JJ awoke to find almost everything exactly as he'd left it. Dwayne rested in a small hole, slowly converting water mana into more earth mana, while Aqua sat above on the lake floor, gathering the plentiful water mana around it.

If there was one thing that had noticeably changed, it was Aqua's size. The slime's gooey body was now completely regenerated. Both physically and magically it appeared to be as good as new, and JJ could no longer feel the trickle of mana flowing out of Aqua's core that had been fueling the regeneration.

'Did my regeneration speed up while I was asleep?' he wondered 'Is that why my mana pool seems slightly lower than before?'

Writing off his confusion, JJ decided that there was no use in looking a gift horse in the mouth. With Aqua in near perfect condition, he felt it was more important to worry about safeguarding his “characters” for the future, rather than worry about the past.

JJ had a plan in mind, but it would involve the heavy use of Dwayne's earth magic. Earth magic that was hard to control down here, surrounded as he was by water mana.

Sure, he could have gone to shore where the earth mana was more plentiful, but JJ felt uncomfortable leaving the lake right now, like that feeling of wanting to lay in bed all day after barely escaping a near-death experience. Just because you know your fears are unreasonable, doesn't mean they'll stop bothering you.

So instead, he scooped out another hole with Dwayne's magic, until the amount of earth mana rose once again.

Then, switching back to Aqua, he began to imbue his will into water mana around the lip of the hole. Recalling his practice with the statues, he attempted to make the enchantment as sturdy and durable as he could, to prevent water mana from flowing through.

The water mana resisted his intentions, trying to flow away much like water itself, but with enough will it began to stick together.

The result was a small dome of enchanted water mana lying over top of the new hole. In Aqua's senses it appeared to be a small bubble beneath the lake, mostly devoid of water mana. The enchantment even resisted Aqua's physical body, imbued with water mana as it was, though Dwayne had no trouble passing through.

With the water mana blocked off, it no longer flooded the hole and pushed away the earth mana, allowing Dwayne to sit inside and gobble up earth mana as it pleased. Which is exactly what JJ did as he moved on to the next stage in his plan.

He'd noticed that water slimes were weak because they had almost no defense, being incredibly fragile creatures with obvious weak points. Earth slimes on the other hand were weak because they were slow and inflexible, unable to respond to most threats that were capable of chipping away at their defenses.

JJ planned to combine the strengths of a water slime's flexibility with the defenses of an earth slime.

First he condensed the earth mana around him into a single spot until rock began to form, creating new rock out of nothing but mana. Unfortunately, with his current intake of mana he couldn't fuel the creation of rock at any reasonable speed.

An hour's worth of absorbed mana barely created a small pebble in front of him. Sure, it was probably the strongest pebble he'd ever seen, but a pebble wasn't going to protect him from fire-wielding goblins.

So instead he began dredging up all of the rocks within reach from the lake floor and crushed them into the shape he wanted.

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The rocks slowly mashed together, forming a spherical, hollow shell with enough space inside to fit a slime's core. Once the rock was gathered and shaped, he went back to condensing earth mana to the point that it could create rock, filling in any minor imperfections and holding the rest of the structure together.

With his slime's three dimensional view into his stone creation, he easily cut out a threaded plug from the side of the hollow sphere, just large enough to fit Aqua's core.

With this new “armor”, Aqua would hopefully be able to enjoy the defenses of a rock slime while retaining the flexibility of a water slime.

Switching back to his water slime, he pulled the protective rock covering over Aqua's core and screwed the plug back into place to complete the shell.

Only after the plug slid snugly into place did he notice an important oversight.

Aqua's entire slime body began to feel distant, slow, and unresponsive. He immediately recognized it as the same feeling he'd felt when the shaman blasted a chunk of his slime off. He could still control the slime, but it was like trying to move a limb that had fallen asleep due to a lack of blood flow, and the feeling showed no signs of abating.

As JJ tried to pry the plug back out of the new shell to reconnect Aqua's core with the rest of the slime, he noticed one more problem. He'd used Dwayne's earth magic to cut out a perfectly aligned plug that was now flush against the rest of the sphere, and with Aqua's now far less responsive body, he had no hope of getting a proper grip on it.

After a brief moment of claustrophobic panic, he mentally smacked himself. 'Wait a second, I'm a slime! Duh!'

Focusing on the rock around him, he slowly dissolved a small path through the sphere, about the width of a blade of grass. JJ thanked his lucky stars that he hadn't yet tried to enchant the stone shell, otherwise the process would have taken several times longer.

As soon as the small hole broke through the shell, he felt the rest of Aqua's body go back to normal.

'So it only takes a bit of physical contact to maintain my normal control' he thought. 'Although I should probably create a few more holes in case one gets blocked off. I'd hate to be in a fight and have my entire body become unresponsive like that.'

As he drilled several additional holes into his shell, making sure to twist and spiral these new ones so that nothing could pass straight through them and strike the core, he felt a familiar magical phenomenon occur almost directly above him.

Many streams of mana began to gather together, condensing into a small multicolored glob.

As JJ watched it come together and begin absorbing the abundant water mana around it, he suddenly had a great idea.

Using Aqua's mana control, he began to absorb the surrounding water mana. While Aqua was unable to absorb mana already owned by other creatures, regardless of the difference in strength, pulling the unowned mana in the surroundings away from the weak grip of the newly spawned slime was child's play.

JJ watched the slime float near the lake's surface as it slowly absorbed the trace amounts of mana in a area around it, minus the abundant water mana that it couldn't snatch out of Aqua's grip.

The first spawned slime he'd seen took mere minutes to transform, but JJ waited for hours as this newly spawned slime slowly absorbed what mana it could.

Finally, after reaching some unknown tipping point, the slime began to change. It began to take on the traits of the most abundant mana it had been able to absorb.

'It worked! A new type of slime!' JJ cheered 'I'm pretty sure that's a... light slime, right?'

Switching back to his astral form, 'AGH!' he cried, rubbing at his eyes for all the good it did him with his ghostly hands, confirming that it was indeed a light slime. The small slime was letting off a bright neon yellow glow that just screamed “Target me!”

'No wonder I've never seen one of these before. A goblin would see this from a mile away.' he chuckled.

Possessing the new slime immediately, JJ tested the new magic by shooting lasers out into the water like some kind of crazed disco ball.

'I dub thee, Disco! New character get!' JJ proclaimed theatrically.

After playing around with Disco a bit more, JJ was forced to downgrade poor Aqua to his second favorite slime, for one simple reason.

'I can see! Holy crap. I can finally see! This is amazing!'

Of course, trying to understand his new vision was like trying to make sense of a Picasso painting that had wrapped itself around him, but he didn't let that discourage him. The colors of objects within his range of perception wasn't a problem, but the light that came from outside of his range was much harder to discern as it passed by.

He found that the best way to wrap his mind around it was by concentrating on the light at only one small point in his body, much like an eye.

The only drawback to his new slime was that Disco's body was even less solid than Aqua's. Nevermind carrying around an armored core like Aqua could do, Disco wasn't even able to maintain a humanoid form with its current mass.

'Heh, I guess Aqua will be my main for a while, and Disco will be my favorite smurf.'