Published: August 15, 2025
"Phew..."
Today, the subjugation and meal ended somehow in the blink of an eye.
All that was left was to wait for Niki-kun...
“Big brother! I’m done with work!”
Apparently, his work ended early too.
“Oh...?”
“Hmm? What’s up?”
“Nothing... Actually, there’s something I need to tell you. The truth is...”
First, I honestly told him that the wire slime had evolved.
“What!? It already evolved!?”
“Yeah. Thanks to Niki-kun and everyone in the village cooperating, we were able to feed it a large amount.”
“Show me! Let me see it!”
“Of course. So after we collect the trash today, I thought we’d check out what this slime can do in the forest...”
“Got it! Let’s go right away!”
With that, we left the diner where we had arranged to meet.
Niki-kun seemed eager to see the wire slime, so he picked up the pace of trash collection more than usual.
Thanks to that, the collection was done in no time.
We moved to the entrance of the forest where we had gathered firewood and displayed the wire slime.
“Hmm... It doesn’t look any different?”
“Yeah. The appearance is subtle, really just a tiny bit smaller, if anything. But—”
I had its body stretch out into a long, ultra-thin thread.
“Ah! Wow, it can do this now... Since its food was a net, can it use this like a net? Can the thickness change? And how far can it stretch?”
“Let’s start by checking those things.”
I asked the wire slime directly, and it said it could adjust the thickness of the thread it stretched out. However, if it’s thick, it can’t stretch very far.
Regarding the maximum stretch distance, I had guessed in the morning that it was related to volume.
I had it stretch its thread cylindrically at a fixed thickness, and the limit was about 40 meters.
Then, I calculated the volume and compared it with the volume of a spherical wire slime, and they matched almost exactly.
However, while its body was flexible, the core seemed different. When stretched to the limit, the sphere believed to be the core was exposed — although it was actually wrapped in a thin body, its location was immediately obvious.
The volume difference was within an acceptable margin of error, but having the vulnerable spot so visible was something to be cautious about.
Then, as Niki-kun asked, I investigated whether it could become a net by changing shape.
The slime could produce threads from anywhere on its body and could produce multiple threads at once.
It was also able to intertwine the threads, which allowed it to weave nets and thick ropes.
It could also perform shape changes it had learned before evolution, when it was a metal slime.
However, these were limited to thread plus alpha changes—like making the stretched thread into barbed wire or attaching fine blades to the thread’s side to create a wire saw.
“…That’s about it. Now, moving on... Niki-kun, would you like to see the moment a slime evolves?”
“I want to! Can I see it?”
“Yes. Actually, there is one type of slime that can evolve immediately.”
This time, I brought out the slimes we had caught or been given recently.
“Slimes respond not only to various kinds of food but also to mana used to cast magic. When you feed them a large amount of mana of a specific elemental type all at once, they evolve into slimes that can use that type of elemental magic.”
“Now that you mention it, big brother said that your magic slime evolved, right? So this is how it evolved?”
“At first, it was just a coincidence. I think which elemental mana they prefer depends on their living environment. At the base where I am, I hardly found any except for earth and darkness types. I also heard that fire slimes who use fire magic were found in volcanic areas.”
“So, to the main topic... I checked which elemental mana the slimes caught near this village preferred, and most of them liked water mana.”
“Which means they can evolve into water magic-using slimes, right?”
“Right. I can supply the mana to evolve them, so I could do it right away. I don’t have any water magic slimes myself yet, so I want one, and I intend to try it now.”