"What the fuck is that thing?"

Those would be the words the slime would be thinking if it had any frame of reference for the spoken word. As it did not know any language, it merely wobbled a bit in bewilderment.

Upon being swept into the maw of the unknown, the slime had been tossed and tumbled about, smashing into this and that, logs and such, all whilst being effectively rendered blind. It was not the darkness that was the cause of it's lack of sight, though indeed this forsaken artery of the mountain was devoid of any form of light. Rather it was the fact that the slime's mana sight was being compromised by the constant churning of the waves and the fact that it kept being bopped by various object being swept alongside it. The slime's body, however resilient to blunt force trauma, was taking tiny chips of damage from sliding against rough boulders, and being poked by branches and bits of debris. The walls themselves were worn smooth by the underground river and the slime took no damage from them despite smacking into them with speed and force.

Again the slime was panicking. Would it be caught in this beast forever? What would happen if it had no Life Force left? Of course the slime did not see Life Force as Life Force, it only knew it was representative of its overall state of health. It assumed the Mana thing was the invisible veins of energy it could sense permeating its body and originating from its core. It had seen that number dip a few times, although again it had no concept of numbers and so could only percieve it as being less than it was before.

Although the messages were represented as numbers and letters, every being that was intelligent enough to recieve the messages would have some form of understanding at least what HP and Mana were. Without a teacher, many beings would simply dump all their free stat points into whichever stat they liked the most after trial and error, or into whichever stat they first fumbled a point into.

That was exactly what the slime was doing.

The first point it had spent had coincidentally been on intelligence. This single point had double its intelligence from its base value of zero which was a huge boost. The slime was drunk on the feeling of being smarter and so it continually dumped all its free points into that one stat.

As for its Life Force and Mana going up?

This was because once the mana it had absorbed from the air or from other creatures had reached critical mass and broke through, its life force would be reinforced. It would be more resilient to damage, and be able to store more mana in its core and channels. Thus, intelligence had no effect on its mana pool.

Each race had inborn traits and abilities, and some would gain more Life Force or Mana with a stat point than others. Titans for example, were born with over 2000 Life Force typically, and would recieve hundreds more with each breakthrough. Of course the Mana of this world required balance and the cost of recieving a point would be much higher.

The slime, being composed primarily of mana, gained more mana than average per level up, but less Life Force. How could it gain much Life Force when its body was basically jelly? However, the slime had an advantage. It's body could take massive physical trauma before losing Life Force due to its consistency and elasticity.

A human was soft on the inside. Once through the skin, the organs were easy to tear apart, this was true for many creatures. A slime's body however was the same consistency on the inside as on the outside, with its core being the hardest part of its body. Therein lies the slime's natural advantage. With every stat point aquired, the slime's gelatinous mass would become just a bit tougher, its core just a bit harder.

Of course, no being knew these things. Slimes had never been allowed to mature.

As for non-sapients? When their bodies reached critical mass, the mana would spread evenly throughout the body with no directive and increase all abilities marginally. Not every creature was born with, or had the ability to form a core after all.

And so, the slime was swept away in this mountain artery, however all was not lost. The slime's prodigious luck came into play once again. Half an hour into its horrific journey, the slime was coincidentally near the roof of the tunnel filled with rushing water, and the slime was coincidentally sucked into and subsequently squeezed through a narrow crack in the rock. This crack coincidentally was supplying an underground lake in an underground cave with underground water.

Dookarook's cave.

The slime was still disoriented from its hectic travels through the intestines of the looming mass of rock, and had been drifting upwards through the calm pool of water, when it bumped into something soft. Immediately the slime regained its senses and used its mana sight to percieve what it had bumped into.

And what it saw shocked and confused it.

It had thought itself and the insects and flashes in the river were the only things in the world. This new sight brought that well thought-out theory to its knees.

It was confronted with an insect the size of which boggled its mind. The thing was at least twice as tall as itself! It had only 5 appendages, with 5 wiggly things on the end of four of them, and on those wiggly things were pointy looking objects. The 5th appendage was on top of its middle section and had a bunch of weird features. It had two bulbous cores set in sockets, and between those cores was a triangular protuberance with 2 holes in it. Underneath that was a crack in the things soft looking carapace that made a noise and had more sharp things sticking out.

The slime wobbled out of the water.

The slime was able to percieve the noise despite not sound oriented sensory organs because when air when expelled through the mouth and lungs, it would vibrate the ambient mana within the air that had not been absorbed. The slime, having superb mana sense, was able to percieve the thing's shriek because of this.

"AGAHGAHGAH," it screeched.

This, absolutely floored the slime. It could hear the mana-laden air swirl through the trees, and the rushing of the great river, but it had never before heard an insect make a sound, besides when it crushed them.

"Baba goga goog aka boo?" It said in a much less noisy manner.

The slime, still bewildered by all the new changes, had no idea what it was doing making those sounds. It was imagining how much it's intelligence would increase if it consumed the mana in that giant thing.

Oh! it just remembered there was a message floating in front of it. It was using its mana sense to look at all the weird new things in the cave and had completely disregarded it.

Of course the slime had seen this message a bunch of times by now and knew exactly what it was going to do.

Intelligence x6!

It remembered! A gold flash had slammed into it in the churning river and it had instinctively dissolved it! That amazing flash gave it 6 free points. The slime was positively giddy with excitement as it slapped all the new points into intelligence and pressed Y.

What the slime did not know was that the fish that had slapped into it had previously also had a few stat point breakthroughs. This had contributed to the amount of mana the slime had gained from it. In addition, the slime's previous stats had come from killing creatures with some of the lowest mana content possible: insects. It was apparent that the slime's stat point breaktroughs were extremely easy to accrue in these early stages of its life.

All at once the slime felt its intelligence soar. It's mind had opened peering into the very heart of the world, piercing the veil. So many things cleared up for the slime in that one instant.

For example, it realized that the river was not a creature but was likely a bunch of rain that had glommed together and followed a slope downhill, just as its own body fell or rolled due to an unknown force pulling it towards the ground.

It realized that the gold flash was some sort of creature that it had absorbed the mana of and in turn had gained some of its strength.

And it realized that it was now inside one of the massive connected boulders that loomed over its home.

"Grook boo shoogle moog soogy?"

With these revelations and more, the slime started flailing its appendages with utter orgasmic glee, not paying any attention to the odd creature before it.

It's like it was looking at the world through a boulder before, its mind slogging through processes with all the grace of a crushed insect. But now was the dawn of the slime! All would know that the smartest being to have ever existed was born!

"Goig-thoog, boo shabba boi poog noggo, tog doogle roo meen," the disgusting bulbous creature said as it started to walk away.

The slime didn't even notice, still lose in the euphoria of its massive stat boost. It was shaken out of its reverie when it noticed the thing walking towards it however. The slime just sat there, it had no concept of caution. The only thing it had ever felt fear from was a bunch of raindrops that moved really fast, it had never faced danger from an insect.

The thing extended one of the things at the end of its long limbs at it, then it pointed at itself with the thing, then it pointed at a tunnel in the wall.

The slime realized that this thing was trying to communicate with it. This insect was so smart! It was a actually smart enough to try to interact with the slime. With this the slime decided against immediately dissolving the insect. It had successfully piqued the slime's curiosity. The slime, being a genius and the smartest slime in existence, knew the the thing want the slime to follow it into the hole. The slime had no reason to hang about at the lake so it decided to aquiesce the thing and follow it.

It decided if it got bored it would just dissolve the thing.