Lohan was leaning against the inner balcony on the second floor of the Astralis Requiem tree, watching the activity below with a deep satisfaction vibrating through his core.
The main hall was buzzing. He saw Lotus chatting casually with Dee about the best routes to find more Litho-Crabs.
Vonde was sitting at a round table with Tunder and WyrmWood, comparing notes on Mana regeneration at the guild base and the best way to make use of it as magic focused combat classes so dependent on Mana.
By all appearances, the Silver Lotus group seemed to have fit into the guild’s machinery with an ease Lohan wouldn’t have dared predict a week ago.
It was bizarre seeing how the social barriers seemed to lose their weight under the light of the white tree.
Alice and Dylan’s veteran members, who Lohan knew came from the Upper Zone, clearly noticed the signs of the new members’ peripheral origins, their more abrasive attitudes, the heavy slang, and the defensive lack of inhibition that only someone who grew up in the Lower Zone developed.
However, respect was the currency there. Seeing Jay and Kai, even with their Common Bases, being treated with the same empathy the members treated everyone else with, showed that the environment Lohan and Lisa had created was heading exactly toward the goal they’d planned.
Lohan knew there would be major problems with this in the future.
Eventually, new members with inflated egos would show up, thinking themselves superior because of the credits in their real world account or how Rare their base was, used to acting with arrogance simply because that was how they’d always lived in the real world.
The guild’s leadership would have to handle those cases with strictness and ruthless fairness to keep the cancer of real world segregation from infecting the Star Garden they were building, but for now, he decided to just enjoy the growth.
He looked at the interface of his in-game Profile window and smiled inwardly.
Deploying the clones with the Player groups had been an absolute success.
Currently, Astralis was split into three hunting groups operating in Mythlorien.
Each group carried with it a small blue "ball of gelatin," a fragment of Lohan’s consciousness, usually staying with whoever was the most fragile or most important combat member of the group.
These clones served three critical purposes: first, they digested the parts of the monsters that had no market value, turning waste into biomass and continuous experience for his main body, not wasting even 0.1 Biomass left behind by those higher level monsters, considering the corpses of these Level 13 to Level 15 monsters were extremely rich in energy.
Second, Lohan’s clone served as a final layer of insurance and protection for the group, consuming a small portion of the kill experience, but in exchange strongly assisting the group with spells at critical moments or defenses in dangerous situations, speeding up the group’s hunting pace so much that not only had the experience they earned not dropped from having one more member to split it with, it had actually increased slightly, while the income they earned from hunting these monsters had risen sharply!
And third, Lohan let the members use the clones as direct access to the Astral Chest.
Since only the leadership had access to the dimensional chest, having the Slime present with each group let them instantly store valuable materials, without needing to carry heavy loads during combat, which also greatly sped up each group’s hunting pace and profit generation.
He limited himself to one clone per group so as not to spread his sensory attention too thin, or unnecessarily limit his main body by helping the current groups too much, but the result was still staggering.
The amount of experience and biomass he received daily "while doing nothing" was equivalent to him spending the whole day hunting alone, without any direct physical effort.
Right now his experience bar was in a state of glory.
Even though level 16 required over 1.6 million points, he was just one step away from hitting that milestone. He felt the density of his mystical core rise with every notification that flashed in his peripheral vision, and the constant chimes of gained experience notifications were like a beautiful symphony.
Lisa was offline from the game for now, likely dealing with the bureaucratic side of the Vance Group that she managed in the real world. Even though she’d freed up a lot of time by delegating much of her responsibility, her presence was still frequently needed.
Lohan took advantage of the privacy and climbed the spiral ramps to the top of the Astralis tree.
There, in a section he’d designated as his office, the atmosphere was one of absolute calm.
Even though he called it an office, for now there was only a simple pedestal in the middle of the room.
Alice and Dylan were completely unable to accept that the Vice President’s office only had a single piece of furniture like that, but Lohan didn’t mind much, giving them permission to decorate the place for him, since he had no idea what to put there besides the pedestal.
He approached the fossilized wood pedestal he himself had shaped for his Slime body. He loved how comfortable it was, the wood gave off a natural warmth that steadied his gelatin.
’Alright, system... time to do some housekeeping.’ Lohan murmured mentally, opening up the full list of his evolutions.
He realized he’d put off leveling up his basic abilities for far too long.
He’d worried that too many simultaneous evolutions would bring conflicting effects that would leave him vulnerable before the dungeon invasion, but now, with the guild running at full capacity and no immediate threats, it was time to bring everything up to at least Level 11.
The goal was to make sure no part of his biology got left behind during the leveling process.
He began by reviewing the list of evolutions that were still at low levels. The biomass accumulated over the past few days was massive, and he was ready to burn through all of it if that’s what it took to reach perfection.