Prologue
A soft hum filled the skies as a small carrier shuttle began its final descent to the surface of the planet, carrying the final passenger on this journey from earth. The moon held high in the starry night, its huge eye like craters gazing down upon the quiet planet as phosphor slimes took flight. In a few short minutes the shuttle landed in front of a large, two story dome-like building, a large flat portion of land stretched in every direction from the shuttle granting it all the room it needed as it proceeded through the unloading process and waking the passenger. As the shuttle unloaded its only passenger a ball of fire streaked across the sky, many slimes slid and bounded for cover at the sight of the fiery formation streaking across the sky.
Moments later, the meteor disappeared beyond the rock formations that made up the biome known as the indigo quarry, but the slimes remained hidden among the rocks and crevices along the walls of the canyon that marked the exit from the ranch. The pod concluded the unloading process as dawn began to break upon the world.
Chapter 1
As dawn broke and the roostero called, Connor began to stir within his room. Connor, after a few moments of hesitation, pulled himself up and climbed out of bed, trudging along to his wardrobe to grab a change of clothes for the day's work. After grabbing some overalls and a tee shirt, Connor quickly changed out of his pyjamas and into the clothes he just grabbed, growing more awake as he did so, then hurried to the door; grabbing his old vac-pack that he inherited from his grandfather who passed away a year before he came to this planet.
Outside, the landscape was quite torn up compared to what it had been when Connor first arrived at the ranch. The earth was ground up to make some veggie farms, rocks crushed under the repeated explosive outbursts, crystals protruding all over. Largos hopped around freely since there were no corral barriers to contain them, a rogue pink plort sat alone near one of the carrot plots. Lying asleep by the door to the house was a hunter slime, quite visible at the time.
Connor looked out across the chaotic terrain when one of his rock crystal largos approached the pink plort, having smelled an odd onion growing in the patch. Connor quickly took action, grabbing the nozzle of his vac-pack and kicking the buttons on his dash boots as he broke into a sprint towards the largo and plort, knowing what may occur should he fail to collect the rogue plort before the largo reached it. The largo continued towards the odd onion that it desired just beyond the pink plort seeing no threat from the plort, for what harm could a plort do to a largo? Not even a second later, the largo spotted the object of its desires, and out of glee the large hybrid slime curled up into a ball, with its rock and crystal spikes growing more prominent, and rolled straight towards the odd onion, and the plort.
"No!" Connor mentally screamed as he pushed forward, his dash boots out of energy, and pulled the trigger on the nozzle of his vac-pack, hoping to pull either the plort or the largo out of the other's path. As the air around the plort got pulled towards the vac-pack, the largo barrelled into the plort. Uncurling from its ball, the largo opened its mouth and wrapped it's congealed lips around the solid mass of pink gelatine, the conversion started and ended almost instantly, the largo's spiked form collapsed into a softer black tar like mass. The appearance of the black hybrid slime sent a wave of terror to all of the nearby slimes and largos as the creature came to realize its surroundings.
Connor silently swore as he broke his focus from drawing the black creature towards him and instead switched his vac-pack to fire off a barrage of water globes towards the foul tarr. The first few globes missed their mark, not seeing the threat the tarr began leaping towards the nearest source of nourishment, Connor himself, right into the next few globs of water. Tarrs, in all of their ferocity towards other creatures of the world, are quite simple minded and always look for the fastest route to their prey.
The water impacted the fluid form of the Tarr as the black substance began to separate as the water bonded to its form and scattered it in a flash of vibrant colours. Connor dropped to his knees and sighed, this was the thirteenth largo lost to Tarr formation this week. Taking a moment to collect himself, Connor got to his feet again and went about his daily chores, cleaning up the ranch the best he could and calming the feral hunters on the ranch.
In due time the ranch was at least functional for a few days of no supervision, Connor stepped into his house to grab a box which he strapped to the side of his vac-pack and returned outside. Connor had been planning a trip back out to the moss blanket and an old temple that was located under a thick bunch of moss and lichen. He was planning to discover all the secrets he could there, now armed with a lunch kit and his grandfather's old vac-pack filled to 30 globes of water at the ready, Connor was ready to head out onto the range. After stepping off the ranch Connor quickly was struck again by the difference that the portion of the far, far range he had always explored was so different from the portion that a blue haired, spunky teenage girl wrangled not too far East of Connor's ranch, where the girl stepped out of her ranch to find a decent sized clearing home to many pinks, Connor found a rocky plateau filled with small volcanic crags, housing many rock and crystal slimes. The plateau was made of more or less the same material as the rest of the dry reef, but this area always confused Connor. What caused such a formation to occur?
Since he broke his dash boots' shock absorbers shortly after arriving at the ranch, Connor continued on his path, climbing down from the plateau and out across the rest of the dry reef, avoiding the cliffs down to the slime sea and many canyons that often housed feral rock slimes. Connor soon came to the line where the dried coral stopped and tall grown trees and mushrooms began. The moss blanket was something truly marvelous, the high growing trees grew their leaves in such a fashion to allow the sun high above to shower the ground in golden light to make it appear like a night sky at your feet. The mushrooms grew to make the pathway seem like a metropolis back on earth, with many honey and tabby slimes hopping around and inside some hollowed out ones. Connor took this as a sign to take a break and enjoy the sun, eating a bit of the lunch he packed for the journey, or at least that was his original intention before a tabby dropped a freshly picked cuberry at his feet. Connor patted the tabby on its head, or the closest thing that the slime had to a head, feeling the fur like texture that the slime had evolved with its other cat like properties, before grabbing the cuberry and taking a bite out of it.
Connor remained in the area for a full hour, watching as the slimes jumped and swung around, before standing up and returning to his travels. A storm cloud had formed within that hour, but it was far to the west with the wind blowing north, so Connor payed no more heed to the storm cloud as he continued. The old temple came into view only a few minutes of walking later. The temple was something to behold, if you had the eye to notice it past the densely grown trees and serried vines; the massive structure appeared to be made of mud, but was so much sturdier. It had intricate designs depicting many of the more common slimes, such as puddle and honey slimes, but also showing some rare slimes, such as hunters and crystals. The structure appeared to be roughly ten meters tall with the door measuring only a third of that height and about seven meters on either side of the doorway in width. Connor had only been to this location a few times but never managed to explore further than parts of the first floor.
Connor took a long moment admiring the designs, tracing one of the slime drawings he had never seen before with his index finger; it was a strange slime with an internal spiral design. He then headed inside and turned on the flashlight attachment on his vac-pack. The entrance room of the old temple was no less spectacular than the exterior, having similar markings and glamorous gemstones embedded into the walls, the entrance room wasn't the largest space, measuring only about seven feet wide and about the same dimensions tall. But the light reflecting off of the crystals made that small chamber seem much larger. On the other side of the entrance room, it opened up into the main chamber, where the crystals and designs continued along the walls.
Out of the corner of his eye, Connor caught a quick flash of blue and yellow light. Immediately turning his head, Connor crept towards a small cubby near the floor where the flash appeared to come from. Connor began to kneel down when the blue and yellow light appeared again further down the wall, with alacrity Connor tripped over to the second cubby, just as the flash appeared again even further down the wall. Connor kept chasing the light. He lost track of where he had been and where he was going, eventually he found his way down three flights of stairs, which he had not noticed traveling down, and into a dark, dank den. The chamber wasn't large, but showed signs of something living in it, vines and mosses lined the base of the walls, scorch marks ran across the walls of the den and lying in the center were some strange rings, quite similar to the teleporters that the blue haired teen had on her ranch.
Drawing his attention away from the rings, Connor discovered a line of writing on the back wall. The writing itself was not something Connor could understand though, finding this more than curious, Connor was about to take a step forward when the blue and yellow flash shot again between his legs, leaving a scorching trail in its wake. It stopped for a moment to form a blue slime like being with electricity running across its body. Connor stared in awe at the new slime until his focus was broken by the sound of thunder above, at which time the slime shot through a small hole that Connor never noticed before. The rings at Connor's feet began to spin, the cause of which was unknown to Connor (because how could he have known that a plort was released within the tunnels the slime escaped through, and got caught in a statue to power the teleporter.), before Connor could even process what was happening lightning struck the roof of the temple.
The walls of the structure trembled as small pebbles broke from the roof of the chamber, the rings at Connor's feet beginning to spin faster and emit a blue glow, and another bolt of lightning struck the roof of the structure — drawn towards the plort being held by the statue — and more pebbles fell with the chunks growing larger. Connor's mind was racing, unsure on how to respond, Connor never noticed as a large chunk broke free of the roof above him, nor would he notice it. The chamber collapsed within moments, the rings being crushed under the weight of the earth above it, and Connor found himself surrounded by a bunch of scrap metal.