JJ glared at his new slime as he brainstormed ideas.

'I recall that possessing my slimes causes extra stress on my astral form... I thought that was because of the possession process, but what if it was actually because of them disrupting my mana? If that's the case, shouldn't I be able to rush in and possess it, so long as I succeed before it eats me?' he theorized.

But that was easier said, than done. 'I'd much rather not find out the answer to that question the hard way!'

JJ also considered allowing the slime to grow stronger before possessing it, in order to bypass the broken state of his other slimes that prevented them from absorbing mana on their own, but that ran the risk of losing it completely or making it even more difficult for him to possess.

'It's still weak right now, but what if it becomes some kind of super slime and starts eating my other slimes? Not that I've seen any slimes attacking other slimes, but I've never seen one of these slimes before, either.'

He glanced cautiously at the slime, but it remained blissfully unaware, continuing to siphon the mana around it.

With night falling, he grabbed Aqua and backed away from his new slime, to ensure that he was no longer within range. Floating out of Disco and switching over to his water slime, he walked back over and began to poke and prod at the pale blue blob with his larger, dark blue tentacles.

The slime showed no reaction to his prodding, merely jiggling in place at his touch. Nothing changed until, while shrinking the tentacle to the size of a small wire, he increased its mana density several times over to maintain its durability.

The pale blue slime globbed onto Aqua's tentacle, trying to engulf it as the average slime would a living creature, but instead it simply got stuck there like a chewed piece of bubblegum. As soon as Aqua retrieved the excess mana from the tentacle pseudo-limb, the small slime reverted right back into a small ball of goo, ignoring Aqua once again.

'Huh, is that why the slimes usually ignore each other? They just don't have enough mana in their bodies to attract each other?' JJ speculated. 'Most of their mana is collected inside their cores, after all, and it's hard to tell how much mana is inside another slime's core from outside.'

JJ concluded that the magic core was likely also responsible for his own protection as well. 'Do I really need to just throw caution to the wind and try to rush the possession?' he worried.

He continued squishing the soft goo like a squeaky toy in thought, until he had a sudden epiphany. 'The magic cores are safe, it's only when I'm outside of the magic cores that I'm in danger! What if I transfer myself to the other core directly?'

JJ brought Aqua's dark blue core towards the new slime as he muscled, or rather tentacled, aside the pale blue goo that was covering the dazzling, diamond-like core. Gradually, he brought them together, taking great care not to damage either core as they gently came into physical contact with each other.

'Please hear me God, or Game Devs, whoever might be listening, please let this work, please let me survive, and please don't delete my characters' JJ intoned, before withdrawing from Aqua's core and passing directly through into the diamond-like core of his new slime.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He let out a huge sigh of relief as he gained control of the slime and felt no pain during the process.

'It worked! Now to figure out what this slime can do!' he cried victoriously.

He could feel the mana around him quite well, but where Aqua, Dwayne, or Disco had senses that were vastly superior when relating to their specific element, and much worse for other elements , his current senses seemed to be more of an average between the two for all types of mana.

At least, that was the case for all of the mana that he could sense within his range. His new slime converted all of the mana it was absorbing into what JJ tentatively dubbed “pure mana”, of which he couldn't find any in the surroundings. He thought it likely he'd be able to sense such mana even better if he could find any.

JJ felt like this slime was absorbing ambient mana exceptionally fast, faster than Disco for sure, and nearly as fast as Dwayne and Aqua who were several times stronger now than when he first picked them up, and yet the mana pool only seemed to grow by a trickle.

Only after focusing on the mana as it was converted into his own did he realize that compared to the other slime's conversion rate of about two or three parts to one, the pure mana had a much worse conversion ratio of around five or six to one.

'This mana better be worth it' he grumbled. JJ wasn't thrilled with wasting his mana pool, but he wanted to find out what this mana could do.

He slowly drew out some of the stored mana from within his core, holding it away of him. He waved it around, condensed it, expanded it, and even tried drawing out more, and yet the mana did nothing. Unlike the elemental mana within his other slimes that had a natural effect on the world, this pure mana seemed to be completely inert.

'What the hell?' JJ shouted 'Don't tell me I went to all of this trouble for something this useless!'

Despite his complaints, he refused to give up on it. Eventually, he realized that where elemental mana already contained innate properties that would manifest in the physical world, the pure mana was like a blank slate. Both contained the energy needed to change the world around them, but only one came pre-loaded with directions. In order to use pure mana to affect the world, he had to use the force of his will to direct the changes, making it slower and more mentally taxing than the magic he could use with his other slimes.

Even worse, the pure mana seemed quite inefficient, at least when compared to elemental mana. Creating a beam of light cost him twice as much mana as he would have expected from Disco if he was using light mana instead, and controlling the water or rocks around him was slower and less intuitive than with Aqua or Dwayne. The only true advantage was that he could replicate the magic from any of his other slimes, no longer constrained to a single element at a time.

Combined with an incredibly flimsy body, rivaling even Disco in solidity, the drawbacks were almost enough to convince JJ to abandon the new slime then and there. Almost.

'The most important question now is whether or not I can copy Disco's vision' he determined.

He wasn't sure whether Disco's sight would be considered a product of his abilities, or simply an aspect of his senses. He hoped it was the former, as the latter was unlikely to carry over to his new slime.

As JJ recalled that Disco's sight worked best when light was directly hitting its body, he wondered if it had to do with the light interacting with Disco's own light magic. 'Pure mana doesn't seem to react to light on its own, but what if I will it to do so? Like I did with that magic earlier?'

JJ extracted another dollop of pure mana from his core, willing aspects of brightness and warmth into it, trying to replicate the feelings he got from Disco's mana. He then embedded the mana into the surface of his new slime, the same way he embedded detailed enchantments within his other slimes to maintain their features.

A small, round eye appeared on the slime's surface, glowing cyan in a similar manner to the way Disco naturally glowed yellow. JJ felt light begin to hit his new enchantment, and suddenly he could see the outside world once again, his vision returning as though he'd gone back to Disco.

The resolution seemed a bit worse, he only had one working eye with no depth perception, and it had taken nearly half an hour's worth of absorption to fuel his eye enchantment that would probably only last the day, but none of that could put a damper on JJ's enthusiasm for the future.

'My gamer's intuition is screaming at me that this slime could be a real late game powerhouse. So long as I can make it through the rough early game where I'm gated by my resources, that's when its strengths will truly shine!'

'Now, I need a name that exemplifies my dreams!' JJ stated seriously. 'How about... Vengeance?'

'Nah, too edgy. Maybe something simple then, like Diamond?' he contemplated, thinking of his slime's immaculate core. 'No way, sounds like a stripper name. I think I'll just go with Clarity... that's a good name for a slime, especially such a resplendent one as this.'