Esmeralda

Emma looked really happy at his response, glad to share her knowledge with him, "Great. Well, for every creature there is a different method to approach them. Generally, flying creatures don't really trust people moving too slowly, they think of them as a possible threat because hunters are usually slow-moving. When trying to tame a bird, gently held its beak. It will fight back a bit, but after stroking its wings and fixing a few feathers, many would trust you. But only do this to ones that you know you can hold down gently, if you fight it with force and it realizes that there is a chance to overpower you it will be a lot harder for it to come under your command.

By the way, it seems that you have already sued up all 100 of your control points, how did you use them all?"

"Slimes."

"Pardon?"

"These guys." Zeeth pulled Al from his head and held it out to her to show.

She placed her hand on Al's face as if to caress a person cheek, "How cute." Al rubbed itself on her hand and closed its eyes. "I don't actually have a slime under my control, it's too dangerous to take the slime out of the forest. Did you use all 100 on slimes?"

"Yeah."

"How many slimes would that have gotten you? How did you get out of there alive?"

"I don't know, I guess I just have really good luck." he was careful not to tell her about his number of slimes, Afir had told him not to reveal his secrets and he was already telling her too much. He knew she was one of the Eight and that she was trustworthy, but he still didn't want to tell her more than he needed to. What if she was cursed to reveal his secrets to an enemy?

"Hmm, I think you need a bit more than good luck to get out of there with a slime. Oh well. If it's a secret you won't tell, I won't push you. One more thing you should do as a tamer is always try to imitate the face of the creature. They respond well with similarities…"

She told him a bit more about taming and how to get close to different creatures. Just as the sun was about to rise, they had finished packing and gotten ready to leave.

"May I ask why you want to leave?"

"It's to explore the world and get stronger."

"Alright, but I think there is a third, more important reason. but it seems you have another secret you don't want to tell me. Just remember, holding too many secrets could be bad for your mental health."

"Got it, thanks, Emma."

"No problem."

Emma watched them to the teleporters herself with Will.

"Erm, Lady Esmeralda, if you don't mind me asking. How come you are so nice to him?"

"Because he has a skill similar to my talent. And he reminds me of my son."

"Oh, you mean Kezmerald? He was a great man."

"Yes, Will. Thank you for reminding me. Haaa... I wish I could go kill that monster of the East Mountains myself. Those monks should just kill it if they can hold it there."

Zeeth shot up two slimes and they both jumped on, ready to ride wherever they needed.

"Page, where are we headed?"

He took in the fresh air and yelled excitedly, "To the volcanoes! We need to get you more used to heat, it could currently be your greatest weakness. We need to attack your weaknesses one by one."

"A volcano? Isn't that going to kill us?"

"No, not just any volcano, a magic volcano! The lava inside has been enhanced by years of being imbued with sun heat. It's in the perfect position on the planet to receive the most amount of sunlight, making it one of the hottest volcanoes in the world. Its temperature can easily rise to the levels were standing too close could melt iron and cause heatstroke."

"...how is that any better? How are we supposed to survive?"

"There is a tribe of people who live nearby. Actually, it's not that near but it's close enough that they are naturally stronger against heat, the magic they have is generally more heat oriented. We will live with them for a short while, then inch closer and closer until all of your slimes are heat resistant and you have at least one that can control heat."

"Control heat? What do you mean?"

"You see that green slime over there? The one named Leaf?"

"Yeah?"

"That was caused by your slime going through a serious contact with violent grass magic, so it absorbed it and made it it's own variation of magic. Now your slime doesn't just have a water affinity, it gained grass magic by mixing it with your magic. And since your slime has it, you should have a very weak version of it as well. Actually, at this level, your level should still be so low that it's not a skill yet."

"Wait, wait. This is way too much, explain to me what going on slowly."

"Okay, so you know how every living thing has its own affinity?"

"Yeah."

"Right, that means that all of your slimes have their own affinities too. We would assume it would be water, but it's not. It's just what they're made of."

"Yes, God told me about this already."

"Good, then you should know that this slime has a grass affinity. That's why it was able to adapt to the grass attack and absorb it so fast, if it was a slime with a fire affinity, it would've taken far more to absorb it. Your luck is just incredible enough for you to choose the best one. However, because your tamer skill allows you and your slimes to share your aspects, you are currently sharing with this slime and you have a very small bit of grass water magic at your disposal. If you focus, you can make a squirt of water with some grass magic in it, although it will be so weak that it will basically do nothing."

"Ooooooh. That is so cool! So how do I create grass magic?"

"Well, check if you have a grass magic tattoo yet. Check your arm where the first tattoo appeared, it should be there, that's where most skill tattoos appear."

Zeeth pulled up his slime armor a bit to check, but he couldn't see a second tattoo. "I don't see one."

"Yeah, that's expected. Your slimes grass magic is only so much and you only receive a small portion of your slimes abilities, this isn't enough. You need to wait for the slime to get more used to grass magic and to create more within itself, or manually have it absorb more grass magic to get your own. But for now, you can get your slime to shoot it for you. But you don't need to worry about choosing the right slime for this fire thing, they will all get a fair amount of heat, after all, it is a volcano. They will all get berated by the heat. Don't worry, I know how to make sure your slimes don't die from the heat."

"How?"

"We can test which slimes are the most resistant to heat by releasing them one by one near the heat and only have ones with high heat affinity to go and the rest will be compressed and wrapped up. When enough get resistance to heat, it should spread to you and the other slimes and they should all be ready to decompress and be safely let go near the volcano."

"That...doesn't sound too safe. Is that how we did it in the past?"

"Yeah! Let's go!"

Zeeth was still unsure, but he decided to trust him anyway. "Page, you know so much about me, tell me something about yourself? What skills do you have?"

"Oh, I have quite a few. My first skill was the body strengthening one that my dad taught me. I have a skill that can let me see if someone is lying. It's still level two, but it's really useful. It doesn't work all the time, but when someone is telling a big lie it can pick it up. I have about 4 skills, I'm working on a fifth one but it hurts when I try to learn it."

"Why, what is it?"

"Oh, it's not that the skill is hard to learn. It's that my body isn't strong enough to handle so many skills, I need to train my body more. When you have too many skills, it starts to rip apart your body if it's not strong enough to hold them all. My other two are simply endurance buff and an escape skill that lets me dash to where I was five seconds ago. But if something interferes, the skill stops, but my momentum doesn't and I get sent flying or hitting my head on something.

Not great skills, they're weak, but that's what allows me to hold so many, they are all weak. But when they level up, they become really powerful. The escape skill literally becomes teleportation. The fifth one I'm trying to learn is a de-buffer to weaken the enemy. Five skills is actually a lot, normal people get by with two or three because they aren't willing to constantly train their bodies. But it doesn't strain your body all that much once you get used to them and it doesn't require that much training to get used to it when they level up. That's why it's a lot more worth it to me to level up my escape skill than to get a teleport skill, it's much less taxing even though it takes longer. This is all knowledge from my 140-year-old self, it's reliable."