On his way home, Lohan took off his heavy protective gear—which was useless to him at that moment—and lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling and replaying what had just happened in his mind.
’They always warned me that this hero’s life was thankless...’ he thought before letting out a sigh.
But despite everything that had happened, Lohan didn’t regret going to help.
He hadn’t known that gang would show up to help the little boy, and if they hadn’t, Lohan would have felt terrible knowing he had the power to help a defenseless child but chose to turn a blind eye and not help.
Thinking about that strange gang in their flashy clothes and on their fancy motorcycles, Lohan was surprised to discover that there were people like that in the Lower Zone.
As far as he could remember, in this end-of-the-world place there were only bad people, people who had given up on life, or people deluded by the hope of a better future.
Obviously, that group belonged to the latter category.
But Lohan didn’t feel like mocking them.
They were banding together to fight for something they believed was right, chasing their dreams as best they could, not worrying about pursuing a conventional career or earning a mediocre salary that would only further enrich the exploiters of the Upper Zone.
That was a very commendable attitude, but it wasn’t something Lohan believed in or wanted to be a part of.
He didn’t feel that the Lower Zone was his home, nor did he care enough about the people around him to go out of his way to improve their lives.
He didn’t even know or care about his neighbors, let alone millions of people he’d never heard of.
And the fact that the people he encountered outside his apartment wore masks and baggy clothes only made that feeling of indifference toward them even stronger.
’Is this on purpose?’ he thought, surprised, but not giving it much thought.
But witnessing such a strange scene today had stirred something in him.
’What am I looking for in this world?’ he asked himself.
Sure, he really enjoyed playing in Elysium; the sense of growing stronger as he leveled up, buying upgrades with biomass, and killing more powerful monsters—all of that was a lot of fun.
But despite the fun it brought, Lohan still hadn’t found a purpose in it all.
Lisa’s arrival was a blessing.
At first, he didn’t care one bit about the guild she wanted to form. As a loner in this other world, the idea of forming a guild and leading people was something that had never crossed his mind.
But as time went on, the camaraderie he developed with that cold yet cute fox began to create something more within him, showing him that life with other people was much more fun than the solitude of just chewing grass every day, as he had done before.
In recent days, he found himself thinking more and more about Astralis Requiem. Thinking about what he could do to improve the guild, thinking about what it would be like to see that tree they had claimed full of people—full of people who might like him and care about him the way few people ever had in either of his lives...
’It’s as if I feel more alive, more at home when I’m in Elysium than when I’m in the real world... or maybe I should stop calling it the real world and just call it This World?’ he wondered.
Considering how Lisa treated Elysium, it was possible that his hypothesis was more accurate than continuing to call Elysium a virtual world.
He was already almost certain that Elysium was another world that humanity had somehow managed to make contact with and was slowly invading, but the idea of that was still so far removed from his reality.
"Phew... maybe I’m overthinking this. I’m still in my third week in this world; I think I’m once again demanding too much of myself. It’s better to just let things take their course while I enjoy the journey, rather than just focusing on a distant goal," he said in a low voice.
As he spoke those words, Lohan even felt as if a weight had lifted from his chest, as if something pleasant had touched him and untied a knot he hadn’t even known had formed.
After the battle he’d had in the alley, Lohan realized how important personal development was and drank a nutritional supplement while pushing himself to the limit during his workouts.
After those weeks of training, Lohan already felt that the technique and quality of every exercise he did were much better.
His body, with such abundant nutrition available at every meal, was also being reshaped almost visibly. Even more so with the specific and general workouts he was able to do at high intensity, even without the use of equipment thanks to his body control.
After finishing these exercises, Lohan decided to test a new idea.
Instead of taking a shower and wasting money on water, he remembered how he used to clean himself as a Slime, simply digesting any particles of dirt that stuck to him, and wondered if something like that would also work in the real world.
Looking at his sweaty arm, Lohan used the same instinct he used in Elysium to try to digest the sweat, but even after a minute, nothing happened.
’Strange... what’s the problem?’ He was confused.
Bringing his arm to his mouth, Lohan gave the sweat a light lick and realized he really could digest it—the problem was that he had to bring it to his mouth.
’Ohh, the Slime can digest anything that comes into contact with its body, since the jelly all over its body is like a digestive acid... but my human body doesn’t have that convenience... but wait, what if I try something.’
---
Lohan looked very closely at his own arm, focusing on the sensation of Mana circulating through the internal channels of his body, much like it did in Slime’s body.
He realized that, although human skin was a solid and restrictive barrier, the pores were natural openings he could exploit.
The first attempt was still crude... he tried simply to "push" the Mana out through his skin, but he only felt an uncomfortable heat and his muscles contracted without any practical result.
Frustrated, Lohan took a deep breath, activating [Structural Stability] to steady his breathing and focus on the cellular structure of his own dermis.
This time he changed his strategy and, instead of expelling pure energy, focused on the sweat glands, trying to saturate the sweat already covering his arm with the Mana from his [Magic Core].
After several minutes of intense concentration, tiny droplets of visibly denser, slightly bluish sweat began to emerge, laden with a massive concentration of Mana and, surprisingly, a bit of biomass!
The next challenge was controlling it.
In Elysium, his gelatin was his own body, something he’d already had great control over since he first appeared there on Level 01, but here, sweat was merely an external secretion.
Using the logic of [Structural Stability] and the trait of [Morphological Memory], Lohan tried to extend his will beyond his skin, treating the liquid on his arm as an extension of his own biomass, viewing that Mana- and Biomass-rich sweat as a true extension of himself.
The first time, the sweat simply trickled down and fell to the floor, but on the third attempt, he managed to keep the liquid film adhering to his arm through a rudimentary form of [Selective Viscosity].
With the Mana-rich sweat under control, Lohan finally activated [Efficient Digestion] through that thin fluid layer.
The effect was astonishing! As soon as the Mana in the sweat came into contact with the dirt and grease particles, the [Digestive Filter] identified the unwanted components and decomposed them at the molecular level, just as he used to do as a Slime.
His muscles relaxed as he watched the dirt simply vanish, leaving his skin impeccably clean and a sensation of renewed freshness coursing through his entire arm—far better than bathing in the dirty water of the Lower Zone.
He smiled contentedly, realizing he had just created a self-sufficient hygiene method that not only cleaned him better than anything he’d ever seen, but also subtly improved his Mana control!