Perfect Assimilation: Evolution of a Shapeshifting Slime!

Her name was Instructor Argenta.

She was a direct descendant of the high-tier Elf race who, rather than returning to her own powerful realm after her graduation, had decided to stay behind and teach in the academy instead.

She was known to be highly temperamental, and she absolutely meant every single word she spoke to her classes.

Since she had just openly stated that she would smack anyone who dared to speak into paste, she would definitely do so without a second thought.

Even though Ayla was not at all interested in learning about anyone else or memorizing administrative files because her brain was only focused on eating people and harvesting their traits, the Nexus system had forcefully flooded her consciousness with the detailed profiles of every single professor in the building.

Among all of those listed instructors, this specific female elf was by far the most special one because she was assigned to be her official homeroom teacher for the entirety of Class One.

Instructor Argenta bended her tall body slightly to stare directly down at the tiny ball of translucent blue fluid sitting on the floorboards.

"Do you want me to personally carry you to a seat?" she spoke coldly, her pupil-less silver eyes flashing with a sharp, warning pressure.

Ayla did not like the mocking tune present in her icy voice at all.

She completely ignored the teacher’s words, rolled her jelly body right past the elegant boots of the elf, and made her way toward the long student rows without offering a single reply.

She completely ignored how the surrounding student’s expressions changed into pure horror at her blatant disrespect, and she paid absolutely no attention to the sharp glare of the teacher burning into her back as she navigated the aisle.

She easily found a comfortable, empty position at the very back row of the amphitheater.

She slithered up the side of the wooden bench, hopped onto the smooth surface of the table, and flattened herself out to watch the front of the stage.

The students sitting in the nearby rows immediately shifted away from her, pulling their desks back to create a wide gap.

They were absolutely terrified that Instructor Argenta would unleash a wave of destructive area-of-effect mana to punish the arrogant slime, and they did not want to be caught in the crossfire.

Ayla did not mind the extra space at all. It gave her a perfect view of everyone’s heads from behind.

Instructor Argenta watched the little blue ball roll away, her face remaining completely flat as she straightened her military jacket.

’What an arrogant little thing,’ Argenta thought inwardly, not showing a single trace of her personal emotions on the outside of her marble skin.

Just like every single student currently sitting in the lecture hall, all of the academy professors were incredibly curious about the Nexus system’s latest direct recruitment choice.

Knowing that the specific student was a slime, a Mimic Slime to be exact, every single faculty member had been deeply surprised when the registration files were distributed.

However, unlike the foolish, proud students from the higher races, the instructors did not underestimate her capabilities for a single second because they were old enough to know that the Nexus would never choose anyone without a very good, calculated reason.

All of them wanted to personally know what this little blue slime possessed that the Nexus found worth investing a legendary fourth recruitment token in, but the lucky individual to be in direct, daily contact with her happened to be Argenta.

Argenta walked gracefully toward the center of the elevated stage, her hands resting behind her back as she faced the one thousand students of her sub-group.

She cleared her throat, her voice instantly projecting through the absolute silence of the room.

"Welcome to your first lecture," Argenta began, her silver eyes scanning the rows of seats.

"Today, we are going to talk about traits. I want every single one of you from the lower mortal planes to completely forget everything about traits that you think you know, because all of your traditional theories are entirely false.

The rankers in the Ascendant plane already know this truth, but you beginners are still trapped in a narrow box."

The rowdy classroom remained perfectly still, the proud expressions of the higher race geniuses shifting into focused attention.

Even Ayla became quite attentive in the back row, her round jelly form perking up slightly on the table.

"The complete mastering and evolution of any given trait is achieved by exactly three steps," Argenta explained, raising three pale fingers.

"Those steps are Understanding, Invention, and Execution. First, you must have an absolute understanding about the trait, what its natural parameters are, and what properties you can choose to manipulate. For example, let us look at a very basic, common trait like Pyromancy."

She waved her hand, and a small, perfect ball of orange fire materialized in the air beside her shoulder.

The flame danced silently, casting a warm glow over the first few rows of desks.

"To a lower plane ranker, Pyromancy is just simple heat control," Argenta stated, her voice echoing clearly.

"The natural heat can be used to burn an enemy, or it can be used to keep your body warm in a cold environment. Those are its direct, obvious properties.

But why couldn’t that exact same heat control be used to forcefully absorb the existing warmth out of an object? Do you know what happens to the target then?"

Argenta’s silver eyes suddenly darted straight toward the back row of the amphitheater, locking onto the translucent blue sphere.

"Ayla," she called out loudly, her voice dropping into a testing tone. "Can you show the class what I am talking about?"

Ayla was far too engrossed in the logical breakdown of the lesson.

She nodded her jelly body involuntarily, completely forgetting for a split second that she had never actually revealed to the academy database that she possessed a Pyromancy trait inside her.

Argenta reached into her uniform pocket, pulled out a fresh red apple, and tossed it through the air with a swift motion.

The fruit landed with a soft thud right on the desk directly in front of Ayla.

Ayla didn’t hesitate.

She extended a single, thin blue tendril from her mass and lightly tapped the skin of the apple.

Instead of channeling raw mana to burn the fruit, she focused her mind entirely on the instructor’s logic, utilizing her heat control to forcefully suck every single trace of warmth out of the molecular structure of the target and pull it into her own core.

Within a fraction of a second, the red apple turned completely pale, a thick layer of white frost forming over its skin as it became completely, freezing cold.

The moisture in the air around the desk crystallized into tiny ice particles that drifted down onto the table.

"Isn’t this Cyromancy?" Argenta asked the class, turning her gaze back to the rows of students as the entire Mortal plane students went completely silent with shock.

"Still, many of you might have tried something similar in your past battles, but that is only the very surface of invention. You think you are using two different elements, but in reality, you are just manipulating the single concept of thermal energy from opposite directions."

She paused for a dramatic moment, letting the heavy silence settle over the room before she spoke again.

"What if you choose to completely change the fundamental properties of the fire element itself?"

Even Ayla’s deadpan expression changed a little bit inside her mind upon hearing those words. She leaned her fluid form closer to the edge of the desk, her golden pupils expanding with a genuine curiosity.

She had always used her traits in a very straightforward, destructive manner.

She had never considered altering the basic definitions of the skills she stole.

"Fire can burn, it can warm, it can create steam, and it can cause massive physical destruction," Argenta said, her voice dropping into a deep, rhythmic cadence as she paced across the stage. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"Those are the direct, material properties of fire that every single brainless beast understands. But what about its indirect properties?

Fire can act as a guiding light in total darkness. That is a direct indirect property. But can it also be systematically considered that fire can show a person the psychological path to move forward in their life?"

The students stared at the teacher in a daze, their minds struggling to comprehend the abstract logic.

"If you expand that concept further through invention, can fire be used to burn away a person’s painful memories, or completely remold the pathways of their soul container?" Argenta asked, her silver eyes shining with a terrifying intensity.

"A true Ascendant does not just throw fireballs to cause damage. They use the indirect properties of their traits to bend the laws of reality to their will. If your understanding is deep enough, your Pyromancy can become a mental trait that burns the enemy’s logic, leaving their physical body perfectly untouched while their brain turns into blank mush."

Argenta paused, "Invention solves the limitation of a trait because none of the traits were inherantly limited at all. It’s the persons with this trait limited in their understanding and Invention..."