Slime Evolution

Chapter 481 The Awaited Stone

Lisa slowly raised a paw to her neck, and her fingers, or rather, the tips of her claws, worked with great delicacy, almost ceremonial, to undo the small leather cord that had been with her for so long.

For all those weeks she had grown used to the weight of the pouch against her chest, and when it finally came off her neck, she felt a strange sense of emptiness, as if she were handing over something that was also a part of her.

"I’ll confess something," she said, holding the pouch between her paws with her eyes fixed on it. "There was a moment, a few days ago, when I thought you could already do this."

"Me too," Lohan replied, and this time his voice carried an almost embarrassed honesty. "When we got back from the volcano and I felt my mind opening up like that, I thought maybe I was already ready. I even felt like asking you for the Stone that very night."

"And why didn’t you ask?"

"Because you would have said no," he answered, and a small laugh escaped him. "And, feeling it now, you would have been completely right."

Lisa raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue, and Lohan settled onto the office floor, his dark body reflecting the soft light coming through the window and the golden constellations slowly spinning beneath the surface, as he searched for the right words.

"Before the evolution, I thought I knew what power was," he explained. "I had gone up nine levels, had accumulated skills, had defeated enemies that seemed enormous, and I felt strong. But now that I’m here, feeling my body like this, I realize the Lohan from a week ago was living on a completely different level of existence. It was like looking at the world through a foggy window and thinking that was the whole view."

"That was a nice metaphor," Lisa commented, with a smile. "But keep going."

"The thing is, the mind of the Whisper Elder was already enough to remake my entire head," he continued. "I got Mental Voice, Abyssal Clarity, Mental Perception, all at once, and my ability to think changed so much that I still get startled sometimes even now. And she was only a creature who had spent weeks tied up, exhausted, mutilated, and who was probably far below the power she had at her peak."

Lisa began to understand, and he noticed, through her face, the moment it clicked.

"Now imagine a monster whose greatest trait since birth was mental power," Lohan said, more quietly. "One that spent its whole life refining just that, training just that, living just off that. And when it died, it was at Level 23." He paused. "I can’t even imagine what’s inside this Stone. I really can’t."

"So the old Lohan, with a weak mind, would have..."

"Would have been crushed," he finished, without sugarcoating it. "I probably would have passed out, or worse. I could have gotten stuck in there, or come back different, or not come back at all."

He said it so matter of factly that Lisa felt a shiver run through her fur, and both her tails contracted. She looked at the leather pouch as if it had just gotten heavier.

"Then I’m glad I didn’t let you take it," she murmured.

"Me too," he agreed, without the slightest trace of resentment. "I was eager, but you were right. As always."

Lisa smiled sideways, and a touch of pride mixed with relief appeared in her golden eyes.

"But now?" she asked.

Lohan closed his little eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, there was a new serenity in them. He took a quick inventory of everything he felt inside himself, the crystalline structure of his body, the parallel layers of his mind running at one hundred percent, Abyssal Clarity protecting every corner, Mental Pressure ready to be used, Mental Perception picking up even Lisa’s breathing.

Those were tools he hadn’t had a week ago, and which, after the evolution, had become even more powerful than when he first got them.

"Now I feel confident," he said, and this time the sentence came out without any hesitation. "Not invincible, because I still don’t know what’s waiting in there. But confident... much more prepared."

"That’s all I wanted to hear," Lisa replied.

She opened the pouch, finally, and the Mana Stone rolled into the palm of her paw, shining a deep blue cut through with golden veins that he remembered so well from Yrneha’s office.

But this time, near Lohan, the stone pulsed with a different intensity, as if it had recognized his presence, and the psychic echo he had been hearing for days, that nearly imperceptible whisper that called to him like a lullaby, suddenly grew clearer.

It was no longer just a sound. It was a voice.

Faint, ancient, of a strange beauty, and it said something he couldn’t understand, but which sounded like an invitation.

’She’s calling me again,’ he thought, and the excitement he felt was so great it nearly drowned out the fear.

"You can hear it, right?" Lisa asked, watching his expression. "I can feel the pressure. It’s like the Stone is alive."

"It is," Lohan confirmed. "Not the creature, but the echo of what she was. It’s an impression, maybe a signature of a mind, that got trapped in the crystallization of the mana."

Lisa swallowed hard.

"So how do we do this in the safest way possible?" she asked, getting practical.

And it was in that instant that Lohan realized how much she had changed, because weeks ago that same question would have come after he had already begun digesting, with her panicking in the middle of the process. Now it came before, with a cool head, with worry turned into planning, and he felt an enormous fondness for that.

"I’m going to split my mind," he explained. "Thanks to Abyssal Clarity, I can isolate parts of it, so I’ll leave one part solely to receive the memories, inside a kind of vault, another to stand guard at the door and push back anything that tries to invade the rest, and a third, lighter one, staying out here with you."

"Like a safety rope," Lisa finished.

"Exactly. You’ll call me through the link, and if I don’t answer, you call me again, and again, until the part out here answers. And if even then I don’t answer..."

"I’ll go into that stone and pull you back, even if I have to rip you out of there with my claws," she finished, in a firm voice.

Lisa also had mental abilities, so at that point, there was no one who could be more useful in this than her.

Lohan laughed, and the laugh sounded warm.

"I doubt that’ll be necessary," he said, "but I feel calmer knowing you would."

He released a small clone, the size of a fist, and positioned it beside Lisa, in silence, like a second pair of eyes. That fragment would stay there, watching, and in case of any sign of trouble, it would have the autonomy to interrupt the digestion on its own.

"Done," he said. "If anything goes wrong this little dude is going to cut everything off."

"I like that," Lisa said, and her tails calmed down a little.

The two of them stayed silent for a moment, and when Lisa came closer, holding out the Mana Stone in the palm of her paw, Lohan felt her light tremble in a small, warm glow, and understood that, behind all her firmness, she was very frightened.

"Come back," she said, softly. It wasn’t an order, nor a request. It was just something that needed to be said.

"I always come back," he replied, and she knew, from the tone of his voice, that he was serious.

Lohan extended a thin tentacle, and the bluish hand at its tip touched the surface of the Stone with the delicacy of someone touching something very fragile. It was warm, and vibrated slightly, and the golden glow of the veins followed his touch as if wanting to hold on to it.

He took a deep breath, even without lungs, and let his gelatinous mass spread over the gem, wrapping it completely, with the tenderness of a hug, and then began to digest.

In the first instant, nothing happened.

In the second, the Stone dissolved, and the world around him turned white.