“Okay, try again” I said, using my voice array to talk directly to Merlin. He nods and lifts a silverY staff with a large lime green bad moon opal at its top.

The stone shines brightly before shooting a single pale green beam of power. The beam passes through special arrays, losing its green luster and turning into a whitish beam.

“It worked.” Merlin says, “There's almost no necrotic mana in the beam.”

Merlin is looking a bit different, he’s holding the staff with a hand made of transparent crystal, his black skeletal digits visible inside of it. This crystal hand was created with the mana from the mana slimes and it allows him to use a pure mana, though each time he uses it his necrotic mana corrupts his crystal hand, meaning we have to change it quite a bit.

“Still not pure though, but it will probably do. Now to the next test.”

Merlin quietly moves to an altar made of silver, pure mana crystals and HS mithril. Spikes of HS mithril and a complex array scribed with pure mana crystals and silver surround the altar. There are also the pure mana crystal slimes powering the array and sucking on some bad moon opals.

These are the 10 strongest slimes I have, all of them are slightly above level 20, which they gained by doing nothing but absorbing mana. I can communicate with them just like my undead and somehow they have even simpler minds, even after gaining so many levels, still they are smart enough to follow my simple commands.

The command is simple, just absorb the necrotic energy of the opals and leave the moonlight mana alone.

The results have been mixed, all bad moon opals broke into smaller moon opals after having their necrotic energy taken, and these smaller opals were also weaker, breaking further if not used carefully.

I have been able to glue these pieces back together using pure mana crystals, their energy is not pure but maybe after some time they will become moon opals.

I also cannot really create large ones easily either, their energy may not be entirely holy but it is still too expensive to create with my necrotic energy.

Instead I did something different. I created Bad moon opals, which honestly are very interesting.

They have a very unique mana, part light and part necrotic. Most light mana tends to bond easily with positive mana, meaning mostly heat and the so called ‘holy’ mana. They are pretty interesting and I do not regret corrupting the whole dungeon…BUT I also want some of the normal moonlight opals, plus this is an interesting experiment.

The altar comes from the magic books Merlin got, each one of them has a special blueprint to create magic altars. These altars are able to enhance an element or an aspect in a room by weakening the dimensional membrane between planes, so the fire book teaches you how to connect to the plane of fire and enhance your heat and fire, the book made of feathers enhances attacks with air and gasses and so on.

The altars also increase the mana density of an area, and even increase the amount of mana you can pull from the environment.

They are also surprisingly modular and easy to understand, allowing the creator a bunch of options on what to enhance and what to weaken, because a room that enhances heat will also weaken cold attacks since you are connecting with the literal plane of fire.

The books also mention that this can have a multitude of effects with teleportation and portals, which I shall investigate later. I was able to create a specific altar to help me purify my opals. The idea is simple: the altar has a connection to the plane of moonlight and with it the necrotic energy will be completely replaced by moonlight mana…or the bad moon opals will explode.

“We are starting.” I say out loud to Merlin, who takes an eleventh pure slime and puts it on top of the altar.

“I’m excited.” Merlin says, giddiness palpable in his voice.

“So am I, but stay behind the protective wall.” He visibly deflates, but nods and goes behind a large stone wall with a single opening to see through.

I control my mana and push it through special purifying arrays, the mana then goes through and enters the proper array with the altar and the slimes. With a simple command they also use their mana and connect to the altar, all of them start to purify their bad moon opals.

The altar activates, I can actually feel the shift in the room as it becomes more aligned with light and positive mana. My necrotic energy weakens and is purified more easily, all sources of light shine brighter, from Merlin’s eyes to the bad moon opals and even the body of the mana slimes.

Using a few fragments of purified moon opals I put even more moonlight mana into the array, which takes a silver color. I can tell it is working, the mana of the bad moon opals is being purified and even enhanced, they are shining brighter and brighter with each passing second.

Some of them are breaking, but the mana slimes are filling those cracks with their own mana, which quickly repairs the opals before being transformed into moonlight mana, making them even stronger and purer than before. This works perfectly, actually better than perfect!

…

It may be working a bit too well, the slimes and opals have so much energy going through them that they would probably blind a normal person looking at them.

And the mana keeps rising. Okay, I may have juiced this array a bit too much. I watch as the mana rises and shines brother and brighter, until all the opals and the slimes explode.

The whole room is drowned in a mixture of blue and silver light, and the slimes transform.

They look a lot different. Their bodies have the general shape of a jellyfish, but are more spherical. Right in the middle of their bodies lies the moon opals, shining a beautiful silver light, the light is strong enough to leave their bodies, mixing with the natural blue color of their bodies and becoming into a cyan halo around their bodies.

That is not the only surprising thing about them, they also have increased their levels.

Moonlight Blue Slime LV25

A slime that excels in controlling pure and moonlight mana.

“See? The explosion wasn’t even that bad. I didn’t need to hide myself.” Merlin says.

“Let’s hope the next experiment won’t blow up.”

“Yes, this one is personal.” Merlin says, moving to an altar of ice, HS mithril and mana crystals. atop of the altar lies the heart of frost Merlin corrupted some time ago.