Clink!—Slime#47 opened the crate, which was a little bigger than he was. Three slimes peeked in with excitement.

It wasn't the first time for Young Slime, but in this loop, it was everything he had; these would help him increase his stats.

'If I can reach a higher level with these… aim for those three creatures… If not, grind through loops until… Lightning Slime evolution,' he mused as stripeless red and blue crystals came into view.

"One, two…" He counted them along with Mama Slime and Elder Slime.

"Forty‑four… but they're all ordinary ones," he thought bitterly, then quickly calmed down. Someone who had nothing couldn't be a chooser.

"I should be satisfied with what I get in my current condition," he muttered, quickly cheering himself up.

'Little Slime…' The crystals reminded him of Little Slime, who loved them. He missed his presence. 'I'll pick him up.'

He glanced at Old Slime, who understood him well.

Elder Slime said with a slight smile, "I'll teach you a powerful technique that can increase your stats and help you level up at a faster pace than normal."

"I'm going to sleep…" Mama Slime yawned.

Wob! She bounced over near the other slimes and dozed off.

"Let's begin now," Elder Slime said, forced to agree under Young Slime's stern gaze; he wanted to sleep.

Wob! They bounced to the training area.

Elder Slime spoke seriously, his tone grim. "I'm going to teach you a very dangerous technique. Many techniques use mana crystals and aura crystals to train, but they require a lot of resources."

He took a deep breath and continued, "But this technique doesn't require that many resources, and that's its benefit."

Slime#47 still remembered the pain of being burned by Fireballs. He wasn't going to back down, so he asked, "How dangerous?"

"It's a suicidal technique that can even cause death," Old Slime replied, glancing at him. "With this technique, your resource requirement will be reduced by a hundred, if not a thousand‑fold."

'Oh… it really is dangerous… a hundred to a thousand…' Young Slime pondered. He knew nothing was free.

He instantly understood that a technique this broken would come with a huge drawback.

He grinned and patted himself. 'I even came face to face with that eldritch creature in the ritual. So what's more dangerous than that?'

He muttered confidently, "Anyway, at most it'll just be death… a new loop."

"I am ready," he said, and Elder Slime nodded.

Old Slime drew magic glyphs on the ground with a wooden branch until the inscription was complete.

"He infused mana into the branch… and… it's an array…" Young Slime muttered as Elder Slime finished a magic formation a meter wide, filled with complex symbols and drawn in a circle.

Old Slime picked five mana crystals, placing four in the four directions and one in the center.

Gzz!

The array lit up in pale white and grey, then rose like a dome to cover a one‑meter area around it like a barrier.

"Good, it's working," he said with a grin. He picked the crystal back up from the corner; after which the array stopped functioning and collapsed into a simple, dead sigil on the ground.

He looked at Young Slime and said, "Stay focused. Control your breathing."

Pointing at the inscription, he explained, "This array will absorb mana from the surroundings and force it into your body. You'll refine it using the technique I teach you. This is where it gets serious—"

Slime#47 cut him off, exclaiming, "Chaotic mana… and too much of it."

"Wrong. This array purifies the chaotic mana and turns it into pure mana, stripping away all the unnecessary energies," Elder Slime corrected, then praised him, "Not bad. You know at least some basics."

He continued with a nod, "But for your second point—you're right. Too much mana can burst your body. That's why no one recklessly absorbs mana just because they 'need more mana', you need to fuse with it your own while not letting your body get flooded with it."

"So are you going to teach me the technique that lets me withstand that much mana inside the magic array?" Slime#47 asked. He was close to actually starting.

Old Slime nodded, "Yes. The technique I'm teaching you is the Mana Torrent Refinement Technique. This technique lets mana go on a rampage and build up violently inside your body. After a few minutes, that foreign mana will get familiar with your body and fuse with your own mana on its own."

"Let's start," he said, pointing at the array. Young Slime Wob!—bounced into it and closed his eyes.

"You have to…" Elder Slime explained the principles of the technique.

Then Slime#47 placed the crystal in the center as Old Slime passed it to him. Elder Slime couldn't step into the array after activation, or the mana would flood into him too.

GZZ!

The formation rose up to one meter high once he set the crystal and sat beside it.

The array started absorbing mana from the surroundings and—

'I feel…' he scowled as sweat pooled on his surface. A flood of violently moving energy crashed into his body.

"Control…" he muttered, forcing his body not to gulp mana on its own and not letting too much rush in at once, while also not letting any that had entered escape.

"Ahh…" He gasped as he felt his body swell.

'It hurts… even more than getting burned by Fireball,' he roared inwardly while wincing as he heated up. His jelly body started cracking, blue liquid dripping out in thin streams.

'Hold on… hold on…' he repeated, forcing himself to endure as mana swept through every corner of him. He protected only his eyes; everything else was invaded.

"That's enough…" Elder Slime shouted, noticing cracks all over Slime#47's body as blue liquid bled out and soaked the ground. His body had even shrunk a bit.

Elder Slime pulled out the crystal from the corner the moment he sensed Young Slime's limit, just like he'd warned.

The array vanished, but Young Slime kept controlling the internal mana flow.

Wob! Elder Slime bounced closer and cast the spell, "Heal."

He poured his mana for skill, and rays of light-green light fell on Young Slime's body, healing him as he kept meditating.

The cracks closed, though some scars remained. "Good," Old Slime murmured before blacking out.

'Finally…' Slime#47 grinned internally as the violent mana stopped clashing and slowly fused with his own mana.

[ Ding! …]

End of the chapter.

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