I took some time to study the body of the elf kid today, and what I found was pretty interesting. He still has no talent for plant manipulation whatsoever, while his talent for internal mana manipulation is improved far beyond what I had thought it was. He’s somehow managing to improve his ability to manipulate plants through his devotion to me, and now that I look for it nearly everyone that didn’t come from the older dungeon is. It’s not surprising that it is happening, I had just never considered the possibility before.

This means that people are going to be improving faster than I thought they were, which is definitely a good thing. I wonder how far this effect will go? Could it allow someone to accomplish something that would otherwise be impossible for them, or is more like making things that they were already capable of easier? More importantly, how would I even test that? It’s not terribly important, but I am curious.

As for my other project, I am now failing to create memories once every four attempts, which is still way too much to reasonably work with but is much better than I was doing yesterday. Once I am able to reliably create memories I need to be able to read them, or rather I need other people to be able to read them. I can just look at the memories directly, but most people will not have that option. So I need something to interpret it, which isn’t too difficult but it will still take some time to perfect.

I think the real problem that I’m going to face is figuring out how to keep it all together once I complete it. Right now everything falls apart over the course of a day or so, which I really should have expected. One part of the core of the soul helps keep everything together, and while it isn’t strictly necessary, I do not have the skills required to make something without it, nor do I have the skills required to create it without using more soul energy than I have available to me. So I need to find another solution. This is probably where I use Spellwood and Grey Iris, but figuring out how to get all of that to work properly is going to be a pain. Still, it shouldn’t be impossible for me.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Other than that I got roped into greeting the leaders of a new city that my forest has expanded over. Usually, Speaker would have done this, but his replacement is still getting the hang of things. There was a big ceremony and a party following it, and it was fun, just not exactly what I wanted to do with my time. That isn’t to say I regret going, quite the contrary. I get a chance to meet with that purple queen slime from before and actually managed to get a chance to study their body this time. It seems to keep its shape through a series of thin membranes that run throughout the entirety of the body, which is a simple enough solution, I likely would have come up with something similar if I had too. These membranes are able to move, shrink, grow, and otherwise change themselves at will in order to accomplish any shape desired by the slime, and are able to do so with an incredible deftness. I’ve never seen anyone change their shape so quickly, I would struggle to reproduce the effects with my own body.

Their core, in particular, was fascinating. It’s very similar in function to a brain, but entirely different in structure. It’s actually a lot more reminiscent of the way the soul is structured, thinking about it that way explains a lot of the design choices made in the rest of the body as well so I wouldn’t be surprised if the original creator of the slimes was trying to create a physical representation of the soul. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to study it but I’m curious about how these similarities impact the communication between the soul and their body. Too bad slimes are so rare in this part of the world, maybe I can get the scholars to bring me some to study. It is theoretically possible for goblins to evolve into slimes, but it’s never been observed to happen outside of carefully controlled circumstances.

I wonder if I would be able to manipulate the body of a slime with flesh manipulation, in theory, it should work but I didn’t test it because that would have been rude.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.