Falc stared at the sentient running back up to the surface, this was bad..Not super bad surprisingly, but still bad. Those tunnels were filled with a bunch of acid slimes rearing to level up, and a few that were ready to air up the entire dungeon.

But it was somewhat worrying, if the sentients didn't fall for the kill room... What was all that mana he put into it even for?

Maybe- Just maybe, he could connect the originally fake path to the real path and make the tunnels a dead end? It wasn't as if his instincts were having a tantrum at the idea, so it should just be fine. But risking the chance that a sentient still went down while another had found the 'Real path' was not worth it, at least not until Falc could be sure about it.

...Falc created a few more boom slimes, just to be safe.

But it wasn't enough, what if the sentients got past the acid spray? They had adapted to acid already, how could he be sure they didn't have the ability to put that weird grey over their entire body? He couldn't, he needed to experiment!

But for that to be effective he would have to make sure the sentients didn't get a chance to adapt to the new varients he was cooking up, Falc needed another test box like the one from his early days, the one that still had a nuclei-holding standard slime just bouncing about.

But letting all that mana go to waste by not stopping or pausing sentients would be a waste considering the urgency, how could he do it?

And then it came to him, he just needed to put his test box after the tunnels. It would both let him experiment, but it would also let all his mana not go to waste. A seizuring slime would probably be at least a slight road block, and it wasn't as if he could recycle all that mana anyways.

But he still needed to be at least a little scheme-ey as he made it, it was basically in his nature now, better to make the most of it. But first he had to make the foundations for his slight bit of tomfoolery.

Falc went to the exit of the tunnels and dug directly downwards for around 3 meters and made a large 3 meter high room that was 5 meters wide and long, with the entrance being a bit off to the side. Then on the other side he made another hole upwards that connected to the original pathway he made when climbing up to the surface, then lowered the original path while separating the tunnels from the original path with 3 meters or more of stone.

Then it was time for Falc to get his unique skill a bit of excersize, as he made the tunnel slowly turn downwards and made the entire tunnel from a bit before the drop as smooth as he possibly could, then he made it suddenly go directly down. Then he just made the pitfall become about twice as large as to make it more difficult for a sentient to halt the fall, about half a meter through the drop in a somewhat fast transition. Though there was still a transition in a cone type expansion, just as it always was, in order to not let any sharp corners that could be exploited in any way to be present.

And with that, it was done. A sentient, which would apparently go through the tunnels and to the exit head-first, would unknowingly get sent into a fun slide down into the depths with their largest weak point ready to feel the wonders of gravity, directly.

Falc couldn't help but feel a little proud as another part of himself was funneling all the extra mana he hadn't been using during his build into slime apostle 1 and some random slimes if the most important slime couldn't handle it- Which it surprisingly could, since... It was the mana of an entire dungeon core, a slime being able to consume it all was surprising.

Coming back for a quick look, he found that the nuclei was a bit different again, but considering he couldn't find any notable difference, he went back to the test box- Which was now its official name, 'Test box'.

Now, just to make sure he wasn't wasting mana as he experimented, he set the majority of himself to create more slimes in the slime plains, and got to thinking.

The way he went to enhance slimes was making them more sturdy with denser weaves, a suitable method yes, but it only made it a bit harder to kill them. Then came , it was the first means of proper attack, but it wasn't that good so he used examples to make it better. Then came twirl with its lucky debut, which Falc still didn't fully understand.

He tried to mule over anything he had tried before, something that failed due to something. And then it came to him; he had previously tried, long, long, long ago, to double up on muscles. But it had failed, monstrously, as the slime died by ripping itself apart. But that was before the D-variant line of slimes had taken the stage of tomorrow, a variant type that took a lot more mp but was also a good bit more durable.

And for that reason, he looked at the super condensed string of mana in the slime plains, split it into three pieces and tried to stretch it back out- Failing quite badly, and taking some time to re-forge it back into proper D-18 density. After which he decided to take a large portion of mana regeneration into his little test box and make a D-1, D-2 and D-3 slime before adding in the muscles the same way as always, just twice over.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

And, after a quick check, he found that it was still too intense for the three slimes. Though, luckily, it did seem that unlike the standard slime within his memory the newly created ones were not dying as badly. While the standard died at the first attempt, ripping itself apart. The D-3, while still very much being damaged by its attempts, did in fact survive the encounter even if not jumping as far as even a normal slime.

But, there was progress! So after cleaning up the mess and making a D-4 slime, and finding that it- Though harmed by the process- Did make it out less scathed than the previous version.

With a ready avenue of growth laying before him, he created a D-5, then a D-6, and finally a D-7 when it finally could jump about without issue. But sadly, the speed of the jump had only increased by 40 or so percent even if the travel distance had better growth.

But, it did work, it was a method to make a superior slime variant. So he had to give it a proper designation... He'd do it later, along with the double musculature and whatever else he found in his journey to the... Innovation land? Whatever he was doing.

From what he could see, adding more muscles was not a dead end, and that meant in simple terms; It was time to bring it to its logical conclusion.

Building up a D-9 slime, the failure that couldn't even sustain a second weave in the past, he tripled the normal amount of muscles- Making sure not the randomly distribute them around the slime- And found it quite easily could resist the ripping force contained within, so he tried again with four times the muscle, little to no problems to be found.

Falc was not expecting this result, even if the D-9 did in fact have nine times the mana within its weave compared to the D-7, he expected something like D-10 or D-11 due to the big gap between a normal slime and D-7.

After another pair of test slimes, Falc finally found the limit of the slime, 5 times the normal muscle- 5x. He would have to re-orient the naming conventions a slight bit, but that would be when the tests stopped and the culmination of experimentation and started to flush the slime plains with even more slime variants ready to level up.

Though Falc did have the intention to one day to experiment with D-10 or above was a bit too much of an investment for mere experimentation, D-7 or so could still be afforded but D-10 and above was just a bit too much. His instincts could still get a slight, slight bit antsy at inefficiency even if it had fallen into a lull over time.

So, he would have to look into a different way, one of skills. He went ahead and started to think about how to experiment with .

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Thalos threw with a smile a somewhat large rib weakly, letting the small grey pup excitedly chase after it for the few leftover pieces of meat atop it "Fetch!"

As the wind burrowed its path through the forest, he held a slight smile on his face as he watched it nibble away before bringing it back to him. He liked pets, especially monster pets that could easily level up and get stronger with time. Though he might not be a {Tamer} or anything, and didn't have something on a higher rarity like or , it didn't mean he couldn't get something more simple like with a slight bit of effort.

And if he had the talents of an animal whisperer, it might even be worth it to switch out his class... It was unlikely that it would be worth it, but it was a possiblity!

If that happened he could relax and train his pets while letting them do all the work... Maybe he could find a way to make Zera a pet? It probably wouldn't work, but if it did he might be able to get her to take care of all the actual work while he played like now, but without any of the complaining.

Like, he could understand. He himself would do everything he could to make the person that pushed work on him hate their lives and rather just die or do the work themselves, but being a hypocrite was guild master tradition.

He would know, his father was one, and his father's father was also one. Going all the way to his great-great-great-great-grandfather who lived in the age of gods at the same time as the mad god, allegedly. Maybe his dad was lying about that one, it wasn't too out of character.

Hearing the rustling and crushing of grass, he turned his head and twisted his torso, finding a certain overworked guild master of his design "Oh, what do you want? Again, if you want to know the details of the deal, you know what to do!"

"Its not that, I asked the caravan myself," She said, eliciting a slight sigh from Thalos at the sad fact, though he would still not tell her for the chance she was just lying "I wanted to ask you about this report from Norman."

Thalos took no initiative to answer as he took out another rib bone and threw it away lightly, in a light manner for his stats at least "Oh, which?"

"The one about the gale wolf subjugation." She explained matter of factly.

Without even the slightest pause, Thalos asked back while watching his somewhat new pet play with the bone "What about it?"

"It says that there were 37 wolves in the pack," She said, looking over the paper she had brought with her even if it had went unnoticed by Thalos 'till this moment "But then at another part it says that 36 carcasses were recovered."

"Uh-huh." He off-handedly responded.

Though, Zera waited for a response, before looking towards where her not so team-oriented compatriot was looking. At the grey, though slightly larger than it should be, grey pup "No, wait. Did -Did you?"

"So what if I did?" Where the only words she got back before Zera just walked back speechlessly, completely surprised at the fact that a non-animal-based class was taking care of a monster of all things, the very obvious potential hazard to human life if not properly managed by a skill.