We spent the next few hours cycling between regenerating mana and practicing that space bolt spell. A few hours before sundown, Geistig gave me a chance to try out making a mana crystal. Geistig cast a spell around me with his own mana and said “The barrier is up, Sylas. Go ahead and try it.”

I pulled at the mana within me — wood this time, as I felt safe with Geistig protecting me from the blowback — and siphoned it to my palm. Gradually, it turned from a liquid to a solid, growing more dense the more mana I poured in. I relinquished control of a point of it, waiting for it to become tangible. When it did so, from that point outwards, I crystalized more and more of it, until I was completely out of mana.

The crystal rumbled and shook, but didn’t break. It was ugly and misshapen, and would take some time to break down from wood mana to neutral mana like most crystals, but it was undoubtedly a mana crystal. I’d finally done it.

And then it blew up.

A cascade of splinters manifested from the crystal, and shot out in every direction. The explosion startled and blew me back a few inches, but Geistig’s barrier blocked the brunt of the blast.

“You got pretty far that time, Sylas. If you’d just held on to it a little longer, filled out the cracks a little more, it would have worked. You’ll get it next time we train on this. Until then, don’t try it again. Especially without me here to protect you when you fail.”

“I won’t.” I lied.

---

After Geistig left, I headed back into my subspace, into the terrarium with only bugs and corpses. Or at least that’s what I intended to put in there. Apparently my latest bout of insect wrangling in flytrap form included several squirrels and birds as well. I’d been looking for a form to replace the owl for flight, but apparently it came to me first.

After moving a few of the critters to Rhannu’s subspace, I broke off a small cube, maybe a foot in each direction, and placed a single fly in there, along with myself in fly form. I waited an hour to fully recharge, and tried again.

And blew up again. The fly died, and that tiny terrarium was destroyed, but I wasn’t deterred. I waited an hour and tried again. And again. And again.

On the fourth hour and fourth attempt, I finally succeeded. A fully formed and functioning mana cry—

On the fifth attempt, I succeeded. Or at least this one didn’t blow up. Yet.

Satisfied, but not fully trusting it, I left the crystal in the subspace and headed into town. I won’t be able to buy everything I need right now, but it’ll be good to get a price check.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out it’s far cheaper to just buy most of the food needed for my subspace’s inhabitants than to gather it myself. Between the fish, meat, and insects, it takes hours to gather everything. Meanwhile, it takes roughly one hundred gold, or one mana crystal, to pay for all of it. It only takes about an hour to make one mana crystal, most of that just waiting to recharge, plus the time it takes to make the portal in and out. Mana powered farming techniques really must be great if they’re willing to sell everything I need for so cheap. I should get into it, once I have the time. Maybe I can ask IKE, for the whopping price of 10,000 gold. Or maybe not.

After saying goodbye to the grocer, I headed to a pet store.

“Hello, customer. What are you looking for? A dog? A parrot? Or are you just looking to stock up on food?” The employee asked.

“I’m looking for slimes, actually. One that’s still neutral aligned, to be specific.”

“Oh, of course you are. Nobody ever looks for adult slimes. People just take them in when they’re small and cute, then abandon them when they’re old just because they ‘tried to drown them’. Have you even done your research on them yet? Do you know anything about them, or did you just think they’re cute and decided to buy one on a whim?”

“I did do my research, actually” I brought out my encyclopedia and turned to the page I’d written on slimes.

‘

Slime:

Size: 1 foot cube at E

Alignment: unaligned at E, any alignment at D

Rank: E-C

Description:

Slimes are amorphous blobs of liquid mana, and don’t have much in the way of distinguishing features beyond their color, size, alignment, and consistency.

Once baby slimes reach the E rank bottleneck, which generally takes 6 months outside of a mana well, they gain their alignment and adult D rank form as a defense mechanism to the first instance of higher rank mana they encounter.

Slimes have no senses other than touch, and mana detection of their alignment. Their sense of touch is strong enough where they can feel vibrations in the ground and through the air, and locate people or objects that way. Though they can hear words through these vibrations, they typically lack the intelligence to understand anything other than simple commands.

Personality:

Slimes are rather unintelligent, and do little except for sleep and eat. Pet slimes can be trained to do simple tasks like chasing after a ball or staying still. Only the best trained and highest ranks of slime can do much beyond that, though they are exceptionally rare to find as common pets.

Diet:

Slimes are rather simple to feed, sustaining themselves entirely on the mana of their alignment.

Combat:

Slimes are generally weak in combat, having very few offensive options, and no senses other than touch and mana detection of their alignment. They can only deal minor bludgeoning damage or attempt to drown their foes within them. Defensively, however, they are rather powerful.

Slimes are effectively immune to all spells or attacks using mana of their own alignment, as well as most forms of physical damage. Due to this, slimes are often purchased as living shields for adventuring parties attempting to fight a specific foe.

Origin:

Slimes are among the most basic elementals, and can be found everywhere.

When adult slimes touch, one of two things happens. If their alignment is the same, they fuse into a single bigger and more powerful slime. If their alignments differ, the intersection where the slimes touched is expelled from their bodies, eventually becoming a new neutral mana slime once the aligned mana breaks down into unaligned mana.

‘

The pet store owner read through my notes, showing a worried expression as he went further along. “This information is correct, but I can’t help but worry that you have a section specifically for combat. What exactly do you plan on using your slime for? I can’t sell you one in good conscience if you plan on doing anything dangerous with them.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t plan on taking them into combat. I just have a leakage problem that I need some neutral slimes for.”

“Uh… sure. So long as you don’t plan on harming them. How many do you want to purchase?”

“I don’t know how many I’ll need yet. How much do they cost?”

“About 10,000 gold each.”

I gaped my mouth open slightly. I was expecting a few hundred gold, not ten thousand. It would take about a week to make enough mana crystals for even one. I can’t afford that. Certainly not when I likely need several of them. What other options could I take? Do I have to hunt for baby slimes myself? Maybe I could find a few adults and breed them, but that would take a good bit of time. Both to find them, and to wait for nature to take its course. What other options do I have?

“They don’t necessarily have to still be alive.”

“I’m sorry, what?” The storekeeper asked, horrified.

“Surely not every slime makes it until they’re sold. I can get by with just a corpse or two, if you tell me when it happens.”

“... If I had sold you them alive, would you have killed them for whatever the hell you need them for?”

“Uh…” I don’t actually know if something needs to already be dead to transfer them to my subspace. I should check on that later. “Probably not?”

The clerk reached beneath his counter, and pulled out a staff with two hollow barrels on one end, and metal and fire mana enchantments on the other. “Get out of my store!”