World Seed

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.