Alaric woke from his meditative state, and immediately analyzed his gains.
'I have indeed become much stronger, the peak of rank-1 puts the previous me in the dust. I feel as if I can actively use my talent over 100 times! My body feels so... lively. And the fusion between my soul and body has become much more concise, controlling my mana will be much easier from now on!'
During this meditation session, Alaric used the last 30 minutes to forcefully adapted his body to the reserves he took in from the soul shards. Although it threatened to dissipate his reserves, he felt that he needed to become much more powerful as quickly as possible.
'I need to assign some duties to Clarus... putting him to work right away will allow me to maximize benefits.'
Alaric had the room slime, Wurst, follow him to Clarus's house. Although the newcomers seemed weak enough, he couldn't quite trust them yet. Only once the Ryder family was killed would he be sure that there weren't any dangerous people surrounding him.
Soon, he arrived at the house assigned to Clarus, and upon knocking, Clarus rushed out. Alaric was a bit curious about Clarus's history, but it wasn't something he'd look into just yet. The parts he was curious about, only Penne Ryder could answer. He wondered why the Ryder family shut down research on slimes.
Clarus stuttered out, "Yes, lad? Do... do you think you can tell me about slime evolution now?"
Alaric went slack-jawed. This old geezer was still obsessing over his slime evolution method!
"I haven't come with education, but with an offer,"— Alaric invited himself in, sitting on a leather couch the couple who used to live here bought from the city —"I want you to act as my envoy, my messenger, and my spokesperson."
At this moment, the room slime, Wurst, had arrived on the couch too.
Alaric paused, giving Clarus time to process what he said, before continuing, "Basically, your ability is extremely useful. I will throw many soul shards into your development, and in exchange, you will do as I order!"
Clarus, who was still standing in the doorway, seemed stunned. His ability was useful? It could barely allow for others to remember what he taught!
"Is it really worth investing in my poor talent, simply because of such an ability, lad? The reason I've remained in this state is that I would need at least 30 soul shards to rank up! Although I've absorbed about 12 in my lifetime, and my accumulation isn't small, I'd still need 15 more! That's at least 100 silvers worth of low-tier soul shards!"
Alaric was amused at Clarus's stuttering. 15 soul shards? With the ones he collected in the forest, minus the ones he just used for his meditation, he had 17! Sonic had strewn an entire pack of storm wolves about the forest, all for this moment!
"Calm down, for now, Clarus. I believe that you underestimate your power. The ability to influence someone's memories with your speech is simply too strong! If you had enough mana, you could tell someone that their wife wanted them dead, and the thought would persist in their mind so strongly that the relationship would simply fall apart!
If we turned you into a ranked wielder, you could request for people to listen to my words, and they'd feel compelled to!"
Actually, it's not that Clarus didn't know any of this. But the weathering of time had simply caused him to lose all hope. He of course knew, that as long as you had enough mana, any talent would be terrifying to deal with.
Clarus looked down at Alaric, "Are... you sure?"
Alaric opened up his leather drawstring bag and poured his 17 soul shards onto the table, keeping 2 for himself.
"15 right? Don't disappoint me. Besides, you don't have much time left, the health brought about by ranking up can let your old bones move a little while longer."
Clarus knelt on the ground, his body shaking in excitement, "My liege! This old man, I, vow to be your microphone in sickness and health. My words shall only pass on the messages that Lord Alaric, of Forger Village, passes on!"
Alaric sweated a bit, 'You can still retain your freedom of speech, yeah?'
"Don't worry too much about it. Tomorrow, others from Ryder Village should arrive. At that time, you'll use them to practice your abilities as a ranked wielder."
Alaric wanted to use Clarus's ability to suspend the doubts of the newcomers. Not only would he be a familiar face, but his ability would make the words he spoke stick to people's heads like glue.
Exiting the house, Alaric turned his head towards Clarus, who had stopped kneeling, and said, "Oh, and adapt to the reserves naturally with a good night's rest. I'm spending a lot of money on you. don't waste it."
"Yes!"
Alaric next planned to get the slimes to multiply two more times and turn 19 into 38, and 38 into 76. With so many slimes, he could create a few rank-2s and immediately raid Ryder Village the day before the caravan arrived!
Of course, this would bring in a greater meat requirement. He would need to force them to full size before he could make them breed and then once again in order to make them evolve. Thankfully, the 5 newcomers had brought enough food for 3 days, and Alaric could focus on himself and the slimes.
'Hopefully, Sonic comes back soon with the wild game.'
Alaric had long since assumed that Sonic stayed behind to finish the task given to it. He doubted that Sonic couldn't run away from that hunk of rock, Grander, in a desperate situation. His tail was fast, but Sonic was small.
"Maybe I should issue an order for him to come back again? Sonic is a bit more independent than my other slimes, so he probably ignored me in favor of the more entertaining task at hand..."
Alaric decided to give it a shot, maybe he could issue long-range orders now that he reach the peak of rank 1?