Drem and Tav

"Oh, that's why." he looked at Zeeth for a second, and then he asked, "Wait, wiped? By someone? You didn't lose it by yourself on accident?"

"Yeah. God wiped it cuz I come from another world. But don't worry I can get them all back!"

Now the self-proclaimed dragon looked at him with sparkling eyes of excitement and bewilderment.

"God? Another world?! Wait, no. Boy, don't confuse your fantasies with real memories. Ahem. Got too excited there." He blushed a little and calmed back down.

"But I'm telling the truth. That all did happen. I have no way of proving it to you since my memories were wiped the moment I came here, but I do know I can get them back. I got one back already."

"Really? Then will you allow me to read your mind?"

"Woah you can do that?"

"Yes. It's a powerful magic that allows my eye to wander your mind so it has strict requirements.

First, you need to be completely still and accepting of me searching your mind and my eye needs to be as close to your brain as possible to get the best effects and we need to be in an area that won't be disturbed.

If I am moved in this process, best case scenario I will be stuck in your head and worst-case my soul will leave and slowly disperse and die and your mind will forever be left with a gaping mental hole, allowing just about anyone to enter without trouble."

"Yeah. Very strict requirements indeed. Okay, but you have to teach me how to fight."

"Alright. That could be fun. Come to my house. I have several layers of protection around this so don't worry about being disturbed. let me just put on some clothing too."

Just like that, they both went into the house and Afir pulled a massive lions skin over his body, and wood and wind magic cut it to fit his body like clothing. All of the slimes stayed outside except the ones all on Zeeth but he was assured that nothing would notice them since an illusion barrier was already put up. The dragon dropped the two creatures on a wooden table and they started to come apart by themselves, being separated masterfully.

He sat down on the wooden floors and patted an area in front of him to motion Zeeth to sit while he was watching the animals being carefully torn up.

Zeeth did as instructed, with his back facing the dragon and his head tilted back a little.

The dragon then put his eyes straight onto the middle of his head where the little spiral was at and Zeeth felt a cool rush brush his hair and then a warmth spread in his brain.

"Hmm. There are many parts that I can't see. But by just looking at everything I can see, I will believe you.

I assume those are the parts where you are talking to god. I guess he doesn't want to spread the knowledge that he is real. Boy, I advise you not to spread this knowledge. It will probably bring ruckus and harm to you.

Luckily for you, I don't give a damn about that kind of stuff anymore but if I was a greedy and powerful man you would be stuck in a lab being studied and cut open right about now."

"Ok. When do we start fighting?"

"Hahahaha. Boy, we are so far apart in strength, even if you fought me you wouldn't be able to learn anything. You will have to go through my training first, with your body I could even accidentally kill you with a small whip of my hair."

"Am I really that weak? Wow. Ok, so what's the training?"

"Well, first we feast." And in a quieter voice, he said, "These two were originally meant to feed me, but now I have to share it. Humph."

Zeeth heard that and quickly said, "Oh I don't need food. As long as my slimes are healthy I can stay healthy too."

"Hoh? Does your tamer ability allow that? I've never seen such a thing before. Your skill seems to be even greater than I had initially thought. May I see your tattoo?"

"You mean this?" As Zeeth lifted up a slime part and showed the tattoo on his shoulder.

"Oh right, boy, you should be warier about showing your skill imprint. That is a very personal thing that you normally don't want to show anyone since it basically tells them your abilities, but yeah you can show me."

The dragon came closer to the imprint and looked at it in amazement.

"Wow… it's so detailed and … is that a hundred dots?"

"Yeah. Why is that a lot? I wanted to make a whole army but I accidentally maxed out on slimes with a hundred."

"Boy, getting the tamer skill alone is incredibly rare, but you have one with such a detailed depiction and a hundred dots. Each dot represents a creature that can be tamed.

When it's black it means it's an open space that can tame more and when it's colored in it means it's been taken.

With such a skill you could've easily taken and controlled one of my kin if they were a baby."

"Woah. So what god said was true."

"Hmm, so God told you this as well? Well then. If you don't need food then we can get started with the training now." and with that, his mouth grew scalier, greener, longer, with more teeth, but more importantly, far larger. Large enough to swallow both the creatures at once.

He swallowed very gutturally and made a satisfied smile as his mouth went back to his human shape and his stomach gurgled. Zeeth and all his slimes just looked on with curious eyes and tilted heads.

It was cute (the slime anyway) but also very awkward.

"Kuhum." The dragon made a dry cough and said "Anyways, my name is Afir. Yours is Zeeth, I know that. The first thing we have to take care of are these slimes. First of all, you have way too many and some of them are too large. They draw too much attention and if you meet anything fast enough, you're basically done for. I will teach you how to conceal them."

"You can do that? Do you have slimes?"

"No, but I have my own tamed pets. I only have two but they are incredible creatures. Drem! Tav! They take 15 control points each, so I only have a thirty point skill. I actually tamed them when they were just children so I saved on a lot of points."

From the sky, two giant birds swooped down with force so great Zeeth could feel the wind and the pressure they were carrying along before he even saw them. They dived down and without slowing down at all, they grabbed Afir's shoulders.

On the right, was a flaming, bright red and yellow phoenix and on the left stood an identical light blue and purple phoenix.

"These two are Drem and Tav. They're twins."

"Two birds from the same parents. I found them as babies just hatched from their eggs. That should tell you how powerful they are, even as infants they required 15 control points each.

Drem here is a phoenix with the attributes of fire and light. Tav has water and darkness. Any creature with two attributes is incredibly rare, so I'm quite proud of these two. Like my very own children."

Afir reached up to stroke their backs and they closed their eyes as they enjoyed it.

"It's a good thing they have opposing attributes, they balance each other out and keep each other in check. Well, back to the topic. For these two, I allow them to fly around since they do need their freedom."

Zeeth looked at Al and wondered if he could fly as well.

"Of course, your slimes can't fly."

How was he able to read minds? Zeeth was taken aback.

I can't read minds like this. Your face was just far too obvious and I can read you like a book. you need to get better at hiding your expressions. but first, we are trying to solve the issue of having 100 slimes around you since we can't let them roam around you, it would attract too much attention. Don't worry though, in this world, we have worked with slimes for a long time and there are many secrets to them.

One of them is to compress them into tiny spheres. They would weigh the same since the matter is all still there, but depending on your mana control, they could be much smaller."

"Okay! I wanna learn that. Sounds super useful."

"The first step is to control the mana. Swirl it into the middle of the slime and quickly shape the water in at the same time using mana so that it doesn't flop out and kill those parts of its body. It's not that easy but you should be able to do it with your control and affinity with water but you should start with a smaller one for practice."

"You just want me to do it without extra practice? What if I kill one of them?"

"No, you can't kill a slime with this. This skill only allows you to change its shape. If you were trying to harm them, they would notice right away and fight back and it would be too inefficient for killing slimes, but you can seriously disable them so go a bit slower on your first try."

"Okay. Let's try with Bu then. He is my second smallest right now and I want to keep Al with me.

"Alright. I will first demonstrate with this flower. By the way, all these flowers you have with these slimes can be shrunk too. But they are much, much harder to shrink if you want to keep its shape. It would be easier if you shrink it to a ball but it might affect its properties."

"Right, the flowers! Do you know what these flowers can do? I grabbed them since they looked kinda useful."

"Hmmm. I'm not totally sure, I'm not specialized in mana plants and potions but I have some experience. These heart-shaped ones are deadly, but when prepared properly it can temporarily boost your adrenaline levels. The only issue is after that you also feel more tired mentally and physically. I know that much, but there is someone else that is much more experienced in this. I will try to call her here after your training but she is probably busy."

"Alright. I guess you gotta teach me how to shrink a slime first then."

"Ok. so, look at this flower. Do you notice how one part is larger and has more water? Imagine this water is mana..."

Afir spent the next 10 minutes explaining and demonstrating how to shrink a flower and how that would apply to a slime. (I actually have all the details figured out but I feel like it would be boring to explain how it works. Maybe if anyone asks I will add it in a later chapter or in the author's note.)

By the end, Afir had a perfectly shaped, exact same flower but far smaller. It weighed the same but it was far denser and harder. It required a lot more strength to even bend it, like a hard rubber stick.

Zeeth applied the same techniques to shrinking his slimes and on his first try on Bu, he ended up with a small, imperfect sphere, like an ovular, bumpy pearl.

Bu was still alive and well but it had trouble moving. It could wiggle around but compressing the body was much harder. It could still do it but the distance traveled wasn't far either since it was only so big.

The jumps were sharper though since there was more tension when it was compressing. Bu seemed sort of uncomfortable with the new change but when Zeeth stuck it into a slime on his slime armor suit so that a membrane carefully wrapped around it, Bu calmed down and closed its eyes peacefully.

This way, Bu could be carefully held in his arms and when he needed it, the slime that Bu was wrapped in could quickly shoot it out.

Zeeth wasn't happy that Bu wasn't perfectly spherical. He decompressed Bu and tried again. This time he knew what he did wrong and fix the mana circulation and Bu turned out satisfactory. He stuck Bu back into a slime in his body and started with his second one, Ce, the third slime he tamed.

This time it came out even better. The slime was smaller, it was more spherical and the color of the slime was just more distributed and even. Afir said this would allow the slime to return to its uncompressed state even faster and be more comfortable.

After about three hours he had compressed and recompressed all of his slimes until they were all as good as he could get them.

It got to a point where he could even compress his 11-meter mammoth slime to the size of a handball. He stuck this into the middle of his slime suit. His entire suit was now peppered with carefully placed slimeballs to make his suit look cool and symmetrical.

Next, he wanted to practice with the flowers to become even more proficient with this. Now, with the experience of compressing all those slimes, he could do it much faster and better. Within only 2 hours he compressed over 400 flowers. He was able to compress with both hands and this time he didn't put too much focus into compressing the flowers since they were one-time-use flowers.

He stuck all the 400 flowers into his suit and with this, he could blend in with the colorful forest easily.

"Now you know how to hide all one hundred of your slimes and unleash them at will."