Chapter 26: Ex… Experiment

“A slime?”

“Other than consuming magic, this kind of monster has no other use.”

“I heard the Academics Department is preparing to officially strip the slime of its monster classification and transfer it to the Harmless Magical Beast category.”

Lucy spoke without stopping her hands, pulling out a report recorded in the academy journal and handing it to Su Na to read.

Su Na followed Lucy’s finger and looked closely, and found it was indeed true.

According to the Academics Department, they had completed their research and judgment on the slime.

They unanimously agreed that slimes possessed virtually no ability to harm humans, which led to its removal from the dangerous “monster” classification.

Attached below was a rough breakdown of the slime’s attributes, abilities, and danger level.

If quantified on a numerical percentage scale, all three of its core attributes were at the lowest value of one.

It could be called the absolute trashiest of trash.

Yet, it did possess a tiny sliver of danger.

This was because the universal ability of slimes was to absorb magic, a skill directly linked to their reproduction.

As long as there was a sufficient supply of magic that met its requirements, a slime could split to produce a new individual.

An isolated slime posed no danger whatsoever.

However, if given a source of magic, it could split indefinitely.

The larger the colony grew, the more magic they would absorb.

This source of magic naturally included humans.

For a mage, being drained of magic was equivalent to being stripped of everything.

It was precisely because of this tangible threat that mages in ancient times had categorized slimes as monsters to be eradicated.

However, over the centuries, the number of mages unlucky enough to fall victim to them was virtually zero.

The absorption rate of a slime was simply too low.

Unless a mage was actively seeking death, escaping before being drained was an effortless task.

Combined with their unique method of reproduction, which made complete eradication impossible, the removal of their monster classification was naturally placed on the agenda.

Institutions like the Royal Academy welcomed new students every year.

These apprentice mages spent their daily lives learning and accumulating knowledge about magic and beasts, making them natural candidates for conducting minor research.

Supported by a vast pool of experimental data, the Academics Department had finally settled on this new classification.

Once the public review period ended, it would be officially submitted to the Mage Association for evaluation.

Su Na jiggled the slime resting on her palm.

Tuning her senses, she felt her internal magic depleting slightly.

It felt as though her passive magic recovery had dropped from plus ten per second to plus nine point five.

Such a negligible loss couldn’t even bypass her passive recovery, let alone breach her defenses.

No wonder they were being declassified; they were essentially the magical equivalent of mosquitoes.

She couldn’t even fathom how there could actually be historical cases of mages being drained to death by slimes.

What an absolute loser those mages must have been.

Surely their families would have preferred to claim it was suicide…

Just as Su Na lost interest and prepared to toss it out to find its own way, a cool sensation on her right index finger caught her attention.

She pulled her hand out of the slime’s body and brought it to her eyes.

The fingertip of the glove she was wearing today had vanished, exposing her pale skin beneath.

Su Na’s gaze shifted back to the slime.

Inside its body was the missing piece of her glove, which was dissolving at an exceptionally slow pace under her observation.

Su Na paused, her expression turning serious as she asked Lucy: “Are slimes corrosive to the human body?”

Her gloves were made of thin cashmere, the primary component of which was keratin.

The outer layer of human skin was formed of the exact same substance, meaning this slime could corrode far more than just cashmere.

“Huh?”

Lucy was taken aback and looked at Su Na in confusion.

She followed Su Na’s gaze to the blue slime wriggling on her palm, where the white fingertip of her glove inside its body was glaringly obvious.

“…Normally they aren’t, but we can’t completely rule out the possibility.”

“According to my previous coursework summaries, while the vast majority of slimes choose to split and reproduce after absorbing enough magic, an isolated few might choose other paths.”

“For example, in Mentor Irta’s laboratory, there is a slime with an exceptionally hard membrane.”

“I heard it’s because Mentor Irta likes to use it as a ball when he has nothing better to do… It eventually became like that.”

Su Na nodded in response.

She estimated that this slime had already reached the threshold of splitting earlier, and absorbing her magic had pushed it over the limit.

However, it hadn’t chosen to split into a new individual.

Perhaps because it was being played with like a gel glove by Su Na at the time, it chose to evolve the ability to corrode the foreign object inside its body instead.

‘Being kicked like a ball makes it turn hard… If sticking my hand inside its body was also perceived as an attack, then it means slimes will evolve corresponding defensive mechanisms based on changes in their environment.’

‘Even if this defense is negligible against external forces, it proves they actually adapt. It’s just that they are too weak…’