Monster Breeder

“So… are you, like, part Slime, now?” Olindia asks once the battle fervor has a chance to die down.

Chris stands there looking down at herself with a pleased-as-punch smirk, twisting to get a glimpse of the way her plump ass looks in that gorgeous corset teddy, not to mention her pristine white angora powderpuff tail. “Umm, I don’t think so. I’m a Snow Bunny, like in the stories! Mom always said I had northern blood in my veins. Nice that I finally get to cash-in on that.” She blows across her palm to create a flurry of snow. Then she smiles as she runs an adoring finger along the curve of the luminescent sapphire Core embedded in her chest, “No clue what this thing is about, though. Sure is easy on the eyes…”

She’s beyond delighted to have gotten the evolution she wanted. It makes all the struggles and hardships seem worth it. I can second that assessment. Chris is humming contentedly to herself under her breath as we speak.

“Huh.” Olindia shrugs, having lost access to the third Large Core she had her eye on when Chris absorbed it, “Well, is, like, everyone alright?”

“Gale is fine,” the Rainbird says as she huddles near the cooling remains of the Orange Slime’s lava to warm herself after suffering some of the White Slime’s frosty breath, “But Rosie and Monal…”

“My face hurts,” Rosie says, clutching it with a wing as blood dribbles from her chin.

“My everything hurts,” Monal adds, her feathers singed and still smoking.

Both of them got hit by part of the Orange Slime’s volcanic explosion. They’re lucky to be alive, you know. Wait, if Olindia already used her first daily use of healing magic on Chris, who will receive the second? That’s right, as a Large Pink Slime, Olindia only gets two uses of her Restoration spell per day.

“It’s totally fine, guys. We’re golden,” Olindia breezes over, snapping open her purse to reveal the plethora of First Tier Slime Cores stocked inside, “I’ve got a ton of these to recharge my magic.”

We almost forgot for a second that the whole point of coming here was to gather Slime Cores to increase the number of healing spells Olindia could cast for the war effort. Oops! The good news is that as long as nobody listens in on our internal dialogue, we won’t look like idiots. Phew.

The Jellyfish Slime girl pops a small marble-sized Core in her mouth and touches both Harpies on the shoulder in turn. A bloom of pink light covers both women for a moment before dimming to reveal their wounds are healed. But that’s not all.

Monal’s hair is normally a rainbow of colors; she’s a pheasant Harpy with male coloring in her feathers, but no dick swinging between her legs. Since her healing, however, a single bright red peacock feather with a gold eyespot has grown from the top of her head like an antenna.

Rosie, meanwhile, is an ebony-skinned flamingo girl with long, slender legs and cornrows of pink hair ending in a braided ponytail. A tiny pebble is now embedded in her cheek like a beauty mark at the corner of her eye.

Gale isn’t quite the same either when we look a bit closer. The Rainbird’s hair and feathers all turned dark blue during her evolution except for a streak of green on her head. A second glance reveals a white highlight in her hair next to the green bit.

““What’s going on?”” we ask, looking from one girl to the next. It seems Flou isn’t the only one with major changes here.

“I’m no expert,” Jing says, crossing his arms like an expert, “But those,” he points from Chris’s sapphire to Monal’s peacock feather to Rosie’s pebble beauty mark and Gale’s albino lock of hair, “Look like Evolution Tokens.”

“Which are???” Chris asks, bouncing on her bunny heels in her excitement to learn her changes aren’t quite done. “Spit it out, old man!”

“My darling Tink’s the only one who can call me that. But you’re her friend, so I’ll let it slide just the once. Listen, when you Evolve, you either go up a Rank within your Tier or you transcend your Tier to the next level but lose a Rank in the process.” He’s not telling us anything we don’t know, yet.

““Like with Gale becoming a Rainbird, Dura becoming an Ogre, or Flou ascending to the Third Tier,”” Brenda and I say together, listing examples.

“Sure,” Jing nods. “But I’ve been around for a long time, and I’ve heard about some exceptions. Sometimes a monster meets a special requirement for a new evolution path, but they don’t have all the other qualifications. In that case, they sometimes get an Evolution Token. It’s a little something that, if they keep it with them for when they do eventually Evolve, makes sure they reach a higher Rank than they otherwise would’ve.”

“Hmm, monster evolution sure is weird,” Tink comments with bewildered awe.

“This is freaking awesome!” Chris shouts. “You’re saying, if I can stick it out to Third Tier, I won’t just become a Greater Snow Bunny. I’ll Evolve into something even cooler?!? Then I’ll finally be able to tell Megan to suck it… I-I mean, I’ll be strong enough to protect everyone~ Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

“Mistress Gale is already amazing, so when she evolves, that means she’ll become something even more incredible!” Monal says as she throws her wings around her Rainbird lover.

“Right, right, and she’s really close to evolving, too!” Rosie agrees while joining the group hug.

“You think so?!?” Gale asks, looking back and forth between her Harpy wingmaidens excitedly. They both nod with enthusiasm and nuzzle her with their noses.

It seems they're more eager to see Gale when becomes something more than a Greater Rainbird than when they become something better than Greater Harpies. Aww, how sweet.

““Chris,”” I ask in our shared voice, ““What can you do now after your Evolution?””

“Hmm? Oh. Uh, let me see.” The angora Snow Bunny concentrates, flexing her fingers and idly swinging her arms as if searching her body for new sensations. She straightens as if embodying an exclamation point and says, “I can make snowballs!”

A quick demonstration later, Chris has a sphere of white slush in her palm, conjured from nothing and shaped by her hands. Throwing the snowball doesn’t result in a spectacular show, but it does create a circle of rime around the impact site on the wall. There’s definitely a supernatural ‘cold’ element in her magical snow getting applied to whatever it strikes.

That’s nothing to sneeze at when you’re fighting Slimes.

“That’s great,” Flou says, with only a tiny bit of patronization in her voice, “But you’re still getting one of these.” The newly evolved Fuzzy Red Swarm Slime tosses Chris one of her Cores, which secures itself on the bunny’s cuffs as a cufflink, upgrading the piece of cosmetic wear. In a blink, a blood-crystal buckler appears on Chris’s arm and then dissolves back into the ruby cufflink. “You too, Gale.”

A small Fuzzy Slime bounces over to the Rainbird, launches itself at her throat, and transforms midflight into a ruby necklace that latches onto Gale’s neck. The avian girl doesn’t object. Rosie and Monal already have their blood-crystal talons. Brenda, Olindia, and I don’t need the additional protection, while Tink and Jing are both tiny and agile with shield magic—they might be the safest of us all.

Olindia makes a show of looking Flou up and down, her gaze lingering on the bunny Slime’s hips and bust, “Damn, girl, come here often? But, like, seriously, Flou, you couldn’t have done this before?” She probably means the three cores centered in Flou’s pelvis, chest, and head.

The Swarm Slime shakes her head in the negative, “My linked Cores are… how to put it? They’re smarter than before. I don’t have to concentrate as much on maintaining my shape in this form. It’s so easy, it barely takes any effort to hold shape while directing a flying dagger swarm even though I have four times as many Cores to control as before. It doesn’t feel like I have any more Multitasking Focuses than I used to, so it's a bit strange.”

“Huh,” Olindia shrugs. “As long as you’re good, it’s whatever.”

Flou smiles for the first time since I’ve known her. “I’m good. Let’s finish this—Slime Solidarity!”

Flou and Olindia high five, though Olindia goes down low with the height difference. "Likewise!" Brenda says through me.

““Speaking of,”” we then say together, ““Here’s your share of the loot.”” Brenda and I hand Olindia the Orange Slime Core.

She takes it, accepting it into herself for safekeeping, but the expression on her face is more than a little disappointed, “There goes my Large trio…”

Brenda has the Pyramidal Stone Core, the Red Bone Core, and the Green Pyramidal Mirror Core. Olindia has the Large Slime Core, the Large Orange Sewer Core, and an Orange Stone Core. Neither of us has a complete trio to match our Slime modifiers, but we can still Tier-up given the right catalyst.

“Maybe we should head home,” Chris says, unhopeful of getting her way but needing to speak her peace, “Everybody got what they need, right?”

“I need to show Jonny the Library!” Tink insists.

““We do need to return soon; I’m sure it’s starting to get late,”” I say, ““But we wouldn’t mind running into more Slimes on our way out,”” Brenda adds in our shared voice. Back to me, ““We have plenty of ammo for Olindia’s healing, Jing to sneak us past the guard, and a Third-Tier party member, now. As much as I hate the idea of pushing our luck, I feel pretty good about our chances.””

Gale, Monal, and Rosie nod together with determination. “Let’s work together to make everyone happy!” the Rainbird says.

That settles it. We’ll visit the Library and then head home.