NOVEL NEXT WORLD Chapter 2: “[Devour]"
Oh sh*t.
Neo finally broke out of his euphoria and started to take things seriously.
He had to defeat this slime before the golden light completely disappeared.
What to do?
Of course, use the newly-awakened skills.
With a plan, the little slime moved slowly but surely to the unknown slime's core.
Why eat the flesh when you can eat the core and deliver a single critical blow?
Naturally, the closer to the core, the faster the golden light lost its luster, but right before the golden light completely disappeared—
Neo opened his "mouth" wide while shouting in his mind.
Devour this bastard!
The system finally sent another notification that sounded more beautiful than any other sound in the world.
At least for Neo at this precise second.
DING! [Devour] skill is activated.
[Devour]
(Skill level: A)
(Special remark: only applicable to fellow beasts.)
There was a logo of a transparent slime next to the skill name, with small words below the logo.
[Slime Race's Basic Skills]
Then, another system panel popped up.
[Initiating the skill's special effects •••]
The golden light protection completely disappeared into Neo's body without him realizing, replaced by a strange white light.
The entire dark cave without any lighting suddenly lit up, so much so that Neo almost went blind.
He might die of blindness before the slime devoured him!
What the hell is this "special effect"?
Why so flashy??
Unfortunately, Neo found himself unable to move, as if controlled by a strange force.
As the white halo took over Neo's body, the little slime suddenly opened its mouth wide.
The mouth was opened even wider and bigger than the size of the slime itself!
The huge mouth rushed towards the unknown slime's black bead, like the man-eating plant in a certain plant vs zombie game.
With one gulp, the entire black bead disappeared into the little slime's big mouth.
Chomp!
Neo quickly swallowed the slime bead and soon, his mouth secreted a paralyzing liquid, just like what the ambitious slime was doing to him.
If Neo chose to swallow the slime's entire body and not just the slime bead, he would only be able to eat a part of the slime, not a whole.
No matter how exaggerated the special effects of the skill, in reality, Neo's mouth was still small.
But it was enough to swallow the entire slime bead in one bite.
The moment the slime bead was devoured whole, the ambitious slime, who was still digesting Neo in its belly, suddenly stopped moving.
Then, the paralyzing liquid and the acid liquid used to digest the little slime slowly evaporated into the air.
The whole slime "melted" like an ice cream in summer, releasing the trapped little slime inside.
However, Neo didn't even notice all of this because the moment he successfully used the [Devour] skill and paralyzed the ambitious slime, a system panel with two options suddenly appeared in his vision.
DING! [Successfully paralyzed the target]
[Linking to other skills •••]
[Slime Transformation]
[Beast Taming]
Out of the two linked skills, the words [Beast Taming] were grayed out, as if they couldn't be activated.
Only the word [Slime Transformation] was glowing with a golden light.
Neo, who was originally planning to tame the bastard slime, was stunned on the spot.
...what? What slime transformation?
What kind of skill is this?
Wait, wait, how come the beast taming failed?
Is it because the target was already dead when the skill was triggered?
Looking at the "melting" slime on the ground around him, leaving behind its huge corpse with no slime core, Neo finally knew what went wrong.
Ah! He was too eager to break free, so he took a shortcut...
But how could he tame a dead beast?
He's not a necromancer.
Naturally, the [Beast Taming] skill failed, leaving only the unknown [Slime Transformation] skill.
Didn't the system only link the [Devour] skill with the [Beast Taming] skill?
Where did this [Slime Transformation] skill come from?
Neo's head was full of question marks but he didn't stay confused for a long time.
The slime immediately opened the system panel, ready to see what the hell was this [Slime Transformation] skill.
And to his surprise, aside from the [Beast Tamer] column that should be there, there were two other columns.
The first one had the logo of a tiny slime sucking a pacifier, titled [Slime Cub].
The second column was [Slime Race], with the logo of an ordinary transparent slime.
Then, aside from the first three columns, there was a new separate column below the [Slime Race] column, with the logo of a little slime wearing a golden crown—
[Slime Neo's Personal Skill]
In this column, there was one skill that Neo immediately noticed.
[Slime Transformation]
(Skill level: L)
Oh shit.
A legendary-level skill?
In manhwas, that's the pinnacle of skill levels!
What kind of luck is this??
Neo suddenly suspected that he was actually a slime king who just had the body of a slime cub.
Which slime cub could be as awesome as him, right?
But Neo quickly got rid of these thoughts and focused on reading the description and restrictions of this skill.
After reading the long text for a few minutes, Neo let out a sigh like a grandfather.
Ah...this skill is so awesome but so complicated at the same time.
Since it was so difficult to understand, let's just try it?
Neo didn't forget the option [Slime Transformation] on his system panel that was still shining with a golden light.
Now that he had digested the unknown slime's core and successfully "paralyzed" it to death, Neo decisively chose to activate this mysterious skill.
The next second, the voice of the system sounded in Neo's mind, but it was colder and more mechanical than before.
DING! [Slime Transformation] skill is activated.
[Initiating special effect •••]
Then, the familiar white light enveloped Neo, and he saw himself moving towards the corpse of the unknown slime.
Before Neo could realize what the strange special effects wanted to do, he saw himself slurping the whole slime corpse like a cold noodle.
Like magic, such a huge slime corpse disappeared into his tiny belly!