Chapter 17 Taste Your Flavor

In the room, the two sisters returned from the communal restroom outside, one after another, and then got started with studying the book.

Just having been exposed to transcendent knowledge, both sisters were beyond excited. Although Karlo couldn't read, she still huddled next to Cherie, bombarding her with questions.

Cherie found it rather difficult herself.

She hadn't completed her early education due to a family tragedy, attending only half of it; the rest was self-taught, so she didn't know many words. On top of that, the book was filled with professional jargon from the transcendent domain, and it was littered with obscure hints and metaphors, so she could only guess at some of the content with what little she knew.

After a while, Cherie tiredly rubbed her temples and said, "I think I kind of understand... It mentions here that to obtain transcendent power, the first step is to enter the Dream Realm through meditation. Karlo, let's try meditating first."

Karlo's eyes twinkled excitedly, "Okay! How do we do it?"

Cherie closed the book and placed it next to her pillow, then found a comfortable position to lie down on the bed: "First, find a suitable position that allows you to relax your body naturally..."

...

Ybur, anxiously waiting outside the window, suddenly saw the two people inside lie down. It got excited, pressed its body against the window, and its skin membrane bulged out, forming cat-like ears as it listened intently to any movement inside the room.

The breathing of the two inside the room gradually slowed. Were they going to sleep? But oddly, why didn't they turn off the light?

After lying down, the sisters continued to converse, their voices faintly reaching Ybur through the window. Ybur tuned in to the vibrations and listened closely to the sisters' discussion about the key points of meditation.

After listening for a while, it scoffed in its heart.

The girl's understanding of meditation was entirely backward. To enter the Dream Realm, one had to bring their spirit into a peculiar state—there's a saying, "Harbor thoughts by day and dreams by night." Entering the Dream Realm was similar; you needed to keep thinking about it, using intense longing as the kindling.

At the same time, however, one had to ensure their spirit and psyche were absolutely relaxed.

This was a contradictory state, requiring both a detachment and a nearly obsessive yearning to hook oneself. In this conflict, one would slowly feel as if a small core within their spirit was coalescing, then seemingly drawn out of their body by something, and upon opening their eyes, they would find themselves in the Shallow Sea.

Afterward, one needed to keep recognizing oneself. Desire as the guide, cognition as the anchor, the purer and more extreme the person, the farther they could advance on this path.

But the girl who took the book had misunderstood the key point, falsely believing that "relaxation" was the most crucial.

Ybur sneered inwardly, fools. At this rate, they couldn't possibly enter the Dream Realm even in a hundred years.

But...

For some reason, listening to the sisters talk hopefully about meditation and transcendent matters, Ybur felt an inexplicable sadness well up inside. That barely perceptible sense of loneliness appeared again, like the sound of waves you'd hear from a conch, illusory, but echoing clearly in its ears. Separated by just a window, humans conversed inside while the monster listened from the outside.

Time passed indeterminately.

The two sisters gradually fell deep into slumber. The oil lamp by the bed remained lit, but perhaps due to running low on oil, its light also dimly waned. Ybur waited a while longer until the oil lamp finally extinguished, then it finally made its move, pressing its body against the glass.

Its acid had no effect on the glass, but the glass window had an iron frame.

Ybur spat out some acid.

The frame corroded quickly, creating an opening as the wind whooshed in from outside.

Haha, Sherry, I'm here to rescue you!

Ybur slipped in through the opening, wriggling and slowly crawling to the side of the bed.

"Squeak! Squeak!" Some mice in the corner were startled by Ybur and ran away in an instant.

Just as Ybur was about to use its tentacle to pull its book back, Cherie suddenly murmured from her dreams and turned over, her head landing right on the book.

Ybur immediately had the illusion of "breaking out in a cold sweat."

Now, with the book serving as a pillow under the girl's face, to directly pull it away would surely wake her. It needed to think of a plan... Ybur carefully wriggled on the bed, circled behind the girl, and upon seeing her exposed neck, got an idea. It then extended a thin tentacle and gently scratched the skin on the back of her neck.

Though it was a tentacle, for a Slime, any part of its body could serve as a sensory receptor. Its tentacle keenly felt the girl's skin, the fine downy hairs on the back of her neck. And... a very faint salty taste? Barely perceptible. Was this what humans tasted like?

Ybur felt its Digestive Acid begin to secrete... No, wrong, I didn't come here to eat meat! Ybur warned itself, but seeing that the girl had no reaction, it couldn't help but think: But surely a little lick wouldn't hurt, right?

Growing bolder, its soft body carefully pressed up against her, part of it deforming and sliding down into her collar, carefully clinging to her skin and keenly sensing the softness and that faint taste. Cherie hummed in her dreams as if tickled, her body moved slightly, but she didn't turn over; instead, she just raised her hand unconsciously and scratched behind her neck.

It seemed the disturbance still wasn't big enough to make her turn over... Ybur thought, continuing to cling to her skin, like a slow-moving wave, from her back to her waist, and then moving forward... It was odd, each part of a human's body seemed to taste slightly different.

Come to think of it, Ruby's memories didn't seem to contain much knowledge about the human body...

Ybur extended its tentacles further, exploring even more carefully.

Cherie started to squirm, as if feeling itchy, and suddenly murmured softly, turning her body. Ybur quickly retracted its body and tentacles, once again having the "sweaty" illusion in its mind—it almost got squashed by Cherie's body.

But with that turn, Cherie's face was no longer pressing down on the book.

Ybur rolled over excitedly, enveloping the book: "Sherry, I'm here to rescue you! Did you miss me?"

"..."

Sherry remained silent for a while before the pages finally began to tremble slowly: "No!"

Sherry said coldly, "Being near some barbaric Slime, I'm only used as a Shield, getting chopped and bitten by monsters, and even abandoned! But here, for the first time, I got the respect a book deserves!"

Ybur was sweating profusely: "Is, is that so..."