《Focusless core》 Chapter 1; Focusless
I heard that the system was made from the left over essence of the world''s creation, but that''s utter bullshit, let''s be honest. On that note; Mana! Magic! Very cool, it does so many fun things, especially my specific type of mana. If I use fire mana, I can burn someone''s eyes to a crisp from a distance. If I use water mana, I can extract the water out of someone''s eyes and turn them blind. If I use earth mana, I can pick up or make a small stone and launch it into someone''s eyes. And if I use wind mana, I can stop someone from breathing. But limiting yourself to the four base elements is for losers, well except if you do a mix of them, those are cool. There are so many types of mana, I actually made loser mana yesterday after ripping out the heart of a loser and using it as a base for mana transformation.
-Exerpt from ''Your mother is fat, HAHAHA!'' written by ''Lucaric Ba''alhos'', the mad god.
A young mind held within a crystaline structure meekly celebrated it''s birth with a mental cheer, and then carried on with what it''s instincts were screaming at him to do; ''Diggy diggy hole'', ''Create (Cool) minions'', ''Make cool place'', ''Create strong protection'' and last but not least; ''Lure and kill sentients''.
*Nameless*
MP; 10/10 Essence; 0
Schematics Record
Skills
Common
Aspects
The core couldn''t help but shake in excitement mentally as it saw it''s status. It was acknowledged by the great will of the world! It madly pushed ''Aspects'' repeatedly, and forth came another screen.
Young core, it''s dangerous to go alone, take this focus!
Earth
The earth, as stable as steel, shall bear the weight of any great beast. -Increase affinity and control of [Earth] aspect by 100% -Increase affinity and control of [Earth-based] aspects by 1-50% (Based on closeness to the [Base aspect]) *Non [Earth-based] elemental aspects affinity and control defaulted to 25%, if above 25%
Wind
Breath in the essence of the world, and be as free as the skies above. -Increase affinity and control of [Wind] aspect by 100% -Increase affinity and control of [Wind-based] aspects by 1-50% (Based on closeness to the [Base aspect]) *Non [Wind-based] elemental aspects affinity and control defaulted to 25%, if above 25%
Water
The waves sway, deep within an murky abyss lay, a monster so great, a dead man it shall make. -Increase affinity and control of [Water] aspect by 100% -Increase affinity and control of [Water-based] aspects by 1-50% (Based on closeness to the [Base aspect]) *Non [Water-based] elemental aspects affinity and control defaulted to 25%, if above 25%
Fire
Burn, burn, burn, let the world burn. Turn it all to ash and leave nothing left, a scorched wasteland in the wake of a flame o'' so great. -Increase affinity and control of [Fire] aspect by 100% -Increase affinity and control of [Fire-based] aspects by 1-50% (Based on closeness to the [Base aspect]) *Non [Fire-based] elemental aspects affinity and control defaulted to 25%, if above 25%
Elemental
Rule the sky, manage the earth, dominate the seas, and burn the heavens. -Increase affinity to base elemental aspects by 11% -Increase control of base elemental aspects by 11% *Lock all non base elemental aspects.
Focusless
The future untold, let your ambition guide your choice, and surpass the mold. -Elemental aspect control set to 50% -Elemental affinity set to 10% -Non elemental based aspects set to 60% affinity if not equal to or above said affinity. -Non elemental based aspects affinity increased by 5% if equal or above 60% control. *Control of the four elements and all those related to them, stunted, but that is to say that those not associated with them are completely free to use.
The young core was amazed, so many choices were laid out to it. Earth would let it make giant monsters, wind would allow it make fast monsters, water would allow it to make more... ''all-rounder monsters?'' it guessed, there wasn''t much information on it. Fire would allow it to make something with great power. Elemental seemed to give him everything, but based on the ''*Insert element*-based'' aspects, it seemed to restrict anything outside of the ''Base elements''. It was versatile, but... Focusless seemed more... Fun. The young core thought for a moment ''I am pretty ambitious, and those non-elemental aspects seem pretty appealing... Just thinking of the cool aspects I could use...'' On pure impulse it picked ''Focusless''. ''-Wait, that wasn''t a smart choice, was it?'' The young core realized, it hadn''t even thought it over. Just the fact that all those cool aspects would be forcefully made available... The core looked at the aspects available to it as a [Common] grade core.
Aspects
Common
-Earth (Affinity; 10%, Control; 50%) -Wind (Affinity; 10%, Control; 50%) -Water (Affinity; 10%, Control; 50%) -Fire (Affinity; 10%, Control; 50%)
''Oh, I''m screwed.'' The young core felt the looming terror hanging above him and quickly looked at ''Schematics''
-Due to lack of focus, no extra schematic is distributed.
Schematics
Common
-Slime (5 MP)
''So screwed, this poor core is.'' The core silently weeped for a few moments, as the mistake really started to fully materialize in front of him. ''-Wait! Who ever said that I had to stay faithful to the schematic? I shall upgrade it!'' Although it wasn''t the smartest tool in the shed, it was confident that there had to be some way to not be the weakest core on the block, what were all those non-elemental aspects used for then? And so he accepted the knowledge held within the schematic, mentally yawning ''Wasn''t there supposed to be something like a kno- Oh, there it is.'' The dungeon core thought as it mentally looked at the schematic within his memory. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. If the core wanted to actually put the schematic to use, he would need some space to put it in, so he started to dig out around it. The earth around his crystal slowly disintegrated at the cost of his mana, after an unknown amount of time, a ~4m^3 cubic room was ''Carved'' out. Though that room made no difference to the fact that the core was laying on the rough ground, not that it mattered too much to the core. It was mostly extremely irritated that it took so long to make, it was as if he had a low affinity and control with it -Oh yea. The y- Let''s just call it something, eh... Falc, yea, let''s go for that- Falc readied himself for a long and arduous process as he started to use the water aspect to manifest a liquid, and used said aspect to force it still into a some-what circular form, and started to weave it together with attributeless mana, after which a few liberties were taken with the water aspect, morphing the created liquid into something more... Viscous. Then the second to last thing, a bunch of long strands of attributeless mana that could contract between different parts of the viscous blob. Now, the final part; ''Mentally'' tap it to life with a small ''Spark''. I know it''s confusing, and it''s just very hard to properly explain this. After it had been brought to life by the spark, that slime that was created seconds ago, twitched madly without reason, not knowing what to do. It could not see, it could not even think, it just was there. ''Come on, stop spasming and do something!'' Falc prodded mentally against the extremely primitive semi-mind inside the slime, which made the slime stop spasming, but it then continued again after only a moment. Falc, seeing that he couldn''t even properly influence it, started to despair ''How do I even make this thing actually do something?! How can I improve a spasming mess without a mind!?'' His mental eyes flitsted back to the schematic, and he quickly looked at the finished product. It all matched up; Viscous, kept together with attributeless mana, mana muscles, nucleolus- ''Wait, nucleolus, how am I supposed to make that?! There''s no guide on that!'' ''Make a nucleolus you seizuring twat!'' Falc mentally screamed at the slime, not really expecting it to do anything except spasming even more, but it actually did something! -It killed itself due to the strain placed upon the stabilizing mana threads. Falc sighed mentally ''It was probably just me making some fatal error as I struggled to use the water aspect.'' They quickly erased the viscous water with great difficulty, and then just tried again. The water creation was the most annoying, but weaving them was pretty relaxing as it wasn''t a fight against the laws of nature for him, but something he could actually do with a bit of focus. Then the muscles ''Wait, did that slime keep spasming because the muscles were done badly?'' The core quickly glanced back to the schematic, and this time made sure to follow the guide to the T. This time the slime just stood still for a few moments, before it tried to jump, which failed miserably, but at least it wasn''t spasming! Every single attempt failed miserably, and it quickly collapsed again. Though it was discouraging, there was progress! And it was pretty obvious he just needed to stabilize it a bit more ''Either the weave or the Water aspect are what cause the problem, and thinking about that focus... it''s 100% the aspect.'' Falc went back to the drawing board and tried to make some other variant of water, after recycling the previous slime''s corpse.
A man silently prayed ''Hey, mad god, I found out today that if you mix life and death magic cool things happen, specifically the creation of a ''Sartal being''. Something that is neither alive nor dead, but is still alive, it''s confusing. But we killed a few and cool [Sartal] attributed materials were obtained-''
Skill; activates.
A dungeon has been formed.
The man instantly stood up and left the small church-like building "Comrades! A dungeon has formed! Prepare to enter the dungeon city that''s going to form around it!" He called out loudly while passing through the streets, filled with ''Madness'', mixes of mana which are dangerous and heretical to all religions. They praised the ''Mad god'', though they didn''t treat him as a true god, his mere presence a few thousand years made this place tainted with a ''[Trace of the mad god]'' which allowed for his believers to have an easier time getting classes and skills relating to him. Mostly ''Madness'' related classes, classes like {Priest of the mad god} were exceptionally rare even with a [Remnant]''s support. He quickly looked at his status to make sure that it was all in order.
Class; {Mad arcanist} Level; 41 Race; [Human]
Strength; 13 Agility; 17 Physique; 32 Spirit; 93 Magic power; 68 MP; 94/94
Skills
Common Uncommon Rare
-, lvl 3 -, lvl 2 -, lvl 4 -, lvl 1 -, lvl 12 -, lvl 7 -, lvl 4 -, lvl 23 -, lvl 2 -, lvl 6 -, lvl 9 -, lvl 12 ... -, lvl 11 -, lvl 16 -, lvl 7 -, lvl 17 -, lvl 12 -, lvl 37 -, lvl 27 -, lvl 41 -, lvl 14 -, lvl 8 -, lvl 16 -, lvl 6 ... -, lvl 12 -, lvl 49 -, lvl 32 -, lvl 24 ->, lvl 22 -, lvl 18 -, lvl 13 -, lvl 6 -, lvl 17 -, lvl 7 -, lvl 3 - magic>, lvl 14 ...
This is what a person with any normal skill would see, but there was more hidden beneath the surface.
Mad god''s bounty
- : Hear the calls of madness and decipher secrets best left forgotten. -Rank 0 (31%) -Attunement process; Record madness. *Due to being rankless, basic statements related to the mad god''s influence are made.
-; You know of which you have not known. -Rank 0 (12%) -Attunement process; Experience madness. *Due to being rankless, intuition is manifested as a screen.
-; HOW DARE YOU THINK I HAVE A WEAKNESS!? -The mad god. -Rank 0 (4%) -Attunement process; Follow scripture. *Due to being rankless, ''s effects are highly limited and conditional (Reduced penalty with higher attunement.)
"There will be a elder meeting in half an hour, be there, or be square!" He called as the old arcanist started to plan out the future of this specific branch of the cult. Chapter 2; Slime innovation
Q; What would you say is a must know for any adventurer? A; Don''t try to take the core. Q; What do you mean? A; You see, there are a lot of adventurers that want the bounty on a dungeon core. But they don''t realize that dungeon cores are alive, that they don''t want to die, and that they don''t play fair like when you just adventure inside for a bit of gold or something. Q; Really, is it actually that much more dangerous when you do that? A; Yes, you know that one forest dungeon that spread up to the surface, the one with a lot of alchemy materials? Q; Oh that one, it was called ''Thiari''s verdant paradise'', right? A; Yes, it''s quite popular now, but back when it was just discovered, about a month after it if I remember correctly. A silver party went inside in an attempt to get that fat paycheck, me included, and everyone except me died a horrifying death. Q; How did they die? A; In a way I won''t tell you, now get lost you damn paparazzi!
-Exerpt from an interview with an annonymous diamond rank adventurer.
A slime bounced against the wall of Falc''s cube, it didn''t die or have a seizure, but it couldn''t see. It didn''t have a sense of direction, or touch, or smell, or hearing. It didn''t even know there was something outside of a black senseless void, and it couldn''t go insane because of it, because it couldn''t think! Falc had to find a way to make it not garbage, so the core started to brainstorm. First; ''How about twice the muscles?'' Though Falc first made the fatal mistake of randomly putting the muscles everywhere, and another seizure occured. But after that, it regained some sense, and realized that the slime was straight up too stupid to not seizure if given the chance. So Falc instead just set the muscles up in duos with the one design where the slime could jump around properly. Now, did it work? No, no it didn''t. It ripped itself apart, not being elastic or hardy enough to bear the power of two little muscles. Second idea; Two weaves! In simple terms, Falc wanted to make another weave after the first weave was finished, to create a ''Double weave'' as they called it. So Falc quickly repeated the thing he had done so many times; Make the water, make a ball, weave it together- But then, instead of making the muscles, he started to try and make another weave inside the water ball. Not put the two weaves together to make a ''Weave+'', but put a weave ''Above'' the previous weave. Might not make sense as the weave is three dimensional and covers the entire semi-floating liquid ball, so it shouldn''t be possible to put it above the weave while also being within the constraints of the in-progress slime. But magic is magic, just think of it as Falc layering it on the basis of the 4th dimension. ''Shit!'' Falc failed in holding the water in place as keeping both the weave and the water stable while making another weave was too hard on his inexperienced mind, making him lose all of the invested mana. A few more repeats of this made Falc walk another path, actually do a ''Weave+'', which wasn''t exceptionally difficult, but it took a lot of focus and time compared to a normal slime. But since Falc had no way to tell the time, it didn''t matter much to the core. To be honest ''Weave+'' wasn''t that much better than the orginal in weaving potential, Falc could make it even better. So Falc did, but it wasn''t enough. So Falc did it again, but there was room for improvement. ... Ten tries later and 9 recycles later, Falc had reached his practical limit. He could technically make it even better but that would take far to much effort for the effect he foretold. He hadn''t even breached the surface yet like how his instincts desired, nor had he gained anything too powerful. He at least wanted something that could actually, you know, see. So Falc quickly registered his ''Weave+ slime'' schematic for later reference and to at least have a way to compare their new version to the old, though mostly because the core didn''t want to admit it had basically wasted its time making a weak monster less of a weakling by a miniscule margin. And as such, Falc went to the last and final idea while leaving the weave+ slime to do its thing with the original. The idea? Make the weave with a new type of mana; Fire mana! Basically, his instinctual impulses are telling him that instead of using mana with an aspect to make said aspect a reality like with the water, he could impose the aspect apon the mana to give the mana that element! This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. So what would happen if he used said aspected mana to make the weave? Well, I''ll tell you what would happen if he tried that; Repeated failure. After many tries and finally a successful weave appeared, the water which was held in place instantly became steam, making a mess which Falc had to clean up with way too much effort on his part. ''So, full weave doesn''t work, so... Half fire mana, half normal mana?'' This time the fire mana disrupted the unprotected unattributed mana and then created some steam. ''Reinforce the mana? Let''s first make a few strands of aspectless mana and try to make them more powerful.'' The first idea to make the mana stronger was; Pure force of will. That obviously failed since after the creature was made, it was pretty hard to keep control over the mana strands. Second; Pack more mana into it. It made great progress, made it far stronger actually, but since more mana meant more space per strand and also more mana cost... so they would have to use drastic measures... Falc would mix Idea 1 to concentrate and then forcefully stablize the mana strands created with idea 2! And miraculously, in one of the first test strands, after releasing it from force of will state, the strand kept its stablized shape, though it did take double the mana compared to the original strand. But the thing was, this ''Big thread'' was actually forced into the size of a normal strand of mana. Falc didn''t know why, but after focusing real hard on a strand of mana, forcing it to be smaller, it became smaller. Now, If we do this with each thread within the weave of a slime, a perfectly balanced slime appears. A new variant, one that Falc registered their new creation as ''Thread+ slime''. But then h- I''m just going to refer to Falc as a guy since constantly saying ''They'' feels weird- But then he realized that if he mixed ''Weave+'' with ''Thread+'' as he was planning, he''d have to call it ''Weave+ Thread+ slime'', and that was no good. So he changed a few things; ''Weave+ slime'' became ''Variant A slime'' and ''Thread+ slime'' became ''Variant B slime''. Proper nomenclature would make his life easier if he were to walk the path of creature perfection. And then with a mix of the two variants, he created; The mystical, the ultimate, ''Variant AB slime''! ''MHAUAHAHAH! It still can''t see. But seriously, it has a noticable difference between the original and itself.'' What was noticable was the stability of its form, though it was still gelatenous, it wasn¡¯t all goopy. Improvement of any kind really cheered Falc up, he had this little voice in the back of his head saying that he couldn''t do shit, and he better just accept his fate. But this showed that if he just kept at it, he''d make something great. But then a thought loomed over him ''Why didn''t I try another aspect outside of fire?'' Now, I here am a reporter of science, and shall now tell thee what happened with the other three elements; Water; The slime, instead of bouncing properly, collapsed, becoming a weird semi-puddle. Earth; The slime become more solid, and brittle. When the slime tried to jump, chunks just broke off. Wind; The water dispersed everywhere over the floor, the wind had no restrictive effect at all. Now, the mix of variant B and the elements faired no better. But then there was another idea ''What if the extra element was a double weave?'' ''Well, it may work, but I can''t do it even with aspectless mana... Wait-'' Falc quickly forced a thread+ out and then a normal strand, and felt which one took more of his mental energy to maintain ''The normal strand, even if by an extremely miniscule amount.'' Falc was extremely confused how that could be, since there was actually more mana in thread+ but took less focus to have not fall apart. ''Just to make sure...'' Falc made a strand of mana with the same amount of mana as thread+, but didn''t put it through the forge of will. Just to quickly check if it wasn''t because of more mana = less maintance. Which it wasn''t, it took approximately twice as much focus compared to the normal thread. Falc mentally shifted his eyes, and waited until his mana pool was full, then he discharged all of it at once and created a enourmous thread. Which he forced down into a more concentrated form, just slightly smaller. But then he tried again, lowering the amount of space it required slightly. In about three times the time it took to refill all his mana, Falc had concentrated the string to the point it was about twice as big as the original thread. ''Hmm, it seems a ''Supreme thread'' takes less than a normal thread,'' At this point each ''Forging'', as Falc had came to call it, did almost nothing ''But this strand, it''s too thick to make a proper weave out of.'' But then an idea hit him; why not just forge normal threads into miniscule proportions and then make an extremely intracate weave? Falc first got to testing the forging effects on a single strand, he quickly found forging mana had deminishing effect. So first he did it with a single forging per thread just to make a proof of concept, but it still took a lot of time to properly weave them together with such small threads. He made quite a few mistakes here and there, but luckily the other forged strands didn''t completely collapse at the slightest decrease in support. ''I decree your kind to be; Variant C!'' Falc couldn''t help but be proud of himself, from a single slime to multiple variants that surpassed the original.
Schematics
Common
>Slime< -Slime (5 MP) -Varient A slime (6 MP) -Varient B slime (8 MP) -Varient AB slime (9 MP) -Varient C slime (15 MP)
''Wait a minute, how am I able to make a monster costing more than my maximum mana?'' Falc started to recall his previous experience after looking at the recorded cost of a variant C slime ''It took so long to make, the extra mana needed to finish it had already regenerated.'' Falc nodded to himself for a moment, and then went on to phase 2; double forged slime, Variant C+ slime! But there wasn''t enough space for him, his little underground room/cube being full of various slime varients, it seemed that one had actually been killed by another, indicated by the ooze on the floor. Falc sighed mentally and cleaned up the, probably a, slime corpse and quickly glanced at his creations. He was going to just go back to what he was doing, but done high enough that none of the slimes would bother him by jumping into the floating variant-water ball, but then he noticed something ''What are those little slivers in the normal slime?'' After some intrusive inspection, Falc saw that mana was being absorbed by the slime to create something. First idea that came to mind; Force a bunch of mana into the slime. Which suprisingly did not work, and another slime bit the dust. But Falc wasn''t too depressed, he could make another one, and he quickly did, at a pace that suprised Falc. At first it took 2 MP to regen before a slime was brought into the world, but now it took a single MP. ''That''s interesting and all, but I want my space.'' Falc made 1 by 1 by 1 (1^3) cube opening on the northen face of the 4^3 cube he was laying in, then he excavated another two cubes down, which became the entrance to the top of another 3^3 cubic room. Then he just waited, as he watched, after a bit of time, the Variant AB slime fell down the 2 meter long chute, and then hopped again to enter it''s new domain. Not happy to sit on his laurels and just wait for the slimes to leave, Falc took some mana, and pushed the slimes down the hole ''Have a nice life!'' PS; He had already put the new room into his domain, he kind of had to do that in order to mine it out, but just saying to be sure. Now it was time to return to his machinations, and the forging process had begun! Chapter 3; Surface quest
It has been a decade since the mad god''s demise, and I find it an apt time to put together a few facts to share the few within the public who are interested in truth. The mad god was a man, not a true god, he was known as the ''Wandering heretic'' and ''Church slayer'' in his early days, though it is unknown what his original identity was. It is unknown what his class was, or if he even used one. But we are sure he used both sword and magic in combat as if it were an extension of himself, he used a complex combination of elements to increase the damage he could do with the same amount of mana, which led to madness. You see, madness is known for it''s difficulty to control, to tame, to have not kill it''s user, and also it''s high power. The mad god did not have some extraordinary mind that he used to subjugate the madness, his usage of madness was artistic in his early years, as if a the proper progression from a {Magus} to something of a higher order. But in his later days, madness seemed to bend to his will without any difficulty, his madness based skills so high level that madness became just like a regular spell. Though sadly this great man disappeared, and all that remained was an empty shell kept together by intense abhorrence and lunacy of the highest order.
-Exerpt from a scroll found within the akashic record, written by an author who used the pen name ''Fayrun''
Falc had reasonably used about 30~ MP to make a variant C++ slime, and the weave was surprisingly stable, it had a noticeable decrease on the draw of Falc''s mental resources compared to a normal weave. But sadly, Falc had reached a point where the mana strings were too small to properly forge. So the next variant was created! Variant D! Variant D was where three C++ threads were spun into a single stand of mana and weaved like the variant C+ slime, it took at least three times as much mana as a variant C++ and a bit more time than that. But then the ever industrious Falc started to make C++ threads in batches to increase speed. And since the proper weaving of variant D strands takes far too much time, it doesn''t make any real detriment (No waiting for mana regen for Falc). But now it was time for Falc''s master plan to be put into action, he made the mystical D+. Where you forge a D strand and then intertwine it with two other forged D strand, then repeat. Now you may be wondering, is all this effort to make a variant D9(9 plusses) actually worth it? Compared to other monsters that aren''t slimes, hell no! But compared to the original template, it was incomparable. Actually, If you drop the variant D9 from 5 meters high, it will not become a weird puddle on the floor, and will just bounce slightly on the floor. It might''ve taken a lot of time, and he may have also skipped D2 to D8. Then the final garnish to Falc''s ascension, the first of his imagined innovations, the 4th dimensional, double weave! Every increase in the D-series slimes rank decreases mental necessity, so, will a D9 slime allow for a double weave? No, no it doesn''t, even if the amount of focus a D9 weave requires is less than the normal weave, it still takes to much. So the supreme master of slimes Falc did industrialization 2.0. Make giant batches of 81 C++ threads for a D4 strand in a single process. so, you intertwine those C++''s into a D1 strands, then you put three of those D1''s together, then put three of those together, then once more. And then you forge until it''s as big as a C+ strand minimum, and then you get a D4 in the time it takes to regen 4 MP, which means you can make another D4! Now please understand how long it took for Falc to make a D9 thread, and then that an entire weave was made of the stuff. And now Falc was on a journey of finding a D-series that allows for a normal weave above it, and that means that he will weave and unravel countless times, which will take a long time, and give the sentient races waiting for his appearance a few wrinkles.
"Dad, how long do I have to wait! It''s been days!" A boy complained against to the {Mad rogue}, it had been two weeks since the prophesy came from the great elder, and the dungeon still hadn''t opened up. The cultist of the mad god laughed apologetically "Sorry Andrew, we don''t really know when it''ll open, just that it''s there. Now, let''s play with magic, aren''t you excited to try out and ?" "Really?" Andrew shouted out excitedly "Didn''t mom say that I wasn''t allowed to use those?" The father exclaimed confidently "As long as you don''t tell, I won''t either. ''Come on, let''s go to the forest." The father-son pair walked into the forest as the adventurers that came for the dungeon and others set up camp around the village that housed the mad god''s cult. The rogue quickly captured a deer with his bare hands, quite an easy thing to do for higher leveled adventurers. Though the {Mad rogue} wasn''t an adventurer, he would soon be one, since he needed to hide his madness class. Now, Andrew found himself in front of a legless deer on the ground "I believe in you Andrew, you can do this. All you need to do is a single Arcane bolt to the head." Andrew was excited, he was never allowed to try out his spells on living subjects. He cleared his throat and forced his mana into the spell created from his chanting "O'' mana, obey me as one appointed by the mad god, reject the sanity of the natural world, and twist into an artificial chimera of magic; Arcane bolt!" In front of Andrew''s palm a very light mana that released semi-blue light was packed unnaturally, just from looking at it, you could tell that Andrew was having trouble keeping it in check. Just before he lost control, the arcane bolt was released right towards the nearby head of the deer. As it released Andrew was blasted back, his hand whizzing past his head as a great impact released, killing the deer instantly.
You have subjugated ''Odocoileus virginianus'' lvl 0.
Class; {Mad Wizard} Level; 1 Race; [Human]
Strength; 5 Agility; 4 Physique; 8 Spirit; 9 Magic power; 7 MP; 2/5
Skills
Common Uncommon Rare
-, lvl 2 -, lvl 3 -, lvl 6 -, lvl 1 -, lvl 2 -, lvl 2
Andrew laughed proudly with no regret or second thought about the life he took, it was but a deer "Wasn''t that fun Andrew," The father of the pair asked "Now think what you could do if you trained your skills to the level of the great elder." Andrew paused before asking "Dad, what the great elder''s highest skill level?" Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. "Haha, I''m honestly not sure, but at least one is at level 40." "Whoa.."
Falc focused with all his might, as he put a normal weave right above his D13''s weave. He strained his mind to it''s farthest edge, if he had to make an entire weave of D14, he would have to use so much time, do you know how many forges a triple strand of D13 would take to get to D14? Well it takes at least 40 of them! But luckily, it seemed that Falc had some room for error. After failing repeatedly in making a traditional weave, Falc got irritated and just went C++, it wasn''t even that hard, making things in batches and not having to put at least... 3^14=4782969 strands of C++ down individually, you can see how much easier it is, right? It was so calming and unstressful to make simple C++ with all the practice Falc had, it had become so easy. Easier than breathing actually, since it was really annoying to breathe manually. And as such, Variant D14-0 had been born, and Falc was just done with this shit.
Due to your endless patience, curiosity and fear, you *Nameless*, Innovated and improved one of the weakest and inefficient schematics, And created something o'' so powerful compared to the original, You have gained the title;
Schematic technician
PS; It is recommended that you get a name.
''A name, huh, what''s a good name...'' I say, your name is Falc, for a consistent narrative! ''Falc Navator would be a good name I guess.''
Falc, Schematic technician, Navator
MP; 4.623/10.001 Essence; 0
Schematics Quest
Skills
Common
Aspects
''That''s good, I guess.'' Falc thought as he focused on the words ''Schematic technician''.
Common
Schematic technician
One who improves/modifies certain aspects of a schematic to create marginally stronger monsters. -The owner of this title can brag about it *The owner of this title gains a slight increase of 1% in their proficiency of handling mana for the creation of a new variant.
''That''s good, but I''m not making another variant D14-0 slime, I still need to make a proper dungeon.'' Falc quickly looked at his slime storage, and saw that one of the slimes, well a few of the slimes were making those parts inside of them, this time he wouldn''t screw this process up and just let the extremely valuable D14-0 slime age like a fine wine with it''s older but lesser siblings. Then suddenly, the instinct that was yelling, screaming, and even punching him mentally, just to have him open up to the surface, finally got strong enough to man handle him into doing so. Falc tried his best to resist, but could not. He sighed mentally in defeat, then he told it that he would do it, but he would make a dungeon first. The instinct finally calmed down after Falc had steeled itself to follow it''s wishes, which gave the crystalline being a respite ''Time to get to work'' For some reason Falc had no drive to make a good floor like when he was just born, so he skimped out and decided to just make a confusing 3 dimensional cave maze-like floor. He wouldn''t make it ''Adventurer friendly'' to attract more sentients, why would he? His instincts told him that sentients were dangerous, and he was very weak if compared to the average dungeon newly born dungeon. So he had to use some mind games to keep adventurers off his track. First; From the south of his little cube, he made a straight fall just like the slime pit, and then from the bottom of the cubical pit, a rough cave was mined out, which then started to split out into multiple different caves, all individually mined out. Then a few dozen dead-ends were added, and a little entrance to a lower, more ordered layer of a large cubic room was made. His instincts were screaming that he needed to get to the lower ''Floor'', but he didn''t. This was called a ''Mind game''. He makes an entrance to a place that any other core would put themselves into, and if sentients were sentient and often had interactions with dungeon cores, that''d mean they''d think he was hidden there instead of in one of the many dead-ends. Then one more ''Mind-game'', well more like a stalling tactic, the one cave that properly split from the cave system was turned into an extremely scuffed stair case, and then he just kept adding to it, spiral stair cases, a bout of ''Cavern fever'', ect. Those were the protocol of Plan; ''No die today'', which could be upgraded at a later date. This took a while, like way too much time. He just had no practice in this ''Ugh, I''d rather make another D14-0.'' Falc used his power to make a more normal ''floor'' like area at the top, with rooms and stairs to make a more liniar path for the adventurers, of course there was a little mind game. In the 4th room in the perspective of the adventures, their pathway/hall encroached the room''s area, and if they don''t look into the part right to the side of the wall of that path, hidden in the shadows. Then they won''t see the entrance to the real ''Room 5'', which was a hole in the wall that served as the entrance to a tunnel 0.8 meters in diameter. And yes, the ends of the walls of said pathway/hall curved outwards slightly to hide the tunnel from light sources more effectively. The fake rooms were just a D2 slime or something in a cave-like room, but yes, the last room had it''s own trickery to mess with adventurers. It was just a winding and very long hallway that held no way to progress. It would waste so much time, and give Falc a buffer to make better monsters and stuff. Then room five which continued from the tunnel, that turned into a hallway, was a large cavernous room, where the hall once again took a bit of space from the room with it''s hook like ends. The room was very large, and had a ceiling quite a bit above. And made it possible to have another tunnel, hidden above the outcropping created by the hall. From the great room five''s hooking hallway came a stairway that was Falc guaranteed, which came to the bottom of room five, the idea being that room five would be a practice/nurturing place for monsters, meaning that there would be an extremely large amount of them, later on. He didn''t expect the sentient races to so quickly see through his first mind game. And no, there is no way there except the tunnel. There was even more after the 5th room that Falc wanted to make, but that was for a later Falc''s worry. And then, just a stair case to the surface. Though it didn''t take that long, Falc wasn''t sure about the sentients and their ability to walk certain distances without any interaction, he put a few rooms in-between stairs, which he would fill with some non D-series slimes. Though it was stupid to actually make an entrance to the surface with his trashy monsters, he was still bound to his instincts, and he hated that fact. The instinctual need to harbour adventurers and also kill a few of them on the side was in a different league compared to the instinct still screaming at him to put himself into the lowest room. And after 47 MP of time ''Wait, doesn''t it feel like it''s taking less time to get a unit of MP?'' with that thought, an opening to the surface appeared. Feeling a dimming of the screaming instinct, Falc sighed, and felt mana leaking into his dungeon from the entrance, steadily flowing through the many halls and saturating it''s ambient mana. Falc could feel his MP regen getting a boost ''So this is why my instincts wanted to open up to the surface no matter what... But why would I even want to lure in adventurers?'' Falc first tried to kind-of hide his entrance with some dirt or something, it did help a bit, but it didn''t hide the massive hole. Then he chose to increase his field of view, by expanding his domain into the open air, which started to dissipate the moment it crossed a certain distance of... about 3~ meters from the entrance.
Through the following of your core, You have breached the earthen floor, And have taken the first step, To become something o'' so great, You have gained the title;
Infant dungeon core
Common
Infant dungeon core
A new dungeon who has just breached the surface. Inexperienced, unprepared, and most importantly; Weak. -No effect.
Upgrade condition: -Gain an uncommon schematic -Survive for 10 days -Gain 1 leveled monster
Chapter 4; Elders Advice Adventurers, mercenaries in basic terms, but more restricted in their official conduct. They say they are free, able to do what they wish with little regard to authority, but if they break a certain set of rules, their life seems to crumple. Adventurers are managed by the ''Adventurer''s guild'', who holds a monopoly. Though you may ask; ''How could the god''s allow such unfairness?'', the answer is obvious; They support the adventurer''s guild''s monopoly, they''re probably the cause too. You can tell by just looking through the common books, in fairytails, whenever the adventurer''s guild is at the final breaths, doesn''t it seem like a god always bails them out? Yes, you can be an adventurer outside of the guild''s influence, though almost no one would actually request some no name if they can get the guarantee of the guild instead. So you need fame, which you get through requests, but you almost never get requests if you''re not a part of the guild. And the adventurer''s guild has rules for it''s members, even outside of the job. Now, if you don''t follow those rules, your life is over. But if you fear those rules, then you''re bending to authority. Now, can you really tell me adventurers are truly free? -Exerpt from ''Adventurer''s, those who call themselves free.'' Written by ''Lucaric Ba''alhos'', the mad god.
Andrew stood with his father and other children that had recently gotten their class, standing in front of a hole with the elders of the cult. It was first come first serve, and the cult was an early bird. And more importantly, they didn''t feel the need to tell glorified immigrants of their discovery. Andrew was estatic as he felt the dense ambient mana radiating from the hole. Though others weren''t so happy "I wanna go home!" One of the children whined, obviously picking a combat class, not for power, but for prestige. But Andrew wasn''t like them, he wanted to see a real monster. Not one of those animals that evolved into a monster, a real dungeon monster that defied all reason and would almost certainly never appear in the natural world. After this, his mother could no longer reasonably say he wasn''t ready to practice his magic. It was so exciting! Just then the elders appeared, they were not ragged old men who had been degraded by time. They were in their mid 50''s to late 60''s, except for the great elder who looked as if he was 50-ish but was about 70~ due to his high level. Andrew had heard he used to be an adventurer, but retired to be the great elder of this fringe branch. The great elder turned to Andrew, and walked closer "Are you the kid with a {Rare} class?" After a pause, Andrew nodded. Hearing this, the great elder smile "What type?" "Uh... A {M- A wizard type." Andrew almost messed up by saying {Mad wizard}, which was a no go, saying that you were using a Madness class. was a big no go, unless you were in a place which was certainly closed off to all but church members. "It''s quite rare for a rare class to appear in such a small place," The grand elder said with a smile "You''re quite lucky that I''m here, I''ve chosen to take you in as a disciple." "-What?" "You see, with the coming of the dungeon, we elders have chosen to nurture talents by appointing them as disciples." The grand elder explained patiently. Andrew paused "My mom wouldn''t like that," His mother kept telling him not to use madness-based magic ever since he had gotten his class "Don''t you use... Y''know..." The grand elder immediately frowned "And here I thought that I got it through her thick skull..." he whispered to himself, and then sighed "You don''t have a choice, and your mother is a dullard and a half-wit who''s only allowed to be here through you father." He got irritated at the thought of Andrew''s mother and chose to just over power the child with the power of being overleveled. So the grand elder picked up Andrew by the scruff of his neck and walked towards the hole and then descended it''s stairs with the other elders following tow a bit later, having used normal manners of negotiation to convince their chosen child. When the child and middle-ish-aged man entered the first non-stair area, he put Andrew down and started to talk as he readied a basic spell "Kid, I''ll tell you something, your mother isn''t a real member of the cult, or even the church. She is still caught up with the propaganda that madness drags the user into lunacy, that used the mad god as an example. But I''ll tell you now, as long as you use madness correctly; You will be able to surpass any other in the same rarity and level." He snapped his fingers the moment he saw something within the darkness, having even if at a low level, and a ball of water holding a ravaging flame shot out, lighting up the cavernous room. The ball of water shot at a less than spectacular pace, and landed squarely at what Andrew made out as a- a slime? The moment it made contact, the balance of water and fire collapsed, and a sudden and violent release of steam followed in an explosive fashion. Said slime died without any struggle or pain "That was done with 2 MP, and it was extremely easy too. It wasn''t even what I''d consider true madness magic, since it wasn''t the control of madness mana, but the post-cast mixing of mana to cause a madness phenomena." Andrew did not pick up on the second sentence as he felt an intense sense of confusion ''What happened, why can''t I see?! What was that flash?!'' You see, when as sudden intense light appears when your eyes are adapted to complete darkness, and a child was too stupid to look away and too slow to close their eyes. In such cases one may burn your retina "AAHHH!" "Stop overreacting," The elder said as he tapped Andrew''s head with a mix of healing mana and lightning mana which slithered through and into his eye sockets. The lightning mana paralyzed the nerves to numb the pain, while the healing mana fixed the retina "All better." Andrew found his eyes no longer screamed in agony, and that his eyes were alright. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. While Andrew was getting to his senses, literally, the grand elder thought that it''d be nice to actually have a light source so he quickly made some light mana and cast the beginner spell ''Guiding lantern''. Now, what Andrew came to was the grand elder and him standing in a cavernous room with a white ball of mana looming over the former, which lit up the room "Sorry kid, I''m used to the people accompanying me having a skill that protects eye sight, or the sense to close one''s eyes in the face of intense light." "What... What did you just do?" The grand elder stated clearly and matter of factly "I put a ball of water mana around some fire mana and it mixed as it made contact with the slime, which is often referred to as post-cast madness, it is a ''Post-cast steam spell'' that was created and spread by the mad god and is commonly used as an entrance into Madness based magic, and is often referred to as ''Gas chamber''-" But then he realized that Andrew knew nothing about this "It was magic, a madness spell specifically." "Now come on, stop dawdling, I have an expedition to expedite." He said, after which he started to walk down the other stairway within the room. Andrew looked around, and then choose to follow behind. Though he knew it was stupid to follow a stranger, the grand elder wasn''t a stranger and more importantly; My only light source. One might think; ''Can''t Andrew use fire mana to create a torch or something?'' Well yes, yes he can. But it will last for a small amount of time due to his low mana regen and mana pool, and the fact that it wouldn''t be a spell without something to maintain it inside it''s structure would also make it far worse. And fun fact; Andrew liked to see things and not be practically blind. Since the grand elder put little haste in his step, it took little time for Andrew to catch up with him. Though Andrew didn''t really know what to say, walking down a stairwell within a cave isn''t the greatest of conversation starters if you ask me. But the grand elder was a master of words, and could think of something to talk about, even in these trying times "Today you''ll just be watching me as I investigate the dungeon, you will not be in any kind of combat scenario unless something... Less than savory happens. I''ll make sure to tell you what I''m doing and try to explain why I do things, since I find it obvious your mother didn''t tell you, since she''s a coward and a fool. Do you have any questions to anything that may interest you?" Perfectly putting the pressure of the making of ideas to another, and also making it very easy to do so, lowering chances of complaints about it too! Andrew thought for a moment "If madness doesn''t cause insanity, then why does mom think that?" "Propaganda." "What''s that?" "Propaganda is... How should I put it in terms you could understand... I''ll give you an example; If you were constantly told that drinking water was bad for you, thousands of books, preachers at every block speaking about how water is evil, so much that even if it isn''t the truth, you start to believe the lie. That''s what happened to your mother, she had lies forced down her throat, and if she didn''t believe, her parents wouldn''t take care of her. A total power imbalance, making it completely irrelevant if it were factual or not." "That actually happens outside? How barbaric are masses?" "Oh, we did it to you as well. If you couldn''t tell, you speak differently than the kids from the caravan, right?" "Yes, they do speak coarsely." "Well, that''s because the cult advocates for a refined form of speech due to it being included in scripture- You haven''t accepted the mad god''s bounty yet, yes?" "Well, no, I haven''t. My mother stopped my father from letting me accept it." "Damn woman, ruining a young talent..." The grand elder cursed once more, softly "The mad god''s bounty has a certain ''Bounty'' which gets stronger by following ''Scripture'', and said scripture commands you to speak like we do, somewhat like nobles of the empire. It''s not that they''re crude, it''s that your standards are refined. And this is somewhat of an application of what happened to your mother, though not nearly as insidious as what she was subjected to when she was a young''in." "That sounds..." Andrew thought of the correct words "Immoral, why do we let them do that?" "We, as I understand it, let them trick the populace because they''re stronger then us if they work together, and we don''t want the masses muddling the church or the cult with their mediocrity. I don''t buy that we can''t stop it if we really didn''t want them to," Though the grand elder would''ve liked to continue speaking, he saw the staircase end and show another room "I''ll talk more about this later, just silently listen to what I tell you." The grand elder hastily descended and entered the new room with his light "First, it''s essential that you use at least three scouting skills the moment you enter a room when it''s the first expedition of a dungeon since you shouldn''t pre-fire. Second, after you''ve scanned the entire room for hidden monsters you use an inspecting-type skill that tells you about the monsters in said room, I''ll be using due to it being the easiest to level and gain, and most importantly; not requiring any preparation. After you''ve gotten all the information necessary, you kill the monsters how ever you wish if you know it''s weaknesses, and in a testing manner if you don''t." The grand elder could perfectly see the few slimes in the room and had already gotten their information, which he would look at after he killed them. He put shot out two small balls of fire mana, spinning inwardly at great speeds, and also quite a bit as a normal ball. Both hit their targets spot on, exploded, and killed the two slimes instantly. "Now, why do you think it''s important for you to learn the manner in which you should get information on a dungeon?" "To share it with the cult if I find a new monster on a lower floor?" "No; To sell it to the adventurers as a fellow adventurer, or say it in a, fake, drunken haze to integrate into the community or something. The cult, and the church overall gets a quarter of it''s converts from retired or up-and-coming adventurers, so we are highly intertwined with that community, even if most adventurers don''t know that. So information on dungeons is a vital tool to fit in. Now, I''ll show you what these slimes are."
Variant AB slime
Common
A slime variant with increased endurance to both magical and physical attacks. Weakness; Aspected and magical attacks.
Variant C++ slime
Common
A slime variant whose magical forces, that kept it together, were gifted with an improved scheme and was far more condensed too. Weakness; Aspected attacks.
"Wow! That''s amazing!- The fact that you think I care about the specific details on a weak-ass slime, I''d rather you tell me about where the most nuclei appear." An adventurer told to Andrew, who followed the grand elder''s advice on integrating into adventurer society, yes, from the response you could see it failed. The grand elder did not honestly think there would be many slimes, they were usually used by a dungeon as newbie fodder, and there were almost never enough for any sort of proper hunting for slime nuclei even if they were valuable. But after the hidden tunnel had been found along with the great expanse of slimes had been found, the adventurers lost any interest in finding the core. Slime nuclei were very valuable due to their scarcity, and are usually seen as; ''The way a new adventurer launches themselves from copper to bronze.'' While there was only one common core, there were a potential for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of nuclei just waiting to be mined. One core for one man, many nuclei for all adventurers. The adventurers were obviously happy with the money, though it does seem the nuclei aren''t appearing as much as in other dungeons, on par with the amount of slimes there were. Though he failed, Andrew was not that sad, he''d rather grind skills instead of leveling with low-level slimes. Chapter 5; Skills, a luxury of the rich.
There are many gods, but many might not know that before them, there were others, the ''Old gods''. They were far different from the new gods, beings who have been formed to fill the void left from the great massacre caused by the mad god, the old gods were mortals who ascended to godhood by both talent and grit, being far stronger and, dangerous and powerful compared to the new gods. This shall be an initiative to record every single one of them, their abilities, personality, goals, dreams, and everything else I can find. Along with any thing relevant or interesting related to them, all so that those of the future generations hold no need to plunge into the akashic record for any media that even mentions any sort of details about them.
Excerpt from ''Memoire of old gods'' Written by an anonymous character going by the name ''Demnos''
Falc was proud of himself, he had done it, albeit accidentally. He created an adventurer buffer, most adventurers didn''t even try to find the next room, along with the fact that room 5 was made to be annoying to explore and take way to much time to walk around with all the slimes that were being made constantly by Falc. No one had even thought about there being another hidden tunnel being above the entrance. And here''s a secret, make sure not to tell the adventurers, Falc was in the process of expanding the ''Slime plains''. But let''s be honest, Falc was relieved only a small amount of people were attempting to progress, and he was happy to bribe them with slimes. It had been about 3 days since he had opened his doors, three bright periods and three dark periods on the surface, and it seemed that the adventurers were harvesting the little fragments that appeared in the a few of the slimes after some time. From what the adventurers said, Which the core could understand, it was very valuable, and a bunch of it was far more valuable than a single common core.
Falc, Schematic technician, Navator
MP; 7.423/10.005 Essence; 3.567
Schematics Quest
Skills
Common
Aspects
Now, you may be wondering what this ''Essence'' thing is, Falc did too. It just started to slowly increase when adventurers entered, and the more adventurers there were, the more the essence grew. Also, there was this kid with a collar around her neck that died from three slimes jumping onto her at the same time, breaking her spine. His instincts told him she was a ''Slave'', no clue what that is. Though it was sad to see her die, without her properly feeding me essence, or growing to give even more essence. Falc was still slightly confused why he wanted to see the girl grow, and then die. The girl did give very little essence compared to the old man that entered first. But the past is the past, and he didn''t have the aspect of time yet, or life, or something that can bring back the dead. Now, Falc decided to look within himself for answers to life''s greatest question; WHY DO I NEED ESSENCE?! His origin marrow responded;
Skills, dumbass.
Falc was enlightened by the secrets of heaven and earth, and quickly clicked on ''Skills'', which he had ignored previously.
Core skills Monster skills
He picked; ''Core skills'', as the grand dao demanded.
Common
; Finding that your adventurers are getting to complacent with the same old monsters? Now you can make superior monsters! Punish those lazy leaks for not getting stronger! 5 essence.
; Adventurers not entering your dungeon? Well this skill makes your dungeon entrance all the more enticing to enter! 7 essence.
; Monsters not properly attacking adventurers? No problem! With this skill, you can roughly guide monsters around. 50 essence.
...
Uncommon
LOCKED
There were a lot of common skills made available to Falc, like way to many. All of them special and unique, but most of them being basically useless. Like ''''? It allowed Falc to produce female adventurer pheromones, which apparently caused male adventurers that were still able to reproduce get distracted due to their body''s response to said pheromones. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. It had no other effect, it said it was good for supporting female adventurer-looking monster in charming an adventurer, or for an illusion monster. But sadly, Falc was too poor to buy anything useful. He couldn''t help but lament how poor he was, as he was creating slimes at massive proportions to hide from the adventurers the fact; That there were no real obstacles past that giant room. And people were searching, they were, they were trying to find the exit, and do something. And he, and by that I mean the instincts inside him, did not trust them to be good sentients and not kill him. He was already extremely surprised the have yet to see through the trick with the tunnel above the entrance, they had done so before with the same trick, so he couldn''t really understand the essence of what made it so much better, sentients are just very confusing. He''d love, and I mean love, to just go back to making better slimes, so that he would never need to waste so much time worrying about the worrying topic of his crystal body shattering into miniscule, discordant, fragments lacking any sense of self, or even a mind for that matter! But he was forgetting about the other side of skills, monster skills, and he would not be proper, quote on quote, ''Living'' being if he did not inspect any opportunity to not die.
Common
; Allows for the chosen monster to manifest and propel an acidic substance with ambient mana. *Requires the chosen mana to hold applicable means to shoot out the acidic substance, or the extra skill will need to be bought. 2 essence.
; Allows for the chosen mana to heat their claws to a high degree of warmth without harming tissue surrounding it. *Requires the chosen monster to have claws and a fire-affinity. 16 essence.
; Allows for the chosen monster to form and shoot out a bolt made of their own magical energy, which causes physical damage. *Requires the chosen monster to hold mana which they can manipulate. 100 essence.
...
Uncommon
LOCKED
''Huh, these descriptions seem far more professional.'' Falc thought as his eyes landed on , seeming far better than a good few skills he could buy, though he wasn''t totally sure how good a few of the skills were, nor did he know he even gave one of these skills to a monster, which he assumed these were for. Sadly, he was still poor, so he couldn''t pick one of the expensive options. He asked his instincts if they held any opinions about what to buy, and they were silent, how useless. He looked for a few cheap skills in the whole common section made available, there were also some super expensive ones, like 1000 essence, one that caught his eye in that category was , he didn''t understand how an inherent part of something would be considered a ''Skill'', but did that matter in the grand scheme of things? No, no it didn''t. He thought about it for a few moments, considering if he should save up essence instead of spending it, or use it for a core skill- No, those were trash. He looked at the sentients still looking for the next room... The future it now!
Thank you for your patronage Falc Navator!
*To gift a skill to your chosen monster, all you must do is think of it said skill while in the creation process, and it shall ask you whether or not you wish to gift it in exchange for an amount of mana.
Falc was relieved that this was useable for multiple monsters, instead of just one, which would really increase the chance that his investment hadn''t been wasted. He quickly shifted his mind to one of the slimes he was producing at the moment, and focused on the skill that he had just purchased. There was no screen to request his permission, it was more of a mental prompt in his mind that told him how much mana he had to spend to put it in, an extra 4 mp. He could afford it, so he affirmed on the most mana intensive slime currently in production, a D-4 slime. Automatically, 4 mp of mana poured out of him, putting itself into the schematic automatically without any input from him, about half of it being lost as a fee, creating some kind of construct in the slime that was connected to it''s weave. After some extra focus on the slime in question, it was quickly brought into this world- And started to shoot out acid randomly in room 5, killing a few of it''s weak brethren. He, Falc, had basically gained something that could attack, but it still couldn''t see. Falc was still troubled by his old foe, but could do nothing to fight back. He mentally sighed and looked at room 5''s inhabitant sentients, he was honestly confused why they kept hunting down the slimes with the stuff formed in them- he actually held no clue as to what they even were- But he was still very much glad they were satisfied with them. But not all sentients were happy with just a ''Weird slime heart thingy'', and were still searching, they hadn''t reached the edges of his 5th room, but if even one of them had the bright idea of looking back, he would be in deep shit. So he would have to stop experimenting and start building, it''d also be good if he got a better understanding of his own dungeon. He had sorta made it without too much thought outside of the few mind games he made, so he was honestly less knowledgeable about his own domain compared to a sentient that spent a day investigating. So it was time to stop attempting to pick up the butcher''s knife, and put on the builder''s hat.
Five adventurers sat in a newly built restaurant "We''ve been searching for a day and we can''t even find the next room!" One of them said while slamming the table "At this rate, we''ll only get to the core when I''m a decrepit old man!" The others were also seething slightly, a dungeon core was valuable, pretty much at the peak of their rarity for artificy, alchemy, and blacksmithing. If they sold it, they''d be able to get at least 50 silver, which was enough for all of them to retire to the country side for the rest of their lives, or they could use it to get a weapon or artifact far surpassing their normal means if they wanted to get to the higher ranks. After a few moments, they stopped ruminating, as started to discuss some matters "So, did you guys see the new building being built in the centre of town?" One of the five asked, getting a few nods, she smiled and revealed "Well, I have a friend in the adventurer''s guild, and he said that that was going to be the adventurer''s guild branch in this place." One of their raised their doubts "Are they going to restrict entry? I heard they do that at other dungeons." "No, no," The female adventurer said "That''s only for [Epic] dungeons and above, this one''s a [Common] dungeon, so at least not for a while," She chuckled for a moment "And even then, with how much of a gold mine this is for the common copper rank, the empire is sure to eye this place, and they''re not going to take kindly to their myriad forces being restricted." Another raised another doubt "What if the empire came along and took the dungeon? Then they could both manipulate it with their mysterious ways while also make it more dangerous for us." The female again chuckled "No, no, they only do that for [Rare] ranked dungeons. If they went for every single small dungeon that made a good bit of money, the emperor would basically be a slaver." She was quite proud of the information she held, it was hard to get a proper understanding of all the local countries and factions, this was one of the perks of going to a proper academy! Chapter 6; Expansionism
The [Memoire of the old gods], as the inspiration for this book''s title, shall obviously be the first to be stated. It is a dagger lacking a guard with a blade of 24 cm in length along with a hilt of 14 cm, with 10 cm of that space being taken for the grip. It''s blade holds a special pattern of obsidian much alike to damascus steel, with golden runes that constantly shift, distort, and flow, obscuring the material underneath. It''s handle is made of a dark grey material that looks akin to wood, though it is uncertain whether it was truly as such. As something forged by the mad god, it is naturally highly compatible with the combination of myriad elements. But unlike any weapon randomly forged by the mad god, the [Memoire of the old gods] is a [Remnant], something left behind by the mad god when he realized that the end was near, infused by his essence and abilities. No regular dagger would be able to hold his true power. [Memoire of the old gods] was just a dagger made by a mortal, but it held a greater purpose, enchanted and forged to be able to contain and use the authority and essence of the divine. As one might guess, it holds the ability to use the divine authority of the slain gods with the user''s abilities as the basis for their manifestation, their potency depending on the wielder. Though it seems to have once been called; the ''Graveyard of the gods''
Excerpt from ''Memoire of old gods'' Written by an anonymous character going by the name ''Demnos''
Falc mused silently all of his findings ''Okay, so from the entrance to the first room there''s a stairway that is angled to precisely 45 which holds a length of 10 meters both horizontally and vertically, after which there is a half-circle room with a diameter of 7 meter in total. After which there is a reiteration of the first stairway but this time 5 meters down. After which there is a 2 meter tall cubic room that''s 5 meters long between the two surfaces from which you enter and you leave the room, and 3 meters on the other axis. Then another 5 meter stairway and then another room alike to the 2nd but 3 meters tall this time. Then a 10 meter stairway to the next room which is another half circle but stretched in the longitude between the entrance and the ''Exit'' in order to obscure the hidden tunnel. From there the fake path goes on with straight, smooth stone walls and floors that curve by 90 degrees in total per hallway with a room that''s 3 meters tall, 4 meters wide, and 6 meters long. the pattern repeating 4 times in total. The tunnel hidden behind the hooking entrance of the 4th room, after entering will expand slightly reaching full hallway size after 7 continuous meters of movement, after which it will curve downward, and right till a full 90 degree turn on the horizontal axis has been achieved. It, in total goes down 7 meters and has a length of 26 meters. From that there''s an entrance to the 5th room, colloquially termed ''The slime plains'', which is a 12 meter high, 210 meter wide and 270 meter long room filled to the brim with slimes.'' He kept this recorded in the back of his mind, then he started to plan out a complete renovation. It was too... Normal. Too... Straight forwards. He wanted to confuse the sentients and waste their time, not give them a slight misdirect. He was certain he couldn''t replace the slime plains due to it''s size, but everything else could quickly morphed into something... A little bit more favourable. He could replace the entrance as many times as he wish- And he was sure to do so, just to mess with the people currently hiding within his domain. Falc was certain of one thing, he wanted a more confusing navigation issue, not just easy to follow corridors, a straight up labyrinthian nightmare. But there was one slight problem; To make said labyrinthian nightmare, he''d need a lot of space and time. Luckily he had all the space he needed, there not being countless sentient mines in the area- He had searched for them in the area he needed- But there was a serious issue; He couldn''t let sentients make maps of his labyrinth, what would the use of it be otherwise? So there was an obvious conclusion; ''The pathways have to shift and morph constantly.'' For now he just had to carve out the base version that he had in mind right now, then use that so that he didn''t have to excavate an entire new floor whenever he needed to pause sentients- Just close a few walls, cave in a few pathways, bend entrances, morph rooms, twist tunnels, ect. So much quicker than making a new floor or something. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. But that Scheme of his would take far to long to implement, taking into consideration people were still trying to find out where his core was. He really just needed something quick, something simple, something he could set up in a minute or two. Then it snapped into place; At middle of the slime plains he would make a 3 by 3 square hole as the entrance to a gigantic stairway, even the steps being massive- Just to increase the difficulty of traversal. It would go down at 60 degree angle for an ever more difficult journey, down a total of 10 meters. Then the reverse for 5 meters, for a bit more redundancy of course. From there, there will be a cilindrical 10 meter drop, 2 meters in diameter. After falling through said drop, you find yourself falling another 4 meters into a 4 meter high, 20 meter wide, and 20 meter long room. Which Falc plans to fill with as many slimes with [Acid shot], it''d basically be a kill room. That obviously wouldn''t be the end, as at the far left corner there would be a 1 meter diameter circular opening which will bring you to a vertically dispositioned cilindrical tunnel through which one would have to climb 3 meters in total. -''Actually, let''s make four of those tunnels, have all four of them not be dead ends immediately, having them all get the same pathways except one. Which will then lead to even more- Which is to come.'' After a few moments of pondering, all four corners of the ''Death room'' would have a tunnel to climb up. For the three fake ones; top right, bottom right, and top left, it would open into the middle of a 2 meter wide room which has for both length and width 3 meters. The room would by rotated so that at least one of it''s side''s middles would line up perfectly with the death room''s associated corner, on said side would be the standard hallway he had previously used to renovate his entrance sequence. It would go down 3 meters and forwards 3 meters, giving way to a 2 meter high, 4 meter wide and long room. Then at the other side another standard entrance was made which would be 1.3 times larger than standard, along with the steps of the stairway behind it. It would go up 4 meters and forwards 3 meters, giving way to a 2 meter high, 5 meter long, and 5 meter wide room. This would continue for a total of five rooms after the first, each time the room''s width and length increasing by 1 meter while the hight didn''t change. Why did it stop of 8 meters? Because otherwise it would become to unstable to maintain. The slime plain''s ceiling was an arch of sorts, so it was pretty stable, but even then it would probably collapse if attacked. Which he wasn''t against in any sense of the word, how many sentients- Which were all totally open to killing him- would die from that? Though it would be pretty troublesome to remold the roof. And yes, each time the stairway''s size- Along with the size of each step- and the hight it traversed increased manifold by the previous room''s size in comparison to the first. The real pathway? That one was, of course, the same as the three fakes for the first two rooms. Then, from there, after a- Seemingly the same- staircase out of the second room, but the third room?; it''s actually a hallway that increases in size to 3 meters wide over 4 meters, after which another 3 meters forwards at that size till the hallway ends. In the center of the 3 by 3 room with one wall missing- which will be called ''Hallroom 1'' from now- Another tunnel would be opened in the ceiling, said tunnel would go up 5 meters, then slowly increasing in diameter from 1 meter to 2 meters over another 2 meters, then continues with it''s new diameter for 3 meters. Said tunnel led to a 5 by 5 by 5 cubical room. Since this sentients that got here had already burst through the Death room and the climbing of the vertical tunnel, Falc found it prudent not to waste any mana by trying to stall the stubborn and powerful sentients that got so far, it was easier to just use another scheme. From that room- In the opposite reaction from the hall that originally led to hallroom 1, a hall twice the normal size was opened for a total of 3 meters, which led to a 2 meter tall 3 by 3 with a 2 meter in diameter spiral staircase that went down a total of 10 meters. Then, that spiral staircase then shifted into a normal sized hallway that went in the same direction as the previous of it''s kind, which- After 3 meters- lead to a 2 meter high, 4 meter long, and 4 meter wide room. In the middle of the ceiling, a cubic hole of a surface area of 1 meter by 1 meter was present, and through that there was another 2 meter high, 4 meter long, and 4 meter wide cubic room with a square hole in the ceiling the same as the previous. This cycle repeated 5 times in total, the space in between each room being only a meter, meaning that it went up a total of 14 meters. Well, it was 14 meters, but the floor of the last room was partially hollow as to make any sentient that steps on it make it instantly fall apart. But, ignoring that; At the side of the top room opposite of the hallway leading to the lowest of the five rooms, another hallway opened up- Though 10 centimeters of the ground from the floor. This hallway went on for 9 meters, leading to a little cubic room that was 2 meters high and both 2 meter wide and long which had a hole with 1 meter in diameter. This hole went down a total of 28 meters, expanding by a meter- in radius- per meter down. He made sure to make the hallway longer than 7 meters to be certain that the expanding hole would not be easily found by breaking through stone, who knows what one of those sentients would do. Fun thing, unlike any other hole he had made, this hole ended in a flat bottom. But that couldn''t trap sentients who had come so far, at least not for long, so Falc had to put in... Less savory measures. Well more like annoying to set up measures, but still. The walls of the hole? They were perfectly stable for half a meter, but beyond that, another half meter had a structure somewhat akin to the inside of a sentient''s bone- Even if Falc had no knowledge of a bone''s structure- It had multiple crucial connections which he could rapidly sever in order to have the front, half a meter thick, wall fall on whoever dared to trespass. Having finally designed the new stalling tactic, Falc reluctantly went to clearing out rock and stone reluctantly, being annoyed by the lack of both affinity and control he suffered for the earth aspect. Chapter 7; Unmarketable expedition Zera was frowning as she finally finished loading in the last piece of furniture that was ''Donated'' by the capital branch, the chair for the only other thing in the room; The table. She had gotten the ''Highly envied'' posistion of guild master, but instead of an established dungeon, she got a small new dungeon that for some reason wasn''t making any proper monsters even after a few days. Then she also needed to deal with an idiot who volunteerd for this. She pressed her temples for a moment ''How am I even going to manage this?'' She thought in frustration ''The local vilagers are too busy delving themselves to be a foundation for operations, the adventurers are getting antsy at there being no progress, along with that fool.'' She tapped her foot on the floor in annoyance, there wasn''t any good way to build up funds either. If she just had funds!- She still wouldn''t be able to do anything, since whatever salary she could offer someone that she could actually use would be far too high, since the slime cores were very lucrative. If you also took the fact that a blacksmith and artificer pair had arrived yesterday, and were willing to buy slime cores; While also selling items. ''Why couldn''t I get a normal dungeon? Why!?'' She complained mentally, sighing a moment afterwards. She took some time, letting a minute or two pass her by as she thought of a method of setting up some kind of order ''...That {Arcanist}!'' The thought instantly burst through the veil that had previously obscured her mind''s eye. She couldn''t help but smile while praising herself a slight, slight bit; ''Of course I''d realize, I''m the only one with proper brain in this branch!'' She walked out from her office, walking through a hall, entering the front of the adventurer''s guild; A tavern. Zera could never understand why there was a tavern; Wouldn''t it be better for it to be a reception hall solely? Though there was a bigger problem in the whole idea of a tavern- Specifically for their branch- The branch couldn''t... Procure any alcohol, so the small amount of money made from the tavern business was also not coming in. She sighed again looking at the almost empty mission board, the main way a guild would gain money before they set up a toll was also not working. Since the locals were integrating properly with the adventurers coming for the dungeon and there was no need to use a broker like them to get in contact. "Miss!" One of the few workers afforded to her by the capital branch called out, panic easily found in her eyes by Zera "The dungeon shifted!" ''-And here I thought the situation couldn''t get any worse.'' She thought off-handedly, before shifting back to the real world "Calm down Norman." She said, her class skill- - taking effect. Norman took a few deep breaths, quickly getting back his mental footing "The... The dungeon shifted, to a large degree too." Seeing that Norman was no longer panic stricken, Zera took a moment to process his words. From it all, a single question came; "Where''s Thalos?" "Thalos..." "Just say it." Zera said, reprimanding Norman. "Thalos declared an expedition, and is currently exploring the dungeon again." ... ... Zera just stood there for some time, her breathing becoming more and more rough, veins slowly appearing on her neck and face. Her body shuddering with rage, her fists slowly closing ''THALOS! Why can''t you just control yourself for one moment, why do you always need to do something!?-'' Her complaining continued- Mentally of course, she had an image to uphold; Even if it was slowly breaking apart from her open display of anger outside the realm of words- Her mind calming down very slowly, before a thought came to her mind; ''It''s not that bad really, this could get Thalos some presence- But I need the presence! I can''t trust Thalos with that small bit of influence!''
My steps were silenced by the cacophony of those of others behind me, more than twenty adventurers behind my banner. The dungeon had just shifted, and I could not let such a good chance to finally get free from that stuffy bit Zera. I was born to explore the unknown, not sit at a desk and do paper work like what my dad wanted. I held the grip up my sheathed sword with a smile, actually having it at my side felt very good to say the very least. Currently I had passed by three rooms with some common slimes, not worthy of my action, though this did seem pretty similar to the previous iteration. The first stairway had honestly been a bit long, and the weird room coming after estranged me by quite a large amount; But afterwards it had returned to normal. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. The halls were silent outside of the mumbling of expedition members- All lead by me- Along with their footsteps. The cold stone steps not caring for the human foot, uneven and rough to the touch. The walls cold and made of stone, the darkness sublimating everything outside the grace of the torches the expedition held. ...I''ll remember those words, they would be perfect for a biography or interview. I once again entered a new room, one of cubic proportions instead of one that was weird and half-ball-ey and stuff. I can''t really find any sophisticated words to describe that weird room. And as such, he noted to himself not to mention its form, just that it was there. He shook his head softly, freeing himself of his thoughts; allowing his gaze to register the pair of slimes hopping about- Both still without slime cores, which obviously caused no enthusiasm of any kind to wash over his current entourage. Without any input from him, two two small magical attacks flew through the stale air and subjugated the pair of monsters. He frowned slightly, mostly at not having a chance to finally show off his power as an {Arcane swordsmaster}. Not taking note of the few who quickly looked behind the hooking exit of the hall "Hahah! I knew it" They exclaimed without any notion of his that they should''ve done so "Everyone! There''s a tunnel here!" Everyone''s eyes quickly turned, a good few of them twitching in annoyance "Why can''t this dungeon just be normal..." One muttered under his breath as all others stayed silent- No one said anything actually, but that''d really increase the impact of this scene. While musing how to ''Adapt'' this situation into a proper account, Thalos parted the metaphorical sea of adventurers and was looked upon while he squatted before the hole obviously hidden away- Not knowing that the dungeon who had created it cursed silently for a moment at this development. After looking through and seeing nothing but a deep darkness, Thalos sighed and took out a torch of his own and lit it "Follow after me, I''ll take the lead" He said, before throwing the torch through the hole as to light up the place due to his obvious lack of low-light vision capabilities. What he saw was actually dramatizeable, a tunnel that increased in size the further you went- No, we found ourselves before a gateway into the abyssal maw, unknown what lay behind the shadows hidden within what the growing tunnels show. I entered this void, having steeled by mind, venturing with trepidation at what we might find- Thalos quickly noted it down in his mind as he crawled inside. He whispered under his breath "Why can''t this dungeon just be normal and make smooth floors..." The rocky surface he had to cross with both his legs and feet not comfortable for human skin. After a few moment of annoyed and reluctant crawling, Thalos reached the torch he had thrown and squatted so that he could pick it up without risking the chance his clothes could be set alight. With caution and heavy breaths, I stood up partially from my prone state- Still limited by the space I was contained by- Picking up the respite of a torch, one to light my way in the harrowing journey ahead- ''-If there even is anything harrowing for that matter.'' Thalos snapped out mentally in annoyance, slimes really not being noteworthy enough for him to even mention in any of his musings. After a slight bit of walking crouched, he could finally stand up fully- Choosing to walk forwards a bit more to get some head room so that he wouldn''t need to be hunched as he walked, finding the tunnel to turn right gradually. "The coast is clear! Come in one by one!" I shouted at the hole I had entered through, easing the worries of my travel mates- If only by a slight bit. Thalos waited and waited for the company of twenty something adventurers to all crawl on through the tunnel until it had grown to a size it could accompany their standing hight, though he''d had wish it had gown a bit faster in all honesty, it was a wallowing grewl to him. He cracked his neck and choose to investigate what was at the end of the tunnel, following the turning path till it started to dip- Pausing for a moment- Then continuing onwards. After a dozen or so meters of pure walking, which Thalos did not appreciate, he found it; The entrance to the slime plains... Wasn''t that a bit too easy? Shouldn''t a shift cause a large increase in difficulty?! Where are the goblins, the kobolds, anything else than a slime?! Thalos unhappily walked down the steps for a few paces, allowing the adventurers to spread out and hunt after the... Large assortment of slimes that had traces of a slime core? Thinking it was a bit strange, Thalos was the last to realize that one of the real newbie adventurers that had come had just had his face covered by a searing liquid.
Congratulations on gaining your first leveled monster ''Acid test 3''
''Eh?'' Falc was surprised by the sudden notification, as he got a burst of essence from a dead adventurer, good times, good times. The main part of his mind quickly shifted from constructing the scheme-approved ''Room 6'' that was still hiding in a tunnel above the entrance of the slime plains. Wat he found confused him quite a lot; A slime bouncing about, with a purpose! As if it could actually, you know, see. Falc couldn''t believe it- He actually could, and hoped it was true too. But he had to test it. He commanded to it ''Jump towards the closest slime.'' And it did! It also shot a ball of acid at it, killing it instantly. Falc was estatic, finally, a monster that could see! He could finally order something to kill adventurers! He didn''t need to hope that a slime accidentally jumped on their head, which would then break their spine, which would then give him essence. He could just tell it; ''Shoot that adventurer in the head.'' And done! He quickly took note of what made Acid test 3- Now termed; Slime apostle 1, due to it bringing forth the light of sight to the slime race, for now just called Apostle. He quickly took note of what made it different from it''s other sightless counterparts; Being ''Leveled'' and having a fully formed slime-core. He didn''t know how to make something ''Leveled'', but he was pretty sure how to make a ''Slime core'' form; Letting it live for sometime in an environment with mana. Thinking of that, he looked back towards his dark, dark past; the 3 by 3 by 3 meter cube that housed all the experiments of his youth. And as he had suspected, there was only one slime left, with a fully formed slime core, bouncing aimlessly in the corpses of it''s brethren, those who it had killed itself from what the small part of himself that had been monitoring this place passively could remember. After a few tests, he quickly concluded; A slime core is what lets a slime see. So what would he do? Well, that''s obvious. Falc would find out how to make these slime cores artificially! Chapter 8; Threat within the shade
Julia, the first to fall at the hands of the mad god. As the god of eternity, her powers were obviously born of eternity. Practically unkillable she remained as the first of the old gods, a woman turned god that ruled the world for millenia. Her hegemony lasted long after the other old gods ascended, though her reign was not without hiccups due to rebellions and confrontations from other old gods. Though her reign fell to the subjugation of the mad god, as the first of whose authority graced [Memoire of the old gods], for she was not amongst the most powerful of the old gods; rather the one most difficult to kill and stubborn in her revenge. Though only half of her authority lies within the blade, as a fault of the mad god''s inexperience. Though he quickly learnt from his mistake, and such a fumble never occured again.
Excerpt from ''Memoire of old gods'' Written by an anonymous character going by the name ''Demnos''
After only a few tests, he had found that pushing too much mana into a slime, it would shatter. But, the higher in the D-chain- The chain that a D slime has to go through to gain more power, mostly in the form of endurance- The more mana a slime could bear in the acceleration process, but also that it required more mana for the same amount of slime core. Luckily though, it seemed that the increase of mana intake was faster than the increase in mana requirements. Truthfully, it was a shame that he had so little mana, otherwise he could''ve- Theoretically- Mass produced nuclei supporting slimes. A real shame. But it was still nice to know that if he let slimes live long enough that they''d be able to see somehow. It wouldn''t be too much of a problem to create a ton of slimes and hope one or two would live, with how high his mana regeneration had become, the sole mana of one slime- A regular slime in particular- Was pocket change. Otherwise, the amount of slimes he was producing in the slime plains would be unsustainable. Though, Falc did want to know, could a slime with a nuclei think? If so, then he could give a thinking slime more muscles, set new templates of muscles beyond or intersecting the original which would allow a thinking slime to jump around differently, more aggressively. Currently a slime''s jump was static, consistent, so that one of those mindless, seizure-chasing, slimes wouldn''t be able achieve their one goal in life. Which they were certain to do if given the chance. With the notification from a subordinate part of himself, he noted that room 6 had finally had the rough schematic put into the material realm. Falc paused his slime contemplations, and considered what he could do to it to make it cause the most averse reaction in his persuers. Ah, yes, let''s make all the stone as uneven and rough as possible. He concluded, after seeing that the wobbly parts that he included in the tunnel because he wanted to get it done quickly caused a negative ''Response'' in sentients. Maybe a few spikes too? He wondered for a moment, before nodding and including it too. Then he returned to his thoughts, about a slime being able to think. After merely a moment, an experiment came to his mind and went back to slime apostle 1- Long may he reign- and ordered one thing; Use only one muscle. And, it did- Tried to at least, since every muscle was somewhat interconnected and constricting one of them would pull others with the first. But that was fine, at least it could try. But, he did need to make sure this came from the nuclei and not the level slime apostle 1 had gained. So his mind''s eye turned back to the little cubic room next to his own hidden room, and- Failure. Apperently this other slime was dumb, but it could see, which was still good enough. Taking that into account, he began to think of what he could do with the excess mana he now had to spend as to keep mana regeneration going- It was a lose it or use it budget, and Falc would rather use it- But Falc was averse to paying the fee of making slimes with skills, at least as a means to avoid reaching the maximum of his mana pool. And making more slimes as a hope to pause sentients was foolish, since the slimes seemed to do nothing except act as a slight annoyance and distraction. And even if they lived long enough to form a nuclei, all they could do was jump about if he didn''t add a skill, and their current jump wasn''t fast enough to not be dodgeable if not paying attention- Or not trying to dodge at all if you consider that ''Slave''. There were also no skills that he could buy which could be consider ''Good'', even if he had more than ten essence now, which was growing at a slightly faster rate due to the off weakling that one of the few acid slimes were killing out of pure luck- Except slime apostle 1, Long may he reign. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. If he could just make sure a slime can live long enough to gain a nuclei Falc wouldn''t have any worry over certain experiments, but seizures were not good for a magically animated blob of weird water. Falc had to think for some time, before he had the idea of just ordering a slime to do absolutely nothing! A slime can''t kill itself, have a seizure, or anything else that could kill it if it just didn''t do anything at all! He created a base slime in the little hole where the other test slime with a nuclei was housed, and commanded ''Stop doing stuff.'' It worked for a moment, but the very next it returned to what it was doing. Falc tried once more but keeping a piece of himself focusing on the slime''s inferior mind- If you could even say it had one- And seeing if that did that anything. Sadly, it did. Why sadly? Because then he''d have to constantly put a part of himself out of action until a nuclei was created.
It was a sad day, someone had died to a slime. But luckily, he had died with at least a modicum of honour, as a few minutes later after everyone came over the shock brought by a man''s face being melted by acid someone used . A kid, a mage specifically. Truly, some great thoughts were brewing up in that small noggin. To have the thought of inspecting an acid-spouting slime to see what it was, no one else even thought about it on account of it being a slime of all things; I personally assumed it was just a lucky acid slime who was favoured by initiative. But shamefully, I was wrong;
Slime apostle 1
Common
A slime able to produce and expel an acidic fluid enlightened by transcension, and crowned by its creator. Weakness; Aspected attacks.
Sadly, we only read this screen minutes after the horrifying incident, having ignored the small mage''s words. Having mostly looked at it only for him to finally shut up about it. But this, this made the choice to allow him into the expedition fully warranted. But even with a harrowing foe hiding within the mass of slimes hiding behind our torch''s light, we continued into the darkness in hope of helping other adventurers that had remained during the shift. Surprisingly there were actually multiple who hadn''t even realized there hadn''t been a shift, unlike other dungeons where there was at least some kind of a quake as a forewarning this one had shifted silently. Did the dungeon focus on that instead of developing monsters? That wouldn''t make sense though, common dungeons shouldn''t have enough sentience for that... With the question silently swirling in my mind, we came about a daunting discovery; A corpse with flesh molten from bone. It seemed that slime apostle 1 was a more prolific threat than any of us had believed, or there were more which wasn''t that surprising honestly since it literally had the number ''1'' in its name. With the latter being agreed upon unanimously, we continued our trek along with our tagalong adventurers, only to warn our fellows of the new dangers hidden in this previously harmless sanctuary. With light as a marker in the shadows, we quickly found more than a dozen adventurers, a good few choosing to be prudent and allowing us to escort them back to the exit of the plains, though I suspect that was most likely due to having enough slime nuclei. What surprised me most was what came out of the mouth of an adventurer, bragging about how he had found a stairway; A way to the lower floors, an abyss that swallowed all the light that his torch produced. Hearing this my fellows could not help but want to go to the stairwell, to enter the depths of the dungeon with greed in their hearts. But even then, I still held steadfast and made sure that the adventurers were brought to the staircase at the entrance of the slime plains. But merely my descision nor my command could stop the others, and such I was forced to promise; ''We shall have the adventurer guide us to the stairwell after we have brought the others to the safety of the tunnels and explore further, that I promise.'' But suddenly, as one of them left for the exit, climbing the steps; A ball of acid hit them right in the head, a horrifying- And disgusting- Sight. I quickly rallied the expedition team together, quickly processing where the acid was shot from and charging towards it in order to judge the evil slime apostle for its sins, finding nothing except a slime with a complete nuclei; Being killed before the kiddie mage had a chance to {inspect} it. After such a dastardly ambush, utmost caution was adhered to as every slime in a radius of the stairs was reduced to a gooey mush. Having made sure that the fear within the adventurer''s hearts had been squashed, with the directions of a cooperative man who hadn''t gotten his face melted off, we courageously went towards the lower floors that awaited sentient presence. After a long travel, and multiple returns to the stairway which had just recently had a torch permanently placed at its foot by my command, The large cubic hole leading diagonally into the stone and rock revealing a staircase. Just walking down would be idiotic at best, and since we had a fire mage on hand, I commanded for a fire ball to be shot down into the dark stairway; As to reveal its hidden secrets. What I saw in the revealed darkness was a staircase with steps far too large, along with what seemed to be another stairway going up at the end. With no form of danger put before our eyes, I threw out caution and started to trek down- Yes, it was a trek, every single step was around the height of my shoulders; Going down isn''t just having a bigger stride. Standing at the bottom, another fire ball was shot up for clarity and it showed the same as before, stairs going up in a steep angle with steps far too large for average traversal. It''s as if this dungeon is trying to make the most uninviting pathway ever. With my thoughts tinted with annoyance, I shook my head and steadfastly helped by weaker brethren up the hike. Especially the mage kid, since he was the only person with . Though worrying new quickly reached my ear by means of an {Agile seeker}, that there was deep pit at the top. Words that could cause great distress in any expedition leader, though luckily, since it was still basically on the first floor, the trek back would at most take a quarter if we take our time- Though it would still be annoying to go back through the stairs. With plans to save time and effort, I quickly commanded the pause of all ascension and brought a mage up to the top; Revealing a little cubic room with a hole in the middle, which was another abyss revealed by fireball... It was too deep for someone to climb back up with a reasonable amount of stats without a rope; It didn''t even show anything properly due to how small the pit was. I quickly said after clicking my tongue; "Everyone, it''s a deep pit, get back down!" Multiple audible groans could be heard, along with a few soft curses- Me included. Chapter 9; Cutting costs
To perform a genocide, you must first find the race you wish to slaughter. The best option, are the elves. Real pieces of work; ''Oh, I''m a friend of nature, the spirits love me; I can''t possibly be an insufferable twat''. Riding on their high horse, taking the moral high ground above us ''Immoral savages'', always spewing nonsense about how I''m ''An abhorrent monster'' and that I ''Unjustly massacred their entire family''- Which was completely just in manner for the record. And don''t get me started with the arch elves; Every time they open their mouth it''s ''World tree that'', ''God of life that'', blah blah blah. They praise a corrupt god, and sanction an invasive species into their territory; They must all be purged. Though you could go for dwarves, I would rather recommend the other short race since they''re actually quite kind after you show yourself worthy of it. Of course, there are always a few individuals in every race that deserve to crushed in the most brutal and horrific way feasibly possible for their arrogance.
Excerpt from ''Genocide 101'' Written by ''Lucaric Ba''alhos'', the mad god.
Falc confidently chuckled to himself as no one had figured out that the real exit was right above the entrance! But the sentients had found that hole to the kill room; Which lacked any killing efficacy. So he obviously had to start making more and more acid spewing slimes, but... Since he seemed to have time, he may have started to take a look at what all that mana was going to. He really, really, really, didn''t like paying that extra mana. If he comprehended how to make slimes shoot out acid on his own, then wouldn''t he be able to maybe enhance the acid shot a bit? Or maybe create an uncommon monster? That was the only thing left for him to become an uncommon core- Apperently. It was what his instincts were telling him, though he didn''t trust them that much since it was the reason he was even at risk right now. But even then, he could not risk it even if he absolutely hated seeing mana disappearing into the aether. But before he properly finished any acid-shooting slime, he took a quick look at the extra parts added. It was alike to the weave keeping the slime together and it had integrated with said weave as well, sectioning off a small part of the space for itself. From what Falc could see, it was more complicated than the weave but it would not be impossible to replicate. The most difficult thing was all the loops, they were completely unnecessary from what he could see, but who knew? Falc definitely didn''t. After giving the thumbs up and letting the slime live, he put a wisp of himself on it to keep it from spewing acid all over the place. Then he made another slime with his favourite and only skill, finding something strange; The loops were in different places now! It was a D-9 just like the previous, but somehow there were loops in new places! ''Hmm...'' After bringing another life into the world and assuring it didn''t destroy his stuff, he made a slime. And then he found something really strange, the weave he remembered in the other two slimes were of the same outside of the {Acid shot} section, but that had taken a portion of the space for itself... So where did the original mana go? He couldn''t help but feel suspicious as he twisted the strings of mana partially and added more mana in order to allow the threads to loop like they were supposed to along with making the pattern- Even if he had to retry a few times- And finally succeeded, noting it down as ''Acid test 01'' and letting it live for the time being. Then it he quickly noted down how much extra mana it had cost to transform the section of weave into {Acid shot}, a total of 1.3 mp. Yep, less than 2 ''I knew it! I goddamned knew it!'' That damn shop had been scamming him by sneakily increasing mp costs by replacing mana instead of repurposing it! He would never again rely on the skill shop to integrate skills into his monsters, as long as it wasn''t actually urgent. With confirmation of the absolute scam that was the skill shop, Falc made another slime; But this time just removed the extraneous loops out right. And since the loops weren''t there anyways, he could increase efficiency a bit by letting the threads be in constant tension. And with a simple tap, his wondrous creation was brought to life! A monument to tax evasion, and apostle of freedom; ''Sacrificial lab rat''! Falc quickly scrapped the previous scam-inspired blueprint and registered a new one; ''Acid slime''.
Due to your relentless will, and staunch suspicion, you Falc, have seen through the lies of capitalist society, and have found a far cheaper manner of doing the same simultaneously. You have gained the title;
Minor disciple of reverse engineering
Common
Minor disciple of reverse engineering
One who has merely scraped the surface of the great way of reverse engineering, an mystical law of the world. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. -The user of this title gains a 0.1% increase in speed of reverse engineering, the user can be differentiated as someone who can reverse engineer.
Falc felt proud of himself, he had seen through the darkness and become a herald of tomorrow. He had taken the cost of a normal slime with from 9 mp, to as little as 6.2! With joy in his heart, he created three acid slimes- Which what he had decided to call the little buggers that existed only to shoot acid and nothing else- Within the tunnels that would lead to his core from the slime plains. With the fact that none of the sentients could stand upright and that they''d be going face forwards it would be extremely easy for one of the slimes to coat their oval flesh bag on the top of their bigger bag of flesh with a complimentary layer of acid. And from what he could see, the head was a fatal weakspot! Oh, and of course, he set up some higher-class slimes, D-4 with , in the kill room. A lot of them, as many as he could fit. So that the moment one of those damned sentients reached the end of the tunnel, they''d be shot upon by like five-dozen acidically-charged slimes. Though yes, a good bit of his mind was portioned out to the created slimes so that they didn''t start killing each other. Well, it was kind of annoying that now he had too little left of himself to get down to creating a new slime variant. He already had the name in his head; ''Slime paragon''. -Basically, a D-100 slime with as many skills as he could possibly force into it. He finally got this little idea after proudly reverse engineering for the good of all dungeon core kind, which felt very rewarding and fulfilling, from which he thought ''I want to get more reverse engineered skills.'' Him completely forgetting it was possible to experiment with making them better also. Then he also realized he could upgrade his second title if he got an uncommon schematic , though he didn''t specifically know what that entailed, he could feel his instincts telling him it was good- Even if they weren''t that reliable. But how could he make an uncommon schematic, he somehow knew that uncommon meant ''Not common'', which could be extrapolated to the fact it was a rank above common, which he then reasoned to be better than common. So if he wanted to get an uncommon schematic, he would have to make a schematic good enough to be considered as such. So of course, he needed to make the pinnacle of his current means; A super slime, a paragon of slimes. But yea, he probably couldn''t make it yet even if he had his full capabilities considering the amount of mana that it would cost along with the time-investment required. But he was certain to make it, as like, maybe his final line of defense? He wasn''t totally sure how powerful it''d be, since he didn''t really have anything to scale it against- And it wasn''t even a real, existing, thing yet. But, since he had nothing he could really do- Except produce a few more acid slimes in the tunnels- So he started to look for a new monster skill to reverse engineer. Of course, his first choice would be , since it seemed the most powerful one. Sadly he had a budget of only 17.238 essence, not enough for the 1000 essence price tag. Beyond , he had zero clue what he could buy. But after a bit of inspection, he found a truly wonderful skill, one that could be considered a manifestation of all that was good; .
Common
; Allows for the chosen monster to split into two, with a high chance of mutation and variation of off-spring generated through it. *Can only be used by single-celled or liquid-based monsters. 12 essence.
This meant that if he put it on a slime, specifically a high-investment slime, it''d be able to split itself into two of itself! Though the fact that there would be mutation and variation might''ve put off the average dungeon core, he believed that if there was a problematic mutation, that the sentients would be kind enough to cull it for him! Though there was a slight question, did this so called ''Mutation and variation'' have any guarantee to be either positive, neutral, or negative in nature? Another question, did it also effect skills? Because... That''d be pretty cool actually. After a bit of thought at the possibilities, he finally concluded that this purchase would bring greatness to the Navator name.
Thank you for your patronage Falc Navator!
*To gift a skill to your chosen monster, all you must do is think of it said skill while in the creation process, and it shall ask you whether or not you wish to gift it in exchange for an amount of mana.
...The same message as before, kind of lazy to be honest. But Falc was not one to choose, he had no real ability to choose actually, this was his only option for getting new skills to his knowledge. And he was kind of busy inspecting a newly formed slime with included. It cost a total of 7 mp, which was a lot less than he expected, considering that the skill effected a far larger amount of weave than ever did. But again, considering who gave him this skill, it was extremely obvious that it was inefficient and almost definitely trying to drain his mp ruthlessly. He would not trust it, but first he decided to take a look at the effect, commanding the slime he had created in the near-middle of the slime plains to split in two. After about a dozen mp of waiting- Which wasn''t that much considering he was constantly creating slimes in the slime plains- The blue-ish ball of liquid bound by mana had revealed to a smaller blue-ish ball of liquid bound by mana, and a barf-green with a tinge of pink oozing slime that was barely able to hop about. Falc looked at the small little blue original slime and wondered with a certain amount of dread: ''So... is it going to stay like this, or...'' Sadly, no matter how long he waited, it stayed with half the volume it originally had. He was scammed, this time in a unique way. He really had to give props to whoever was selling him skills, they were truly a master of their craft. Interlude; Apostle candidates Azal sat at the head of a ornate black table with red accents along with five other unique individuals, her pink hair with white endings reaching about the length of her chin and her hands partially obscured by fingerless gloves holding eight individual jewel-less rings of various materials and natures. Her hands intertwined while her elbows symmetrically rested on the cold obsidian-like material before her, obscuring her tie. Around her neck was a thin black leather collar, a single red cross at the front akin to a rough paint job, it seemed mystical; As if it could corrode the world. "Anything to report?" She asked. Said alchemist thought for a moment "Preparation for the expedition isn''t going well. Even if it''s only the first layer, the abyss is the abyss, otherwise, how would the Executioner die there?" Azal couldn''t help but sigh, this had already been the third year "I thought you said it would be done by next month? What''s the problem this time?" "Dragon blood, I need a demi-dragon''s blood for abyss-heart pills, and that''ll be the end of it." "And it can''t happen without them?" She questioned with suspicion that the girl was just messing with her for experimental material, even if she knew that either way; She wouldn''t get the ''Abyss-heart pills'' without giving her what she wanted. "Nope! Unless your fine with your soul getting reduced to basically nothing, that is." She said with a confident chuckle, playing with a vial containing a probably incredibly valuable potion. Azal squinted her eyes at here, causing a sudden rush of panic and nerve within the still pretty new apostle candidate, she was so lucky that the order was under her and not any of the others "...I''ll see if it''s possible, any of you four have anything to say?" A small silence preceded before a man with black hair, striking black hair, and a black earing hanging from his left earlobe found the need to say something "Another one of the emperor''s kids wants a chance at the [Heavenly crown]." An imperceptible frown formed on her face for a moment "Put him with the rest of the batch." "As long as you say so~" He said, chuckling slightly. On the other side of the table, a woman with long white hair and eyes of a golden-like hue verbally ''Hmph''-ed, very obviously trying to interrupt the man "This isn''t even important Demnos, why bring it up now?" ''Demnos'' chuckled slightly "I''m sure you know why." "Hmph!" She once again hmphed verbally, silently bringing her hand up to feel the earing hanging from her right ear. The pink-haired orator quickly shifted the topic and faced the prudently proportioned white-haired woman in a white gown with golden accents, it was pretty obvious she liked the colours white and yellow together "Well then, do you happen to have anything of note?" "Yes!" She said proudly, crossing her arms "The next restoration will happen within the next decade!" ... Unlike the praise and surprise she was expecting, an awkward silence ensued, with the black-haired man barely containing his laughter. Azal frowned silently and gave a glance at the joyful trickster "You see, Nal, Demnos already told us that." "Bwahahah!" A burst of laughter instantly pierced the tension with not even the slightest worry at retribution, the origin obvious "Months ago too!" Taking a deep breath, and waiting for the earing-wearing man''s laughter to die down even if Natalia''s motivation and moral was quickly crushed "Don''t worry Nal, it''s not your job to be an informant, you''re doing great as you are." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. It seemed the words calmed the situation down a bit, Azal could understand that she wanted to overshadow Demnos and all considering their origins, but still... Demnos was the {Sleuth of the mad god}... "Anything else?" She queried, though no one felt the need to answer "Nothing about the acrobat?" No answers. "Well what did you expect? That they would suddenly appear again and praise the [Heavenly crown] like a good god-fearing apostle candidate?" Demnos sneered. She couldn''t help but feel a small part of her self bubble with rage, but she knew it was- At least partially- The effect of one of his skills, so she forced it down and let one of her skills do the talking "Well, I would certainly hope so, but sadly we don''t live in a perfect world where everything goes according to plan." "Tch!" The mischievous male being clicked his tongue, obviously still trying to use his instigation skill set; Though it failed against the protection of . "Is that all?" Seeing that not much important had cropped up, She went to clap, though the annoying instigator seemed to remember something. "Ah, yes," He said somewhat hazily and without any urgency "There''s a bit of a weird dungeon at the northen border of the empire." "And what''s so weird about it?" She tried to sleuth out of the sleuth. Demnos chuckled slightly "It only has slimes, so it''s a guaranteed nuclei production-line, though it''s only [Common] right now." At his last set of words, the little tinkerer once again rapidly lost interest. Actually, everyone did. "Now don''t be hasty," He smiled slightly "It appeared close to a [Trace]." The tension had instantaneously risen, as the [¡ö] radiating from multiple apostle candidates twisted the world "Chill out~ It''s not as if I''m sure, maybe it''s just one of that wretch''s experiments." Though the steaks had returned to more reasonable levels, Azal needed to think for a moment. Even if the chance that it was valid was slim at best, becoming a proper apostle would afford much more influence for the church, along with far more personal power as well. But it could also be red herring, and considering it was the red eyed sleuth that gave the information; There was almost certainly a half-truth or an omitted fact hidden somewhere within his words. "Report if it lasts until it''s [Rare]." With a shrug he obliged, at least verbally "Your wish is my command~" ...She did not trust his ''Promise'', she knew enough that he''d say ''Well, I never said I would, did I?'' if she pressed after he very obviously consciously choose not to do it. Or maybe he would, It wasn''t as if her reprimands would effect him in any way "...Then I''d say that it''s an apt time to end this annual meet." Before she could even say another word, all five of her- Barely friendly- Compatriots rushed away with full force. She had barely been able to keep them here due to the order left behind by the mad god, and she couldn''t afford to use her for this. She stood up herself and locked the ornate door behind her, and chosing to have a stroll in the dark cathedral. Taking one hand to feel the completely ignorable [Orator''s choker] basically integrated into her skin, she looked at the seemingly marble pedestal holding a resplendent golden crown that seemed to shine even with a lack of proper light. ''I wonder, what was your name?'' Azal thought aimlessly as she readied herself for the daily attunement. Though she herself possessed a [Remnant] on her person at all times, the attunement increase by merely being in the presence of the [Heavenly crown] surpassed that of the [Orator''s choker] even if both were considered a [Remnant], though the strongest effect suppressed the rest and did not stack meaning that she would be the same as everyone else in consideration to said boost in attunement- Though luckily, she still held an inherent affinity to the mad god''s bounty beyond the average member. With a deep breath, after making sure all her clothes were properly fastened- She didn''t want another incident of a guard accidentally seeing too much, even if she had long ago changed from skirts to pants when she had matured- And in one singular motion, found herself standing on one hand with all limbs stretched out. And that is how she remained, as she started to note and complain about different random matters in her mind.
Mad god''s bounty
Mad god''s eternity Rank 2 (25%) ¡ú Rank 2 (26%)
It wasn''t much, but enough coins would equal a dragon''s hoard. Chapter 10; Daily happenings
Okay, so; Magic names, specifically magic types. Like seriously, where did the name ''Pyromancy'' even come from? No really, I heard it came from some divine language created along with the world ten-thousand years ago. But considering I heard it from an untrustworthy source, I can''t help but doubt it. But anyways, that''s not important, not at all. Where a name came from has never mattered, ever, including the meanings of names- No one cares about that, at least I don''t, and I am the base-line for opinions. So, it doesn''t matter, at all- But what is important, is that I can''t find an easy way to name new magic! I''ve been playing around with a new mana attribute, Astral mana, an attribute born from the mixing Lunar, Solar and Stellar attributes to one single aspect. So, I can''t find a name for it, the magic using astral mana. Lunar has ''Lunomancy'', Solar has ''Solomancy'' and Stellar has ''Lumomancy''... If only Lunar and Solar were used, then I could somehow find how to piece together a name if I really accepted that I was a nerd and committed to my own ego death, and accept ''Astromancy'' as a proper name. But that just doesn''t work! So, I have decided and will also now declare the new naming system for magic! First of all, let''s stop with the ''-omancy'' shit, something a bit more... Simple at the end of each name, let''s go with... ''Magic''. Yep, that''ll be dumbed down enough that even the spiritually crippled can understand it. I kind of have to at least do something for the people I used to experiment on with . Second of all, as you could see from the previous line, yep. The name of the attribute? Just put that before ''Magic'', and boom! New magic made; '''', it''s even legendary! Yeah, the power of me is beyond all others! Though it''s a shame the names I''ve been attaching to all-ready named skills aren''t getting official approval from every sentient being''s best friend, the system, but I''m going to fix that... Sometime soon, maybe, I''ll see. And if you''re really that attached to the old names, then you can just use them instead of the ''High-'' series. So, use '' '' in place of ''High-pyromancy''.
-Exerpt from ''New names for a new age'' Written by ''Lucaric Ba''alhos'', the mad god.
Andrew, the {Mad wizard}, slowly opened his eyes; his mind hazy. But even then, he was confused as his woozy mind controlled his body to look around to the vibrant forest lacking any sign of civilization. Though he soon found his eyes drawn to cloud of gray smoke and mist, more specifically how reality seemed to strain in the figure''s presence. It felt... Familiar, but Andrew''s dreamy state seemed to stop him from remembering anything specific. The figure raised its hand, and started to chant- Showing either a lack of familiarity with the spell it attempted to cast, a lazy nature, or a lack of talent "O'' spirit of flame, obey my call. O'' spirit of water, yield to my call. O'' spirit of earth, heed my call. O'' spirit of wind, hear my call. I, as the minister of magic, demand your support in suppressing my foes and trampling those who dare rival me. Form into a grand array of conflicting elements, destined to implode, and fated to defy order; Elemental hegemony!" Though the chant was normal, and foreign to, his ears. Andrew was still surprised, specifically with its effects as the four base elements simultaneously through arcane command, mixing to a single large sphere of elemental chaos. Though, strangely, it did not manifest madness as the quartet of attributes intermingled. It was madness- No, it was... Weird. From what he knew, you either had to keep mana types that would form madness when combined separate, or mix them together as madness before shooting it off. But this ''Person''- Though he wasn''t sure who- Was somehow able to mix to their heart''s content without any repercussion. But it wasn''t over, as the ball quickly compressed to a denser as the mist-born man said "Hey, spirits, I think I told you to do your job. Don''t you dare slack off, or I''ll come over to the spirit realm and break your legs personally." ''???'' The words quickly reached the dreamer''s little brain, who just recently gotten a wake-up call ''What?!'' "Still being lazy? Well, I did hear that spirit souls are a delicacy, I''ll treat the four of you to some- On a totally unrelated note, do you any of you have a relative or four?" Once again, the mystical sphere of four elements shrunk. Andrew expected another to threatening line, but instead the figure shot it out without even the slightest of warnings, flying with maddening speeds. Before he could even react, it had already caused an explosion miles away. Turning his head to face the epitome of destruction, the fall out of a spell far beyond what his young soul had ever recognized, coating the nearby world a crimson-orange. Every tree, every stone, everything- Even the land itself- Seemed to tremble as the chaotically attributed remnants of a distant mountain were casually distributed to the fellow mountains in its range. The pinnacle of magic, the zenith of power, absolute hegem- "Ahh~ I put so much effort into that, and it didn''t even destroy an entire mountain range... Ugh, but the efficiency..."
The shock had directly woken him up ''What was that?'' He had dreams before, yes, but it wasn''t as if he remembered them often. Especially not so clearly, or so strangely, but, well; He could ask the elder about it. But it wasn''t as if he could do it right away, it was still early morning. The sun hadn''t even come over the horizon yet, he would have to wait for a while. But just waiting was very boring, seeing that he had a bit of money stored up from selling slime nuclei to the crafter couple that came along with a merchant caravan a day or two ago. They seemed to have been trying to set up a stall near the dungeon entrance, though Andrew wasn''t exactly sure what their classes were. But still, he had free time ''Here''s hoping one of them is an lark.'' After tidying up his act, putting on his clothes and eating some smoked meat, Andrew freshened up and found himself ready for the newly lit world infront of him with full clarity. Though his house, and the rest of the village, weren''t exactly close to the dungeon and the new outpost being built up there at rapid pace by {Builder}s and their variants. It was somewhat entertaining to just watch the adventurers cough up for the negligable fee newly set up by the owner of the ''Guest house'', which was originally to either house outsiders who''ve yet to have a house built or used to punish children by certain households... It wasn''t comfortable from what he heard. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. And the fact that a good amount of people were still bleeding silver for it was slightly uplifting, for Andrew, not the poor souls probably sleeping on the floor with four others with the stink of piss drowning everything else out. Though, sadly for the owner of the Guest house, there did seem to be some plans in the works for a new inn, from what he heard from the adventurer friends made in the big expedition. With coin bag at his side, he steeled his heart against all haggling skills, and pushed on with a heavy heart. As he walked over to the outpost destined to become a proper dungeon town or city if the dungeon survived long enough for it, he took a moment to look at all the random stalls set up about between the few construction sites and even fewer completed wood and stone buildings. Most of them were unmanned and lacking in goods, since not many people woke up at the very crack of dawn. He didn''t either, normally, but things happen. Though it did seem he wasn''t the only one, seeing from the adventurer''s guild having lighting on in a few rooms- Probably from a candle or something like that. Though seeing that the only proper stall, with a proper table and items loosely arrayed in a visible manner, was open. Andrew instantly recognized the man manning it, the husband of that crafter couple he had met a day or so ago. There were a trio of metallic helms with accents of a light purple, a few daggers and other metallic weapons along with a few bows and iron-headed arrows. "Hi, nice to see you again- Was it Andrew?" Andrew flinched slightly at the sudden, and somewhat awkward, attempt to talk to him. It seemed his silent perusal of the man''s goods wasn''t as inconspicuous as he had thought "-Uh, yes." "Haha," The weirdly wide-awake crafter laughed cheerfully "Well, good to see a fellow wide awake at the wee hours, anything catch your eye kid?" Andrew pondered for a moment "Well, if I had to ask, what is it with the helmets?" It was kind of strange that there were helmets but no other armour, when the most danger from a regular slime was it jumping on you, and it wasn''t as if some normal metal was going to protect someone from magical acid. Maybe normal acid, yes, but not the acid that adventurer''s were dealing with. And it wasn''t as if he could just peruse its information with a use of - Well, he could, but if it was found out, it wouldn''t reflect nicely. "Oh, I made a few with some of the slime cores, they ward off the acid." The... From what Andrew could just piece out blacksmith seemed confident in his words. But that confidence wasn''t enough to convince him, who knew if they were just metal and the talk about nuclei- Which some people liked to call ''Slime cores'', which was objectively wrong- Was just that, talk "Umm... Really?" The blacksmith seemed a little peeved at the young one''s words, though still somewhat understanding seeing from his own response "If you don''t believe me, take a look if you can, or bring a friend that can." "..." Andrew''s eyes couldn''t help but shift with suspicion, it could be a bluff since inspecting-type skills weren''t that common "If you say so..."
Acid-resistant iron helmet
Common
A standard helmet with a classic design, slightly altered through use of a slime nuclei to resist magically-charged acidity. Weakness; Non-acidic magic.
''Huh, it is real.'' He couldn''t help but think in slight shock, a bit embarrassed, and even a slight bit peeved that - Which was all about looking into weaknesses and very rough descriptions- At the low-level of level 4, couldn''t give anything better than ''Non-acidic magic''. If it was better, it would definitely be ''Non-acid magical damage''. Which would be a lot more accurate, since fire magic worked just fine on it, even if it had some acid magic on the side, it wasn''t as if said acid magic would activate an anti-magic enchantment or something. "What do you think? Great right?" From what Andrew could see, the helmet was priced at a total of 7200 andrus... Seeing that I have more than thirty thousand, and I don''t have a use outside of it... I can afford it "It''s great, I''d say it''s worth every drop of silver." The somewhat burly man couldn''t help but prop up in pride "You''ve got a good eye kid, unlike certain people." He did seem to show a bit of... From what he could see, a mix of resentment and annoyance, even if the resentment was barely noticable. He took another look, just to make sure of the price, and started to ruffle through his coin bag silently ''Let''s see... What was a thousand again, I think it was the silver one? Well, I guess that''s right considering it was the most valuable coin I got.'' Andrew took out a total of eight silver coins "I don''t have the space for eighty coins right now, so keep the change." Though it seemed Andrew''s wishes were not that important "Nonsense, I won''t take pity. Give me a moment please..." The man took the coins before scrummaging behind the table, hidden by the make-shift wooden add-ons "Ah, here you are." Andrew suddenly had a new pouch forced into his hands, the perks of being a high level really showing. He was only level 3 right now, not really a peak specimen, slimes weren''t the best for leveling "Here, eighty bronze coins and a sack to store ''em, I''m not accepting any charity from a kid." Andrew took a moment to process, but quickly accepted- It would be rude not to "Well, thanks, can I have the helmet now?" "Say no more, take it."
Zera watched from her office, through the glass-less window, at the ''Edge'' of what may be called a ''Town''. There she could see the major share holders of the most recent caravan negotiate, with Thalos of all people. He had instantly started to prepare the moment he saw them coming over the horizon- Actually he didn''t see them coming at first, one of the adventurers helpfully informed him while he socializing early in the day. She might''ve thought he might actually start being responsible for a change, but then he bought a helmet made of basic, non-magical, iron. It wasn''t even a full head piece, just a basic helmet costing a good bit too much. Even if it was the inexperienced Norman taking the wheel, she''d feel more assured. Thalos was overly active and didn''t think before doing something, just like with the dungeon and now too. He was probably either going to fumble the ball and destroy relations, or take up an unreasonable deal. Even if he came from a high and mighty guildmaster''s family, some people just weren''t made for politics. She shook her head, and nervously thought to herself how to somehow fix Thalos'' mess. He may be able to do paper work, but that never equivocated to actual management ability. After she finally got an idea, a minute or two later, she looked back and saw Thalos and said merchant drinking it up full with cheer. It was obvious what happened, Thalos got ripped off. Definitely, Zera couldn''t reason any way for a merchant to be handling him so joyfully. That would be a lot harder to handle compared to Thalos completely offending him, a lot harder. ''-Oh, my lord Cel.'' Zera, now about three hours later, saw a pile of coins on her desk that Thalos had set down. "D-Did you steal these?" She asked with honest shock easily plastered on her face, either it was from his personal stash, or he had stolen them. There was no middle ground. Thalos, seemingly offended, reprimanded her "What do you think I am? No! It''s royalty fees from the merchants, why do you think I let them use the front? Didn''t we need money? Or were you just lying?" Zera was instantly frozen ''He actually negotiated payment?!'' This was honestly unprecedented for her "Tell me the details, right now." "You aren''t hearing it with that attitude." "...Please?" Thalos shook his head "Not good enough, I''d like an apology for your blatant transgressions against my good name." He was messing with her, it was impossible he wasn''t, she could just see it from his confident- Though small- smirk. ...She wasn''t doing it. "Fine, be that way." Thalos shrugged, very obviously a bit disappointed at her very forced poker face. He walked over and to the helmet he had just put down, putting it on with weird familiarity "-Oh, and also, I''m setting up another expedition in a day or two; And you can''t do anything to stop me~" Though he himself couldn''t see it after he turned around to leave, a few cracks started to show in Zera''s perfect mask of calm. Chapter 11; variation
Firearms, or ''Guns'', popularized about 400 years ago during the war between the Kalis kingdom and the Andrus kingdom. During this war the Andrus kingdom was fighting a losing battle as the defending party, in desperation they turned to the non-magical mechanisms of fire-arms as to turn regular non-combat class commoners and peasants into barely viable fodder, which was done by giving countless families muskets, flintlock pistols, and nearing the end of the war rarely an experimental gun called the ''Revolver'' which allowed 6 continuous shots before needing to reload. The revolver, holding only around ten-thousand models known to exist, has gained some collector''s value amongst Andrus'' nobility. Though counterfeits are not hard to create due to the non-magical nature of the construct, even if the creators need some time to get used to creating the small pieces needed to make a functional version. Though very impractical, many households still hold a flintlock hidden as a family heirloom and train with firing it for the extra protection it gives, even if the attack it gives is only equal to a level 10 to 15-ish {Mage} and has terrible accuracy.
An excerpt from ''Collector''s items within the Kalis kingdom (22nd edition)'' by ''Garit Stalmn''
A bit ago Falc, after having failed to replicate while honestly not finding any actual use for it, had decided to take a look at slime apostle 1- Long may he reign. He didn''t really know what made it level up instead of any of the other acid shooting slimes, though it was probably the intelligence- But that would only be true if it had intelligence before leveling up. But all of that curiosity was instantly wiped clean with one single moment taking complete precidence. Slime apostle 1 was jumping about, silently stalking in the dark and getting close to its mark. It jumps were slow, soft, trying to make less noise than its probably soon to die compatriots. Just like always, it noiselessly sat still in the mostly lightless slime plains and waited for the perfect time to strike. Then, right when the group of three of which one was its chosen prey were distracted by a weak acid-less slime that couldn''t even see nearing, it shot out ruthlessly and fled like the respectable coward it was. What had transpired was no different than otherwise, but... There was one thing that worried him, shook him to his very soul. The little sentient with a weird gray thing surrounding its exposed weak point wasn''t dead! It was in pain, yes, but it wasn''t exactly dying rapidly as its flesh melted off bone like normal. There were sentients that could resist an to the face! Falc''s entire calm state of mind was shattered, only kept actually calm due to the fact the tunnels were basically a death trap. But... The sentients were changing! He didn''t know how, and it didn''t really matter anyways. What mattered was that he wasn''t safe anymore! At any moment one of those bipedal pink things covered in cloth could transcend it''s limits and become completely immune to his only line of defence and start charging through everything Falc could set up to protect himself. All plans of making a slime paragon were instantly snuffed, he needed something new- And fast too. If slime apostle 1 died, he would be stuck with clueless slimes again! They might be able to semi-consistantly see now, but thinking is also an important part of any monster! While he contemplated how to somehow slay the grey-headed sentients, he saw slime apostle 1 shooting an once again at the still suffering sentient, and it landed directly on its chest; and this time it worked just fine. ''Slime apostle 1... Learned! It could do that?!''
''Slime apostle 1'' has leveled up to level 2.
His perverbial eyes instantly locked on to slime apostle 1, seeing it morph and stray from its original form somehow. Its nuclei changed slightly, its membrane morphed, its weave contorted, its muscles shifted and replicated and the little part of the weave reserved for changed a bit too along with a single small loop being put atop its center a layer above. Falc was amazed, completely baffled that leveling could do something like this. If it could strengthen slime apostle 1 like this, what would happen if it leveled up a few more times? Would it rival that one sentient leading the large group which set up torches? Falc mostly remembered him since he gave a lot of essence, a bit more than that sentient which threw out a weird mix of fire and water that first came in with a small sentient. Could he mimic the changes? What would happen if he made a slime with all the changes in slime apostle 1 and let it level up twice, would it remain the same or would it be even stronger than slime apostle 1? -But why did it even level up anyways? Falc was a bit confused in all honesty, it killed that one sentient and leveled... Slime apostle 1 leveled up after killing a sentient! ''So, if I let a monster kill some sentients it''ll level up?'' He thought to himself as he first guided slime apostle away from all the sentients and brought it to the corner of the slime plains before testing a few things. First was the difference in , so he made it shoot out a bit of acid to show its new power. The acid, unlike before, shot out with good speed. Unlike before, where it was more like lobbing a stone, it was directly throwing said stone towards the target. The acid had also been more concentrated, not in terms of purity, but in terms of how it was shot out. It was as if the acid was forced through a nozzle, which controlled its spread. Falc had already begun making a new slime, though it would take a while until he got full insight on the changes in slime apostle 1, he could easily mimic the most obvious change; the little loop atop the weave. After a test, it was shown that slime apostle 1''s was definitively superior, it went both farther and actually corroded out in the stone floor a hole of non-negligable size Falc had to painfully restore with earth mana. Though, the effect of this slime, which had been called ''Inheritor candidate 1''- It being called so just because it was an attempt to inherit the inherently better capabilities of slime apostle 1- Was greater than a normal acid slime, its range was a slight bit better, and the spread was way less along with being a bit faster, and thus also harder to evade. The nicest thing was that this change costed less than one tenth a point of mp, it was extremely cost efficient. Falc directly put this loop in the standard design of acid slimes, it was just a single little string of mana so it wasn''t so hard to instate above a weave. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Though, somewhat suddenly, Falc felt something foreign to him coming from one of the connections to his monsters. It was slime apostle 1, and... It conveyed... Pride? Falc hesitated before giving back a very clear feeling of confusion, which for some reason caused the apostle of slimes to roil and boil ''Oh- You''ve got to be kidding me!'' It was very, very similar looking to a seizure, a phenomena the still young core hated to his very magical marrow. But after a quick look at roiling slime to see if he could find out what caused the seizure, finding that the skill was pulling at the rest of the weave and gathering mana from the entire body. All the power was gathering as a single little ball of mana right under the loop, unstable in nature. With a single ''Bang'', a shot of acid was forced out of slime apostle 1 with impressive power, directly pushing the user back more than two meters while the shot pierced into the rock and cause a giant and still corroding hole. There was just one question in his mind as he saw the aftermath, could an acid slime do this? He didn''t even care about the fact they would end up having their weave contorted like what had happened with slime apostle 1. Also, slime apostle 1''s weave, both and normal, had both deformed and contorted from that shot. It was also taking in mana to restore the giant expenditure, and it seemed that it would take about half a light period to be topped up on mana. Luckily the weave also seemed to be reforming, though that was going very slowly and he couldn''t be exactly sure how long it would take to get back to tip-top shape. Falc quickly ordered it to never do that again, slime apostle 1 was a valuable asset and it getting deformed was not a good idea for the long term. That didn''t stop him from ordering the inheritor candidate to try and do the same, though it had no clue what he was talking about and just shot out another shot of acid like the bumbling moron it was. Seeing that it would take a while for any worthwhile information to come about, he let the now useless slime go out and explore the world and created another slime after fixing the wall. This time, he increased the size of the loop to see what would happen, and the that was manifested sure did change. Unlike a shot, the acid was just burst out in the general direction the slime was forced to aim by his command. Of course, the destructive power in one singular point was lower, and so not being applicable for attacking strong sentients. It would directly coat their target in acid, stopping the fear of accidentally not hitting one in the right place, nor letting the problem of actually hitting a sentient survive any longer. Then that brought the question, what if instead of a loop around the center of the weave, I put a single little ball of mana? An explosive finish, that''s what. The slime he had created with that idea in mind, shot out and exploded. Of course, the power created by that explosion caused damage to the slime and increased the power behind the acid shot out like a claymore. The slime was still alive, but it had completely lost its weave, and wasn''t healing. It was ''Spent'', and worthless. ...He put a few in the four paths coming out of the kill room, and also in the tunnels. It didn''t seem that he needed to worry about them exploding on their own due to the effort required to force the past the ''Jammer'' as Falc came to call it, but he could at any moment command them to go boom boom and kill anything in front of them. Falc wanted to name the variants he made, but was very quickly informed that the first of the acid slimes inside the kill room were ready to be released from his mental chains, allowing him to restore his processing power by a bit. With this, he finally realized that the worth of the variants was next to nothing compared to what they were derived from. He quickly gave a check on slime apostle 1''s health, ability to fight and mobility. It was, of course, still suffering from a deformed weave. But its was working... Good enough. And the extra muscle formed during the level up let it jump around in various, less static, ways. It now actually had the ability to both run away and pursue others! Though, when Falc tried to give this new muscle arrangement to a new slime, it had a seizure. It would be a sacrifice to the sentients like all seizuring slimes before them, it was a sad fate, but why would Falc use his limited supply of processing power just to let a seizuring slime not constantly seizure? Since slime apostle 1 was doing fine, Falc allowed it to roam the lands once more. Mostly so that it could reach level 3, if that was even possible. In the meanwhile he started to experiment with changing the weave of standard slimes to match slime apostle 1''s original structure. Slime apostle 1''s actions were conveniently still inside the dungeon, and thus he could keep watching its actions. One of which was to shoot the standing torches from afar in order to once again let shadow reclaim its lost territory and increase the space it could use to stalk its prey. Back to the new inheritor instance, the slime seemed to be... A bit tougher, but it was still lacking in both sight and intelligence to see if this was the part of the weave that allowed slime apostle 1 to gather mana for a grand attack. Considering the new weave would cost a total of 0.3 extra mana in comparison to Falc''s own C++ weave he had formulated back in the day, and would only have a bit more than a barely noticeable effect, Falc cast it aside for a future Falc to deal with. Noticing that slime apostle 1 was already getting back in the motions of sniping an adventurer from a bit away, Falc turned his focus away to see how good it did, and prepared to get a few sacrificial lambs running over to help it if things went arwy.
A party of four adventurers walked as one of the dozen lights seen in the darkness of the slime plains, an assortment of a {Warrior}, {Hunter}, {Spell slinger} and {Spearman} "''The hell is it so dark down here?! It''s supposed to be the ''Slime plains'', not the ''Slime gallows''!" The {Hunter} complained. "Deal with it, it''s a new dungeon, did you really expect a false sky or something?" The female {Spearman} with oxymoronic nature interwoven into her veins responded to the question not meant to be answered. The {Hunter}, not one to be one-upped, snapped back "I expected there to be light! Like maybe some of that glowing moss on the ceiling, the stuff we saw growing near the entrance!" The {Spell slinger}, completely unconcerned by the scuffle and more what had just been said "There''s glowing moss at the entrance?" "Well, more like the stairway to the first room had some right after we entered, though it completely stopped growing after a point." The {Hunter} responded. "Hmm... I''ll need to look into that." The four barely knew each other, except for the {Spell slinger} and the {Hunter}. The {Warrior} was wearing a helm of regular iron for some reason, and the {Spearman} seemed a little jealous as she looked at it for some reason. Though the reason was soon revealed, as the holder of the torch, the {Spearman}, was suddenly hit in the head with a shot of acid fluid. Due to her physically oriented class she was even able to feel her face melting... Kind of a gross thought, got to stop having those. Luckily the torch was still burning as the {Spell slinger} cooked up multiple small balls of fire mana which he quickly shot out in the rough direction where the acid was shot from before quickly taking out his old family heirloom and using the light given by his spell to try and find the culprit responsible, actually finding a slime which he quickly shot before cocking back the hammer and returning it to his side. Though that wasn''t the end of it, as the {Hunter} ran to the {Spell slinger}''s side while taking out a dagger. But the worst happened, the torch went out, and the {Spell slinger} saw the cause was a shot of fluid the same as the one directed at the {Spearman} face. This wasn''t worth it, and so the duo of old friends ran back to the recently set-up torch at the entrance while the {Spell slinger} prepared a very simple barrier spell to surround him. All it would do was counteract any fast moving objects with a bit of kinetic resistance. "Wait u- AAAR-" The {Warrior}''s cry could be heard from the darkness, luckily the {Spell slinger} decided to bounce right away, shown by the sudden shot of acid that consumed his barrier before he and his friend reached the stairs. Chapter 12; Subjugation order
Spells and sword arts, both functions born of skills or creatable through one''s own efforts even if rare. Spells often come from magic skills such as and its elder sibling high pyromancy, often containing related chants one with insufficient mastery can use to cast it. Though chants are merely a crutch and their use a show of lacking talent, only those who can use spells chantlessly hold the potential to reach level 100 and become a named with the blessings of a god however small the chance it blossoms may be. Sword arts mostly come from upper-class sword skills, and the highly sought though, do not offer any sword arts. Both are foundational skills that offer true mastery of swordsmanship and do not bother with sword arts. Sword arts are mostly offered by skills such as an example of which being ''Guillotine'', a singular slashing motion to decapitate an opponent with overwhelming speed, strength and sharpness. Those who can use sword arts without the direct help of a skill are those have true potential to reach level 100 like their chantless spell-using counterparts. It is very much possible to combine spells and sword arts, as they are not mutually exclusive. Though it is not easy to mix them, requiring either one casting a spell or using a sword art without the support of a skill while manifesting the other with the help of a spell or using both through a skill at the same time, both methods being non-viable in common combat in most cases. Though, {Spell blade} and {Magic swordsman} holders are usually the ones who attempt to manifest this possibility due to their class offering both skills that give spells and skills that give sword arts.
An excerpt from ''Basics of the system'' by ''Marth Cel'' published on the 3rd day of Julia on the 252nd cycle
Two men were walking down the steps of the slime plains. One was Thalos "Ugh... Why the hell is there a variant so early?" The other an old {Mad arcanist}, Lest von Balis, now known as Lest "It''s probably that slime apostle 1 you and your mooks found, didn''t it say that it transcended? That means it became a transcender variant." "A transcender variant? You must be joking," Thalos joked as he enjoyed the little orb of light levitating around them "How old is this dungeon? Maybe a few weeks at the maximum? It''s definitely a more normal variant, maybe an sapient variant? They''re rare and all, but they exist from time to time." Felt scoffed "And you take this dungeon as the standard, when not even the first floor has been cleared after a week? That there are slimes that can kill those newbies is already worrying." "Sure, sure," Thalos waved, obviously relaxed "As if slimes could ever be a valid threat, its just that they''re all still newbies. Have you seen anyone above bronze in town? No, I would know, guild master and all." "Well then, if you''re so confident, what makes a level 10 like you any different?" The old arcanist very intently asked. "How extravagant, to think the retired silver found the need to use on me, I''m flattered." Lest rolled his eyes "" "Whoa," Thalos couldn''t help but exclaim in a bit "How high level does need to be to see levels? I thought it only gave rough overviews." The old man currently on the job for free frowned "At level 30 it will start giving rough level estimates for those weaker than the user, but don''t think I don''t see the stunt you''re trying to pull." "Haha... I have no idea what you mean," Thalos, having his attempt at steering the conversation thwarted, decided to actually give the far stronger veteran what he wanted "It''s a difference in both skills and class, their best skills are multiple levels below my skill. All thanks to my old man being a worry wort and forcing me to train my skills, a bit too much." "Your highest level skill for mine?" The ververnt user of madness magic offered. "Sure, you first though." Thalos said, not intending to actually answer. "Haha, no, you young upstarts should respect your elders." The two bickered animatedly, walking all the way into the slime plains with Lest casually shooting a bolt of fire directly at any slime close by. "-And, there it is, slime apostle 1; ''A herald for the future of all slime kind''. Huh, what a joke." Lest remarked, as he raised his arm without haste and manifested a tiny ball of concentrated flame mana. Thalos, instead of letting him do his work and returning the dungeon to a safe state, stopped him "Dude, no. I need to get the kill on the guild card, it''s worth basically worth zero experience anyways so at least get the variant bounty. If it''s really a transcender we''ll get at least a silver for our trouble." "And you''ll be able to get the credit since I''m not a part of the guild anymore." Lest said bickered back. Thalos'' face contorted in confusion "Yea, so what? Make the most of everything, its not like you need the credit." Lest paused for a moment, and realized "Huh, that is true. Go on, kill it. Its just a level 2 right now, so a single kick should be enough." With the arcanist''s blessings, Thalos went off in the direction before stopping "You can attach a lantern spell to me right?" "Yes, that would be possible," Lest responded, before catching five coins, all of them copper. Not much, but something. It was just a latern spell, five copper was way worth it. Coalescing his mana and turning it into light mana before linking it to the body of Thalos and set up a little construct on the inside to convert mana to light mana before finally manifesting it "Pour mana into it if you want it to last." Taking a moment to get comfy, Lest watched as the {Magic swordsman} ran toward the darkness in hopes of finding the transcender variant, though he was quickly used as a target for the slime''s acid attack. Though ''Slime apostle 1'', its name being a worrying indication that there could be more, quickly started to run off into another dark corner. Sadly, the latern was strong enough and the speed of Thalos fast enough that he found it running away. With the enhanced senses given by high stats, he could hear him loudly chant from far away: "O'' heavenly thunder that birthed the first life, grant me the strength to smite the impure!" His sword suddenly charged with a good few arcs of blue lightning, crackling with power. He took a moment to pause and ready his attack, before swinging with a sudden and unnaturally refined and standardized slash, all of the electricity taking a distorted line towards the slime, though only hitting where it had just hopped from. ''Hmm... Was that a spell and a sword art at the same time? Or was it a combination?'' He thought to himself, choosing to take a proper look at the panel he had gotten from .
Slime apostle 1
Common
A slime born with the ability to expel magically acidic fluid, transcended twice over, crowned by its creator and highly valued by him. A herald for the future of slime kind and honoured by its role, prideful in its superiority over the rest of its kind. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Strongest skill: , a variant of the skill refined by transcendence, holding the ability to gather power and mana to shoot out with extreme power with risk of damage along with being stronger overall than its standard variant. Level: 2. Weakness; Aspected attacks. Warning: The slayer of this creature and their helpers will gain the long lasting ire of its creator.
The moment he read the last line, the warning not often included in any inspection he used, specifically ''Will gain the long lasting ire of its creator'', he suddenly felt his blood pressure rise "Hey, get back here!" Still going after the slime, and having also had his face coated in acid which was slowly degrading his skin, Thalos was not very much intending to listen "Why should I?!" "Damn it dumbass, if you kill that the core''s going to be pissed!" He exclaimed as he himself ran after him with full speed "And I''m going to be caught up in the blast radius!" Thalos paused before shouting back "A [Common] core can hold grudges?!" "This one can apparently!" He shouted back, luckily seeming to have an effect on the slightly antsy Thalos. After a few seconds, Lest finally caught up to the now still Thalos, who complained the moment he entered hearing range "You better show me the details screen or so help me god of death, do you have any idea how much that thing is going to do for me? I''ll finally be able to completely push all the paperwork on the other guy!" Lest, knowing that trying anything outside just showing him the results of would basically just provoke him even more, he showed it to him. "...This dungeon is already conscious?" Thalos asked, annoyed. With just a shrug, the old arcanist turned to the entrance and started to stroll "Maybe its just gotten to the threshold of making memories, or maybe not, it''s unique." Thalos himself started to think of a way to get rid of it without directly getting blamed for the kill "...I guess I''ll just kill with a borrowed hand." "That would be the smartest move." Lest affirmed, the duo walking back through the slime plains, through the tunnel, then through the rooms before it and finally leaving through the entrance.
The slime that had transcended twice over slowly hopped through the darkness, knowing its creator held its eyes on it, relieved at its escape from the dastardly lightning wielding foe. But quickly, its gaze faded, returning to what it had been doing, attempting to bring the rest of its kind up to its standards. It had survived once more, and it would continue to kill sentients as it was created to do! It hopped and hopped, finding a large lack of sentients, but it still waited and watched for their signs and killed one or two groups that entered. But then a large group came down the stairs, three light sources all the type that wouldn''t go down with a shot of acid, all with grey heads and even grey chests. The entirety of their journey was cautious, not showing easy openings it had discovered over time, such as fighting for or harvesting the nuclei of its kind. The group always strayed in its general direction, following its trail. It was confused, why did this group of sentients follow the path it took? Luckily, the creator seemed to realize quickly what it meant, and told it; They were tracking it, following it through the traces it left. It could feel the anger and worry inside its creator as it was informed, and it felt angry that they brought its creator to such straights. With a small pause, it gathered a slight bit of power and shot the one that its creator thought was the tracker straight in the head before circling around at full speed to avoid any and all attacks directed in its previous direction. From what it could see the tracker was completely stopped from doing what it did, completely saving slime apostle 1 from the threat of being traced! But as its creator informed, it was best to kill the tracker before it could get back to tracking. But before that happened, another sentient with a plate of metal in its hand shouted and for some reason it couldn''t think about attacking anything except that sentient. Whenever it tried to go for the tracker, its thoughts returned to the sentient with the plate of metal. It was not smart to go for the metal plate sentient, that was what its creator told it, and it tried its best to convey its issues with its semi-sapient mind; but could not. But quickly, the worry disappeared, as its creator directly forced it to shoot the tracker''s hand as it was being covered by a green light while another sentient sat next to it and causing a its flesh to slowly erode. But it was worrying, its hand did not directly melt like sentients normally did. But still, the sentients were quickly brought to disarray and for some reason one of the lights disappeared. Its creator kept at it, forcing it to shoot at the sentients in their ''Hands'', ''Arms'' and ''Legs'' which weren''t grey. And it even tried to shoot out an extra shot at the tracker, though it quickly went towards the metal plate sentient where its shot was stopped by its metal plate. It all went well finally, it could shoot at them from a bit away while circling around, even a few of its fellows with nuclei were dragged closer to attack with it. Even if they weren''t as strong as it, they could help to obscure its own location. For some reason the metal plate sentient once again shouted, though even louder this time. It wasn''t worried, as long as its creator kept it under control- -It had to attack! IT HAD TOO! It leapt with ferocity, nearing the metal plate sentient and planning to crush it with both acid and its own body. While its creator confusedly tried to stop it, it fought back, it had to attack! Finally as it entered the light with a sharp jump, it was quickly forced to backdown by its creator, why did its creator have to stop it?! Slime apostle 1 was so close to killing that sentient! Luckily the sentients had found it and kept going after him somehow, they were taking the initiative to die by slime apostle 1''s hands! But its creator kept trying to have it shake them off, it tried to resist and got a few shots of acid at the metal plate sentient out, making sure they could still find it. Though it might''ve angered its creator greatly, luckily its hatred was not directed at it but instead the metal plate sentient for some reason... For some reason he felt something was off, that something was wrong. It had directly gone after that metal plate sentient and of course wanted to directly crush its head with its weight, but why? it wanted to kill it so intensely after it shouted, but why? When it first shouted all its attempts of attack kept centering around the metal plate sentient, but why? It didn''t know, it was confusing, but in this state it stopped resisting the wishes of the one that made it. But it sadly couldn''t run away from the sentients, as one of the lights chased after slime apostle 1 in order to make sure than it couldn''t escape in to the familiarity of shadow. But why did it think it was to stop it from escaping? It was confused, but its creator wanted only one thing; For slime apostle 1 to escape and live for another day. If it could just force out a strong shot of acid it could kill that metal plate sentient, it could still feel itself raging in order to attack it. But, it could do that later, it had to live longer and not disappoint its creator- Ah, yes, it just had to escape. It needed to escape, and it had to use everything it could in order to do so. It started to constantly spit out acid, not in order to attack, but in order to use the recoil to escape faster. Somehow, said shots of acid completely ignored what every forced it to attack the metal plate sentient and sprayed a few of the sentients in acid. As it and its pursuers neared the edge of the slime plains, its creator quickly become worried for where it could go, but was not worried even with the prattling of one of the sentients with a weird floaty body outside of the grey parts which indicated some kind of projectile attack. Taking the initiative, it jumped directly onto the wall, then boosted diagonally to the right back to the ground before once again jumping to the wall. Using all of its power to boost up off the wall to a height that the sentients wouldn''t expect, it was surprised to find the light still followed it. Normally such attempts at showing it travelled in a straight line or moved around slowly, now, it was directly soaring through the air without the slightest chance at redirection or evasion while a ball of fire rapidly homed in on it. Its creator had already started to fumble and panic, trying anything it could to help it escape. But it didn''t need that, it was created the same as its brethren but became greater, it could do it again. It could get stronger, it could become smarter, it was slime apostle 1!
Congratulations, ''Slime apostle 1'', you have attained rudimentary sapience and manifested a soul, allowing you access to the system proper.
It knew what it needed, its nuclei called for more mana in order to truly forge itself anew. And when slime apostle 1 called for it, its creator happily obliged, pouring copious amounts of mana within it without concern for its life or death. It poured and poured, filling slime apostle 1''s form and quickly offered to the nuclei which called for more, and more it received. Using some of the mana supposed to go its nuclei, the slime poured out a large burst of acid to the side to avoid the ball of fire while still letting its nuclei gather more mana. For some reason the light that kept following it stayed where slime apostle 1 had almost died, and the only big thing it could remember happening there was the intense density of mana. But all the time it spent thinking, its creator kept forcing it to run with everything it could, even trying to use manifested mana to push it further even if only slightly. All the while, it could feel its nuclei fill and morph with all the extra power it had access to. Just like when it had first formed, and slime apostle 1 had yet to even see the world, its body finally filled with mana beyond just what it regularly harvested from the atmosphere to fill itself. It still called for more, and slime apostle 1 relayed its call to its creator, who still filled it with mana even after having almost escaped its predicament. Chapter 13; Stockpiling
Then comes the transcender variant, the most rare of all the variants. A transcender variant is a monster born in a dungeon that had leveled-up beyond the limits of its race, though that does not mean any extra level in a dungeon monster would make a transcender variant. It is unknown what specific rules there are to bringing forth a transcender, all that is known so far is that it is caused by leveling. Thus, to prevent the creation of a transcender variant it is important to keep adventurer casualties minimal. But what if even if you took proper preventative measures, a transcender variant appeared? Kill it. The simplest way to get rid of a variant, like always, is killing it. But what makes a transcender variant so important compared to a elemental variant? The answer is a bit more complicated, while an elemental variant is merely the same creature but born with a different attribute, and thus it is more likely to not be defended against by any brought equipment. But it is still a regular monster, and a transcender variant is an overal superior variant of a monster. With a fundamentally different form, upgraded skills and often supported by a dungeon if conscious. The easiest method to get rid of it is to declare its presence and abilities to adventurers, allowing their greed for the bounty lead them to attempting to kill it. Though, be warned, such an act may allow the transcender variant to transcend once more. And take note; the bounty for double transcenders are four times as high.
An excerpt from ''Variants and solutions'' by ''Yale'', distributed to all students taking the ''Guild management'' course in the imperial academy.
With that entire... ''Situation'' over, Falc finally just paused and took a small- Though significantly helpful for his emotional state- Break. Two times in a row a group of more than one sentient ran into the slime plains to kill slime apostle 1, and he needed to figure out a way to stop that, gather their attention in some other direction like he had done with the false paths he had made more than twice. There also weren''t many sentients braving the depths anymore, which was actually a good thing since then there was less of a chance that the very nearby entrance to his true pathway would be discovered. But that also meant he wasn''t getting any essence for him to get skills for his monsters... He hadn''t actually had a proper look at any of the core skills for a while too, so he''d have to remember that. It wasn''t as if sentients weren''t entering all together, some of the ones that generated a little bit of essence went through the first few rooms along with the two false ones after the entrance to the slime plains. But why would they do that? From what he understood sentients were malevolent creatures coming to shatter his core, why would they not try to find it? It had shifted only a single light and dark cycles ago, though now that he thought of it, it did seem that there were already signs of decreased sentients a few cycles before it... When slime apostle 1 started to kill a bunch of sentients, and then again a little while before the first duo of sentients came down with very clear intent to kill his dearest slime. ''Are sentients... Afraid of death?'' Falc thought to himself ''That... That seems a lot like me... Do they also think like me? Or are they just primal creatures?'' Taking a moment to think of what he could do with that information, he decided to put himself in a sentient ''If I were a sentient coming to catch a dungeon core or kill a bunch of slimes in the slime plains and suddenly a slime kept killing my compatriots, I wouldn''t go down into the slime plains before it died, and if I could I would even make something go and kill it themselves I would.'' It suddenly all clicked, if the sentients could think somewhat coherently- Even if not just like him- They wouldn''t risk going to the slime plains while slime apostle 1 was around, at least not just to get nuclei, which they seemed to like a lot. So, if he just hid slime apostle 1 away in some deeper floor where it couldn''t die nor kill sentients, wouldn''t it not be at risk of death? Then the problem of too few sentients for his essence needs would probably disappear as well, though that wasn''t as important. Though Falc was not even slightly convinced of the validity of his conjectures, the only way to test it was to try it out. He quickly ordered slime apostle 1 to go a corner of the slime plains, it having finally stopped asking for more mana. Though it was actually pretty good that it was actually having proper thoughts instead of just emotions, even asking him for mana properly. While it bursted with its vastly superior hopping speed, Falc started work on what he had long since forgotten; A double weave slime. Well, mostly it was just practicing creating a bunch of mana strings in preparation for when the slimes had to replaced again, but if that didn''t happen again for a while, it didn''t seem like a bad idea to start setting up for a proto slime paragon. When it finally reached the location it was demanded to reach, Falc started to tunnel a little winding passage-way down and down with his terrible earth affinity. After about... two tenths of a light dark cycle, he had finally made it go far enough for him not to need to worry about any sentients accidentally coming across slime apostle while it was relaxing under ground and demanded that it entered before starting to cover it back up with more earth at an even slower pace than when he dug it out. And that was his plan, slowly tunnel down and close it up at the back, with slime apostle 1 being stuck inside the air pocket. He wasn''t exactly sure how long it would take before he could be completely certain it would safe to re-introduce it into a part of dungeon, but he was certain it would be somewhere in the tunnel system somewhat close to his core. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. It would be a shame it wouldn''t level up for a long, long, long while. But he still needed to inspect slime apostle 1 in detail before Falc could confidently put it in the face of danger for another boost in power. Waiting while constantly pressing more and more strands of mana together and forging them into a smaller size, it was quite a slow process after the first D-12 strand was created. Mostly due to the time consuming act of forging something that had been forged 14 times over, and then he found that he once again had free mana that he couldn''t easily consume without over populating the slime plains far too much. Luckily, with a slight tang of asking for attention coming from his connection to slime apostle 1, and opportunity arrived. Taking a small portion of his consciousness to go and ask what it wanted, as expected, it asked for more mana. It just so happened he had free mana just going to waste since he wasn''t using it, so with the thumbs up from his own creation, Slime apostle 1 had been mentally put down as a dump for excess mana, for the near future at least. Since the little wisp of his mind wasn''t robust enough to pour it all in on its own, he borrowed a bit from his forging consciousness and added it to the mana dump consciousness. When the D-12 strand was finally properly condensed down to proper size for the next merger, Falc began to make then next threads and no longer needed to constantly pour his mana in some creature and so did not. When he finally reached the road block of a highly-forged thread of mana needing even more forging, he let the tap to slime apostle 1 loosen before closing it when he needed the mana again. He wasn''t exactly sure why slime apostle 1 wanted the nectar of the world in its small artificial frame, but he didn''t really question it as he took his time making more and more threads of mana seeing as the difficulty seemed lesser than when he started. Though the slight, slight, honestly negligible amount of mental focus required to maintain the one or two big boy threads did trouble him, though only slightly. With nothing really to do except making threads of mana, pouring mana into slime apostle 1, filling up the row of rooms at the beginning with slimes from time to time, and thinking up ideas for more rooms and schemes. The most easy thing to do was the first, and experimenting with it would also be the safest and easiest. And it was kind of getting annoying to make such insignificantly forged threads one at a time, it was time to start making mana threads en masse for time efficiency, maybe. It would be an experiment, and while he was in the middle of process of forging the created threads into a greater form he could see what would happen if he poured mana into slime apostle 1. Falc was kind of curious what would happen if a slime that already had a nucleous absorbed more mana... Wait, was this exclusive to slime apostle 1? Pausing his forging process, he took a look at an old slime, a slime formed in the deepest darkest depths of the dungeon, just below his little room. Holding a nucleous and jumping about in the cubic room he had casually made without constantly thinking about the effects it would have in prolonging his survival... Good times. With a very focused look, the slime was actually taking in mana, though extremely slowly. Less than a hundredth of mp per day, when he had already given slime apostle about 112 mp already and actually far slower than slime apostle 1''s passive mana gathering speed. An interesting fact, but he still needed to do something a bit more productive like test different work flows for creating higher-order slimes. He had decided to create a total of 243 threads at once, which would allow him to create a D-6 thread in one fluid process. And, it did pretty well. About 30% less time consuming overall in comparison to the original method, so it was time to go one step further and make a D-7 thread in one big leap to the heavens, though he did first finish two more D-6 threads to not waste the original test thread before attempting to make 729 strings of mana at the same time, though he hit his limit at around 500-ish threads. A worrying obstacle, and an old nemesis from his days of trying to create a double layered slime. It took a while for him to come up with a way to over come it, but while he was in the middle of compressing the threads and going through the motions of forging higher order threads, he felt space open up... That was it! It was an old foe, yes, but Falc had overcome it once before through compressing the threads enough that they no longer consumed too much of his mind''s energy. So, if he compressed the threads while also creating new ones, space would be opened, allowing him to create even more threads while he still forged other threads and forming a constant cycle of mana thread production. It was also somewhat relieving to clearly see the group that had just previously gone down for slime apostle 1 to come back down and search for the now well hidden slime, finding the end of its trail in a dark and dusty corner where he led a acid spewing slime with a nucleous to roughly shoot towards them before hopping off. Though it was sadly hunted down and then killed, it wasn''t actually well made or anything, just one of the test slimes to mimic slime apostle 1''s weave, though not being that well made and thus highly disposable. Though the speed at which attained a nucleous was pretty good considering he never gave it a single drop of excess mana. He''d look into it, right now in fact. Taking all the information gained from his mana-dumping consciousness about slime apostle 1- Not taking the somewhat morphed, and still morphing, nucleous into consideration right now due to it not really effecting the rest of the slime at the moment- Falc created five slimes with just regular ol'' threads strewn about and weren''t directly in use at the moment, just like what slime apostle 1 was made of. Then he returned to his day job of making more and more and more high order threads of mana, slowly increasing in pace over time as Falc got used to his new work pace, which increased speed by more than 70% in comparison to before, allowing him to make a D-17 thread in merely a single cycle then two more in the next... Falc was done, maybe he had begun fantasizing about the mythical D-100 thread which held 3^100 times more mana compared to a regular thread of mana, but it was just an unreasonable time investment. He had taken around three cycles in total just making the materials needed for a D-18 thread, not even accounting for the time it would take to even make it, he neither had the time nor the mana to waste on a single D-100 thread that he wouldn''t even be able to properly use for a slime since a slime was made of a weave, not a thread. But now with 3^18, or 387420489, strands of mana just sitting there, he wasn''t exactly sure what to do with it. The amount it had was almost certainly at least a thousand times his mana pool ready to be moved for whatever he wished at any moment in time, he could do so much with that. But... It was taking a surprisingly miniscule amount of mental energy, it was just near nothing, negligible. The trend hadn''t changed a bit, more mana with the same amount of value required less of his mental resources to keep from dispersing. -Even if the idea of letting such a humongous amount of mana go to the wind just to see what kind of crazy stuff would happen was somewhat interesting to him, he couldn''t waste his stockpile of war supplies. Though Falc didn''t have any proper experience un-compressing mana, considering that mana didn''t stay in its compressed state after letting it dissipate, he was pretty sure he could do it artificially or at least make the natural process do it in a controlled manner. But he wasn''t exactly sure what to use it for, it wasn''t as if a D-15 or -16 would be that better than normal. But there wasn''t really a reason not to save up even mana for a rainy day, he''d figure out what to use it for at a later date while expanding the dungeon when he got any ideas. Chapter 14; Relief of peace
Article 4: An apostle candidate can become an official apostle and gain the relevant benefits by fufilling the following conditions; 1. Reaching level 50 or above 2. Holding a [Legendary] or [¡ö] rarity class. 3. Having cleared the dungeon ''Isle of doom'', it should be enough of a strength test I guess. Even if its barely a [Legendary] dungeon, I do have an investment relationship with it after I beat it up for some free stuff. It was still just a little [Rare] core back in those days, and man was it nice! I hadn''t gone to the abyss back then, and I had not WASTED a s???t???a???r??? ???f???r???a???g???m???e???n???t??? because I was just too goddamn weak to shrug of some weak-ass taint, past me was a WEAKLING, remember that you goddamned lobotomites! Anyways, I wish I could see it brought up to mythic rarity- Which does exist, even if the system isn''t recognizing it yet- Its some weird local processing shit okay, anyways, it is real! That I declare, so, the one that helps it the most in bringing it to mythic rarity gets to directly set one of the boons to rank 10. 3.1 If in whatever way some annoying rat gets a little antsy and wants to show mommy and poppy how much of a genius they are (Which they aren''t, the gods are though, even if only slightly. They''re pretty good, even if my standards are a bit higher than the norm.) by killing off a relatively nuttered [Legendary] core, uhh... You can use the first core that''s related to a trace or a fragment that reaches [Epic] as a replacement for 3, though the rank 10 deal is a one time thing, capische? 4. Declare official status as apostle with the death of ten level 50 or above creatures in a ritual (Maybe)- Actually, no, just do a little jiggy and say ''Hallalula, I am apostle of apostate now!'' and it''ll be fine. Though, if you want to do the other thing, I guess its fine too.
-Article 4 of the apostle appointment process within ''Church blueprint'', written by Lucaric Ba''alhos, the mad god.
It had been less than a tenth of a cycle when Falc finally got some new inspiration to expand the dungeon, not exactly in the way he would like. But it would probably increase the amount of essence he could gather even if it took up more space than he''d like. He would extend the first pathway, the one at the beginning with multiple rooms that lead to the slime plains with the basically meaningless miss-direct. It wouldn''t make him safer, but there would be more space for sentients to walk around, and thus more essence. -Talking about essence, it was around time to start looking at some core skills to put his, currently only 14.466 essence. Breaking off a part of himself to start building some extra diversion rooms while also filling them with random slime variants, except of course the boom slime, one always needed at least 2000 trump cards. Though sadly Falc only had... 2, and both weren''t even that good actually. Now, letting his spirit look through the core skills available, and parsing what the weird advertisements included for their use, he found a few that took up his interest. The first being one he had overlooked many cycles ago, ''''; From what he could understand, it would just make a monster better. Though, it would probably be another scam, just like the monster skills. But the chance that he could use a superior monster as a blue print which he would them make a superior version of with the skill, and then repeat the process over and over again: That just sounded so good. It probably wouldn''t work considering that the shop was basically a scam, but the dream was real! It was even only 5 essence, not much in all consideration. Though a few other interesting skills were a good bit more expensive, probably meaning it was near worthless. But the dream was real!
Thank you for your patronage Falc Navator!
Rapidly Falc created two slimes in the deepest chamber of the... He took a moment to actually create a proper name for the new pathway ''Hmm, fake way? No... Maybe ''Easy stairs''? No, no, no. I guess ''Spiral abyss'' might work? It does sound good, but... No...'' He couldn''t think of anything, but then an idea came to him, why not ask his instincts? Yea, that thing Falc had basically forgotten about, his old nemesis.
Subterranean whirlpool?
''Good enough, I guess.'' He thought as he accepted the name seamlessly, it was good enough as a placeholder. But back to the subject at hand, he created two standard slimes at the deepest chamber of the whirlpool, leaving one without any difference from the original template he first held and with the other he activated which cost him an extra 4 mp. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. And with a close look at the difference; There was none. Did this mean Falc had, once again, been scammed? Yes, probably. But just to make sure he could mentally yell at whoever was selling him skills for their sins, he had to test a little something before the next few sentients came to check if a new room had come. So he just had the two jump at full force, and found the slime that cost 4 more mp than the other had a noticeable advantage over the other. Though, he couldn''t find even a slight difference between the two when he took a look at their weave, water, or whatever else. But yes, it was objectively better than the other, at least in speed. He didn''t know about if it was harder to kill, but it was better even if Falc had zero clue how. Though it definitely didn''t make much of a difference, as both died with one weird projectile of normal mana. A normal weakling and a slightly stronger weakling were both still weaklings. With again nothing to do, he let some mana pour into slime apostle 1 and went to look at all the slimes that were still hopping around the slime plains since there wasn''t anything to do. What Falc found, though it didn''t amaze him that much, did bring a bit of joy to his core heart. He saw the slime that had two sets of musculature hop around with great freedom, not a seizure in sight. Falc just couldn''t believe it, a slime not seizuring at the slightest opportunity! He didn''t think it was even possible, but, it was just.... Wonderful. And interesting, since it was actually pretty good at what it was doing too! Unlike normal slimes that always had the same jump that could be made less strong though never really did, this slime- Now termed ''Twirl'' until further notice, since it twirled a lot in its jumps- Actually used this capability and used different muscle from the two sets together to create myriad jumps, with it somehow finding a way to have the bottom part of its body suddenly move when it to let it twist and turn in the air by means of spin... Somehow. But it was really interesting! So Falc made sure to note down what he had made, and became slightly sad that he hadn''t added to it, so it wouldn''t be able to level up as easily as slime apostle 1 and thus also more difficult to see what cool stuff would happen when it was upgraded and had a few thoughts in its non-existent noggin. Watching it move aimlessly while flexing on its inferior kin was a soothing experience, though as it landed on some white shit that pierced through its membrane, its mobility quickly fell to less than the norm. Falc was obviously outraged, why was such a thing- That could permanently cripple his slightly better creations- Just laying on the rough floor of the slime plains that he had never felt like properly flattening in fear of messing with an unruly aspect. Taking a look at the assortment of weird white objects with other weird stuff attached to it his instincts quickly named for him, ''Bones'', he used the free time he now had to look through his mental archive and found something that had overlapped with its current position; That slave sentient that died that one time. That put into question, were sentients like his creations, made of different elements and held together with mana? Well, Falc couldn''t find any mana on the bones or in the flesh, so he quickly gave up and tried his best to dissolve the hazardous material, finding the most leeway with earth though also taking water to finish the job. He let a split off portion of himself comb through the rest of the death sites for any more high-risk environmental dangers, strangely finding nothing. He would have to let a bit of himself inspect the next sentient carcass that found its way into his dungeon, though that was a plan for the future. Since he was already checking in on the slime plains, he tried to find the defective mitosis slime before finding in the record of one of his split consciousness that its remains had been cleaned up... It seemed that it just died after seizuring, it seemed its inferior nature had not allowed it to escape its destiny like Twirl who was still jumping about without worry even if a bit less jubilantly than normal. He was still a bit peeved that he couldn''t use and got scammed, but he couldn''t really think of a way, at least not now. With nothing better to do, he started to add-on to the whirlpool while pondering on a way to make a superior slime variant.
Dannis drudged down the dark steps with an obvious frown, it had been getting super annoying with that transcender. That girl kept telling for him and the other three to wait until someone killed it, but then more than one party set out and couldn''t even find it! Even the guild was pretty sure it was safe again, it was just that they were waiting for the bronze party that was coming tomorrow to confirm- As he had heard from his friend in the guild a day or two ago, but she kept talking about ''Danger'' and ''Being cautious''. They were trying to take a core before it got too strong for them, it was a race without rules, not some premeditated competition. Taking care to kill slimes without getting hit, using his dagger to leave large cuts in its gelatinous body, quickly crippling its ability to do anything before finishing the job with the same knife. With his strategy working without fault, the {Rogue} casually ignored the slimes in the fourth room and instead directly went into the tunnel head first, confident in his low-level even if he made sure no one knew of it. Confidently striding through the hallway and into the top of the slime plain''s entry stairway, he ignored what was below and instead at what was above; A perfect place to set up an ambush or sit in order to observe the entirety of the slime plains. He came here just to see if it were feasible to sit up there with at least one person, if it were then it would be a lot easier to track the progress of others and use that information, or... Ambush someone with a lot of slime cores, even if it meant more people would realize how good it was as a hiding spot. At first not wanting to use the rope or the grappling hook he had specifically bought for this, to at least test if he could hide it from the party. But quickly found the outside facing hook when he jumped up and let it enter the range of , and that it was not friendly to a hand which wished to latched on. Giving up, he took out his grappling hook and spun it a bit before throwing it up with an underhanded motion. After a few more tries after it slid down multiple times, and a few more tugs to make sure the hook wouldn''t crumble against his weight, he started to climb up. And with a last pull he brought himself up and quickly panicked as he found it somewhat difficult to stand since it was, for some reason, somewhat smooth unlike the rest of the dungeon. But after realizing he could just put the underlying hallway between his legs with a bit of difficulty, he went to the other end to see how much space there was. And instead of finding a full wall, he found a very similar hole into the darkness. "...I hate this dungeon." He whispered to himself before he turned around and jumped down, not daring to risk death when he didn''t even have a single piece of anti-acid equipment on nor his teammates around to help him out. Chapter 15; Pre-emptive wartime innovation Falc stared at the sentient running back up to the surface, this was bad..Not super bad surprisingly, but still bad. Those tunnels were filled with a bunch of acid slimes rearing to level up, and a few that were ready to air up the entire dungeon. But it was somewhat worrying, if the sentients didn''t fall for the kill room... What was all that mana he put into it even for? Maybe- Just maybe, he could connect the originally fake path to the real path and make the tunnels a dead end? It wasn''t as if his instincts were having a tantrum at the idea, so it should just be fine. But risking the chance that a sentient still went down while another had found the ''Real path'' was not worth it, at least not until Falc could be sure about it. ...Falc created a few more boom slimes, just to be safe. But it wasn''t enough, what if the sentients got past the acid spray? They had adapted to acid already, how could he be sure they didn''t have the ability to put that weird grey over their entire body? He couldn''t, he needed to experiment! But for that to be effective he would have to make sure the sentients didn''t get a chance to adapt to the new varients he was cooking up, Falc needed another test box like the one from his early days, the one that still had a nuclei-holding standard slime just bouncing about. But letting all that mana go to waste by not stopping or pausing sentients would be a waste considering the urgency, how could he do it? And then it came to him, he just needed to put his test box after the tunnels. It would both let him experiment, but it would also let all his mana not go to waste. A seizuring slime would probably be at least a slight road block, and it wasn''t as if he could recycle all that mana anyways. But he still needed to be at least a little scheme-ey as he made it, it was basically in his nature now, better to make the most of it. But first he had to make the foundations for his slight bit of tomfoolery. Falc went to the exit of the tunnels and dug directly downwards for around 3 meters and made a large 3 meter high room that was 5 meters wide and long, with the entrance being a bit off to the side. Then on the other side he made another hole upwards that connected to the original pathway he made when climbing up to the surface, then lowered the original path while separating the tunnels from the original path with 3 meters or more of stone. Then it was time for Falc to get his unique skill a bit of excersize, as he made the tunnel slowly turn downwards and made the entire tunnel from a bit before the drop as smooth as he possibly could, then he made it suddenly go directly down. Then he just made the pitfall become about twice as large as to make it more difficult for a sentient to halt the fall, about half a meter through the drop in a somewhat fast transition. Though there was still a transition in a cone type expansion, just as it always was, in order to not let any sharp corners that could be exploited in any way to be present. And with that, it was done. A sentient, which would apparently go through the tunnels and to the exit head-first, would unknowingly get sent into a fun slide down into the depths with their largest weak point ready to feel the wonders of gravity, directly. Falc couldn''t help but feel a little proud as another part of himself was funneling all the extra mana he hadn''t been using during his build into slime apostle 1 and some random slimes if the most important slime couldn''t handle it- Which it surprisingly could, since... It was the mana of an entire dungeon core, a slime being able to consume it all was surprising. Coming back for a quick look, he found that the nuclei was a bit different again, but considering he couldn''t find any notable difference, he went back to the test box- Which was now its official name, ''Test box''. Now, just to make sure he wasn''t wasting mana as he experimented, he set the majority of himself to create more slimes in the slime plains, and got to thinking. The way he went to enhance slimes was making them more sturdy with denser weaves, a suitable method yes, but it only made it a bit harder to kill them. Then came , it was the first means of proper attack, but it wasn''t that good so he used examples to make it better. Then came twirl with its lucky debut, which Falc still didn''t fully understand. He tried to mule over anything he had tried before, something that failed due to something. And then it came to him; he had previously tried, long, long, long ago, to double up on muscles. But it had failed, monstrously, as the slime died by ripping itself apart. But that was before the D-variant line of slimes had taken the stage of tomorrow, a variant type that took a lot more mp but was also a good bit more durable. And for that reason, he looked at the super condensed string of mana in the slime plains, split it into three pieces and tried to stretch it back out- Failing quite badly, and taking some time to re-forge it back into proper D-18 density. After which he decided to take a large portion of mana regeneration into his little test box and make a D-1, D-2 and D-3 slime before adding in the muscles the same way as always, just twice over. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. And, after a quick check, he found that it was still too intense for the three slimes. Though, luckily, it did seem that unlike the standard slime within his memory the newly created ones were not dying as badly. While the standard died at the first attempt, ripping itself apart. The D-3, while still very much being damaged by its attempts, did in fact survive the encounter even if not jumping as far as even a normal slime. But, there was progress! So after cleaning up the mess and making a D-4 slime, and finding that it- Though harmed by the process- Did make it out less scathed than the previous version. With a ready avenue of growth laying before him, he created a D-5, then a D-6, and finally a D-7 when it finally could jump about without issue. But sadly, the speed of the jump had only increased by 40 or so percent even if the travel distance had better growth. But, it did work, it was a method to make a superior slime variant. So he had to give it a proper designation... He''d do it later, along with the double musculature and whatever else he found in his journey to the... Innovation land? Whatever he was doing. From what he could see, adding more muscles was not a dead end, and that meant in simple terms; It was time to bring it to its logical conclusion. Building up a D-9 slime, the failure that couldn''t even sustain a second weave in the past, he tripled the normal amount of muscles- Making sure not the randomly distribute them around the slime- And found it quite easily could resist the ripping force contained within, so he tried again with four times the muscle, little to no problems to be found. Falc was not expecting this result, even if the D-9 did in fact have nine times the mana within its weave compared to the D-7, he expected something like D-10 or D-11 due to the big gap between a normal slime and D-7. After another pair of test slimes, Falc finally found the limit of the slime, 5 times the normal muscle- 5x. He would have to re-orient the naming conventions a slight bit, but that would be when the tests stopped and the culmination of experimentation and started to flush the slime plains with even more slime variants ready to level up. Though Falc did have the intention to one day to experiment with D-10 or above was a bit too much of an investment for mere experimentation, D-7 or so could still be afforded but D-10 and above was just a bit too much. His instincts could still get a slight, slight bit antsy at inefficiency even if it had fallen into a lull over time. So, he would have to look into a different way, one of skills. He went ahead and started to think about how to experiment with .
Thalos threw with a smile a somewhat large rib weakly, letting the small grey pup excitedly chase after it for the few leftover pieces of meat atop it "Fetch!" As the wind burrowed its path through the forest, he held a slight smile on his face as he watched it nibble away before bringing it back to him. He liked pets, especially monster pets that could easily level up and get stronger with time. Though he might not be a {Tamer} or anything, and didn''t have something on a higher rarity like or , it didn''t mean he couldn''t get something more simple like with a slight bit of effort. And if he had the talents of an animal whisperer, it might even be worth it to switch out his class... It was unlikely that it would be worth it, but it was a possiblity! If that happened he could relax and train his pets while letting them do all the work... Maybe he could find a way to make Zera a pet? It probably wouldn''t work, but if it did he might be able to get her to take care of all the actual work while he played like now, but without any of the complaining. Like, he could understand. He himself would do everything he could to make the person that pushed work on him hate their lives and rather just die or do the work themselves, but being a hypocrite was guild master tradition. He would know, his father was one, and his father''s father was also one. Going all the way to his great-great-great-great-grandfather who lived in the age of gods at the same time as the mad god, allegedly. Maybe his dad was lying about that one, it wasn''t too out of character. Hearing the rustling and crushing of grass, he turned his head and twisted his torso, finding a certain overworked guild master of his design "Oh, what do you want? Again, if you want to know the details of the deal, you know what to do!" "Its not that, I asked the caravan myself," She said, eliciting a slight sigh from Thalos at the sad fact, though he would still not tell her for the chance she was just lying "I wanted to ask you about this report from Norman." Thalos took no initiative to answer as he took out another rib bone and threw it away lightly, in a light manner for his stats at least "Oh, which?" "The one about the gale wolf subjugation." She explained matter of factly. Without even the slightest pause, Thalos asked back while watching his somewhat new pet play with the bone "What about it?" "It says that there were 37 wolves in the pack," She said, looking over the paper she had brought with her even if it had went unnoticed by Thalos ''till this moment "But then at another part it says that 36 carcasses were recovered." "Uh-huh." He off-handedly responded. Though, Zera waited for a response, before looking towards where her not so team-oriented compatriot was looking. At the grey, though slightly larger than it should be, grey pup "No, wait. Did -Did you?" "So what if I did?" Where the only words she got back before Zera just walked back speechlessly, completely surprised at the fact that a non-animal-based class was taking care of a monster of all things, the very obvious potential hazard to human life if not properly managed by a skill. Chapter 16; Wisdom in the simple.
Another possibility is compression, which has no true problems with its usage outside of a lack of mana. Due to the fact that with proper compression when using level 50 or above can be maintained for a certain period on its own, there should be no big problems to cast a 6th tier spell with it. But the power given by compressed mana is not equivalent to the amount of mana used, the specifics still elude me, but I do know that a 1:100 magic bolt is less than five times as strong as a standard shot. Though, if one holds an extremely large mana pool, a lot of time, but not high spirit stat, then it could be used to cast higher tier spells. Though one can also use external mana reservoir in the process, which what I did in order to be the first to ever cast a 9th tier spell. Specifically the 9th tier ruin spell; ''Eclipse'' Yes, I did use the Ruin aspect which is both unstable and hard to cast, no need to praise me, I used the affinity and skill growth boosts of my class to do so. I do still hope that I can one day cast a 10th tier spell before I die, though for that I''d need to first bring up my ruinomancy enough to even access one.
-Exerpt from ''Random arcane possibilities'' by ''Semley Danron'', the sage of ruin.
After a long and hard period of contemplation, Falc had come up with his next experimentation plan, rushing a bit more as a quintet of sentients started to examine the entrance to the tunnels. It was simple, but his greatest improvements were all simple in nature- And no, Falc was not researching this path to slime hegemony because he was too panicked at the entrance of his tunnels being discovered to properly and calmly think about a good idea, definitely not. What was this award winning idea, you ask? As said before, it is simple; two s in one slime. He wasn''t exactly sure what would happen when he took another bit of space within the weave up for an segment, but it wasn''t as if it costed a lot on his part, only 1 mp extra. So, after a quick moment of creating a labrat, he saw it; the wonders of being born to die. And man was it depressing, not that it was born to die, but that his spark of inspiration failed to bring forth a proper product of power. It didn''t even properly jump around nor seizure! He had failed that much! It sort of just... Broke apart at the first part. It didn''t rip itself apart, it very clearly just broke apart at its first attempt at declaring its existence to the world the slime way, seizuring but instead accidentally jumping. But, that did not mean he would stop- Well, he did actually stop for a moment, enjoying the view of of a bit of acid coming down on the grey head of one of the sentients as they made it through the beginning of the tunnels where he had prepared more than one slime to prevent the first few visitors. Anyways, ignoring the cathartic little attempted murder that really helped sooth the mind, Falc of course had a plan to avoid such an outcome in the next attempt; make the slime bigger. As Falc will now always say, bigger is better, and he almost couldn''t believe he hadn''t though of it yet. A slime is weak, but a big slime is less weak, so why not make a big slime? Since he was making it twice as big for enough room for the second , it did cost exactly twice as much to make- Specifically 10 mp in total. That number was quite large, not for the him of today, but of the him at the beginning that would be his entire repertoire. He was starting to realize why he wasn''t that keen on thinking about it, but the future was now, and he was rich! With a total of 12 mana spent, two of which spent on the duo of s, Falc created his biggest creature yet. It wasn''t exactly impressive or anything, it''s diameter wasn''t twice as large as its original counterpart, no, no, no. Just its volume, and that meant the outside proportions increased in a inverse exponential manner. But after like two jump tests and it not falling apart at the seams, he felt confident enough to ask for a little shot of acid. With it going well, outside of the fact that the knock back was less than to be desired for movement but still too much to just be ignored, Falc wanted to see what the difference a second weave made. And after a quick order, it shot two individual shots of acid in rapid succession, quickly gaining Falc''s intense interest. He was expecting either that it would just make a bigger acid shot, or that it would just fire off one and wait for a few moments before the next was fired off. But a successive shooting of two shots of acid? Now that, that was something that could peak his interest for a large portion of time. With another try, one of three s, he took a look and found that it did not die immediately. A sign of good fortune even if it was a bit... On the weak side if he were to be honest, and even then the weaves seemed to very much interfere with the overlapping muscles. But that wasn''t the focus of the test, this was about continuous shooting of acid, and the display was not one to disappoint; even killing one of the muscled slimes, but no need to worry, it was one of the first successful tests, only a mere D-5 slime, no need to worry about it. Cleaning it up was the only consequence, except, of course; not getting to see another funny moment after the group of sentients thought they were safe after they killed the first acid slime from outside the tunnels with a mana attack and let the already injured one lead again, letting him get another weakness-pelting attack. With his mood going up along with the probably drop in happiness in the tunnels'' sentient population, Falc went and started to think up a way to experiment with his new findings. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. What he really needed was something strong enough to get through the grey stuff and still kill, it wasn''t as if it out right nullified the damage, it only decreased or warded it off. If enough acid came along, it wouldn''t be impossible for a fully grey sentient to die in spite of their colouration. So, what he needed to do, was in turn with the increase in size of the slime, he needed to increase the size of the weave, by just directly making the strings bigger, with twice as much mana! Which took three tries before he finally spliced the smaller threads of the normal weave with the good big strings, and even then, it was... Strange? Wobbly? Anyways, it didn''t work as well as he''d like it took, though yes, it did have a bit bigger amount of acid to expell in a single shot, again; it was strange and wobbly afterwards, somehow stretching and ripping the slime after a few shots coming out the moment it could again. Troublesome, he wasn''t sure whether the normal had this problem, though after a quick look at his memories, he noted the biggest problem came from the weave around his make-shift creation. But that wasn''t important right now, just making an upsized weave wasn''t going to fix this problem... Or would it? -It would, it worked basically just as well as the original variant, though then he would need to use his jerry-rigged splicing method for the normal he was planning to add to it. Another thing to note was that the big variant of took about 50-ish% to recharge enough to shoot again, a troublesome fact. Especially when Falc was fantasizing about a slime that had so many weaves inside it that in the time it took to fire off all the other weaves, the first weave would already be ready for the next shot. But the size required for such a thing would be troublesome, it would wondrous if he could just make another layer of weave that was nearly solely weaves so that there weren''t any problems, but that required a D-14 slime for enough mental space to be opened, and then considering that weaves were an extra point of mana each... It just wasn''t going to work, at least a D-15 slime for sure. Maybe it''d work with the slime paragon, if he ever actually had enough time to accumulate mana. But, of course, Falc did have a certain interest in seeing what would happen if a large slime with like a dozen or so s inside of it leveled up, or whether its nuclei was different. But Falc also felt that it''d be an absolute waste of time and mp to make more weaves than could actually be used in a battle, so he needed to use his analytical mind to calculate a bit. ''Since double the weave of a standard slime could sustain 3 s instead of the expected 2 means the original amount of weave could be considered to hold 1.5 or so capacity. Then since the time span between two shots is...'' Falc quickly timed the difference between two consecutive shots and declared it a unit to be used for the next few minutes, ''Cooldown'', along with noting the progress of the five sentients; not that good. And then noted the existence of a group of four sentients that weren''t grey. Well, not in the same way as the acid resistant sentients. It wasn''t as if the mere colour grey on a sentient made them resistant to acid on that part, no, no, no. This one sentient of the four had weird parts of grey on their mostly brown whole, though the weakness was partially sort-of white, not as much as the rest, but still sort-off. ...Seeing that they weren''t coming to the tunnels and that the Quintet- As the five previous sentients were to be called from now on- Actively got rid of their light sources, seemingly not wanting to showcase the tunnels to fellow sentients. That could mean... Maybe... The sentients weren''t a single entity that was working together to kill him, they were... Divided. It was duly noted, and the four sentients were then duly ignored as they seemed to search for the torch light at the entrance to the kill room among the various other torches that were set about. Falc felt that snuffing out the torches that had been set up while slime apostle 1 had taken its leave were ripe for removal, but felt it was best to do so after the quartet of sentients took their chance with the kill room. Falc really wanted to see what would happen when those more than a dozen shots of acid coated a sentient, though he would have to wait for a few moments. Then, going back to his calculations, Falc discovered that the recharge needed about 7.2 CD of time, meaning he would- When rounding up just to make sure that maximum output was assured- 8 weave sections. That meant 8 mp when dealing with normal mana strings... He had yet to consider the cost reductions that would come about from making use of the superior D2 or D3 strings if converted to , at least Falc realized now and not later. Though he would have to test it later as well, since now was not the time for such things. Anyways, he needed to increase the volume of a slime eight times over, not too big a problem. The 5 mp of a regular slime times 8 would be 40, not that much compared to the big shots of the D-chain, but still pretty respectable; especially when D-3 or D-4 was being considered, since Falc wasn''t sure the weight of such a large slime could be contained by a mere regular weave. But it was still manageable, nothing really, really crazy. But he did want to see what would happen with the nuclei and leveling up, so he decided to let it exist within the plains. But, he was pretty sure it could easily be found and then killed before it matured, so he had to hide it somewhere close by. So, behind the centre of the left wall of the slime plains- With the stairway being the basis for directions- Falc pushed his domain through the rock with a bit of difficulty and then after two meters, started to hollow out a cube with more than enough space for the slime that, surprisingly, had exactly double the radius of a normal slime. Falc didn''t exactly understand why, but eight times the volume was twice the radius. So he made a normal 8 m^3 cubic little room since it was far more than enough for it to exist without moving about outside of a little test to see if it would seizure or jump as he wished. With nothing wrong, and sadly the kill room not getting its first guest as the group of four started to go about the slime plains and killing some slimes- Which had surprisingly, had mostly held nuclei as they had been left alone for enough time for nuclei to form- A bit sad, since the amount of essence they gave off was pretty superior compared to the ones that died before, maybe he''d even get more than a single point per death. With a noting of the lack of progress from the Quintet, as they hid silently and tried to advance through the tunnels while failing repeatedly, even wasting the many nuclei that were available to them with arcane bolts. It was great to have it be confirmed that the tunnels were working as intended, but still, that did not mean he could rest easy though. He needed more ideas, but didn''t have any sudden enlightenment, so he had to think smart and not hard. What his previous big slime ascension method showed was that simple and the double musculature showed that old experiments could be reappropriated. Maybe he could seize another successful experiment and bring it over to another part for reappropriation, so the question to ask, was what was so successful that it warranted even more tests? Looking back to the past, that which had brought about his greatest advance and was probably not yet brought to its logical conclusion of 1000000000^3:1 mp to standard mp volume, that which is still the main way to differentiate variants: Compression. Chapter 17; Acidic advancement In a tent near a few- Still in construction- More permanent forms of housing. Within, a certain {Spell slinger} stood at a table filled with glassware and magical alchemical equipment for both heating and water creation, along with another table a bit away filled with catalysts and other more common ingredients. He wasn''t much of an alchemist, he didn''t even have a proper skill bonus for it from his class, but Damian... Well, he dabbled enough to create a few remedies. Specifically disinfectants and healing potions of somewhat low grade, though he wasn''t limited to them. Currently, as he sloshed a vial filled with water and a certain mildly luminous moss of dark grey colouration and soft-blue-ish radiation, examining what it could do in fascination. The moss lost its light about five hours after it left the dungeon, even if it wasn''t even slightly hard to get some more. An interesting fact, saying that the dungeon had something within it that was activating or fuelling the glow. Specifically the increased ambient mana within it, proven by the fact that when Damian poured mana into the vial and let it naturally dissipate; the moss returned to radiating slightly even after dulling completely. But that wasn''t too big of a deal, something that was able to indicate the ambient mana levels was pretty easy to find, but something that could contain ambient mana for any period of time was valuable. Because it could be naturally and easily be used to make mana potions with a slightly difficult process, and mana potions- Even the low quality stuff that would be born from normal plants somehow holding mana- Were valuable. Both in coin and skill experience. If Damian lucked out and could create a mana potion, it would be possible to grow his to maybe level 25 or so from his current level of 13 in a mere month or three. Even if a level 30 [Uncommon] skill wasn''t exceptionally great, was a more valuable skill in the modern market compared to a normal combat skill, especially compared to more common swordsmanship or spearmanship skills. With that he could probably even make a fifty to a hundred silvers a day in bigger cities, though that would only be if he had a proper establishment to sell his potions. Still, it would be a good bit more than what people made here, not that that had been his focus as someone able to do alchemy. As long as Damian felt like it, he could go to either a city or large village, find a master to apprentice to, work in an already established shop, or make one of his own, and he''d be making enough to live off of. But, the methods to detecting whether the moss was storing mana for a period of time instead of it only using the energy obtained from sitting in high ambient mana levels were all very expensive. Especially the proprietary compound which which indicated whether there was mana in a something when crushed and mixed with said something. It was even more annoying because the moss died less than three hours after leaving the dungeon''s domain and the complementary ambient mana that came with it, both meaning that it would be troublesome to bring to other dungeons or cultivate outside of using dungeons. But luckily for him, no one paid attention to it because such flora was quite common in dungeons as lighting for whatever reason, specifically the dungeons that were actually managed. ...Not that the lack of easy solutions was especially bad, even if he''d rather just repeatedly make some mana potions instead of using his head and experimenting. Skills always leveled up best by either holding great mastery over whatever the skill pertained to, experimenting and trying new things, gaining achievements with it- Such as creating a formula for a mana potion without clues nor hints- Or using the skill in chaotic or dangerous situations, usually in battle. Just using the skill was always slow compared to the proper, though difficult to use, leveling methods. And even if one knew about it, like almost every person in the world, it wasn''t especially easy to make use of the information- Outside of experimenting. Damian himself wanted to make use of the first the most, he had heard many a tall tale of some legendary figure or just a random farmer gaining a sudden enlightenment and bursting through multiple skill levels in the matter of a day or two. Though those were mostly folk tales or legends, and then the myths... Those were even more exaggerated. Placing the vial calmly inside of a wooden holder recently made, since he had no plans of testing glowing moss for a good bit of his stay. But, even if the dungeon opened up again, he wasn''t exactly planning to enter again considering the two levels in he had gained. Although the growth would quickly fall off at some point, it didn''t seem to have reached it yet. He took another one of the herbs he had recently bartered for in exchange for some health potions with a modicum of proper shelf life, crushing it in a mortar and pestle, making sure it was as fine as it could reasonably become before carefully pouring it into the vial as the smell of peppermint and blue berries started to pour into the room while a small sizzling could be heard from the mixture. As he finally heard it and noticed the somewhat obvious turn from peppermint to basil, the {Spell slinger} hastily took a wooden stopper- Him not feeling the need to waste money on a glass one- And closed his newly found concoction away from the rest of the world with worried emotions. What he had just mixed in with the moss could obtain acidic properties when mixed with quite a few materials, especially blood. And what just so happened to be the smell of said acidic combination? Basil. Though, watching from afar on the other side of the tent, as the moss broke apart and seemed to taint the water with its glowing property... Even if only partially. But most importantly to him, was that the vial was not corroding. Not sure whether the fluid was safe for either consumption or smelling, he took the vial and fastened it with a common spell, anchor, and went looking for his good friend who had a far better physique stat when compared to his 6. He was attempting to learn anyways, so he also had mana to replenish too. Quickly finding Ferr in the process of skinning some local game, he brought him to his tent as testing a potion that might or might not lose effect in only a few minutes was more important than skinning some small creature which wouldn''t spoil for at least multiple hours more. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Breaking apart the anchor spell, he took the vial and handed it over to his {Hunter} friend "This is it, I don''t know specifically what it''ll do, so only a few drops okay?" "Yea, yea, I''m your precious lab rat." Ferr said, slightly annoyed, taking the vial and directly opening it up without even trying to smell it. "Yes, so I can''t have you die on me right now." Damian remarked back, in a somewhat joking tone. "Sure, sure," The {Hunter} remarked with a small smirk, before chugging the whole thing in one big gulp "I''ll do my best." Damian watched in shot for a moment "-Ferr, I told you to only drink a few drops!" "It''ll be fin-" Ferr attempted to remark confidently, before suddenly grasping his stomach in acute pain. Not to the point that he fell to the ground, but enough to wheeze out "-Oohhh... Acid in my bowels... Is so painful. Tell my mother, that I hate her." Though Before he could go on in making the most of the situation, a proper potion of healing with minor side-effects that looked like sludge but tasted like vegetables in liquid form was forced down his gullet by his dearest friend "Stop being over dramatic and start learning, you''d think 7 spirit would make you smarter than this." Coughing instinctively as the slight bit of potion that had happened to enter his lugs was removed, he brought out "It- It wasn''t that serious, do you want to torture me man?!" "Well, I do want you to get for a rainy day, maybe even if I''m lucky," Damian couldn''t help but remark "But other than that, did your mana refill?" Choosing to bring his mind off of the looming pain that was coming for him "Yes, 3 mp." "For real?" "Yes." Laughing loudly, Damian mentally noted it down as he found something large enough to bite on without breaking- A large stopper- And put it in his friend''s mouth. And as Ferr steeled himself for the pain in his stomach to triple, he found no such thing happening, only his body becoming quite numb. Giving a questioning gaze to Damian, he got his response: "It was a good one, torture isn''t cool." A large relief in Ferr''s eyes, as he went to sit down "You really scared me there... Well, I''m... Feeling kind of woozy, let me just, sit down for a minute."
Falc still sat, thinking, as he started to create slimes once more. There were a few sentients taking the plunge into the depths of the slime plains, allowing him to finally start accumulating essence at a proper pace again. Not that he particularly liked the change though, but there were one or two kills as he controlled one or two acid slimes to shoot sentients in their large and pretty exposed weakness which didn''t have grey heads, and he made sure to leave a little bit of himself on both of the remains to see what happened to them. With a bit of extra essence to his name, He couldn''t help but seethe slightly about how the acid wasn''t as effective as it used to be in the olden days when he first got it... Not much, for but a single moment. But from it, come an idea. Falc finally saw it! Compression was the best way to make better variants, that had long since established. But a new way to use the near ancient method had finally been found, one that Falc had surprisingly never thought up. What if- In completely hypothetical terms since he hadn''t tested it- He made an weave... With compressed threads? They had always just been made up of regular threads of mana, but the mere thought of compressing the strings and seeing what would happen never occured to him. Quickly making a standard slime in the slime plains since it would probably do nothing amazing and wasn''t worth wasting space, he twisted the threads and appreciated the lack of splicing between regular threads and far smaller threads. Though it was somewhat questionable why the D-1 or D-2 slimes didn''t have the problem the original giant test slime had, then realized that they were compressed. Anyways, not bothering with the superfluous facts that he could find out about later, he looked at the of his new creation. It''s double compressed C++ threads connected with the regular threads, it seemed somewhat flimsy, but after compressing all the threads down to a suitable size, he let it show the world its power. And, it was kind of disappointing. The amount of acid was clearly less, so it seemed this was a waste of time. Though, why was there less acid when the weave hadn''t shrunk? Was the volume of the weave not important for that? Letting a part of himself do the dirty work of cleaning up the mess of acid, he found that it hadn''t done its job properly even when it had followed its preset orders to the T. The small amount of acid, had in fact, corroded the stone a bit more than the negligible amount it should''ve. Even the normal amount of acid- Three times the current amount, since the first forging had the most effect and as such the C thread was one-third the size of a normal thread- Didn''t do much to stone and rock. That didn''t mean the new acid did much, it was just slightly less negligible and could be a bother if a slime for some reason became obsessed with spitting acid at the same spot constantly. Even if the acid dissapated after some time, if it kept being replaced it could leave a proper mark in the floor. An interesting development, as another shot of acid was set off. Making it take only 50-ish% of what a normal to refill while only 30-ish% of the volume. So, first was to see what would happen if he sized up the mana threads while still having the same amount of compression, and the volume was brought back to its original amount while the acid still held on to its enhanced nature along with a 70% increase in time needed to shoot once more. Then, he tested something out, he created another, standard, slime with attached. But, doubled the volume of the strings without shifting the strings even slightly. Though Falc then found there wasn''t space for that, and instead increased the volume to 150% of the original. And, surprise surprise, it had 1.5 times the amount of acid. Even if it did have the problem of wobbling after a use, which would probably lead to destruction if over used. Though it also had an increase of its cooldown to 50% more than the base variant. So... The volume of the strings equalled the volume of acid, how condensed the strings is at least correlated with the efficacy of the acid, while both were related to the cooldown... But then the only question that was left to ask, why did the upsized version not have an increased cooldown? The only way to find out, was to make the upsized version with twice the volume of both slime and skill weave, but just making all of the strings normal strings. And, before the jump test was made within the test box, he let the risk of the other tests getting harmed and determined the cooldown time of his creation. And, it was halved. That meant, the volume of the weave very heavily determined the cooldown of the skill. Though Falc didn''t exactly understand why that was a fact, he wasn''t certain how could figure it out anyways. Overall, Falc was pretty satisfied, since he had a way to overcome the bane of his murderous impulses. But where would he make use of it? If he placed a bunch of them in the slime plains, they might get all scared again and not go into the kill room- The kill room, that was the perfect spot! Along with the tunnels, he would put slimes with compressed weaves with and along with it add a ring atop to focus the shot. And obviously it would have proper volume, but, after a quick little test, well; the slime kind of died, in an extremely pathetic and embarrassing manner. As the skill weave within pulled at the inferior weave beyond it, and through that... Pulled it apart. The power of the higher order D-3 thread compression was too much for the normal threads, their inferior nature allowing for the minimal strain almost unnoticeable in normal usage enough to directly kill the slime. So, he directly made a full D-4 slime with D-4 included, even if the costs were closer to a D-5 slime due to the increase in expenses from increasing the size of the threads to normal size along with the extra mp needed for the weave. Its cooldown was exceptionally long in comparison to normal, but its acid did indeed gnaw through rock at a proper pace. Thus, a few twins were made in the same room as the big boy slime with eight skill weaves within it after its residence was expanded by a reasonable amount, by at least enough space to contain 10 or so normal sized brethren. Chapter 18; Aimless advance
When I look in my reflection, I am one with it. Because like the depth to any mirror, there is none to it.
-Nameless great figure. This saying comes from a great figure of times passed, only a hundred or so years old, even though no one seems to know their name anymore. It is divided into two parts ''When I look in my reflection, I am one with it'' and ''Because like the depth to any mirror, there is none to it''. The first has many interperatations floating around, those valid among them being: 1) That instead of seeing one''s reflection as another being seperate from the self, one must see it as the self instead. 2) That the reflection is false and one should instead trust oneself. 3) That the reflection is not the self but also not false, but instead another form of the viewer. Then the second is more clear, directly stating that there is not depth in mirrors. But that does not mean it is the true meaning of the phrase, rather it is symbolism. It takes on the meaning a mirror image- Someone else similar to you- Has no depth for you to look for, stating that one has to look for the answer to their problems themselves.
-Exerpt from ''Sayings and their meanings'' by ''Sarrah Haylen'', distributed to all students of star academy since the 120th year of the new age.
Falc watched as one of the sentient remains he had left a little bit of will on was being transported by other sentients for some reason, it being brought all the way to the surface and quickly leaving his sight. Well, that explained it quite clearly, they were retrieved by sentients for some reason. An interesting fact, but the more interesting thing was that the other corpse didn''t have any mana keeping it together, though there was a bit of mana left over from somewhere in the body which had dispersed. It was not that much, actually- It was miniscule, just a bit more than the mana hidden in slime apostle 1. Not the cost of the muscles, weave, skill or whatever else. Just what was passively remaining within it and was sometimes being used to use . But that did make him wonder how the sentients lived without mana binding them together, or how they even walked about without any mana muscles to their name. But, considering he now had the entire body''s schematic floating in his mind, he would see if he could figure out the mystic power that let them move. If he could, he may even be able to make sentients himself! Falc couldn''t help but happily reduce the carcass he had recently recorded into his database into nothing by means of water and earth aspect usage. ... The sentients had come back into the slime plains in full force, like he expected, there even seemed to be some attempts to enter the kill room. Though they sadly stopped on the way down, seemingly because their weird light brown strip made of countless other small brown strips wasn''t long enough. Kind of a shame, the amount of essence that he would''ve gotten from that would actually be somewhat enticing considering it wasn''t one of the weaker sentients that were offed. Even if he wasn''t exactly sure how much he''d get, considering some of the sentients gave more than ten times that of others, he was sure it would be at least a good bit more valuable. Though all he could do was wait for the special day when his old scheme finally bore fruit, but that day was near, and his first stronger sentient kill would come! With no other pressing or interesting matters to worry about, Falc returned to thinking about how to improve his slimes. The means were obvious, he had just recently used it to improve his understanding of . He just had to think of something that could be compressed, some usage of mana... Falc could think of three other things that he had once used mana with, but had not compressed. First, the strange water he created as the slime''s material anchor to the world. Second, the muscles, he hadn''t even thought of it. Though, for some reason, the third reason eluded him for a slight moment even when he knew it existed. It had something to do with weaves, but that couldn''t be possible since he had already tested compression on the regular weave and skill weave. What other kind of weave could there... Be... The second weave. Falc instantly got to work, mass producing mana strings of higher and higher order, seeing which round of compression would allow him to keep up two weaves at the same time along with the musculature and the physical body. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. And he found it, D-7. Just D-7, quite a bit lower than he had suspected. Since, well, his most revered creation was a D-14-0. Now, instead, he could create- If he kept the previous naming convention for the time being- A D-7-7 slime with only a bit of effort. Not even close to the effort required to make the D-14 weave, both because of the lower quantity and because he had made the entire process more efficient. Then, a question came; What would he need to do in order to get a third weave on his slime? Considering that his current creation had almost neared his maximum capacity before giving it life, it meant that the weaves had to be 2/3 the mental requirements they currently had. And that would be... D-11. Meaning that the next slime on the pyramid would be D-11-11-11, costing the same as a D-12 slime. But, even if he could make one at will considering the stockpile he still hadn''t touched since creating, he did not feel like making a D-12 slime''s worth of mana threads right now. It was a time for experimentation, not one apt for mindless work. It wasn''t as if slime apostle 1 wasn''t still happily receiving his excess mana, so after he had finished designing and bringing that design in reality he let his natural mp regen into his dearest creation. One might wonder, what was it that Falc had designed? It was simple, but also genius, at least in Falc''s eyes. Instead of having the second weave being a regular weave, he made it a giant weave with threads the same size as normal- But, the weave used more mana string than a regular weave so he was forced to make it D-8. Though he quickly found that the threads were not stable enough without a regular weave to help it, so he obviously just connected the two layers together. There was a good weave perfectly good for the stabilization of its fellow weave, why not use it? After that was shown to not be a dead end, he also casually used the additional space left in his mind to create a complimentary D-8 ring floating in the center of the slime a layer above the weave. Then came another bit of consideration, as he turned the lower weave into a D-8 as well so that he could add an additional two musculatures as to bring about another twirl. As he brought his newest experiment into reality, the only thing Falc was interested about as he brought it to life in the dark storage area was how strong the acid would be as a D-8 weave of . Well it wasn''t the only thing he cared about, but it was what was most important to him right now. Diverting the mana streaming from slime apostle 1 in order to catalyse his new creation''s nuclei''s formation, he sat there and just watched. -Eh? With a slight tug towards him from a seperate part of himself that sat with slime apostle 1, he went over to look. And it asked a question to him ''Is ''[Uncommon]'' good?'' Falc wasn''t even sure how it even knew about the notion of something being [Uncommon], and he himself wasn''t even sure whether it was good or not. But after a small moment of deliberation and dropped it a ''Yes'' before returning to the important business he was partaking in moments before; watching the weave slime sit there as it neared nucleous creation over time. Luckily the amount of mana it could take in wasn''t that substantial, since Falc did need to fill the slime plains constantly considering his invaders had finally gotten some confidence again. Even if that confidence was probably going to go down the drain soon. At least, Falc really hoped it did, since then he could confidently add any of his newer creations to lower levels so that there was at least some proper anti-sentient capability within the dungeon. ...Again, there was nothing to do. But he couldn''t just aimlessly wait and not make the most of the time he had, who knew if that one second wasted would come back to bite him when more sentients came. So, he had to get back to thinking what he hadn''t used compression for; the variant of water used for slimes and muscles. After a quick attempt with the water, he found it way too difficult. It just didn''t mesh with his low control and affinity for the base elements, so he had to put it in the back of his mind for now. It didn''t seem as if it was an impossible quest to do so, no, it just wasn''t really worth the effort- Probably. So, all that was left was to either build up the next room or see if compression was a help for muscles... Falc really wanted to experiment with muscles, he really did. But, well, it just so happened that it was already clear that he needed to prepare another diversion for when the sentients finally passed through the tunnels and the test box. So, he had to start cooking up another scheme, one that improved upon the data he could collect from its predecessors.
Congratulations, your monster ''Slime apostle 1'' has evolved from a slime [Common] to an elder slime [Uncommon]
Falc paused, and then wondered why his title ''Infant dungeon core'' hadn''t upgraded, taking a quick look at it.
Common
Infant dungeon core
A new dungeon who has just breached the surface. Inexperienced, unprepared, and most importantly; Weak. -No effect.
Upgrade condition: -Gain an uncommon schematic -Survive for 10 days ? -Gain 1 leveled monster ?
This had been the first time Falc had looked at the title since he obtained it, and he found an unfamiliar checkmark behind the condition that he had to survive for ten days. Which definitely couldn''t be uncomplete considering his instincts were telling him a ''Day'' was synonymous with a ''Cycle'', so he quickly found himself confused as to why he didn''t have question mark behind the uncommon schematic condition. So, he went back to look at slime apostle 1 for possible answers. Chapter 19; Respect your elder Slimes
In the name of his imperial majesty, the emperor, Vale Fanath, the 126th squad of the 3rd legion is to: Cross the Iralen mountain range and the northern border and take control of the [Uncommon] core 53 units from the last mountain. It is commanded to not interfere with the populous, report back to headquarters after completion of task. Further orders are to be given afterwards, if there is any confusion then request parley with headquarters, follow standard procedure for [Rare] cores; if any complications appear the squad leader holds the right to request parley or chose a course of action beyond standard procedure.
An imperial order given to the 126th squad of the 3rd legion on the 1671st year of the new age
Slime apostle 1 sat in its hole burried within rock, waiting and waiting. It didn''t know how long it had been since his creator had lead it here nor how long it would remain. But it did know that its ascension would soon near, as the stream of power of unknown source was once again opened, streaming into it with no care for its funnel''s well being- It didn''t need to. Its weave welcomed the mana, pulling it in as if ravenous, brining it all to its nucleous
You have met the conditions for an evolutionary pathway.
Uncommon
Elder slime Throughout its life-time, a slime slowly gathers mana from the atmosphere, creating a nucleous. But even after that, the process does not end. Day by day, week by week, month by month, mana is gathered at a leaden pace. When the process finally comes to fruition, and the nucleous has climbed beyond its previous station, an elder slime is born.
Slime apostle shuddered at the sudden appearance of the screen, blasting out a shot of acid before it realized what it was. It could evolve, to become an elder slime instead of what it was now. Somehow, a thought seemed to appear in its mind, one that called for it to accept. But the thought was not absolute, and it could not help but wonder where it had came from. Such a thing had never happened before, its little mind trying to see where it came from from, but slime apostle 1 could not find the answer after try upon try. With no way to find out, Slime apostle 1 tried to brute force it. Before giving up and asking its creator if ''[Uncommon]'' was good, it said a definite ''Yes'' before their eyes drifted to somewhere else. With a plain confirmation, Slime apostle 1 knew it had to evolve into an elder slime. But how? It did not know, and it seemed that its creator was busy since they no longer came when slime apostle asked. With only the fact that a screen had informed it of the evolution as a guide, he tried to open the screen that it had accidentally opened once or twice for answers.
Name: Slime apostle 1 Race: Acid slime [Common] (+) Level: 2/0
Strength: 2 Agility: 3 Physique: 2 Spirit: 4 Magic power: 3 MP: 3/3
Skills
Common
-, lvl 2.
It looked at the screen, which had changed ever so slightly. In such a manner that it probably wouldn''t have been able to notice it if they hadn''t been looking for something, a small plus after its race. Slime apostle 1 didn''t exactly know what a plus was, nor did it know its meaning. But it had been the only change that had appeared outside of ''s ''1'' turning into a ''2'', so it inspected it as best it could for anything. And it was quickly met with a screen to support it in chosing the only possible evolution.
Evolutionary pathway
Common
None
Uncommon
Elder slime Throughout its life-time, a slime slowly gathers mana from the atmosphere, creating a nucleous. But even after that, the process does not end. Day by day, week by week, month by month, mana is gathered at a leaden pace. When the process finally comes to fruition, and the nucleous has climbed beyond its previous station, an elder slime is born. Growth limit: level 1 Growth rates: - 1 per level; Agility, Physique, Spirit, MP - 1 per 2 levels; Strength. - 1 per 5 levels; Magic power. Innate skills: None Base stats: Strength; 1, Agility; 2, Physique; 1, Spirit; 3, Magic power; 4, MP; 2
Note: level will be reset and innate skills will be unavailable without a method to use them.
The screen seemed to explain a lot, but slime apostle 1- Though it could somehow understand the text when it had never, ever, in its short life ever even seen text. But, its creator said that [Uncommon] was good, so it did not hesitate and chose ''Elder slime'' as directly as it could. Struggling slightly to find the way to take it up as its own race. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. And so, the world went dark for a moment, its nucleous once again roiling and coiling within it, and time passed ever so slowly... And then it woke up, with the eyes of its creator above it, with a lesser mind and a greater nuclei to its name.
Falc stared at the slime, finding it without its weave... A troublesome fact, meaning that it would be difficult to level from now on. And even more worrying was that its weave was different, not the same as either its leveled form nor that of a normal weave. It was... Less orderly, it was... How it''s instincts put it after a quick question: ''Natural''. But that also meant that it was somehow inefficient but also somehow slightly more resistant to damage as it showed after bumping against the ceiling of its little room. Its weave and nuclei were completely different from what he remembered it was supposed to be like. If originally the weave was a standard square pattern with not a single flaw hidden within- At least none available to Falc''s eyes- And the new one was chaotic and seemingly created based on whim. Unlike a machine that did the same thing at all parts of the weave, it changed to fit on that specific part of it, even leaving proper space for the muscles to make sure no problems occured. Though, of course, this was merely an analogy and not the direct truth, as a three-dimensional weave was difficult to describe by normal means. So, of course it was noted for future research, then duly forgotten for the more important difference; the nuclei. Problem was, of course, that Falc Navator- The involuntary slime enthousiast- Had yet to inspect the way of the slime nucleous. So he could not hold enough knowledge about the topic to allow the creation of euphimism, but in the simplest terms the new nuclei was ''Deeper'' in a sense, though he wasn''t exactly certain in what sense so far. Though, at least, he added the entirety of the new elder slime version of slime apostle 1 to the ''Potential improvements'' file. Now, he did have a small question for the elder slime "What level are you?" Falc did not expect a proper response, and was mostly just asking to see if it even knew about levels since it knew about ''[Uncommon]'' being a thing. ''0/1.'' It surprisingly responsed. Falc required a moment to understand why it didn''t give just a simple ''0'' or ''1'', and found himself asking "What was it before?" ''2/0.'' Slime apostle answered prudently. Quickly, the crystaline creature began to cross reference the two sequences of letters with previous information ''Okay, previously it was ''2/0'', and since it used to be level 2, that should mean the left number is the current level. But then what''s the right one? Is it, like, a sign of how many times it evolved? What rarity it is?'' But, with no information informing him of anything outside of the possiblity that the first number was its level, he quickly gave up trying to figure it out and just accepted his current answers for what they were. Even if slightly sad slime apostle 1 was once again a level 0, it wasn''t impossible to level it up again and see what happened, he just had to be more careful since there was no way to attack from a distance included. ...But Falc wasn''t sure if he wanted to risk it. Who knew what would happen? It was obviously stronger than the average slime and all, but not having a proper means of attack would make it near impossible to kill a sentient outside of the few weaklings that even a normal slime could kill with a bit of luck. Slime apostle 1 did seem smarter than the others, yes, but that did not mean it would be able to survive being cleaved in half. Which was slightly strange considering there was literally a skill that allowed slimes to get halved, but the two small slimes created weren''t worth the regular slime it cost. After a few moments, Falc took a look and saw that- At an even slower pace than last time- Mana was indeed getting absorbed by slime apostle 1, even more so than the regular slimes that were maybe attempting to become elder slimes too. And with both the question of what would happen if it gathered enough mana along with it currently being the only elder slime around, Falc decided to just let it sit there for now.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Ray impatiently asked "You''ve got the rope, climb down!" Tailem gulped audibly, bundle of rope in hand while looking at the hole infront of him along with the large iron nail hammered into the rock beside it. He took a look at the sword sheathed at his owner''s side, and then at the other two that came along for the ride. Taking a deep breath he nodded "Yes sir." Tying the rope to the iron nail previously mentioned, he let the conjoined strings of fiberous material fall down before carefully letting his hands and feet attach themselves to his only means of not falling to his death. Looking down into the darkness below, barely visible with the light of the torch held by one of the two he didn''t know. He couldn''t help but shudder as he accidentally lost his grip and slid down by less than half a meter, slowly descending with a very scared heart. As the light from above nearly vanished and he relied only on his sense of touch to keep him on the rope, a light-blue bolt descended, with Tailem pulling to the side in audible shock; Finding, moments later, that the magical construct was remaining below, showing him that only a few meters were left before he could enjoy the beauty of rock beneath his feet. It also allowed him to see- And feel, since he hadn''t touched the sides of the hole with his jerk- That the tunnel had increased in size without him noticing it. Even if he had any method to climb back up without the rope, if he had fallen with it not there, he wouldn''t have been able to do a thing except accept his fate. At least, that was what his jumbled mind presumed as he neared the bottom with arms and legs slightly sore. With the accidentall loosening of his grip, he once again slid down, doing his absolute best to regain his vice-like grip without looking around. And luckily, it returned to him in but mere moments. But as Tailem looked around with the support of the blue light below him, he saw a worrying scene. More slimes than how high he could count, one or two already roiling slightly as he saw the moment used by slimes to create the acid they sometimes shot out. He rushed upwards with all his might, forgetting about his legs and directly pulling himself up with his arms with no concern for pain as he heared the whissing of the very much fatal attacks that were to land of him "AHHHHHH!" "I don''t want to die!" He called out to himself, forgetting that he could just do that in the form of the wonderous means of self-insulting called ''Thoughts''.
You have obtained the skill You have obtained the skill
Getting new skills were great and all, but the better thing was that it finally let him realize that he wasn''t really in danger anymore since the slimes weren''t able to climb. Though, the sight of the rope already degrading below him, he decided to use the most of his new duo of skills and climb up. It wouldn''t be that bad, he thought, as he had come back with the information that there were a lot of acid slimes down there. Interlude; Iralen mountain range Iralithen Hasturnal Benenthin, or shortened to ''Iralen'' for the ease of fellow dragons, couldn''t help but seethe slightly, Just recently a brigand of humans had attempted to steal from his hoard, when it was still in its territo- Iralen shook its head and corrected itself; desolation. Those damn humans dared to come into his desolation, though he was only an [Epic] dragon, that didn''t mean any random sentient could take its riches for themselves. From what he remembered, they went towards the north. From what he could remember the last time he looked there, the humans there were in the middle of a civil war. He really couldn''t understand the small rat-like creatures, less than the size of one of its claws, and even more foolish than locusts along with rivaling their hunger. At least the empire to the south had the sense to pay him tribute every ten years just for not attacking them, they even gave him a large amount of gold trinkets and a few artifacts that were candy for his eyes so that he moved to this beautiful cold mountain range. There was a lot of prey just a bit down, the height was good for flight, it was nice and cold. They even carved out a reception area for other dragons to come or for them to bring their tribute! This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. And; Get this! The more local human leaders- Iralen couldn''t exactly remember what they were called, something like ''Barans'' or ''Nobls''- Would also come to him with precious gemstones and gold to request for him to get rid of a somewhat larger prey. Something he was happy to do, he got to eat well, get gold, and also cement his might in the sentient population. Then there was this one time that an empire human came along and tried to take one of his artifacts, when he went to burn down one of their villages to punish them before going to kill the thief Iralen remembered something and went to the nobls and told them that a human had stolen something from him and they quickly went to execute them for him! He didn''t even need to bother finding the rat himself! In comparison, he had to go through the effort of burning down a vilage or two, then finding that thief too... He couldn''t help but think that it would be so much easier if he just went to the kingdom, killed their rulers and made the empire their boss from then on. Then he could laze around and have them go and kill any thieves that stole his jewels in his sleep. Though, he didn''t really know about which sentients he would have to kill to do that, and decided to just go and follow standard procedure and burn down that village. Chapter 20; Knowledge brings action.
Some days I lie wide awake until the sun hits my face and I fade, elevate from the dirt, far away to a place where I''m free from the weight, this old world, this world~ Some only live to die, I''m alive to fly higher than angels in outfields outside of these lands. I''m ascending these ladders, I''m climbing, say goodbye to this old world, this old world~ I''m born to stay on the ground while I look to the sky, clasping my hands and praying for luck to pass. But today, here I stand; reaching for the stars with pride, unbound by this old world, this old world~ With a floating heart I thought that when I jumped I flew~, even if it felt like I was falling... -Onto this world.
-Excerpt from ''Three steps to transcendence'' written by ''Lucaric Ba''alhos''
Dannis the {Rogue}, along with his companions, sat around a table, whispering silently with somber mood "Did you hear about the drop?" "Yes..." The woman that had previously confidently talked about the specifics of the adventurers guild couldn''t help but say sadly. They had all heard the ''Good news'', the drop had lead to a death trap very obviously made to kill any unsuspecting invaders. Though Dannis didn''t know the specifics, it was just another problem on the heap. He couldn''t be sure, but a thought came to him "Guys... What if ''It'' was actually the diversion?" Every member of the core-hunting party of adventurers paused, before the gloom regained its rightful place before intensifying even more. It just made sense, even if they didn''t want it to. The first diversion from the dungeon showed that it could make diversions, and after seeing that it was found so quickly, it''d probably think that the next time it could be possible from the hidden passage to instead be the diversion. Even if it wasn''t, the chance that it was could be the difference between winning or losing. The real problem was that both paths were exceptionally dangerous, and the chance that something more dangerous would pop-up if they continued. And if the fact that they could just be wasting their time was also taken into account... "How about we sell it?" Asked the user of arcane arts, Noren "Cut our loses and at least get something." "...Are you insane?" Yurilin asked exasperatedly. But before she could continue, Dannis raised his hand "Hear him out." A silence loomed over the table before the mage- His specific variant unknown- Spoke up once more, explaining his thought process "Well, since we can''t force our way through, pass through it without alerting others, isn''t it obvious to let others go first in order to find out what''s up? And since we can''t buy people, why not sell it instead?" She thought for a moment, but shook her head "No, there''s no reason to let go of a potential lead." But, Dannis was not convinced "One that''ll probably kill us?" "...Yes." She confirmed. Dannis'' body shook slightly, but was quickly supressed by a smile from a [Common] {Warrior} sitting next to him, and from that smile was born the words "And why does your opinion matter? You''re not the leader, are you?" Yurilin, the academy student, could not find a rebuke; for her higher standing was based merely on her upbringing, holding no true right to rule. Gritting her teeth, she spout out "Fine, but, if we''re doing that. Then let''s leave for an [Uncommon] dungeon nearby to level-up and buy equipment, any suggestions?" Luckily, it seemed the rest of the party wasn''t against the idea as they proposed different ways to sell the information or where to go afterwards.
Zera went through paperwork with skill-assisted proficiency, a silent grumble appearing within her mind with each extra page she completed. She was tricked into this by Thalos, and like always; he was scarily good at it too, along with making friends in the adventurer community. He had even made friends with the main leader of the original populace and seemed to sometimes go drink with him too, leaving her with all the work as always. Thinking of drinking, she couldn''t help but hold her head with a wince at the sharp through temporary mental pain of a hangover. It just... Happened. She was stressed out and there was rum nearby... Returning to her work, she tried to take her mind off of it by being optimistic ''At least with Thalos at the wheel, I don''t have to worry about any public backlash or anything else political, the hardest part of the job.'' A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Though her slightly appreciative mood was quickly interupted, such a mindset not being allowed for a guildmaster, as the door was kicked open by a certain lazy guildmaster. Without any words, he neared with Norman coming through the door behind with a somewhat nervous and worried expression. A worrying situation, not Thalos kicking in the door, it wasn''t exactly out of character even if she had jumped back at it. But Norman being worried, that was strange. The only question was what he was worried about, Thalos or herself. "What is the meaning of this Thalos?" She asked while leaning on the table with a hand half-covering an eye, her annoyed tone betraying her less than palatable mood. Though Thalos, actively deciding not to take notice, took the pile of finished paperwork and started to blitz through it- To such an extent that Zera wondered why he didn''t want to do paperwork that would take less than half-an-hour- While he started to explain "Well, lil'' Norman was worried about your new vice so he asked me to check in on you. And here I am, checking in on you, aren''t I nice." Before Zera could respond, he turned back and showed the stack of documents and such to her only employee so far "No faults to be seen, it''ll be fine Norman, if the hangover doesn''t affect paperwork then it doesn''t affect much else." It was a bit strange to see paperwork used as a test to see if her hangover was an actual problem, but, she couldn''t really see a specific issue in his reasoning at that particular moment "Did you only come here for this, or did you have a change of heart and do your fair share?" With a slightly mocking laugh the {Magic swordsman} answered "Keep dreaming, I''m here to tell you a new little rumour that''s become the talk of the town. Quite an interesting one really." "Well, spit it out." She prodded calmly. "Jeez, what happened to respect these days, must be the moral degradation that I''ve been hearing about." Thalos whined indicatively of a certain word he''d like included in her prod. "Tell me, please." She relented, knowing that Thalos wouldn''t tell her until she did. "To think there were still such polite young''ins, brings a tear to my eye," The lackidazical procrastinator said with a snake tear "Since you''re so polite, I''ll tell you; a little birdie that the tunnel behind a hall at the initiation area wasn''t the only one, it has a twin at the entrance of the slime plains!" Zera did not say a thing, just sitting there; waiting for Thalos to stop with the jokes and actually say what was going on. Though as she saw Thalos start looking around, it dawned on her that he had decided to just directly state it this time... He was messing with her by making use of their previous interactions! "...Seriously? Again?" "Yep, pretty cool. It''s a shame that I myself won''t be going on this expedition." He remarked off-handedly. Zera took a moment to process his words "Another expedition?" "Yea," He confirmed "WIth both paths being pretty dangerous without proper equipment or prep the guys downstairs decided to start another public expedition, which is pretty impressive considering none of the big parties are involved yet." "How many has it been now? Three?" She asked. "Nah, it''s been two." He contested, surprisingly getting a skill in the process; "Ahh..." She sighed "Why can''t this dungeon just be normal..." Thalos shrugged with a small smile "Look at the bright side, or at least try to, our spot as guild masters seems pretty stable to me." "As if I you wouldn''t rather relax in the capital." She shot back. "I would actually rather sit here, in this office, than back in the capital," Thalos retorted, surprisingly "The difference is clear." Zera didn''t buy it, but sadly her opinion didn''t matter in these matters as thalos left directly after his words had fallen.
In front of a certain hole to the underground which had been partially covered from rain by the semi-make-shift creation of an {Junior architect} and a few {Builder}s, doing so for skill- and class levels, 15 adventurers stood with Thalos before them. "As you all know you will be entering the dungeon behind you, piercing through the dangers that would halt any regular party. With the strength of fifteen you will overcome that which was meant for fewer and explore the depths not meant to be reached!" He declared "The path is known and the end goal is as well, but what stands to stop you is yet discove-" A large explosion erupted in the distance, as the looming red glow of flame overshadowed the noon sun and winds blew over seconds later, forcing many a being to stumble and fall. But that was not all, as below rock and stone certain thin walls stirred; opening up and letting semi-new creature out for a turn. Along with multiple rocks falling down, quickly being cleaned up before a sentient within could take proper note in the panic of the world rumbling. Though in time, some came back to their senses, allowing them to see the rapids of smoke rising in the horizon. Indicative of destruction beyond regular means, a destroyer, and no a kind one either. And soon their identity became clear, as a large silvery-white creature with wings spanning multiple houses in length rose from the horizon which was still tainted by smoke and dust. As one of the first to overcome the shockwave of draconic origin- One certainly held back to the point any average human would not go deaf from the force- Thalos stood up, a smile forming as he hid his eyes from the still looming sun, giving a laugh both honestly and to relieve the tension "A dragon, never thought I''d ever see one of them with my own eyes, quite lucky really." ... "Let''s hope it isn''t coming for us," He said, almost just to stave off his own fear "Because there''s no chance we''ll ever be able to fight back nor is there chance for reinforcements strong enough to wade its advance." And he did indeed feel the words sooth his fragile human soul a bit, letting him take a proper look around as multiple of the less well-made buildings had fallen to the ground ''It seems... That the expedition will have to put-off for a bit.'' "Everyone! Get moving! We need to rescue anyone who got caught under rubble!" He yelled out, catalysing a few of his listeners out of their fearful stupor "Forget about the explosion and save as many people as possible, there''s no chance to resist it so it''s better to work with the only scenario where we get out of this alive in mind!" Then a thought occured, one alien to him due to a lack of residence in an area with a [Common] dungeon before this "Five of you go down and see if anything collapsed, if not come back after yelling to come to the surface! If it did... Come back anyways, they''re a lost cause!" Chapter 21; Catastrophe consequence
Death is inevitable. Death is preventable. Death lurks just beyond the shade of night, always waiting silently in your shadow. Despite the hiding attempted or the armour worn, death will find its way to your soul. No need to rest, it never stops; no breaks for its subjects to exploit. Respect death or its keeper shall be angered, fear death or it will soon near you, do not mourn death or it will control you. But do not run from it or be remembered as less than it.
-Excerpt from ''Mortem'' by an unknown human guided by a divine revelation.
As Andrew heard a shout from far off, he cast his gaze instantly shifted along with the rest of his team- Which was mostly only built in the case of another slime apostle 1 appearance- To the top of the staircase, where a group of people was shouting on the top of their lungs "Get out of the dungeon! A dragon destroyed a village close by, who knows if another one will get destroyed and this place caves in!" With their piece given, they ran back up with haste, at least it seemed like that to Andrew. There had been a sudden shake a minute or two ago, but since it didn''t do that much except maybe make two of the five-strong party stumble and fall- Andrew being one of them- But a dragon destroying a village... He had never heard of that throughout his not so long life, nor had any large shaking of the earth occurred. So, this was a first... But Andrew did know about dragons, they were unbelievably powerful from what he understood, though not that common. The main reason for that being the fact that they were purely [Epic] or [Legendary], with not a single [Rare] dragon existing. Though he wasn''t exactly sure about the specifics outside of them having large amount of mana, a large bonus to and could breathe fire. ...Well, they were [Epic], even if they were weak for their rarity, almost every human would be unable to face one in a one-on-one duel. And considering they were actually in the upper rungs of [Epic], there was no way anyone out here in this rural place could properly fight back. Even if it was near the border of another country, though Andrew did not know which, said border was already defended in stead of humans by the Iralen mountains. "Uhh, should we go?" He asked his mates. "Nah, if it''s a dragon, we''re screwed anyways. How many more cores?" Peral, the {Duelist}, queried to Kanor. The {Spear thrower} slung the backpack he had been carrying infront of his and opened the flap and counted for a moment "Three more." "That''ll be like half-an-hour." With the information noted, stretched his neck while twirling his axes. With half-an-hour to go, Andrew looked at his half-full mana pool, meaning he had 5 out of the 9 max mp ready for use. Not the best, but considering his low level of 3, it was actually pretty good. He had started out with 3 max mp and had gotten an extra 6 added on, and since most people just had 1 or 2 max he was quite the talent! Though most of that came from his [Rare] class. ...Well, it was more like an [Uncommon] class in the magic department, it just gave a bonus to physique along with the magic stats. It probably just came out instead of {Wizard} or something because he lived with a lot of madness-wielding mages. Anyways, it was good enough for a pair fire bolts and would refill fully in a few minutes. Though a fire bolt was overkill for a normal slime, the few ''D-7'' or higher slimes that rarely roamed the plains required them, and; Andrew didn''t have precise enough control to take out less mana than what was required for fire bolt even with level 5 . Seeing another slime enter the light, he quickly used - The main reason he was here outside of killing some of the slightly more annoying slimes.
2nd weave acid slime
Common
A slime variant born in recent times, holding far greater acidic potential than it''s kin, holding enhanced magical structure and the chance to bring about a greater future for all of slime kind. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Weakness; Aspected attacks.
Seeing the fragments of a near fully-grown core, his sense of danger flared as he skimmed the words. It was a new variant! Different from all the others, the dungeon was again trying to create something greater again. He had heard from the elder that it seemed to be more intelligent than usual, but to constantly iterate on slimes of all things! "Back away, its a new variant!" He yelled out as mana was drawn out as fast he possibly could, pacing back as best he could while pushing forwards his right hand, beginning to chant "O'' flame obey my command, form a bolt of-" But, the still lengthy chant- He had changed it after some practice with his master because the original one was a bit too taboo- Was far the burdening as a shot of acid was rapidly propelled through the air, directly towards him; landing on his outstretched- And protected- Right hand. With that fact in mind, Andrew''s first thought was obviously ''SHIT!'' Though it quickly dissolved to nothing as all he could do to the unbelievable pain was scream with all his might. Though as he lay on the ground, guttural screams of agony endlessly spewing from his mouth, a spear pierced the slime and split the semi-fragmented core into the many pieces it had been built from. But a spear being thrown through it was not enough to kill it, but an extra axe was enough to finish the job. "Why the hell isn''t the armour working?!" He heard in blurry tone, slowly regaining consciousness as the pain faded slowly along with the world around him, metal breaking apart and bone revealing... And then there was nothing, no pain in his mind and the world blurred and mere remnants of voices remained.
Falc watched as a sentient with one of its stubs was ferried up the staircase and pulled through with the support of two stronger than usual sentients, though the sentient hadn''t died the protected ''Hand'' had indeed been destroyed, and it was truly wondrous for his emotional state. When the shake had came, he was scared shitless. But it seemed to be a one-time deal, even if it was his oversight that he hadn''t thought about the wall between the new slime variants and the slime plains during the whole ordeal, doing his best to stop the- Already strained to its limits- Ceiling from falling in and making him have an ludicrous amount of effort to recreate it. But it seemed the variants were doing pretty well, though it was actually specifically the newest one. It was kind of a shame that it died before it could start mimicking twirl and properly start leveling up like slime apostle 1 used to, and it was a surprise to him that it could even properly see with its not yet fully developed nuclei. A fact that was happily noted in the mental record, along with the current growth rates of the other slimes. Which also surprisingly had some pretty well developed cores as well, and weren''t currently in the process of seizuring. And though, yes, if he had willed it they would''ve stayed in their hidden little hole. But the whole ceiling debacle had not been some random little nothing that he could risk messing up, so he might''ve taken back all the little wisps of himself to make sure nothing got messed up. The only one of the slimes that had yet to get far enough with nuclei creation to do anything was the double volume slime, so he had after he had finished with what he was doing he once again appointed a wisp to suppress it and then fixed the wall and all the acid marks left behind by the slimes that had already left in their first few minutes of freedom. From what he had seen from the sentients and how they dealt with the sudden shake- After he had finished dealing with the ceiling, of course- It seemed that they somehow vibrated the air to do something. He wasn''t exactly sure what vibrations in the air could do, but he was kind of curious so when 4 sentients, from the 8 that had entered in a hurry, which had come through the tunnel vibrated the air at a scale he only saw when sentients died, he just happened to... Maybe exacerbate the intensity to see how all the sentients still in the slime plains would react, and he was satisfied with the results. Though he wasn''t going to make any conclusions for now, he noted down all the reactions and left a few wisps to linger around before returning to the test box and continuing with what he was doing before he was disrupted: Testing out the new elder slime weave and attempting to create a nuclei without having to wait for the slime to do its thing.
"Don''t you dare die!" Thalos commanded loudly while rummaging through rubble, hasty in every action "If you die I might actually have to do paperwork dammit! You''re not allowed to die unless I give you permission!" And he wasn''t the only one, as the noble human spirit of ''If there''s no harm in it, sure I''ll try to help someone.'' showed itself in the fullest, especially in the stronger adventurers who might even get paid for their part in disaster relief. As a large plank was thrown to the side, a small bit of human skin was seen through wooden remains. And with even faster movements, random pieces of rubble were tossed to the side, before his hand pierced through it all to grab on to something human and wrenched the person hidden inside out "Now, let''s hope you aren''t dead... We got another one here!" From what he could see the woman he had gotten seemed alive enough, so she could probably make it in spite of the gashes that may or may not have been formed by his own hasty extraction- He honestly wasn''t sure if they had. It was annoying that there were only two life-using magicians, so he couldn''t reliably get information on which piles of rubble had people. But another one handed over to the only {Priest} that had come to town, one of Culaed, god of life; and they sure as hell were going to level hard considering the amount of people that would be grateful and how much life would be preserved through his actions. It wasn''t as if the two life mages weren''t going to get maybe one or two skill levels in either. And while Thalos was leading the actual rescue, Zera was pacing quickly between wounded souls, noting down how many there were and trying her best to figure out which needed the most care. She hadn''t been trained for this, and never even planned to get involved in anything related to disasters like this. She was almost definitely drinking herself to sleep tonight, and then Norman would get worried again, and then it''d be even more stressfull... If only the dragon just stayed in it''s den like it always did, did it just wake up and feel like killing something? She heard it happened from time to time. Anyways, she noted one of the people they passed by as deceased and called someone to mark it as such before continuing to walk around, quickly noting a newly discovered victim. She seemed good enough and could be healed later on, though maybe cleaning the gashes would be a good thing, with that in consideration she put less priority on her before once again looking around as a sweat began to build up. Chapter 22; Hand problems In a haze of painless respite, Andrew''s eyes flickered open, still brimming with life. Out of pure habit sitting up, even as his eyes adjusted to the light of the rising sun coming in through the window. Confused thoughts flitzing through his mind, he held his head with his hand- Or at least tried to, finding only a stump of a right arm. ... His mind quickly cleared as memories returned, as he attempted to feel his right hand. It seemed that this was reality, and it was one he''d rather not accept; but he still had to. It was difficult to ignore the complete lack of feeling in his hand and the sight of a bandaged stump instead of his young hand, and as it was said to him a thousand times; ''A pessimist is a loser, an optimist is a loser too; only be accepting reality do you have a chance at not being a loser.'' It didn''t rhyme, it didn''t sound nice and he had no clue where the quote was from, but the elders kept repeating it when he was ever doubting something obviously true. Like when one of his old friends were talking badly about him to his parents- A reason why they were ''Old friends'' and not friends- And he didn''t want to believe it. Andrew had to just say something, even if no one would hear, just to sate the little part of himself panicking about it "It sure feels weird not to have a hand." Feeling his mana pool, he couldn''t find any problems when he tried to take out a batch of mana. At least that was fine, if he couldn''t draw out mana his time as a {Mad wizard} would have come to an abrupt and disappointing end, though his lack of a right hand would still be troublesome since chants with hand motions were usually shorter for the same amount of skill; even if he hadn''t really gotten to that point yet. "Ah, you''re finally awake." He heard from outside the room he sat in, the grand master revealing himself the source after opening the door. Andrew, taking a small glance at his hand "Elder, could you tell me what happened?" "I think you know what happened, you lost a hand." He said with a laugh as he walked to the side of the bed and pulling a stool to sit next to it. "Yea, yea, I obviously know that," Andrew shot back, gesturing towards the subject in question with his head "I''m asking about what happened, remember; knocked out. A quick refresher would help, how long have I even been out?" It seemed that his quick rebuke had taken him off-guard, seen from the elder''s pause before thinking "I don''t really have an entire explanation prepared for you, so this might be a bit lacklustre; don''t blame me if it is." "No worries." He one-handed patient affirmed patiently. "Well," Lest said while taking out a string-bound book obviously cheaply created by the lumberjack because he wanted to increase his skill, him begining to read from it "Remember; don''t expect a perfect summary." "Yes, I won''t..." Though he couldn''t understand why he was messing with him, it wasn''t that big of a deal. As the arcanist began to speak, he took out a pen and began to write- Was he actively trying to mess with him? "First of all, a dragon flew over to a nearby village. I think you went there once, though I''m not entirely sure. It blew it up with a single breath of fire, shaking the earth and causing a local earth quake from what I can tell," He explained, writing rapidly all the while. If not for knowing his class, Andrew would''ve expected him to be a {Scribe} of some sort "Because of this multiple of the houses created in the last few weeks with lesser quality collapsed and lead to a good few people to being heavily injured, and this continued to the dungeon as well; spooking it into releasing a new slime variants. One of which made you lose a hand." Okay, he was definitely messing with him. Andrew could already feel his blood pressure rise slightly, completely forgetting about his loss of a hand and tensing his left hand into a fist along with his phantom right hand "Yes..." "So, in response to this terrible situation. The heroic and brave guild master Thalos steeled his heart and began to manage the disaster relief efforts without a second thought, heroically bringing together all adventurers and the like together under his honourable banner to save the unrightfully injured populace. He himself taking centre stage in the process, bravely wretching out the wounded though sadly unable to save those too far gone. His loyal side-kick Zera helping all the way through, showing her great heart and why she is worthy of being his assistant." "Wait," Andrew quickly stopped with his right hand- Before realizing he didn''t have a hand and instead stopping the old man with a stump "Is this propaganda? Why are you making propaganda?" "Shut up, brat!" The dutiful propaganda writer instantly snapped back "I''m getting paid for this!" "With what?! You''re rich!" Andrew couldn''t help but follow the footsteps of his master and snapped back in turn, Lest von Balis had been quite the adventurer back in the day and had amassed a good sum of money for his retirement. How did he know? He bragged about it to his parents once while he came over to guide him in . The grand elder stared at him for a moment before stating "One''s wealth cannot be determined by mere coin - I''ll kill your entire family, the mad god. Once you get older, you''ll realize the truth of these words." If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. "Isn''t it just an addition to ''I hoard weapons, my neighbour hoards food, my neighbour is my food supply''? The quote came from a book titled ''I''ll kill your entire family'', I think it''s pretty obvious violence is what he''s talking about." He asked, using one of the more common quotes to increase the power of his argument. Though Lest could only shake his head in disappointment "And this is why you''ll only understand when you''re older." "Sure, whatever." Andrew gave up on the topic, it didn''t seem that he would make any headway anyways. Seeing that he no longer had any contest, the old man continued "As all who could be saved had been brought to safety and healed as best as they could''ve been, Thalos and Zera united the people with a grand rousing speech, dulling their panic and bringing forth the courage of humanity. With tearful heart, Thalos once again began forming an expedition to the depths of the dungeon. Though he was saddened by the loss, he could not let it get in the way of progress... And now that''s that, you''ve been out for about a day." "...That''s it?" Andrew thought he was going to write an entire novel about how cool the guild master was. Putting the book back to where he had stored it, he explained "It''s just the synopsis, I''ll write the actual content of the book after this." Andrew''s blank face was enough to show his response, at least in his own opinion. "Alright, so, with that done. Let''s talk about the most important topic." He said gravely, putting away his means of writing as well "Your split of the slime core money, 200 andrus was taken off for transportation to the surface but because I myself healed you along with funding the other healer that took a look at you nothing else is taken out, leaving you with 12700 andrus." With the metallic sounds of coins slamming against wood, Andrew''s eyes passed over the money and asked the question he was expecting an answer to "So, about the hand." "What about it?" "It''s gone, I don''t have my right hand anymore." Andrew pursued. "Yes, that is kind of obvious. Talking about that, when you think about your lost hand do you happen to see flashes of something unpleasant or start to sweat? Anything strange at all." "N-No? But, my lost hand, is there any way to get it back? Is it find to not have it?" Andrew once again tried to get answers about his lost hand. "Hmm, really? When you think of what happened, does your heart beat start raising and you feel like something is watching you? It''s pretty important for me to know." "No, not really. I''d rather not remember it since it was a very painful experience, but no. Wait- Why are you asking this?" Andrew asked, very confused. Lest smiled "Well, to make sure you don''t have shell shock." "Shell shock?" "Yep, shell shock," He explained "I don''t know where it was originally discovered or where the word came from, but shell shock can be extremely troublesome for anyone. Whenever you think or are reminded of a trauma all kinds of bad stuff happens, I''ll explain it better later. But just know that if you had shell shock, when you next see a shot of acid coming from a slime you''ll instantly fall to the ground or run away in panic and fear- Maybe, it''s different for different people, I can''t be sure; I''m not someone who researches it." "Okay?" Andrew accepted quickly in an attempt to start talking about the hand "It''s good that I don''t have it then; but the hand." The grand elder though, did not follow Andrew''s lead and continued with what he was talking about "Well not exactly, I can''t be certain if you have shell shock or not without going back into the dungeon to test it out. Even if I don''t you should be going back inside, it''s best to be certain there aren''t any weaknesses in your mind." "Okay, I get it, sure: But the hand, talk about the hand please." ... "Fine, since I''m done making sure, sure. You''re lost hand," He paused in the middle of what he was saying, unknown to Andrew what was going on in his mind "Is not that big of a deal. You''re a mage, specifically a wizard. Not a warrior, so you don''t really need to use weapons. Not a builder or anything else menial or auxiliary, nor do you have nor can I teach it to you even if you wanted to learn it. There''s not a single actually important skill that requires both hands, or even just one for that matter." The words relieved Andrew, he had seriously been worried about that. He knew very well about the troubles one of his neighbours, mr. Then, had gone through just because he lost his left pinkie finger- Mostly because he was extremely angry about it even after having killed the person who had done the heinous deed- He was the one who owned the Guest house, Andrew could imagine him at least a bit cheery considering houses had apparently fallen apart. Though he couldn''t be sure about that, he didn''t have any details about how many houses got ruined by the dragon''s, probably accidental, destruction. But that did not mean he was happy about the whole situation "Is there a way to get it back?" Again, the old {Mad arcanist} thought for a moment "...Yes, there are even a good few methods; with many more I probably don''t know. Though each comes with a draw back, you could go to the a priest variant from the god of life and give a very, very, very large amount of money as donation, you could go to a mage that could do it and pay more directly, you could learn a magic skill that could regenerate limbs and train for a long time, you could maybe find an artifact that can do it if you''re lucky, maybe make a deal with a demon?" "What magic?" ", , , , maybe, , ,