"Bwahahahaha!" Lisa couldn’t help herself, bursting out laughing at Lohan’s appearance.
And not because he looked ridiculous, but because he looked so cute!
Because he had a completely round and chubby build, the four short blue legs he’d formed were already cute, but when he covered them with the black exoskeleton, he looked like a cute little animal wearing black booties.
Since only his legs had the rigidity of the exoskeleton, when he walked, the round, blue part of his body would bounce up and down.
If it were just that scene, Lisa wouldn’t even feel like laughing; she’d just find it cute and admire that "little animal" in front of her.
But when Halon spoke in his usual calm, slightly deep, magnetic voice, the contrast between what she heard and what she was seeing made the fox unable to resist and burst out laughing.
Lohan looked at the fox laughing at him and projected a small clone to view himself from an external perspective, and when he saw himself, he couldn’t resist either and started laughing.
With this external view, he was able to better analyze the differences between himself and Lisa and slowly correct them, to the point that after a few minutes he had four perfect copies of the fox’s four paws!
But even so, he still wasn’t even a little bit as elegant or intimidating as she was, since his round body was exactly the same...
Feeling how much he had to concentrate to maintain that shape, Lohan sighed and gave up on trying to replicate her entire structure.
’I guess I’ll have to leave that full copy for the future, when this skill’s level increases even further.’ He thought, a little disappointed.
But with the four legs, Lohan began walking around, gradually increasing his walking speed to the point that before long he was running!
Surprisingly, his running speed in this form—perhaps affected by the [Viscous Flow]—was twice as fast as his speed rolling along the ground!
[Viscous Flow Lv 24] - 2.09 m/s.
[Increases agility in controlling one’s own body by 10% per level.]
From his rolling speed of 2.09 m/s, with these four legs copied from the fox, Lohan could move at 4.18 m/s!
Unfortunately, he still couldn’t use this in combat, since the concentration required to maintain it would cause his attack and defense capabilities to drop to almost zero.
But it was still nice to have the ability to do something like this!
Satisfied, Lohan stopped running around and lunged toward Lisa, retracting the legs he had formed and embracing the fox’s body, wrapping her with even more care than before, now wanting to understand her structure better so that when he improved his body control, he would have a better grasp of it.
To analyze her even better, Lohan enveloped Lisa’s entire body in his Living Armor form, without activating the exoskeleton, and analyzed everything he could.
Lisa, who had been laughing just moments ago, suddenly froze at his strange behavior and felt her cheeks grow hot.
"Halon, what are you doing?! We’re not even in combat!" She asked in a cold, slightly trembling voice—a change neither she nor the slime had noticed at first.
"Ohh, I’m just studying you better, so that when I build my body, I can use you as a reference." He said as he continued to move his gel around her body.
With that explanation, Lisa understood what he wanted, but still, for some reason, it was making her very uncomfortable!
"Stop! I don’t want you to do that right now!" she shouted, preparing to generate Spirit Flames to scare Halon away from her, but before she could do so, the Slime obeyed her request and returned to its round shape, forcing her to stop generating the flames.
"I’m sorry, next time I want to do something like this, I’ll ask you first," Lohan said in a regretful voice, realizing he’d gone a bit too far due to the excitement he felt, remembering that in front of him wasn’t just a little animal, but a human girl like him.
Lisa turned to look at the Slime, feeling a bit incredulous about it.
While she was happy that he had respected her request and hadn’t been a clueless jerk like the other boys who tried to interact with her, she was still furious because she had nowhere to vent her anger!
In a rage, Lisa opened her mouth and spat a fireball into the center of the stone clearing where they stood.
-- BOOOOM!
[NunuNote: This time it’s a real explosion; I stopped with the mental-boom after so many people complained... and I thought it was so cool when I read it in the novel that inspired me to use it... ;( ]
With the explosion, stone debris flew everywhere, along with a cloud of dust caused by it.
Seeing the explosion she had caused, Lisa finally calmed down a little, sighing in relief.
Lohan, on the other hand, was shocked by this fox girl’s fury.
’Is she on her period? Why else would she suddenly get so stressed out?!’ He wondered, confused and shocked.
After a few seconds, Lisa also calmed down enough to realize she had gone a bit overboard, but that only made her even more confused.
’Why am I acting like this? My anger management has always been very good; few things can get me riled up, whether negatively or positively...’ she wondered, not understanding.
Looking again at the Slime behind her, which at that moment was just standing there in its shrunken form while looking around as if nothing had happened, Lisa felt her chest tighten slightly, bringing a mix of feelings to the fox that she couldn’t understand.
’Halon, I think I’m getting tired for today; I need a shower. How about we call it a day on the hunt?’ she asked, wanting to log out of the game and figure out what she was feeling.
Lohan saw that something had happened to her and grew concerned. ’Sure, no problem on my end, Lisa. If anything happens and you need to talk about something, you can message me, okay?’
Lisa looked at him and felt that same tightness in her chest rise again; with a simple nod, she quickly requested to log out of the game, and before the 20 seconds it took for her body to turn into particles of light had even elapsed, Lisa forced the disconnection, leaving her body standing motionless like a robot while, in the real world, Isabella took the helmet off her head.
As she calmed down, thinking about what might have happened, an older, more mature female voice echoed through the house. "Bella, I’m home!"