21 - Evolving Creatures

In the morning, I did the usual chores and finished preparing lunch and dinner.

Today, my sister’s group is going to hunt together. The two girls, Chisato and Yumi, finished their assignments yesterday and will join us in the afternoon.

Until then, I’ll be picking up scrap metal and collecting slime cores in the western meadows.

However, I don’t think there are that many weapons in the western grasslands.

According to Taku’s mail, slimes are hated by players.

The reason for this is that attacking anything other than a nuclear weapon will not do much damage, and once it is attached, it cannot be easily removed.

So, today’s objective.

Pick up scrap metal in the western grasslands. Collect slime cores. Find a clue to break through the meadows. Play with Uluru and the others.

That’s all.

So, I logged in.

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When I opened my eyelids, I saw the same gorgeous ceiling.

This place where Tia lives is not strictly speaking inside the royal castle.

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To be precise, it’s more like a mansion within the castle walls.

The large garden of the royal castle, or perhaps a small forest. The large mansion right next to it is Tia’s house.

She may be isolated, but she doesn’t seem to be sick, and the royal family’s affairs are way beyond my reach.

When I looked down at the garden from the window, I saw Tia wearing full body armor and swinging a giant sword.

Growllllll~~

“…I’m hungry—”

“Yuki-sama, breakfast is ready. Her Highness is waiting for you downstairs.”

“Ah, yes.”

…She waited too long and started swinging the sword.

After an elegant breakfast, I immediately headed out to hunt.

Tia said she had something to do and disappeared into the city.

When I went out to the western meadows, fortunately there were no players within sight. This was convenient, since I didn’t want Uluru and the others to be attacked.

I opened the book and summoned them.

There are six little bunnies, one bunny, one slime, one petite golem, and Uluru.

Including me, that’s a total of seven.

“Hmm?”

Suddenly, I felt something strange on Uluru’s page.

If I look closely, I see that next to the “Summonable” section at the bottom, there’s an additional section called “Evolution”.

Hmm, evolution, huh?

The first thing I thought of was the history of biological evolution.

Evolution is either a long process or a mutation.

But what kind of evolution is it in this case?

What comes to mind is an enemy demon.

For example, the first Wild Dog leader would be an evolved Wild Dog.

Similarly, the horned rabbit that attacked us yesterday must have evolved from a rabbit.

To add to that, in the underground canal, the Big Cockroaches.

There were Greater Cockroaches that evolved from being Big Cockroaches, and then there is the Mother Cockroach, then comes the Giant Cockroach and the Queen Cockroach.

Slimes are notable in this area. Lesser Petite Slime, Petite Slime, Slime, Big Slime, Scavenger Slime and there are probably many more evolved ones.

And then there’s Reinya.

The powerful Reinya is probably an evolved form of the Wildcat.

In other words, evolution means to become stronger, in some cases bigger, and smarter.

Not evolving was not an option.

When I chose to evolve, Uluru was enveloped in light.

After the light subsided, there was a particularly strong glow.

Name: Uluru LV7 State:

Race: Wolf

Skills

Bite LV3

Enhanced sense of smell LV5

Loyalty LV4

Galloping LV1

Uluru had grown up a lot.

“Koon.”

“Oh, there, there.”

I patted Uluru, who was spoiling me with all his might, seen from the side, it would be a girl waiting to be attacked and eaten by a wolf.

I wonder if he was really happy about the evolution?

It took a while for Uluru to calm down, but fortunately, no players passed by, so it was safe.

When I looked around again, I saw that he had doubled in size, his fur had become more beautiful and supple, and his face had lost its youthfulness and become more handsome.

While Uluru was pampering himself, the petite slime attacked him, although it didn’t bother him.

The size of the smile had doubled, and it must have eaten something.

I stroked the smile and it shivered, either because it was happy or because it was annoyed.

It felt cool and soft, just the right amount of elasticity to make a good pillow.

Now, let’s start hunting, shall we?

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《Your level has increased.》

A good amount of time has passed since I started hunting.

A river runs through the middle of the meadow, and we crossed a stone bridge over it, and walked to the side of the forest.

Right now, we’re heading south along the invisible wall.

As expected, the number of metal scrap was small, and there was none at all beyond the river.

I’ll explore the river area at a later date, but for now I’m hunting and looking for clues to help us break through the grasslands.

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After a while of hunting and gathering, I saw a large rock in the distance.

It was a good time, so I decided to climb up there, look around and go home. I decided to do so and proceeded to the rocks.

The closer I got to the rock, the bigger it became, and finally it was so majestic that I had to look up at it.

I let Uluru and the others wait below and climbed up the huge rocks. It was uneven, and if you were as light as I was, it would be easy to climb.

“Fuu, finally at the top.”

I climbed to the top and looked around.

The view was reasonably good.

The sun was shining on a large grassy field, and on the east side, many players were surrounding a black dog and killing it.

The north side was empty. I don’t see anything strange on the castle walls either.

I turned around and looked at the forest.

“It looks like a normal climb from here.”

The rock is a slope, and there is an invisible wall blocking the way, so we can’t use the slope anyway.

I looked at the forest again.

It was shrouded in fog, so I couldn’t see what was going inside. If I had to point out something strange, it would be that the forest was covered with a thick fog even though the sun was shining so brightly.

There was a large field to the south, and to get to the field side, I had to cross an invisible wall. To the northwest, there is a forest that is not covered with fog, but there is an invisible wall there as well.

Just as I was about to leave, I noticed a hole in the middle of the rock

”Hm, clearly unnatural…”

I peeked in and saw that the hole was deeper than I was tall, but big enough for me to fit in. And at the bottom of it—-

“…..A slime?”

I thought it might be a pool of water, but there was an octahedral crystal floating in the center, so it must be a slime.

The slime seemed to notice me, and it began to shake. But it didn’t do anything.

It bounces around, but it doesn’t come out, or rather maybe it can’t?

Perhaps….it was eating the rocks and it couldn’t get out?

If I look closely, I can see that this hole looks like a flask, and I can see that the slime did its best to escape.

However, considering the size of the rock I wondered how many days it would take to escape.

Suddenly, it occurred to me to take out the poisonous plant from my inventory, and throw it into the hole.

Thinking that one would not be enough, I dropped a large amount.

Some of them were highly poisonous, and I threw in a lot of poisonous plants and berries anyway.

When I finished throwing them, I looked into the hole.

Apparently, it absorbed everything, and all I had to do was wait.

And while I was peeking in to see how the slime digested things—–

“Nyuwa!?”

–A strong light pierced my retina.

“…What is it……my eyes are flickering.”

It took me a while for my eyesight to recover from the combination of looking into the darkness and looking directly at the light.

When my eyesight returned, I looked into the hole, and there was nothing strange about the slime, if anything, it was a little darker in color.

I mean, is this an evolution?

Big Poison Slime LV?

Yeah, it evolved….right?

This is not good, let’s go home.

“Excuse me, please take your time.”

I turned my heel and was just about to step off the rock when I heard the slime’s sound.

Splat!

“Hiya!?”

I was startled by a cold sensation on my foot and looked down to see a purple liquid stuck to my foot.

I looked back at the hole and saw a thick purple tentacle reaching out from inside the hole and grabbing my leg.

No way… Is it possible it evolved and changed its shape so that it can escape?

The slime stretched out its body like a tentacle and slowly lifted its body to escape from the hole, and finally a large core came out of the hole.

The whole thing was so big that it could have enveloped my body.

I quickly took out a broken spear and thrusted it into the core.

Jujuuuuu!

However, the moment my attack touched the slime’s body, the spear began to melt, and before it could reach the core, it was completely dissolved.

The slime slowly began to take me in.

Without being able to make a satisfactory resistance, I was being enveloped by the slime—-

Ah, I’m dead, aren’t I?