Slime Evolution

Chapter 393 - Infiltration III

”I couldn’t help but hear our young friend’s question,” the newcomer said, his voice coming out in a warm, paternal tone that tried to mask a deep-seated arrogance.

He stopped in front of Alice and Dylan, sizing them up with quick, rather calculating eyes, lingering a few seconds longer on the girl’s beautiful face before returning to normal. ”I am Garius, leader of the third combat division of the Broken Suns. And I can assure you, Dan, that our guild does not live on cheap promises alone.”

Marcus and Julian quickly gave a respectful salute, their eyes shining as they saw the high ranking officer step into their negotiation. ”Leader Garius! We were just introducing the headquarters to Lily and Dan. They’re players who just reached level thirteen hunting independently as a duo!”

Garius’s eyes gleamed with a greedy intensity upon hearing the mention of level thirteen.

For players operating without the support of a large corporate organization, reaching that level as a duo was a genuinely impressive feat. They were rough diamonds, the kind of combat force that would bring immense prestige to his division if he brought them into his group.

”Level thirteen? Playing only as a duo?” Garius asked, his smile growing even wider. He put his hands on his hips, his golden plates creaking slightly with the movement. ”That’s extraordinary! Marcus, Julian, you did an exceptional job bringing these two talents into our home. Tell me, my young friends, what is your Base? With that kind of progress, you must have some interesting specialization.”

Alice stepped forward, showing that innocent, excited look she had kept up since the moment they left the tavern. ”Oh, I got really lucky when I went through my level eleven evolution! My starter class upgraded into a Rare Class focused on agile combat and physical precision! I can land quick strikes that break enemies’ posture with ease!”

Garius nodded, visibly impressed. ”A Rare Class for physical combat! That’s of immense value to our frontlines. And you, Dan?”

Dylan kept his expression serious and analytical, but allowed a slight trace of controlled pride to surface in his gaze to keep the act believable. ”I wasn’t as lucky with my class, which is still common for now. But I made up for it with my racial base. I awakened a Rare Race with high mana affinity and elemental resistance.”

As he said this, Dylan opened his mouth slightly, showing his somewhat larger fangs, and smiled with pride.

Lohan, watching everything through the clone hidden inside Dylan, thought his lie was brilliant.

By saying he had a Rare Race, Dylan justified his mana density and physical agility without needing to reveal his Rare Class, not handing over such relevant secrets to opponents.

Considering that a Double Rare Base was very close to the rarity and potential of an Epic Base, if these people found out about that regarding Dylan, it would be extremely hard for them to leave afterward, given how insistent these people could become upon seeing someone so valuable.

”A Rare Race and a Rare Class!” Garius exclaimed, striking his own breastplate with a genuine enthusiasm he couldn’t hide. To him, those two were the golden ticket to consolidating his influence within the Broken Suns. ”You two are truly extraordinary! With the right support and the elite equipment our guild can provide, you’ll reach level 14 in less than a week!”

Garius gestured toward the golden tapestry behind him, his tone becoming extremely proud and confident. ”To answer his earlier question, Dan, we were the ones responsible for solving a magical corruption problem at the northern rift of Thalendor. The Elf Council was paralyzed with fear, not knowing how to contain the creatures from the void, but we stepped in decisively and brought peace back to that region.”

”Unfortunately an achievement like that isn’t declared in Elysium’s Global announcements, otherwise we would definitely have even more prestige than other guilds that rely on nothing but luck to grow.” He sighed, feigning resignation.

The division leader leaned in a little closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone that exuded an irritating pretentiousness Lohan knew all too well from the real world. ”With the help of our valuable partners and allies among the city’s nobles, we managed to access resources and suppression spells that made the operation much easier and more economical than if we’d tried to purify the site by brute force. We solved the problem the mages couldn’t, cleaning up the whole area and ensuring Thalendor’s safety with an efficiency the Council had to publicly acknowledge.”

Hearing those words, Lohan’s core vibrated with suspicion. ”Economical”? ”With help from nobles”? A magical rift connected to the void that threatened Thalendor’s mana flow wasn’t something solved with ”economy” or ”suppression,” from what Archmage Yrnhea had said.

Yrneha’s insistence that it sounded like an amateur fraud began to make complete sense to the Slime.

The Broken Suns had probably just created a temporary barrier with the help of some artifact provided by the noble families to simulate a full purification, keeping the source of the corruption active so they could keep exploiting the political influence the ”solution” to the problem had earned them on the council.

’Considering the players’ growth speed, maybe they believe that by the time this problem blows up, they’ll already have enough strength to deal with it head on?’ Lohan wondered, trying to form a theory that made sense of such a dangerous attitude.

While Garius kept bragging, superficially detailing his division’s supposed glories to impress Alice and Dylan, Lohan noticed movement on the second floor through the clone that remained motionless at the base of the stone pillar.

A player wearing a dark blue robe marking him as a high ranking Broken Suns officer, whose mana signature was dense and stable, approached the upper stairs.

He carried a glowing runic tome and walked briskly toward the guild leaders’ meeting room, the exact place Lohan needed to monitor to obtain the concrete proof Archmage Yrneha had demanded of him.

The officer came down the stairs and passed through the invisible mana barrier.

In the millisecond his mana signature made contact with the detection spell, the barrier opened a small gap to let him through without triggering the magical alarm.

”It’s now,” Lohan thought, activating his perfect parallel processing coordination.

The small slime clone, transparent and completely flattened against the wooden floor, moved at the maximum speed the viscous flow allowed at level eleven.

Sliding silently like a liquid shadow through the gaps, the small blue clone positioned itself exactly behind the officer’s heel as he prepared to climb the stairs again after picking up some important reports from the reception desk.

When the man stepped back to go up, the detection spell didn’t trigger any alarm. Lohan’s clone slipped through the opening at the exact instant the barrier closed, crossing the security threshold without emitting a single fluctuation of mana that could be picked up by the mansion’s sensors.

”Infiltration of the second floor complete,” Lohan told Lisa and Alice, feeling a deep satisfaction rise through his core. ”The clone is climbing the stairs right behind the blue robed officer. I’m about to reach the main meeting room. Try to get something useful out of Garius, or just keep him busy talking to buy me more time.”

”Understood, Lohan,” Alice replied mentally, her tone keeping Lily’s lightness as she kept laughing at Garius’s unfunny jokes. ”We’ve got things fully under control down here. Find out what these idiots are hiding under their golden sun.”

Lohan’s clone kept sliding silently through the deep shadows of the second floor, staying pressed against the wooden baseboard as the officer headed toward an imposing oak door reinforced with silence runes and thermal barriers.