With that out of the way it was time to buckle down and focus to allow the healing to take place, this detour had taken up a lot of Resh’s time and it was eager to get back to the matter at hand. Growing denser, and there was a long way to go to achieve that. Yes, Strength was the reason it was pursuing this path but there would be other benefits to be had as well. There always were.

So it happened four hours later, after having to go in and out of the soil five or six times that Resh finally fully recovered its digestion glands throughout its body and was able to resume. A wonderful side effect of the process was that Natural Plant Healing had gained a lot of experience. Frustratingly though, because of the short amount of time that Resh could spend above ground it had been unable to max out the Targeted Healing Talent for any period. By the time it got to forty per cent, it was time to dive back into the soil. This Talent would not be fully explored or tested until Resh could live above ground again.

Natural Plant Healing has increased to Level 17!

Now the Slime was sitting below the ground and ready to try once again in making Consume more efficient. Resolved to start where it had made the last debilitating error, Resh focused once more on the digestion glands, one in particular to start. It was time to start. Resh used Consume and as before followed the movement of the matter through its body until it got to the digestion gland, gradually pouring a small amount of Mana in, a fraction of a point at a time. The gland hungrily absorbed it and boosted the speed at which it digested. It was many times faster. With such a small amount of mana, Resh had managed to digest the small amount of matter almost instantly. It was hard to gauge how much of a boost the process had received. Resh tried again with a larger amount of matter, one gram, it was what Resh had started with at the beginning, now a fraction of what Consume could do. This time following it through the whole process from absorbing through to the digestion Resh continued to gradually feed mana to the process. A small trickle all the way. This sped up to process but Resh thought it could go faster if it pushed a little harder. Resh had trickled a single point of mana through to the functional parts of its body to handle the soil matter that was being processed. This had increased the speed of the process by ten per cent. Further experimentation would yield more concrete results.

Resh tried the process again with two points of mana steadily given, then three, all the way up to eleven. At that point, it started to feel the strain. There seemed to be a linear relationship between the amount of mana expended through the process and how much faster the process would go. So that meant when it eased off to just ten mana it would double the speed of Consumption. However, with the amount that Resh could Consume each hour, it would require two hundred mana to continuously speed up the process, which was without even thinking about how much more it would be able to Consume later on. This was going to be an expensive Talent in terms of mana cost.

Regardless of the cost though, Resh had achieved what it wanted after a lot of effort, and when Resh saw the result it was ecstatic, the cost would not have resulted in a more worthwhile prize!

You have gained the Talent Consuming Blorenar, you have gained your first World Talent. It will improve your ability to add matter to your body, anything you consume on the Planet Blorenar will while using this talent will have improved effects. Each minute of focus will improve your Consumption by 1% up to a maximum of 100%. Every 1% boost to your Consumption speed will also cost you 1MP per hour that you Consume. Each gram in Consuming Blorenar increases the experience Consume will gain by 5% up to 500% bonus based on the amount of boost you give it. Evolve this Talent to get greater bonuses. No Active Skills can be employed while using this talent, all your attention must be focused on the process of Consuming from the Planet. An additional feature of this World Talent is that any Creatures with traits that can be Assimilated will have up to a 10% greater chance to be successfully incorporated into your being.

This was even more incredible than Resh could have hoped for! Oh yes!! Resh was overjoyed! More mana would be needed to make full use of this but with this Talent, Resh’s capabilities were going to skyrocket! Immediately after that Resh’s face fell as it realised that it did not have anywhere near enough mana to fully make use of this incredible Talent it had just gained. It would be able to boost the process a little for a long time or the maximum for a short amount of time. Grumbling Resh got to work, sinking deeper into the soil as it Consumed, this time it boosted the skills capability by nine per cent. It cost 9MP per hour but it was worth it as Resh increased its Consumption from twenty grams per hour to almost twenty-two, and it didn’t cost Resh more than its natural mana usage while Zen Meditating. It took a few minutes to ramp up but once it did. Wow! Resh saw the results immediately. Not only that, but the experience Resh was gaining also rapidly increased. Five, ten, fifteen up to forty-five per cent, and that was compounded with the fifty per cent boost it was already getting from merging Absorb and Digest.

All in all, it was a great situation, but Resh was not satisfied with just that. It was time to up the speed again, use up all of its mana. Resh pumped up the boost to twenty per cent then thirty, then up to the maximum, consuming ninety-one mana each hour that it was active. Mana slowly drained away faster than it could be replaced but the effect was clear.

By the time Resh ran out of mana about three and a half hours later it had gained some significant bulk and now was back to just under half a kilogram in weight. This is a great feeling! Being back on top is so good!

Resh had nothing but good thoughts from having bottomed out its mana…and a massive headache. It had also experienced the full effect of using the World Talent and the feeling was incredibly addictive. It needed that high again and again. But for now, if it tried it could not get to that top point without running out of mana first. Resh decided it was time to push to the surface and use Natural Plant Healing again and with focus, hopefully, get its mana up again so that it could keep repeating the cycle.

The difficulty with focusing on one skill through a Talent though was that it meant that no other skills could be used at the same time. It reduced the usefulness of the Talents but still made them worthwhile in specific niche situations. That meant Resh would be continuing to use them. Luckily passive abilities continued to work so Resh could see, hear, smell, taste and feel just as normal. This made the whole situation far more palatable.

You have just received +3.1 Luck!

It was time to once again knuckle down and get to work. Rising to the surface Resh began what was promising to be a long and boring process to growth. Just under ten hours of recovering mana followed by just under five hours of consuming made things slower than if Resh just Consumed the whole time but this was a long play. With thought given to what other skills it could improve at the same time and Natural Plant Healing, Consume and Land Dwelling were all given their fair share of consideration, all skills that would help with Resh’s future survival, and that thought process was rewarded.

You have gained +1 Intellect! For thinking through and using more than just the most direct strategy for immediate growth, sacrificing short term gain for a more solid foundation and better long-term gains will be rewarded.

Once again whatever this thing is loves me! I need to keep pushing. Resh patted itself on the proverbial back as it congratulated itself on the stat gain. Then it continued to cycle through its skills, gaining Weight with each pass.

So Resh found itself large once again four days later. Ready to Consolidate and reap the benefits once more. It had made some substantial gains during that time and was ready.