Learning Skills

After evolution, monsters don't learn new skills instantly. Rather, it was more like unlocking the skill, enabling the monster to train and learn the said skill. For the evolved form of the slime, the big slime, three skills are easy to unlock. The skills are [Shrink], [Expand], and [Polymorph] where the effects are as you'd imagine.

For the harder ones, there's [Cloning] and [Elemental Magic]. [Cloning] enables the big slime to split its core and control multiple bodies at the same time. On the other hand, [Elemental Magic], can only be learned if the big slime was born with proficiency in an element. Slimes usually have no elements, but rare cases would enable them to have minute elements in their bodies.

For example, slimes living near a volcano can easily earn fire affinity. Those living near an ocean or a large body of water like a lake will have an easier time acquiring water affinity. Others earn earth affinity by living in mines. Rare affinities include Healing, Poison, Dark, Light, and so on.

For today, I will train Ember to learn as many of the above skills as possible. As soon as the sun rose, we headed straight outside the town and towards a wide clearing. There, we could practice skills as much as we desired.

For now, I tried explaining each skill to her as much as I could. Then, we practiced one skill at a time until the skill was learned. How do I know that she successfully learned the skill? Well, since all skills of a tamed beast would be shared with the tamer, when the information of a new skill suddenly entered my mind, that would mean Ember was successful in learning the skill.

On the first day, we only managed to do [Shrink] and [Expand]. Since I didn't expect to learn all skills in a single day, I extended my holiday until all my desired skills were earned.

On the second day of training, Ember finally got the hang of [Polymorph]. However, it was still far from being called a skill; it was more like a forced copy than a transformation.

On the third day, [Polymorph] was finally earned as a skill. Now, after learning three of the basic skills, it was time to learn the last skill that I needed, [Cloning].

After getting the hang of teaching Ember, it took a whole week before she managed to learn the skill. It took me 10 days just to teach her 3 basic and 1 advanced skill. However, this investment was worth it. With new skills under her belt, Ember could probably hunt demons with more than twice the efficiency as before.

After a good night's sleep, we once again went towards the undead forest. Since the travel time was halved, we earned an extra two hours of hunting compared to the last time.

"Ember, use [Cloning] then [Polymorph]!"

Right as we entered the forest, I immediately gave my order. Ember, who heard my command, immediately acted upon it.

Since she only had two cores now, she could only create one clone. After splitting, the two halves quickly squirmed and transformed into something like a wheel. The wheel was thin to the point that you wouldn't be able to notice it approaching from the front in a dark forest like this. Honestly, it was more like a razor blade shaped into a wheel than a normal wheel.

"Okay! Go and hunt to your heart's content!"

After telling her that, Ember quickly rolled away in opposite directions, cutting at anything that unfortunately got in her way. I followed one of the tracks and picked up fallen essence crystals. Once in a while, a larger essence crystal was mixed into the ground, meaning Ember took down a demon variant a step stronger than undead skeletons.

When it was about to reach noon, we finished clearing the outskirts of the whole undead forest. Even though all I did was pick up the essences, I still felt extremely exhausted. Running several dozens of kilometers around the undead forest was way worse than doing a non-stop marathon.

"Only the central area remains, but the demons there are much stronger than at the outskirts..."

Looking at the total number of essences we gathered, there were more than 400 pieces of the undead skeleton essence and about 50 pieces of the stronger unknown variant. A rough estimate would probably net us around 500,000 credits for all these loots. It was a large haul for half a day's work.

"Maybe we can take a peek at the central area... No."

I quickly denied the idea. As I am right now, if a strong demon chased us, I would probably be unable to outrun it. Getting caught by a demon means only one thing, and that is death.

"Ember, let's return to the city for today."

Since the skeletons only spawn at night, we can't get anything else from here after hunting them all to extinction. Hence, we should just go straight home and train some new skills for the future.

---

"It's been more than a week and you still haven't found him?!"

Zen shouted as he threw a glass toward the poor guard. The guard, unable to dodge, was struck on his temple, where he bled profusely.

"Master Zen, we have searched the entirety of the lower district and the slums, but we couldn't find even a shadow of the guy."

The guard said this, ignoring the stinging pain from his wound.

"If somebody told me that he got spirited away, then I may even believe it."

"Incompetent bastards! And why do you think my dad pays you high wages? I don't want excuses; I want results!"

Ever since Zen got knocked out by Cloud (a.k.a. Will) and was released from the hospital, he has been cooped up at their house, not daring to venture a step outside. Zen probably didn't notice this, but after getting a taste of his own medicine, he was extremely reluctant to leave the protection of his house's four walls. He was unconsciously afraid that if he went outside, he would get hit by Will again.

"Extend the search to the nearby towns! I don't believe that bastard can run far!"