Aqua sat calmly on the lake shore, strands of water twirling around its gelatinous body like dancing snakes.

Several meters away a pair of small green humanoids waved their spears in challenge. The smaller of the two attempted to circle around to the rear of their prey, not realizing that Aqua's range of vision still encompassed him.

The second goblin began shouting provocations to distract Aqua from his friend. Presumably. Aqua was unable to hear sounds, but judging by the frantic way the goblin was opening and closing his mouth while jumping up and down he must have been trying his best.

Neither was prepared when a winding water snake broke off from their prey's body and... splashed both of them in their faces. In shock, the two goblins spluttered and dropped their weapons to wipe the water out of their eyes.

Before either one could recover, Aqua pounced on the nearest goblin trying to sneak up from behind. The creature screeched in surprise and futilely tried to claw the viscous slime away from his body.

The other goblin picked up his weapon and began to shake in horror as he watched Aqua slowly envelop his friend. Hesitating for only a few moments, he firmed his resolve and charged forward to impale the vicious slime with his trusty spear.

He watched in anticipation as the tip of his spear found purchase in the soft body of his terrible foe, sliding in with almost no resistance, nearly clipping the magical core as Aqua moved it out of the way at the last moment. Then he watched as the spearhead continued directly into the chest of his erstwhile friend.

Aqua took the chance to abandon the now quickly dying goblin and crawl up the shaft of the spear onto the body of the remaining goblin. With his weapon stuck and his body now immobilized, the goblin quickly succumbed to his horribly gooey fate.

After collecting its spoils, namely the two large masses of mana lying on the shore, Aqua rolled back into the water leaving nothing but a pair of ownerless spears behind. The less said about the process, the better.

'I need to find a better way to fight' JJ complained mentally 'my water blasts are almost completely harmless and my absorption ability is useless on living targets. Even goblins are a threat if I don't disarm them first!'

JJ's dreams of abusing his slime's absorption ability offensively, to suck the life right out of his enemies, were dashed. He found that mana was effectively impossible to influence when already bound to another creature, at least while it was alive.

As it stood, Aqua's most effective tactic was to asphyxiate the opponent until it passed away, at which point its mana could easily be stolen and its body could be broken down into more mana to feed Aqua.

This also made Aqua's fellow slimes effectively immune to anything it could dish out, as they didn't need air to live in the first place.

'I thought slimes were supposed to be the standard grinding mob!' he grumbled.

Before this showdown on the shore, JJ had spent a week straight practicing Aqua's ability to control mana. Without sleep. It was only after the passing of three days and nights that he realized he no longer became tired unless he overused his astral form.

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Part of the reason it took him so long to notice was that the only difference between day and night in his slime vision was the slight fluctuation between light and dark mana. Without his earlier experience with inspecting the different mana types around him, he wouldn't have even noticed the change.

He made several important discoveries during this time. First and foremost was that his efficiency had indeed sucked, as he made rapid improvements in his control over mana.

What most concerned JJ was that Aqua's growth directly correlated to its pool of mana, which seemed to be stored within its magical core. With more mana, it could increase in both body size and perception range. The mana within Aqua's mana pool could also be used to fuel magical effects, but Aqua's size and perception would be reduced in exchange. Controlling water was one thing, as it cost relatively little mana, but water creation was frighteningly expensive.

Fortunately, JJ found that he wasn't limited only to Aqua's own pool of mana when casting magic. He could also take control of mana within the surroundings to produce his desired effects. Therefore, in an environment like the one Aqua currently resided in, a large lake filled with large amounts of both water and water mana, his water magic was practically inexhaustible.

Aqua's control over other elements, however, was nonexistent. With some inefficiency a slime could absorb mana types other than its own, but Aqua couldn't reverse the process to perform anything other than water magic.

'I need to create a new character if I want to play with more magic!' JJ concluded. Now that his combat test with Aqua was finished, he planned to broaden his magical horizons.

The obvious choice was another earth slime. They wandered around the area regularly and were only slightly less common than water slimes.

Leaving Aqua deep within the safety of the lake, JJ took to his astral form to search for Rocky's new successor. He passed several smaller earth slimes before coming upon one nearly as large as Aqua, who by this point was half again as large as an average water slime at nearly two feet in diameter. The slime had wedged itself between two large stones and was slowly absorbing mana from the rocks and ground around it.

'I've found, you Rocky Two!' JJ declared, as he took control of the entrenched slime. 'Wait, that's a stupid name. How about Rocko instead? No, I can be more imaginative than that. I know! I'll name you Dwayne.'

Extracting Dwayne from its rocky crevice, JJ jumped right in to experimenting with his newly acquired magical abilities.

He found that earth magic took significantly longer than water magic. Rocks generally didn't want to move, and earth mana showed that same tendency. Even worse, the amount of mana consumed when JJ attempted to create a small pebble from nothing was several times more drastic than when Aqua tried creating water.

'Well, nobody ever said magic would be easy' he consoled himself.

Keen to improve his skills, JJ slowly sculpted the ground to rise up into a rough, stumpy looking statue that vaguely resembled a goblin. He knew he wouldn't be winning any art competitions any time soon, but he found it fascinating to create something tangible solely through the use of magic.

JJ used dense clumps of earth mana within the statue to draw rock and dirt straight out of the ground. However, even the slow moving earth mana was not completely stationary, and over time it flowed back into the ground as the mana density between the statue and the ground evened out.

The detailed work turned out to be quite simple thanks to the incredibly detailed perspective Dwayne's mana vision gave him, but he struggled with the stability of the structure as a whole.

As the excess mana flowed out of the statue and back into the ground, any pieces lacking enough physical support would break off. This forced him to sculpt legs twice as thick as a normal goblin and made him unable to extend the arms away from the body. By the time he finished shoring up all of the fragile areas on the statue, it looked like a dumpy potato with a goblin's head on top.

Moving on to his next statue, rather than focusing on the physical engineering side of things, JJ decided to focus on the magical support instead.

As he focused on increasing the density of earth mana within the base of his new statue, he found that by further condensing the earth mana in that area he could also condense the physical material as well, thus increasing its hardness.

After finishing the profile for his second, still slightly chubby goblin, JJ watched the earth mana slowly escape from his newly fortified statue. He was happy to note that the increased toughness remained, but he began to wonder if it was possible to prevent the mana from flowing out in the first place.

He condensed a small cloud of earth mana as tightly as he could within the statue's chest and waited. And waited. And waited. Hoping that the high density of mana would change something. As nothing continued to happen, JJ thought back to how creatures could gather large densities of mana without it dissipating.

'Just like mana is naturally bound to living beings, shouldn't it be possible to replicate that proccess with other things?' he wondered.