Chapter 147

"Oortez, so, what does the main body look like? They all look the same to me. Are you sure she still has a main body after evolution?"

"Indeed, a good question." He stroked his scaly chin.

"Also, what's the smallest unit she could split into?"

There were countless blobs of slime scattered across the cavern floor, some collected in puddles while others stuck on rocky surfaces. When I checked, they all displayed statuses with varying values of health, mana, and level. Aside from these differences, I couldn't tell which could possibly be the main body because traits, abilities, and basic stats were all the same.

One of my concern was that if a blob of this demon could have been washed downstream and entered a larger body of water and started replicating unbridled. That would be an absolute nightmare for whoever had to clean it up in the future. Though, strictly speaking, if it ever came down to the cleanup job, it would be the oceanic guardians' role to disinfect the oceans of this obnoxious demon.

"The smallest unit would be about half a copper coin. Worry not, back when Mimi was still a devil, food consumption was the limiting factor to her survival."

"Oh? Continue...?"

"It was for that same reason that I had to discard her. The results she provided was marvelous but my research budget was being devastated by that glutton. Without food, she'd shrivel and die in days."

"Seeing she's still alive, I'm guessing she's hibernating or something. But wait... A glutton you say? You thought I was going to feed her?"

"Of course. It is the employer's duty to do so?"

"Huh? I mean, as a demon, you don't even need to eat food. So why would I feed her?"

"It seems you're mistaken. She's a bit of a special case. But, that shouldn't be a problem at all! Since you can create food for her and eat portions of her at the same time, it'll all balance out." He stated that without a bit of hesitation nor remorse.

I eat the demon and in turn the demon eats from me? What is this madness? It's the epitome of abomination!

I couldn't help but glare at him and retort, "Has no one ever told you that you're super twisted?"

"True ingenuity lie with thinking outside of the norm. Unrefined plebeians who fail to comprehend my brilliance are simply unworthy to speak of someone as great as I."

Thanks, I'll remember that.

He basically just called me an unrefined plebeian.

"Whatever, so how did you converse with Mitasan before? This thing can't seem to talk."

"Let's try amassing them into a single container. Then we'll carry it out somewhere warmer."

"By 'we', you mean me, right?"

"Exactly."

"Then we'll feed it something?"

"Exactly, exactly. Truly, our minds think alike! As expected of milady."

"That's not... Never mind. Catch." I created a shovel and threw it at him. "Get working. You're not going to make your lady do all the work, right?"

Next to me, I had a transparent metallic container to hold all the blobs of slime.

If I wanted all of this done in a few seconds, I could just use |dedicated will|. However, if I did that, it would be as if I was the assistant to Oortez. That would hurt the little pride remaining in me.

With disgruntle, he began freezing puddles of slime and shovelling chunks into the container.

"Milady, I have a proposal."

"What is it?"

"If I recall correctly, she tends to float. Thus, it would be easier to completely flood the cavern and freeze the surface."

"There's no water source here and I'm not going to transport or create water. Oortez, your hands have stopped moving." I pointed out.

"Hmm... Ah! I remember seeing a suction cleaner device in the Great Labyrinth. Is it possible for you to recreate it?"

"Lazy people and shortcuts. Fair enough..."

Creating a vacuum cleaner was simple enough or so I thought. I didn't even need to add a filter or anything. As long as there was a tube, a container, and spinning wind blades, then it would work. The issue was the power source.

"Oortez, it's not going to work. I can operate it but I'm not sure if you have what it takes, you know?"

"Kuh!" He acted like he was shot through the heart. "How could it be!"

"Do you have something that can convert mana into electricity? Or something to convert mana into rotating force?"

"Unfortunately not. I believe the Federation has devices such as those. Should we not pay that glorious country a visit?"

"No. You just want to escape from boring work."

I guess I'll use the alternative method... Just to be sure, I'll ask.

"By the way, are there magnets in this world?"

"Magnets? I cannot say I've heard of it."

And so, I described to him what magnets were capable of.

"Ah! Those are called adapters, extremely rare metals with little uses."

Then I guess it's fine.

Since this world has magnets, I decided to implement a little trick into this vacuum cleaner. With that done, I added a power switch and handed the device to him.

"Done, give it a try."

"Impressive! As expected of milady." He said with dazzling admiration.

While he was happily playing around with his new gadget, I decided to learn how to use one of my powers, those little black cubes. It was about time I started learning more about my powers. If I kept relying on |dedicated will|, I'd end up a good-for-nothing god-to-be.

I started with one cube at a time, and slowly expanding that number to ten, then fifty. Once I was confident with controlling a hundred small cubes, I started varying the sizes of cubes and performing miscellaneous tasks with them such as collecting slimes and making stone statues.

Two hours had passed before Oortez had finished playing with his new gadget. However, the cleanup wasn't done despite the first container reaching full capacity and the second container being half full.

"I believe we have enough samples." He declared.

"What should we do with the rest?"

"Nothing."

"Not happening."

"What will you do?"

"I'm going to test my new power." I smirked playfully holding an ominous black cube in my hand. "Not only that, these crystals are nice. I think I could make a fortune with them."

Ice cold strawberry wine? I'd be filthy rich!

"Oh! And what does it do?"

"Watch closely, Oortez."

Although my control was considerably lacking without |dedicated will|, I wasn't incompetent.

The black cube in my hand initiated its systematic division, splitting into tens, then hundreds, then thousands and so on. With each iteration, its compassing volume increased exponentially. Once enough there were enough divisions, it was as if these cubes had a will of their own, and snaking into branches of the cavern system and swallowing everything in their path.

"I-Impressive! As expected of milady."

"Interesting, right? I could gather anything I want."

"Wait, then why I have been slaving around for hours?"

"I'm not your assistant, isn't that right?"

"Yes... It's definitely leaving a bitter aftertaste."

"If you're ever tired of living, I don't mind eating you up?" I sent a dangerous yet amiable grin his way.

He chuckled nervously while scratching his head. "Uh. It would be an honor, but not today, milady."

"That's a pity. Just sit quietly for a bit."

About half an hour later, the cavern system had lost majority of its natural lighting. In turn that meant my work was near completion. Though I had no plan to take all the crystals for myself, I thought it would be the best if I traced the underground water streams. To do so, I allowed a few miniature clones of mine to flow down the streams and also loaded it with lethal chemicals to destroy any possible food sources for the demon fragments.

"Alright, time to leave."

I sent Oortez along with his cargo back to his lab.

Since I felt bad for the trolls who lived in this region, I hollowed out the corrosive swamps sitting between valleys. If I left the swamps there, it would be unthinkable how many lives they would claim into the distant future.

Only once all the swamps had been cleaned up did I return to my subspace to witness the revival of Mitasan in Oortez's laboratory.

"First, let's warm it up."

For safety reasons, that pile of slime was sitting in a huge sealed tank. The sealed tank was a transparent container twice my height, much like an oversized beaker. Since I was able to gather some more slimes using my black cubes, I added those into the tank.

It was just like boiling soup.

With amber flames licking the bottom of the tank, bubbles were rising to the surface. Then, using a special tube, I fed the soup, I meant slime, some chunks of suspicious food. What kind of food I threw at the slime didn't really matter since they were all melted down into goo nonetheless.

"Oortez, this better be worth my time. It's not even showing signs of intelligence."

"Have faith in me, milady. She will surely assist in my research."

"I hope you mean it because I'm not lending my clones to you."

"Ah yes, your clones. I have some knowledge of them but I heard they lacked intelligence?"

"What are you smoking? Of course they are intelligent! Ah... Could it be that you've never actually seen my newer clones?"

"Ooh! I would love to gleam-"

"No. Absolutely not." Before he could get any more strange ideas, I pointed to the tank to distract him, "Look, it's stirring. Is she waking up?"

"Ah, yes. She should transform momentarily."

Given his words, I waited.

I waited.

And, waited.

Hours went by. Thankfully, this was probably the only part of my subspace no longer synchronized with the time outside.

If we finished soon, say, within several years, I'd still only be late to the meeting by a few hours.

That was a joke, by the way. In reality, it had only been a few hours here. All this time, he was taking notes and working on other gadgets, completely leaving this observation task to me.

"I'm a patient person but isn't she taking a bit too long? Not to mention, are you not mortified seeing your Mimi a higher levelled demon than you?"

Mitasan, after combining together into a giant blob of slime, was now level 45. Her stats hadn't changed a single bit other than her health and mana. Oortez, on the other hand, was only level 23. It just went to show how fast Mitasan was able to level up within such a short amount of time after she was dumped in the wilderness to fend for herself. Realistically, she probably went on a feeding frenzy.

"That's the trivial matter," was his disinterested reply.

My effort to get a reaction from him had failed miserably. In the end, I never found an opportunity to properly test my new weapon on someone.