A/N: … Long time no see huh? Miss me? Nah I know you didn't. But seriously my computer stopped working and I had to wait a bunch of months to get a new one. I got it a few days before you're reading this and honestly, I was gonna give up on writing this xD (taking all the stuff from life as a sign I shouldn't), but then I logged on to my fanfiction account and saw that some people showed some interest in the story and I decided I couldn't just leave it there. Long story short, I'm gonna be trying to pick this back up again. So I'd just like to thank everybody who gave the story a review, a follow, or a favorite, because you don't know much about it, this could turn out terribly for all you know, but you still gave some support so I'd like to say thanks :).

Also for the sake of events, the story will take place from the first-person point of view from now on. The only time I'll switch it to the third person would be other events... Best time to do it before I make a habit of writing in the third person then trying to switch feels too late. So anyway, hope you enjoy the read!

Chapter 3 – Progress Day Pt. 1

'I don't recall my bedroom's ceiling being made out of flesh.' That was the first thought I had upon regaining consciousness, and I felt it was fairly justified. I was confused because one does not wake up into a dream. And it was at that moment when the word 'dream' ran through my mind, I realized what was happening. The details, the painful sensations, they would not make sense in a dream...

But it would make sense if this was all real.

I felt the thump of my heartbeat in my throat, my body became hot, white noise filling my head, as I fell unconscious for a second time.

-|0|-

Sunlight. Sunlight that entered the 'mouth' of the Hatchery was going directly into my eyes. This was how I regained consciousness, and how I knew it was roughly some time in the late morning/ early afternoon. I shielded my eyes from the ball of fire and got up from the floor of flesh. I blinked a few times until my eyesight was back to normal and then I began to lightly stretch.

While I was doing my mini-exercise I began to think about my situation now that I knew that this world was real. My thoughts began to wander back to Earth for a bit, but they weren't able to do that for long. While I would admit that I fell unconscious a second time, I didn't do it due to fear or terror. I was shocked by surprising information, and like many things this morning I felt that was fair. I didn't have too much back home, I had some friends and some cool stuff sure, but if I was given a choice, and in a weird way I was, I would still choose to come and be an Overmind here.

'Wherever 'here' is... The slimes from yesterday make me- Actually I don't even know how long I have spent unconscious.' I snapped out of my thoughts for a second and did the last few movements, finishing my morning stretch. However, before I could re-enter my incomplete musing, the hatchery started to hum and in the second it took me to react, I felt myself becoming unnaturally light as if I was being dragged up by some invisible, celestial rope. I looked around and I immediately realized that my limbs were near invisible, and then the ascension stopped with me being at the hatchery's highest point.

I immediately realized why the hatchery vibrated and what was happening. The hatchery must've responded to my thought and now I am seeing what the Hatchery wants to show me. I looked around again, taking in the surrounding scenery for a bit. When out of nowhere, my gaze locked onto the horizon as I watched the sun go down and then come up, set and then rise, nightfall followed by daybreak, before coming up one more time.

And in similar contrast, I plummeted back down. I blinked, and just like that, I was seeing through my eyes again. I thought it was weird that I was laying down though. I got up from the floor, uttered a thank you to the Hatchery, and thought about the information. 'So it looks like I wasted 2 days the first time I went unconscious and a day the second time. That's not too important though, what matters is the fact that three days were wasted.' Then I remembered I asked the Hatchery to queue up a Spawning Pool. As if reading my thoughts again, the hatchery vibrated in a way I knew meant it felt happy to have been useful.

I groaned in frustration at myself, but now wasn't the time to get annoyed or try to analyze everything. I had progress to make and I asked the Hatchery to place me outside.

Once outside, I was easily able to find the addition to the now creep-filled clearing. At its base, it was shaped like a mutated pear with numerous smalls tubes and spiky protrusions that pointed to the sky. Not counting the spikes, it rose up to be neck height and I could see the liquid inside. I knew the liquid was supposed to be some shade of light green, but instead, it was a bluish-green. So noticing the change I did the only thing a reasonable, curious seventeen-year-old human being should do in this situation. I stuck my hand in the pool.

A rush of information flooded into my mind, Zerglings, Queens, Spine Crawlers, Spore Crawlers, Banelings, each bit of information so delicious looking I instinctively began licking my lips. I turned around, possibly setting a world record in the process, and asked the Hatchery how many larvae it had produced during my extended naps. Rather than having another out-of-body experience, a small interface appeared before my face.

[Total Larva Produced: 10

Maximum Larva Capacity Reached]

'That's really good actually, the normal max per hatchery is three if my memory is serving me right. Now what to actually turn those units into is the question... As much as I want to turn all of them into zerglings, I can't afford that with no resource production. Now that I think about it, from my exploration a few days ago, I didn't find any mineral clusters or vespene deposits and normally they'd be pretty close to a starting location. That's another thing I can add to my list of 'Different From Game' kinda like those slimes from earlier.'

As I thought about those creatures, I felt a small headache start to form. 'One thing at a time Drew, one thing at a time. For now, I only need to think about resources and everything else will come in time. Now the question is where to find my Current Resources.'

I started stirring the Teal liquid with my hand, calling out commands with the hope one of them would show me my current resources, " Minerals..? Vespene..? Current Resources...?" When I said the last two words I caught something in the upper-right most corner of my vision and they were exactly what I hoped to be. The usual blue crystal image with the word 'Minerals' beside it, however, instead of the usual green blob that represented vespene, there was a color spectrum of vapor with the word 'Gas' beside it. Both of them were resting nicely at 250.

'Another thing for the 'Different From Game' list it seems... So if it says just gas does that mean any gas could work? And if so these trees could make a nice fire, but then how could I do that without burning the inside of an Extractor?'

Without even realizing it I had taken my hand out of the spawning pool and buried my face in both of them, the teal liquid staining my face. I used the sleeve of my top as a towel and wiped the liquid off my face, sighing as I thought about my current dilemma. That's when I realized that the lazy answer would probably be the best, so I looked towards the hatchery and said, "Turn all the larvae into drones." The interface with larvae popped up in front of me again and ticked down from ten to zero, the same thing happening with the mineral counter.

After making my, very hasty, decision I got up from the floor. I knew I had to find minerals soon, otherwise, my hive cluster would start to suffer more and if I wanted to be a good Overmind I couldn't let that happen. So I set off East, hell-bent on finding a mine or mineral cluster of some sort.

-|0|-

[Set Command Activation: Verbal / Mental / Both (Selected)]

[Spawning Pool: The spawning pool is a pit of primordial ooze which contains the genetic makeup of zerglings and makes several zergling evolutions possible that increase their speed, attack rate, movement speed, health, and armor.

Size Required: 10,000 square feet around build location. (Roughly a quarter of a football field)

Morph Time: 1 hour and 20 minutes]

[Drone: The drone is the basic worker unit for Zerg. It can harvest Minerals and Vespene Gas as well as build any Zerg structure at the cost of its life.

Health Points: 45

Attack Damage: 5

Attack Speed: 1.0 (An attack is made every 1 second)

Armor: 0

Spawn Time: 20 minutes

Resources Needed: 50 Minerals, 0 Vespene Gas, 1 Supply

Classifications: Biological, Light]

Messing with the interface was the only thing providing me with any entertainment. An hour, I've been aimlessly walking in this direction for an hour now. Tree, Rock, Grass, Taller Tree, the same sights over and over again would've driven me insane if I didn't have the menus to distract myself with. I have been walking in this direction this entire time and hadn't even seen the reflection of a gem. I understand – Oh a cave, that's new – that this was realistic and all, but couldn't the Overmind throw me a bone and make my starting resources nearby. Am I thinking about this right even... If this world is realistic, should I just give up on all the Starcraft information I've spent months learning?

'No, that's a stupid thought, a lot of the natural rules from Earth do seem to still apply. So think Drew, where are crystals and minerals naturally found?' Then it clicked, my eyes drawing to the nearby cave. If this was any other situation I'd have facepalmed myself for not using my brain, but seeing as this was the first cave I had seen all day I gave myself a pass. I approached the cave.

There wasn't anything immediately noteworthy about the cave besides the stalactites and stalagmites around its opening making it look like a predator's mouth. Since there wasn't anything else to discover out here, I climbed in and begun to search on the inside. There wasn't immediately anything, the opening providing me with enough light to look down into the deeper cavern. The wall was smooth with a small scratch mark here and there, the few small stalactites at the top of the cave had some liquid on them, but the stalagmites didn't. Of course, I found that weird but I didn't know enough about caves to say whether that was weird or not.

Even though that didn't change the fact that, besides the first few steps or so, I couldn't see into the cave. I got out of the cave and sighed, drawing on the most ancient and forbidden knowledge I had access to – Biology. A fact very few knew about me was I wanted to become a biologist, that was part of the reason actually why the Zerg and Protoss were always more interesting to me than the Terrans.

So as I stepped out of the cave, bringing forth my biological know-how, I caught a small glow through the corner of my eye. On the very border of the forest, where it was just dark enough to realize, was a small glowing, yellow flower. I walked over and plucked the peculiar little blossom and then brought it back over to the cave, reading the small HUD that appeared when I did.

[~New Plant Has Been Discovered!~

Luz Fleur: While not common this flower is by no means rare either, primarily because of their unique growth condition of only growing in an area why they have balanced sunlight, and balanced darkness. These flowers are able to last two months after they've been picked from their growth location and as such, they are used mainly as makeshift light-sources or as a decorative alternative to lamps and torches.

Effect: Produces low-vision light in a 10-ft radius.]

I might have to look for a few more of these for any time I want to do things at night. Now that I had a light source I pushed past the beginning of the cave and began to delve inside.

It quickly got dark as I delved deeper and deeper. I spent a few minutes walking in pure silence before a familiar sound caught my ears. I held the flower out and looked around but the light was dull and the sloshing sound echoing on the cave walls made the creature impossible to pinpoint. And in my haste to locate the slime I didn't pay proper attention to my surroundings. I stepped on a small bed of jagged floor rocks and jumped forward in pain, this led to me slamming my shoulder into a roof rock. Out of reflex I grabbed my arm and forced my body into a tumble... Unintentionally crushing my mini light source.

I stayed in my curled up position nursing my pained shoulder, but that attempt was cut short by the familiar splat of the nearby slime. So I got up and readied my Psychic Blast skill and as I turned to activate it I saw light. So rather than make a dice roll to hit the slime I ran towards the light, luckily not colliding with anything else on the way. The short sprint led me somewhere beautiful, somewhere perfect in fact... I had found the minerals I came looking for.

Hundreds upon hundreds of glistening gems and crystals, hundreds upon hundreds of shapes, colors, and sizes. Some had light glows to them, while most were reflecting their neighbor's light, bathing the cavern in a bright white that had other colors mixed in at some parts. That's when I saw it... her..?

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something... someone... a creature that even in fantasy games was rare, mainly being found in anime, manga, and sometimes more mature games and literature. Something that only existed in millions of fantasies back home, with thousands of different versions and variations.

Because out the corner of my eye, I saw a slime girl.

The... I'm just gonna refer to it or her as a girl to save myself the confusing thoughts, those can come later. I was confident in her race because of a mix of her 'skin' and 'hair'. She was humanoid, having the traditional two arms, legs, with the torso and head. Her skin tone was a translucent cobalt blue, her eyes were a bright emerald green and she had a light blue for her hair which was puzzling to look at. For the most part, her hair didn't go below her chin, but the few strands that did kind of entered her upper torso. What was weird about this... and how did this prove she was at least partially slime. I can't properly put how weird this looked in words but the bits of her hair that were in her skin was constantly dripping into her skin and being absorbed.

It took my brain a good five seconds to process what was going on with her hair and as my eyes drew back up I saw something in her eyes some part of me knew how to identify.

Bloodlust.

I had near zero time to react as the fingers on her right arms started to stretch and extend until they were scythe-like in appearance, but rather than being angled at ninety or so degrees they were pointing straight ahead. My body screamed at me to move and I listened throwing myself left, deeper into the cavern. As I collided with the cold, uneven ground I got a glimpse of her cutting the air that I was standing in.

Positive point, she hit the small slime that was chasing me slicing it into ribbons of... slime. Negative point, she definitely intended to hit me with those sharp claws as her eyes turned from the pile of mush beneath her and re-focused onto me. The same feeling came over my body as she immediately came in for another attack. I preemptively dodged left again, however, this time she seemed to be expecting it. Once she missed she used the momentum to pivot, swung her left arm around, and drove me into a nearby wall of crystals that dug into my back, trapping me in place.

Being so close to her I got a good enough look to realize other details were missing from my list, quite literally because of the fact that she had no ears, mouth, or nose. As I noticed those details, one thing in her facial features begun to shift. A thin line started to cross her lower face, where one's mouth would be. Then once the line spread enough to resemble a mouth, it opened revealing the toothless, tongueless void within. And with a feminine voice, she spoke

"Hello... I'd apologize for what I'm about to do, but I don't feel apologetic in any way, especially since I assume you came here to kill me." And as she reared back to, I assume, decapitate me, I shouted out sounding much more desperate than I'd like,

"I'm not here to kill you I swear! I was only looking for somewhere that had minerals because I needed to start something, and I happened to find this one! This is all just one great misunderstanding, Honestly!" As these words left my mouth, the slime's scythe of a hand stopped moving in its 'ready to strike' position. And as I looked at her face for any expression, I was confused to see her shaking with a bubbling sound coming from her. It was only when I noticed her mouth's upward tilt that I understood; she was laughing.

And as if cued to that thought, she snapped out of her bout of laughter, looked at me, and said, "As if I'd buy such a stupid excuse. There are hundreds upon hundreds of mineral deposits lying around in the Endyyk Forest and there are just as many caves, if not more, along the Agni mountain. You happen to come into the very cave I'm hiding away in and expect me to believe it? You're probably one of those dumb people who want to try and copy our natural regeneration upon death, or you could be working with L-".

Before that last word could come out of her 'mouth' it closed, her eyes narrowing immediately. I heard a sound similar to a 'tut' as she opened her mouth one more time to say one word, "Goodbye". The familiar feeling of internal screaming returned to me more intensely than before, as I felt my psychic energy rush to my hand.

I threw forward my hands and I felt the energy flow out as I cast the one offensive skill I had, Psychic Blast. It projected out in the form of a purple bolt of electricity that coursed through the air. The force of the point-blank shot flung her off of me and gave me enough room to catch my breath. As I fell forward I pushed off my lead foot in a dash for the cavern's entrance, however, I once again underestimated how much force went into the blast.

I took a step and felt fatigue course through my body. As soon as I took that first step, I was immediately forced to my knees. My back felt sore from the crystals that dug into it, but besides that small detail, I felt good about being alive. Following this thought, I heard a screech from my left, so I turned my head toward the fourth slime that had tried to kill me.

An arm was before my face.

I felt my eyes widen before I realized that this was an arm by itself; it wasn't connected to the slime's body. I watched as the arm decomposed from being solid to a thick looking paste on the floor. That's when I heard a cross between an angry yell and a screech from behind me. I didn't get any visual on what happened, but I felt the unseen force slam into my side.

I was flung deeper into the cavern, but now as I was able to see the slimy humanoid approaching me, without a particular limb. As she approached, her other arm morphed into the scythe-like shape of its fallen twin and was slowly rising over her head in vengeance. The anger in her eyes was palpable...

"And you happen to be a psychic as well. It's so unfortunate that we couldn't have met differently," And as she stood above me for a brief second, I saw that anger morph into sadness, but it was quickly snuffed out when her eyes locked back on me. That primal feeling of self-preservation kicked in one more time, but before I could make an effort to move, the pain in my side kept me in place.

I saw her hands pull back and closed my eyes, realizing my luck had run out. I heard the slicing sound of her arm through the air and a feeling of warmth overtook me. 'Huh, death doesn't feel that bad...'

I enjoyed the heat for a minute before I felt somethings slowly creeping their way on my skin. I reflexively swatted at it and the wetness of my palm assured me of my kill. It took me a second to realize that my eyes had instinctively opened back up and I was facing the cavern roof. As my brain was slowly processing the fact that I was still alive, I looked down to my palm to see what I had struck, and that's when I realized that I was submerged neck to toe in slime.

I freaked and jumped up, but the pain in my side hadn't healed and I collapsed back on the ground with a groan. So trapped there until the pain in my ribs subsided I turned my attention to figuring out what happened when I closed my eyes. A particular line she said earlier did come back to mind: 'You're probably one of those dumb people who want to try and copy our natural regeneration upon death'. So if this is what she, the question became how long would it take?

If she managed to finish whatever this regeneration process was before the pain in my sides dulled and I could make it safely back to the Hatchery, that would be a true game over. I breathed out and shuddered at the thought. My eyes fell to the slowly expanding pool that reminded me of those handmade slime products that were popular a long while back. Minutes of silence later, I eventually decided that it bore a better likeness to creep than the handmade slime.

Prodding my injury revealed that it hadn't felt better at all. I hissed from the pain and a feeling of hopelessness starting to wash over me. The sound of skittering reached my ear and I felt a familiar dull buzz in the back of my head. I was able to tilt my head and from the entrance came a few bug-like creatures.

They were around knee height with bodies that could rival some of the biggest dog breeds for length while looking like a crossbreed between an ant and a mutant scorpion. Their heads were grotesque being made up of eight beady green eyes sheltered under an armored ant-like forehead and mandibles. The middle parts of their bodies were similarly armored with spindly 'wings' that were connected by a thin purple membrane and underneath each side of this membrane, they had a pincer for a hand. Their lower bodies followed the trend of being armored while also containing a fish-like tail, connected by the same purple membrane. Once Drew saw them he sighed, not out of exasperation, but out of relief as he recognized these creatures as his beautiful newborn drones.

As they started to enter the cave I immediately noticed that, as they were missing legs, they were moving by lightly gliding across the floor. 'Probably something to do with that membrane.' mumbled the scientific voice in the back of my mind. Once they were in proper, they started to split up. Two of them went left, two of them went right and one of them came over towards me.

The groups that went left and right approached the cavern walls and each drone used its pincers to rip out a small crystal cluster. Once they had a satisfying amount they all lined up by the cavern entrance and stopped. The one that came over to me delicately wrapped a pincer around my thigh and the other around my chest. I was then carried and placed on the back of the other four drones who immediately departed the cave. As I glanced back, I saw my carrier rip out his own crystal chunks before turning and following us back home.

-|0|-

It was a bumpy ride, a grassy ride, and an uncomfortable ride, but thankfully it wasn't painful and didn't take the same hour it took me to get here. I didn't have a watch to tell, but I was willing to bet it took around half the time it took me. Once we were back to base the drones placed the minerals into the tube-like part of the hatchery and were sucked in, me along with them.

Of course, I collided with the inside part of the Hatchery and it was painful, especially when I was hit by a few crystals on the way in, but what happened distracted me from it. From the base of the pool a hole opened up and a tentacle with a mouth-like tip, similar to the hatchery's, came out of it. When I say mouth-like, I meant around the tip of the tentacle were 5 spiky protrusions that were contracting and expanding around an open 'maw' (read: hole). The tentacle stretched out of its hidey-hole and maneuvered its way over to the crystal chunks around me. The spikes on its face expanded and latched onto the gem. Once they latched on the tentacle tilted up a bit and secured its prize in its maw. Once secure there was an audible psst of air as the gem disappeared down the maw and into my resource bar.

Seeing something like this was cool, it honestly felt like a crime that it wasn't shown off before in the actual game. I sat there for a second and watched the tentacle go to work, picking up crystals and swallowing them. Once it was done with those, it disappeared back into the base of the pool. As I got up, I realized that the ache in my side was much lighter than before, but it was definitely still there.

I got up and felt some slime residue dripping through the gaps in my clothes and unto my skin. I almost suspected that it was the inner wetness of the Hatchery. The best way I could describe it would be the Hatchery felt like your inner cheek, soft but the wetness is there while having the slime on me felt somewhere between being slathered with warm water and saliva. I facepalmed because, while accurate, that made it sound much worse than how it felt.

Shaking the strange thought out of my head, I focused on the dull buzz in the back of my skull and I looked around me. I then asked, "You wouldn't happen to know how to get this stuff out of my clothes would you?" There was a second of silence. Then two, then three before I got a small hum back in response. From the base of the pool, albeit the opposite side, came another tentacle.

This one looked... 'dirty' if one understood. Rather than having a maw and then spikes, this one had a maw and big puffy 'lips' that seemed to be made of the same membrane that made up the drone's 'wings'. This tentacle came up to me and hovered in front of me for a second as if evaluating me. Once it was done with its evaluation, it throbbed and grew a bit in size before latching onto my shirt and sucking.

I hadn't messed around with many things that had to do with air pressure, but the closest thing I could say it was similar to would be a vacuum cleaner. It was incredibly uncomfortable and I'm pretty sure I heard a few of the seams in my shirt tear from the pressure, but after a few seconds of this weird cleaning, it removed its lips from my clothing. And as puffy as my clothes felt, I couldn't deny the results, the slithering liquid that was in my clothes was now gone and I was feeling better.

[New essence has been acquired. Begin assimilation?]

The interface popped up in my face. As it was another thing I had no idea what it did, I muttered a 'yes' under my breath and thought about what it meant by that. Before I could begin to search my mind for what assimilation would mean I realized that there was a third resource, fourth if you count supply, in the resource tab called Biomass and it rapidly ticked down to zero.

To be fair it was only at 5 before, but that was yet another thing that I didn't know about. Rather than being frustrated, this all intrigued both my inner gamer and scientist. That's when I remembered a feature common to most games called a 'Help' section. I briefly brushed through my interface, there wasn't much information there besides a little settings tab so I guess that was a no go. Now that I think about it, everything that I've gotten had been because I wanted information on it, built something, or got lucky.

'Eh I'll look more into my interface later' I thought and made a mental note. I couldn't go down that path right now because some things were still bothering me. I moved away from the pool and took a seat on one of the Hatchery's walls. I crossed my legs and started to search my mind for what assimilation was. A few memories from Starcraft popped up and...

If I was right the prospect was exciting.

Assimilation being the hive's way of grabbing essence from another species and then incorporating it into their units and buildings. If I was right in my understanding of that and I could get that slime's abilities to morph body parts and regenerate upon death, it was safe to say I'd be in a good place. I felt the smile brush against my face, then a yawn forced its way out of my mouth. I looked towards the mouth of the Hatchery and poked my side. The sun was still up, however, I was still in pain, so I made a decision and closed my eyes to take a brief nap.

'Hatchery, wake me up in an hour please'. I thought to the fleshy structure as I fell into unconsciousness.

Okay hi again, so I know that wasn't very long for being gone for so long and it was originally going to be three times this length, but I found myself straining to connect the parts and I felt like this was the best possible place to end it. Also if you can't tell I'm trying really hard to describe every single action forcing a lot of my efforts into creating my own descriptions without copy-pasting someone else's work as tempting as it is. Speaking of which here's a challenge for you: During a certain part of the chapter I was sleep-deprived and it came out sounding very weird, but the descriptions... also came out sounding weird. Can you guess what part of the chapter that was?

Other than that I don't have much to say, this chapter I tried to start dropping some hints on what Drew will be doing soon. I promise this time I won't make another disappearing act and go away for 5 or so months, so lookout for a new chapter sometime soon.

OH! Btw, nothing in this was some weird fetish nonsense, I picked the slime for the assimilation and showcasing how I think the Hatchery could adsorb liquids, cause it feels boring to just say everything dies when it goes in the pool if you get what I mean.

Thanks for reading, and please tell me your opinions on it, and even though it passed a while ago Merry Christmas!