"Can you help her?" Kabal asked me.
"Yeah, you completely healed us, I don't even have a scar! Surely you can-" Elen trailed off as I looked her in the eye. Then, I shook my head.
"She's exhausted her life-force. She's basically dying of old age…" Big Bro explained for me. My healing skills were good, but there wasn't a herb in the world with the effect of curing old age.
…
In the end, the adventuring trio left after three days of rest, leaving Shizu to us. Them being here for her death wouldn't change the fact that she died, anyways. We gave them a few potions and a full set of Special grade gear that I'd managed to make out of high-ranking monster parts (with Kaijin and Garm's supervision) for each of them before sending them on their way.
A week after that passed, for a grand total of ten days after the incident, before Shizu woke up again. Unfortunately, she didn't stay awake long. I was at her bedside, administering the treatment that I'd been giving her for the past ten days, when she woke up.
"I'm sorry…" The first sign of her stirring was a whispered apology.
I decided to answer with the truth. "You only damaged our stores. Nobody was actually killed… except for you." She didn't need me to spell it out for her, but I felt like confirming it was the best thing I could do in this situation. She was far older than she looked. A century or more, in fact, by my guess. Without Ifrit's power stabilizing her body, keeping her in a state roughly halfway between normal human and whatever the state of evolution beyond that was, she was rapidly aging to cover for the time that her body had weathered. Already, her hair had turned white, her skin rough, and her strength mostly gone. Even if I transferred one of the B-ranked spirits inside my Stomach to her, and she managed to bring it fully under her control, which was doubtful, she'd die within two or three weeks. As it stood, she likely had a couple days at most, and they'd be terribly painful.
"As a last request… can you call him in? The other slime? I want to talk to him."
"Of course."
…
And thus, Shizue Izawa died.
…
In the end, though, Big Bro and I gained quite a bit from our short meeting with Shizu. By eating Shizu and Ifrit both, not only did Big Bro gain a human form, but he also learned Control Flame, Cancel Flame Attack, Replication, Deviant, Ranged Barrier, Flame Transform, and the magical force of a mid Special A ranked being.
Meanwhile, I got to Process two mid-ranked fire spirits, Salamanders. Honestly, that was almost as good a prize from my point of view, though it took me two weeks to drain them of their magicules and fully control them. Over the course of those two weeks, I learned the Flame Transform and Control Spiritual Energy skills from them, boosting my own raw magicule stores slightly past the point that Big Bro had been at before he'd eaten Shizu and Ifrit.
I also managed to bend them to my will by draining their energies and adding them to my own powers, essentially gaining me two loyal, high ranked spirits.
Then, I had an idea.
I named one of them while they were inside my Stomach. Izzy. Since it was inside my stomach, I could perfectly control the amount of magicules that I expended in the naming process.
Immediately, Izzy took a ton of my magicules. About 70% or so, I gave him as many as I could without permanently weakening myself to make sure that I didn't hinder his evolution. The naming turned out perfectly. Izzy evolved into a superior spirit of fire. Notably weaker than Ifrit had been, but still stronger than me, technically. Since he was basically my little pet, though, he was perfectly content with staying in my stomach and acting as a magicule battery, interacting with my skills as a sort-of support. I planned on naming the other Salamander once my magicules restored themselves.
Unfortunately, the very day after I named Izzy, a problem cropped up.
It all started with a routine hunting trip. Everyone was really excited because Big Bro had just realized that his human form came equipped with taste buds, so we were having a feast.
Figuring that they'd be exhausting themselves a bit more than usual, Big Bro made sure to send Ranga along with the hunting party. Ranga was around an A-minus or so in terms of actual strength, anyways, and a lot more predictable with his behavior than I was, so he probably figured that, if I disappeared for whatever reason and the worst came to pass, there wasn't a thing in the forest that could stand up to his wolf buddy. And he wasn't totally wrong. But problems only rarely come alone.
"Master!" Raya noticed it first.
"Yeah, that's not Rigur." I agreed with Raya that something was wrong, but when I got there, it was so much worse than I'd expected.
There were six ogres attacking our hunting party. I say attacking, but two of them were simply standing back, watching their companions decimate our hunting party.
Gobta was barely hanging on, screaming as he barely dodged blow after blow from the elderly ogre's sword. I didn't like his chances, though. The dude was skilled, and Gobta was an amateur at best. That Stab Resistance skill was really pulling its weight right now.
As for Rigur, he was dueling one-on-one with a purple-haired ogress wielding a giant blade. Another losing battle. Her crushing strength was clearly too much for him, and he was quickly getting covered in scratches and bruises.
And Ranga was fighting two of them at once. A blue-haired one with a stoic expression, wielding a vast number of hidden weapons, and a normal-looking one wielding a giant hammer.
Seeing me, the white-haired one immediately redoubled his attack on Gobta, slashing him in the chest and moving to engage me in battle. The red-haired one hanging back to protect the pink-haired sorceress raced toward me as well.
"Stay on your guard, everyone! Whatever evil monster this one is, she's far stronger than she looks!" The other battles paused for a moment as the ogres processed what the pink-haired princess-looking one had said. I took the opportunity to toss a potion in Gobta's direction before addressing Ranga.
"Did you call Big Bro?"
"Yes!" Ranga replied, growling at his opponents.
"Then stand down. All of you. These guys are too much for you." If it was only holding these ogres off for a little while, even in my weakened state, I could do it better than Rigur, Ranga, and Gobta all together. And if I didn't have to worry about my friends getting injured, all the better.
Checking with Raya in my shadow, I squared up against the six ogres, as my companions backed off. I made sure to toss a healing potion at Rigur, to deal with the scratches and the like.
"Confident, or stupid? Fighting all six of us at once, by yourself?" The red-haired one asked. He wasn't wrong. It probably was stupid. As it stood, my magicule stores were more-or-less even with theirs. I could use Izzy as a battery to maybe pull out enough power to equal three or four of them, but no more.
"Brother, don't underestimate her. Everyone, be careful."
"Don't worry, young princess. We'll take care of this foe." The elderly one assured the pink haired shamaness.