"No!" Collin exclaims as I approach with a box under my left arm. "Stop! I don't care who started it, I'm ending it! I will rip out your core and put it in a bucket again!"

It seems that two of the plain magic slime and the water slime were fighting and are in need of being reprimanded. That last bit was directed at the plain magic slime, so I'm guessing he said something aggravating.

A slime's core being removable without killing them is news to me but appears to be something that can be done. I'm kind of curious what happens to the actual goo body of the slime when their core is removed.

Collin is arguing in his slime "pen", which is a fenced-off area with only one tree in it, a smaller tree that I'm not sure how he's keeping small. A small pond was created at the base of it and a few fish were transplanted into that from the closer lake where water slimes can be found, giving Slushy a play area.

That's where Collin is currently arguing with a pair of slimes.

The earth slime is hanging out on some boulders I created for him in another part of the slime yard. He may be sleeping, or he could be doing something else. I'm not entirely sure what. The air slime is chasing the mana slime around, the two of them probably playing a game of tag. They seem to enjoy that.

Though the space itself is only around forty feet on each side, the slimes seem to be happy with it. Only the plain magic slime and the water slime are tamed, and none of the others are hostile toward us.

We strategically cleared out some of the surrounding trees as well, which resulted in a six-foot-wide gap in the center of the canopy over the slime yard. That allows for more sunlight to reach down, and sitting in the center of that is a plain magic slime that wasn't in existence when I visited yesterday.

All of the slimes are around a foot in size, including Slushy. The slime yard isn't massive so they're all maintaining a smaller size to fit in here more comfortably. Any excess goo they produce is released, and Collin's managed to convince them to stop just leaving it on the ground.

One jar for each type of slime sits against the eastern fence, with some of them partially-filled with goo… in a mix. Slushy and the tamed magic slime are fine with putting their extra goo into the appropriate jars while the other slimes… are probably intentionally mixing things up.

My brother could tame them all and make it clear they need to put the goo in the appropriate jars rather than mixing them all up. Rather than doing that, he's trying to do it breeder-style – by teaching them. With how stubborn the slimes are being, he may need to make separate yards for them.

As I enter the yard while my brother continues to argue with the two currently being stubborn, the new slime rolls its way over to me. When it reaches my feet, I get the sense that it's focusing its attention on me. According to Collin, slimes have omnidirectional vision but can "focus" on something in one specific direction if they wish.

"Hey there," I kneel down and bring my left hand down to the ground. "Want up?"

The slime doesn't move for a moments, apart from the occasional ripple in part of its membrane. Then is slides onto my hand, and I hold it up at about rib-height as I walk over to my brother. Domesticated slimes seem to like being carried around like this, and Collin hasn't managed to get his familiars to give him a proper explanation about it.

"Dive bomb attack?" I whisper as we get close.

The slime shrinks a little as part of its membrane extends out to create a short arm with a hand closed in a fist, its thumb up.

"Alright," I whisper. "Get ready."

The slime returns to normal and wiggles a little and once we're behind Collin, I throw it up into the air.

"You have until I count to five," Collin tells the slimes he's arguing with. "And if you don't apologize to each other-"

I accidentally threw the slime higher than I meant to, not realizing how easily it would fly. Adjusting to my Strength isn't an excuse here since the System helps us automatically know how much to use for most common activities, like throwing an object up into the air. I simply miscalculated, as people do.

However, what goes up usually comes back down, and Collin doesn't get to finish his statement because the plain magic slime I threw up into the air lands straight on top of the other plain magic slime. That causes the other plain magic slime to dash away as fast as it can while Slushy starts bobbing and rippling in a way that indicates heavy laughter.

Collin stares at the also-laughing plain magic slime for several long moments, then sighs.

"How did you even get up there?" He asks.

"Hey, Collin," I say.

"Dammit, Carter!" He jumps and faces me.

"I brought you some more slime eggs!" I laugh. "Did you roll more monster eggs for this guy?"

"No," Collin answers. "I asked Goop if he'd make an egg for me back when he hatched. He saved up his slime and made the egg a few hours ago, and this guy here hatched about an hour ago. Mind if we use some holy leaves to turn him into a holy slime? And you got more eggs? How?"

"You can apparently collect rewards at the System Shop for earning Perks," I tell him. "You get a choice between items or materials that can be used to make those."

After I explain about the different rewards we received, I show him the eggs I brought over. Since his slime yard is on the smaller side, Collin doesn't want to do duplicates yet so most of them will be put in storage with the others. However, there are three variants here that he wants to hatch immediately since they're new for him.

"Going to make a second pen?" I ask. "Or just expand this one?"

"Both," he answers. "For now, I'll probably do an elemental slime pen and a non-elemental slime pen, then expand or create new ones as necessary. But this pen has room for around four more slimes."

With six slimes already in here, that would be ten slimes in the yard, which is forty feet on each side. I'm doubting he's just pulling a random number out of his ass, so it probably came from the slime tome or Slushy.

"About a hundred and sixty square feet per slime?" I ask. "How'd you get that?"

"About a hundred and fifty," he says. "And from the tome on raising slimes, if it gets more cramped than that, the slimes will start getting unhappy and possibly cause problems. We can do the two now and then get the second pen set up later. I want to make sure the space is good for their tastes first."

"Alright," I say. "So you're hatching them now? How does that work?"

Collin hatched the other eggs while I wasn't watching, so I don't know the process.

"They just need Mana poured into them," he answers. "Can be done by a slime, another monster, or a person. Around 100 Mana does it."

Collin takes the aura slime egg out of the box and examines it. It looks like any other slime egg, though reddish in color. For a few moments, he stares at the egg as if thinking about something. When I try to reach out with my [Mana Sense], however, I can detect a steady stream of magical energy flowing from him into the egg.

The egg begins to glow, then suddenly starts shrinking down. It reduces down until it resembles a small, red magic crystal with a thin coating of slime goo on it… then the goo pulses and more begins to flow out and around.

Without waiting even a moment past that, Collin drops the crystal. By the time it hits the ground, it's a one-foot slime with a solid core around its crystal, a darker red than the one which makes up the monster's body.

"Quite the dramatic hatching," I say as the aura slime bounces a few times, then starts rolling in the direction of the mana slime and air slime.

"Yeah," he says. "The chickens Grandma sent had much more normal hatchings."

"You hatched them?" I ask. "Isn't the air basically lethal to them?"

"Patrick and Teresa built a coop for them," he tells me. "And Chance enchanted it so that they can survive despite the Mana."

"Ah," I say.

The hatching for the dimensional slime turns out to be just as dramatic, and the dark grey slime slides beside me and watches the hatching of the metal slime. After hatching, the metal slime makes its way over to where the earth slime is doing its thing, joining it up on the boulders. The aura slime and mana slime have created arms without hands and are poking each other with them, which seems to be more for fun than anything else. The air slime has shifted to doing some sort of dance around them, and I'm not going to question it… too much.

"We're not going to head into the Dungeon tomorrow," I inform Collin now that all the slimes are hatched, the dimensional slime still hanging out by my leg. "After killing three royal monsters in one day… we want a little bit of a break. And we all want to try out some new stuff and train just a little bit more. In case of any surprises. Would you mind making sure the dimensional slime goo is separate? I'm confident that Chance can make a basic storage item if he has the goods."

"I can do that," Collin says. "Want to stay here and see what happens when a slime shifts? The mana slime one wasn't too noticeable but it might be for a holy slime."

We could just hatch the holy slime egg, except that Collin doesn't want to bring the yard to its capacity just yet and holy slimes are important enough that having a second one sooner isn't going to be a problem. Since there's a plain magic slime ready for conversion, we can just do that now and hatch the egg once another slime yard is made.

"We'll need to get more holy oak leaves," I tell him. "I can take one of the others and get them after lunch."

"Already have them," he tells me. "We figured you'd say 'yes' so Tessa and Todd went and got some. It should be enough to convert the slime."

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"Oh, cool," I say. "Yeah, no, it's not a problem. Do you need to go get them?"

"They're over here," he exits the slime yard and opens up a backpack that's sitting beside a tree, then pulls out a wooden box and returns. "Where'd the rascal go?"

"Over there," I indicate where the new plain slime is chasing around the old one.

"Hey! Goop! Send your son over here!"

Goop stops playing with the other slime and wiggles in some sort of way, then the other plain magic slime comes over to us. Collin kneels down and opens up the box, revealing the holy oak leaves packed inside of it.

"Here's some delicious food for you," Collin tells the slime. "Nummy nummy nummy. Eat up, okay?"

The slime shifts towards Collin in a gesture that suggests it's "looking" at him, then at the box. Then it rolls forward a little and stretches out a tendril, touching one of the leaves. A moment later, the leaf sucks into the slime through the membrane and begins to dissolve. While the leaf dissolves, the slime is almost completely still… then it does a happy jiggle and starts pulling in more of the leaves.

"It doesn't look like anything is happening," I say once three-quarters of the leaves are consumed. "It dissolves them, but doesn't change color at all."

"Hold on," Collin says. "I think it's almost there."

Three more leaves are eaten, then the slime stops and does some sort of strange bouncing. As it does that, its core begins to change color, turning white and seeming to sparkle with some gold a little, even through the bluish-grey tint of its goo. Once the core has finished changing color, gold begins to spread out as if leaking into the goo.

The "leak" is slow at first, but quickly picks up speed until the entire slime has changed to a golden color. Upon finishing its evolution, the slime begins to faintly glow, its membrane taking on a slight glittered appearance.

"And that is a lot more of a flashy change than the one for turning into a mana slime," Collin says as the new holy slime wiggles a little, then slides into the dimensional slime before taking off toward the mana slime and aura slime. "I don't think their personalities change much when they change types, though."

Collin and I watch the slimes for a few minutes after that, the dimensional slime remaining beside me the entire time.

"Out of curiosity, but what are you going to feed the new slimes?" I ask.

"Nothing."

"How are they going to eat?"

"Slimes only eat if they actually have the materials to do so," he tells me. "At least, according to the guide. And most of them haven't really been eating. So they'll eat what's there if it's to their taste. Feeding them makes them happier but isn't a necessity unless they're a plain one that's not learned or agreed to stay a plain one. Though they can also eat ambient Mana regardless of their type, which is why they aren't affected by ho much is in the air."

That's a little bit different than what he told me before, but alright.

"Lucas said lunch is in about twenty minutes if you're planning on joining us," I let him know. "That was about ten minutes ago. Just thought I'd let you know before heading back."

"Alright," he snorts. "And yeah, I'll join you guys. Just the house eating there?"

We haven't hosted any more meals for everyone since the Dakota and them arrived, but this is the second time today I've been asked if everyone is going to eat with us.

"Lucas asked me that about breakfast," I say. "Is something going on I don't know about?"

"Not that I can think of," he answers.

"Alright," I say. "See you when you come over."

I leave the slime yard, making sure no slimes are with me as I exit through the gate. That does involve asking the dimensional slime to stay behind, however, as it seemed to want to follow me out.

As I pass through the storage for some of the wood that we've cut to various sizes, I notice that a certain slime is following me. The others all stay in the fenced-in area even though they could slip through the cracks. This one just… apparently doesn't want to do that?

"Hey, buddy," I kneel down. "I don't know what you're doing, but do you mind going back to the slime yard? It might be a little crowded, but Collin's planning on a building a second one soon and moving some of you over to it."

The slime jiggles in a way I'm not sure how to interpret, but I get the feeling it isn't happy with that.

"Please?" I ask. "I'm not sure why you're wanting to follow me around, but you'll get a better home soon. I promise."

The slime gives me a sad-looking jiggle, then starts rolling back toward the slime yard. That was definitely weird and I'm half-tempted to go through the tome I bought earlier to see if I can't figure out some mind magics that would let me communicate with a slime. Just using [Mind Mastery] probably wouldn't work considering I couldn't read the thoughts of the breezestep deer king when I used that on it earlier. Practice will no doubt be needed.

Shaking my head, I finish the walk home, where Lucas is working on lunch and Wyatt isn't visible. Either he's inside the house or went off somewhere.

"Need help?" I offer Lucas.

"No, thanks," Lucas answers. "I'm almost done. Would you mind letting Wyatt know? He said he was going to Todd's."

"Probably to harass Mr. Baxter about reagents," I say. "I'll go get him."

"Let Mr. Baxter know there's enough for him if he wants some."

"Will do."

I head over to Todd's and find Wyatt sitting on a giant boulder that wasn't there an hour ago, kicking his feet a little while watching Mr. Baxter process the snake. I'm not sure what's interesting about that… or why Mr. Baxter let him conjure a boulder to sit on to watch the process.

The breezestep deer king has already been skinned, gutted, and is hanging up, its antlers sitting on a wooden table nearby, along with several crystals and the feathers, beak, and talons from the magihawk king. Though Mr. Baxter is still working on removing the skin from the snake, its fangs and some of its scales are on the table as well.

All of the monster parts on that table have been cleaned of blood, though the table wouldn't stain if they hadn't been. Chance treated all of the tables and shelves he's built over the last week with a brew he figured out that makes them resilient to stains.

"He's not bothering you, is he?" I ask.

"What? Hey!" Wyatt protests. "I'm not bothering anyone! I'm just sitting here, patiently and quietly watching him!"

"Excuse me?" Mr. Baxter gives him an amused look. "The only reason Carter didn't hear you jabbering was because you were trying to think up an answer to my question."

"I wasn't jabbering!" Wyatt protests. "I was just telling you about the fight! You should've seen it, Dakota getting tossed off of her with a vine. Lucas's got some wicked control over those vines. Kind of a turn on, to be honest. His skill with magic, I mean. Not the vines. Not into bondage."

"I don't think he is, either," I snort. "Anyway, Lucas says it's almost time for lunch. Mr. Baxter? He said that you're invited if you want some. He was making some extra for Patrick and Teresa since they're busy and I'm guessing figured he'd offer since we dropped a ton of work on you."

"No worries," Mr. Baxter says. "And if he's offering, then I'll take him up on that. Just give me a few minutes to finish skinning her and get cleaned up, then I'll be over. Butchering can wait a little."

"Alright," I say. "Come on, Wyatt."

"Wait," he hops off of the boulder. "Can you help me carry my loot?"

"I don't know," I smirk. "Is that the team's loot or yours?"

"Uh-well-I was just-maybe-uh-we can talk about it, right?"

He was one hundred percent going to try to use it all for making new potion bombs without remembering to ask the team how we wanted it split.

"I'll help you bring it over," I snort.

Wyatt and I gather up the stuff on the table, then head back home and put it away in the inside storage. Lucas has lunch out on the table now and is fixing up a basket to take over to the builders.

"Mr. Baxter will be over once he gets cleaned up," I inform Lucas. "I can take that to the builders if you want to sit down and eat. I'm sure you're exhausted after this morning's fights."

"Thanks," he says. "I'm putting in enough for Dakota and Chance, they'll probably want to eat there."

Lucas finishes preparing the basket, then hands it to me. It's woven from reeds taken from beside the lake at the former sports park. Todd wove it a few days ago, and it's fairly sturdy. I take it to the construction site, where the four workers are taking a break and talking about the relationships they've had in the past. When I arrive, Chance is in the middle of discussing "our" ex-boyfriend. That's an interesting phrasing and has me curious.

"Who's 'our'?" I ask as I reach them.

"Collin's and mine," Chance says. "We dated him together for about five months."

"Must've been an interesting relationship, dating twins," I say. "Or dating someone with your twin."

Chance shrugs.

"Here's the lunch Lucas offered," I hold up the basket. "There's mac-and-cheese with bits of magihawk meat, a salad with some dried cranberries and small orange wedges and chopped nuts in addition to the usual mix, and peach pudding. There's also a jar of hot chocolate and another of hot apple cider. Dishes are in the bottom. And yes, Koda and Chance, there's enough for you two. Lucas figured you'd probably want to stay here and eat."

"We do," Dakota says.

"Tell Lucas thanks," Teresa says.

"Will do," I say. "Enjoy your lunch."

When I return home, Collin and Mr. Baxter have arrived and are eating with Lucas and Wyatt. I take a seat and serve myself some food, then dig in. There's no reason to grab anyone else, as Tessa, Todd, Trent, and Grace are probably going to fix themselves something. Lucas didn't offer to cook for everyone, after all, and they're all grown adults.

Wyatt and I clean the dishes after dinner and as we finish, I notice an extra being here. Collin's already left to go do something and Mr. Baxter's returned to his home to finish dealing with the stonefang snake queen's remain.

Neither of them look anything like the medium-dark grey slime that's beside my leg.

"Can I help you?" I ask.

"But I didn't even look at you yet!" Wyatt exclaims.

It seems that he wanted something, too.

"Not you," I give him an amused look before looking down at the dimensional slime, which is doing a sort of side-to-side wiggle. "Alright, you know what? Come on."

"That's a slime…" Wyatt says.

"W-where'd he come from?" Lucas asks as I walk over to the back door.

"The slime yard," I answer. "He's the dimensional slime from the egg I got. I don't know what he wants, but he's apparently escaping to stay close to me."

Inside the house, I grab an empty five-gallon jar and set it on the ground, then demonstrate how to open it before fixing the lid back on.

"Alright," I say. "Your turn. Open the jar."

The slime creates two tendrils from its goo and reaches forward, taking a few tries before figuring out how to get the lid off. Upon successful removal of the lid, the slime does a jiggle dance while waving the lid around.

"Yeah! Good job!" I say. "Now can you put the lid back on? It needs to be screwed on all the way, but make sure you don't screw it on so hard you break it or the jar."

The slime gives me a jiggle which might be a response, then places the lid on top of the jar. I demonstrate screwing it on, then unscrew it.

"Your turn," I say.

The slime screws the lid on, and after I have him demonstrate opening and closing the jar a few times, I move the jar and set it on the floor beside the back door. As I do that, the slime's tendrils suck back into him.

"This is your jar," I tell him. "When you have excess goo to get rid of, put it in here, okay? We can make use of it in alchemy and crafting, so it'll help us out if you do that, okay? I'll leave the jar here, but you can put it in other places if you want. But don't let the other slimes put their goo in it – we want yours pure. It's special and rare. Alright?"

The slime shifts a little a few times, then creates its tendrils again and reaches out to grab the jar, holding it up over his head as he does a little dance. That's really cute, especially considering that the jar is bigger than he is. It's probably a good thing Chance has already enchanted all of the larger jars for durability as I'm not sure how likely the slime is to drop it.

"Could you do me a favor, though?" I ask. "I don't want to accidentally step on you, and things can get hectic here. And dangerous, too. So could you stay in the slime yards most of the time? It doesn't have to be all the time, but you can't come with me when I leave the homes since things are more dangerous out there. Alright? I'll visit you there, too."

As I speak, the slime stops moving. He remains still for a few moments after I finish, then sets the jar on his head as a purple-grey spell circle begins to form beneath him. I watch as it forms, quickly recognizing it as similar to the one which teleported Lucas and me to the Dungeon Gate back when we went to rescue Wyatt. Though the slime's spell circle is smaller than the one which teleported me nearly a month ago, it takes about ninety seconds to complete.

"Bye!" I wave as his four-foot-wide version of the spell circle completes. "See you later!"

At the last moment, he creates a third tendril for himself and gives me a salute, then the teleport spell circle flares up in brightness and the slime and its jar vanish, the spell circle fading away a moment later.

He's barely an hour old and is already teleporting. We may need to keep an extra eye on him… especially as he Levels up that Skill. A slime which can teleport around quickly can cause some mischief if he's of that sort of nature. I don't know if he is or not, but I can hope for the best.

Now that the slime's been taken care of, I should probably figure out what I want to do for the rest of the day. Maybe Lucas is up for some post-lunch exercise?