Slime Evolution

Chapter 492 - Closer

Lohan got home floating, in a much more literal sense than he would have liked to admit.

It was only when he unlocked the penthouse door that he noticed the pen hanging in the air half a meter from his head, slowly spinning, following every step he took, and that the blue light was still pulsing under the skin of his forehead, lazy and happy, with no sign that it intended to go out.

’Good thing I can park directly at my apartment... if I had walked through the building’s lobby like this, the attention I’d attract would be out of this world.’

He made the pen land on the table with exaggerated care, and stared at it for a moment, embarrassed.

"I’m not going to stay like this the whole time," he said to the pen, out loud. "This is temporary."

The pen, naturally, didn’t answer.

The apartment was exactly as he had left it, with one important difference: the building’s staff had already replaced the bed, and the new one, with a reinforced frame and a firm mattress, filled the bedroom with a much more imposing presence.

Beside it, the dented immersion capsule was still in the same place, intact, after all, a product like that could probably only be repaired by someone from the Vance Group, and considering that the damage he had caused was minimal, merely cosmetic at most, Lohan didn’t mind leaving it as it was.

Lohan ate two ampoules of nutrient solution standing in the kitchen, without tasting a thing, and when he finished, he realized he was smiling at the wall.

He could still feel the touch of that afternoon... her pinky between his fingers in the car, the petal in the palm of his hand, the light weight of her body against his on the stone bench, all of it remained etched into his skin with a clarity that no evolution had managed to produce.

He opened the drawer of the work desk, took out a small glass box that had already been there when he moved in, and stored the blue petal inside it, with the same care as if he were storing a treasure.

Then he thought for a few seconds, and placed it on the highest shelf of the bookcase, where he would see it every morning.

’Okay,’ he thought, taking a deep breath. ’I need to do something with this energy, or I’m going to explode.’

There was only one place where he knew how to do that.

He lay down in the dented capsule, which still worked perfectly, adjusted the ocular device, and closed his eyes.

The transition to Elysium came smoothly, as always, the sensation of weight dissolving, his usual gelatinous mass rebuilding itself around his consciousness, and when he opened his little white eyes, he was back in the guild office, with Elle’s moss rug back in place and a forgotten feather on the desk.

The first thing he did was open the member list.

For no particular reason, he told himself.

It was just a routine check, to see who was online, who needed help, who was about to make some serious mistake. And as he slid his eyes down the list, he stopped at the name he knew he would find, and felt his heart, or the equivalent of it, give a small leap.

[Lisa, Level 19, Online]

[Location: Valley of Fangs]

He stared at it for a good while.

It had been less than two hours since she had fled into the mansion, and she was already there, in Elysium, hunting, as if nothing had happened.

The question he asked himself, and which made him smile again, was whether she had come to hunt or to hide, and the answer, he knew, was probably both.

But Lisa had another motive, and he knew it well.

Ever since he had gone through the Level 21 evolution, she had been in a silent race to catch up to him, determined not to fall behind, and he found himself imagining the energy she must be pouring into those hunts, with the day’s emotions spilling over everywhere.

’Well,’ he thought, and got up from the office floor, flexing his tentacles as if stretching his arms. ’If she’s going to hunt, she’s going to have help.’

He left the headquarters tree at a smooth run, gliding along the forest trails at a speed that would have left him stunned a week ago, and that now felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Several of his clones spread out across the map and reorganized in silence, with a large part of them staying at the guild base waiting for the members who would take those clones out to hunt, and others just spreading around the perimeter of the guild base to test their own powers, and Lohan sensed, through Mental Perception, Lisa’s warm white light growing sharper ahead of him.

It was a light he had known for months, steady and white, and that afternoon it shone in a different way, more intense, with small spikes of agitation, like a fire someone blows on now and then.

He reached the top of a slope and stopped, looking at the valley below.

The Valley of Fangs was a wide depression, full of dark rocks and twisted trees, and in the center of it, surrounded by a pack of some fifteen gray furred wolves with red eyes, a white, two tailed fox moved in a beautiful and extremely violent dance, using far more energy than necessary, but clearly not caring about it.

Her white flames traced arcs in the air with every blow, and with each arc, a wolf fell, and the ground around her was already covered in ashes and mana dust.

Lohan stood there, just watching, for too long.

’I have to stop staring,’ he thought, and went down the slope before she could sense him.

But she did.

The exact instant he stepped onto the base of the slope, Lisa’s white ears turned toward him, one at a time, and she cut a strike off in the middle of the motion, which nearly cost her a bite to the flank. She dodged with a leap, knocked the wolf down with a smack of her tail, and then stood there, in the middle of the pack, motionless, looking at him, with wide golden eyes and both tails starting to sway without permission.

The two of them stared at each other for one long second.

"Hi." Lisa said, over the link, in a voice a little too high.

"Hi." Lohan replied, in a voice that came out a little hoarse.

A wolf, who had understood perfectly that this was the ideal moment to attack, leapt at the fox from behind.