Born in apocalypse

"So, Alaric, you can put a creature’s being in your shadow, right?" Dhruv asked while walking toward the hunting area.

"Yes, master. I can put living creatures in my shadow, but only for two hours before they need half an hour of sunlight," Alaric explained.

"Oh, so after putting anyone in your shadow, what will be their condition? I mean, will they be able to wake or not?" Dhruv asked once again.

"If the creature is weaker than me, then I can forcefully put them to sleep. But if they are stronger than me, they would be awake but couldn’t do anything in my shadow," Alaric explained how his shadow storage works.

"Oh, so you can put those slimes to sleep, right?" Dhruv asked.

"Yes," Alaric said.

After asking all the questions, they began to walk silently toward the train track once again. After walking for a minute, Dhruv suddenly remembered that he had forgotten one thing to ask. He looked at Alaric and asked a question once again,

"How many can you store?"

"Depends on the types of monsters I am storing," Alaric answered.

"Let’s say they are the slimes we were killing but one or two tiers stronger," Dhruv said as he estimated.

Listening to the question, Alaric began to think for a second. After thinking for about half a minute, he replied, "If they are Tier 2, I can store up to three hundred of them. If they are Tier 3, then one hundred of them."

"Okay!" Finally getting the answer to all his questions, Dhruv began to walk toward his final destination silently.

...

After reaching the edge of the tracks, Dhruv looked forward and found out that where the slimes were coming from before was blocked by sheets of metal. After looking at it closely he found that the sheets of metal looked as if they were cut off from the gates.

"So that’s how they are stopping slimes. Does that mean they aren’t capable of cutting through metals? Phew! That makes everything very easy." Dhruv whispers.

Dhruv was standing there and created a metal base below all those sheets and began to move them towards himself. When he was done doing that he looked at that part of track once again, hoping to see those slimes.

But, even after removing the sheets, there weren’t any slimes coming from the darkness. Without any second thought, he told Vexar to create a fire torch...

"Fire torches,"

Vexar whispered as a few blobs of torches began to materialize in front of them. Dhruv signaled, and Vexar began to move the torches toward the deeper side of the area where the slimes were coming from.

With the light coming from the torches, Dhruv noticed that there weren’t any Tier 1 slimes left in the holes. He observed and found out that there were at least thirty slimes feasting on the corpses of monster bears.

These slimes were different they were at least a quarter of a meter tall while being half a meter wide in length, it was obviously bigger than the slimes he was hunting. Its body color was also a deeper shade of lime and there was a core within its body. Strangely enough, the tier-one slimes didn’t have these cores.

"So, they are feeding these slimes these corpses to keep them calm, or is there another motive behind this feeding..." Dhruv thought as he looked at the slimes that were feasting on those bears.

There were at least 80 bear corpses in front of those slimes. Dhruv was astonished to find out that the gang was even able to hunt those monstrous bears, but then again, the corpses could also be transported in the same way the guns were done, so Dhruv wasn’t exactly sure.

One thing that Dhruv noticed was that he couldn’t find any crack where the Slimes were feasting. A few seconds later he realized that the crack could simply be deeper in the tunnel and didn’t think about this any longer.

Dhruv didn’t disturb the whole gang of slimes yet and ordered Alaric to bring one of them here. Alaric listened to the order and did as he was told. He placed the picked-up slime by diving it in his shadow and then let it appear in front of Dhruv.

Noticing that its food was nowhere to be found, the slime began to advance in Dhruv’s direction, hoping to eat him. But before it could even crawl toward him, the corpse of a bear appeared out of nowhere. It stopped its advance and began to eat through the new meal.

Looking at the slime, Dhruv thought, ’Let’s see how you were able to reproduce those little slimes.’

At first, Dhruv had thought that he had to use the conventional trial and error method to find out the reason behind their reproduction. But after finding the Inspect-or glasses, he was glad to skip all those trials and could directly look at the slime biology.

The thing he was looking for was the section on slime mutation. While summoning the glasses, he prayed to the heavens that his luck would be good. He put the glasses on and looked at the slime.

[Essence Points: 8]

Looking at the information it revealed, Dhruv didn’t get discouraged and looked at the slime once again. This time he got luck...

[Mutation: Acid-layered slime skin +8, Efficient Stomach hole + 13, Powerful Digestive Acid +5, Regenerative Skin +9, Essence Converter + 12, Small Division Reproduction+ 14, Mind Connection +3]

Dhruv was impressed with the number of mutations this tiny creature had packed in its body. He was even more impressed that it was also upgrading them and not just leaving them aside.

After carefully reading the names, Dhruv had a tiny bit of understanding of how this creature was reproducing. In the hope of getting further answers to his curiosity, he clicked on the name of the option to get a detailed explanation, but to his surprise, he couldn’t access it.

He tried the same thing with other organs of the slime, but every time the result was the same. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t access the exact details of the mutations. However, that didn’t stop him from making a guess.

So, through an Efficient Stomach, it can eat and store anything, and then there’s a Powerful Digestive to turn that thing into an essence point. After that, there’s this Essence Converter that lets it turn that essence into the thing it requires to create those Tier 1 slimes by dividing itself. With the Mind Connection, it communicates with the little slimes and tells them to collect food for their main body. I have to admit, this thing is genius in making itself a baby producer. Hehe hehe, better for me.’

With a smirk, Dhruv looked at Alaric and said,

"Pack them up."