Chapter 21 Assimilation, Absorb!

Although the ideas of assimilation and mimicry had arisen, Ybur was still somewhat unclear about how to go about it.

But that didn't matter.

The path led by the heart's Mysterious Source was characterized by its ability to think and ponder.

After all, the heart is full of passion, capable of change, and surges with imagination. The ability user next door imagines that by pondering the ability to control elements they can truly control them, so if I ponder that I can mimic, then I must certainly be able to! This is logical.

Ybur began to think hard while also restoring its Mental Power.

Time passed, and Ybur had not yet come to a result when it suddenly felt that the "muscles" of the brown mud creature loosened—this guy had no strength left. The stamina of a Slime was not inexhaustible; the brown mud creature tried to suppress it but instead depleted its own strength.

It was time to counterattack.

A vague idea formed in Ybur's mind. It made its body as sharp as possible, arching upward like a drill bit. The brown mud creature struggled a bit, but it couldn't do much about it and was easily pierced through by Ybur. Its spiked cone broke through the body of the mud creature, and it felt like it was stabbing out from a mound of mud without much resistance.

Unlike its own black pudding-like form, the brown mud creature's outer membrane didn't seem as tough... Ybur reflected on this, its body rolling, wrapping part of the brown mud creature's body in reverse and then "slurp" swallowing it into itself, feeling like slurping noodles.

As a fellow mud creature, its body was already similar to that of the brown mud creature. It could seamlessly absorb its own shed body fluid. Could it then absorb the brown mud creature directly through this method?

Ybur thought... it should be possible!

Once detached from the brown mud creature's main body, the portion it had swallowed quickly lost its vitality.

Ybur did not attempt to digest but directly fused it into its body, and at that instant, it imagined—as if ink had dropped into water, the traces of ink slowly spread, and that small piece of the brown mud creature's tissue also dispersed within its body, and then... fused with it. It savored that strange taste, its Mimetic Ability as if actively adapting to this subtle change, making fine adjustments constantly.

...I seem to have gotten the hang of it a bit.

Ybur half-understood. It was well-rested by now, and the Divine Power Source was activated again, sending a mental probe into the brown mud creature's body. The creature's intelligence was too primal, its body hollow, devoid of anything that could be called spirit—almost purely physical instinct. Ybur didn't even know how to influence it.

That was alright. Ybur's spirit wandered within the brown mud creature's body, striving to sense it, to experience every detail, while also tearing off a piece from the creature's main body and devouring it.

The brown mud creature shivered slightly, as if sensing a threat. But its energy was exhausted, and with weak and feeble attempts to strike with its pseudopods, it began to sink slowly into the crevice of the ground.

Hmph, trying to escape?!

I'll inhale you like a storm!

While engulfing and assimilating the brown mud creature's body, Ybur developed an academic curiosity—brown mud creatures are not the same as ocher frost creatures, which can't split into two individuals after being cut in half. That meant there must be a "main body" within them. But the brown mud creature tasted the same all over, with no difference, and since it had not found something that could be called a core of spirit, where exactly was that "main body"?

The body of a Slime, truly fascinating...

Ybur, like slurping noodles, sucked in half of the brown mud creature's body—the creature escaped quickly, with most of it burrowing into the crevices and disappearing. By this time, Ybur's form had swollen by about half, the part belonging to the brown mud creature spreading and melding inside it, and Ybur carefully pondered this sensation.

The brown mud creature was classified as a Shapeshifter, its body's plasticity even greater...

With a single thought from Ybur,

Its body's surface began to ripple like waves, starting to shake. Then, from the center of those ripples, a long tentacle stretched out.

There was indeed a change...

Before assimilating the brown mud creature, its Transformative Ability was weak, only able to stretch and transform its body as a whole, and the tentacles it could extend from its surface were small, akin to fingers. But now, it could shape tentacles like whips.

Of course, to refine it further was not yet possible. Ybur could not yet fully control its transformation process—it suspected this would have to wait until it reached Second Rank and mastered the Shapeshifter's Deep Mimicry Ability.

Ybur swung its tentacle whip as though it were amusing itself.

Unfortunately, its muscles were not strong enough, and the long tentacles reaching out lacked strength, limp and flaccid. This was not yet sufficient to be considered an attack method.

But it felt so interesting!

Ybur swung its tentacles back and forth, playing for a while, contented.

It then crawled towards the broken drain leading outside the city, but it was then that Ybur noticed a little problem.

After assimilating the brown mud creature, both its size and weight had drastically increased, but its strength only improved slightly, without proportional growth. Besides, the mud creature's body was softer than its own, making it feel as if... it had exchanged muscle for fat, to the extent that moving made it feel a bit heavy.

Its already slow speed had now become even slower...

Ybur thought that after all, the mud creature's body had not undergone the enhancement and transformation of the Mysterious Source, and couldn't compare in "quality" to its own. Relying on this method of assimilation and fusion, even though it could grow in size rapidly, it seemed to have become a burden...

However, it seemed to have inherited the brown mud creature's resistance to acid. Ybur tried smearing some of its own Digestive Acid on its surface and found out that, apart from its stomach, the other parts of its body also developed much higher tolerance to the acid, a mixture of advantages and disadvantages.

Moreover, despite having just assimilated the brown mud creature and expanding in size, it felt not sated but hungrier instead.

It seemed that the hunger of the mud creature was also inherited in the process of assimilation.

Still have to keep eating.

Ybur sighed inwardly, and glanced at the sewage flowing in the sink next to it, getting lost in thought for a moment and feeling an inexplicable yearning... After a while, it snapped back to reality and shivered involuntarily.

No, I can't stay here any longer. This place is making my spiritual focus unstable.

...

Inside the room.

Cherie and Karlo looked at the corrosion marks on the window frame, their expressions somewhat solemn.

Karlo frowned and said, "Sure gonna get an earful from the landlord lady later..."

Cherie immediately responded with annoyance, "Is that the point?"

She said, "Without that book, how can we learn about Transcendent knowledge?"

This remark seemed to awaken Karlo. She had a moment of realization, "Didn't I tell you that I had a strange dream? In the dream, I learned how to meditate correctly!"

Cherie looked at her with beautiful eyes, her expression skeptical, "…So?"

Karlo touched her chin, "Things related to these Transcendent powers are always weird. If I think about it carefully, the sudden disappearance of the book and my dream last night... Cherie, do you think the two might be connected?"

Cherie's unease surged again as she nervously said, "How would I know..."

But Karlo had become increasingly calm, "I have an intuition—"

Even though she was often teased by Cherie for being a "single-minded fool who doesn't think and only acts on intuition," Karlo actually trusted that intuition a lot. She said with confidence, "There's definitely a connection between these two things. The book didn't get stolen... it disappeared on its own!"

Cherie hesitated to speak, then finally let out a sigh of resignation through her nose, "Fine! Let's assume the book grew legs and ran away by itself after opening the window, but what do we do now?"

Karlo gestured grandly, "Wait!"

"Wait?"

"Yes!" Karlo said, "I think the book itself might not be crucial. It might just be a catalyst... The real secret lies in the light that appeared in my dream. Just you wait, I have a feeling that the light will definitely appear again!"

As she spoke, Karlo lied down on the bed again, "This is a good opportunity to try out the Meditation Method I learned in the dream—"

But Cherie grabbed her arm and promptly pulled her back up, "It's morning already, have you forgotten our appointment with Uncle Pan? We have to go out soon!"