Sleeping beneath two suns yielded Kelix decent resting results. The sun shone bright when he woke up with his cheek stuck to a waxy leaf and his spine complaining like it had been folded wrong.

  For a moment, he did not remember where he was. He only remembered the feeling of numbers hovering behind his eyes and the weight of exhaustion in his bones.

  Then he opened his eyes and saw the bubble-sky. Right. Zeldritzon.

  He sat up slowly and checked his chest out of habit. No invisible shove. No sudden pressure. His EX did not scream at him to look. He did anyway.

  Name: {Kelix}

  EX = [43%]

  EX had crept up a little during rest. Not much. Enough to prove that Endigo's answer had been true. Honestly, it was a relief that rest helped.

  Kelix exhaled and stood, brushing blue sand and gelatin residue off his clothes. The makeshift shelter sagged behind him, embarrassed by its own existence.

  Endigo was already upright, still as a statue. The slime stood nearby, glossy and quiet. It looked smaller than the day before, or maybe Kelix's sense of scale had shifted again. Either way, it remained close, as if the act of being summoned had tethered it.

  Kelix tightened the cloth pouch at his side where the dark blue cores sat heavy and cold.

  "Let's move," he said, mostly to himself.

  Endigo moved with him. The slime followed with its soft wobbling steps, leaving faint ripples in the gelatin ground. They walked for what felt like hours, though time here was a joke. The terrain gradually changed. The jelly-grass grew thinner, less bouncy, the surface becoming smoother, like the world was hardening into something else.

  Kelix noticed it first in his footsteps. Less give. More grip. The ground stopped wobbling under his weight. His pace quickened without him meaning it to, like his body trusted solid ground more than a field that behaved like dessert. Then the gelatinous terrain ended. Kelix stopped short.

  A pond lay in front of him, wide and still, its surface reflecting the bubble-sky in perfect, glassy clarity. The water was not green like the ocean. It was clear, almost colorless, except for faint bands of light moving beneath it in slow loops, like something luminous was swimming far below.

  Across the pond was a different world. Instead of crystal trees and jelly-grass hills, the land on the other side rose into a fairytale landscape that made his brain hesitate.

  There were flowers. Giant flowers that stood where trees should have been, stems thick as pillars, petals broader than roofs. Some petals glowed faintly at their edges. Others were translucent, catching sunlight and throwing it back in soft colors.

  The "canopies" were blooms, layered and heavy, swaying slowly as if the air itself was breathing through them. The ground beyond the pond looked softer too, not gelatin, but a carpet of mossy green and pastel growths that glittered like dew.

  Kelix felt a quiet awe settle into his chest, the kind he hated admitting because it made him feel small.

  "Okay," he said, and realized his voice had softened. "That is…" He did not finish the sentence. There was nothing clean enough to fit.

  Endigo stood beside him, silent. The slime wobbled once, then held still.

  Kelix kept staring at the flower forest, the way the stems rose like towers and the blooms turned the sky into a stained-glass ceiling. A part of him wanted to walk into it immediately. Another part of him, the one that had survived fights and debts and government rules, reminded him that beautiful places were often where things ate you.

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  Kelix turned his head slightly and looked down at Endigo.

  "Does Zeldritzon have civilization," he asked.

  It was the first question he had asked that felt truly important. Not about numbers. Not about skills. About people. About structures. About whether there was somewhere in this world you could go that had walls and roads and answers.

  Endigo's skull face tilted.

  Kelix waited, trying not to let the impatience show. His gaze drifted to the slime while he waited.

  The dark blue slime stood there like a drop of midnight given shape. It had no mouth. No eyes. No obvious organs. Kelix had registered it, summoned it, and used its [Heal] skill. It cost it MP. It cost it EX.

  So it had Existence too.

  Kelix's mind started running on its own. How did it eat? Did it eat? How did it rest?

  Did it dissolve back into its core when unsummoned? Was that rest? Was it trapped in there like a battery! Was it aware? Did it dream?

  And the bigger question, the one Kelix could not stop circling.

  Could it be trained? Could it level up? Could it evolve?

  Evolution stage had been on every creature screen he had seen so far. Fledgling. That word had followed Endigo like an insult ZiE had thrown with glee. If slimes had stages, then stages could change.

  Kelix's gaze slid back to Endigo. Endigo had once been a three meter tall incarnation of death with lightning limbs and leaking particles, staring down gods and devils like they were inconveniences. Now it was small and quiet.

  Kelix's curiosity sharpened despite his exhaustion. Could Endigo be trained too? Could it level up? Could it evolve back? Was he supposed to do that?

  Kelix swallowed and forced his attention back to the question he had asked.

  "Is there civilization," he repeated.

  Endigo's voice came after a pause, calm and certain.

  “Yes,” Endigo said.

  Kelix’s chest loosened slightly.

  Then Endigo added, as if it was the obvious next line.

  “But it is not safe for you yet.”

  Kelix exhaled, half relief and half irritation.

  Of course.

  Nothing was simple.

  He looked again across the pond at the fairytale blooms towering like city spires made of petals and light.

  Not safe yet.

  He glanced at the slime again and then at Endigo, feeling the strange shape of his new situation settle around him like a cloak he did not want.

  If he wanted answers, he would need to get stronger. And if he wanted to get stronger, he would need to learn what his monsters were, what they could become, and what it meant that they were following him at all.

  ?? ?? ??

  The flower forest did not wait for Kelix to decide whether it was beautiful or dangerous.

  The moment he found a shallow crossing point along the pond's edge and stepped onto the mossy ground beyond, the air changed. It smelled sweet and wet, like crushed stems and sap. The giant blooms overhead filtered the daylight into soft color, and the shadows beneath them were too deep for how bright the sky still was.

  Kelix took three careful steps forward. Something rustled. Then the ground around him moved.

  Vegetable-shaped monsters rose from the moss like they had been planted there and decided it was time to harvest him instead.

  The first one that came into view had a pumpkin head. It was carved by nature, not by a knife, but the grooves in its face looked like a mocking grin anyway. Carrot claws jutted from its arms, orange and sharp like hardened roots, and its legs were grassy rabbit hind legs, springy and thick, built for sudden leaps.

  It hopped once, twice, then launched at Kelix with a hiss of torn leaves.

  Kelix pivoted, his body remembering motion before his fear could interfere. He stepped in, turned his shoulder, and redirected the leap with a clean parry that would have sent a person sprawling. The pumpkin monster twisted midair and landed on its feet anyway, claws scraping, already springing again.

  Kelix's jaw tightened. This thing was fast. He slipped inside the next leap and drove a tight elbow into its rib area, if you could call it ribs. The impact felt like striking a tough gourd. It staggered back a half step. Kelix followed with a low kick to the grassy legs. The monster toppled.

  Kelix planted his palm on its pumpkin face and shoved down, hard. Heat crawled over his palm. Not just his right hand this time. It spread to his forearm, thin and bright, fire that refused to burn. Kelix felt the concentration behind it like a muscle he had not known he could flex.

  He pushed that intent into the strike. The pumpkin head cracked. The creature burst into particles.

  Obtained: {285 Essence}

  Kelix observed his own arm as the heat faded. So it was not only his right hand that could be shrouded. It was wherever he committed. Wherever his technique landed with intent. His technique.

  It was not a surprise that his TEQ was high. Not really. He had spent years turning his body into something that could survive fights. He just never expected the world to care enough to measure it.

  Kelix's eyes narrowed as the next monsters closed in. Around him, more shapes emerged.

  Not just one pumpkin thing. Two. Three. Smaller vegetable bodies half-buried like sprouting weeds. A line of vine-snakes slithered through the moss, their bodies braided cords of green with leaf fins that fanned out like warning flags. Their heads were blunt and glossy, and their mouths opened sideways, revealing pale fibrous strands that looked like they were meant to bind rather than bite.

  Kelix inhaled slowly. This was not a peaceful garden. This was a heavily infested Monster Zone.