Riley opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her room. She smiled to herself and snuggled back under her covers. They were nice covers. Very smooth, very soft. Her third set after she'd dissected the first two that she'd been given.
They were magical. They came from a special sheep on another continent. Its wool was as thin and smooth as spider silk, but it had an internal structure that made it compressible in addition to its tensile strength. That meant that woven layers of it could compress in a way that silk couldn't.
The best of both worlds.
It, of course, was because of magic. It had taken her a long time to tease out the cells that generated the effect. They were similar to Galas Muscle, but spread out along the fiber. The first two sheets had barely given her a cubic centimeter of genetic material.
She'd use it for something eventually. Possibly incorporate it into her living dress. It was hard to say. Like most things magical, she didn't get clear plans from her Passenger. Her Shard knew how to connect biological components together in precise ways. She could graft pieces of one magical creature to another, but they sometimes died.
Like poor Krabby.
Not that his death was a complete loss. Badgy was finally accepting of his new head and arms.
Riley drifted off to sleep, only to wake back up a few minutes later. She didn't want to wake up. She didn't want to get out of bed. It was too soft and warm.
It had been designed that way.
That was the other thing she'd learned from her examination of the wool. The animals it had come from were too organized to have evolved wool like that naturally. She hadn't seen a 'Sariant Lamb', but she'd already learned a lot about them before Perorn had gotten her a book on them.
The book was interesting, but it had only confirmed what she'd learned on her own: Sarian Lambs were like Crelers.
Not in size, appearance, abilities, temperament, diet, habitat, or any other metric that most people would think to compare. No. In all of those, the two creatures were as different as night and day. Even the way other animals reacted to them were polar opposite extremes.
Animals would band together to kill Crelers if able.
Animals would adopt Sariant Lambs and protect them.
It was quite fascinating really.
Riley yawned and turned over to her other side. She awoke again a few minutes later. Sariant Wool was so nice. What had she been thinking of?
Oh, that's right. How Sariant Lambs and Crelers were the same.
It was a secret that only she knew, because she was the only one to realize that Crelers were biological weapons. They were designed to survive, eat, hide, and kill. Over-engineered, but still wonderfully constructed.
Compared to them, Sariants were child's play, but they were still also clearly from an intelligent design.
The book she'd been given had confirmed that. Eydole the Delightful, a level 69 [Beast Master], had made them about six-hundred and fifty years ago. Their traits were designed and implemented - the same as Crelers, but on a much more shallow level.
It was like comparing the work of Bonesaw to other wet Tinkers.
While Riley hadn't seen a Sariant Lamb except for their wool, she could discern the... fingerprints of a Tinker at work. The wool was great, on that she had no argument, but there were just so many other ways she could improve it without even incorporating magic.
Some nano-tubes could be added to the length to increase its durability. Scent absorbing filaments could line the strands to keep it smelling fresh. The random molecules would build up, so she would have to add either a waste disposal function or find a way to feed them to the Galas cells.
Or just clump them together and design a microscopic sac that would eject it all at once when full. That would be simpler and make it so-
Riley yawned.
Okay, fine. She'd get up.
With a mental nudge, her brain was flooded with a simple cocktail to wash away her sleepiness. It wasn't much. There was only so much room for storing chemicals inside of her, but waking up naturally didn't require much. Brains did it all on their own most of the time.
It was just convenient to have a manual trigger.
Riley sat up and yawned. Not a cute little performative yawn, just a regular one.
The room was pitch black, but her biological clock told her the sun was rising outside.
Riley ► Turn on the lights.
See-no-evil ► Ook.
Hear-no-evil ► Ook.
Speak-no-evil ► Ook.
Her eyes could work on the smallest trickle of light, but Riley still preferred things to be bright and cheery. Her monkeys scrambled around the room turning on the magical light fixtures.
They would make her creler-spiders deteriorate quicker, but they were much better than before. They still needed some work, but without a space completely devoid of magic, there wasn't much else she could do for now. She couldn't perfect their 'magical mirror' chitin unless she had a way to restrict magic so she could observe exactly how they reacted from every angle separately.
It was a fun puzzle, but Surgery was out of ideas with the materials she had on hand.
With the room fully lit, Riley got out of bed and stretched. Life was good now that she'd gotten Perorn to call off the Stranger that was pranking her.
Why was the leader of the Forgotten Wing Company like that when Niers was so... completely opposite?
It would be like if she put Pinky in charge. Pinky wasn't stupid, and she could be trusted... but she still did 'foolish' things just because they were foolish.
Where was she anyways? Riley hadn't seen her for a several days, perhaps even a week. Ever since they'd arrived in Elvallian her Fraerling friend had found other Fraerlings to spend time with.
She had her experiments to work on, and plenty of people to help, but she was still lonely without someone to talk to. What she really wanted was for Kevin to come back and read her some bedtime stories again. She could sleep without them... but it still felt strange and wrong.
She slapped her cheeks with both hands. Focus!
She was making other friends. It wasn't too hard to get on people's good side after she fixed them up.
But first... breakfast!
Riley found a clean cup. She needed to take her dirty dishes to the kitchen and pick up some new ones. At least the dishes that she used for milk. The rest of the glasses had been co-opted into holding various mixtures. An acid to eat non-Galas cells was coming along nicely.
On one hand, it was easier to dissolve regular cells, so a milder acid worked. She'd gotten the PH down to a good level to do exactly that, but it wasn't enough. It still dissolved the Galas cells eventually. It might work for fishing out the few cells that existed in a strand of wool, but it needed something else to reliably work on muscles, tendons, and bones.
Something that made it magic-phobic.
She poured herself a glass of chilled milk from her Milk Box and sat down to think. Let's see, her day would be pretty normal. The usual routine she'd fallen into after getting Foliana to quit stalking her. Or at least to quit trying to startle her. Riley still caught a whiff of freshly baked cookies every now and then, but it was faint. Whatever her senses missed, it was only a blip. Something that she would only have seen out of the corner of her eye.
Without that distraction she could focus on other things in the morning.
That was the routine she'd made for herself: Wake up. Sit around and feel lonely while she drank her milk and got ready for the day. Breakfast. Tinkering on different projects. Lunch. Auditing Niers classes. Dinner. Surgery to help out people with wounds healing potions wouldn't fix... and studying different biologies while she did it.
In a way, the Forgotten Wing Company was the best location for that. The Great Companies were sort of like mercenary governments. Warlords. They had their areas and provided 'protection'.
It was like a gang except for two key differences. First, the scale. From her understanding, the Forgotten Wing Company controlled approximately the same land mass as the North America continent. The Eyes of Baleros to the west controlled slightly less. The Iron Vanguard was about the same size to the north, across the Sea of Nagas (which was misnamed due to it being a gulf, not a sea). Maelstorm's Howling to the Northwest was even bigger.
The other reason was that their 'protection' was warranted. From her understanding and limited experience, the jungles on Baleros weren't as bad as the Dyed Lands, but there were still plenty of wild animals. Magical wild animals.
So, even if you discounted raids from jungle dwellers and other settlements, there was a lot to be protected from.
The odd thing was that there were a lot of mercenary companies apart from the Great Companies. Niers had gone over that in his class. In fact, it was one of the reasons for his class in the first place: training [Strategists] who were part of the Forgotten Wing Company, or were on friendly terms with it.
He had students from all over the world. Some would stay on after they graduated. Some would return home. Some would join other companies on Baleros. Regardless of where they went, they'd remember the Titan.
She supposed it was a lot like how fostering worked in medieval societies.
It was what set the Forgotten Wing Company apart. The other Great Companies were mostly made of single races. They protected their kind. Their own kingdoms made of nations and towns. Any Centaur in Maelstorm Howling's lands could count on that company - and join them if they wanted to.
The same was true for Dullahans and the Iron Vanguard, and Gazers and the Eyes of Baleros.
You would think that the Forgotten Wing would've recruited Beastkin and Fraerlings, but Beastkin weren't really a untied 'race'. More like an umbrella covering all the subspecies of humanoid animals. Fraerlings were... too small.
She still hadn't gotten a straight answer why there weren't other Fraerlings in Nier's class.
Oh well. Riley finished her milk and quit thinking about random things. She had work to do!
Her stomach growled.
But first, breakfast. The milk from her Milk Box was great. You could live on it alone, but she liked variety.
There were perks of being the guest of the Titan.
...
"Here you go, Lady Bit."
"Thank you, Peclir." She looked at the plate of food the head [Chamberlain] placed in front of her. As always, it looked delicious.
Riley took a small bite of each of the dishes before leaning back and sipping her water. She was immune from any and all poisons, but that might not hold true for magical ones. Better safe than sorry.
One thing that all poisons shared, regardless of if they were magical in nature or mundane, was that the dosage mattered. Heck, even the water she was drinking would kill her if she drank too much of it.
Not that water fit the technical definition of poison, but... whatever. The point was that by taking a small bite of everything she could check for poison by seeing how it affected her. Especially if it was a combination poison.
It wasn't like she didn't trust her food. It was just a sensible precaution.
"You know, I never see anyone else here eating."
"Most of the commanders prefer to take their meals in their rooms." Peclir said from behind her. "There are several common dining areas where the soldiers and students eat."
"Oh?" She turned her head to look at him. "Then what's this dining room for? Visitors?"
"No." He smiled at her. "This is where the [Chefs] and [Cooks] eat. They have to work during regular meal times, so it's empty and close by, which is why I chose it to accommodate you. If you would like to share your meals with someone, I can make some inquiries on your behalf."
"That won't be necessary." Riley said as she started to eat her meal in earnest. "But thank you for satisfying my curiosity."
"My pleasure, Lady Bit."
...
Back in her room, Riley started work on her latest project.
"Come here, GUI."
The red slime gurgled, but she couldn't tell if it was in response to her words or her presence.
"Let's take a look at you." She picked it up and gently placed it on the table that she'd designated for operations.
GUI felt... strange in her hands. It was a solid mass, but it also kept altering parts of itself to be a bunch of cubes as it tried to mimic the Met Factory she'd used to construct her virus in the Red Lands.
GUI, or 'Gooey', was the sample she'd taken from the massive slime that lived inside the trees and their interconnected roots that spanned that section of the Dyed Lands. As such, it was infected with the 'cubic' virus she'd used to transmit the un-summon signal to her rogue Mets.
She'd thought long and hard about GUI's name. She wanted to call it 'Cubey' or something, but it wasn't always cube-like. Besides, Kevin would appreciate the pun.
"I'm going to remove part of you today and try and make you a little brother, okay?" GUI rippled under her hands as it changed part of itself into cubes and back. "It's so hard to tell if you understand me. It would be a lot easier if you had a normal brain, or even a core like most slimes. "That's going to change, but I need to take my measurements first."
She'd built up a collection of them. Well, she HAD a collection of slimes. Niers had provided them to her, so Riley couldn't really say she'd built it herself. Most slimes ranged from harmless to 'was technically capable of harming a baby'.
There were more dangerous variants out there. Things like acid slimes, lava slimes, or poison slimes, but the slimes she had were made out of innocuous materials - mostly slightly acidic water. They were also all clearly sentient, but not sapient. They had the intelligence of similarly sized animals.
Her slimes didn't enjoy being tested on, but as long as she didn't touch their cores, and didn't deplete their bodies too much, they bounced back easily enough. The main thing they 'ate' was magic in the air, or as Niers called it in his class: mana.
He taught strategy, not the biology of slimes, but that was fine. Riley preferred to learn stuff with her own experiments.
"Slime A is..." Riley made a small incision in it's 'skin' and inserted a pipette to extract some of its liquid. Slimes were homomorphic, their skin and insides had the same cell structure. They just 'flexed' and made their outer layer more rigid as an environmental defense mechanism. The slime squirmed, but it had grown accustomed somewhat to Riley cutting it each day.
She then dropped the liquid she'd extracted onto her litmus paper.
If she really wanted to elevate science in this world, that would be what she sold to [Alchemists] instead of a finished product. It wasn't even that hard to make, just the right lichen for dyes and some paper fibers to hold it. The tricky part, for other people, would be to accurately associate the color shades with precise pH values.
That was one of the things her Shard let her tell at a glance.
A drop fell on each of the different sheets she'd made. They all changed different shades. "...the same level of acidity as it has been previously."
Good. It was her control. Maintaining the same pH balance meant that there probably weren't outside variables that were influencing her work.
"Slime B is... less acidic!" She smiled. She was successfully diluting it with filtered water. If she could make it completely neutral, then she might have slimes that people could drink! Like her Milk Box, but less biology and more magic.
She noted the values for slimes C through F, and then moved on to her next project.
"Slime G is... alive." She poked it and the slime rolled away. "Hmmm. I think it remembers what I did. There, there." She opened her supply of ground Sage Grass and sprinkled it over the slime. It jiggled excitedly as the mana-infused plant dissolved inside of it.
"That's a reaction I'll need to edit away." Drinkable Slimes would need to enjoy being consumed to a point before they'd be viable.
Not that Slime G was designed to be used like that. Once it was stable, she hoped it could be a symbiote for the Selphids. That was why she'd made an embalming fluid slime. The 'undead' soldiers in Nier's army, sorry, mercenary group, were her most enthusiastic customers.
It was nice to talk with them as she repaired and improved the bodies they inhabited. Selphids knew more about biology than any other race she'd met on this world. That wasn't surprising, considering they were parasites that inhabited and puppeted bodies. They had to know how things worked because they took the place of their victim's brain.
Hmmm... 'Victim' was a loaded word. They used corpses, so it wasn't currently accurate. The thing was, Surgery knew them. Riley had understood them at first sight - and she had alllll sorts of ideas.
Naturally, the first thing she did the next day was to implement counter measures in her own body and those of her pets. Reinforced nerves. Fake pathways. Toxin pouches. Binary poisons.
The Selphids were each polite and nice people, but it only took one bad apple. Especially since they could interpret the electrical impulses of the nervous system in a way that was very similar to how the Corona Pollentia communicated with Shards. Riley hadn't seen any evidence, but she was certain that enough Selphids working together could extend their telepathy range from touch to something much farther.
Hypotheticals were just that, and Selphids inhabited corpses instead of people. They ate the dead brain and took over, stretching themselves throughout the body. It was fascinating.
And inefficient.
While dead bodies were the moral choice, the fact that they were dead were quite limiting. Sure, the Selphids didn't have to care about being wounded as much in battle, but that was lazy. Living bodies healed. Dead bodies didn't. Living bodies protected themselves from bacteria, and decomposition, and all sorts of things. Dead bodies didn't.
Most of a Selphid's work was managing all the small issues and doing repairs from the inside. Repairs, not healing. They could wrap themselves around a tendon to keep a body from falling apart, but they couldn't cause dead cells to grow back together or to make new cells. What they could do was excrete an interesting little substance to 'weld' together torn muscles and broken bones.
It wasn't healing, but it was still impressive, as she'd said before. It took a lot of skill and knowledge of biology to do that sort of thing. For Selphids, it was almost instinctual.
And that was their biggest problem. The knew what they needed to know, and didn't look any farther. They understood muscles, tendons, bones, and cells, but they didn't know of more basic building blocks like proteins. They used chemicals, but they didn't understand the molecular science of why such things worked.
If she could make a proper embalming slime, it would allow them to preserve corpses much longer. Some of the Selphids had Skills that did similar things, but that wasn't a universal solution. Once finished, her slime would be able to single-handedly do the complicated process of embalming.
Denaturing proteins to prevent them from being a food source for decomposition. Killing bacteria. Fixing tissues with CH2 linkage. Adjusting the pH of the water left to be perfectly neutral. Breaking up blood clots. Dyeing tissues to look alive.
Some of those things weren't actually needed. Selphids got rid of blood and most of the moisture in a body.
That helped slow decomposition, but it didn't stop it.
No.
Proper embalming was the key.
Of course, that did require several different chemicals given in precise amounts in a predetermined order. It was tricky to get her slime to have them all - even with its adaptable biology.
Riley sighed and put Slime G back. Her project was still a long way from being completed.
At least this one was. Her other slime experiment was ready to go. Since Slime G was alive and well, even if its composition needed work, it served as proof that her transplant procedure was feasible.
By placing the core of a slime in a new liquid and helping it convert that substance into its new body, Riley could make new types of slimes!
Or, in this test... give a core to part of GUI to make GUI2.
She injected Slime H with her special slime-anesthesia. She'd considered making an anesthesia slime, but there hardly seemed a point. It would just be a more dangerous poison-slime. Sure, it would be novel, but that would be it.
Of course, the anesthesia she used on Slime H wasn't a chemical that would sedate humans, or most other forms of life. The simple fact was that a 'regular' chemical that targeted GABA and NMDA glutamate receptors - for example - wouldn't work on something like a slime that didn't have normal biology.
Riley had seen plenty of magical creatures in this world thus far, but most of them were something that she could've made back on Earth Bet with enough time, resources, and inspiration. There wasn't much practical difference between magic and the different ways that Parahumans could bend reality.
It was mainly a difference in scope. Riley could've made something like Badgy with the proper base materials. ...Though that was a 'Bonesaw' sort of thing to do and not something Bit would condone.
She'd even seen capes that could make slimes, but they behaved differently. Slimes that originated from Parahuman powers all still used neurons and electrical impulses to 'think' - not that she'd had a particularly large sample size of Parahuman-made slimes to study.
Conversely, slimes here used magic. Thus, the way to sedate a slime was to simply block the magic from their core to their body. Like everything, it came down to dosage to differentiate between poison and not poison. While her blocking technique for her Creler-Spiders, Crelders?, Spilers?, wasn't working perfectly yet, her anti-magic poison based off of their reflective carapaces was doing wonderfully.
Well... not that wonderfully for anyone that you didn't want to also suffer from random magical mutations, but those took time to develop. She'd have to save Slime H's fluid and see how it was altered.
Even as the slime seemed to relax into a puddle, it still maintained its cohesion. Riley sliced into it and reached down with her forceps to gingerly remove its core. Without its body to provide magical nutrients, the core would soon die.
...Which did make her Creler-poison act more like regular poison for the slime now that she thought about it. Creler-anti-magic-poison? To help keep it distinct from a Creler's 'regular' poison?
Eh. She could worry about semantics later.
She placed the core in the cut-off part of GUI and then started to mix them together with more ground Sage Grass. GUI's liquid wasn't normal. It still had... sentience without need for a core. Riley watched intently as the core from Slime H came into contact with it...
...And nothing happened.
No combining. No merging. No new slime.
"Shoot."
She picked up the core with her tongs and placed it into a cup of water. It didn't react in the slightest. It was completely inert. Whatever magic it had possessed was gone. It didn't even have enough to maintain its physical structure as it broke apart and dissolved.
She'd do a post-mortem later. She had several ideas as to why her experiment failed. Slimes weren't made from magical liquids according to the book she'd gotten. Plus, GUI was already 'alive', which was another rule for what could and couldn't become a slime.
Riley didn't believe everything she read. Even if it was true for everyone else, it didn't mean it was true for her. Or even just true in general. This world didn't have peer-review or the scientific method or sample sizes. A [Slime Wizard] had written down his personal experiences - and that was it.
It was helpful, to be sure, but hardly definitive.
She was sure that it was possible to make a slime out of a magical liquid. It was simply a matter of... compatibility. The specifics still eluded her, but it made sense. A slime had to use magic to live. Adding to or blocking the magic in its body interfered with that.
It was probably down to 'resonance'. She'd heard the term mentioned in Niers' class. It was something about how all but the very best magical items would react to being in close proximity to other magical equipment - usually with explosive results.
It wasn't biology, so it didn't interest her or Surgery, but the underlaying mechanics were probably the same. Magic slime core plus non-magic liquid worked. Magic slime core plus magical liquid resulted in no slime - one way or the other.
However, just as with everything else, dosage was the key. Even the most poorly crafted magical items could be wielded together in small enough amounts. Better quality just meant more could be used. And there was apparently an art to mixing and matching. Not every artifact was the same.
It was probably some version of magical harmonies that fed on each other or canceled each other or something.
So, she just needed to find a lucky combination of liquid and core, or she needed to build a better slime core herself!
It still might not work with GUI. She would have to start smaller.
Before that, it was getting late. She had just enough time to grab a bite to eat before going and sitting in on Niers' class.
Despite her not being a [Strategist], nor having any real interest in how armies moved or specific tactics to employ in battle, she still enjoyed his classes. Not only were they entertaining, but they gave Riley a much better picture of what this world, or at least this continent, was like.
...
Riley walked back to her workshop after class.
They'd gone over a mock battle Niers had let his students command. She should probably go to his morning class one of these days. She liked learning, but she liked figuring things out herself more.
It looked like she'd have a lot more bodies to repair after dinner. Niers liked to use 'realistic' combat scenarios, and the best way to do that was to have Selphids fight. The undead, no that wasn't the right term... the living dead were great at mock battles.
They could be stabbed, chopped, pin-cushioned with arrows, and smashed with maces. The bodies the alien creatures wore got damaged, but the Selphids themselves were talented at pulling themselves away from danger and using their possessed bodies as a shield.
It was probably because they were used to it from all these fake fights.
Ah. That made sense. It was for the Selphids' benefit just as much as it was for his students. Eh, seventy - thirty.
The Selphids didn't wear their 'best' bodies to the fights, and were decently talented at patching them up afterwards. Riley suspected they'd be a lot better at repairing a living body. One that could actually heal on its own instead of requiring more and more patch jobs.
It wasn't surprising that Selphids didn't inhabit living bodies. She certainly wouldn't want one inside of her. Not a normal one, at least. One that she'd altered the cognitive functions of to be a tool rather than a person... but that would be wrong.
...Even though Surgery had plenty of ideas how to make it happen.
Yeah. No matter how beneficial it would be to have your own private doctor living inside of you, it would never work. The Selphid or the host would have to be basically brainwashed. Either that, or willingly share sensations.
Nope. Not viable in the long term. And a lobotomized Selphid wouldn't be smart enough to fix things properly.
Corpses were clearly the superior choice for them currently.
That was probably why she didn't see any Selphids living inside alive animals either. It would be a slippery slope.
Her musings were cut short when she got to her door. There was a tiny red envelope in one of Badgy's pinchers.
"What's this?"
Riley held out her hand and Badgy dropped the letter in her palm. Riley turned it over and sniffed it. It looked like a normal letter. Not normal for Earth Bet, the 'envelope' was more of a small paper pouch, but normal for this world. No poisons or other concerning things that she could detect.
Still...
She went into her room and closed the door behind her. She then held the tiny envelope up to one of her slimes.
...No reaction.
Well, if it didn't have poison or magic, then it was probably just a note from Pinky. Had her friend decided to leave? Riley wouldn't have pegged her as the the type who had a hard time saying 'goodbye', but Pinky was Pinky. Perhaps not saying goodbye was foolish?
Riley rolled her eyes and pulled the small letter out.
Bit,
By the time you read this, I'll be dead. Unless you read it on the same day that I left it. It will probably take me a few days to reach the leaders of the Selphids.
And they might not kill me. Who knows? That's what I'm going to find out!
Anyways, I hope they don't. Talk to you later.
-Pinky