Chapter 2: Chapter 1 - A Clean Slate
'Reincarnation... fucking hilarious,' Slate thought sarcastically. He's read so, so many stories about it. He even has what could be called a "system," that old trope. The human-turned-monster kept fuming to nobody in particular, having been basically kidnapped into another world. In the end, all he could do was sigh and grumble to himself about his frustrations. Here he was, out in the middle of nowhere in an indifferent foreign world, in a completely unfamiliar body with nobody to turn to.
It's not like he had anybody in his previous life either, but you get the point.
Right, let's get to that part about an unfamiliar body. When Slate woke up, he could see "nothing." It wasn't like seeing darkness as one would when their eyes are closed, no - he could see "nothing." Such an experience can't be explained to a creature that can see, however, so we won't dwell on that. He couldn't hear either... couldn't taste, couldn't smell. Total sensory deprivation, all with the exception of his sense of touch, which only felt cold, damp dirt and the force of gravity weighing down his doughy body. Fortunately for the sludge creature, his "system" - the "Clean Slate Program" - was there to assist.
< Notice. Distress detected within the host as a result of being in an unfamiliar form. >
The robotic female voice spoke in Slate's mind.
< Suggestion. Host's ⌈ Mimic ⌋ Innate Skill is able to perfectly replicate the human body. Source: the host's previous life as one. Transforming into a human may alleviate stress. >
'How fucking convenient!' Slate sassed at nobody in particular. After a few moments of awkward silence, he relented. With a mental sigh, he asked the Program, 'How do I do that?' with his internal voice dragging. Just then, a stream of information was sent into his mind.
< Notice. Transformation instinct has been embedded into host's mind. Please attempt to use the ⌈ Mimic ⌋ Innate Skill. >
'Here goes nothing,' Slate thought as he willed his body to morph and contort into a human shape. He began to feel his entire body "shifting" around. Parts of his sludgy constitution started solidifying from within, forming into bones and ligaments. Layering on top of those, connecting to key points, the rest of his biomass formed into muscles and other organ tissues, while some remained in liquid form to serve as blood. Finally, the surface of his body changed both in color and texture to act as skin, some parts coming out in thin strands to become hair.
The process wasn't painful at all, but it was most definitely disorienting, if not outright uncomfortable. It was honestly quite terrifying, at least mentally and emotionally, as Slate felt like his mind was disconnected from his body for a while. There was even this consistent sensation of "falling" during the process, like those times when you're about to fall asleep, and you "wake up" as you hit the ground. Except that feeling of waking up was extended for Slate until the transformation concluded. He ended up keeling over after the fact, clutching at his neck and almost failing to breathe as he panicked. The poor creature felt like he would run out of breath and pass out, when...
< Notice. Activating ⌈ Heartless ⌋. >
As the Program notified him, Slate felt all of his panic rapidly fading away. 'What was that...?' he mentally asked as he steadied himself into a comfortable sitting position.
< Answer. The ⌈ Heartless ⌋ Innate Skill consumes emotions that the host feels. This can be configured to avoid consuming certain emotions, or put more attention into snuffing them out. >
"So it's basically the same thing that Ainz gets, but better...?" Slate thought out loud.
...
"Wait... voice test...? One two? The fuck?" Something was wrong. "Program...? Am I a kid?"
< Answer. Due to the body's limited mass, host is unable to form into an adult-sized body without compromising physical stability. >
Slate went silent, pondering for a few moments until he remembered a certain character from this show he used to watch. Their situations are almost identical... "Hold on," he spoke aloud once more. "Couldn't we use magic or something? Like substituting actual mass with magical particles or whatever?"
< Answer. Negative. Unfortunately, host's current body is yet unable to manipulate magic. Learning from a mentor or by oneself is advised. Using ⌈Assimilate⌋ on entities capable of such feats is also an option. >
'No such luck, huh?' Slate thought. Sighing, he went and got up. "Alright," he spoke in his child voice, which irritated him somewhat. 'Actually, I'll avoid using my words until I get a more comfortable body to be in... but forget all that! I need clothes!'
Yet another issue that needed to be addressed, though Slate figured that this would be much easier to solve. He used to be a sludge creature, but that's been dealt with. Well, he still is a sludge, but he's taken on a perfect imitation of the human body. He can see, breathe, taste, and hear - everything felt as natural as it should. Slate has all that he needs to feel alive and grounded in reality. Living with only your tactile sense can be a real nightmare, but that transition from sludge to human was even worse... total sensory deprivation is its own brand of hell.
Getting back on track now. While Slate has taken on a human form, he's essentially a little kid buck naked in the middle of the woods. That's not a good thing. The human-turned-monster-turned-human went right to figuring out how to address this issue. He instinctively brought up the Program Interface to figure out what other "Skills" he may have, hoping that something could help. When he finally managed to navigate to the Abilities panel, his eyes were immediately drawn to a Subskill of his ⌈ Mimic ⌋ Innate Skill: ⌈Minor Shapechanging⌋.
Subskill: ⌈Minor Shapechanging⌋
- Connected to ⌈ Mimic ⌋.
- This Ability gives the user a degree of free control over their amorphous body, allowing them morph parts into basic abstract shapes, like pseudopods and prehensile tendrils. They can also harden their body or make it more fluid.
- The above feature of ⌈Minor Shapechanging⌋ cannot change the user's color.
- If the user has stored biological data on features from other organisms via ⌈Assimilate⌋, they can precisely copy body parts down to intricate cellular detail.
- ⌈Minor Shapechanging⌋ can still be used even while mimicking other creatures.
It took a while to figure out how to morph in clothes, but the process went something like this:
Morph in black, leathery "skin flaps" to cover what needs to be covered. This was uncanny-looking and a bit uncomfortable, so Slate ended up un-morphing them. He repeated this over and over, iterating more elaborately on every attempt. Slate kept switching up the texture, thickness, weight, volume, etc. until he landed on an ideal configuration, and even managed to exclude nerve endings so he couldn't feel out of his not-clothes.
His end result was a set of black and grey clothes that resembled the Turtle School uniform from Dragon Ball Z: a grey undershirt, attached at the shoulders with a loose black tunic/vest on top of it, connected to the same attachment point. Around the waist sprouted a grey belt/sash to help sell the illusion of clothes. Slate also managed to morph in some baggy black pants as well, but gave up on morphing in shoes, so he ended up walking around barefoot. It was a little uncomfortable, so he morphed in something like paw pads, and that seemed to help with that issue. The fun-sized sludge-man went on to wander the forest after solving his clothing issue, since he really couldn't do much else.
While Slate had no survival or navigation skills to speak of, his situation at least permitted some convenience. Being a sludge meant that he wouldn't have any issues with food, what with his ⌈Consume⌋ and ⌈Inflict Decay⌋ Skills being things that he can use.
The former was a Subskill of ⌈ Mimic ⌋, which would let him completely break down and absorb any organic matter, including venom, poisons, and other harmful substances, all without having to put them in his human form's mouth. ⌈Inflict Decay⌋ was similar, though this didn't involve him ingesting his target - it was more for quickly dispatching threats than acquiring sustenance. Still, he could always "eat" whatever was left of his poor victims after the fact.
Slate noted the different classifications of these abilities while pondering their uses. ⌈Consume⌋ was a "Subskill" of the "Innate Skill" ⌈ Mimic ⌋, while ⌈Inflict Decay⌋ counted independently as a "Species Skill." When asked, the Program explained that Innate Skills are abilities unique to individuals as a part of their soul, while Species Skills are abilities that all members of a certain species have. 'So one is tied to the soul or whatever, while the other is connected to DNA or something to that effect,' Slate concluded.
He absentmindedly walked around until he came upon a river, spotting it after hearing the running water as he neared. Remembering something about going upstream, he elected to follow along the river's length, going in the opposite direction of where it was flowing.
Along the way, he found a small creature toying with what looked like a wet rock. On closer inspection, the small creature appears to be a feline with light brown fur, black stripes, and small antlers growing out of its head. Just as well, the "wet rock" that it toyed with turns out to be a turtle-like creature, barely hanging onto its life by a thread.
'Looks like cats have nasty "play" instincts in every universe,' Slate thought. He'd usually feel terrible after seeing what the turtle is going through, but a certain Skill prevented such emotions from bubbling up in his chest. More importantly, the feline seemed to turn its attention to Slate.
'Okay, let's not get hasty here,' Slate mouthed his thoughts, mostly to himself. The cat with antlers lowered its stance, puffed up its fur, and hissed at what it perceived to be a threat. Thankfully, instead of attacking, it turned around and darted right off. It used some of the stones jutting out of the river as footholds to cross the water and make its getaway, leaving Slate and the poor turtle thing behind.
Relieved that he didn't need to fight off a two-foot-tall feline (as Slate is about the size of a small child), he went on to investigate the poor shelled creature. It looked exactly like a turtle, though it didn't have the same "sectioned" shell as the ones from Earth. Slate didn't know if there were any turtles like this back home, and he didn't have the attention span to think about it either. What mattered to him right now was that this creature was dying.
'Hey, Program,' Slate spoke mentally, 'Does a creature need to be alive for ⌈Assimilate⌋ to work?'
< Answer. ⌈Assimilate⌋ works just as well with creatures regardless of whether they are dead or alive. Its function becomes less reliable if a creature has been dead for a long time, but chances are better if there is sufficient spiritual data lingering within the body. >
Humming out loud, Slate held the dying turtle with both hands and brought his ⌈Assimilate⌋ Subskill to life. His palms morphed back to their natural sludge state, a sensation that he had yet to get used to, and enveloped the creature. Slowly, the slimy black mound in his hands disappeared, having seemingly consumed the animal completely.
< Notice. Digestion and analysis will take some time. ⌈Consume⌋ will be used in conjunction with ⌈Assimilate⌋. Prey creature will be stored within host's physical body for isolation and analysis. >
While all this happened in the background, a question popped up in Slate's mind. 'Program,' he began to query once more, 'were all my "Skills" based on things from the media I consumed?'
< Answer. Everything was constructed to most effectively fulfill the host's desires, using their memories as a base. >
'That explains a lot,' Slate thought as he quickly moved on.
He kept on traveling upstream, the journey being mostly uneventful. It only took some one or two minutes to completely break down the turtle from earlier, granting him the Vestige Skill ⌈Bone Shell⌋. The name made sense, Slate thought, since he knew that a turtle's shell was actually connected to its spine and not just a thing that wrapped around them.
Once again, he asked for an explanation, and learned that a "Vestige Skill" is something acquired from other creatures by one means or another. In Slate's case, it was via ⌈Assimilate⌋. He could extrapolate this information on his own, of course, but it was always better to get concrete confirmation.
When Slate thought about using the ability, he was able to sprout hard bone-based armor from any part of his body. There was that odd sensation again that came from transforming his body, but he was slowly getting used to it, perhaps with the aid of ⌈ Heartless ⌋ keeping his heart and mind tempered.
⌈Bone Shell⌋'s transformation would actually start from Slate's "actual bones," breaking through the skin and forming over top seamlessly as if his human body had grown that way. The shape wasn't limited, either. Instead, the bone armor that he could morph in would conform to the contours of the body part that they formed over.
Slate also learned at that point that, while he can't change color, his transformations that weren't true mimicry could shift from black to white, since he was instinctively able to morph in white bone armor from the get-go. He thought that he should've realized this when he created his clothes, but chose not to dwell on it.
While he traveled, Slate discovered that he can use ⌈Minor Shapechanging⌋ to further enhance ⌈Bone Shell⌋'s durability. 'I'll need to eat some sort of beetle soon,' he thought. The sludge-man also figured to do the same with creatures like armadillos, since their armored shells had keratin on top of bone instead of turtles' cartilage or an insect's plain chitin exoskeleton.
While Slate thought of just morphing them in on top of the other or coming up with configurations to their setup, the Program pitched in and brought up his ⌈ Soulsmith ⌋ Innate Skill. It explained that ⌈ Soulsmith ⌋ could combine abilities together and bring out the most potential out of them in the process.
It didn't take long for Slate to find a beetle while he wandered. He consumed it, which didn't take as much time as the turtle, and employed ⌈ Soulsmith ⌋ to combine the turtle's ⌈Bone Shell⌋ with the beetle's ⌈Chitinous Carapace⌋. The end result was a glossy armored exoskeleton that the Program dubbed ⌈Hybrid Carapace⌋. Slate didn't get the chance to test the durability of either of his previous Vestige Skills before, so he thought to ask the Program instead. It told him that the newly-synthesized Vestige Skill had the combined durability of both of its predecessors and then some.
Satisfied, Slate concluded that this was enough "work" for the day and hurried along on his trek. Luckily for him, it wouldn't be long until he found civilization. Well, it would be more accurate to say that civilization had found him.
Slate heard several sets of footsteps from somewhere among the trees. Men, he presumed from their voices, and they seemed to be conversing casually until they appear to have spotted him. He saw them as well just as they stopped talking.
"What's a kid doin' out here...?" one of them spoke in clear English. These men, who seemed to be equipped as hunters, eyed him cautiously. Slate only stared back with a neutral face. He cursed his intense anxiety around social interaction while also thanking his childlike appearance - it made it so that being awkward around such things wasn't so strange.
Eventually, one of the hunters took a few steps forward and knelt down, beckoning the childlike sludge monster - not that they knew what he was - to come closer. Those that stayed where they were signed things to each other, looking around, probably to make sure that this isn't some sort of weird trap.
"Hey, little man," the hunter who stepped forward spoke awkwardly. It looks like Slate isn't the only one that was more than a little put off by the situation. "What're you doing out here, all by yourself?"
Feigning a childlike innocence, Slate simply looked around, trying his best to put on a "clueless" face. The hunter eventually gave up on trying to get the child to talk after several rounds of coaxing. He tried to switch things up at that point, retrieving a piece of jerky from a pouch on his belt.
"How about this? You hungry?"
With his curiosity piqued as he'd never tried jerky before, Slate reached out hesitantly. He gulped before taking a tiny nibble into his mouth. He felt that sour pang that he usually got in the back corners of his mouth, which came up whenever he went a while without food and suddenly experienced strong flavors again. Slate finished the strip that he'd been given fairly quickly, finding that the unfamiliar food was actually to his liking. He swallowed down the last bite and licked any leftover flavor from his fingers, then looked back up at the hunter with an expectant look. The man, in turn, sighed softly and handed the child another strip of jerky, then turned to his team to say something.
"We should probably take this kid back to town. Sister Ophelia should have no problems takin' him in, right?"
With the rest of the hunters in agreement, Slate ended up tagging along with them, following behind the man that fed him while the others walked behind the two. They probably planned to take him to an orphanage until they learned more about him, not that they would, so this was exceedingly convenient.
Meanwhile, out in the vast cosmos, a dark-bodied entity watched on from his decorated office. Violet rings of light gleamed brightly within the "eye sockets" of its porcelain head.
"Good. Very, very good," the Headmaster muttered to himself. "How will you deal with your first few trials, I wonder?"
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[A/N]: Author's note! Not much to say, so I thank everyone for checking out chapter one and making it this far! Things won't get so dark this early, so not to worry, though I do obviously plan on ramping things up as Slate "ages." Additionally, TCSP [I think that's the abbreviation I'll go with for this work] will have relatively low magic compared to its main inspiration, TenSura. There will still be a lot of magic, of course, just that the scale won't be quite so large. It'd be closer in scale to the common people of Overlord's universe - 3rd level/tier magic like Fireball and Lightning would be the peak for most of humanity, while a select few can employ magic of up to 5th level - something along those lines, though obviously not so blatantly D&D-ish.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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