Time seemed to stand still.
Lohan remained motionless, using [Structural Stability Lv5] to its fullest to prevent his body from making any movement, hoping against hope that the elf girl hadn’t seen him there, or that she would at least ignore the small Slime among the leaves on the ground and continue her run.
But unfortunately for Lohan, the girl’s eyes began to shine as she looked at him with curiosity.
"What do we have here... why are you so still, little pest?" She asked, without waiting for an answer, as she slowly removed the staff from her back and walked towards Lohan.
’Little pest? Don’t elves like any forest creatures?’ Lohan wondered, confused.
The direction this conversation was taking didn’t seem pleasant to him at all.
Slowly rolling backwards, Lohan tried to look for anything that could help him escape, but there was nothing.
"Are you running away from me?!" the girl asked, shocked.
To confirm her guess, the girl did not walk directly towards Lohan, but walked around him, circling the little Slime.
Lohan was very scared, so he instinctively moved away from the elf girl, even if she changed direction, he also changed it and tried to get away.
"You’re running away from me!" the girl said excitedly, putting the staff behind her back and bending down to look at Lohan even more closely. "Why are you running away from me? No creature is afraid of elven magic... but you seem different, little pest."
When the girl put away her staff, Lohan felt relieved, but when he heard her call him a little pest again, Lohan was startled and became alert again.
’Okay, this girl seems to be more curious about me than scared or angry, so as long as I keep her interested, staying alive won’t be a problem.’
Elysium has severe penalties for deaths, with normal human players complaining about losing a portion of their experience, players of rarer classes and races receiving penalties such as losing skills or even receiving permanent debuffs, with the penalty becoming more severe the rarer the player’s race or class.
There was even a story of a player who completely lost their character with a unique race after dying, having to start from scratch and receiving only a common race after that.
Coincidentally, Lohan had a unique race and class, which scared him with the possibility of dying.
Not knowing how to interact with the elf girl, Lohan quickly thought of something.
With [Structural Stability] at level 5, Lohan’s control over his own body was far superior, and with the human mind controlling that small body, he was able to do much more advanced things than other Slimes, such as pointing at the staff on the elf girl’s back with a jelly tentacle.
When Lohan’s body began to vibrate, with a small tentacle extending toward her, the girl was a little startled, but she didn’t move, without any fear of the damage a Slime could cause her.
Curiously, she saw the creature, which should have had no intelligence, point at her staff as if it wanted to say something with it.
"You... you mean the reason you’re afraid of me is... because I picked up my staff?" The girl asked incredulously.
Previously, she had spoken to the Slime only because she was used to talking to all the creatures and plants in the forest, not imagining that the Slime would actually respond!
To her shock, the Slime’s tentacle began to tremble as it readjusted itself, as if under a lot of stress, but slowly the shape of a small hand, like a baby’s, appeared, with four fingers closed and only the thumb raised.
"Is that a YES?! YOU UNDERSTOOD ME AND ARE RESPONDING TO ME?!?!?!?!"
The Slime did not undo its hand and just waved it forward.
"Oh my Miriath, did I really find an intelligent Slime?! This can only be a miracle!" The girl said in shock, quickly approaching Lohan. "Little pest, are the other Slimes as intelligent as you?"
Lohan didn’t like that she kept calling him a little pest, but looking at the path he had come from, with the ground cleared of any kind of life and a clean trail of death and destruction of vegetation where he had passed, he realized that that definition was perhaps not far from the truth.
So he controlled his tentacle to close his thumb, open his index finger, and shake his "hand" from side to side in denial.
Looking at that hand, the girl was even more shocked. This little Slime really understood her question and managed to answer negatively as well!
Excited, she looked to the side and pointed in a certain direction, where a small blue body was crouched down just like the Slime in front of her, but behind that blue body, another trail of destruction had been left.
"If you’re the only smart one, why is your little friend also hiding like you?" She asked curiously, pointing to the smaller slime.
Using his clone’s vision, and seeing that the girl was looking directly at him, Lohan controlled the clone to roll up to him and merge with his body.
Seeing the "smaller Slime" approach the larger Slime and merge with it, the girl was even more shocked. "You have the rare ability to clone yourself?! Wow, how lucky is that?! I think you’re the only slime I’ve seen in the last hundred years that has developed this ability!"
This surprised Lohan.
’No other Slime has come up with this skill in the last 100 years? Although that’s not so surprising, considering the cost of 5 Bio to unlock this evolution, it’s possible that the other Slimes don’t have enough discernment to choose this evolution over the cheaper ones.’
By showing her some "tricks," such as his human hand and the integration of his clone, Lohan realized that the girl was no longer showing any hostility towards him, which made him feel much more relieved.
But the girl’s next action completely startled Lohan.
Without asking him anything, the girl suddenly reached out her hands and picked Lohan up!
’Shit, what does this crazy girl want to do to me?! Am I going to become an experiment on some wizard’s table?!’