Archive Of Potentialities.

IDENTITY [[SHADOW SLAVE X TENSURA]]-- Prologue.

Azure scales rippled as its enormous body glided seamlessly through the waters, but the creature had not seemed to have noticed me.

Its head was raised upwards, trained on something I couldn't see from my position beneath the surface.

But as I observed the serpent as it drew closer to my location, a haze cleared around my thoughts. It was akin to a light suddenly coming to life.

I began to remember things. I remembered fear, I remembered danger.

I remembered my name.

“What the hell is going on…?”

Suddenly snapping to full attention, I took stock of my situation. A sudden surge of terror and discomfort overcame me as I remembered how I had been behaving just a second ago.

No normal person thinks like that.

I clutched my chest as I wondered: how long would I have stayed like that if nothing came to disrupt the environment?

The thought was terrifying. The casual acceptance of things that had been recognised as wrong, the ease with which I had decided to give up without even discerning the true nature of my problem.

Relief flooded me as I pondered the one thing I remembered in this odd ocean.

Rimuru Tempest, that was my name. I failed to recall anything else, but I had the utmost conviction that this was something I would always be able to fall back on.

The world had slowed around me the moment I returned to awareness. The colossal serpent of length more than a kilometre seemed to be sitting still, but I could discern the faintest of movements still existed.

Enhanced perception speed? An ability of mine?

It was frustrating, the sense that I needed to hurry nagged at me, but I could not remember why or even what I could do in my current situation.

What even am I?

Raising my arms to eye level, I gazed at my skin. White, flawless. I picked a strand of my hair and inspected it as well.

Blue.

Somehow, I knew that wasn't a natural hair colour.

I looked again at the approaching danger, inspecting it closely this time.

What even is that thing?

The moment I asked myself such a question, information flooded my mind.

Great Beast, corrupted lifeform, estimated length, 2 kilometres, estimated density, weight, energy levels…More and more bits of information were revealed to me.

An analysis ability? I was grateful for the answers, but also felt an inexplicable pang of loss at the same time.

Something felt wrong about how that information was revealed to me.

I shook my head, dismissing the unfamiliar feelings. I needed to think of a way to escape here, I needed to find a way to complete myself again.

An idea dawned on me, a way to perhaps learn exactly what I was capable of and what I wasn't.

Turning my attention inwards, I began to explore myself.

I had no ideas of how to escape the situation, I couldn't remember exactly who I was or why I was there, but my earlier fugue state terrified me. And then and there, I had resolved myself.

Never again, never again will I give up on myself.

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Sunless was in a bad mood.