Yrneha continued to move the prisms around Lohan, capturing every millisecond of the gem’s transmutation into Biomass and Mana.
She seemed spellbound, mentally noting how the Slime isolated the impurities and refined the stone’s essence in real time.
It was shocking to her that that tiny Slime could absorb the energy of a Guardian of Light!
Initially, she had intended to give it just an ordinary Mana Stone, but thinking of the creature she had captured a few centuries ago, yet never found a use for, a bold idea came to Yrneha’s mind.
"Master, will Halon be okay? He seems to be having trouble." Aeliana asked worriedly, noticing the slight tremors in the Slime’s membrane as golden energy was exhaled from the Mana Stone within his body.
Yrneha did not take her eyes off the magical holograms monitoring Lohan’s brain activity and Mana flow. A smile, a mix of arrogance and fascination, lingered on her beautiful face.
"Calm down, Lia. What you’re seeing is merely the natural resistance of a superior essence that doesn’t want to be absorbed by a lower-level creature," Yrneha replied, her calm voice contrasting with the violent golden light now bathing the laboratory. "The Guardian of Light is, indeed, a magnificent creature overflowing with purity, but make no mistake: by the standards of the high realms of Elysium, he is still just a low-level creature."
Aeliana blinked, confused. To her, who was at Level 20, a Level 13 monster was something manageable, but to Halon, who had just reached Level 9, that gem must have been a death sentence.
"But Master, he’s only Level 9!" Aeliana exclaimed. "Common slimes can only digest what’s below them in the food chain. If they try to consume something four levels above them, their core usually collapses under the pressure!"
Yrneha nodded in agreement, adjusting one of the prisms to relieve some of the stress on Lohan, who was working frantically to isolate the Guardian’s oppressive memories.
"That is exactly why this specimen is invaluable," the mage explained. "From the characteristics I’ve observed in him, he seems to ignore the level-based biological blocks that limit others of his race. While an ordinary Slime would be purified by the light of this gem, your little friend is actively rewriting the structure of the light for himself. The mere fact that he accepted my offer of the high-level Mana Stone shows this isn’t his first time."
Yrneha raised her wooden staff, ready to intervene should the mental link she had established show that Lohan’s consciousness was being erased.
"I’m monitoring his thoughts," she continued, her eyes gleaming with a dangerous curiosity. "If he starts to falter, I’ll use my spatial magic to compress the gem and expel it. But if he wins... ah, the power he’ll receive will be rewarding. He won’t just gain an ordinary Skill; he’ll be able to integrate the frequency of light into his own Natural Energy Core, becoming something not even the Goddess foresaw for a Slime."
Meanwhile, inside Lohan, the battle of attrition continued.
Thanks to his [Bio-Synthetic Mana Circulation], he used the very energy the Guardian was trying to expel to recharge his defenses, turning a deadly attack into a way to hold his ground.
Lohan’s gelatin, which had once been a clear, tranquil blue, now pulsed in violent waves of incandescent gold.
He felt his mental processing capacity pushed to its absolute limit; it was as if his mind were split into separate tracks, where most of his willpower was drained just to keep his "self" intact against the Guardian’s personality, which screamed incessantly within his mind.
The heat generated by the conflict was so intense that chemical residues and impurities previously stored in his system began to vaporize, emitting jets of white smoke from his membrane.
His internal structure, normally mutable and adaptable, began to falter under the guardian’s qualitative pressure, and Lohan felt his vitality plummet, becoming dangerously transparent as his biological decomposition ability tried, unsuccessfully, to digest the gem.
Yrneha observed everything through her magical prisms, noting that the architecture of the Slime’s soul was on the verge of collapse.
She realized that the celestial creature’s pride would not allow for a peaceful integration and raised her white wooden staff, beginning an incantation to compress the space and extract the stone before Halon exploded.
In the millisecond the mage’s intervention was about to be unleashed, a cold, absolute, bluish starlight descended from the skies of Thalendor.
This energy, which exuded a divine signature, enveloped the Slime’s body like a protective cocoon.
The moment that blue frequency touched the golden radiation, the conflict ceased abruptly. The guardian’s fury was "washed away," transforming from a deadly attack into a nourishing essence as calm and docile as a small puppy.
With its resistance nullified, Lohan’s absorption capacity finally managed to erode the stone, which, due to the damage it had suffered, was fully utilizing its high digestion rate of 5.1k Biomass per hour to recover as much as possible from the injuries it had sustained.
From that digestion, a torrent of power flowed into his core, stabilizing his form and instantly regenerating the flaws in his membrane.
The process was somewhat slow, but given the damage he had suffered, it was surprisingly fast.
When the glow finally dissipated, Halon was different... his gelatin, which had been slightly dark, now took on a deep cerulean blue hue, speckled with sparkling particles that orbited his core like stardust.
For an instant, he exuded an aura of purity that seemed to cleanse the very air around him.
Only for those changes to vanish the very next second as if they had never existed, and for him to return to his natural appearance.
Both Yrneha and Aeliana stared at the scene in utter shock, unsure how to react to what they had seen.
While Lohan’s mind was still reeling, both from trying to process what had just happened and from the notifications that kept popping up in his vision, Aeliana prepared to approach him, before being pulled back by Yrneha and a stern command flashing through her mind.