Chapter Thirteen - Slug Beach Town, Part 2

Seiko is a bad teacher. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, and I can’t hurt her. She is very stoic, but I can tell that she takes everything seriously. She has wishes she wants to fulfill. And she is a great fighter. She’s climbed four floors alone, so her fighting experience is well above mine. All I have under my belt is a few months worth of kickboxing classes. My fighting opponents have been humans under my same weight class and experience and a couple of low intelligence monsters. So not a good track record in a fantasy world.

I punch, kick, and jump. Seiko is trained well in some form of martial arts too. She blocks every punch with her arm and every kick with her shin. Normally, it would seem like it hurts to block this way, but I don’t think she’s human, so her physiology is something unknown to me. She interrupts my train of thought as she lands a direct hit onto my stomach.

She’s a foot shorter than I am, but extremely adept at combat. I’m hopping and doing my best to dodge, but Seiko sees things I don’t. I think of myself as strategic, so I look towards the environment and feel bad about using sand as a blinding tool. But then again, I have my tail magic.

I’ve tried all my tails ranging from dog, cat, horse, and fox. None of them seemed to have any effect or strategic advantages. My default lizard tail however, secretes a poison-like substance when cut or slashed. Great, the only tail that is not part of my magic seems to have some sort of magical effect, I was given a bottom of the barrel magic.

I collapse from exhaustion and pain. I have not eaten in hours. Seiko had proposed that she would feed me if I could land a hit on her face. Normally, that would be a territory that I would not cross, but starvation has triggered a decline in my rational thinking capabilities.

“All right. Good enough,” Seiko says, “I know the extent of your abilities now. You can eat.”

Seiko turns around and walks back to her beach setup and retrieves her assault rifle. She walks back to the seaside and materializes a hard light bullet with a strange shape consisting of a hook and star-shaped tip and loads it into the chamber mechanism. She points and shoots into the water making a hook and line contraption shoot out of the gun. It pierces something in the water and Seiko reels it back in. A sea slug is fished. It radiates with the sun reflecting the toxic light green and neon blue colors as the sunlight passes through its body. Its body is the real spectacle as it is ocean colored. Blue and white mimicking the water itself and sea foam. It secretes a slimy substance making it more apparent that it is a creature and not a part plucked from the sea. Its eyes and antennas are more noticeable now as Seiko brings it closer to me.

“Eat.”

“Eh?”

This girl is not subtle at all.

“You have transformation magic,” Seiko pulls away the slug, “Which means you can gain more transformations by eating. In your case your current magic is shapeless and needs data and material to know what else to transform into. Take a look at this ocean slug. They are the staple of this town. They represent the calming spirit and fierce, persistent attitude of this town’s people. Also it has a tail.”

“Uh… What good can a slug tail do?” I attempt to find a way to get out of this.

“I don’t know, you’re the one with the tail magic.”

Geez. This girl isn’t letting me off easy. At the same time, she wants to see me get stronger. She wants to climb the floors and I am allowed to tag along. But for that to happen, I have to get stronger. I have to fight better, I have to improve my magic, and I need to know more about this world.

“Eat.” She repeats.

I take the ocean slug from her hand and drop it down the hatch. It is the worst, most foul, slimy… I can go on with the gross descriptions, but this is something I do not want to do again. Unfortunately for my magic, it seems like my road ahead will consist of eating creatures with tails.

[Ocean Slug Tail Acquired]

I decide to test it out and scroll through my virtual wheel where I find the slug silhouette. I mentally select it and my tail glows and transforms. Its shape morphs to that of a slug’s tail and the ocean effects accompany it.

[Ocean Slug Tail Equipped]

“Good. There are more sea creatures out there with tails, I want you to find them and eat them, there is an underwater cave with more creatures dwelling there, I will attempt to find something there for you.”

“Any chance that it might taste better than the slug?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a pescatarian.”

This girl!!!

“Also,” she continues as she begins to walk towards the incoming waves, “There are different sea creatures active at night, so we will hunt those after sparring practice.”

After that she disappears beneath the waves. 

I walk over the water stepping over the crashing waves to the best of my ability. I’m sure I’m passing by hundreds of ocean slugs, but at this point I don’t need to eat any. My ocean slug tail blends with the water and I can feel it becoming part of the sea and absorbing more water as it is replacing that which is lost. I see a red blur swim in front of me and I hop impressively from the wet sand. My whole leg was submerged a second ago and now I’m in mid-air, my eyes locked on my target. I land on one leg a few feet away from the animal and hop again slightly closing my distance. With my other leg I strike with a downward kick towards the sea creature’s direction as it was swimming away from my splashes and quick movement. I picked up the dead animal as it took the full force of my heel to the head. Its wet, shiny red scales shimmer with the sunlight making me holler in victory.

Fish! Something I know the taste of. Oh, I hope it has the same taste as Earth fish. Judging by how the beer does not taste like beer, I hope fish tastes like fish. I don’t have time to cook it because I’m too hungry to roast it over a fire. There are no ovens here to my knowledge and my mouth is drooling at this point. I’ve had sashimi and sushi before, so I know raw fish is not as looked down upon as raw meat. Plus, I’m a lizard-human hybrid, so my body should be able to handle it in terms of chewing capabilities and digestion.

I devour the fish violently as I notice Aquastar and Clover approaching behind me. One of them looked in horror at my butchered meal.