Alwin spun around on his read, doing his best impression of a spinning top as he scanned the endless white room for that giant floating crystal also known as Lapis. All he saw was white, white, and more white. Oh, and two of her drones near the room's exit holding onto a banner that said 'Come outside. Grand Student of mine.'

Following the instructions, Alwin hopped over towards the exit, taking extra care to nudge the bottom of the banner with the top of his head when he hopped under it. The drones, upon sensing Alwin's intentions, floated up an inch higher so that the only thing that would take a hit was Alwin's ego. Stupid drones, making him look bad.

Stepping out of the white room, Alwin entered Lapis's lab. Bookshelves filled with books and smears of what Alwin could only hope were cake batter smeared along their spines. At her bench strewn with all sorts of glass funnels, test tubes, and bottles containing who knows what, there floated Lapis. Her Spirit Hands were whisking away at a white substance inside a glass bowl. Alwin wasn't going to get fooled again, he knew better than to fall for Lapis' tricks twice. She was making cake! Not some super mystical potion. Now there was nothing she could do to embarrass him!

"Oh, slime boy. Good for you to join me." Lapis hovered towards Alwin, letting a drone take her place and command the whisking Spirit Hands. "Well, not really. I teleported you here so you didn't really have a choice. And remember it's proprietary magic so I can't share with you the deets, but you probably don't have enough mana to use it anyway. So how's life? Doing good? Evolution treating you well? Milvee still being a bad teacher? Wait, since I thought him wouldn't that mean I'm a bad teacher? Doesn't matter, I thought him magic, not the magic of teaching. Anyway, I bet you're wondering why I brought you here."

Lapis paused her speech as if she was goading Alwin to confirm her suspicions.

"Well?" Lapis said.

"I thought you didn't want to be prompted?" asked Alwin. "Didn't you say it's a waste of time or something like that?"

"Yeah, but I changed my mind. Go on, ask me why I brought you here."

With all of his might, Alwin had to resist the urge to follow in Uchronia's footsteps—rolling his eyes. He could bite his tongue to prevent him from saying something that he would regret, but he couldn't exactly bite his eyeballs to stop them from rolling. That's why there was only one solution he could think of. Alwin closed his eyes.

"So why did you bring me here?"

"Well, I'm glad you asked." The pair of Spirit Hands in charge of whisking that sticky white substance dropped the whisk in its hands just to clap, before resuming its duties. "I brought you here today because it's experiment day! Or experiment week depending on how fast you learn."

"Experiment? Learn?" asked Alwin. Was it time to evolve again?

"You're learning! I didn't even have to prompt you to prompt me this time. Before I tell you what you're doing I have to give you some context. Don't want me to say something then you don't understand it, but you just keep nodding along too afraid to ask a question in case you think that I think that you're dumb, then you end up wasting time not knowing what to do while you panic internally, until you eventually give in and ask me, then you realized that it was actually a quick fix and that one minute of asking could've saved you ten hours of work."

Was Lapis talking about him? How did she know that he didn't like asking questions and would rather 'spend' time figuring out a solution on his own. It worked for his species skill, not so much for his Core skill, although he did ask about his Core skill multiple times and he still hadn't found a resolution for it yet.

"To cut a long story short, actually, it's still the same length but split into smaller easy-to-digest segments that give the illusion that it's short. That little meeting I had a few days ago was a resounding success. I received more funding and sadly more work to do. Now, I have to figure out whether certain elemental essence truly affect your evolution. I mean that's what everyone's been assuming and for the most part, it kinda works, but you know they need proofs and papers and publications and whatnot. Publish or perish as they say."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"You're getting good at this. You, my friend, are the perfect guinea pig. You've already learnt that Refinement technique and luckily for you I've figured out a way to refine the Refinement. Also, I'm assuming that Core Skill of yours would come in handy. You know, devolve then evolve, then devolve and evolve again. You get the picture. So have you tried it out yet?"

"You saw it yourself, there's a meter just like evolution," said Alwin.

"I know, but have you actually tried to use the skill yet? Maybe the counter just allows you to access newer forms? Or since its devolution is it considered older forms? Whatever, semantics aren't my specialty."

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Alwin opened his mouth to speak up and shut Lapis' idea down when he realized that he never actually did try to devolve after he first evolved. On the off chance that Lapis was right, that would be another blow to his ego. His incompetency would be highlighted for the world to see—this was definitely not Alwin overreacting.

"Before I answer, can I go to the bathroom first?"

"Sure. Drones, lead our young guest to the bathroom."

Two drones came flying down from the stairs that connected Lapis' lab to the upstairs cafe. They picked Alwin up and chauffeured him to a door with a sign that said, 'It's business time.' Drone number one opened the door and lifted up the toilet lid while drone number two placed him down on the floor before both of them closed the door behind them.

The bathroom was a bathroom—what a shocker. It had a toilet bowl, shower, floor mat, sink, and a cabinet above it that doubled as a mirror. All in all, it was a standard home bathroom. Time for Alwin to get down to business, he was going to relieve himself—not expelling any waste. Alwin was going to relieve himself of the burden of not knowing whether he could use his Core Skill or not.

There was only one problem. How did he even use his Core Skill? If it didn't work was it because he didn't know how to activate it or was it because he hadn't fulfilled any requirements yet? Was Alwin overthinking things as per usual? Absolutely. He just had to go about it the same way he went about his species skill. Simply think of activating the skill and let his core do the rest.

First, Alwin had to sit on the toilet seat, that was the only position where he could see himself in the mirror—stupid short monster problems. Alwin closed his eyes, repeating the words devolve inside his mind. Nothing was happening. Alwin squeezed his eyelids even harder, wrinkles forming on his face as he scrunched it. To any would-be onlookers, they would assume Alwin was having a bowel movement so intense that even air fresheners were useless.

Still, Alwin continued to chant the words, 'Devolve, devolve, devolve,' in his mind. Even going so far as to start saying it out loud. Nothing happened. This can't be right. Looks like Alwin was right and Lapis was wrong. Take that grand teacher! No, it is not weird to bash his grand teacher inside his head when she was just trying to help, and, no, Alwin did not have any issues.

It was then that Alwin realized he had made a grave error. The name of his Core Skill wasn't called Devolve. It was called Devolution. Alwin attacked the wall with his face. No one could ever know about this slip-up. Time to bury this memory into the deepest recesses of his mind, so deep that not even mind readers would be able to find it. On an unrelated note, Alwin was still convinced that someone somewhere out there was peeping into his mind every once in a while. Was it paranoia? Maybe. Was he going to continue down this train of thought? Nope, he was getting off at this station.

"Devolution."

A flash of light consumed the room blinding Alwin because like the idiot he was, he was staring right at the mirror that was shooting all of the rays of light back at him.

Alwin couldn't see, but he could feel. He could feel himself shrinking, not much, just a tad bit. After the light died down, Alwin still had to wait just a little bit longer for the black spots that consumed his vision to dissipate before he could actually see.

Wait, wait, waiting. Most of the black spots had finally disappeared, except for one. One large black spot that dominated his vision still hadn't vanished yet. Odd. Was he going to blind? Alwin blinked his eyes, fluttering those eyelids of his up and down, giving them the workout of a lifetime. But, still, there was one giant black dot in the center of his vision that refused to disappear. There was something even more peculiar. That black spot was blinking as well.

Oh.

Let's just ignore the last few paragraphs and pretend that Alwin wasn't an idiot. After the light died down, and the black spots that consumed his vision had finally dissipated, there was one final black spot far larger than the rest. Except that this wasn't any black spot, that was Alwin looking at himself in the mirror.

Success!

Gone was his half-dark and half-light form, he had regressed back into a Dark Slime. Now one small teensy-weensy problem. Was he stuck like this?

Alwin cleared his throat making sure that he and whoever deemed it necessary to shout out the name of their skills could hear him crystal clear.

"Devolution."

Nothing happened.

Drats, this was bad.

"Evolution? Evolve?"

Nothing happened. Again.

Alwin only had one last idea in mind. Let's hope this works.

"Noituloved." That was Devolution backwards.

Another flash of light consumed his vision and this time, Alwin was smart enough to close his eyes instead of staring. He could feel his body expanding back to its original size. As he grew, Alwin shoved away the idea of debating which was his original size—his Dark Slime form or his Yin-Yang Slime form—after all it depends on context.

Opening his eyes, Alwin found himself staring at his half-light and half-dark bulbous body. It was a sight for sore eyes and a huge relief like a ginormous burden had been lifted off his shoulders. Alwin had finally used his Core Skill! If Lapis asked why he took so long, he could just say that he had a lot to let go and technically he wasn't wrong.

Hopping off the toilet seat and remembering to flush, so that the drones who were undoubtedly standing guard outside the bathroom wouldn't ask too many questions, he finally exited the room. The two drones escorted Alwin back to Lapis who had once again taken charge of the Spirit Hands who were whisking away at the thick white substance that filled the glass bowl. They flew back up the stairs to fulfill whatever duties that Lapis had tasked them with while a third drone took over the whisking station once again.

"You know, slime boy, I'm disappointed in you."

"What? Why?"

Did she catch on that Alwin had only thought about trying out his Core Skill less than five minutes ago? Was she disappointed that her grand student was such an incompetent buffoon? What was it? Spell it out, woman!

Lapis shook her diamond-shaped crystal body because it was also her head. "The drones didn't hear you wash your hands."