Chapter 3

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Chapter 3: Flowing Rune

Making a decision wasn’t too difficult as there weren’t many options in front of Tasha.

The work of the mole team continued, with many branches appearing in the tunnels, turning this underground network into a maze. Blue Ore was slowly and steadily accumulating, and Tasha decided not to create more moles. She felt like a coal baron who relied on mining to thrive and constantly had a sense of impending resource depletion crisis.

Other than the earth rune, Tasha had three unused runes.

Water, air, fire runes. Tasha carefully touched them and could feel the increasing energy needed for each. The energy required to activate the Flowing Rune was several times that of creating a mole, and "air" was several times that of "water". At the current energy accumulation rate, finding out what the flame rune could hatch would take a long time.

Tasha tried to activate the Flowing Rune.

It was a repeat of creating a mole, except this time the light that shone was water blue. Before the light dispersed, fragments of information had already flashed in Tasha’s mind.

What was about to come was—

It is a creature that can consume everything, corroding physical beings and digesting living things as its food. It is an immortal shapeshifter, able to transform freely without a fixed form, surviving even the deadliest weapons and harsh environments alone.

It sounds much more capable than a mole. The unassuming mole is an excellent miner, and the ores they dig up saved Tasha’s life. She couldn’t help but feel excited again, wondering what surprises using more Flowing Runes could bring.

On the floor where the blue light faded, there lay a blob of watery substance.

Tasha was not a fantasy enthusiast and hadn’t played many games, so her knowledge of legendary monsters was shallow. Despite this, she recognized the creature before her. It had a famous name that most young people from the information age would recognize instantly. This being was quite representative.

Unfortunately, being "representative" doesn’t equate to being powerful.

Friend, have you heard of slime?

Tasha stared at the bluish gel in front of her, temporarily speechless. The creature had a rounded shape, like semi-solidified water. Through its uniformly semi-transparent body, she could see the ground behind it. It moved along the floor, leaving a moist trail, but the rough sand and stones didn’t leave a mark on its soft body.

The devourer of everything? Well, this slimy monster can break down organic matter naturally. As for inorganic materials like stones… if acidic water dissolving a cave over centuries is considered corrosion, then slime corroding the ground over a hundred years could also be called "devouring everything". An immortal shapeshifter? Indeed, its soft body seems like it could be molded and flattened easily, showing no apparent weaknesses. It’s very likely that physical attacks are ineffective.

Lower life forms, such as fungi, bacteria, single-celled organisms, and so on, all possess astonishing vitality upon closer inspection. They can survive in harsh environments and reproduce through self-division. However powerful they may seem, it cannot be denied that they are lower life forms.

No matter how much the slime is praised, it can’t change the fact that it is considered the lowest-level monster in most fantasy stories.

Tasha stared at the creature without eyes for a long time but couldn’t sense its core or give it commands. After a few minutes, she realized that this low-level creature didn’t have a core at all.

How do you communicate with an amoeba?

The watery slime crawled away slowly, completely oblivious to the creator’s distress, and curled up in a corner of the hall peacefully. For the next few minutes, it remained motionless, making people wonder if it was just a strange-looking mushroom.

Tasha tried poking it with an invisible hand, hoping to unleash the potential of the slime, but it showed no response. She searched her scattered thoughts for information on how to command such a creature but couldn’t find any. No matter how much she tried to command it mentally, the slow-moving slime didn’t respond. Tasha couldn’t figure out what it could do with its sluggish snail-like pace.

So she summoned another one.

The second slime appeared on the floor, looking identical to the first one. Without a nose or eyes, it was a smooth gel blob quietly lying on the ground, then slowly moving towards the corner, curling up next to the first slime. After completing this action, it also became still, and the two gel blobs merged into one large blob. Apart from adding a bit of moisture to the dry hall (look at those two shiny traces), they seemed to have no other use.

Wait, could it be because they have no food?

Tasha had a sudden realization, comparing the motionless slimes to herself when she lacked energy, and she began to understand. Deleting the exaggerated parts, she remembered that slimes can "digest living creatures as nutrients," meaning they need organic matter as food, unlike earth elementmoles.

This idea made Tasha happy at first, but then she started to worry. Even though her senses expanded to countless tunnels, she still couldn’t find a single bug or even a leaf. Underground, there was nothing besides sand and rocks, nothing to feed the slime. Thinking about it this way, they haven’t really done anything wrong. Staying still at least reduces energy consumption.

Tasha gave an order to a mole to find food for the slime. The mole that received the order stopped, puzzled, and wiggled its nose, not understanding what it meant.

"Find insects? Dig up plants?" Tasha clarified the order.

The mole sat on its hind legs and started cleaning the sand and stones off its paws.

Tasha commanded again, "Come to the hall."

This time the mole accurately returned to the hall, it didn’t seem like the command failed. Perhaps it couldn’t detect living things? Tasha thought about it and realized it was possible. The moles had only dug up Blue Ore along with some other scattered stones, but they only reacted to Blue Ore like Tasha did. It seemed that she was lucky from the start, accidentally summoning a mole specialized in mining.

Another possibility was that there were no living creatures where they were now. Tasha didn’t want to entertain this thought. No matter how much her form changed, she still couldn’t bear hundreds of years of solitude. What meaning would there be in being resurrected if she was trapped in an empty underground world?

Tasha pushed away her worries; it wasn’t time to be anxious for no reason. This was a whole new world, and nothing she encountered so far could be explained using her past scientific knowledge. Regardless of the environment, all she could do was abandon her previous knowledge and explore like a newborn child.

A mole, following her command, brought a piece of Blue Ore and tossed it onto the slime’s head. The Blue Ore bounced on the elastic ground, rolled on the floor, but the two slime had no reaction. On the other hand, the mole was eager to pounce on it. Tasha sighed, too lazy to stop the worker from snacking. The mole swallowed the Blue Ore in one gulp, leaving the sluggish slime behind, and energetically returned to work.

Talking about this reminds me of the first mole that got beaten up and vomited, this guy seems to be especially greedy.

Tasha couldn’t do anything about the slime, so she had to put this matter aside for now, relieved that the slime didn’t seem to starve if it didn’t eat. She focused on conserving some of her mental energy (it had become easier to concentrate since she arrived here), a few hours later, Tasha had regained the energy she had before creating the slime. Instead of summoning more slime, she continued to gather energy, preparing to activate the airflow rune with full power. This took longer than expected, as the mine kept extending further away.

The next day, Tasha noticed something was off with the slime.

The slime’s bodies were a light blue color, a kind of blue that was shallow and slightly transparent, so fading would not dye the ground dark blue. A faint blue light hung on the rocks beneath them, as if being illuminated by blue light, even though there was no light underground.

Tasha found this blue color very familiar, she looked around and immediately recognized where the sense of familiarity came from: wasn’t the floor of the stone pool this color?

The color of the stone pool might be a bit deeper, formed by layers of melted Blue Ore. The ground under the slime was lighter, similar to the excavated Blue Ore, as if…

Tasha focused her mind on that area, being a part of the building itself was helpful, she immediately noticed a faint energy fluctuation in a corner of the hall, weaker than the Blue Ore, yet undoubtedly from the same source. The hall originally did not have this kind of fluctuation, and neither did the slime. Tasha had a thought and had the moles move the rubble to the slime.

On the third day, the rubble that had been moved turned blue, on the fourth day it looked no different from the Blue Ore’s fragments. The moles, who had been carrying out their food search instructions, began to approach the rocks they had previously ignored and picked out blue pieces to throw into the stone pool. These blue fragments melted into the pool bottom just like the natural blue ore.

The hypothesis was successfully verified, and Tasha finally understood the purpose of the slime. They indeed could not follow commands, but the slime was like a kind of crop that improved the environment, like a catalyst: they could alter the environment, turning ordinary sand and rocks into this Blue Ore.

Tasha was overjoyed and immediately summoned several slime creatures. The mollusk monsters huddled in a corner of the hall as Tasha gazed at them eagerly, envisioning a season of plentiful ore harvest and feeling like she had evolved from a time of gathering to a time of planting.

The new landowner felt relieved, thinking to himself that it’s indeed possible to grow good crops.