Over the next few weeks, JJ settled into a comfortable routine.
Twice a day he would renew his light enchantment as it wore out the quickest, once a day he would renew his water enchantments, and every two days he would renew the more durable earth enchantment.
He had two water enchantments dedicated to Dwayne and Disco each. Dwayne's enchantment still protected the hole that collected earth mana, while Disco's enchantment consisted of a tall column of water mana reaching up to the surface of the lake, blocking out the water mana and allowing more light mana to enter.
The last enchantment was something of a combination enchantment, even if the enchantments didn't truly combine. First, an earth enchantment lay on the lake floor, preventing earth mana from rising out of the ground. Above it stretched a dome of water mana, which Aqua had constructed after draining all of the water mana from inside. Finally, layered on top of the water enchantment was a light enchantment with the same purpose.
JJ's original goal was to throw the next spawned slime he could find inside, to discover what would come out. His goal hadn't truly changed, but he no longer had to wonder type of slime it would create.
Inside the dome, a creeping ball of dark mana began to gather. Every night it would grow and every day it would disperse slightly into the surroundings.
The most bizarre part was that not only was darkness mana congregating inside, but when he took on astral form he could see a visibly dark cloud covering the area, and the previously manaless water seemed to be taking on a dark, syrupy form.
His enchantments had grown slightly more durable and long-lasting due to practice, but he still followed the same pattern, as it allowed him to rotate between all of his slimes.
During the day JJ would control Disco, taking advantage of the increased concentration of light mana, and during the night he would play with either Aqua or Dwayne, switching between the slimes at dusk and dawn to top up his enchantments.
There was no way he could pass up the prime hours for strengthening Disco, especially after his infuriating discovery that the slimes weren't truly absorbing much, if any, mana while he left them alone.
His unused “characters” would still gather the surrounding mana, slowly converting other elements into their own, giving the impression that the absorption was working just like a normal slime. However that mana would then simply congregate around the slime in question, slowly dispersing into the environment rather than be absorbed.
The only reason he had even noticed his oversight was because of the disparity in growth between their mana pools, depending on which slime he was controlling. In hindsight, he realized that his mana pool had never grown while he'd slept, either.
Other than renewing the enchantments, he spent most of his time practicing with the humanoid forms of his slimes, as it used very little mana. This way most of the mana intake could go towards growing their mana pools.
JJ would have liked to say he spent all of that time bettering his movement and control skills... but that wasn't entirely true. He kept distracting himself with aesthetics instead.
He had gotten slightly carried away and sculpted Dwayne a new body with rock hard abs and massive pecs that any bodybuilder would envy, complete with a half-robotic, half-human face.
Aqua, in contrast, now looked like a beautiful, sapphire colored goo girl with wide hips, a slender waist, and perhaps a bit too much goo in the chest.
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'I may have lost my body, my libido, and possibly even my sanity, but I can still appreciate some nice eye candy!' JJ snickered. 'Full character customization is the best!'
The enchantments placed within their bodies maintained JJ's chosen features, so he didn't need to redo them every time he switched between slimes.
Disco, meanwhile, simply took the form of an androgynous, glowing human silhouette. The light given off by the glowing slime made any facial features unnoticeable. Rather than bother with aesthetics that couldn't even be seen, JJ focused most of his efforts on wrangling his new sense of sight.
Technically, he could see from any and every point of his body, but in practice, the more information he tried to take in, the more confusing it all became. For simplicity's sake, he focused his senses on the points where his eyes would normally be, much like a normal human.
Disco sat within its water enchantment, absorbing the last rays of light mana for the day, as JJ moved his eyes to watch a school of small fish swim by. He hadn't noticed them before, because they gave the slimes a wide berth, completely avoiding their mana senses. Only thanks to Disco's pseudo-sight was he able to find them.
'Well, the slimes chase after everything they can find with mana, so I guess any fish that didn't learn to avoid them would get eaten' he admitted.
Just as the light mana in the lake began to fade and JJ was about to switch to Aqua for the night, he noticed a dim light begin to gather about 20 meters away on the lake floor. Slowly it began to coalesce into a cloud of rainbow light.
Despite being outside the range of his mana perception, he could tell that he was watching a near perfect visual representation of the last spawn he'd seen.
'Finally! It's been weeks since I last got a new character!' he exclaimed.
Disco picked itself up and swam towards the spawning slime. By the time he reached it, the small blob had already fully formed and began to absorb mana.
Wrapping a tentacle arm around the newborn slime and preparing to head back to his “New Character Box” as JJ called it, he stopped in place as a sense of deja vu came over him. No more than five paces away, another congregation of mana streaked into existence.
'But I only have one New Character Box!' briefly flashed through his mind, before a stroke of genius struck him. Before a new slime could finish forming, he threw his freshly acquired baby slime right into the cloud of mana.
As the slime began absorbing the clump of mana, more multi-colored mana began to gather, as though to complete the spawning that had been interrupted half way through.
'Wait a second, I remember reading on the internet that slimes aren't the only monsters that can spawn. Higher mana densities are supposed to summon nastier critters, right?' JJ muttered, glancing at the surging cloud of mana.
'I didn't just create some kind of super monster, did I?' he trembled, backing away slightly.
He could only console himself with the fact that the spawning still didn't complete, as the slime continued sucking up mana.
'You can do it, slime! I believe in you!' JJ cheered it on.
After the longest minute of his life, in which the slime held even in a sort of tug-of-war against the brimming mana, the slime grew a brilliant diamond-like core, while not losing its original, nearly transparent, pale blue coloring. As he stared, the core seemed to subtly flash with every color you could possibly imagine.
As soon as the core formed, the absorption rate of the new slime sped up, easily overtaking the rate it was gathering.
JJ let out a sigh of relief as the cloud finally disappeared, no longer increasing now that the slime had sucked up the last bit of mana. With no more of the spawning mana left, the tiny slime slowly absorbed the normal mana around it instead, regardless of element.
'Hahaha it worked! It actually worked! I knew it would'' he cackled. 'Isn't this a super rare draw? How often can two spawns happen on top of each other? Lucky!'
He danced around in glee and prepared to “select” his new character, before his caution finally caught up with him, and not a moment too soon.
'Stop! JJ think! The last time you tried to possess a slime that looked like that, it nearly ate you!' he yelled at himself, bringing himself to a pause.
Steeling himself, he projected his astral form from Disco and cautiously approached the new slime, planning to poke it lightly and see if it hurts, but before he could even get near, he felt a slight burning sensation cover his body as the slime launched itself off the lake floor, directly towards his astral form.
In a panic, he rushed back inside Disco, who got a slime to the face as it attempted to chase JJ's fleeing form. With his disappearance, it simply went back to eating the surrounding mana, completely ignoring Disco.
'No way! I can't give up now! That slime will be mine somehow!' JJ raged, picking up the slime and dragging it with him back to his little home base. 'I refuse to be outsmarted by a mindless monster!'