Strengthening!

Alaric had wanted to create a stronger slime, born from the fusion of many. The idea was there, but the process was something he hadn't thought of. Although slimes stuck together quite well, they didn't merge at all!

"I need to find out more about slimes," Alaric thought aloud. Due to their weak nature, no one had really studied slimes in depth, finding it useless.

'I will watch them closely, how their... flesh changes with contact, when and why they huddle together, everything will be found out by me.'

There wasn't much to it, actually.

"Slimes, cuddle!"

All of the 34 slimes— Alaric had finally counted —began moving towards each other. A command like this, Alaric didn't actually expect to work. He was asking savage magical beasts to cuddle, after all.

As soon as they had settled into a pile, their goopy bodies slithering about, Alaric noticed a few details.

'They lay on top of each other instead of mixing, acting similarly to oil and water. They move their cores and eyes in a way so that the other slimes cannot reach them.'

Actually, it was pretty obvious now that Alaric thought about it, 'They don't want the others to feed on their only organs.'

Alaric was, however, very curious, 'Why can slimes touch each other, but any other form of matter is immediately eaten up once it enters their body? Rather, why do slimes have an inability to enter eachother's bodies?'

The only conclusion he could come to, while not an answer to his questions, is that slimes wouldn't merge. It was impossible for one slime to absorb the other.

'Merging is obviously impossible. Feeding them with soul shards? No, someone has definitely tried, plus, the reason I need an evolution is because I lack soul shards in the first place.'

For now, Alaric decided to head back to the grove, raising his voice and saying, "Head back to where we came from!"

With a burst of mana emanating from Alaric, the slimes did as he commanded.

Alaric wanted to rest, his mana had been rather heavily depleted due to the commands he had been throwing around. Even though authority-type lord talents were the least consuming of one's reserves, they were still lord-type talents.

'It's already evening anyways. If I continued traveling at this pace, I'd be ambushed by wolves anytime now.'

After settling down in the grove, Alaric once again asked the slimes to protect him. He ate some of the provisions he brought along in his drawstring bag, and prepared to sleep on the grove's floor for tonight.

Normally, someone wouldn't feel safe sleeping in a forest at night, but magical beasts didn't normally invade the dens of other magical beasts. The slimes still had the aura of rank-1 magical beasts, others would hesitate before attacking them.

'I can rest... but tomorrow will need to be very productive.'

After waking up, Alaric immediately got to work after meditating for 2 hours. With his mana reserves increasing by another 5%, Alaric felt empowered.

He began trying all sorts of ways to get slimes to merge, none working. He had spent hours on this endeavor, before finally giving up.

'Consensually, forcefully, through trickery... none of it works. I need to find a new route. Eating soul shards won't work, others would have long found out. Slimes are too stupid to gather mana through meditation.'

Alaric was contemplating. He wanted to find some way to make this curse into a blessing, and evolving a slime was merely step 1.

'Eating?'

Alaric remembered that his mother in this world, Pamela, had once read him a story when he was young.

The story told the tale of a powerful octopus-like humanoid with a slippery texture and transparent blue flesh. This octopus had eaten every slime he came across. It was called "The Rodent Killer." There was no meaning to the story, it was simply mythology telling the tale of an ancient unidentified monster.

It was a rather popular story in the Neuling Kingdom, but it made Alaric think.

'Slimes, while not slippery, have transparent blue flesh. Has no one thought of the coincidences behind this story?'

A monster that looked similar to slimes eating slimes?

Although slimes themselves were not edible by normal means, their cores were! The poor would often eat the insides of a slime's core, which contained its brain, heart, and other essential organs.

Alaric was prepared to remove the core of one of his slimes. He unsheathed his sword, pointing at a specific slime in the large encirclement and commanded, "You, come. Everyone else pay attention to the forest."

The selected sacrifice exited the circle of protection surrounding Alaric, and had arrived in front of him.

"Stay still." Alaric commanded, and so it did.

'Thankfully, slimes are stupid.'

With swift edge, the blunt end of Alaric's sword pushed the core out of the slime. This extraction method was known very widely. One simply cut into the slime with the sharp end of a blade, and then twisted the blade in order to push the core out with the blade's blunt side.

Immediately, with its core extracted, the slime's transparent-blue flesh melted into the ground, leaving only an odd recess of blue goop.

'Since the other slimes were paying attention to the forest, they didn't see me murdering their comrade.'

Afterall, with authority-type lord talents, loyalty mattered to a certain extent. Things wouldn't be this easy if slimes were even a bit smarter.

A moment later, Alaric ordered a second slime to come and stop in front of him.

"Eat this." Alaric commanded, tossing the dead slime's core over.

The sky blue, pearl-like sphere entered inside of the slime's body. Immediately, the outer shell of the core began dissolving. It was a slow process, taking almost five minutes, but Alaric watched intently. As the core dissolved, the slime's mana had actually been steadily increasing!

Although some beasts could hide their aura, slimes definitely couldn't. Anyone with even a small grasp on the sensing of mana would be able to tell, this slime got stronger!

'Not a small increase either! Its aura has almost doubled in intensity!'

A slimes aura could be described as extremely weak, but this slime? It could be considered moderately weak!

'I guess I should... feed it a few more?'