> Then comes the transcender variant, the most rare of all the variants.
>
> A transcender variant is a monster born in a dungeon that had leveled-up beyond the limits of its race, though that does not mean any extra level in a dungeon monster would make a transcender variant. It is unknown what specific rules there are to bringing forth a transcender, all that is known so far is that it is caused by leveling.
>
> Thus, to prevent the creation of a transcender variant it is important to keep adventurer casualties minimal.
>
> But what if even if you took proper preventative measures, a transcender variant appeared?
>
> Kill it.
>
> The simplest way to get rid of a variant, like always, is killing it. But what makes a transcender variant so important compared to a elemental variant? The answer is a bit more complicated, while an elemental variant is merely the same creature but born with a different attribute, and thus it is more likely to not be defended against by any brough equipment.
>
> But it is still a regular monster, and transcender variant is an overal superior variant of a monster. With a fundamentally different form, upgraded skills and often supported by a dungeon if conscious.
>
> The easiest method to get rid of it is to declare its presence and abilities to adventurers, allowing their greed for the bounty lead them to attempting to kill it. Though, be warned, such an act may allow the transcender variant to transcend once more.
>
> And take note; the bounty for double transcenders are four times as high.
An excerpt from 'Variants and solutions' by 'Yale', distributed to all students taking the 'Guild management' course in the imperial academy.
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With that entire... 'Situation' over, Falc finally just paused and took a small- Though significantly helpful for his emotional state- Break.
Two times in a row a group of more than one sentient ran into the slime plains to kill slime apostle 1, and he needed to figure out a way to stop that, gather their attention in some other direction like he had done with the false paths he had made more than twice.
There also weren't many sentients braving the depths anymore, which was actually a good thing since then there was less of a chance that the very nearby entrance to his true pathway would be discovered. But that also meant he wasn't getting any essence for him to get skills for his monsters... He hadn't actually had a proper look at any of the core skills for a while too, so he'd have to remember that.
It wasn't as if sentients weren't entering all together, some of the ones that generated a little bit of essence went through the first few rooms along with the two false ones after the entrance to the slime plains.
But why would they do that? From what he understood sentients were malevolent creatures coming to shatter his core, why would they not try to find it?
It had shifted only a single light and dark cycles ago, though now that he thought of it, it did seem that there were already signs of decreased sentients a few cycles before it... When slime apostle 1 started to kill a bunch of sentients, and then again a little while before the first duo of sentients came down with very clear intent to kill his dearest slime.
'Are sentients... Afraid of death?' Falc thought to himself 'That... That seems a lot like me... Do they also think like me? Or are they just primal creatures?'
Taking a moment to think of what he could do with that information, he decided to put himself in a sentient 'If I were a sentient coming to catch a dungeon core or kill a bunch of slimes in the slime plains and suddenly a slime kept killing my compatriots, I wouldn't go down into the slime plains before it died, and if I could I would even make something go and kill it themselves I would.'
It suddenly all clicked, if the sentients could think somewhat coherently- Even if not just like him- They wouldn't risk going to the slime plains while slime apostle 1 was around, at least not just to get nuclei, which they seemed to like a lot.
So, if he just hid slime apostle 1 away in some deeper floor where it couldn't die nor kill sentients, wouldn't it not be at risk of death? Then the problem of too few sentients for his essence needs would probably disappear as well, though that wasn't as important.
Though Falc was not even slightly convinced of the validity of his conjectures, the only way to test it was to try it out.
He quickly ordered slime apostle 1 to go a corner of the slime plains, it having finally stopped asking for more mana. Though it was actually pretty good that it was actually having proper thoughts instead of just emotions, even asking him for mana properly.
While it bursted with its vastly superior hopping speed, Falc started work on what he had long since forgotten; A double weave slime.
Well, mostly it was just practicing creating a bunch of mana strings in preparation for when the slimes had to replaced again, but if that didn't happen again for a while, it didn't seem like a bad idea to start setting up for a proto slime paragon.
When it finally reached the location it was demanded to reach, Falc started to tunnel a little winding passage-way down and down with his terrible earth affinity. After about... two tenths of a light dark cycle, he had finally made it go far enough for him not to need to worry about any sentients accidentally coming across slime apostle while it was relaxing under ground and demanded that it entered before starting to cover it back up with more earth at an even slower pace than when he dug it out.
And that was his plan, slowly tunnel down and close it up at the back, with slime apostle 1 being stuck inside the air pocket. He wasn't exactly sure how long it would take before he could be completely certain it would safe to re-introduce it into a part of dungeon, but he was certain it would be somewhere in the tunnel system somewhat close to his core.
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It would be a shame it wouldn't level up for a long, long, long while. But he still needed to inspect slime apostle 1 in detail before Falc could confidently put it in the face of danger for another boost in power.
Waiting while constantly pressing more and more strands of mana together and forging them into a smaller size, it was quite a slow process after the first D-12 strand was created. Mostly due to the time consuming act of forging something that had been forged 14 times over, and then he found that he once again had free mana that he couldn't easily consume without over populating the slime plains far too much.
Luckily, with a slight tang of asking for attention coming from his connection to slime apostle 1, and opportunity arrived.
Taking a small portion of his consciousness to go and ask what it wanted, as expected, it asked for more mana. It just so happened he had free mana just going to waste since he wasn't using it, so with the thumbs up from his own creation, Slime apostle 1 had been mentally put down as a dump for excess mana, for the near future at least.
Since the little wisp of his mind wasn't robust enough to pour it all in on its own, he borrowed a bit from his forging consciousness and added it to the mana dump consciousness.
When the D-12 strand was finally properly condensed down to proper size for the next merger, Falc began to make then next threads and no longer needed to constantly pour his mana in some creature and so did not. When he finally reached the road block of a highly-forged thread of mana needing even more forging, he let the tap to slime apostle 1 loosen before closing it when he needed the mana again.
He wasn't exactly sure why slime apostle 1 wanted the nectar of the world in its small artificial frame, but he didn't really question it as he took his time making more and more threads of mana seeing as the difficulty seemed lesser than when he started. Though the slight, slight, honestly negligible amount of mental focus required to maintain the one or two big boy threads did trouble him, though only slightly.
With nothing really to do except making threads of mana, pouring mana into slime apostle 1, filling up the row of rooms at the beginning with slimes from time to time, and thinking up ideas for more rooms and schemes.
The most easy thing to do was the first, and experimenting with it would also be the safest and easiest. And it was kind of getting annoying to make such insignificantly forged threads one at a time, it was time to start making mana threads en masse for time efficiency, maybe.
It would be an experiment, and while he was in the middle of process of forging the created threads into a greater form he could see what would happen if he poured mana into slime apostle 1. Falc was kind of curious what would happen if a slime that already had a nucleous absorbed more mana... Wait, was this exclusive to slime apostle 1?
Pausing his forging process, he took a look at an old slime, a slime formed in the deepest darkest depths of the dungeon, just below his little room. Holding a nucleous and jumping about in the cubic room he had casually made without constantly thinking about the effects it would have in prolonging his survival... Good times.
With a very focused look, the slime was actually taking in mana, though extremely slowly. Less than a hundredth of mp per day, when he had already given slime apostle about 112 mp already and actually far slower than slime apostle 1's passive mana gathering speed. An interesting fact, but he still needed to do something a bit more productive like test different work flows for creating higher-order slimes.
He had decided to create a total of 243 threads at once, which would allow him to create a D-6 thread in one fluid process.
And, it did pretty well. About 30% less time consuming overall in comparison to the original method, so it was time to go one step further and make a D-7 thread in one big leap to the heavens, though he did first finish two more D-6 threads to not waste the original test thread before attempting to make 729 strings of mana at the same time, though he hit his limit at around 500-ish threads.
A worrying obstacle, and an old nemesis from his days of trying to create a double layered slime.
It took a while for him to come up with a way to over come it, but while he was in the middle of compressing the threads and going through the motions of forging higher order threads, he felt space open up...
That was it! It was an old foe, yes, but Falc had overcome it once before through compressing the threads enough that they no longer consumed too much of his mind's energy.
So, if he compressed the threads while also creating new ones, space would be opened, allowing him to create even more threads while he still forged other threads and forming a constant cycle of mana thread production.
It was also somewhat relieving to clearly see the group that had just previously gone down for slime apostle 1 to come back down and search for the now well hidden slime, finding the end of its trail in a dark and dusty corner where he led a acid spewing slime with a nucleous to roughly shoot towards them before hopping off.
Though it was sadly hunted down and then killed, it wasn't actually well made or anything, just one of the test slimes to mimic slime apostle 1's weave, though not being that well made and thus highly disposable. Though the speed at which attained a nucleous was pretty good considering he never gave it a single drop of excess mana.
He'd look into it, right now in fact.
Taking all the information gained from his mana-dumping consciousness about slime apostle 1- Not taking the somewhat morphed, and still morphing, nucleous into consideration right now due to it not really effecting the rest of the slime at the moment- Falc created five slimes with just regular ol' threads strewn about and weren't directly in use at the moment, just like what slime apostle 1 was made of.
Then he returned to his day job of making more and more and more high order threads of mana, slowly increasing in pace over time as Falc got used to his new work pace, which increased speed by more than 70% in comparison to before, allowing him to make a D-17 thread in merely a single cycle then two more in the next...
Falc was done, maybe he had begun fantasizing about the mythical D-100 thread which held 3^100 times more mana compared to a regular thread of mana, but it was just an unreasonable time investment. He had taken around three cycles in total just making the materials needed for a D-18 thread, not even accounting for the time it would take to even make it, he neither had the time nor the mana to waste on a single D-100 thread that he wouldn't even be able to properly use for a slime since a slime was made of a weave, not a thread.
But now with 3^18, or 387420489, strands of mana just sitting there, he wasn't exactly sure what to do with it.
The amount it had was almost certainly at least a thousand times his mana pool ready to be moved for whatever he wished at any moment in time, he could do so much with that.
But... It was taking a surprisingly miniscule amount of mental energy, it was just near nothing, negligible. The trend hadn't changed a bit, more mana with the same amount of value required less of his mental resources to keep from dispersing.
-Even if the idea of letting such a humongous amount of mana go to the wind just to see what kind of crazy stuff would happen was somewhat interesting to him, he couldn't waste his stockpile of war supplies.
Though Falc didn't have any proper experience un-compressing mana, considering that mana didn't stay in its compressed state after letting it dissipate, he was pretty sure he could do it artificially or at least make the natural process do it in a controlled manner.
But he wasn't exactly sure what to use it for, it wasn't as if a D-15 or -16 would be that better than normal. But there wasn't really a reason not to save up even mana for a rainy day, he'd figure out what to use it for at a later date while expanding the dungeon when he got any ideas.