Author’s Corner: Sorry for the late chapter today folks, had to take down Christmas decorations today. Busy busy.

The next few hours passed uneventfully, and I even managed to get Dark Affinity to 10%! However, after that, I began seeing movement again through the trees. Part of me thought that Arriane had come back for some reason, and that part was rather happy for the chance to see the naked plant lady. Of course, that part was located entirely in my lower body.

Sadly though, what I saw was not the movement of a beautiful dryad, but the birth of a monster. Using my X-Ray Vision, combined with Zoom and Aura Sight, I was able to watch as a particularly dense mass of plant mana surged into a fallen seed on the ground. As it did so, the seed thickened, becoming a round sphere similar to the Seed of Plants that I could refine. Around the green pellet, the mana began to condense in the form of a viscous liquid. It was at this point that I realized the monster being birthed here was not a dryad, but a plant-based slime.

With interest, I watched the process until it was completed. I had never seen a slime before, let alone seeing as it was formed. More and more of the liquid mana poured in around the slime’s core, until it had a diameter of a meter. At that point, it seemed to stop, the slime sitting there with an occasional jiggle of its body.

Huh… If that’s all it takes to form a slime, then druids should be able to do so by liquefying a layer of mana around an element seed. I’ll have to experiment with that later. If I can produce slimes of my own, I could learn all of their special powers and add them to my repertoire. Plus, if I can make them loyal, they’d be an excellent bodyguard for my real body. I began thinking up plans for the slimes as I watched the new one idle in the spot it had appeared. From what I could see, it was not sentient by any means, and was simply a mindless monster.

Shrugging my shoulders, I got up and went over towards it. Navigating around the trees that were in between us, it started moving as soon as I was in sight. Though, its moving was to try and eat me, I think. It was difficult to tell, because all it did was bubble hungrily and slowly slither towards me. Okay… if I plan to make slime bodyguards, I am going to have to make them better than this.

Seeing that I could evade the slime simply by slowly walking, I watched it for a little while. To my surprise, it had an acidic quality to it. Any of the leaves or twigs it passed over dissolved almost immediately. Naturally, I didn’t want to subject myself to that. Thinking back to what I knew about slimes, their weaknesses in games were traditionally magic and energy attacks, and they were all but impervious to physical attacks.

Thankfully, I had next to know physical attacks, aside from punching. And no, I was not about to punch a slowly rolling ball of acid. I did, however, want to do a few tests. Pulling my magic staff out of my inventory, I focused on the seeds I had ‘planted’ in it. Using the Seed of Void as a focus, I formed a field of void magic around the slime. Instantly, its body dissolved, leaving the core lying in a puddle of gooey acid. When I lifted this field, the slime slowly began to reform itself, a process that took over a full minute to complete.

Interesting, so slimes are literally constructed of pure magic. Take that away and they break down. Next, I shot a ball of plant mana at the slime, seeing if it was possible to simply will its core away from it. That test… did not work out as planned. Rather than being controlled by the plant mana, it was strengthened. The slime immediately increased in radius by another foot, and its speed also increased somewhat. I did a bad.

Next up, fire! My experiment continued, this time sending a thin beam of fire at the slime, which visibly shook as the attack connected. I watched as the slime slowly reduced in size, apparently burned away by the magic attack. I then repeated the process with wind and light, and the same thing happened. By the time I finished, it barely had a layer of slime, and couldn’t move at all.

Just as I was about to destroy it, I had a thought that made me realize what an opportunity this was. I had an already defeated slime in front of me, with no power to resist. Time to study! There was a chance my later experiments would result in failure, so I should take advantage of this while I can. There was even the possibility that studying this slime would help me create my own later.

After I knelt down next to the slime, I began pushing my Mana Sense into it, and frowned as I saw the slime trying to absorb it. Right away, I created a barrier of light mana around the slime to prevent it from growing while I worked. And honestly, the slime was currently only six inches in diameter, making the study process extremely quick.

As I had suspected, the nucleus of the slime was a Seed of Plants, but it seemed to be a bit more pure than the ones I refined. Likely, that meant it was a medium grade seed. When I asked Celeste, she confirmed my theory. That also gave me a hint on how to refine seeds of higher quality.

Incoming call from Jacobs.

There was a slight ringing in my head as the window appeared, and I accepted the call. “Hey man, what’s up?”

“Wanted to check in. You make it to Crailor okay?”

“Not quite. Hit an alien blockade, and crash landed on a hungry jungle planet.” I said as I continued studying the slime in depth.

“A hungry… jungle planet? Anyways, that’s not important. You said an alien blockade? I just got a message from my other friend a bit ago that was heading there, and he said the same thing. Looks like some race is making their move to expand their territory… and they’re not doing it nicely.”

“I’d say not. Looked like a monster from a horror movie. All thin limbed with an elongated dome head, long blade-like tail, and its blood was acid.” I briefly described the alien that I had fought on the Nostromo to Jacobs, who seemed to be passing the information on to someone else.

“Looks like they are called the ‘Klax’. I asked them why, and you want to know what they said?” There was a hint of laughter in his voice, so I said sure. “They only speak in clicks and clacks, and Clix was already taken by a different species.”

I let out a chuckle at that. With my study of the slime complete, I compressed the light barrier to remove the last traces of it clinging to the core. Afterwards, I leaned down and picked the core up, placing it in my inventory. Never know when a medium grade seed could come in handy. “So, the Klax attacked your other friend too?”

“Yeah, from what I’ve heard, they are attacking any ship that comes within a hundred parsecs of their borders. Since Crailor was on the edge of space between wood elves and the Klax, that means they have essentially claimed the planet as their own.”

“Sounds more like they’re getting ready for war or something. It wasn’t exactly a small fleet I saw taking care of the Nostromo.”

There was a pause at that. “You seriously rode on a spaceship called the Nostromo..?”

“Uhm… yeah, why?”

“Dude… that’s like getting on a ship named the Titanic. You really haven’t watched the old horror movies, have you?”

“Did they get remade in holo-cards?” I shrugged my shoulders as I stood up and walked back to my previous spot. Old DVRs were expensive, and the quality wasn’t nearly as good as a hologram movie.

“I… don’t think so, but that’s not the point!” He sighed, and I could just tell he was shaking his head. “Anyways, they should be able to rescue you before too long. They’ve got a bunch of other people they’re having to pull out of escape pods or planets from attacks like that. So they’re just talking about doing it all at once.”

“Sweet. Though it’s not all that bad here. I’ve managed to convince the trees not to eat me.” I smirked slightly, knowing how that must have sounded.

“....Sure, whatever. I give up.” He said with a sigh, letting the connection end. I laughed lightly, setting my staff down and looking at it.

I did not enchant my weapons yet, partially because there is the chance I’ll need to take them with me to the real world if monsters start spawning. However, this staff already is far too magical for me to put it in my grove to transfer. So, there is no reason for me not to enchant it!

Probing the aura of the staff, I found that it would be suitable for either durability increase, wisdom increase, or attack increase. Out of those three, the only one that really mattered to me was the wisdom one. This staff was not meant for fighting, at least not a physical fight.

With a bit of focus, I recalled the runes I needed, and began tracing them in the air over the staff, empowering it with my enchantment. If my skill was higher, I would directly give it a special effect, but right now this was all I was able to do. Jacobs probably had a high enough skill to do, but he was definitely too far away to help me directly. Maybe if I called him, he could walk me through the process, but I’d rather not risk nine element seeds and a mana gem on a phoned in experiment.

Though, with this, I began thinking about what kind of enchantments I might be able to do with this staff. There was one that I thought would be really good, and that was the ability to fire elemental blasts from the staff, using different elements depending on which seed or seeds I focused on. If that was possible, it would be really good, because I could use any element that I put a seed into the staff for it.

Another thought I had would be to enchant it with a barrier spell, since defense is always a good thing to have. However, I couldn’t do either one yet, so instead I turned my attention elsewhere. Specifically, I wanted to try copying some slime traits. “Celeste, going to need to take you off again. If I turn my skin into acid, would rather I didn’t dissolve you.”

The holographic woman appeared on my wrist, ready to raise a fit about what I had said, until she heard the last part. Then, there was an audible gulp, and she slightly nodded her head. With that, I went ahead and put her into the grove, before closing my eyes to focus. What I wanted to do here was change my skin into the same substance the slime had coated itself with. If I did that, I might gain some resistance to physical attacks, as well as an acid touch.

Ssss….. “GAAAAHHHH!!!!” I let out a blood curdling scream, as my experiment unfortunately worked. However, I immediately cancelled it and began healing myself. Note… to self… acidic skin burns muscles and veins too!

The moment my skin had turned into that of the slime, there was a massive drop in my health due to my skin trying to dissolve the rest of my body. If I had waited even a couple more seconds, I might have accidentally killed myself with that experiment. Instead, I was collapsed on the ground, struggling to breathe as I repeatedly healed myself. It took a full ten minutes before the pain faded away enough that I was willing to move my body, and another ten minutes before it was completely gone.

After the pain was gone, I summoned Celeste back to my wrist. “Never… again…” I did not even want to try doing a full conversion into a slime now, because the mere thought of turning into that plant slime filled me with pain.

Celeste appeared at my wrist, looking up to me with a worried expression. “What happened…?”

“Acid skin is officially a terrible idea.”

She winced a bit as I said that. “Ouch…”

“That is the understatement of the millennium.”

No longer concerning myself with the outside world, I did my first attempt at a Runic spell. It was a pretty basic one, and should function as a perimeter alarm. All I did was a ‘lasting, field, intruder, sound’ set of runes and cast it around myself. The small mana requirement made my eye twitch as I realized just how little mana is needed for Runic spells. If I didn’t have the druid’s Worldcasting method, I might put in more work and learn the hundred million runes to master that language.

Anyways, after I set my alarm, I focused purely on cultivating. At my current levels of mastery, I could focus on all four of my 8% affinities, and also Lightning Affinity, which was only at 6%. Doing so took all of my attention, but with my wings absorbing the surrounding plant mana I had more than enough mana regeneration to sustain it at this level. I wouldn’t be able to get them to 10% before being rescued if I split my attention between five affinities, but it is the easiest way to grow my grove, since I am evening out the balance of mana.