Versatile Mana

Calle walked forward towards the surviving slime with confidence as he prepared both of his fists to deliver mana-packed punches straight toward the slime's half-regenerated body.

He already had a general idea in mind about how to create the skill that he wanted to be as effective as possible in hindering the slime's cheat regeneration ability, but whether it would actually work or not, he had to actually try it out for himself.

The slime was outside of the man-sized crater that he had created with his mana blast skill, and Calle didn't have any plan of moving closer to the side of the crater since it would be difficult for him to test out his current experiment with mana if he or the slime were to fall onto the crater. So he closed in on the slime from the direct opposite angle of the crater.

With his running speed that was no less fast than the fastest sprint runner on earth, Calle quickly arrived inside the slime's 3 meters detection range and grabbed the slime's sole attention.

The slime was aware that its body was not in its peak condition after it lost more than half of its whole body to Calle's mana blast earlier, and now that its mana sense had detected an intruder coming in close towards it, the slime quickly went into its last stance as it quickly extended one part of its body towards Calle to try and corrode Calle's body slowly while minimizing the chance that Calle could do any damage towards the slime's body.

The slime was still struggling to kick out the foreign mana that invaded its body and making it hard for the slime to regenerate its body back to its healthy condition. And even though it was quite a hard feat considering the amount of mana that Calle put into the mana blast was not minuscule, it had already been a few seconds after the attack, and the slime had almost done it.

The slime only needed a few more seconds to completely erase the foreign mana and it would be able to complete its body regeneration in a few seconds. So for now, the slime's main priority was staying alive for about 10 seconds, which it did by attacking the invader first, trying to catch the invader off-guard, and giving the slime the time that it needed.

The slime's tactic might have worked if it went against someone who had never fought a slime before. And Calle was indeed quite shocked when he saw the slime's aggressive attitude despite its body condition being the equivalent of halfway towards death's door in the human's terms.

However, Calle had already had a few experiences with the blue slimes to know what kind of abilities they had, including the one that the blue slime was currently doing, which was extending a part of its body to try and restrict his hand's movement while simultaneously corroding his hand.

It was considered a good strategy for the slime since it would definitely catch the slime's opponent off-guard and they had to dodge the slime's attack if they didn't have any countermeasures against the slime's corrosive body, which means the slime would gain the precious seconds that it needed.

But unfortunately for the slime, Calle was more than ready to deal with the slime's move, as he extended his right hand forward, the hand that the slime aimed to coil around and corrode, and pushed his right hand forward to face the slime's extended body part head-on.

Calle knew that the slime's extended body part moving in a straight line was only a facade where it would suddenly move into a spiral at the last possible second to catch his hand in the middle of it, so when the two were about to meet, and the slime started changing the shape of its extended body, Calle quickly opened up his fist before he released all the mana in his right hand forward.

Although Calle had gathered mana in his right hand beforehand, it wasn't as much mana as the volume he used for mana blast and it also wasn't condensed as much, hence the explosion was incomparable to his ordinary mana blast.

He basically created a tiny explosion right at the front of his hand.

The tiny explosion was indeed tiny as it didn't even let out a sound loud enough to hurt Calle's ears even though it happened close to his ears, but the damage that it had done was certainly not minuscule.

The moment the mana explosion made contact with the slime's extended body part, the blue and squishy slime's extended body part instantly broke down both from the force of impact of the explosion and also from the addition of foreign mana that invaded its body again, causing its full effort in erasing the initial foreign mana to go down the drain as it now had to deal with the additional dose of foreign mana.

But Matthew didn't stop there, Matthew took another step forward, closing in the 3 meters distance in that single step, arriving right in front of the blue slime, whose body had only become a quarter size of its peak condition.

And he didn't waste a single second as Matthew shoved his entire left fist towards the blue slime's body that was now only slightly larger than his own fist.

Since he wasn't ambidextrous, Calle's accuracy with his left punch was nothing to be proud of as he couldn't hit the blue slime's small body squarely in the middle. But it didn't matter much in the end, with Calle releasing all the gathered mana in his left fist forward, through the front of his knuckles, exploding the mana right inside the slime's body.

The blue slime's body, or at least what's remaining of the blue slime's body exploded into bits as Calle's punch delivered the small mana explosion straight inside the slime's body.

And with that, the blue slime finally ceased to exist under Calle's own hands, with a new skill that he created on his own.

"Congrats, Calle! You succeeded in defeating them on your own!" Edric said as he flew over, closing in to perch on Calle's shoulders.

Calle then received the little dragon and let it sit comfortably on top of his shoulders, with the enhanced strength trait that he got from Edric, Edric's current weight was nothing for him, and Edric could sit as long as he wanted on Calle's shoulders without Calle feeling bothered by it.

"Thank you, Edric. The test I was trying to do turned out to be successful. This means that we can experience more about how to use our mana! The mana is very versatile and I think our creativity is the limit here, Edric."

"Let's continue walking inside, we could test out more things on more slimes!" Calle said to the little dragon while pointing his finger forward towards the insides of the unexplored cave.

"Sure! Let's go, Calle!" Edric replied as he imitated Calle's gesture and also pointed one of his claws forward.

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A/N: This is the bonus chapter for reaching 50 collections last week. The next goal for a bonus chapter this week would be 30 Power Stones. So if you want a bonus chapter then make sure to vote with your powerstones~