Afir's Friends

Zeeth used a pen from the wall and wrote on the back, "thank you so much for all that you have done for me." When he wrote these words, strange confidence grew within him and words got sturdier-looking too. Now that he thought about it, this was his first time ever writing here. His first few letters were shaky and light, but as he wrote his heart steeled up and he decided this was for the best.

He jumped out of the speeding cart and decompressed Gul, a small slime that he typically used for the top of his slime cannon.

He jumped on Gul, grabbed the hook that held the tentacon, which had been moved to be right next to his cart, and had it start their journey to Jarlon. While he rode ahead, he looked back one last time to the dark carts. Only one person was up in each cart to watch out for dangers and they noticed Zeeth on his slime and they waved to him, unable to see the slime due to the shadows from the clouds covering the moonlight. He waved back and quickly rode off to the right before they could see him too well. He had noticed that he would soon reach the rocky area that Afir talked about and had Gul slow down a little. It wasn't supposed to go any faster than 50 miles an hour and a slime bouncing was more consistent than his running.

This would allow him to study the statue that Tarud made for him some more.

"Oh yeah, Afir. I wonder how he's doing."

Over on Afir's side. It's been a couple of days since he had found Jalila and Alan and took the orb for studying.

'The orb has no tracking device, but it is a communication device, which means it can probably be tracked from the other end. There seems to be a third piece missing from the back of the box.' behind the lid of the box there was a small gap in the shape of a rectangle with a small, oddly-shaped handle.

He had already taken apart the Breadcrumb and the orb for further studying. He even kidnapped Jalila and Alan and interrogated them for information. He learned that there was indeed someone who was looking for them, but they had told them that they were tracking a dragon, not a sage dragon. They instantly spilled everything they knew, Jalila even told him their birthdays out of panic and they were let go after he went into their minds and took out their memory of where his home was and what he was like. He then sent them off to the nearest city, Jarlon, and flew back to his brother's place. A massive, magic volcano where the heat simply emanating off of it could easily burn the hair off of any normal person once they got even a bit too close. He simply dived into the lava and appeared under it as a dragon. Some other beings were there like a tiny, slender elf, a tall, muscular Dwarf, and a few more.

"About time you got here, Afir. You called the meeting."

"Sorry, had to take care of a few things." He reverted back to his human form and pulled out the orb and the box and tossed it to a lady to his side, "Balc, I have a few toys for you."

"Oooh, yippee! More food!" she inspected it for a bit, but was clearly unimpressed with the making of it after tinkering with the insides and threw the entire thing into her mouth, which had changed to the massive snout of a dragon and instantly back again after she swallowed it all.

"Okay, what did you want to tell us?"

"Right, I've been tracked down again. I initially thought it was the Vonnears, but after a closer inspection, I don't think it is. It was definitely Vonnear who had them track me down, but there is no way he had something like this orb that he would just have lying around. Someone is using him from behind the shadows while providing him with tools. This orb isn't something humans can easily make or obtain, the magic formulas are too strange."

"Yeah, these magic markings are more like a crude, horrible mixture of things. It tastes like when you try to grind up meat, fruits, and lollipops together to make a horrible smoothie that dried up in the shape of a popsicle," said Balc.

"Thanks for the great analogy, exactly. There is no way he made this. It's a mixture of what seems like dwarf, human and dark elf magic."

The woman clawed at her stomach and ripped it open to let out the mulched up orb and the box and said, "What could do this? Even I, the legendary Faber," she said this very proudly, "wouldn't do that." she then closed her stomach and performed a quick hand flick to turn the mulch back to its the original form.

"You're still going by that name? Isn't it annoying having to remember so many names?" a dwarf leaned into the orb to inspected it, a green glow emanating from his pupils to see the insides like a magical x-ray. he took in all the details as he spoke, checking out the materials, the methods by which it was made, and the tiny circles that were drawn on the inside.

"No, it's really fun." Balc said, "You should learn from me and not use your real name when you're meddling with your dwarf people, Karsil. Even Rafil goes by Afir, although I think it's a terrible choice to have so many letters in common. See, my name is Faber, no one will ever guess that it's me."

An elf took the box, wrenched it open, and sprinkled some yellow powder on it which whirled into a pair of hands that carefully felt the box, "Guys, what do you think this is then? Who made this?" the hands finished touching it and closed the box back up again, putting it back to the exact way it was before.

"Well, let's do our usual one-two thing." Karsil took the box and orb back and held his hand over them. a clock appeared on the back of his hand and the hour and minute hands rapidly spun backward. They spun for a short while and stopped at 5:55. The elf then sprinkled a bunch of her yellow, glittery powder all around her hand. They all took a step back, Afir took the orb and the box away, and once the hand was removed, the powder took the shape of a pair of hands, then an arm, and gradually, an entire body.

The body wasn't detailed, but it showed a man, about seven feet tall, with hands that looked far too small for his body as he worked on building the box, which was also shown with the powder. Another person came by made by the same yellow glitter, this time a small child with two little horns. He tapped each piece of the box against his horns and mumbled something to it, but no noise came out since this was all made out of powder.

"Did anyone make out what he said? Drozrenaz?"

A similarly horned man from behind Afir spoke up, "Yeah, it looked like he said 'dwarf, human, dark elf' in an ancient devil's tongue."

The scenario continued to play out, the boy kept on whispering things to the pieces that the man would piece together to slowly form the box and orb. At the very end, a large swarm of sharp tiny needles shot out from the man's sleeves, tearing up his sleeves in the process, and running into the box and orb. The powder showed them grinding against the orb and box on the inside to create tiny, detailed engravings. Each of the needles finished their grinding at the same time and dissipated into mana which melted itself neatly into the etchings that they made and reformed the box and orb to their original shape, without any clear engravings or marks, having filled all marked in with mana. this made it so that the formulas were still there but they wouldn't be noticed under normal eyes, but Karsil the dwarf easily saw through the mana and into the formulas.

"So that's how they made it." Drozrenaz said, "It is definitely dark magic, made by using the body parts of demons and other creatures. The little pieces that made up the tool looked like they were still part of something alive, they had a slight pulse, so they're making them from body parts of creatures that were still alive when they took them off."

"Karsil and I can revert it, it will just take some time."

"Alright, then let's get to it. Once you find someone, tell us and I'll go look for them." Afir walked away from the table, along with a few others to allow them to work. He dived through the lava and flew out to survey the land again. He spread his senses to cover the entire volcano and sat there, practicing his mana control.

Along the way to Jarlon, Zeeth kept trying new things with his slimes, testing their limits. While he was playing with them, he noticed that a leaf was sticking out of one of his slimes, and a tiny second one was growing next to it.

It was the slime that he had used at the front to block the blasting grass wind that came from the Faber box. At first, he thought it was just some random leaf he accidentally took in while he was quickly trying to shrink his slime, but when he looked closer, it was a light blue, teal leaf. It looked like a combination of green and blue, the outside edges being greener and the insides were blue. He also saw some small, dark blue dots in the middle of the slime. Zeeth grabbed the slime's sides, confusing the slime a bit, and then shoved his face straight into the side, surprising it. From looking at it like that, the dots became clear, they looked like oval seeds. He counted about 7 of them but many more were too small for him to see clearly, especially since it was within his slime.

He immediately called up god and asked, "What's that inside my slime?"

This time, god was in the form of a tall woman working as a receptionist. There were many others around them but time had stopped. God tended to go down to the world and act like other animals or creatures to have fun. "You were right. They're seeds."

"Why?"

"I told you. Slimes can absorb almost any magic."

"Magic?" Zeeth thought for a bit, and then it hit him and he exclaimed, "Oh. OOOHH! That's what you meant by magic! I thought you just meant like mana, and I was so confused cause I was like 'yeah, I know that that's how they grow. Ok, and the crazy wind thing caused my slime to absorb grass magic and become grass?"

"Well, there is more. But I don't wanna tell you, figure it out. It should be fun."

"Also, I just remembered, did you make me cough like that when I was talking?"

"Oh, were you about to mention me? Yes, if you ever try to mention me to anyone, you will be forced to stop. After every attempt, the forces will get harder and harder to endure. Don't try it."

"Wait, but I was able to tell Afir."

"Yes, I know. I only set it up after one of the others tried to tell everyone in their world about me to get them to kill me. I had to go down and wipe every single person's memory, it was so much work. I can't say I didn't expect it, I was just hoping for it not to happen."

"Oh, who did it?"

"Remember that loud boy who yelled at me and I scared him a bit?"

"What do you mean a bit, I think he peed himself. But, yeah. I don't think I would be able to get along with him either."

"Hah, see this is why I like you. You're honest. I will allow you to tell anyone who already knows about me, but no one else. Once they hear about me, they will suffer from the same curse though."

"Okay, thanks!" they spoke a bit more, Zeeth trying to learn more about slimes and useful knowledge and left the call, resuming back on his slime ride.

He rode the entire way there in less than 2 hours, doing squats and inspecting his other slimes for traces of magic while he was at it. God had told him that even slimes have their own attributes, and not all of them are water. Some are good at handling fire, or earth, so he would have to test them all himself. Which seemed like too much work, and he had no clue how.

Water is just what they were made of. A human wouldn't be good at manipulating bones and flesh magic just because they were made of it, it was just like that for his slimes.

God had said that a trained eye could instantly tell what each slime was good at, but no matter how he looked, they all looked like simple slimes.

But he had experimented the most with his leaf slime, who had renamed from Lox to Leaf to better fit his abilities. While riding there, another leaf was sprouting and now three leaves sat on top of the slimes head. He pointed the slime at the ground and told Leaf to shoot water. A normal stream of water with a hint of green shot out. He had remembered not to shoot faster than 50 miles an hour, so he decided to make it weaker. He wasn't sure how fast 50 miles an hour was when looking at a stream of water, so it simply came out as a quick rush, like water from a faucet. He dipped his finger in the water as it shot out and tasted it. It tasted like the smell of freshly cut grass, kind of nasty.

'What could this water be used for? Maybe it can help the grass grow faster.'

At some point, he could see a tall, rectangular shadow in the distance. He squinted and covered his eyes as they adjusted to the brightness of looking up at the sky and he noticed giant stone walls in the distance. The wall towered over everything around it and gave off a dominating feeling.