"Is it done?"
With a hint of doubt, Dark took out a Mercury Knife about 0.5 centimeters wide. After infusing it with magic power, he carefully cut open the entire green cocoon.
As he cut, green light kept streaming through the opening.
But once the cocoon had been cut in half,
it suddenly turned into green slurry and collapsed!
"Could it have failed?"
Looking at the Magitech Card soaking in the slurry, Dark picked it up with tweezers, then rinsed it under the tap.
Only after it was clean did he take it over to the other side and examine it closely.
The card's face showed a puddle of green, gooey stuff.
"A green slime?"
Dark couldn't help thinking of a certain very common sewer creature.
[Card Name: Trash Slime] [Type: Spirit Card] [Level:] [Species: Elemental Species] [Attribute: Grass Type] [Magic Power: 100] [Attack: 0] [Defense: 0] [Special Move: Reinforced Gastric Acid] [Reinforced Gastric Acid; Secretes reinforced gastric acid to quickly digest substances swallowed into its body.]
"W-w-wait, a Trash Slime?"
Dark's hand shook, and he almost dropped it.
"So, does this count as a success or a failure?"
"Zero attack and defense? Why don't you just go die?"
After recording the Trash Slime's data, Dark wasn't actually disappointed.
Since it had stats, that meant the transmutation had succeeded.
Whether he could find a use for it among the trash was up to the Magister's own ingenuity.
Trash Slime-chan Masters the Art of Licking
At least this Trash Slime, despite being called "trash," wasn't actually... Well, it was still pretty trash.
In any case, it wasn't entirely useless.
With zero attack and defense, it didn't seem suited for duels. But its special move, Reinforced Gastric Acid, could clearly be used to deal with trash.
Rather than call it a "Trash Slime," Dark would rather call it a "Garbage Can Slime"!
"Magic Guidance Summon!"
After summoning the Trash Slime with a regular Summoning Technique, Dark tried enhancing it with Pride 1, Pride 2, and Bliss 1 in turn.
He discovered that perhaps because the Trash Slime's brain was too simple, it couldn't show symptoms of Pride or Bliss.
Nor did its intelligence level noticeably increase.
Under the usual rules, a Magic Spirit's standard intelligence level should be 2.0.
But this Trash Slime's intelligence seemed to fall somewhere between 1.0 and 2.0, making it only a little smarter than a paramecium.
It could understand commands, but it was very slow to react.
It was as if it had a latency of over 1,000.
He wondered if something had gone wrong during the transmutation.
But when Dark thought about the cat hair and fingernails he'd tossed into the No. 1 Transmutation Circle, he felt at peace with it.
Magic Guidance was a new technology developed on the shoulders of Alchemy, so naturally it had also inherited a degree of the "principle of equivalent exchange."
As for the part that wasn't equivalent—
Magisters usually joked that they had "stolen it from within the Gate of Truth."
That was the sort of thing it was.
Next, Dark conducted an experiment using the Basic Transmutation Method for [Bird-Beast Species - Grass-type].
This time, however, the experiment was a complete failure, and the blank Magitech Card was ruined.
He wondered if it was because the "Bird-Beast Species" didn't match the cat hair from the Meow Meow Grass.
In any case, he summoned the Trash Slime and had it deal with the leftover waste.
No matter what, tonight's haul had been pretty good.
The Trash Slime was really convenient for dealing with trash. From now on, he wouldn't have to take out the garbage anymore!
After organizing the experimental data, Dark decided to continue experimenting the next evening.
Then he went off to sleep with a smile.
Ten o'clock.
At St. Marian, where there was little nighttime entertainment, students—especially first-years—generally didn't stay up too late.
By half past nine, the common room was almost always empty.
Most students moved their entertainment to their own dormitories rather than staying in the common room.
The Knight Academy common room.
The candles in the sconces above the crossed-sword decorations still burned.
They gave off the bright white light unique to magical candles. It was bright enough, yet still gentle on the eyes.
In a corner of the common room,
Emma was probably one of the last students to return to her dormitory.
Around nine o'clock, she always left the library for the common room.
Perhaps it was the little girl's final act of stubbornness—she didn't actually want to cut herself off from socializing completely.
Dark was completely different in that regard.
Only after everyone had left the common room did Emma pout, pick up her books, and head up the stairs to the second floor.
The boys' and girls' dormitories were on opposite sides.
The corridors connected, but there were separate staircases on the first floor, so the boys and girls usually went their own ways.
Once Emma had left, the candle flames in the sconces went out on their own.
But not long afterward, the flames lit up again!
Emma, who had just reached the second floor, noticed a flash of light below and couldn't help feeling curious.
Who would be going downstairs this late?
She was actually very curious by nature.
So she quietly crept back downstairs and peeked out from the stairwell. She happened to see Victor slipping out of the common room!
"Victor? Where's Gaude going this late?"
Emma considered following him.
But on second thought, she decided that wherever he was going had nothing to do with her.
So Emma returned to the dormitory with her books.
But someone else was quietly making their way down the staircase opposite.
Robert Broheim!
After washing up, Robert had lain in bed for ages, unable to fall asleep. He'd thought about finding Victor for another game.
But this time, he happened to see Victor sneaking out of the dormitory.
For reasons he couldn't quite explain,
Robert didn't say anything.
He'd actually noticed Victor sneaking out at night more than once.
Whenever he asked, Victor would mumble something and change the subject.
Robert only knew that it had something to do with the Forbidden Love in Victor's hands.
"How can friends keep secrets from each other?"
Unlike Emma,
Robert quietly followed him.
The night passed in silence.
Sunlight drove away the darkness.
Morning soon came to St. Marian.
Dark woke from his sleep with an idea.
"If I cover my face with the Trash Slime, could it suck the dirt out of my pores too? Like a face mask."
He tried it on his palm first and found that it did seem to work a little.
So Dark really did cover his face with the Trash Slime, leaving only his nose and mouth exposed.
The Trash Slime slowly squirmed across his face. Apart from feeling a little cool, it was also somewhat ticklish.
But after five minutes, when he took it off, he suddenly felt refreshed!
"Whoa!"
Dark watched as tiny specks of grime moved from the surface of the semi-transparent Trash Slime into a small core inside it, forming a tiny black spot.
Then the Trash Slime used its Reinforced Gastric Acid skill to quickly digest the spot.
"So this is what they mean by a Magic Spirit that leaves no trash behind? I love it!"
After washing his face again,
Dark looked at his reflection in the mirror. He felt as though his pores had become noticeably finer, and his skin was smoother, too.
"Why has no one discovered such a useful Magic Spirit before? Or are other Trash Slimes different from mine?"
Thinking he'd look into it at the library at noon,
Dark gathered his textbooks and left the dormitory.
DemiDevimon brought him breakfast. Today's basket even contained a copy of the Great Sage Daily.
It seemed the Halfling chefs liked Dark, the owner of their Familiar, more and more, simply because they liked the Familiar itself.
Dark read the newspaper to keep up with current events in the kingdom while eating sausages and eggs with a milkshake.
Before you continue