Slime Evolution

[NunuNote: We’ve hit Chapter 400!! This is officially the longest story I’ve ever written in all my years as an author, honestly, it’s a much bigger challenge keeping a story going for this long, with so many characters already written, so many new plots and storylines that need to come back around, while still keeping the story coherent. I know I’ve left a few plotholes along the way, but I have pretty much all of them noted down here to deal with in the future hahaha, thank you all for following along this far, on toward 500 Chapters now!!!]

Isabella swept her golden eyes across Lohan’s bedroom, half narrowed in a mix of curiosity and mischievous anticipation.

She secretly hoped to find some piece of underwear thrown on the floor, or maybe a forgotten pair of boxers draped over some chair, after all, being honest even with herself, her own bedroom back at the mansion was a true monument to chaos.

Anyone who walked into Isabella’s private quarters would find imported lace panties, silk bras, and fine robes scattered without the slightest ceremony over armchairs, beds, and vanities.

She’d always thought that kind of mess was just part of any young person her age’s routine, and she’d expected the apartment of a boy from the Lower Zone to have at least a bit of that basic human sloppiness.

However, to Isabella’s disappointment, Lohan’s bedroom was a complete desert of organization.

There wasn’t a single thread of fabric out of place.

The built in closets were perfectly shut, the marble floor gleamed without a single speck of dust, and even the gray silk sheets where the young man rested looked stretched with military precision, save for the natural give caused by the weight of his body.

Everything there was cleaner and more organized than her own residence, which left her intrigued and subtly frustrated, especially considering she even had maids to handle everything for her, and yet his house was even more organized than hers?

She really wanted to find some slip up to use as a joke in their next conversation, but Lohan simply gave her no opening for that, keeping up an extreme cleanliness that seemed almost artificial.

That obsessive tidiness, however, soon gave way to a quiet worry in Isabella’s chest.

She stopped beside the bed, watching his chest rise and fall rhythmically, and began reflecting on the young man’s mental health.

Ever since she’d met him in college, and from the frequent conversations they kept up on the Syn app and in Elysium, it had become clear that Lohan spent nearly all of his time either locked away in that apartment or immersed in the game.

The only moments he ventured out into the real world, seeking any kind of leisure or social interaction, were the ones when he was with her, whether to eat or to handle problems.

Isabella felt an uncomfortable tightness in her chest upon realizing this reality of his isolation.

She knew how oppressive confinement in the real world could be, especially for someone who came from the Lower Zone and carried deep scars from that gray sector’s social neglect.

Lohan seemed to be using Elysium not just as a path to growth, but as an absolute refuge from the harsh reality of Eden-3, forgetting to live outside that immersion helmet.

"You urgently need a reality check, Halon." she murmured quietly, looking at his gray helmet blinking steadily with its blue indicator lights.

She decided, right then and there, that she’d have to actively do something about this to help her friend.

As soon as this operation against the Broken Suns was over and they’d consolidated Astralis Requiem’s hold on Thalendor, she’d force him to get out of the house more.

She’d take him walking through the fine dining districts, show him the few clean spots in Eden-3 that were actually worth visiting, and make sure he learned to enjoy himself in physical reality, even if she had to drag him by the arm on surprise outings and adventures she’d plan herself.

Isabella picked up the thermal bag and walked quietly back to the penthouse kitchen, taking in the vastness of a space she’d never used.

She opened the door of the state of the art refrigerator and organized the remaining Grade SS nutritional solution ampoules on the inner shelf, making sure the stock of biological compounds was perfectly visible for whenever he decided to check for something to eat.

Satisfied with her duty done, she picked up her designer bag, took one last look to make sure everything was in order, and left the apartment with firm, decisive steps.

The garage echoed with the powerful roar of her white Pagani’s engine as she accelerated toward the skies, her mind finally light now that she’d finished her work at the Vance Group and could finally reconnect to Elysium.

As Isabella’s car cut through the metropolis’s artificial clouds at high speed, the scene shifted drastically to Elysium’s magical plane, where the currents of mana were far purer and sweeter than the gray air of the Lower Zone.

Near the Broken Suns headquarters, beneath the dense foliage of Thalendor’s grand trees, Halon’s main body remained camouflaged.

’What fucking boredom...’ Lohan rolled his small artificial eyes, having spent this time practicing his own control, since there was nothing else for him to do there besides that.

He’d been in the same watchful position for hours, invisibly anchored to the tree while his clones monitored the second floor of the enemy mansion.

Another meeting among that guild’s officers had ended without bringing any new leads on the northern rift fraud once again, and the silence that had settled over the enemy base made the vigil extremely exhausting and monotonous for his mind.

Lohan’s only entertainment was the slow, gradual trickle of data and memories arriving little by little through the Collective Synaptic Sync.

The smaller clones he’d shared with the guild’s vanguard members were active in the forests of Mythlorien.

Through the mental connection, Lohan could catch glimpses of distant battles, the glow of elemental spells, and the tremor of the ground whenever some monster crumbled under Astralis’s coordinated attack.

Watching his experience bar climb millimeter by millimeter from his guildmates’ passive grinding was highly satisfying, but it didn’t ease the numbness of being stuck still in Thalendor’s darkness.

Suddenly, an extremely comfortable, pleasant thermal sensation began radiating intensely from Lohan’s core.

That wasn’t coming from Elysium, it was an inflow of biological warmth he felt directly in his physical body in the real world.

A wave of extremely pure, dense energy began circulating through the veins of Lohan’s human body, filling his muscles with a vitality superior to anything he’d ever experienced before.

His mana channels in the luxurious penthouse vibrated, instantly absorbing the nutrients of the Grade SS formula Isabella had fed into his mouth with such quiet care and affection.

Lohan was confused for a few moments, his parallel processing trying to figure out where that sudden feast of molecular warmth in the real world was coming from.

However, his logic quickly landed on the right answer to the biological mystery.

"It was Lisa..." he thought, feeling a wave of deep gratitude warm his Slime’s biomass. "She really did keep her promise and went to the penthouse to feed me. Damn, this Grade SS solution her family produces makes the Grade A formula I used to take taste like factory tap water."

The feeling of rejuvenation in the real world was so overwhelming that Lohan felt his own mind in Elysium grow sharper, more focused, and faster.

Curiously, he didn’t even remember he’d logged into the game completely shirtless. The aesthetic matter of his physical body never even crossed his mind, to Lohan, what mattered was that Isabella had shown a level of care no one in either of his two lives had ever bothered to offer.

But the little fox wouldn’t forget what she’d seen so soon.