Slime Evolution

Chapter 410 - Finally

While the man scanned the darkness of the roots suspiciously, searching for the source of that elemental fluctuation, Lohan noticed, through a clone hidden on the upper floor, that a new confidential meeting was starting in the guild’s conference room.

The senior officers were gathering around the oak table quickly and quietly.

Surprisingly, that confidential meeting didn’t include Gideon’s presence, and no one there seemed to want to wait for the man to arrive, which stirred Lohan’s curiosity even further.

For the first time since Lohan had begun silently monitoring the shadows of the enemy mansion, he felt there was a chance the subject he’d been waiting so long for would finally be discussed by them.

The critical problem was that Lohan now needed to split his attention between two extremely high risk tasks.

While his main slime body stayed fully camouflaged so the guard wouldn’t find him at the root of the tree, his parallel processing focused on recording the words his clone was picking up in the meeting room upstairs, while also doing everything possible to keep his clone in there from being discovered, demanding mental effort from his independent minds beneath his skin.

In the circular hall on the upper floor, the mage in the blue robe, who had earlier debated about the guild’s finances, approached the other officers with quick, nervous steps.

He looked at the archer and the cleric in a panic, speaking in an extremely low tone, genuinely afraid that whatever he was about to say might be overheard by anyone curious nearby.

"We got an urgent alert from our noble ally’s messenger here in Thalendor," the mage whispered, his hands trembling as he held the scroll. "The seal we placed on the northern rift is showing pretty serious leaks of corrupted mana. The void energy is escaping through the edges of the temporary seal, and from what he overheard in private discussions among the council members, there are already voices doubting the process we carried out there was reliable."

Lohan, hearing this through the clone hidden behind the meeting room’s cabinet, felt an incredible satisfaction at maybe finally being able to shake off this tedious task, mixed in with the tension of the moment.

Even without physical proof right now, just hearing news like that was already practically all the proof he needed.

But Lohan’s attention was pulled back to his main body’s world as the sound of leather boots struck the walkway, less than two meters from his position.

The Broken Suns guard advanced slowly, holding a mana lantern that cast a cone of yellowish light over the roots of that fossilized tree.

Lohan flattened his biomass, using sticky adhesion to squeeze himself into the deepest crevice of the bark, blending his color into the grooves of the tree trunk so the lantern’s light wouldn’t reveal his gelatin texture.

The lantern’s light swept across the shrub right above him, making Lohan’s heart pound.

Back in the meeting room on the second floor, the whispered discussion among the enemy officers grew more tense and disorganized by the second, revealing the organization’s internal weakness.

"How can that suppression seal be leaking now?" the archer asked irritably, slamming her fist on the meeting table. "Those goddamn nobles guaranteed the suppression barrier would hold steady for at least two months!"

"Now he’s implying it’s our fault..." the cleric scoffed, his voice coming out muffled. "They’re the ones who gave us lower grade runes to save resources, and now that the pressure from inside is destroying the magical containment lines, they’re saying it’s our fault?! If doing it was so easy why didn’t they drag their noble asses out there themselves? Damn it, I lost a whole level dying once trying to set that piece of shit seal."

"Fuck the level you lost or who’s right or wrong about this, if Thalendor’s Council finds out about this fraud, who do you think will get blamed for this shit? Us outsiders who just arrived, or the nobles who’ve lived here for thousands of years?" the blue mage warned in a panic. "He’s already told us that if we don’t handle this leak in the next few days, he’s going to abandon us to face the consequences of the local law alone."

"Son of a bitch!" The archer slammed her hand on the table in anger.

"And why haven’t we told Gideon about this?" the cleric asked, extremely confused, to the other officers sitting around the table.

"Have you not seen how crazy with rage Gideon’s already been since he died the first time?! If he finds out about this shit now, guess what he’s going to try to do?" the archer hissed, her eyes gleaming with disdain. "Obviously we’re going to tell him, but we need to at least stabilize things first so his nerves don’t get frayed enough for him to do something stupid and ruin all our work."

Downstairs, the danger to Lohan’s main body hit its critical limit.

The guard stopped his patrol just a meter from the root where the Slime was camouflaged.

The man drew his short sword from its gleaming sheath, using the steel tip to poke through the leaves of the shrub, searching for the reason his instincts kept screaming.

Lohan had to maintain absolute calm through his bodily control.

He felt the cold tip of the guard’s blade brush within millimeters of the edge of his gelatin, and even with a slight cut on his own body, he didn’t move a single millimeter, trusting in the malleability and density of his defenses not to give away his presence there in any way.

"We can buy a few level twenty containment runes on Thalendor’s black market," the mage proposed, his whispers coming faster. "They’re not cheap, but if we install them discreetly in the middle of the night, they should hold the leak for at least a few weeks, giving us time to recoup the gold with the thirty percent fees we’ll be charging members over the coming weeks."

"That might screw us over pretty badly on the money we need for rent when the time comes..." the archer remarked, thoughtfully. "But it’s the only viable option we have to keep our hold and avoid getting kicked out of the city... Not to mention I think in another week or two Gideon’s nerves should finally calm down."

Outside, the guard let out a frustrated sigh, sheathing his sword after realizing there was nothing but damp leaves and wind in the darkness of the root. "Must have just been those damn elves again," the man grumbled to himself, resuming his patrol along the guild’s outer corridor.

Lohan finally let his magic core relax, feeling a triumphant satisfaction rise through his entire biomass.

Without hesitating, Lohan quickly opened his chat and got in touch with Lisa.

Finally, after so much time spent investigating, he had something solid to bring back to the guild; even though he still needed to keep clones at the Broken Suns’ base, the need to remain in such close proximity was now far outweighed by the gains he would reap if he resolved this matter for Yrneha.

Given the growing importance of the Broken Suns within the Council of Thalendor, if Astralis could handle the situation even better, all the renown the Broken Suns had earned would go to them instead!