The sensation of evolution was not the divine transcendence the bards sang about. It was not a gentle shedding of skin or a blossoming of power. It was an industrial accident occurring inside my soul.
Inside the Starmetal vat, the laws of biology and physics were being pulverized into a singular, molten slurry. My consciousness, usually anchored by the dry, clinical voice of the Archivist, began to fragment. I was no longer a single point of silver liquid; I was the heat in the furnaces, the vibration in the stones, and the jagged lightning dancing across the Heart of the Crag.
< Alert: Core Density approaching Singularity Point. > < Physical Vessel: DESTROYED. > < Reconstructing... >
This is it, I thought, the memory of my human death in Tokyo overlapping with my death as a slime in Loop 01. The third death is the charm.
"Archivist," I roared into the void of my own mind. "I don't want a body that can be broken! I don't want a heart that can be pierced! If I am to be a Sovereign, give me a form made of Logic and Iron!"
< Processing... Incorporating Starmetal Lattice... > < Synthesizing Humanoid Template from Residual Memory... >
The silver liquid didn't just coalesce; it forged. I felt the liquid metal being hammered into "bones" of hyper-dense ether-conductive silicate. I felt "muscles" being woven from high-tensile silver filaments, designed to contract with the speed of an electrical discharge. My nervous system was no longer a series of biological sparks; it was a fiber-optic network of pure mana.
Then came the "Skin." A semi-permeable, non-Newtonian membrane that looked like pale, moonlight-tinted flesh but possessed the structural integrity of a tank's hull.
The vat exploded.
A shockwave of violet mana rippled outward, shattering the glass viewing ports of the chamber and sending Baron and the Goblin guards stumbling back. A pillar of white-hot steam filled the room, smelling of ozone and ancient earth.
I stepped out of the mist.
My feet touched the cold stone floor, but I didn't feel the cold—I processed it. I looked down at my hands. They were five-fingered, elegant, and pale. I clenched a fist, and I could hear the faint, high-pitched whine of the internal mana-servos adjusting to the movement.
I walked to a mirror of polished Starmetal on the wall.
The reflection looking back was a youth of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. I had hair the color of a winter moon, long and shimmering, and eyes that were no longer human. They were deep, cobalt pools with glowing data-streams of the Archivist flickering in the pupils. I was slender, yet there was a weight to my presence that made the air in the room feel heavy.
< Evolution Complete: Demon Lord Slime (Variant: Chronos Sovereign). > < New Skill Acquired: [The King's Calculation]. > < New Skill Acquired: [Matter State Manipulation]. >
"By the ancestors..." Baron whispered, stepping forward and wiping the soot from his goggles. "Aris? Is that you in there, or did the mountain finally win?"
I looked at him, and for a second, my [Magic Sense] displayed his entire biological makeup—his heart rate, his adrenaline levels, the mineral content of his bones. I blinked, suppressing the data.
"It's me, Baron," I said. My voice was no longer a vibration of the air; it was a perfect, melodic human tenor, though it carried an edge of cold steel. "But I think 'Aris' is only a small part of the equation now."
I didn't have time to admire my new face.
The Hive Mind screamed. At the base of the Iron-Crag, the white crow I had been tracking hadn't just watched; it had acted as a beacon.
"Master!" Vector, the wolf-commander, barked through the telepathic link. "The sky... the sky is bleeding!"
I walked to the balcony of the fortress, my black bodysuit—a manifested layer of my own slime mass—shifting and hardening into a coat of reinforced armor.
Looking out over the Forest of Jura, I saw it. The clouds were parting in a perfect, geometric circle. Six figures in white and gold robes were suspended in the air, their hands joined. Below them, a battalion of a thousand Holy Knights was marching, their shields creating a sea of reflected light.
This wasn't a scouting party. This was an Inquisition Purge. They had skipped the investigation and gone straight to the execution.
"They're early," I muttered. "They're reacting to the desynchronization of the timeline. They know the 'Anchor' has changed."
"What do we do, Aris?" Baron asked, his hammer trembling. "We've got the railguns, but they aren't fully calibrated! If they launch a Miracle now—"
"They won't," I said, my eyes glowing with a fierce, violet light. "Because I'm not going to wait for them to finish their prayer."
I turned to the "Twelve"—my elite guard of High-Goblins and Silver-Moon Wolves. "Vector, take the Fang-Pack. Flank the infantry from the weeping woods. Use the Infrasonic canisters. I don't want them dead; I want them incapacitated. Baron, get the 'Kinetics' team to the roof. Target the mages in the sky."
"But the distance is too great for a standard bolt!" Baron argued.
"We aren't using a standard bolt," I said, walking toward the center of the balcony. "I am the barrel."
I extended my arm toward the sky. My silver skin began to peel back, revealing the Starmetal-reinforced chassis of my forearm. I didn't just "aim." I used [The King's Calculation] to factor in wind speed, mana density, and the curvature of the earth.
I reached out into the Hive Mind and pulled the energy from the mountain's Capacitor Stones. I felt the surge of ten thousand mana-batteries flowing through the stone floors, up through my boots, and into my core.
"Physics Lesson Number One," I whispered. "Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is simply delivered to the wrong person."
A bolt of blue, hyper-compressed light erupted from my palm.
It wasn't a fireball. It was a Kinetic Slime-Slug—a marble-sized piece of my own body, hardened into a diamond-lattice structure and propelled by an electromagnetic pulse. It traveled at Mach 5.
The lead Inquisitor didn't even have time to blink. The "Miracle" shield they were weaving shattered like glass. The slug passed through the mage, through the cloud layer, and vanished into the upper atmosphere.
The sky, once white with "Holy Light," turned a bruised purple as the mana-circuit of the mages broke.
"Now!" I commanded.
The Iron-Crag came alive. From hidden ports in the mountainside, the Goblins unleashed the "Flash-Casters." Beams of concentrated light lanced down, not killing the knights, but melting their armor and blinding their horses. The Fang-Pack hit the flanks, a blur of silver fur and obsidian claws.
It wasn't a battle. It was a systematic deconstruction of a military force.
As the sun began to set over the carnage, a single figure remained standing at the center of the valley. It was the Knight-Commander I remembered from Loop 01—the one who had killed Fenris.
He looked up at the mountain, his gold armor scorched, his sword shaking. "What are you?!" he screamed. "The Prophecy said a Slime! A mindless beast! You... you are a demon of logic!"
I didn't answer. I stepped off the balcony.
I didn't fall; I manipulated the air pressure beneath my feet, creating a series of solid "steps" as I descended the thousand-foot drop. I landed softly in the mud in front of him.
I looked at him—this man who had been my nightmare—and I felt nothing. No hate. No fear. Just the observation of a flaw in the system.
"The Prophecy was written by people who don't understand the laws of the universe," I said, my voice cold and clear. "You rely on 'Miracles' because you are afraid of the dark. I survived the dark. I learned its secrets."
I raised a hand, and a blade of vibrating silver ether extended from my wrist.
"Tell your masters," I said, leaning in close so only he could hear. "I remember the smell of their 'Miracle.' I remember the heat. And tell them... I'm coming for the Throne next."
I didn't kill him. I let him run. A survivor is a more effective weapon than a corpse; he would spread the infection of fear.
I turned back to my mountain. Fenris was waiting for me at the base, his silver fur stained with the blood of the knights, but his eyes bright with life.
"Master," he thought. "The loop is broken."
"No, Fenris," I said, looking at the glowing violet light of my own hands. "The loop is just beginning. But this time... I'm the one holding the leash."
[Volume 2 End]