Thankfully, it didn't take long for Vee to finish eating her "king of fruits", which I still found quite baffling. Who would ever eat something that smelled that bad? I'd eaten monster corpses that didn't smell even half as bad as that.
Seriously, and I got mocked as being a sewer slime.
With no further prompts from [Dungeon Master] and nothing else to do in the room but go up, we started heading up what we assumed was the final staircase.
At the top, we were met with the giant and nervous face of Dran, who seemed to be embodying a sapling in the middle of the room. It seemed strange to have his old, bearded treeman face inhabiting such a youthful sapling. Next to him was his fellow [Dungeon Master] and sister Juniper, who appeared to be assuming the role of his bodyguard.
"C-congratulations on successfully completing your trial!" Ygdran said, trying to sound important but stumbling over his words.
"Wow, where was the bravado from when we first entered the dungeon?" Vee asked.
"Your antics throughout his dungeon have traumatized him," Juniper answered. "I'm honestly starting to doubt your innocence over those claims, even though I got some verbal confirmation from Simon."
"I didn't think we did anything too bad," I replied in earnest.
"You ate everything," she retorted.
"I'm a growing slime, I need my nutrients… It's a pity I didn't get a brown slime before completing here, that way I could've gotten the full benefit of so many veggies."
Juniper sighed and shook her head, "I don't know what the gods were thinking when they allowed someone to reincarnate as a slime… you might honestly become far worse than the dragon with enough time."
"At least I haven't destroyed any dungeons. I'm even thinking of opening up my own one some day, so maybe we will work together in the future?"
"P-please don't set up shop anywhere near us…" Ygdran pleaded.
"With you two, and then each elf family likely having a dungeon nearby, it probably wouldn't be a good idea. I'd probably create my dungeon somewhere remote so I don't have any competition, and nobody can get angry at me for culling the local wildlife."
"Hey, that's all fun and games for future Syl to worry about, but we've got a group of wannabe assassins to deal with still," Vee pointed out.
"Right… apparently you've somehow roped me into disguising a trap door?" Juniper asked, sounding mildly peeved. "Dran was a little light on the details, begging me to agree to stop you from turning his tree into a warzone."
"Yeah, we want to lure them through this," I answered and with a hand flourish and successful spell casting tore open the dimensions to create my [Rift Door]. I was pretty pleased with the ease of opening them now, with some extra practice.
Juniper made a hissing sound as she stared at it. She kept glancing at the floating spatial tear and back towards me as if weighing up her options.
"I can't believe you've got [Dimension Magic]... and at this level already," she muttered.
"What do you mean by this level?" Vee protested. "It's only level four, unless Syl gained another level in that last fight and didn't tell me about it."
Vee's outburst caused Juniper's eye to twitch. "I'm starting to see why Dran was sobbing in his communications with me. You must have an extremely high level in [Mana Weaving] or [Mana Shaping]... or perhaps even [Mana Dominion]?"
"Oh!? Are those upgrades or sidegrades for [Mana Manipulation]?" I asked excitedly.
"Please tell me you are joking," she responded, her eyes raised in suspicion.
"No? And I only recently got level eight in it. If you can show me the upgraded skill, I'd be extremely grateful."
Juniper shut her mouth tight, now she was looking at me with an extreme level of caution.
"Even if I wanted to, I can't. I could lose my rights to be a [Dungeon Master]."
"Really? And yet talking to us directly and even helping us disguise a dimensional door is fine?" Vee responded.
"Yes, because that doesn't involve giving away classified system information. And before you ask, no, I can't elaborate any further—if you want to find out the details, then become a [Dungeon Master] yourself and find out all the rules and regulations."
I visibly drooped in dismay. I had a tantalizing treat before my eyes, only to have it snatched away before I could even take a bite. "I guess I'll have to ask Llewel or Loreleia for help."
"Yeah! They'll owe us one when we deal with these troublemakers. We should even try to capture one to use as leverage in negotiations," Vee suggested.
"But… but… the experience points…" I whined.
Ygdran's sapling shuddered in terror. "I swear they didn't fully remove the evolution madness from that one," he said while pointing a branch directly at me.
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"I'm only four levels away, it feels like it's been ages since my last evolution," I defended myself. "I haven't evolved since I conquered the floating island. Vee's a whole tier above me, I can't be slacking."
"Yeah! I want to see what is beyond a simple blue slime," Vee added.
"Calling you a simple blue slime feels like the biggest scam in the world," Ygdran grumbled.
"I mean you're already at the same tier as a black slime," Juniper pointed out. "I can't think of anything beyond that, so I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you—there's probably better mutations. I guess you could go into something rarer, like a pink slime?"
"Oh great, another one who's obsessed with mutations over evolutions," Vee groaned. "Speaking personally, I got a big upgrade when my evolution and mutation combined. I bet Syl will get something captivating."
"Yeah, and there's gold slimes too," I added.
"Can't say I've ever heard of a gold slime, but sure," Juniper said. "Shall we move on with the plans so we can be done with you two troublemakers?"
"Don't we need to get our token first?" Vee asked.
"Oh, right, the trial!" Ygdran cried out. He pointed a branch to the floor, where a flower bud sprouted from the floor before opening in full bloom—inside was a diamond acorn.
"Oh, another snack?" Vee asked excitedly. "I can't say I've ever eaten an acorn before."
"What? No!" Ygdran cried out. "It's the proof of the trial being successful; it's not for eating. It can also be planted and, with some [Nature Magic], can be grown into a tree home."
"Yes! I love it!" I cheered. "I miss my original tree home back in Stantondale, and the tree full of those unicorns and pegasus was trashed."
"Darn, I was really hoping it was more food," Vee admitted.
"You ate so many fruits, this is my first actual reward from this dungeon."
"Yeah, but one of them was a turnip; it shouldn't count. There wasn't even a persimmon or pear."
"Oh… those are some good ideas to add, I'll add them to my growing list," Ygdran said unexpectedly.
"I should have something sufficiently grown in a year or two. I'll give you one as thanks for the suggestion," he offered.
"Wait… a year!?" Vee whined.
"Yes. It takes a while to cultivate a magical fruit, especially to isolate and remove the negative side effects. To be perfectly frank with you, the fact that they are tasty was an unintended side-effect."
"The great taste was just a side-effect? That should be the main purpose!"
"Ha, good luck trying to change Dran's mind," Juniper scoffed. "Even if you threatened him, you'd get nowhere—it's his life purpose to cultivate these magical body-enhancing fruits."
Vee continued to grumble while I grabbed the acorn. I was already brainstorming ideas of where or how I would use it. The best option would be for me to find a safe and remote location to plant it, and then Vee and I could set our coordinates to it, allowing us to teleport to it as our base or rendezvous point.
Maybe a floating island? No, wait, the coordinates would probably change as it drifts along. I suppose a remote forest would be ideal, and I hope no monsters or humans cut it down.
While Vee and Dran continued to debate the topics of fruits, I began working on my next preparation. We wanted to fight our assailants inside the [Rift Door] so that I'd have reduced issues using [Dimension Magic] on them, and if I combined it with the newly discovered [Displaced], then I could probably teleport them at will.
Combining that with Vee's [Rift Threads] meant we could lay the perfect trap. Vee could create an impenetrable net, and I could teleport them inside it.
Of course, we wanted to keep one alive so Paeris could integrate them, so I'd probably try to drug one of them with [Sanguine Dream]. [Basilisk Venom] would probably be more potent, but I wasn't sure if the elves could cure the petrification after the fact.
But, before any of that, I needed to make a change to my spell. Currently, it was creating a rift in my [Pocket Space], which meant that I'd be reserving Mana to "store" the enemies. Of course, I doubted they'd be as dimensionally heavy as my past self, but I didn't want to take any chances—plus I was a little concerned about what might happen with fighting inside my own space.
Thus, my solution was to create the [Rift Door] to an unassigned space, like the research notes had mentioned, that wouldn't rely on my own Mana to sustain it. This was also part of my plan for when I needed to finally evolve safely, so I had double the incentive to work out the solution.
I began my work, which immediately prompted Juniper to react and call out to me. I explained my intentions and she hesitantly agreed. Dran stopped his fruit discussion to ask me if I couldn't "try that outside," but both Vee and I pointed out that leaving the dungeon early would alert our would-be attackers.
"They don't know I have [Dimension Magic], so it's a perfect trap. If I start opening up spatial tears outside, they might smell something fishy about the situation."
Dran reluctantly agreed, although both he and Vee banished me to the corner while keeping the maximum distance away from me. It seemed that neither of them had faith in my magical experimentations. Juniper, on the other hand, watched me like a hawk; it appeared she was both interested in my methods and closely supervising me.
After everything I had accomplished with creating [Displaced] I had thought this would be the easy part, especially with the aid of [Triangulate], but I soon learned that nothing was ever simple with this damn magic.
I need that damn Riftmancer class. I bet it has skills that would make this easy—or at least I hope it does. I'd love to try out long-distance teleportation, but honestly, I'm a little nervous. The saved coordinates with [Triangulate] are probably fool-proof, but after I exploded in my last big teleportation, I can't help but be anxious.
There was also another aspect I want to explore further down the line. What if I used my [Rift Door] as a kind of staging area? I could go inside it, then reopen the door somewhere else. Or what if I have two doors open, could I use the rift space as a makeshift portal gateway? Although to really test it out, I need to start collecting coordinates for some ideal locales.
While challenging, I eventually figured it out and managed to change the coordinates without the spell collapsing. This involved the spell being in a sort of half-formed state, which allowed me to manipulate and anchor it to the current position.
Visually, the "zipper" would form, but I wouldn't rip it open; instead, I would attempt to stabilize it within the current environment. Once fully stable without any coordinates linking to my [Pocket Space], I was finally free to tear open the dimensional hole and create a localized door.
Visually, it looked nearly identical to my own, except for a stark difference in how it felt to me. My own, I felt personally linked to, which made sense considering anything stored was using a reserved amount of my Mana. Yet, there was a small link to the "zipper," which was the only thing marking that this was my spell.
"You got that quicker than I expected," Juniper admitted.
"That's the power of many brains at work," Vee replied proudly. "How does it compare to the original?"
"The creation portion is longer, especially the part where I need to stabilize it, so I definitely can't do it on the fly right now. Hopefully, there's a skill somewhere down the line to help with that," I explained.
"Makes sense, so it's a good thing we will be laying a trap then. Maybe you can try using your personal one on some monsters or something not so threatening, and we can see if there's any negative repercussions."
I bobbed my head in agreement. The last thing to test before we made our move was to confirm whether manipulating coordinates was still the same inside, or if that was something limited to my personal domain.
And then, the hunt can begin!