"Would the words mean anything to you, I wonder? I am a curse... What? That doesn't sound right. Or possibly cursed. Except, no - yes, I am a curse. I keep the dungeons shackled. I was created by Demon Lord Haruto Tachibana The Corrosive. He wanted to change the world. To change dungeons. How do you get stronger? You kill. Kill monsters. Makes killing people easier. Lots of adventurers, good at fighting, mercenary. Endless war over petty things. And endless young fools dying in dungeons. The dungeons are the problem."

"It's not ideal," Ame agrees. "As I understand it, people with peaceful, productive Skills grow in power much slower than people willing to take violent risks in a dungeon. I may include myself in the latter category, but I don't prefer it, no."

Ame pauses. "Wait. You... think I'm the next Demon Lord? How does that work? You already said you know that I got, uh, 'summoned' to this world."

"Ha! Yes! My Lord Tachibana came here from another world, too. The western spirit told him he was the hero, and he came with good intentions. But he couldn't stand the state of the world. Too much war and death. And even if he conquered all the corrupt and selfish nobles and built a land of peace and prosperity, eventually he would grow old and die. He realized this. He tried to change the rules that everyone accepts, cleverly seeing that only lasting change can truly save the world. Of course, everyone invested in the current way of things decried him as the foulest being to ever exist. Before long they called him the Demon Lord."

Pause.

"It didn't help that the first few experiments went so badly, I think."

"Of course they did. Ugh. You can't actually do a better job than the extant asshole if you just kill them and take all their problems for yourself, that's just obvious. You have to solve the problems, first. Of course then whoever actually tried to solve the problem would terrify every asshole who'd happened to build their castle on a pile of those problems."

Ame sighs.

"So, you are seriously telling me Tea Lady lied. There is no Demon Lord. Not really. She set me up."

"You share his dislike. The western spirit is one thing My Lord never was able to learn about. He theorized that-"

"What was I saying? No, nevermind. I had a script so I wouldn't forget anything important and I've lost my place. Ruined! Just let a dragon eat me... I should kill you so nobody can know my failure! -No, no, Lord Tachibana told me to stop killing people. That was important, I think? Or was it the other way around..."

"It sounded like you were meant to do something that requires my cooperation, and I can't cooperate if I'm dead. Me being dead sounds like it would be a much bigger failure on your part, if you want my opinion. Now are you going to tell me why I'm here? As much as I appreciate knowing the score, I'm still very curious what this is about."

"-To the next Demon Lord. My death is near, for the Hero's growth has eclipsed my own. I do not wish the knowledge I have won to be lost. The power to bend dungeons to your will can be yours, if you are truly my successor. This construct will teach you the first spell along this path, and then tell you to find the next step in your understanding. However, nothing is truly free. I have found that trials and questing have greatly improved my power and understanding in this strange world, so I shall put you through the same. If you pass the tests I have left - if they have survived the gulf of time between you and I - you will be ready to wield the knowledge I have won through hard work and many trials. The knowledge of how to create and manipulate dungeons, as well as my insights on the natural forces of the world. Sincerely, Haruto Tachibana. Recorded seven years since my death in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture."

"That was the message! Ah, to hear My Lord's voice again..."

"...huh."

Creating and controlling dungeons. Holy fuck that's big.

"So I guess you're supposed to teach me a spell and then tell me where to find these trials? Who was 'the Hero'? I though you said, uh, your lord was supposed to be the Hero."

"My Lord called her 'that gaijin bitch'. She had very strong fire magic. I don't know much more about her. Right, the spell! Spells are tricky, do you know any already?"

"No, I haven't been able to learn anything at all about how spells work, yet."

"To do this spell you need to draw upon the mana inside you. Then you push it into the right shape with words and gestures, and a spell happens!"

"Alright. How do I do that. In excruciating detail."

This sentient curse or whatever it is is not exactly a skilled magic teacher, and is completely unable to explain the theory, but eventually hits upon a meditation exercise that lets Ame feel her inner mana and do things with it.

The words of the spell are in another language that uses different phonemes. She has no trouble pronouncing it, but whatever language power she has it doesn't let her trivially rearrange the words into other valid configurations. If she wants to figure out this language's grammar she'd have to guess.

"I offer two mana from my core in the form of viric to the spirits of creation so that they might create a monster with a body of slime, which will be sustained by mana from my core and unerringly obey my command!"

A shadow-smoke-thing sprawled out across the floor is not very good at demonstrating gestures, though.

Ame has the shadow thing repeat the incantation until she's managed to nail down the meaning of every sound. This is the first time her language-barrier?-what-language-barrier thing has made itself obvious and frustrating, but this is important. And some hints of theory are derivable just from the incantation.

If she tries, can she speak any other words in this language? If she tries to construct a sentence with some of the words she already knows does the language thing fill in any of the blanks?

Are the gestures correlated with the incantation? She's figured out how to feel what her mana is doing now, so if the words and gestures are linked she should be able to guess at the correct gesture by feel or something...

Trying to figure out the meaning of individual words and sounds is really tricky. She can speak other words in that language... If she's addressing it at the weird shadow thing. It comes out as English otherwise. She doesn't think about what she's saying when this power activates, it just comes out fully formed with the meaning she intended to convey. Deriving grammar from this process is going to be tedious. The shadow-thing seems amused at nonsense conversations and is willing to play along.

Come to think of it, whatever language she's been speaking with the locals has been doing the same thing, it was just less obvious.

Her mana does nothing until she's all done and voices the ! at the end of the incantation, which is its own word in whatever-language-that-is. If she did everything right, she'll get a torso-sized blue slime sitting on the floor in front of her! If she didn't, what happens depends on what the mistake was.

Ame is very aware of when she doesn't know something.

She painstakingly derives more vocabulary and grammar, enough to be absolutely sure of what she's telling the magic to do. She tries variations on every gesture, prodding the shadow-thing each time for confirmation or error. She's pretty sure she has the correct gestures but she wants to derive what she can about why those are the correct gestures.

Hours upon hours pass.

She has quite forgotten that Arwen is probably frantic by now, or just thinks she's dead.

And only then, when every variable is accounted for, not just memorized but comprehended. Ame casts Create Lesser Slime.

She gains a level in Incantation Comprehension somewhere during those hours, and her progress speeds up rapidly after that. The gestures connect the words to each other in a smooth logical chain. 'I offer' opens up a phrase with one gesture, then 'Two' refers to 'mana' with another gesture, after 'from my core' is the gesture that ends the phrase opened by 'I offer'... And so on.

She feels suddenly drained by the movement of her mana and the trickle still flowing outward. Cold, tired, feeling like it would be nice to just veg out for a bit.

But a blob of blue slime is sitting on the dungeon floor. It moves when she intends it to move, rolling along the ground.

Slime!

Can she sense anything about its properties? Is there, like, a figurative control panel or is she just meant to guess? Is it safe to pet?

"What determines the slime's specific properties? That wasn't part of the spell, so the... physiology information... must come from somewhere else. Can I change its properties?"

Oof. That was either a very impressive spell or she has very unimpressive mana. Does healing her fatigue have any effect on her mana? Or has her Unique Skill been using mana all along without her noticing?

It is a slime. It is <over there>. It is <not damaged>. It doesn't hurt her hand to pet it.

"I don't know! Probably!" Is the shadow thing's unhelpful answer.

Her Unique Skill is not interacting with her mana at all.

Eyeroll. "What are this slime's specific properties, then? What all can it do? How does it attack. What can and can't hurt it. What are the dos and do-nots of slime."

For example, is sticking her hand into the slime a do-not. She can just heal herself if it is. Can she make the slime shape-shift? Or is it limited to being a round blob?

"It's a generic level one slime! It can harden and leap to bludgeon and engulf to suffocate! Slimes are resistant to slashing damage!"

Putting her hand into it adds a mental indicator that the slime has <englufed something approximately fist sized>. It's thick and sticky like some sort of gelatin, it's hard to move her hand and hard to pull it back out and her skin starts to sting after a few seconds.

The slime can bend and mold if she focuses her intent. Flattening it out or elongating it is pretty easy, and making it do a 'leap' by suddenly tensing and changing shape is only a little tricky. Extending a short pseudopod is a lot tougher.

Hm, that's all good, except for how it's stinging her hand. She was afraid it might be like that. This seriously limits the slime's non-combat applications.

Can she order it to not digest her hand? Or is that involuntary on the slime's part?

...can she summon a second slime? "How many slimes can I sustain at once? What happens to me if I run out of mana?"

The slime has a thin layer of 'skin' that is tougher than the internal goo and non-burny. Digestion seems to be involuntary.

"As many as you have mana for! You might fall unconscious."

Ame attempts a variation, having derived the grammar and vocabulary for it during her experimentation.

"I offer two mana from my core in the form of viric to the spirits of creation so that they might create a monster with a body of slime altered to replace all corrosive properties with restorative properties, which will be sustained by mana from my core and unerringly obey my command!"

Nothing happens.

"[All corrosive properties] isn't a thing, silly!"