[NunuNote: Thanks to kenneth_tate you are gonna get 2 more Bonus Chapters tomorrow! We are gonna have 2 bonus today for Soccer and 2 bonus tomorrow for Kenneth, thank you!!]
Looking at the new Nutritive Solution Sachet, Lohan hesitated a little.
The liquid was thick, a dull silver, and the smell reminded him of wet earth.
But thinking about how much it had cost and remembering all the worse things he’d eaten in Elysium, he activated [Efficient Digestion] at maximum power and drank it all in one gulp.
The moment the liquid touched his stomach, Lohan felt as if he had swallowed a small star.
An overwhelming heat shot through his [Optimized Mana Circuits]. He could feel his muscle fibers vibrating, absorbing the high-purity nutrients and rebuilding themselves at a terrifying speed.
"Ugh... this stuff is potent," he gasped, feeling the bluish sweat begin to ooze from his pores as the cores inside his chest began to spin in resonance.
He didn’t let the energy dissipate.
Knowing that only through efficient digestion could he fully absorb these nutrients without side effects, Lohan took advantage of the nutritional "pump" and began his workout routine.Where before he’d done hundreds of reps and felt exhausted, now he seemed to have no end.
He did one-handed push-ups while using his other hand to control the flow of mana through his fingers, training his control at the same time.
His movements were fluid and fast, at a level already nearly impossible for a normal human, even someone trained to the limit of what a human could endure without supplements or technological modifications.
After an hour of intense training that would have killed an ordinary athlete, Lohan stopped.
His body wasn’t just sweaty at this point; oozing from his pores was a thin layer of a bluish membrane that digested all the nutrients leaking from his body, not only keeping him clean but also ensuring nothing was wasted in the process.
Then he sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed his phone to see if there was a reply, but Lisa hadn’t sent anything yet; she was probably still resting or handling the guild’s preparations at her mansion in the Upper Zone.
Seeing that he now had nothing else to do in the real world, he opened Syn and typed a quick message:
[Hayes: Hey, good morning! Is everything okay? You haven’t replied to me since yesterday... if anything’s up, let me know, okay? I’m heading into Elysium now; if I don’t see you there, I’ll do as you do and start a solo hunt, huh. 😎]
Satisfied with the message, he set his phone aside and put on the neural helmet.
The familiar sensation of freefall enveloped him as his consciousness was torn from his human body and hurled through Elysium’s blue tunnel of light.
--- Connecting...
--- Synchronizing Data...
--- Welcome back, Halon!
Lohan "opened his eyes" and his 360-degree vision returned instantly.
He was in the main hall of the Astralis Requiem base; the fossilized tree still looked exactly as they had left it yesterday, but through his external senses, Lohan detected movement outside.
All around him, the scent of ancient wood and pure mana was invigorating.
Seeing the Offline icon next to Lisa’s nickname, Lohan rolled out of the throne room and came upon the source of the external movement he had sensed.
In front of him was Elle, delicately flying through the interior of the tree, covering the holes the worms had left in the ground, as well as the hole Lohan had made while testing the evolution, filling each hole with soil and painting over the soil with a special paint that made it look exactly like wood!
That really shocked Lohan.
The little girl’s painting skills were incredibly high!
"Elle, your painting skills are amazing!" Lohan said excitedly in his mind, but realized the little fairy hadn’t heard him and continued painting without noticing his presence.
’Right, I forgot that without Lisa I can’t talk to the guild members... I definitely need to sort this out as soon as possible.’ He thought amidst a sigh, unconsciously shaking the jelly.
Hearing the sound of the shaking, Elle finally noticed his presence and looked back in shock.
"Salvador Halon, good morning! Did Elle disturb your rest?? Please forgive Elle; next time she’ll be more careful..." The little fairy said in a tearful, pleading tone, deeply worried that Halon was angry and wanted to expel her and Pip from the guild.
Lohan just laughed heartily at the little girl’s reaction and patted her head comfortingly, assuring the little fairy that everything was fine.
After assuring her of this, Lohan waved goodbye and rolled out of the tree.
He would have liked to wait for Lisa, but not knowing when she would log in, Lohan decided to have a little fun with a solo hunt.
Lohan descended the tree’s spiral levels, admiring the changes in Elle’s paintings, marveling at the realistic flower designs, paintings that transformed the once-dead, parched wood into something that now looked alive and healthy.
Upon reaching the colossal opening in the trunk, he saw Pip standing there like a small guardian statue. The little warrior’s wings, which resembled sharp glass blades, reflected the morning light of Mythlorien, and he held his short sword with impressive diligence, even though he was alone and with no one to supervise whether he was doing his job right.
Lohan noticed that Pip took his role as Base Sentinel very seriously.
The Slime approached and, since he couldn’t communicate telepathically, formed a small bluish hand and gave the fairy an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
Pip flapped his metallic wings in greeting, pounding his chest with his tiny fist in a gesture of loyalty that made Lohan vibrate with satisfaction.
Lohan rolled onto the forest grass at high speed. With his new base speed of 6.52 m/s, his current ground movement was much more dynamic than in his early days in Elysium.
He felt the ground directly beneath him, absorbing as much information from it as possible, and now, rolling right through sharp, thorny bushes without getting hurt, his current membrane being much more resilient than in his early days, when any sharp rock or twisted branch could pierce his membrane and cause him to lose biomass.
Rolling through the forest, the sensation of hunting alone brought back memories of when he was just a Level 1 Slime digesting grass and fleeing from ants.
Back then, the world seemed vast and terrifying, and today, with the equivalent of tens of thousands of biomass invested in evolution, that feeling was greatly alleviated.
He knew there were extremely powerful and frightening creatures in the world, dragons, demons, even gods, but such distant things no longer frightened him.
His [Instinctive Perception] soon picked up thermal signatures ahead.
A group of four Level 8 Gray Wolves was hunting nearby. Lohan didn’t hesitate and activated [Explosive Steps], feeling the detonation of Mana beneath his body that launched him like a blue projectile.Upon reaching the center of the pack, he was quick to spawn four clones.
With the clones being much faster than before, while the wolves were still confused, not understanding where that Slime had come from, Lohan’s clones wrapped the wolves’ paws in [Selective Viscosity], immobilizing them instantly.
Lohan didn’t need to use his [Ice Spike] or [Vacuum Detonation]. He simply used his most direct and brutal attack, his extremely efficient digestion, causing the wolves’ flesh to bubble and disappear beneath the blue gelatin in a process of accelerated acid corrosion.
’Solo grinding really does taste different...’ Lohan thought with great satisfaction, feeling the digested biomass of these monsters replenish just a little of his reservoir.
He continued the hunt for a few more minutes, eliminating smaller monsters and getting used to the various new evolutions he’d gained since his last solo hunt, switching between several different combat tactics and letting the Elite Earthworm ability guide his movements underground and through the vegetation.