Slime Evolution

Chapter 479 Refinement

"It’s started," Lohan said directly into Lisa’s mind, in a calm and steady voice. ’I’m fine. If I go quiet for a while, it’s only because I’m concentrating, okay?’

Lisa leapt up from the nest of cushions, her ears raised on her head and her tails bristling, and Lohan felt her white light flare up, ready for anything.

But he had already positioned himself in the center of the room, pulled all the tentacles back into his mass, and let his body rest on the coating that covered the floor, as if lying down for an exam.

A second message appeared before him, denser than the first.

[Evolution of the Slime Race (Mythic) available.]

[Estimated collapse risk: 9%]

He read it and couldn’t help but smile. Last time, the system had given him a seventy percent chance of dissolving into a puddle of gelatin with no return, and he had accepted anyway, because he’d had no choice.

Now, with his body stabilized, his mind organized, and a whole week of preparation behind him, the number was almost laughable.

All that preparation had been worth it.

’Accept,’ he thought, and the system answered with a soft click inside his core.

It was as if someone had switched off the floor.

His gelatinous mass lost its shape all at once, dissolving like a popped soap bubble, spreading across the floor in a bright blue puddle that reached the edges of the coating.

But this time there was no piercing pain like the last time, nor panic, and Lohan realized that this was a direct result of Abyssal Clarity, which isolated the sensation of discomfort in a small box inside his mind, where it could be observed without taking over everything.

One part of him felt his body coming apart. Another part, calm and analytical, observed what was happening. And a third, the lightest, kept the connection with Lisa open and calm.

’I can feel the two cores,’ he told her, narrating so she wouldn’t be left in the dark. ’They’re... spinning around each other. Like two stars.’

Inside, that was exactly how it was. The Superior Magic Core and the Sacred Light Core, which since the first evolution had lived side by side like two polite but wary neighbors, began to move closer to each other, orbiting at an ever faster rhythm, trading energy in wide, regular pulses.

With each turn, the edges of both grew smoother, more perfect, and he felt the mana and the light intertwining like threads of the same weave, without mixing, but without getting in each other’s way anymore.

The blue puddle on the floor began to change color.

First it darkened, going from crystal blue to a deep sapphire tone, and then gradually took on obsidian reflections, as if an entire night were slowly being poured into it.

The white and golden particles that had always floated in his gelatin, since the first evolution, began to glow more intensely, and then to cluster together, forming small constellations that slowly rotated across the surface.

Lisa watched it all with wide eyes, her breath caught in her throat.

She had already seen Halon evolve once, and she remembered very well the dread of those minutes, of his body contorting, of the collapse warning she couldn’t see but could feel on her skin.

This time was different, quieter, almost hypnotic, but even so her heart was pounding so hard she thought he could hear it.

Both her tails moved on their own, out of control, and white flames flickered in and out around her paws, as if her body were preparing for a fight it didn’t yet know would happen.

And beneath the fear, little by little, an excitement she couldn’t contain was growing, the excitement of someone who knew she was witnessing something that almost no one in Elysium would ever see.

’If anything goes wrong,’ she thought, her claws clenching against the floor, ’I’m jumping into that puddle and pulling him back, even if I get burned. I won’t let him...’

’Lisa,’ his voice interrupted her, gentle, and she felt a wave of warmth cross her mind, like an invisible hug. ’I can hear you. It’s all right. I swear.’

"Liar," she murmured, out loud, but her voice trembled with relief. "You were just saying it was going to be fine last time too."

’Last time I had a seventy percent risk. Today it’s nine.’

"Nine percent is still a lot!"

’I’ll accept those nine, if you’ll accept standing up and breathing.’

She took a deep breath, still suspicious, but the flames went out, and she took a step back, without taking her eyes off him.

The obsidian puddle stayed strangely still for a few seconds, and then something changed. An invisible pressure appeared at its center, compressing it, as if something were trying to fit the entire universe into a space far too small.

The air in the room grew dense, and Lisa felt the hairs on her neck stand up. The walls, covered in the layer of gelatin, began to vibrate at a low, deep frequency, like the rumble of an enormous creature sleeping.

Inside, Lohan felt his whole body condensing.

The mass that had once been light and malleable was compressing, layer by layer, into a far denser and more organized structure.

He felt every molecule of the gelatin aligning with its neighbors, forming a crystalline lattice that stretched from the core to the surface, as if someone were rebuilding his body from a much more elaborate blueprint.

The outer membrane, which had once been a single resistant layer, split into several, each with a different function, one elastic, another rigid, another able to harden instantly on impact, and between them small channels appeared through which mana and light circulated like blood.

He had never felt so whole.

It was then that the pressure reached its peak, and the final message appeared.

[Evolution of the Slime Race (Mythic) completed successfully!]

[Beginning evolution of the Devourer Class (Mythic)...]

BOOOM!

The shockwave was louder and wider than the first one, but the coating he had spread across the walls absorbed it with a thick crack, like a mattress taking an impact, and the whole office shook without a single splinter of wood being torn loose.

Lisa was pushed back a step, her paws sliding across the floor, but she managed to stay on her feet, her eyes fixed on the puddle that now glowed in gold and white, so intense she had to squint.

This time, there was no silence of tension. There was a silence of reverence.

And the second evolution began.

If the first had been a reconstruction of the body, this one was like opening an entire library inside his head.

Lohan felt everything he had ever digested, every monster, every plant, every metal, every memory, being reorganized onto clear and accessible mental shelves, sorted by type and by potential, and the sensation was so satisfying that he let out a mental laugh that Lisa picked up, and that made her eyes widen even more.

’Is he laughing?’ she thought, unsure whether to feel relieved or frightened.

His mind, already sharpened by the new mental skills, now seemed like a freshly polished blade.

The parallel layers that Abyssal Clarity had created rearranged themselves, fitting into an even more complex and even cleaner structure, and Lohan felt that what he once did with effort now happened on its own, like breathing.

[Optimizing Trait Extraction Matrix...]

[Congratulations! Class Evolution Completed: Devourer Level 21]

[Gains:

Parallel Processing Core: Each independent consciousness now operates at 100% of its original capacity, with no division of efficiency.

Trait Extraction: The chance of obtaining rare evolutions from non Player prey has permanently increased by an additional 20%.

Abyssal Storage II: The spatial compression capacity of the biomass reservoir has been increased fivefold, with no change in external volume.

Stratified Crystalline Structure: The membrane and core now operate in multiple layers, drastically reducing the physical and magical damage received.]

The light slowly faded, until the room returned to its earlier soft dimness, with only a few golden reflections dancing across the covered walls.

In the center of the office, where there had once been a puddle, a shape was slowly rising.

Lisa barely breathed.