Or maybe control was super important instead?
Anyways, it felt a lot easier to control and that was the important part on his end.
'Actually, yeah, with this and the increase in mental power I should finally be able to actually use aspects for something.' He couldn't help but think, choosing not to seeth about how much more powerful he'd become with a normal aspect choice.
With his current authority over mana it wouldn't be that difficult to actually make something like a twenty weave normal slime, considering he could make a normal slime with all the extra stuff outside the weave even with 1/20th of what he had now.
It wouldn't even cost that much too, at least in comparison to the path he had tread just before. A mere D-3 slime cost more than the still imaginary vigintuple weave slime, and considering that a small slime like it could safely hold a single
...Theoretically.
Though that was a slight bit overboard due to only actually needing 8
It was just that it was completely infeasible to actually make use of the extra weaves due to the extremely high associated cost, but now, now it was far more economically viable.
To be totally honest, Falc was actually extremely curious to see how powerful such a creation would be.
And, get this, he didn't need to wait for it to stop being blind and stupid. Since he could directly make a nuclei, even the elder slime variant of one, just for around 40~ mp for the regular one and around 50~ for a elder slime nuclei.
That wasn't even that much, considering how much anything worth a damn cost.
But he only needed 8
Taking 8 of himself from the recently created production line, 10 weaves worth of mana converged in middle of the slime plains along with 50 mp for an elder slime nuclei. First the slime water was created as usual, then a weave was formed. But, as expected, there was still a lot of mental power left to use. There after came another weave, then another, until a total of 8 elder slime weaves formed.
While the only real substantial benefit of the elder slime weave was the increase in gathering mana for a better nuclei, the cost at a no compression scale was so negligible that the cost actually wasn't that inefficient when taking the advantage given into a account.
Then Falc added on muscles to the slime, at every level of the weave, just to see what would happen, then finally he twisted a section on each weave into
All that was left was to pour in mana into the centre, isolate multiple sections of mana and push them down before wedging the mystical energy below the slime water, ending up with a functional elder slime nuclei.
With everything finished off, he found himself with a lot more room for certain additions.
But, he constrained himself and chose to become a bit more prudent for a few moments, and sparked life into the octuple weave acid slime.
...
It was surprisingly not having a seizure.
Good, Falc was basically satisfied with his creation. The bar wasn't hard to clear, but it was a standard set based on previous experience.
First was to test how good it could jump, about... 70% further, pretty good, pretty good. It was a bit of a shame he didn't add on the legacy Twirl, the slime that died to a sentient carcass, but he suppressed it; he made this slime as a test and nothing else.
Second was to just make sure how much mana they were taking in, about 17% more than the elder slime he had created to rank up. But, next was to check the maximum amount of mana it could take in, specifically for whatever it was doing with its nuclei. So, some of himself was set to manage its mana intake, a minuscule amount compared to what he had been using to actually create it.
Doing the same to the normal elder slime, he compared the two to find the newest octuple weave slime did indeed have the perk of taking in mana at a rate of 8 times that of its normal variant, even if that difference was on a scale so small that he was surprised there was so little coming into the slime.
Strange, especially since the entire slime should've required some mana to maintain its existence, the amount being a good bit greater than what was entering the slime. Anyways, with that little test done, he left the slime out for the sentients on clean-up duty.
Now sure that more weaves directly equaled the amount of a mana a slime could take in, it was time to ignore all that less interesting and more iterative stuff and look towards the future of all slime kind, the next slime apostle 2.
A slime with a hundred weaves, while probably possible considering his newly increased amount mental prowess, would not truly be an innovation on the previous generation of slimes and only something build atop the last generation's foundation. How could that be an apostle of the future? No, a hundred weave slime would be a slime paragon.
...Well, no, a slime paragon was supposed to be a D-100 slime and considering the amount of self he had and how it seemed the maintenance costs seemed to scale with compression, it'd be something like a D-100-100-100... The... Amount of weaves made available were just unbelievably large, far too large for even Falc himself to personally- As a dungeon core without the need to rest his lungs or brain- Pronounce the entire thing.
It had to be fixed, not urgently since a D-100-100- You get the gist- Was far off in the horizon. But the fix did seem pretty easy actually. The simplest solution ever really.
A D-11-11-11 slime, would from now on be a D-11x3. The fact that he hadn't done this sooner was not that suprising, but now, it was time to finally show case the true might of the new slime paragon.
D-100v50502336
Yep, it'd cost about 2.6x3^100x505023+2.4 mp when using normal weaves.
Falc was almost certain he would never even near such a ludicrous amount of mp in his stores, and decided to just said theoretical monster the 'Prime paragon' and find some more reasonable standard to chase after.
Like aspects, maybe.
Though falc long since knew what would happen if the weave of a slime was aspected- With wind the water would just form a normal puddle, fire turned it to steam, earth made it hard and somehow brittle while water made the slime water become some strange semi-puddle that couldn't do a thing- But his previous attempts at making an aspected second weave were for naught and later put in the back burner after the D-14-0 appeared.
But with present capabilities, it probably wouldn't be that hard. After a few moments of thought on which of the aspects he wanted to go with, or if he wanted to look into the 'Slime' or 'Steam' aspect for whatever reason, Falc decided to go with wind as the first test.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Mostly because, while he was indeed most familiar with the water aspect, if the wind aspect failed he could be certain that the slime water could be smoothly recycled for the next experiment.
Taking a weave's worth of mp to the centre of the slime plains just like the last experiment, grasped said mana by the throat and told it to get its act together and be like his friend 'Wind aspect', or get beaten up.
After allowing his mind to start suppressing and contorting the mana to its whims, the concept of wind had been fully instated.
It had felt a bit strange while getting a feel for the process after so long, but luckily it had been exceptionally simple, so it didn't cause any real problems. Still, it was a bit annoying.
With that done, Falc had to drag the mana into the shape of a weave, make some slime water to anchor it to, add on the musculature and finally add the normal weave before giving it the gift of existence and hoping that it wouldn't fall apart.
...
Huh, nothing bad was happening. Good, Falc wasn't a masochist even if he didn't know what one of those ever were.
Then to just wait and see what happened to the second weave wind slime... To the wind slime. Making sure to suppress its attempts to do anything for a bit of time just to make sure it was stable on its own before giving it free reigns to start doing whatever a wind slime would want to do.
With a singular hop, the blob of water soared.
No, truly, it soared. Though still in an arc, as if lighter then it actually was, its hop sent it more than three times as far as it should've.
Falc took in a deep breath as he watched with some awe, no wonder aspects were so important, just an extra weave of mana to triple its mobility! Who cared how it worked?! Not Falc, Falc wanted to see what happened when another wind weave was attached!
Or what happened when other aspects got involved as well.
Quickly creating another slime, just a standard one, and then adding on an earth attribute weave to see what happened. The slime, when jumping, somehow jumped less far than the average slime. Just like wind, it seemed heavier than it should've been. But Falc didn't understand how though, none of the other magical additions ever seemed to make a slime heavier in any way.
...Would air and earth cancel each other out?
A question for the ages indeed, one soon to be answered as Falc sectioned out two parts of himself to create some earth and wind mana weaves along with a standard slime to be their host.
Falc felt giddy as he first transplanted the wind weave onto the slime before instating the earth weave above it, with no problems occurring the entire way through.
He quickly examined for any possible issues or faults in his creation, as he was still dealing with aspects, before giving it that spark of life like he did many a time before.
The wind-earth slime plopped down to the stone floor, under heavy examination for any signs of seizures, and though the mortal enemy of all dungeon cores did not appear...
The slime turned to dust.
All over the slime, with no specific starting point, the water somehow degraded into something else entirely. A bit of a shame really, but the real problem was when the effect started to spread out beyond merely the origin.
Stone ground down to mere dust in the wind, slowly crawling out spherically and degrading all in range.
'...Its not stopping.' Falc stated from his examination, a certain sense of urgency coming out. He wasn't even sure whether it could end or not, who knew if it would keep expanding outwards forever?!
With all the mana from any slimes in production being taken without any concern about issues caused, Falc quickly surrounded the entire area affected with mana, crushing whatever was causing the phenomena into a little ball secluded from the world.
Seeing the problem so easily constrained, Falc was honestly a little surprised, though slightly worried at how the mana itself was being spent somehow.
But the best way to solve the problem was to crush it even further, using even more mana to smother the problem in the cradle. At least, his instincts were instructing him to do so, and they had proven somewhat trustworthy in this sort of thing.
Mana poured from the core towards the slime plains without any real concerns as the mana that was still containing it was forced into choking the problem as much as possible, little bit of it being pushed into the quarantine zone to smother it even further and completely infuse it with Falc's own mana.
After a fraction of a cycle spent getting rid of whatever was causing chaos, the thing had finally stopped doing whatever it was doing as Falc found his mana strong and stable without a bit of degredation in site. Even finding no problems letting it completely close in into a sphere of mana.
Finding the problem had disappeared, the previous industrial complex was set back into motion while Falc started to speculate a bit.
With wind alone no problems occured, but when mixed with earth the slime it was used to form turned to dust through some thing... It was probably something to do with the aspects reacting to each other, but the question was what that thing was.
First, before experimenting, Falc restored the pretty smooth half circle dug out of the floor. Then he took a single mp of wind mana and a single mp of earth mana along with a few mp of normal mana surrounding the iconic duo in case something needed to be killed in the cradle, and made sure to record everything for future examination.
Then, finally, the two attributed mass of mana were smashed together into one larger amorphous blob. Though the preparations he had made seemed to be of no use, as the two different masses of mana did not fuse while still intertwined. Falc had thought they'd take initiative themselves and step over any barriers preventing them from forming the thing he was looking for.
Well, no problem, he just had to force them to mix. He had the extra power free to use, it wouldn't be very hard in all honesty.
Surprisingly the mana resisted the fusion, but its protest went in one ear and out the other as the 2 mp seemed to transmute into something entirely else.
Though still mana of its own, under the dominion of the dungeon core that created it, it was not of any of the aspects he recognized while still holding the same unruliness as an elemental aspect. It was actually even worse, it kept trying to wriggle about and influence the world outside of itself.
While Falc could keep it where it sat, it shook with violent intensity at any chance it got.
But was this really 'The thing' that Falc was looking for? Truly, there was only one way the find out, let it do what it wished.
Though risking it do something with the floor again and make him clean up the mess again was not something Falc felt worth it, so he made some slime water and let it enter the little wind-earth fusion mana's hovel and then stopped trying to suppress the irate mana.
The earth-wind mana reveled in the freedom afforded to it, rampaging through the slime water it was given without a single concern that its actions were slowly decreasing its volume.
In a short time the earth-wind mana proved itself to be what had worried him so much, at least it seemed that it couldn't cause mayhem infinitely. That probably meant Falc was free to play with it without worry it would somehow reach his most precious of things, his core still laying deep within the soil.
Turning his sights back to aspected weaves, Falc pondered on a single little factoid 'If regular mana can herd aspected mana, could it stop the two aspects from fusing?'
With the question asked, a slime similar to the one which had caused the chaos just a minute or two ago was formed, with a single normal weave and two aspected weaves. But this time, instead of having the normal weave at the bottom it was between wind and earth as to act as a barrier to stop the formation of earth-wind mana.
Though it quickly led to another clean-up job for Falc, who was left wondering why the slime had collapsed before then starting a earth-wind destruction session. He wasn't even sure whether or not the segregation idea even worked, at least it was way easy to test.
The next slime had four weaves, going in a sequence from lowest to highest: normal-wind-normal-earth.
After the slime came into existence, it seemed to not instantly collapse, but whether or not the barrier worked was left to be seen.
Letting time trickle by while keeping mana at the ready to snuff out any disaster, the slime hopped around aimlessly in a world of darkness without a mind to acknowledge that fact. It seemed that the experiment was a success!
From what he could see, the effects had actually not canceled out. Interesting, so very interesting. That would mean that they had more than one effect which did not conflict, or would it mean some parts were taken from one while others were from the other?
The slime hopped in a stunted arc through the sky, even while the horizontal distance traveled was the same. At a bit higher the weight as it was normally as well, at least it seemed to be that way.
Though, honestly, it seemed kind of underwhelming for the effort put in. That weird earth-wind mana getting put in a slime seemed way more interesting in all honesty.
But controlling some of that seemed even more annoying than normal aspected mana, and it might even cut into production if he didn't compress some mana, and he didn't want to end up with another D-14-0 situation...
Better to just see what happened with a fire and water weave before any of that.
Quickly making a fire slime, he found no difference in their jump. No increase or decrease in weight to be seen. The same with water, no extremely obvious jump change to perceive. But their forms did indeed change and morph. The water slime was less tense and more fluid even if no liquid left it form while fire took in a bit more mana from the environment and did seem to initiate their jump a bit quicker and went a little further too...
Maybe.
The fire slime was the least obvious one, it wasn't as if it burst into flames at the first chance. From what he could see, it just seemed that the extra mana it took in was for its weave and musculature for whatever reason. Though, the muscles did seem a bit more... Active, somehow.
Looking at all the effects of different base elemental weaves, Falc concluded that wind was the best one and started to formulate and experiment for a slime apostle 2 template.
Earth made the slime heavier, there wasn't any worth in that to be honest. Water just made it a bit more goopy, Falc saw no worth in that even if it weren't detrimental. And the effects fire brought to the table honestly just seemed negligible, the extra effort put in was not worth the additions brought by it.
Which of the base elemental aspects is the coolest overall?