Winter Snow Thousand Cat Lanterns

The vast Dream Sea, atop layers of miracles and magnificence, where Transcendents walk the ascendant path guided by their ultimate longings as if by beacons.
The supreme beings wielded power, their greatness shining in all directions, ascending to divinity.
But even deities were not the ultimate. They too struggled for greater perfection and ideals, endlessly, within the Void Origin, above the Dream Sea.
"So... Your Majesty Ybur, as the most powerful Slime in history, what exactly drives you to become stronger?"
Many years later, when faced with the question from a Heavenly envoy, Ybur, who by then stood at the zenith of the Dream Realm as the "World Devourer," recalled the afternoon just after his birth when the Creator had stuffed him down a golden toilet and flushed him into the sewers in one go...
After a long silence, he spoke with a heavy tone:
"It's the toilet. The golden toilet."
The envoy: "???"

I, a Slime, have also dreamed of becoming a great Demon King!

This eerie "Little Underworld" had limited visibility, not quite a labyrinth yet surpassing it. Ybur had flown for a bit and realized it had encountered a ghost hitting the wall; somehow, it had flown right back to where it started. Unconvinced, it flew around again and found the situation unchanged.


Luckily, it still had the Seeking Sky Warrior Medal.


Ybur found a corner, pulled out the medal, and prayed in a low voice to the ancestral Dwarf. A thin beam of light spread from the medal, pointing in one direction. Following the guidance of the medal, Ybur flew forward and gradually saw clusters of low "houses"—very typical of Rat People construction. The houses looked like they were haphazardly piled up with garbage, messy, smelly, and seemingly on the verge of collapse.


This was actually a village of Rat People.


Chapter 16 The Feast of the Rat