Chapter 95: Chapter 95: Slime Farm

Following the airflow, Theodore was greeted by an alarming sight. From around the corner, down the long tunnel, there was light. Additionally, he was also beginning to hear water falling. Not drops or trickle of water, but more akin to that of a small waterfall.

In a hurry, Theodore shut the blinders on his lamp, fearing that someone might see. Just in case, he then checked on the behavioral matrix sewn to the back of his robe.

(Plenty of Aether left...)

Though the 'Stealth' behavioral matrix was useless against the bloated creature due to it being able to see in the dark, whatever was emitting the light ahead probably had no such advantage. Theodore reasoned that if it was able to see in the dark, then there would be no need for light.

Theodore crept closer towards the light to investigate, his threads of Aether wrapped around his feet to absorb any sound coming from his steps. As he got closer, Theodore realized that the light emitted was soft, something more akin to bioluminescence than a brightstone lamp. This meant that the origin of the light was more likely to be a creature than a mage.

Poking his head around the corner, Theodore found his guess to be correct. The emitter of the light was no mage nor anything that could be called human. However, despite being right, the reveal still shocked him.

Before Theodore, resting in the middle of a pool, was a gigantic slime, glowing softly in the light of Aether. At the slime's center, there was a large behavioral matrix, about the size of an ostrich egg. However, the behavioral matrix appeared malformed, with various bumps on its surface.

Surrounding the gigantic slime were other smaller slimes of varying sizes, sticking and piling around the larger slime for some reason.

It was an odd sight. For as far as Theodore knew, these slimes were made for cleaning and should not have a reason to gather in a cluster in such a manner. Certainly, they couldn't be trying to eat one another or fight each other for territory, could they?

The mystery of their behavior did not take long to resolve as one of the bumps on the large behavioral matrix began to split from the main body, forming a second independent crystal. The new crystal was then gradually pushed out of the body, forming a new slime out of the larger slime's mass in the process.

As it turned out, the slime was reproducing, the smaller slimes stuck to the larger one were newly formed slimes. The reason why they still clung to the larger slime was probably that the newly divided behavioral matrix needed some fine tuning from the larger one, which explained why the large slime's behavioral matrix was so much bigger. For it to adjust the behavioral matrices of the newborn slimes, a certain level of complexity was needed.

While fascinated by this discovery, Theodore quickly ducked back into the corner he peeked out of as soon as he heard footsteps. Someone was heading towards the large slime, the 'mother slime' as Theodore had decided to call it. Thankfully, they weren't coming from the direction Theodore had come from.

The footsteps came from above, slowly descending with each step. Stairs were what they were most likely using from the sound of it.

Eventually, a pair came into Theodore's view. From the looks of their bearing, Theodore felt that they were probably apprentices. With each carrying a bucket, the two approached the clustered slimes.

One by one, the apprentices reached into and plucked the behavioral matrices from the slimes surrounding the mother slime. The slimes that had their cores plucked were quick to melt away, no longer able to maintain their shape once the objects supporting their very existences were removed. What was left of these slimes were then absorbed by the mother slime, returning to whence they came.

After filling their buckets with crystals, the apprentices promptly left, climbing up the stairs Theodore could not see from where he stood.

Once the coast appeared to be clear, Theodore approached the pool where the cluster of slimes rested on.

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The pool was roughly five meters wide and was rather shallow. It lay in the center of a circular chamber roughly fifteen meters in radius, extending up to what appeared to be ten stories high. A set of stairs could be found directly behind the pool, obscured by the slime cluster. In the walls were various waterways of varying heights from which water from the sewers flowed out of, pouring into the chamber. The water would flow into the various pools around the edges of the chamber before flowing towards the central pool. Eventually, the water would flow from the central pool into the rest of the sewers, through the path Theodore had taken to arrive at this place.

Overserving the cluster of slimes, Theodore noticed that roughly half of the slimes remained, left alone by the apprentices. It was likely so that the population of the slimes would be kept within a certain range.

All things said and done, Theodore found the slimes to be a rather interesting creation. Though he was told that they served as cleaners of the city, it appeared that they also came with a few other functions.

Other than cleaning the city, the slimes also served as a farm for crystals. After watching the apprentices work, they seemed to have prioritized the slimes that were somewhat defective, be it their shape, coloration, or general movements.

As a slime cleaned the city, accumulating material and Aether, it was expected for changes to take place within its behavioral matrix, either due to adaptation to the environment or simply the decay of the instructions imprinted within the behavioral matrix as the crystal absorbs Aether from other sources. This meant that over time, glitches would appear and cause the slime to malfunction.

The apprentices were likely told to clean up the malfunctioning slimes and harvest their behavioral matrices so that they could be reused for something else.

Another thing that caught Theodore's attention was how the mother slime 'reproduced.' Even while he stood before it, he noticed that new bumps were forming on the mother's behavioral matrix, with several appearing ready to split from the main body.

The reproduction rate appeared to be rather high, leading Theodore to question where the mother got its Aether from to 'give birth' to new crystals at such rapid rates.

The answer eventually came to him after remembering the malformed slimes clustered around the mother. It wasn't just the 'newborns' that were there. The older slimes were stuck to the mother as well.

The thing was, in a city inhabited by mages, the land was bound to be overflowing with Aether, perhaps to a harmful degree even. By cleaning the sewers, the slimes were also absorbing much of that Aether in the process. It was likely that these slimes would deposit the Aether into the mother, which then was used to produce more slimes.

In a sense, the slimes and the mages had a symbiotic relationship, with the slimes producing crystals and cleaning up their city while the mages provided the Aether which the slimes used to reproduce. Of course, whether an artificial construct could be considered symbiotic with any living thing was another question entirely.

With the mystery solved, Theodore continued with his exploration, heading towards the set of stairs the two apprentices had come down from.

Taking a moment to gather his wits to deal with what he might encounter up there, Theodore proceeded onwards.

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End of Chapter 95

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