While Firl the rookie photographer and writer of the popular monster magazine, The Magna was busy coming back from Trice Mountain, Dean was busy with his training for the new skills.
Summer 25th – Month 1 – Year 2001
A few days ago, Dean's bounce skill finally finished upgrading from normal grade level 10 to elite grade level 1. Dean tested his bounce skill and felt that it became stronger. He was extremely happy that he now had become a bit stronger.
His training with heavy tackle went on smoothly. He made quite a good progress learning the skill. He thought it will be super hard but it was easier than he thought. His water absorption skill however was really hard to learn. He did make a progress with it but it was small and he still needed more time for him to master it.
All in all, everything went great for him. After his conversation with Yuri a few days ago, Yuri had started talking to him more but it was not much. Before this, she won't even try talking to him and never answered his question but after the conversation before, she still never strikes a conversation first but when Dean talk to her, she will talk to Dean.
Just like his small progressed with the water absorb skill, he made a small progressed with Yuri. Both Yuri and Dean still not accepting the marriage but Dean thought that since they live in the same house, he should try to get to know her better.
It was afternoon and it was summer, so it was totally hot. Even with the heat, Dean still trained hard and he will also constantly drink water so he did not get dehydrated. There was no training room inside the house, so he can only train outside the house.
Part of the process in learning the heavy tackle skill was to tackle an object. There was a big tree at the backyard of the house and Dean used the big tree as part of his training. Dean was sweating a lot and his shirt was drenched with his sweat.
He wanted to go shirtless but Yuri was home and he felt embarrassed showing his body to someone he was not close with. Sys said to Dean that there was no need to feel embarrassed with that. He was a man and he had a great body too. So, there was no need to feel embarrassed.
Sys even teased Dean saying that if he showed his body, Yuri might fall in love with him. After Sys said that, Dean was determined to not go shirtless even if it killed him. He knew that Yuri was a proper lady and doing that will probably made her mad. Yuri had just started to talk to him and he did not want to ruin it.
Sys was just laughing at that. Sys got bored with Dean constant training so he made that kind of talk to amused himself which Dean sometimes found it annoying. There was sometime Dean found it funny but most of the time it was cringey and annoying.
There was once Sys said Dean should take the marriage arrangement properly. No one wanted to marry him anyway and he needed to grab the chance available to him. Sys said that woman loves bad boys. Sys suggested Dean to go hard at Yuri and kissed her like a bad boy. Dean stopped talking to Sys for few days after that.
Yuri was currently at school and Dean did not want to take any chance of embarrassing himself by going shirtless. Despite the summer heat burning his body, he won't give up. He will endure and kept training.
'Dean you should rest a bit. Forcing yourself won't give you any better result,' Sys advised Dean to take some rest. Dean also felt he should rest a bit and took Sys advice. He sat under the tree shade and took out some water from his storage and drank that water.
He looked at the clear sky and he sighed. He was worried that there was still no news about the rabbit coat slime and the rubber slime. He was still searching any news of them on the internet but it seemed no one had found it yet.
Dean pondered a bit and opened his system.
'What are you doing?' asked Sys.
"I don't want to wait anymore. I will just create a new slime. I can at least make 2 new different slime from everything I had. Many people of my age already went far and I am stuck here," said Dean. "If even the new one I made and no one found them, then I will just hunt the elite grade colorful slime. Even if I can't use their soul to increase my stat, their data is still work for me."
The monster soul had many uses but there were also limitations. Like In the case of attaching them to weapons, there was time limit based of one minute for each use. If the parameter increased the same as the soul characteristics, then the soul can be reused after sometime but if it was different than the soul characteristics, the soul will vanish after one use.
In case of permanently increasing someone stats, the soul of the same species of monster cannot be used twice even if the monsters were of different grade. Same species but different grade monster was considered to be different species. However, that only applied to the monster core. The monster soul was different.
For example, Dean absorbed the normal grade blue slime core and use its soul to increased his stats. Dean can absorb the elite grade blue slime core data but he cannot use the elite grade blue slime soul to increase his stat because he already used the normal grade soul before.
Dean currently had three different add-on he can use to mutate his slime. The three add-on were the butterfly hair clip, the heavy tackle skill and the waster absorb skill. The slime core combined with butterfly clip gave a useless slime so he discarded that choice.
He only left with the skill add-on. He never tried to use them before so he did not know what it will produce but Dean knew it will be something good. Dean opened the monster creation menu and chose the mutations feature.
Dean used the elite grade brown slime core and used the heavy tackle skill as the add-on. He took a deep breath and asked Sys to show him what the new slime looked like. Sys showed Dean what it looked like and Dean's face unchanged.
The size was the same as the kilo slime but it was not blue but brown. "A kilo slime variant?" Dean asked Sys to show him the new slime stats.
Name:
Grade: Elite
Skills: 1. Bounce 2. Heavy Tackle
Item: large brown pillow, skill book.
When Dean saw the stats, he was totally disappointed at it. He thought that the skill will be heavy tackle II but it was not.
"Why is it not heavy tackle II? The rubber slime has bounce II…" Dean pondered a bit and realized that it was simple. "The elite grade green slime already knew the skill bounce. With another bounce add, it creates the bounce II skill. Rubber things usually can bounce and that was the reason why the slime body become rubbery."
"As for this new slime, it did not know heavy tackle and thus it learned the skill just like that. It becomes big because only with physique like kilo slime can the slime learn the heavy tackle skill. I need to be more creative. None of the color slime will made a different slime with this combination."
"With my inference, using it on kilo slime will give me heavy tackle II but I don't think anything else will happen. Will combining it with pillow slime give a different slime? Or will it just make the pillow slime as big as the kilo slime?" Dean pondered a bit and decided to try it.
Before he tried the combinations between the elite grade pillow slime and the heavy tackle skill, Dean tried to combine the elite grade kilo slime with the heavy tackle first. Just like what he thought, it was a slightly darker kilo slime and it learned bounce and heavy tackle II. Seeing that the color was a bit darker, he thought he should create it but Dean decided to not create the slime. The was a reason why he did that.
Elite grade kilo slime with heavy tackle II was too overkill for people that was still at elite grade. Even the original kilo slime proved to be dangerous and the new kilo slime will surely cause much more trouble. Although Dean did not create it now, it did not mean that he won't do it in the future. He just thought that it was a bit inappropriate to do it now.
After trying that, he tried doing the same thing as the brown slime but with different color slime and they all gave the same result as the brown slime. That proved that his inference was correct. After doing all that, it was time to do what he planned to do earlier.
Dean chose the elite grade pillow slime core and used the heavy tackle skill as add-on. Dean asked Sys to show him what it looked like. Sys showed Dean what the slime looked like and he was pleasantly surprised with the new slime visual.
The slime did not expand and became the same size as kilo slime. It remained it original size and it was still carrying the pillow. However, the twist was that the pillow was now twice the slime size. If before it looked like the pillow slime was hardworking, this one made it looked like the pillow slime was overworked.
Dean chuckled a bit at that visual. He felt good looking at the new slime. It felt like he was not the only one working hard but other people working hard too. Dean asked Sys to showed him the new slime stats.
Name:
Grade: Elite
Skills: 1. Water Absorb 2. Heavy Throw
Item: red pillow and large blue pillow. Skill books.
"A new skill. The new slime did not learn the heavy tackle but it changed it to new skill, heavy throw. Will it throw the pillow it carries? Hmm~ then it can use it once?" thought Dean.
"It lost the bounce skill that made it quite powerful," said Dean. Sys who heard that said something.
'You should know that an elite grade monster only capable of learning two skills max. Since it can only learn two skills, it omits the skill it learns earlier,' said Sys. He continued, 'Normal grade monster can only learn one skill that is why the kilo slime and pillow slime of normal grade only know bounce.'
'The higher the grades the more skills the monsters can learn. However, having more skills does not mean they were strong but it was just mean they have huge range of skills.'
'The monsters in the wild mutate naturally unlike the slime you create and thus their skills will sometimes be useless for them. Your slime however will have the most suitable skill for them. That is why your kilo slime and pillow slime is strong.'
'Even if this new slime lost the bounce skill that made it strong when it was the pillow slime, that did not mean that they are weaker. Try to properly see the two skills,' said Sys.
Dean looked at the water absorb skill and heavy throw skill. Dean eye wide opened.
"A combo moves!! Using the water absorb will increase its strength and with heavy throw, it can cause huge damage. Heavy throw is much stronger than bounce and that mean this slime have high strength. It loses much of its mobility but the strength is more than enough to make up for it," said Dean.
"I also prepare a combo of water absorb and heavy tackle and this new slime can do the same as me. Alright, I have decided to create this new slime. Your name will be…"