Slime Evolution

Chapter 484 -Real World

"You look like someone who’s planning something terrible," Lisa commented, and her voice sounded amused, but also a little nervous.

’I’m planning several things.’

"I know," she sighed. "I can tell."

She stayed quiet for a moment, still smiling, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened.

"Halon," she said. "You did it."

’We did it,’ he corrected. ’I wouldn’t have gotten here without you.’

"I only kept a stone in a little pouch."

’You kept a stone in a little pouch for days, while I begged with my eyes.’

Lisa let out a laugh, and this time it was a full, loose laugh, without any tension. She threw herself back onto the cushions, her tails swaying, and stared at the ceiling for a while, with a satisfied smile.

"You know what?" she said suddenly, turning her head to look at him. "I think we deserve to celebrate."

’Celebrate?’

"Yeah. You leveled up, went through the evolution, digested the Stone, and I’m one step away from Level 20. All in one week." She got up, shook out her fur, and her golden eyes sparkled with a kind of mischief. "Let’s celebrate today, in the real world."

’In the real world?’ he repeated, surprised.

"I want to have lunch with you," she said, trying to make it sound casual, but he sensed, through her white light, a small tremor of nervousness. "Somewhere nice, with no rush, with nobody interrupting, with no chaos around us like what happened the other times... Just the two of us."

Lohan stood still for a moment, trying to process it, and her light grew more intense, almost vibrating with anxiety.

"So," she went on, talking fast. "In two hours. You come pick me up with the car."

’With the car,’ he repeated, and felt his own smile spread. ’Two hours.’

"Two hours. And don’t be late, or I’ll have lunch alone and tell everyone you left me waiting."

’I’ve never been late.’

"You were three weeks late with the barbecue."

’Technically the barbecue was made on the first day, you’re the one who didn’t eat.’

Lisa rolled her eyes, but she was laughing, and when she logged out, with a quick wave and one last glance over her shoulder, Lohan was left alone in the office, looking at the feather still floating in the air, and feeling his heart, or the equivalent of it, beat harder.

He let the feather drop onto the desk and logged out too.

The transition to the real world hit like a shock.

It wasn’t the usual sensation of heaviness, the sticky tiredness of someone returning from one place to another.

This time the sensation was far more intense, as if someone had thrown at him, all at once, all the power he had gained over the last few hours, and his human body had been forced to receive it without warning.

Lohan opened his eyes in the apartment bedroom with the curtains closed and sat up on the bed, and heard the dry crack of the wooden frame splitting under his weight.

"Ah," he said, out loud, looking at the bed. "That’s not good."

He got up slowly, and every movement felt different, firmer, more controlled, as if his muscles were responding to his will before he even thought about moving them.

He got up from the immersion capsule, and felt its edges give slightly under his fingers, with a worrying creak. Lohan opened his hand immediately, and picked up the glass of water beside him, and the glass shattered in his hand, spilling water all over the table.

"It’s fine," he murmured, taking a deep breath, looking at the shards. "Easy Lohan, you’re calibrating.... I need to calibrate my strength."

He spent the next few minutes testing every movement with exaggerated care, as if learning to walk again, and discovered that his human body had become denser, firmer, faster, like a refined version of everything he already was.

His hearing picked up even the hum of the electrical wires inside the walls, the murmur of water in the pipes, the breathing of the neighbors downstairs.

His vision, even in the dimness of the closed curtains, showed every detail of the room with a clarity he had never had. Even the air had texture.

And inside him, a new sensation made him stop in the middle of the room.

His biomass reservoir, that small stockpile he kept in the real world, gained nearly five times more space, thanks to the Abyssal Storage evolution.

He felt that immense emptiness, like a newly expanded pantry, waiting to be filled.

From now on, it was likely that two ampoules a day weren’t even his limit anymore. From here on, the only thing that would stop him from accumulating energy would be the lack of food.

He went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at himself in the mirror.

His face was still the same, but there were small details that made him stop.

His eyes! Around the bright blue pupils were tiny golden specks, almost invisible, spinning at a very slow rhythm.

His skin looked firmer, smoother, almost luminous.

And just above his eyebrows, a small, faint blue mark pulsed with his breathing, no longer a passing glow, but a constant, discreet presence, which he could now turn on and off whenever he wanted.

’Isabella is going to notice,’ he thought, with a low laugh, and the idea of meeting her like this, with his eyes full of stars, gave him a pleasant flutter in his stomach.

He tried one last thing before leaving the bathroom. He focused on a pen sitting on the sink, and extended the invisible hand, and the pen trembled, slid half a centimeter, and stopped.

That was all.

But it was already something.

’The real body only gets a fraction,’ he thought, with a smile. ’But it gets it.’

He looked at the clock in the corner of his vision, and saw that nearly twenty minutes had already passed. There was less than an hour and forty minutes left, and he had a broken bed, a shattered glass, a crushed capsule, and a new body to learn to use before driving a car worth millions and crossing the city to pick up Isabella.

This time, he knew, he would have to be very, very careful with his hands.