Several weeks had passed since Mary-Ann had moved into the castle and she was settling in nicely. It turns out that there were several human staff members who attended to laundry, cooking, and other things that Phyron did not trust the goblins to do but they lived in the local village and only worked at the castle when he needed them to. Apparently it was cheaper, especially when he was traveling. It turns out that her new master was a bit of a penny pincher, which is apparently why he used so many goblin slaves. They were cheap to buy, and would, generally speaking, eat almost anything making them cheap to maintain as well. Unfortunately they were also quite stupid.

Mary-Ann lamented this fact as she scraped up the remains of one of the aforementioned goblins off the wall. Why it tried to pet the rabid werewolf that Phyron was using in his latest experiment was beyond her. Unfortunately the creature had been spattered against her freshly drawn spell runes and while they should be nearly indestructible while active, she didn’t put it past the goblins to somehow mess them up.

She would have had Al clean this up but he had been sent to pick up an order for her master. He was the only one she would trust around spell work as all the other goblins slaves were even worse than ordinary goblins. Given his nature, her master probably bought the cheapest goblins he could find but as they say, you get what you pay for. It was her guess that Al’s habit of shoving his fingers up his nose lowered the seller’s estimation of his intelligence.

Phyron’s experiments into slime husbandry had taken a turn when he started using the blood of various magical creatures to mix with goo from the various slimes. Some would be absorbed, some mixed, and some, like unicorns, caused more energetic reactions. The new window on the east side of the room can attest to just how energetic. Many of his experiments revolved around a strange iridescent slime he kept locked in special box he kept hidden when not in use. Unlike any other slime she had ever heard of this one could form separate slimes when a piece was separated from the main body rather than becoming lifeless goo. Surprisingly, if you did something to one of the separated slimes, the main body would respond to the same stimuli as if it had already experienced it. Phyron theorized that there was some kind of magical communication between them.

Today he had pulled some goo from the iridescent slime and the purple slime, some werewolf blood and mixed them inside a containment circle along with some crystals and other spell components but before he could activate the spell to forcibly combine them one of the goblins had gotten the idea to pet the werewolf, which led to Mary-Ann cleaning the active runes in the middle of potentially dangerous spell work while her master went to get some fresh components.

She had just finished scraping one last toe off of the rune work when she turned around to find another goblin playing with a couple of glowing crystals just outside of the containment circle.

“Stop!” she yelled just as the goblin banged the crystals together. At this point several things happened all at once. First Phyron opened the door with his arms full of glass vials; second the werewolf broke out of his chains as another goblin tried to pet it; third the goblin banging the crystals together looked up at Mary-Ann questioningly, and finally Mary-Ann groaned as she did he master’s infamous facepalm. This tableau held for the briefest second, during which Phyron immediately tried to cast a shield spell but even his reflexes proved too slow as the crystals in the goblin’s hands detonated.

The force of the explosion would have killed Mary-Ann if the raw magic had not activated the spell. Even if the explosion had not killed her the werewolf would have torn her apart a second latter if he had not been torn in half as he lunged across the spells circular barrier, further fueling the magic. Instead of either of these outcomes she seemed to just vanish as the spell continued to light up the room after the explosion ended.

Phyron, on the other hand, had managed to get his shielding spell up blocking out the after effects and flying debris. Getting up carefully and brushing the remains of the spell components that he had been carrying when he opened the door off his robe. He kept his shield up as he carefully entered the room again.

The room was in complete shambles; the blast had destroyed the table and shattered the wooden shutters. The cloud of raw manna was thick enough it could be seen with bare eyes and could instantly kill or twist nearly anything, as was shown to be true when Phyron conjured wind to blow it out the window and into the face of a passing bird. The birds luck must have been phenomenal as instead of dying, exploding, or mutating into some twisted monstrosity, it instead warped into a golden phoenix!

Seeing this Phyron quickly tried to capture it but even disoriented from its transformation the mythical beast was able to quickly recover and fly out of reach. Phyron rushed to the window and stuck his head out in hopes of getting another shot at the nearly extinct species but had to quickly jump back as something shot by the window glowing brightly. Phyron looked at the birds parting gift and decided to give up on it as it was either unusually intelligent or lucky, either of which would be dangerous with such a creature. He would have to have a goblin gather the golden phoenix excrement from the side of the building as even it was a prized spell component.

Flustered as he stepped further away from the window Phyron nearly entered the spells containment circle before stopping himself. Cursing at the loss of spell components and the cost of paying out death benefits for yet another apprentice he was about to dismantle the circle to have the goblins start cleaning up the mess when he discovered something trapped within it.

The floor outside of the circle was covered in shattered wood, crystal, glass, and various spell components along with the remains of the goblin that had caused the explosion and oddly the lower half of a werewolf. Compared to the mess outside of the spell circle, the inside was amazingly clean with everything having been converted into a small slime that Phyron nearly mistook for a puddle of goo from a failed transformation until it quivered back and forth on its own. Looking at what remained outside of the spell circle Phyron quickly starting writing notes in his journal.

Truth be told this was the real reason he kept goblin slaves. During his first apprenticeship his master was experimenting on goblins and was trying to use them as both spell components and slave labor. Phyron honestly thought that the old man was just making things up to experiment on cheaply to keep his royal grants but as an apprentice he wasn’t stupid enough to call him on it. During this time he noticed that not only were the goblins largely immune to raw manna, but that they always seemed to do something that would cause completely unexpected results. True, most of these results were rather explosive in nature but they often created something fantastical. As a result of one of those experiments his original master was either killed or turned into a llama, no one is sure which as the llama promptly escaped while doing a funky dance.

Phyron would never have made the connection between goblins and strange spell results if his second master had not made him write an extensive report on his previous master’s experiments. After he noticed the connection he whitewashed his report so that it wasn’t apparent. He intended to save that information for his own future experiments. After having few results to show for all his research into slimes he had purchased a large number of goblin slaves to see if they could push his research in the right direction.

Personally he believed that goblins were the chosen children of the god Chaos, though he would never mention this to anyone as it would be considered heresy. He had originally considered Chaos’ twin brother Random to be their patron but Random was also the god of luck and way too many goblins blew themselves up for luck to play a hand. Still, using them has given him some spectacular results, even if it cost him a few apprentices along the way.

After finishing his notes Phyron was initially disappointed as he looked into the containment circle. The slime had the same iridescent sheen as the one from the last explosion but then he noticed that it had random streaks of purple running through out it.

“Ha!” Phyron barked out a single loud laugh triumphantly. This was exactly what he had been looking for, a way to combine multiple slimes so that he could create a hybrid with all the advantages of a green slime without the narcotic effects.

Checking the active spell script Phyron was pleasantly surprised to find that it was largely intact and functional. Activating the sealing function allowed him to reshape the circle into a globe of force containing the new slime. Shrinking the globe until it was barely larger that the slime he covered it with a Magi-ware® container and ended the spell. The slime stopped for a moment then seemed to go berserk, slamming itself against the sides of the container causing Phyron to fumble and nearly drop it.

“Now, now little one, don’t hurt yourself.” Phyron smiled at the vainly struggling slime before taking it to a fresh lab to study.