friend to Dorin, and to the kids in the woods. Much as I adored eating rocks and analyzing their tastes, I also liked being with Dorin, Samri, Tanev, and Jaden. It was far more interesting than being alone.

  “I like it,” I announced.

  “Alright. I hereby dub thee, Suri Slimeheart, Friend of the People.”

  As if on command, the Creator chimed in with an update to my status.

  [Name: Suri Slimeheart; Lesser Guardian Slime, Tier 2

  Status:

  Health: 15/22

  Mana: 30/46

  Injury Index: 1 - Damage recoverable

  Health and Mana regeneration operating at optimal parameters]

  “Well, Suri, I promise I’ll be fine,” he assured me with a smile. “Believe it or not, this isn’t the worst injury I’ve ever had. Just a few broken bones. Those will mend in time, and I think—” he grimaced once more as he twisted his arm behind him, reaching into a pouch at his hip and pulling out a small glass vial—“yep, that’s the stuff.”

  He downed the crimson liquid. I watched the magic within slide down his throat to settle in his stomach. It pooled there, stoking his internal fire.

  “Is that how humans heal?”

  “All those opinions about humans, yet you don’t know a healing potion when you see one?” He tucked the empty vial in his pouch. “I really don’t like using them. They’re a bi-”

  Dorin was cut off by a cough followed by a grunt of pain. I could only watch in horrified fascination as the crimson magic from the potion seemed to shoot out from inside him. Everywhere it touched, Dorin tensed.

  “It’s fine!” he said through gritted teeth. “Healing potions hurt almost more than the injury, but they’re worth it in the end.”

  It…didn’t look worth it. Not in the slightest. Dorin’s entire body was wracked with pain, tensing and relaxing in waves until he was eventually curled on the ground. It must have been several long minutes before he finally breathed a sigh of relief and sat up straight once more.

  “Mending bones is nasty business,” he muttered. With a shaky hand, he pushed his body up, getting his feet underneath him and sliding up the wall until he was standing fully once more. “I don’t suppose you found my axe in all the rubble, did you?”

  I flopped my slime side to side, like I’d seen the human children do.

  “Ah. Well, I suppose I’ll have to rely on you to defend us.”

  “Of course, you’re my friend. You named me as such.”

  “I suppose. If you want to be.” He began shuffling along the wall towards the damaged section. After a moment, he paused and looked down. “Forgive me, Suri. You did so much to keep me safe, not to mention my children. I’ve never been friends with a slime before, but if that’s what you want, then I hope to live up to being a friend deserving of your efforts.”

  “It’s okay. I wouldn’t be friends with most slimes either. They’d eat me, given the chance.”

  “That’s not-”

  To prove my point, I hopped ahead, eating the lesser slimes along his path so they wouldn’t hurt him. Relief filled me with purpose. Dorin was a good friend. I was sure of it with all my being, and I wasn’t keen on losing that friend so soon.