In a tent near a few- Still in construction- More permanent forms of housing. Within, a certain {Spell slinger} stood at a table filled with glassware and magical alchemical equipment for both heating and water creation, along with another table a bit away filled with catalysts and other more common ingredients.

He wasn't much of an alchemist, he didn't even have a proper skill bonus for it from his class, but Damian... Well, he dabbled enough to create a few remedies. Specifically disinfectants and healing potions of somewhat low grade, though he wasn't limited to them.

Currently, as he sloshed a vial filled with water and a certain mildly luminous moss of dark grey colouration and soft-blue-ish radiation, examining what it could do in fascination.

The moss lost its light about five hours after it left the dungeon, even if it wasn't even slightly hard to get some more. An interesting fact, saying that the dungeon had something within it that was activating or fuelling the glow. Specifically the increased ambient mana within it, proven by the fact that when Damian poured mana into the vial and let it naturally dissipate; the moss returned to radiating slightly even after dulling completely.

But that wasn't too big of a deal, something that was able to indicate the ambient mana levels was pretty easy to find, but something that could contain ambient mana for any period of time was valuable.

Because it could be naturally and easily be used to make mana potions with a slightly difficult process, and mana potions- Even the low quality stuff that would be born from normal plants somehow holding mana- Were valuable.

Both in coin and skill experience.

If Damian lucked out and could create a mana potion, it would be possible to grow his to maybe level 25 or so from his current level of 13 in a mere month or three.

Even if a level 30 [Uncommon] skill wasn't exceptionally great, was a more valuable skill in the modern market compared to a normal combat skill, especially compared to more common swordsmanship or spearmanship skills. With that he could probably even make a fifty to a hundred silvers a day in bigger cities, though that would only be if he had a proper establishment to sell his potions.

Still, it would be a good bit more than what people made here, not that that had been his focus as someone able to do alchemy. As long as Damian felt like it, he could go to either a city or large village, find a master to apprentice to, work in an already established shop, or make one of his own, and he'd be making enough to live off of.

But, the methods to detecting whether the moss was storing mana for a period of time instead of it only using the energy obtained from sitting in high ambient mana levels were all very expensive. Especially the proprietary compound which which indicated whether there was mana in a something when crushed and mixed with said something.

It was even more annoying because the moss died less than three hours after leaving the dungeon's domain and the complementary ambient mana that came with it, both meaning that it would be troublesome to bring to other dungeons or cultivate outside of using dungeons.

But luckily for him, no one paid attention to it because such flora was quite common in dungeons as lighting for whatever reason, specifically the dungeons that were actually managed.

...Not that the lack of easy solutions was especially bad, even if he'd rather just repeatedly make some mana potions instead of using his head and experimenting. Skills always leveled up best by either holding great mastery over whatever the skill pertained to, experimenting and trying new things, gaining achievements with it- Such as creating a formula for a mana potion without clues nor hints- Or using the skill in chaotic or dangerous situations, usually in battle.

Just using the skill was always slow compared to the proper, though difficult to use, leveling methods. And even if one knew about it, like almost every person in the world, it wasn't especially easy to make use of the information- Outside of experimenting.

Damian himself wanted to make use of the first the most, he had heard many a tall tale of some legendary figure or just a random farmer gaining a sudden enlightenment and bursting through multiple skill levels in the matter of a day or two. Though those were mostly folk tales or legends, and then the myths... Those were even more exaggerated.

Placing the vial calmly inside of a wooden holder recently made, since he had no plans of testing glowing moss for a good bit of his stay. But, even if the dungeon opened up again, he wasn't exactly planning to enter again considering the two levels in he had gained. Although the growth would quickly fall off at some point, it didn't seem to have reached it yet.

He took another one of the herbs he had recently bartered for in exchange for some health potions with a modicum of proper shelf life, crushing it in a mortar and pestle, making sure it was as fine as it could reasonably become before carefully pouring it into the vial as the smell of peppermint and blue berries started to pour into the room while a small sizzling could be heard from the mixture.

As he finally heard it and noticed the somewhat obvious turn from peppermint to basil, the {Spell slinger} hastily took a wooden stopper- Him not feeling the need to waste money on a glass one- And closed his newly found concoction away from the rest of the world with worried emotions. What he had just mixed in with the moss could obtain acidic properties when mixed with quite a few materials, especially blood.

And what just so happened to be the smell of said acidic combination? Basil.

Though, watching from afar on the other side of the tent, as the moss broke apart and seemed to taint the water with its glowing property... Even if only partially. But most importantly to him, was that the vial was not corroding.

Not sure whether the fluid was safe for either consumption or smelling, he took the vial and fastened it with a common spell, anchor, and went looking for his good friend who had a far better physique stat when compared to his 6. He was attempting to learn anyways, so he also had mana to replenish too.

Quickly finding Ferr in the process of skinning some local game, he brought him to his tent as testing a potion that might or might not lose effect in only a few minutes was more important than skinning some small creature which wouldn't spoil for at least multiple hours more.

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Breaking apart the anchor spell, he took the vial and handed it over to his {Hunter} friend "This is it, I don't know specifically what it'll do, so only a few drops okay?"

"Yea, yea, I'm your precious lab rat." Ferr said, slightly annoyed, taking the vial and directly opening it up without even trying to smell it.

"Yes, so I can't have you die on me right now." Damian remarked back, in a somewhat joking tone.

"Sure, sure," The {Hunter} remarked with a small smirk, before chugging the whole thing in one big gulp "I'll do my best."

Damian watched in shot for a moment "-Ferr, I told you to only drink a few drops!"

"It'll be fin-" Ferr attempted to remark confidently, before suddenly grasping his stomach in acute pain. Not to the point that he fell to the ground, but enough to wheeze out "-Oohhh... Acid in my bowels... Is so painful. Tell my mother, that I hate her."

Though Before he could go on in making the most of the situation, a proper potion of healing with minor side-effects that looked like sludge but tasted like vegetables in liquid form was forced down his gullet by his dearest friend "Stop being over dramatic and start learning, you'd think 7 spirit would make you smarter than this."

Coughing instinctively as the slight bit of potion that had happened to enter his lugs was removed, he brought out "It- It wasn't that serious, do you want to torture me man?!"

"Well, I do want you to get for a rainy day, maybe even if I'm lucky," Damian couldn't help but remark "But other than that, did your mana refill?"

Choosing to bring his mind off of the looming pain that was coming for him "Yes, 3 mp."

"For real?"

"Yes."

Laughing loudly, Damian mentally noted it down as he found something large enough to bite on without breaking- A large stopper- And put it in his friend's mouth.

And as Ferr steeled himself for the pain in his stomach to triple, he found no such thing happening, only his body becoming quite numb. Giving a questioning gaze to Damian, he got his response:

"It was a good one, torture isn't cool."

A large relief in Ferr's eyes, as he went to sit down "You really scared me there... Well, I'm... Feeling kind of woozy, let me just, sit down for a minute."

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Falc still sat, thinking, as he started to create slimes once more.

There were a few sentients taking the plunge into the depths of the slime plains, allowing him to finally start accumulating essence at a proper pace again. Not that he particularly liked the change though, but there were one or two kills as he controlled one or two acid slimes to shoot sentients in their large and pretty exposed weakness which didn't have grey heads, and he made sure to leave a little bit of himself on both of the remains to see what happened to them.

With a bit of extra essence to his name, He couldn't help but seethe slightly about how the acid wasn't as effective as it used to be in the olden days when he first got it... Not much, for but a single moment. But from it, come an idea.

Falc finally saw it!

Compression was the best way to make better variants, that had long since established. But a new way to use the near ancient method had finally been found, one that Falc had surprisingly never thought up. What if- In completely hypothetical terms since he hadn't tested it- He made an weave... With compressed threads?

They had always just been made up of regular threads of mana, but the mere thought of compressing the strings and seeing what would happen never occured to him.

Quickly making a standard slime in the slime plains since it would probably do nothing amazing and wasn't worth wasting space, he twisted the threads and appreciated the lack of splicing between regular threads and far smaller threads. Though it was somewhat questionable why the D-1 or D-2 slimes didn't have the problem the original giant test slime had, then realized that they were compressed.

Anyways, not bothering with the superfluous facts that he could find out about later, he looked at the of his new creation. It's double compressed C++ threads connected with the regular threads, it seemed somewhat flimsy, but after compressing all the threads down to a suitable size, he let it show the world its power.

And, it was kind of disappointing.

The amount of acid was clearly less, so it seemed this was a waste of time. Though, why was there less acid when the weave hadn't shrunk? Was the volume of the weave not important for that?

Letting a part of himself do the dirty work of cleaning up the mess of acid, he found that it hadn't done its job properly even when it had followed its preset orders to the T. The small amount of acid, had in fact, corroded the stone a bit more than the negligible amount it should've. Even the normal amount of acid- Three times the current amount, since the first forging had the most effect and as such the C thread was one-third the size of a normal thread- Didn't do much to stone and rock.

That didn't mean the new acid did much, it was just slightly less negligible and could be a bother if a slime for some reason became obsessed with spitting acid at the same spot constantly. Even if the acid dissapated after some time, if it kept being replaced it could leave a proper mark in the floor.

An interesting development, as another shot of acid was set off. Making it take only 50-ish% of what a normal to refill while only 30-ish% of the volume.

So, first was to see what would happen if he sized up the mana threads while still having the same amount of compression, and the volume was brought back to its original amount while the acid still held on to its enhanced nature along with a 70% increase in time needed to shoot once more.

Then, he tested something out, he created another, standard, slime with attached. But, doubled the volume of the strings without shifting the strings even slightly. Though Falc then found there wasn't space for that, and instead increased the volume to 150% of the original. And, surprise surprise, it had 1.5 times the amount of acid. Even if it did have the problem of wobbling after a use, which would probably lead to destruction if over used.

Though it also had an increase of its cooldown to 50% more than the base variant.

So... The volume of the strings equalled the volume of acid, how condensed the strings is at least correlated with the efficacy of the acid, while both were related to the cooldown... But then the only question that was left to ask, why did the upsized version not have an increased cooldown?

The only way to find out, was to make the upsized version with twice the volume of both slime and skill weave, but just making all of the strings normal strings. And, before the jump test was made within the test box, he let the risk of the other tests getting harmed and determined the cooldown time of his creation. And, it was halved.

That meant, the volume of the weave very heavily determined the cooldown of the skill. Though Falc didn't exactly understand why that was a fact, he wasn't certain how could figure it out anyways.

Overall, Falc was pretty satisfied, since he had a way to overcome the bane of his murderous impulses.

But where would he make use of it? If he placed a bunch of them in the slime plains, they might get all scared again and not go into the kill room- The kill room, that was the perfect spot! Along with the tunnels, he would put slimes with compressed weaves with and along with it add a ring atop to focus the shot. And obviously it would have proper volume, but, after a quick little test, well; the slime kind of died, in an extremely pathetic and embarrassing manner.

As the skill weave within pulled at the inferior weave beyond it, and through that... Pulled it apart.

The power of the higher order D-3 thread compression was too much for the normal threads, their inferior nature allowing for the minimal strain almost unnoticeable in normal usage enough to directly kill the slime.

So, he directly made a full D-4 slime with D-4 included, even if the costs were closer to a D-5 slime due to the increase in expenses from increasing the size of the threads to normal size along with the extra mp needed for the weave.

Its cooldown was exceptionally long in comparison to normal, but its acid did indeed gnaw through rock at a proper pace. Thus, a few twins were made in the same room as the big boy slime with eight skill weaves within it after its residence was expanded by a reasonable amount, by at least enough space to contain 10 or so normal sized brethren.