Slime Evolution

Chapter 409 - Oops

For Lohan, the silence of Thalendor’s night was broken only by the distant hum of urban activity and the constant messages floating on the game’s chat panel.

Even lying near the elven capital’s living wood walkway, keeping his main body in a state of almost complete physical stillness, the Slime’s mind was buzzing through a complex network of data.

To keep from passing out from sleepiness and boredom, his Collective Synaptic Sync ran without interruption, bringing in periodic information from his various clones scattered both through the Broken Suns’ base and with the Astralis members who kept grinding monsters nonstop.

The most tedious part was paying attention to every whisper in the hallways of that place, every creaking door, every recruitment attempt aimed at unsuspecting rookies, and every footstep of the enemy guild’s guards, all transmitted directly and without delay to his consciousness, forcing him to map out that guild’s internal structure.

To Lohan’s relief, the monotony of that long term espionage was broken up by the messages Lisa kept sending nonstop through Elysium’s private chat.

The white fox stayed at the headquarters tree, actively taking part in the recruitment interviews, and even with his clone there sending blurred, heavily delayed memories, Lisa made a point of reporting every detail of the candidates to her friend and battle companion. She described their abilities, the rare classes appearing in the main meeting hall, and, most importantly, asked for Lohan’s opinion on who should or shouldn’t be accepted as an Astralis Requiem member, showing respect for his opinions.

This behavior of Lisa’s helped the young man a lot in dealing with the crushing boredom of his solitary vigil beneath Thalendor’s leaves.

Even physically far from Mythlorien and unable to talk directly with the candidates approved in the first recruitment screening, Lohan felt deeply included in the selection of the guild’s new members. Knowing the guild’s President valued his tactical judgment and that no final decision was made without his input brought a comforting, deeply pleasant sense of partnership.

He replied with whatever he could through the chat, also making an effort not to disrupt the recruitment with too many questions or unhelpful input where he couldn’t actually contribute, returning the trust Lisa, Alice, and Dylan placed in him.

Besides Lisa’s frequent updates, another great source of entertainment came from the memories and data streams he continuously received from the clones staying with the guild’s other warriors.

Dylan and Alice’s groups, operating independently, and Skye’s group, who kept up their own hunts through the deep forests, running intense grinding sessions to level up while the leaders handled the recruitment.

It was even considered requiring their presence at the guild headquarters as a show of force for the newcomers, but thinking that this would not only be a waste of everyone’s time, they also knew they didn’t need to worry about something like that, considering Astralis already had enough reputation to ignore small tricks like this.

Through the mental connection of his core, Lohan could tune his perception into their battles, using the different perspectives as if they were biological television channels.

The quality was just as bad as his clone’s feed from inside the guild base, but between watching videos at 144p or watching nothing at all, he wasn’t going to complain about having some entertainment.

Even with the low quality of the memory transmission reaching him, he could still watch and understand how the groups fought, which helped him a lot in better understanding the subordinates he’d need to command in future battles.

Best of all, this constant activity from his companions resulted in continuous deliveries of biomass and passive experience feeding Lohan’s core every few minutes, ensuring he wouldn’t fall behind in leveling, feeling the satisfaction of watching his strength grow without having to lift a finger during this period of stillness.

Sure, during this time he wasn’t wasting time doing nothing besides watching the Broken Suns and following the vanguard’s hunts.

Lohan started using this free watch time to train his magic control and his variations on the use of ice magic.

He wanted to go beyond the simple linear cast the system executed automatically, seeking a manual, controlled mastery over the frost element through an intense process of trial and error that demanded patience.

In the past, he’d already run complex tests with the ice spike magic circle, back when both his Mana and his magic core were still weak. So much so that he’d already managed to control the size and speed at which the Ice Spikes flew during combat, so he at least had a foundation to build his relearning of magic control from.

Lohan concentrated the cold energy inside his gelatin, trying to find within the magic circle where the freezing rate, the crystal structure density, and the physical direction of the icy projectile all sat.

The problem was a magic circle was extremely complex, with small fluctuations of Mana at certain points being more than enough to make the spell fail and trigger small bursts of uncontrolled Mana.

But even so, with nothing better to do with his main body, he spent hours focusing his mind on analyzing the magic circle.

The training process was full of mishaps that resulted in small, painful accidents for the Slime.

In one attempt to increase the Ice Spike’s density without increasing its overall size, the magic circle’s structure couldn’t withstand the pressure applied and cracked violently.

Extreme cold spread outward, causing a freezing burn that injured his membrane and scattered small bluish shards of ice across the nearby walkway’s wood.

Lohan had to spend some units of biomass right away to heal the ruptured skin and ease the sting of the burn that was bothering him.

In another control failure, a sharp, high pitched crack echoed out, accompanied by a sudden magical fluctuation that bent the light around Lohan for a split second.

’Oops...’ Lohan thought, realizing that the reaction to this had been much bigger than he’d planned.

The noise and the elemental static had been small, but in the now deep silence of the elven capital’s night, it was enough to draw the unwanted attention of a Broken Suns member patrolling the outer perimeter of the enemy mansion, just a few meters away.

The man in the orange cloak stopped his walk abruptly, his eyes narrowing suspiciously toward the exact spot where Lohan was stationed beneath a twisted root of the great oak.

Lohan instantly froze all his mana activity, pulling every particle of energy back to the center of his magic core.

He activated pigmentation mimicry and shadow camouflage at maximum level, flattening his blue mass against the tree’s dark bark until he looked like nothing more than a harmless, damp protrusion of the place’s own natural surroundings.

He kept his magical breathing completely at zero, calm and under control, hoping that man, probably forced to work this late at night, wouldn’t be dedicated enough to come investigate what that had been.

But unfortunately, luck wasn’t on Halon’s side that night.

And surprisingly, amidst this already delicate situation, a meeting was getting underway inside the Broken Suns base, and at a time that was highly unusual, judging by what he had observed so far.