Mark of the Ranger

XXXI. David and the Slimes

          David walked out of the slime shower and put his clothes back on. Once he did, he peeled off another string of slime. The disgusting film of the slime skin always got on the workers, so they had to shower every time before they went to their breaks. This time was no different, in fact, David seemed to have had even more slime covering him than what had covered him in the morning. David followed his coworkers to the rock dome--they were in an open area, so the slimes could roam free--so he could eat something out of a bowl go to sleep, then go back to work in the morning. It had been one day, and already things were boring.

          They trekked through a narrow hallway into the room, where Lion and Ko were waiting. They always seemed to get there first. Lion waved as he saw David, then gestured to sit next to him. David grabbed a bowl of something and sat down. "...So I looked at the ores," Lion continued, "And I wondered to my team, 'Why don't we feed these to the geovores?' And the guys didn't know! So that gave me an idea. I'm not sure exactly what I would use it for, but I'm seriously curious about what would happen."

          Jeff found the group, took a bowl, then joined them. "I had an idea, too. I was looking at the crystal from an ore I was breaking--an earth crystal--and I got an idea. I asked a rock breaker next to me what would happen if I ate the crystal, and he guessed it would give me the power of Geomancy. We're not sure, but it's something I want to try." With that, Karen joined the table with her bowl of something.

          "Hey, I've got an idea, too!" She told them. "It turns out, we feed the beast Toxiclaw with the pearls we collect, right?" Lion nodded, clearly intrigued. "Well, nothing has strengthened him enough more than the ability to walk, live, or whack the occasional delinquent. However," she leaned in closer. "I found this giant pearl. I wondered to myself, 'How much more powerful would Toxiclaw get if he ate this?' It's just an idea, but I don't know what I would do with it." David listened carefully to all these ideas, thinking on what he could do to link them together.

          "I wonder if we could use all your ideas together to find a way to get out of this joint," David mentioned as Isabel and Elena joined them. They stumbled to the table in their high-heeled shoes, then sat down. Their faces indicated that they didn't want to be asked about their day. "We were just discussing idea that occurred to us while we were working," Lion explained.

          "Oh, that's great," Elena muttered angrily, fuming with the heat of a thousand dragon's lungs. The others looked between each other and decided to end the conversation in silence.

          After dinner, David walked back to the slime corral and went to sleep in his bunk. He woke up in the morning with a crick in his neck. He must have slept oddly, but he woke up like he normally did. David got dressed and strolled over back to the corral and dressed in his gear, along with a few others. There was another Asmerian there, a girl named Jen. She taught him how to do the important things, all the slimes' food preferences, and even how to stun slimes if they were being naughty. He followed her to one of the pens as she unlocked the door. He prepared to catch the first slime.

          The first slime was a blue one-- a pure slime. It was a slime that hadn't been powered up by any magic crystals, so it produced pure mana instead of a kind of elemental magic. David swung the net, a part of his gear, stopping the slime in its tracks. He pressed a button on the handle, and the net closed around the slime. It struggled for a bit before realizing the futility of its efforts and stayed still so David could bring it to the "milking" station.

          David walked over to the station, making sure that the slime did not escape, and set it down in the slime receptacle of the "milking" station. The station was a fairly simple thing, but it still worked like it was supposed to. It was simply a hole that slimes could fit in with a bunch of tubes that would be attached to the slime. Presumably, the tubes would suck the mana, or elemental magic in other cases, from the slime, and feed it into a canister, which sat on a pedestal. The canister had a clear little window on the side to show how full it was. Once it was full of the mana, it was thrown down a chute, sent to who-knows-where.

          As David looked at the canister and thought about how he had no idea where the chute led, an idea sparked in his head. It was by no means a plan, but it was definitely an idea. As David "milked" the other slimes and threw more canisters down the chute, the idea began to form more. David thought and thought as he worked--there were one-hundred and twenty-six slimes to "milk," so the job took nearly all afternoon--thinking on how he could connect his idea to the idea of his friends. There was just one more thing he needed to know.

          "Say, Jen," David asked his coworker. "Do you have any idea where the canister chute even leads?"

          "Not a single inkling," Jen responded, confirming David's suspicions. She must have thought that was a strange question, or had never had anyone ask that question before, because she immediately questioned David. "Why do you ask such a question? You're not planning anything, are you?" 

          "Nope, not a plan," David answered, getting back to work. "The only thing I have is an idea."