Miniaturization

"Wh-what is this!?"

The owner came back. He was wiping his hands, so apparently he'd been in the bathroom.

By the way, I, Miitei-chan, was already hiding under the floor.

"What happened? Why is there nothing in the room!? The desk, the chair, the shelves, the lab equipment!!"

Thanks for the meal. Well, it was a mission, so it couldn't be helped.

By the way, I got SP as a completion reward, so I had enough to learn Home now. I felt like I might want to use SP for other things, so I was holding off on that for now… I could grab it once I escaped safely after all. Actually, you know what? I'd go ahead and spend it on the Miniaturization skill right now.

It was just too hard to hide — or rather, to move — when my body was this big. It cost 10 SP, so if I leveled up four more times, I'd have made back what I spent.

Now then, with the room empty, he'd notice the hole in the floor right away. I'd like to escape through the underfloor if possible, but apparently this was a basement.

Under the floor, there were only pipes for the lab equipment. Should I eat these too? Munch munch. Metallic taste.

Could I travel through these pipes to the next room? … Ah, my core was stuck. Maybe I'd eaten a bit too much…

And here's where I immediately activated my SP skill, Miniaturization! Poyun! The pipe in front of me doubled in size… no wait, I was the one who got smaller.

My water-dumpling-like Slime body was now about the size of a basketball. Core was about ten centimeters in diameter. I could fit through any hole big enough for a smartphone.

Plus, my original volume still applied when I reached out, so I could stretch the compressed mass as far as I wanted. This was fun. It was like being a yoga master.

Well then, let's follow the pipes to another room. Baldy's been ripping up the floorboards!

While traveling through the hollow pipe, the next mission appeared.

[Mission! Attack the researchers!]

… This was that thing, wasn't it? Like in movies where monsters attack from pipes, ducts, or under the floor.

Never thought I'd be on the monster side… but this was definitely gonna be fun, right?

Besides, from what I saw in the documents, this research facility was conducting illegal research with national backing, so basically the mission was telling me to attack everyone in this facility, right?

And to munch on everything.

Nice, nice. This was fun.

But from inside the pipes, I couldn't see outside at all and had no idea what was going on. I wanted to get out soon… oh right, there was a map function. Let's see, my current location was… looked like I was inside the wall of a room about three rooms away from where I started.

Snap, I punched a hole in the pipe, then punched through the wall too.

Let me take a peek at this room… oh! Looked like a storage room. Lucky, it was an all-you-can-eat buffet!

I widened the hole and slipped out with a splorch, then started eating everything in the storage room at random.

Wheat, salt—just regular food storage. Got some dried meat too. Yay, real meat… it was tough though. Guess I'd dissolve it and slurp it up. Super salty too. I could eat it, but it kinda hurt my mouth…

Also, the only vegetables were onions and potatoes. Was the vitamin tablet storage somewhere else?

Man, I couldn't eat all this. I'd put some in my inventory too. It was like bringing Tupperware to a buffet, totally cheating, but this was a game so it was legal.

And with that, the food storage was cleaned out. I'd eaten a lot and gotten bigger again… or so I thought, but while my volume definitely increased, my actual size stayed the same thanks to Miniaturization.

Knew it was the right call to get this. Without it, I'd be oozing out of the room by now.

Level was at 9 now too. Time to attack the researchers… but it was really noisy outside the door.

I pressed my body flat against the door to listen to the sounds outside.

"Emergency alert, emergency alert! Experimental organism has escaped! Emergency alert, emergency alert—"

"Target presumed to be a Slime variant, all units equip Special Gear D! Shoot on sight! Is the hatch closed!? Quarantine procedures are—"

"Research materials evacuation complete! Continuing evacuation—"

Ah. Well, of course I got found out. I'd emptied out an entire room, so there's no way they wouldn't notice.

That bald researcher must have responded properly. Well, the damage was too extensive to cover up anyway.

Then suddenly the door banged open and I got squished between the wall and the door. My core was fine though, so zero damage.

"Report!! The food storage has been hit!!"

"Impossible, where did it get in from!?"

Soldiers in protective-suit-like gear came stomping into the room.

They were holding something like guns.

"Captain! There's a hole in the wall!"

"So it got into the walls… but we found it! If it ate all the contents of this storage, it must've gotten pretty huge. The thing's gotta be stuck and unable to move! Inject the solution into the wall, then widen the hole! Watch out for counterattacks!!"

"Yessir!"

With that, the soldiers sprayed some liquid into the hole with their gun-like devices, then pressed some tool against the wall with a GAGAGA sound and started widening the hole. So that was Special Gear D… Decay Factor type? Yeah, getting close seemed like a bad idea.

I'd better escape from this storage while I could. I crept slowly toward the ceiling, sticking with Slime adhesion… using the noise as cover, I scratched a hole in the ceiling and slipped into it with a shwoop.

Phew, safe for now.

… Ah. I should've planted a Fission dummy inside the wall. Too late now though.

"Come to think of it, they mentioned something about hatches. Am I quarantined? Having no escape route is rough. Do I have to fight all of them…? If they group up, I'm done for."

Thinking that, I continued gnawing upward. Then I hit a metal plate.

… A metal plate I could handle. Sizzle, munch munch. Punched through. Made it to the space under the upper floor.

Man, what a lame quarantine! Hahaha!

"We definitely disposed of the Chimera Slime! We administered the Decay Factor and confirmed the corpse!"

"But everything has disappeared like this!"

"The flask fragments are gone too! The enemy isn't a Slime — it's something else!!"

Angry voices from the floor above. One was the owner of that room, and the other was a soldier?

… Hmm. This was my chance to complete the researcher attack mission. First, take out the soldier with a surprise attack, then the researcher… no, maybe the other way around? But if the soldier counterattacked, that'd be a pain…

"H-Hey, look! There's a magic circle floating on the floor over there!!"

"What? Is that your desperate excuse? There's nothing there."

Crap. Got spotted. I retracted it immediately so no one except the researcher noticed, but…

Seriously though, the Halo clips through the floor AND is visible to others? That's gotta be a bug.