Chapter 2: Bubblehead Squirrels

While using my black body and the darkness of the shadow of the tree, and trying to focus on the skills that I would like to analyze, I still can't help but shiver a little as I remember such a display. You just have to be here to see what the alligator looked like, its head just went straight 360 with some slight pauses as if it forces its neck and spine to come with its head and turn.

That's some horror shit right there.

_Sigh... should I feel thankful that I still feel fear? But if that bastard just let me die, then I would not even get to see such messed-up shit._

After another sigh, I decided to just really try hard to forget about it by looking at my skills. Firstly, a casual glance makes it obvious that I don't have any common skills, presumably skills that everyone in this world, or at least anyone on the slime genos, can acquire.

I don't have any complaints on that, since that means I can get a blank slate, which means I can have initial control of my primary skills before just getting anything possible for survival, and also because I don't really have any choice on the matter. You know, [Blessed by Mischief] and all.

After that, there is the unique skill [Parasitism], which quite shockingly immediately puts up its definition:

[[Parasitism]: A unique skill given to Hermes Trickmaster by the god of mischief, making one able to make avatars out of parasitized victims. God said: Use it and entertain me well.

Effects:

Parasitic Avatar: Makes one able to split themselves into multiple parts and insert themselves into targets that then can be turned into an avatar when parasitized. The parasitized will retain 1-3 random common skill it has on the original level and will lose all racial skill it have before.

The user then chose to:

Absorb: to get a full 50% buff for a short period of time, with 5 minutes at the max, but it can be reduced when the upgrades are being constantly used. After 5 minutes all stats will be back to normal. The avatar will be lost once the part of the user is retrieved.

Full Parasitization: The target is to become an avatar, will lose 50% of their MP, HP, and PP, but all of their senses will be shared in a 500-meter radius, and all of the stats can be gotten back by the avatar by retraining them. The closer the skills that are wanted to be gained to the skills that the avatar originally had, the faster it can be regained. Once an avatar is lost, and a part of the user is retrieved, all skills and stats of the avatar will be lost forever.

The main body can divide itself every 10 PP until the mana core of the main body becomes fully exposed without a slime coating. This is not advisable. The main body can recover its mass and slime coating every 2 days. Only the main body can use the skills of the user.

The unique skill has the following auxiliary abilities:

Mark: Even when an avatar is more than 500 meters away, it's still able to be felt by the main body anywhere in the world by instinct. The main body can still find it even if it was blindly flung in a random direction.]

Ugh... while the skill itself looks good if you want to be at a safe distance and if you have a glaring weakness like a damned core like me, I felt like the remarks in the summarized description are unnecessary. So in any case, this means I can create my own minions with other options and restrictions, and fight for me or alongside me.

This is good because I don't need any kind of training, and every single one of them would be in sync and able to know my command at the point-blank second. The momentary buff by absorbing the stats of the parasitized is quite handy too if push comes to shove.

Though for now, I wouldn't let myself be in a position where I would have to drain any avatars out of their stats. If that happens, no buffs can help me. Of course, the loss of stats and retaining of 1-3 skills at random is completely acceptable as everything in any world has to be balanced out.

Though the 'entertain me well' part of the description may have the part on it...

Next, I looked at my racial skills. As I said, they do look like the typical slime racial skill, you know, the ones owned by the most popular slime of the esikai genre. That except [Charm], anyway, they go like this:

[[Charm]: as a speciation of the now extinct false slime, it can passively charm beings to come near it. This would make it easier for the user to attract possible parasite targets and avatar prospects.

[Self Division]: Since the user is a speciation of a false slime, the user acquired a new racial skill that makes them able to divide themselves without repercussions. The selves will not have any consciousness and are still one with the main body.

[Digestion]: A False Angel Slime can digest almost everything. However, only flesh can recover its stats and conditions.]

Hmm... They really are just complementary, while technically [Digestion] can be used as an offensive skill, digestion itself, as a scientific process, is something slow and gradual, so I can assume for now that I need to latch on to something for a long time, or something has to be inside me for a set period of time to be digested properly.

It also doesn't help that I can see myself nearer to that of a sludge in terms of structure than gastric acid, so there's that. In any case, [Charm] is not something I would like to use at this point, first of all, because I don't feel like staying in place and trying to digest whoever wants a piece of me. After all, those False Slime most definitely got their assess handed to them because of this scheme. Second, I seconded the first, so yeah, if nothing wrong happens, I wouldn't use [Charm] any time soon.

Why would the person writing this give a cheap doujin skill to me in the very first chapter? That's very unprecedented.

_But still, [Charm] and [Digest] combo of the False slimes created an image of an ambush predator... staying in place and releasing [Charm] to make food go near you..._

That being said, I also opened the magic skills section and looked at the gift of the god of mischief towards me:

[[Illusion Magic: A type of magic given to the world by the god of mischief [####], no need to describe the magic.]]

_Does that bastard have authority over the system? Making him able to use descriptions like this._

While the system is right, I still feel like I'm being mocked by the bastard who chucked me in this body.

However, there is no time to be lampooning about the bad attitude of the god that blessed me, as from now on, I have to live as a monster, and my only advantage is that I'm not as predictable as the monster here, since I have a human mind, and to maximize this advantage, I have to know the limits of every skill I have.

Especially the [Parasitism] skill, for while it got a pretty detailed explanation of its capabilities, being able to understand and being able to use the skill are two different things. So, I have to experiment.

Thinking of this, I immediately went out of the shadow I was hiding in by sliding towards another shadow of a tall tree towards my left, to look for relatively weak experimental subjects, of course. For some reason, sliding has become an instinct for me, and while doing that, the PP of mine is being reduced constantly, but the regeneration is faster than the depletion, maybe because I'm not going particularly fast.

However, I felt like these movements are too slow, especially when I get to remember the alligator with the twisting neck.

So, I started hopping, which is harder than I would like to admit using this new body and expends more PP than simple sliding, but since it's not too intense a movement, it doesn't drain my PP that much. Plus, I get to skip several shadows at once, so I get to have a good distance from the river.

I feel like if I want to, I would be able to increase my speed, but I feel like it would affect my PP reserves, so I didn't do so hastily.

While doing all of this and finding weak-looking 'prey', I can't help but metaphorically frown as my strangely 360-degree vision gave me a view on why this forest is called 'bizarre'.

The tree that currently casts its shadow over me, the tree in front of me, which I'm targeting to go in, the tree in my back, and maybe all trees in this forest have the wrinkles on their barks slowly crawling up and down and sometimes even stopping to 'look' at me as if I'm something to be curious about before continuing their seemingly mindless crawl. Their branches and leaves methodically creak and shift directions in a sleek yet noticeable manner as if teasing me into feeling horror and fear, while I could've sworn that every time I hop towards a new tree, the old one would bend down a little and shift its foliage to my direction before snapping straight right away.

_What the fuck is this... don't tell me these trees will start walking once I try to sleep?_

I tried to knock on the tree bark while suppressing my fears of its moving wrinkles, thinking that all of these might be an illusion, but its squirming texture and rough surface tell me that all of these are real.

_There are no bird nests in sight... this may be because the branches move on their own... or I didn't see them yet..._

This also means that maybe monsters that live inside trees live under them instead...

_This is getting scary..._

I steeled myself and continued hopping around, though slower than before, causing the sun that was just rising when I started to hit its highest point. And as if on cue, I heard a mechanical voice in my head.

[Notice: Individual have acquired common skills:

[Stealth lvl. 1]: Using blind spots like shadows, corners, and others, the user will be able to better hide themselves from enemies.]

Once again, I stopped my shadow hopping and looked at my status window with a rather bland notification and activated the skill, immediately making me able to sense all spots that can make my hiding better. There's nothing like a spot of light or something, I'm just able to properly feel them by instinct, evidently, most hiding spots in the forest are shadows of trees and some rocks of differing sizes, probably because I'm a black-colored slime.

_But it's quite slow... It's been hours since I've been hiding... I wonder if it would be faster to acquire skills when I'm in a battle, most esikais are like that. Also, isn't it said that I have a faster speed in acquiring common skills with a 'deceitful' nature? Why did [Stealth] still take so long? Could it be that it's not a 'deceitful' common skill?_

Hmm... I really have to test out how all of these common skills and blessings work with real fights. I also have to have a feel for how slow/fast acquiring skills is in this world. It would be disastrous if I got my hopes up in a fight just for acquisitions to last 8+ hours.

As I was thinking of all these, I suddenly saw a tree with a half a meter in width hole in it. On the side of this hole are brown-colored squirrels with very veiny necks that connect their bony and huge head to their disproportionally small body. If one looked closely, you can even see that the head is not only huge, it's also heavy, so that even with the muscular neck of the small squirrels, their heads still wobble like a bubblehead figure.

They're about 25-30 centimeters in height, with 40-45% of their height being that of their head. All this time, I had [Stealth] activated, so they didn't notice my staring at their ridiculous proportions and their bobbing heads that seemed to be waiting for someone to get out of the hole.

_There's an alligator that can turn its head 360 degrees and a squirrel that looks like a bubblehead... yup, Bizarre Forest, it is._

Soon, a bigger 'Bubblehead Squirrel' of about half a meter in size, still with a bobbing head, went out of the cave. I noticed that they have canine-like fangs, so either they're omnivores or outright predators.

After making a loud squeaking sound that had some growls from the mother, the children, the bubblehead squirrels went back to their lair as the mother hunted for their food.

Finally, the kids are alone...

Pause.

In any case, I can now do my experiments.

_Thank god I have a superiority complex over animals because of my human mind, or else I would feel bad._