In her past life, Tainted Orchids was, and always had been, an otome game first and foremost. Which meant it prioritized character designs (and there were a lot of them,) over environments and other aspects of the game.

That didn't mean the other parts of Tainted Orchids were bad, they weren't, just not as polished compared to the visual novel itself. Which was a good thing of course! She had no complaints about the main appeal of the game as being the most developed part of it.

Anyhow, the reason why Thariel was thinking this as she hunted for slimes is because despite the mini-game for catching them being rather samey and repetitive, the lore for these little buggers was actually pretty fleshed out.

Actually, everything involving about the lore was well crafted, not just the ones for monsters.

In the lore, the reason why slimes- and any other monster for that matter, - are active during the dusk or the night is because the sun has power over the world and its light actively harms them.

In Tainted Orchids, this manifests as monsters gaining debuffs when fighting on places illuminated by the sun, which explains why they like to gather in bushes, grasslands, or forests.

Slimes drying out, damphir skin becoming flakey, vampires burning to death, goblins going blind, and trolls turning to stone are the few examples that Thariel can think of at the top of her head.

There are genuine side effects that monsters suffer under sunlight, which not only helps with explaining why villages are untouched by the countless hordes of monsters but also why dungeons are so prominent.

Because that is how monsters survive; they build or take over dungeons and turn them into their lairs.

And due to the magical energy the monsters naturally produce, the items inside the dungeon end up turning into artifacts.

And it's not just limited to items either, as this process affects plants, insects, and even small critters, mainly rodents and reptiles.

On the rare occasion, humans also get affected by this, and it is briefly mentioned in the lore that this is how Vampires, Lycans, and later on, Fae and Beastkin came into existence.

With the knowledge that the sun harms them, finding slimes isn't that hard, after all, there are only so many places that these gelatinous creatures can hide in.

It was either slimes gathered in large bodies of water, underneath rocks, inside fallen logs or, when their numbers get large enough, they form actual lairs by hollowing out trees.

Thariel found a pond shortly after she left her shed and after checking the pond bed by dipping a stick into the water, she accidentally hit a slime and moments after, an irritated blob of gel emerged from the pond and began hopping towards her.

It was obviously trying to kill her but honestly? Thariel could never take something this cute seriously.

She caught the slime in the air after it jumped and dropped it inside her basket.

Well that was easy.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Thariel searched for more slimes inside the pond but found nothing besides the first one she captured.

She stared at the slime now trapped inside her basket, it wobbled back and forth at the bottom, unable to climb due to the hydrophobic properties of the material that lined the basket's interior walls.

Its surface was also lined with Ember Cap spores if she remembers correctly.

Thariel closed the lid and hefted the basket to her shoulder.

Since she found no more slimes, she moved on and searched for them elsewhere.

After a while, she found a wet patch of grass under a shaded tree, this was a common sign of slime activity nearby which means that if she checks the trunk...

Aha! A gash lined the bark at the bottom.

The slimes haven't come out yet but there should be a lot of them living in this tree, her basket might even become full before she captures all of them!

After knocking on the bark, Thariel sat in front of the opening on the bottom and waited for the slimes to start coming out.

It didn't take long for the slimes to emerge and when they did, the first thing that greeted them wasn't the open air, but a hydrophobic net ready to snatch them.

True to her expectations, her basket did become full way before the tree was empty of slimes.

With over a dozen captured slimes squirming in the container strapped to her back, Thariel ran back to her shed to make her ballistic suit.

It all starts with igniting her hearth and putting a cauldron on top. As the cauldron turned hot, Thariel filled a quarter of it with water.

She then dropped some ice-element herbs such as blue moss and frostfern inside and then waited for it to boil.

When the scent of fresh winter started to mix with the rising steam, she poured powdered darkshade root into the liquid and then began mixing until it turned viscous.

Thariel worked on the other ingredients while she waited for the slop to dry out.

She grabbed her slimes out of the basket, placed them on a bucket, and using a metal rod, broke the cores before pulling it out of the now uncohesive gellatin.

The effect of losing a core was immediately visible as the slime lost its structural integrity and became a pool of gel that sat at the bottom of the bucket.

Thariel dropped her harvested core into a bowl and repeated the process until she had two buckets worth of the stuff.

Afterwards, she placed all the cores inside a mortar and pestle and grinded them to dust.

She sprinkled the powdered cores into her cauldron, mixed it with the goop, and when the goop turned into a gel-like substance, Thariel poured the slime gel into it before mixing it again.

Now all that's left for her to do was to continue mixing until the slime gel melded with the goop.

Another bucket of charcoal later and the mixture was finished.

Thariel scooped up a bit of the gel and inspected it.

"Liquid-but-not-quite", that was how the material used to make ballistic suits was described, the gel in the cauldron had that exact same consistency.

When it cooled, Thariel moved the gel out of the cauldron.

She only filled a single bucket with it but that was enough, she could make a ballistic suit large enough to fit her entire body with just this much.

Making the suit itself required another mixture however so she proceeded to thoroughly clean her cauldron of the muck from the gel and then cooked up a transparent liquid full of fire-element herbs.

Thariel made enough of this to fill an entire tub.

When she finished, Thariel went back to her house to grab the one last thing she needed to complete this tedious side-quest.

"What are you doing?" Clyra asked when she saw her daughter carrying the tub they used to clean their clothes out the back door.

"I need this, I'll just return it!" Thariel replied with a grunt, for a tub, this thing sure was heavy! Also, wasn't she a Damphir? Where's her super strength?!

"Just come back before dinner, you've been in that shed for the entire day," Clyra looked away and left her daughter to her own devices.

Thariel turned away without replying and with a huff, got the tub out the door, she carried the blasted thing back to the shed and dropped it just outside the door.

Then, with great effort, she carried her cauldron out and poured its contents into the tub.

The ballistic gel shortly followed and now for one last thing, Thariel stripped herself naked before skinny dipping into the tub.

Theoretically, the liquid suffused with the fire element should be enough to scare the semi-living slime gel she made into clinging to her skin, and since her head and neck were out of the water, it'll only cling to her body.

However, if she wanted to ever take this thing off of her- and she does, - then she's going to need to guide the molding process using her own magical energy and this is what she is scared of the most.

She wasn't an expert mage, hell, she wouldn't even call herself an aspirant, she knew jack shit about controlling Surge, let alone use it to guide a slime-gel into connecting to her skin but she still had to do this-

"Make sure you come back with your limbs intact,"

Thariel heard her mother speak before a hand was placed on the nape of her neck, then the flow of energy within her system became much more efficient.

The difference between her control of Surge and that of Clyra's was like night and day.

With her mother's help, she was able to successfully connect the suit to herself, allowing her to control it using her energy channels.

Thariel opened her eyes, "thank you,"

"Sure," Clyra sighed, "again, I'm doing this because this'll help you,"

"You're not gonna ask how or why I know how to make a ballistic suit?" Thariel didn't dare look the woman in the eyes.

"No, it's unnecessary, you know how to make it, it'll keep you safe, and that's what matters," Clyra stood up and walked away shortly after answering.

Thariel stayed in the tub for a while before getting up and cleaning everything.