But I’d been reborn. As a slime.

Munch, munch.

Munch, munch, munch, munch.

I just snacked on some grass.

Why did I do that? Well, why not?

Not like I had anything else to do!

It had been a few days or so since I was pretty much forced to accept the fact that I was now a slime. How many, I wasn’t exactly clear on. The passage of time is tough to pick up on when all you can see is total darkness.

One discovery I had stumbled upon over the past few days was that a slime’s body could be way more useful than at first sniff. I never got hungry, for one, nor did I get tired. Food and sleep, for me, were wholly unnecessary. And I had divined something else, too. I couldn’t be completely sure, but there didn’t seem to be anything else living around here. In terms of danger, I wasn’t sure there was any to speak of. My days were blissfully free of worry.

Or anything else, really.

The whole time, I never heard that voice again. By this point, I wouldn’t have minded a little companionship. But no. It was just me, the grass, and me eating it for lack of much else to do. It was simply a way to kill time. And by this point, I could sense the entire process—my body absorbing the blades, dismantling them internally, sorting through all the components, and storing them away.

What it all meant, I couldn’t say. It was starting to frighten me a bit. I needed to do something, or I’d lose my mind. So I kept going through the cycle—absorb, break down, store up. But there was something odd about the process. Elimination never factored into it, somehow. Not even once. Maybe slimes didn’t need to do that. Hell, not like I’d know either way. But where was all this stuff I was ingesting going, then? My senses told me that my form hadn’t changed in any appreciable manner from when I first arrived.

So what the hell?

Received. It is being stored in the stomach of the unique skill “Predator.” Current physical space usage is less than one percent.

What? Whoa! It speaks!

But since when was I using any skills? I thought I answered no back there.

Received. The unique skill “Predator” is not being used. The matter being ingested into your body is set to automatically be stored in your stomach. This can be changed as needed.

Oh? Well, nice to see we’re having a real back-and-forth, finally. But back to business. If I use this skill, what happens then?

Received. The unique skill “Predator” chiefly comprises the following five effects:

Predation:	Takes the target into your body. Lesser chance of success if the target has its own consciousness. Can be targeted on organic and inorganic objects, as well as skills and magic.
Analysis:	Analyzes and researches targets taken into your body. Lets you create craftable items. If the required materials are present, allows you to make a copy of the item. Successful Analysis of the casting method allows you to learn the target’s skills and magic.
Stomach:	Stores the Predated target. Can also store materials created via Analysis. Items stored in your stomach are unaffected by time.
Mimicry:	Reproduces the form and skills of absorbed targets. Only available once the target has been Analyzed.
Isolate:	Stores harmful effects incapable of being analyzed, neutralizing them and breaking them down into magical force.

Um… What?

For the first time in a while, I was thrown. That sounded like kind of an incredible ability. Not exactly the kind of thing slimes were known for. At least not the ones I knew.

And…hang on. Who was this voice answering my questions, anyway? Was someone there?

Received. This is the effect of the unique skill “Great Sage.” The skill has taken effect, making it more immediately available.

A sage, huh…? And here I thought that voice was just screwing with me. Now it was the best partner I had. Hope that keeps up.

Hell, anything would have been fine at that point. As long as it helped smooth out the endless solitude I was preparing myself for. For all I knew, this “voice” was something my mind had crafted to keep my marbles intact. It was fine by me. For the first time in ages, I could feel a burden lifting from my heart.

By my count, it had been ninety days since I was reincarnated as a slime.

To be more precise, ninety days, seven hours, thirty-four minutes, and fifty-two seconds. How was I so sure about this? Turned out that was one of the many side effects of evoking that “Great Sage” skill.

Holy cats, was that thing helpful. Talk about your best friend in a pinch. Any question that popped to mind, it instantly provided the answer.

According to this Sage, it took ninety days for the skill to fully fuse itself with my soul. Normally, it would be unable to provide responses in the form of conversation, but in order to answer my questions, it apparently revamped itself, diverting part of its “World Language” powers to assist me. That’s how it was explained to me, at least.

This useful ability—relaying words into my mind—isn’t normally possible. As it explained to me, this “World Language” was heard only when there were great changes to the world or when you either earned or upgraded a skill—something that normally didn’t happen all that often. These skills were obtained only rarely, when the world recognized that you had grown in one way or another.

Evolution, meanwhile, was something most people never got to experience in their lives. It was all Greek to me, but if that was how it was, I was willing to accept it.

So the Great Sage was answering my questions at the moment, but otherwise it was this totally passive thing. No real sentience or anything. Unless I spoke up, it would never talk to me of its own volition. That was the only real drawback, but tossing words around with someone again was a wonderful feeling, even if it was a one-way street.

Although, back in my home world, having a conversation with my own skill might have been considered strange…

So there I was, still locked in darkness, asking a barrage of questions.

One thing the replies confirmed was that yes, I was a slime now. I also found out why I never got hungry or sleepy. The slimes in this world, it turned out, never had to eat if they could keep absorbing the magic particles, or “magicules,” in the air. In less magically abundant regions, I would be obliged to fill up by absorbing monsters or small creatures.

Most slimes shied away from areas with low magic presences, but the ones that didn’t were apparently both quite strong and madly vicious. Usually it was the other way around, where a wealth of local magic meant especially strong monsters.

In other words, the area I took up residence in was so laden with magic that I didn’t even have to eat.

As for the sleep question:

Received. The body of a slime consists of a mass of completely identical cells. Each individual cell may function as a brain cell, a nerve cell, or a muscle cell. Since the operational cells used for thought are rotated in and out at regular intervals, there is no need for you to sleep.

This raised the question of where my memories were being held, exactly. Maybe it was kind of like a RAID setup on a computer?

That would be close enough, came the response. Considering its lack of personality, the Sage certainly came up with some snappy replies.

Speaking of which, the “Great Sage” skill consisted of five effects:

Hasten Thought:	Boosts perception speed by a thousand times.
Analyze and Assess:	Analyzes and assesses the target.
Parallel Operation:	Operates on any matter you wish to analyze, separating it from the regular thought process.
Cast Cancel:	Annuls the casting period required when using magic, et cetera.
All of Creation:	Provides full coverage of all unsuppressed matter and phenomena in this world.

“All of Creation”? So I know about everything, everywhere, with no effort on my part? Score! Or so I thought.

It turned out that I could only be told information related to things I’d already heard about—in other words, I needed to recognize and understand a concept before I could grab a full Analysis of it.

And the spell thing—did that mean I could instantly use any magic once I learned it? And, like, there was magic in this world and stuff?!

The Great Sage replied with a big Yes.

Well, once I knew that, I just had to try to learn a few spells myself.

I checked with the Sage to see if it could help me cast magic, but that was a no-go. Eh, it was worth a shot.

Still, I had another great idea: Could I link the “Predator” Analysis skill with “Great Sage” Parallel Operation?

Received. It is possible to link “Predator” Analysis with “Great Sage” Parallel Operation. Do you wish to link them?

Yes

No

Uh, yeah? Not that I had anything to analyze yet… Wait. Or did I? That grass in my stomach. The stuff I had been eating to pass the time. What was that? Not like I had anything else to do. Let’s give it a try.

Off you go, Sage.

………

……

…

Analysis complete.

Hipokute herbs:

A type of ingredient used in healing medication. Only thrives in areas blessed with high local magic densities. Fusing its juice with magicules produces recovery medicine. Grinding the blades and fusing them with magicules produces a salve that closes wounds.

Wow! That was what I’d been snacking on? Talk about an unexpected windfall. I immediately set out to create some medicine of my very own. The process took place inside my body, so it didn’t really feel much like crafting, but the Analysis took less than a second, and within another three-ish, I had my very first potion. Five minutes, and I could’ve had a hundred. And while I didn’t have anything else to compare it to, using my Great Sage skills to assess them resulted in a “high quality” rating.

So there you go. I was happy enough with it, at least. It all went so fast, too. I asked the Sage about it, and it said the process usually took more time than that. Linking it with Parallel Operation must’ve been the right idea, I suppose.

To test that theory out, I unlinked it long enough to create a single potion. It took fifty minutes. Damn, that was slow. Looks like I had the foresight to stumble across some mega-compatible skills to combine. Not that I knew what I was doing at all.

Some of your garden-variety weeds were also sprouting here and there, but most of the local grasses were hipokute. How ’bout that? So I decided, as a little insurance, to Predate all the herbs I could in the area and turn my stomach into a little recovery-potion factory. I didn’t have much else to occupy my time. It was still pitch black in here.

There was no doubt about it. I had put my guard down. I had a partner who granted me skills and the ability to engage in (kind of passive) conversation, and I let it get to my head.

I suppose that had a lot to do with how for ninety days in a row, I never ran into any other creatures. No danger to my life whatsoever. But either way, I had let my guard down.

For an instant, I was like, “Huh?”

I felt a sudden sensation that I had grown lighter or heavier or, like…unstable.

Did I…fall in some water?

In the past ninety days, I hadn’t felt so much as a drop of water hit my body. I’d assumed I was in a rain-free cave or some other kind of shelter, so I had never even entertained the possibility before.

I had probably slipped into a river or something. Rivers don’t exist indoors, so maybe it was some kind of underground creek in this cave I was in…? Up to now, I had been careful with every step I took, making sure everything remained steady in the darkness. But after learning about my skills, getting full of myself, and using Predation to eat a pasture’s worth of grass, I had stopped paying attention to what was under me.

I was always like that. Getting cocky, then screwing it all up in the end. I’d proclaim to a customer, “Oh, absolutely! That won’t be any problem at all!” and then have hell to pay. It had happened over and over. I still remember the spiteful looks the rest of my team gave me for it.

Too bad I didn’t think to stop myself in time. What kind of idiot runs off into parts unknown when they can’t even see? If I survived this, I was gonna give myself what for. Of course, given my personality, I doubted I’d learn anything from it.

It was funny how serenely I was handling this whole thing, though. Not like I had much in the form of arms or legs I could flail about in horrified panic…

Guess it’s over, then. Pretty short lifetime—even by slime standards, maybe. I said my final prayers, awaiting my inevitable suffocation.

………

……

…

Suffocation never came.

Why not? Did I not fall in the water? Time to call on the Sage, maybe.

Received. A slime’s body operates exclusively on magicules. Oxygen is unnecessary, and therefore, so is breathing. That is why you have not been engaging in that behavior.

Oh… Right. I wasn’t paying attention, but I guess there wasn’t any breathing, was there? Made sense. Even after ninety days, I was still learning something new!

But now wasn’t the time to celebrate. I had fallen into water, and even if I wouldn’t die, it did still put me in kind of a bind. What now? I couldn’t really tell whether I was floating or sinking. My lack of limbs precluded any attempt at swimming. Would I wind up at the bottom sooner or later and be able to creep my way back to the surface? Or was I doomed to bob around in the middle of the current, never reaching much of anywhere?

Though, if anything, it felt less like a violent torrent and more like I was being rocked in a cradle. Very gently rocked. It felt pretty good, even…

Something told me this wasn’t flowing water after all. Maybe it was a lake, not a river. I didn’t feel as though I was being taken anywhere. I was just kind of bobbing up and down, like a plastic bag, and it didn’t feel as if I’d ever hit bottom. If things stayed this way, I was in big trouble.

What now?

Just then, my brain cells—or my slime body, I guess—came up with an ingenious plan. Maybe I could go all Predator on this water and then spit it out for some water-jet propulsion. Would that work? Only one way to find out. Not like I could do anything else.

So I started drinking, filling my Predator stomach up to approximately 10 percent of its capacity. Then, I expelled it like I was wringing out my stomach.

The sense of release was exhilarating.

Suddenly, I heard a voice in my mind:

Water Pressure Propulsion skill acquired.

It was the first time I recognized it. This had to be the so-called World Language. There was no mistaking it, since the Sage spoke only when spoken to, but the two voices did sound exactly the same.

But I didn’t have a moment to ponder over this. The more pressure I applied on the water, the more pressure I felt on myself, and I was rocketing forward at astonishing speed, as if I was about to launch myself into the sky. The acceleration was intense. Honestly, maybe it was a good thing I couldn’t see. Instead, I just basked in the sensation of my body zipping along through the darkness.

Well, let me clarify. If I could’ve seen my surroundings, I’m sure the fear would’ve been intense…but not being able to see was just as terrifying.

If you’ve ever been on a roller coaster in an amusement park in total darkness, perhaps you’d understand the feeling. My mind flashed back to my previous life and the single day I spent visiting a certain paradise under the rule of a certain rodent. At least his magical dreamland offered safety harnesses.

By this point, I wanted to punch myself for coming up with the idea. And trying it out right after thinking it up? Come on, man! What happened to some kind of, you know, preliminary safety check?

The terror was starting to affect my train of thought. How long would I keep accelerating? How much water did I spit out, anyway?

As that thought occurred to me, I felt my body crash headlong into something and bounce off it. I braced myself for a wave of paralyzing pain. Which never came.

Huh? Shouldn’t that have, like, damaged me? Or did it damage me, and I just didn’t feel it or whatever?

Received. You have acquired Cancel Pain, which interrupts the creation of pain. Your Resist Melee Attack has reduced the amount of damage taken. The amount of damage your body has incurred is ten percent. The intrinsic slime skill Self-Regeneration has taken effect. Would you like to support it with your Predator unique skill?

Yes

No

Oh, so I was hurt a little, then? Made sense. I wasn’t sure whether this was a good or bad thing, but as long as I knew something was up, then maybe I didn’t need to feel pain after all. It’d make certain things easier.

Predator support, though, huh? I don’t really get it, but sure. “Yes.”

At that moment, I was greeted with the feeling that I had suddenly lost some of my body mass. After a while, I felt it return. My damaged parts had been Predated, analyzed, and repaired. Talk about a useful body to have. I should try testing later to see how much of it I can afford to lose before I’m KO’d. It was way too dangerous to mess with in detail, but I guess I could afford to go without at least a bit of it at a time, so…

Something told me I was getting a little too careful, anyway. I had a stockpile of recovery potions, which I didn’t even have to use. And I would’ve figured losing a tenth of my body would be a pretty serious issue, but now I knew I could just regenerate it in the space of ten seconds. Next time I was damaged, I’d try using those potions.

So where am I, I wonder? Making sure my body was back to normal, I checked out my surroundings. No telling what kind of dangerous monsters might be nearby. I was out of the water, but maybe there were scary, scaly things waiting for me on the other side.

Slowly, carefully, I started taking action.

It kind of seemed as if whenever I did something “carefully,” it meant I was about to be exposed to a heap of danger. I was sure it was just my mind playing tricks on me, though.

And that thought probably did me no favors, because…

Can you hear me, little one?

I heard something.

Little one? It’s probably not anyone besides me, is it?

It wasn’t a voice, exactly, but something I could recognize more directly and instinctually in my mind. I didn’t have any ears to listen with anyway.

Hello! You can hear me, can you not? Respond to me!

Well, no shit! But how was I supposed to reply without any mouth? As an experiment, I tried thinking Shut up, baldy! in my mind—not like this guy could hear it or anything. But how was I gonna get anywhere here if I couldn’t even give a—

…Oh-ho! You dare to call me bald, do you…? Rather a lot of nerve packed into such a little body, no? I had hoped to give my first guest in quite a while a little kindness, but it would seem you are in rather a hurry to die!

Uh-oh. Geez, could’ve warned me that would work first. And I had no idea who I was dealing with, either. Well, that was it. My loss. Time for an apology.

I’m sorry! I didn’t know how to reply to you, so I just tried saying the first thing that came to mind! I’m really sorry about that! I can’t see anything right now, so I have no idea what you even look like!

Did that come across? Kind of rude to call this guy bald when I couldn’t even see him, I supposed. If he was, I’d probably just pushed some very delicate buttons.

Heh-heh-heh… Eh-ha-ha. Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The resulting laugh came in three distinct levels. A masterpiece. So were we cool now, or—?

How fascinating. I had assumed you reacted as such upon seeing me, but you cannot, eh? Most slimes are low-level monsters, incapable of conscious thought as they run through the cycle of absorption, division, and regeneration. It is the rare one, indeed, that ever leaves its habitat.

Now what was he talking about? Was he more curious than angry, then, or…? Either way, this was my first contact with another intelligent being. The first conversation in my new, oozy life. I wanted to keep it a friendly one.

You had aroused my curiosity, slime, by the way you so eagerly slammed into my body. The regenerative powers you just showed astonish me. Are you a named monster, perhaps, or a unique?

A what? And a what? Say again? I’m sorry, I don’t get what you mean. I’ve only been alive here for ninety days…

Hmm. I suppose, with your sentience, you were never destined to be merely a slime. Named monsters are those who have been assigned an exclusive name. But only ninety days? Ridiculous. Are you a unique, then?

“Unique” meaning…?

A unique monster is an individual who has suddenly attained unusual abilities, akin to mutation. They are occasionally born in areas with high magical concentrations… Perhaps you were born from the mass of magicules that leaked out from me, then?

Muh? What the heck?

Let’s try using my previous-world knowledge to suss this out. This guy (I’ll call him a guy for convenience’s sake) had been leaking magic all over the local area. It was so thick, in fact, that it gave birth to a monster. A slime. Me. Was that it?

Hmm. No monster has ever come close to approaching my domain in the past three hundred years. If you were born from my magical force, then perhaps, indeed, that gave you the power to touch me and live to tell the tale!

Oh… So you’re kind of, like, my dad, then?

No, not your parent by blood. I have no reproductive ability to speak of. Some monsters do, and some do not, you see.

Really? ’Cause I thought that kind of came with the package by default. But if I just spontaneously burst out from magic or whatever, maybe you don’t need it, huh?

…Your intellectual abilities surprise me. Very few, indeed, are the monsters that possess anything of the sort. Among all the monsters, only magic-born have sentience in the way you or I would understand it.

The commentary went on for a while. But the most important thing to learn from it was that apparently humans existed in this world, too. Then there were nonhumans, species very close to mankind in nature and similarly gifted with reproductive abilities. These included races like elves, hobbits, dwarves, and other fairy types, and generally they were allied with the humans.

Alongside that, you had races like goblins, orcs, lizardmen, and so on, which were hostile toward mankind and treated like monsters as a result. This animosity wasn’t inherent to their biology, however, so crossbreeding was entirely possible.

Next were the “magic-born people”—the catchall term for those who came into being from magic itself, monsters who experienced sudden mutation, and sentient beings evolved from animals or magical beasts. They had both intelligence and reproductive ability, but only within their own subspecies. In their upper social castes existed titans, vampires, devils, and other longer-lived species—all equally capable of having offspring, although they rarely did so, since their overwhelming magic force caused them to be nigh immortal, obviating the need to leave descendants.

These diverse intelligent, reproducing species were hostile to mankind and collectively referred to as the “magic-born race.” And reading between the lines, the impression I got was that the magic-born weren’t so much overtly hostile toward humans as the humans feared and coveted their powers. It remained true, though, that both sides were fighting for their own living spaces.

These sundry monsters had been classified by levels of danger. The upper ranks of the magic-born were packed with some pretty powerful buggers—all capable of leveling a human town solo if they felt like it. Not the kinds of guys you’d want to hang around.

So my new companion kept going for a while—about how he’d fought against the upper-level magic-born in the past and so on. Finally, the subject turned back to me.

As I told you, then, I lack the ability to produce offspring. The reason is simple… Because I do not need to. I am of the dragon race—one of only four in the world, both unique and the most perfect of my kind. You will hereby know me as Veldora, the Storm Dragon! My life span is infinite, my flesh unfathomable! As long as my will remains intact, I shall be ever alive! Ahhhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

He could’ve skipped the laughter. I got it. So he didn’t need to have kids, because he was gonna live forever, right?

And while this guy took a while to get to the point, he did mention something I didn’t want to overlook.

Veldora was the Storm…Dragon?

Plus, if he liked taking a good-natured swipe at upper-level magic-born now and then, he was…like, pretty tough, wasn’t he?

Using my knowledge of Earth stuff, I tried to picture Veldora the Storm Dragon, no doubt seated in front of me right now. I didn’t like what my mind came up with. He seemed to be acting polite with me, and that made it all the creepier.

So what now…?

W-wow, really? Well, thanks for all that handy guidance, sir! Guess I better be on my way, then!

I tried my best to flee.

Halt. I have told you all about myself. It is your turn now, would you not agree?

I probably shouldn’t have expected any other treatment. Hmmmm. He wanted to know about me? If I told him about my miraculous journey from an alien planet, would he believe me? He seemed to marvel at how smart I was for a slime—if I tried to make something up, I doubted he’d fall for it. Such an attempt seemed like a good way to dig my own grave.

Well, whatever. If he didn’t believe me, I’d deal with it then. Summoning my resolve, I told Veldora everything that had happened to me so far.

………

……

…

So… Yeah. Here I am, I guess! It’s been super rough, y’know?

While prudently keeping the topic of my skills unexplored, I regaled the dragon with my tale of being stabbed, waking up as a slime, and everything else that happened on the way to his domain.

It was a bit weird how…well, non-rough it all sounded when I put it into words. But it was rough for me all the same. And the worst part was how I was literally operating blind the entire way. If some cute lady passed me on the road later on, would I ever get to see her? The thought saddened me a little.

Hmm. So a transmigrant, then? Your origins are quite rare, indeed.

Huh? Are they? And you… “Transmigrant”? This isn’t any big surprise to you?

What’s with that reaction? So these “transmigrants” were common enough that he had a name for them? What was so rare about it, then?

Hmph. You do see transmigrants, on occasion. Their memories from the past are burned into their souls, due to a powerful will. There are some, indeed, who retain every memory of their past lives. But a transmigrant from another world… That is quite uncommon. A regular soul, by itself, would have no hope of surviving a journey across realms. It would dissolve midway, taking its memories with it. Someone retaining their full mind and becoming reborn as a monster out of pure magic… I cannot recall any past example of that. Quite…peculiar, indeed.

Transmigrants from other worlds, it seemed, kept only part of their memories at best. Someone like me, who still had them all, was pretty well unheard of—not that I cared too much.

He had just told me something I couldn’t afford to ignore. A soul, “by itself”…? So you could travel to this world without getting reincarnated or anything?

Huh. Am I that unusual? ’Cause it sure doesn’t feel that way… Are there people, then, who come here from other worlds without being trans-whatevered?

There are. None have succeeded in traveling to another world from here, but there are more than a few that have completed their travels here from elsewhere. They are known as “visitors,” or “otherworlders,” and they bear knowledge of things that do not exist in this world. They acquire, as I hear it, some manner of special power when they make the journey here. Beyond that, there are records of transmigrants, who—as I said—bear knowledge of other worlds. Not all of them choose to openly identify themselves as such, though, I imagine.

Interesting. I didn’t know whether they came from the same planet I did, but it might be good to chat with them a bit. There might even be some from Japan, for all I knew. It was probably best for my sanity to have a goal while I was here, besides.

I see, I see! In that case, I think I’ll try and track down some of these “otherworlders,” as you called them. Maybe I’ll find someone from my own land!

Well, one moment. You said you cannot see, yes?

Oh, uh, yeah. And? It was a pain in the ass, yes, but as long as I took my time and kept from getting myself killed, I was sure I’d run into some fellow visitors. Probably.

Let me help you see, then.

Um, what? Damn. This guy… I mean, Veldora the Storm Dragon… He was acting way too nice to me, wasn’t he? Could I really trust him?

Uh, really?

Indeed. On one condition, however. What do you say?

I didn’t like the sound of that, but…ah, what the hell.

What kind of condition?

A simple one. When I grant you the ability of sight, I beg of you not to fear me. That, and I bid you come visit and speak to me again. That is all. I trust my terms are agreeable to you?

That’s all? Was he sure? What a lonely dragon. Guess there was no one else around at the top. No wonder he couldn’t stop talking to me—I must’ve been his first conversational partner in ages.

If I’d had my druthers, I would have said this dragon was a total pushover. He might’ve been feeding me a line this whole time, even, saying he was a dragon. Maybe the dragons in this world weren’t even all that powerful in the first place.

Heh. This was a pretty good deal.

Is that really all you need?

Yes. To be honest with you, I was sealed away in here three hundred years ago. Ever since then, I have had so much free time on my hands, I was practically out of my mind with boredom. What do you think?

Well, if that’s all you need, you got yourself a deal!

Good. It is a promise, then…and I trust you will hold up your end of the bargain.

Of course! Maybe I don’t look it, but you can count on me, man! Just ask anybody on Earth! They’ll vouch for me!

Hopefully he wouldn’t try to. That would be bad.

Very well. There is a skill known as Magic Sense. Can you use it?

Oh, here we go again. More walls for me to deal with. So unfair.

No, I can’t. What kind of skill is that?

It allows you to perceive the particles of magic floating around you. It is not a very powerful skill, and all it offers is a visual reference, so it is not difficult to acquire.

Oh… Sounds easy enough.

Indeed. I can wield it as easily as I can breathe. I hardly even bother to think about it.

Really? So once I learn that, I’ll be able to see again?

Precisely. This world is covered in sheer magic, although it is not spread evenly across its entire surface. Did you know, also, that light and sound both have the properties of a wave?

Yeah, I’ve heard about that. Light waves and sound waves.

Ah. How intelligent of you. Did you learn of that in your past world? You must have, I wager. But, indeed, you will be able to observe how these waves disturb the nearby particles of magic, then use that information to calculate how the area around you looks and sounds. Simple, yes?

Um? Not really? What kind of BS was that? I, um, I’m not really sure whether that sounds simple or not, actually…

No? But that is what allows one to continue fighting even after losing both their sight and hearing! It protects you from surprise attacks, and that is all but a requirement for survival here, is it not?

Y-yeah, but…can we skip all that fighting talk and just get me seeing again, maybe?

Mmm… Very well. Allow me to help you acquire this skill, then. This is the only method I am aware of.

W-wait, can you do that? I’m kind of a newborn here…

Worry not. You do have your memories from your past life, yes? And there, you gained knowledge about the nature of light and sound. Without that, not even I could help you, I wager. Luck is on your side, truly.

True. I supposed it would be hard to explain sight to someone who can’t see at all. I certainly couldn’t manage it. I read somewhere that Helen Keller learned how to speak only by following cues she learned before going deaf at age two. Maybe I could use my knowledge of Earth to harness this “Magic Sense” thing to figure out what the world around me was like…

Worth a shot, I guessed. This blindness was getting to be a massive pain. Plus, I had the Sage on my side. It could work this out.

I’m ready to learn, sir!

Now, now, no need for such ardor. It is quite simple. First, try moving the magic around you with the force in your body.

I had an inkling of what he meant. It was the skill I’d probably adapted to blow myself out of the water a moment ago.

Like this?

I tensed up, trying to imagine the strength circulating through my body. I could feel something moving within—the magicules my companion was talking about. I hadn’t been conscious of it in the water, but it looked as though I could adjust the force by how much I tensed up. Before, I hadn’t been controlling the water so much as I was controlling the magic dancing around in it. I was exercising my magical muscles, and the particles around me were reacting. It came to me surprisingly quickly.

Mmm. You are more gifted in this than I thought. Now, do you see the difference between the magic moving within you and that outside of your body?

Whoa. Maybe this actually was easy. Maybe I was more sensitive to the magic I absorbed now that I was conscious of the way I lived off it.

Well, sure! Like, that’s the stuff I’ve been eating all along, right?

Heh-heh-heh! If you understand that much, the rest is child’s play. All it takes is feeling the movements of the particles outside of you.

Yeah, that I didn’t get. But I gave it a shot, doing as I was told and feeling out the particles surrounding me. And I found I could.

I could sense them hanging in the air, riding air currents, moving around—all sorts of sensations.

Let’s ask the Sage about this.

Confirmed. Extra skill “Magic Sense”…successfully acquired. Use the extra skill Magic Sense?

Yes

No

Huh? It was that easy?

Well, sure—yes, then… Man, talk about a rock I can rely on!

The moment I invoked Magic Sense, my brain was filled with new information. A massive amount, something my human brain never could’ve processed—the waves of light and sound pushing every single tiny particle around—and I processed it all, converting it into perceptible data.

The thing about human eyesight is that it doesn’t give you even a 180-degree view of what’s in front of you. Now, all of a sudden, I could “see” a full 360 degrees around myself. The shadows of the rocks around me, the views hundreds of meters away—the moment I turned my attention to it, I could figure out what it was. If I were still human, all this perception data probably would’ve fried my brain circuits. But now I was a slime. My cells could provide muscle just as easily as brain power.

So somehow or other, I withstood the torrent of information. Then—

Synchronizing extra skill Magic Sense with unique skill Great Sage… Successful. All information will now be managed by Great Sage.

Suddenly, my vision opened up. The brain-searing sensation from before was gone, and then I could see—so clearly that it was a wonder I wasn’t able to do it before. Something told me that having the Sage at my side was almost cheating. It wouldn’t be going too far to put it that way. If someone else had it, I’d probably bitch that it was against the rules. Since I had it, though… No problem.

Oh, I think I’ve got it. Thank you very much! I said, turning my attention to the creature in front of me.

Holy crap. He really was a dragon. He was covered in scales that shone a dark shade of black, tougher looking than steel itself but supple and flexible. A big, evil-looking…

Gahh! You’re a dragon!!

He looked positively demonic, towering far higher than I anticipated. My internal scream welled up, pouring out of me, and I don’t think I could really be blamed for it.

What a surprise. I feel bad for ever thinking this guy was pet sized. This was…for real. Absolutely no doubt.

The body, startlingly similar to a Western-style dragon’s, shone like obsidian. There were six fingers on each “hand,” equipped with claws that looked ready to tear through whatever they found. The two pairs of wings on his back—one larger than the other—came to a point at their respective ends, like swords honed to perfection and ready to dice.