[Book 1 Completed] Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World [Kingdom Building LitRPG]
B2 | Chapter 32 – Solving the Slime Solidification Problem

Gazing at the most recent batch of yellow slimes, dull and lifeless in the bottom of the containers, Theodore hummed in thought. He had been trying to figure out sustainable slime cultivation for what seemed like forever now. After completing their three-stage lifecycle—from liquid to foam to solid—the yellow slimes' natural secretions created an exceptionally strong barrier against both heat and cold, making them ideal for insulation. The problem was keeping the damn things alive long enough to harvest their slime like "shearing" a sheep's wool without killing them in the process.

But that was the problem. These slimes… loved to die.

So far, each approach he had tried had failed. Metal cages with ventilation holes, glass containers, wicker baskets, wooden boxes, clay pots, open-air pens with barriers, and even intricate terrarium settings that attempted to replicate their natural cave habitats as accurately as possible. Nothing was successful. The slimes would begin to degrade within half an hour or even minutes, their movements becoming excessively slow, and eventually collapsing into pools of lifeless slime.

Of course, Theodore had meticulously documented everything, as that's what you do when you're trying to solve a problem. He had recorded temperature, food sources, substrate materials, container sizes, population densities, heck he had noted down the lighting conditions as well . He'd tried feeding them different types of organic matter, adjusted their living space, and even experimented with different methods of extraction to see if the harvesting process itself was somehow traumatizing them to death.

But no matter what he attempted, the outcome was the same. New slime secretions would initially be a viscous liquid but after a few period of exposure to air, they would start to froth up, resembling a type of biological expanding insulation. The foam would eventually harden into an excellent insulating substance.

It was brilliant, really.

A completely renewable resource that could solve heating problems if he could just figure out how to keep the producers alive. The applications were endless, and Theodore had spent more than a few sleepless nights envisioning workshops full of contented slimes living comfortable lives while providing their communities with sustainable insulation materials.

Granted, normal slimes were literally the lowest when it came to thinking or instinct. All they did was eat whatever came in their way.

Regardless, each time he'd tried fi, he had ended up emptying containers of dead slime remnants and attempting to determine what had gone wrong.

By concentrating on the physical surroundings and mechanical procedures, he had been tackling the issue like an engineer and attempting to improve living conditions via trial and error. It had been utterly pointless, yet it was the sensible course of action.

Theodore rubbed his temples and looked around his workshop.

Maybe he'd been overthinking this—

"Oh… Oh—oh!"

He had been overthinking this!

Because there was one incredibly obvious thing he hadn't bothered to check!

Something so basic that he ought to have begun with it instead of jumping straight into elaborate experiments.

The mana!

He hadn't looked at how the goddamn slimes behaved with mana!

How had he been so dumb?

Theodore activated his [Arcane Awareness] skill and immediately felt like an idiot.

In his increased awareness, the slimes glowed like tiny magical beacons, completely saturated with mana. It was not, however, the constant, regulated radiance of a being endowed with innate magical abilities. It was erratic and chaotic, as if they were taking in magical energy from the surroundings more quickly than they could process it. Without any sort of control or release system, the mana levels were rising inside their small bodies, and the excess energy was essentially cooking them from the inside out.

Of course. Of course it was mana exposure!

Theodore had totally overlooked the notion that caves were inherently low-mana regions since he had been so preoccupied with trying to address the problem and recreate their native underground environment. The slimes could live in their desired state of little magical exposure, deep underground, or far from the mana radiation that all living things emitted. But the moment he'd brought them up to the surface, into an environment saturated with the ambient mana that humans and other creatures naturally produced, they'd started absorbing it compulsively.

They couldn't help themselves.

They simply kept taking in mana until it killed them since their primitive neurological systems were insufficiently developed, so much so that they didn't allow for conscious reasoning or decision-making. It was like seeing someone drink water nonstop without ever feeling satisfied, only that they were being magically burned alive rather than drowning.

The solution was so obvious now that Theodore felt embarrassed for not seeing it earlier.

It was mana regulation.

In order for the slimes to absorb what they need without overdosing on ambient mana, he had to figure out how to keep an eye on and regulate the mana levels in their surroundings. Or, more specifically, he needed to make sure the slimes expelled excess mana, given that regulating the environment would be harder and regulating the slimes themselves was a far easier solution.

Theodore had been eager to try out his [Rune Inscription] skill anyway, so this was really ideal timing. Since getting the skill, he had developed a vast mental library of runic symbols—directly "installed" in his brain—that he could engrave on anything, but he had not yet had the time or chance to put his skill to the test.

This appeared to be the perfect chance to see what he could inscribe and how well his runic work could address real-world issues.

With the idea that he would start small and progress to more intricate applications, Theodore attempted to inscribe a basic mana detection rune straight onto the side of a glass vase.

But the moment the rune made contact with the surface—just as the glowing tip of the etching line burned faintly into the glass—something changed.

His perception was altered, as if a film peeled back from reality, and he instantly saw it—the weave. The name came naturally to him as if he'd known it forever, and that was a strange thought to have.

It was something completely different than a cloth or a weaving of threads. It hovered just below the surface of what he believed to be the actual physical object. It was a lattice-like structure that was neither quite visible nor quite real. Like the thing's skeleton, but far more significant and detailed.

It wasn't on this plane. That much he was sure of, because he felt like he was only glimpsing it through the narrowest slit in a wall he hadn't known existed, a slit that had opened only because the rune had brushed against it.

The weave was the shape of the object, yes, but it was more than that. It was the way mana understood the object. The true shape, the real rules that made a glass container glass and not, say, water or bone or sand.

When he first saw it, he was terrified and froze since he hadn't anticipated anything like that at all. It reminded him of purple fire, the way it'd appeared so suddenly and fucked up his arm. He did not want that repeating.

As he looked about, however, to his limited current knowledge regarding this all, he discovered that he was unable to directly interact with the object's weave, just as the weave couldn't directly interact with the world. Aside from, maybe, the object itself. He could interact with it, though, not with hands or tools or willpower, but through the runes. Runes were the language, and willpower and mana were the fuel required to burn a rune into the weave.

The rune formed properly under his touch, glowing with soft blue light as it activated, but within seconds the entire container shattered. Apparently glass wasn't compatible with runic inscription, or at least not with the amount of mana he was trying to channel through it.

The second attempt was on a wooden box, and while the container survived the inscription process, the rune itself faded after a few minutes and stopped working entirely. Wood absorbed some mana, but not enough to sustain a functional runic array over time. He supposed that the excess mana of a slime would suffice, but he needed to try other things first.

Next, Theodore experimented with clay, then metal, and finally stone, working his way through different materials while trying to figure out what would hold a rune long enough to be useful. Some materials couldn't handle the initial inscription process, cracking or burning when he tried to channel mana through them. Others were unable to retain a rune for an extended period of time. A few seemed promising initially but developed problems after extended use, with the runic patterns becoming unstable or producing unpredictable effects.

After three full days of nonstop experimenting, he eventually discovered a combination that worked.

The breakthrough came when he had started inscribing directly onto the slimes themselves.

At first, Theodore had been hesitant to use this approach, but as it turned out, live tissue was a great medium for runic art. The mana required for the inscription process could be handled by the slimes' bodies, and once the runic symbols were in place, their inherent ability to absorb mana actually served to stabilize them. This wasn't a complex enough array of runes to warrant a mana battery or a way to siphon off more mana than needed.

The rune array he eventually settled on was more complex than anything he'd attempted before, requiring two distinct functions to work together with each other along with a few supportive ones. Continuously monitoring mana levels, the first component recorded the ambient mana in the immediate area of the slime as well as the quantity of mana the slime had previously taken in. When mana levels rose beyond a fixed threshold, the second part functioned as a release valve, immediately removing excess mana from the slime's body into the environment.

It had taken more slime sacrifices to discover that threshold than Theodore had first thought it would need, but the research was essential. If it were too low, the slimes wouldn't get enough mana to sustain their essential biological processes. Too high, and they'd still die from magical oversaturation. It took hours of careful observation and tweaking to get the remarkably tight sweet spot, which required accurate calibration.

When he finally got it right, however, the results were evident right away.

The slimes with properly calibrated mana regulation runes remained active and healthy even when exposed to normal surface-level ambient mana. They moved around their containers naturally, grew "fat" and their slime could be "sheared" off their bodies and harvested for later use.

They showed no signs of the deterioration that had plagued all his previous experiments.

The only issue now was the harvested slime, because that still had the same problem. Though the solution wasn't that hard, it only required special containers that regulated mana.

In any case, the mana release mechanism was particularly amusing to observe. Every few minutes, when the slime's internal mana levels approached the dangerous threshold, the rune would activate and expel the excess energy in a small puff of invisible magical discharge.

Theodore could see it with his [Arcane Awareness], little clouds of mana being vented into the environment like steam escaping from a pressure cooker.

It was essentially a mana fart.

All this time, all these weeks of complex experiments and elaborate theories, and the solution had been as simple as giving the slimes a way to relieve magical buildup. They needed to expel excess mana they were absorbing, and now they could do exactly that thanks to his runic inscription.

His first successful batch of regulated slimes went about their business, contentedly plopping around their containers while periodically releasing tiny puffs of excess magical energy into the air. With mechanical precision, the runes tracked and controlled their internal mana levels, glowing subtly on their translucent bodies.

This was going to change everything.

With a reliable method for keeping yellow slimes alive and productive in surface environments, Theodore could establish sustainable insulation production on any scale he wanted.

Of course, all this experimentation had a positive impact on his skill levels:

[Rune Inscription] has leveled up! – Lvl 0 > Lvl 3!

[Arcane Awareness] has leveled up! – Lvl 8 > Lvl 10!

[Meditation] has leveled up! – Lvl 21 > Lvl 22!

[Mana Control] has leveled up! – Lvl 5 > Lvl 6!

[Basic Rune Creation] has leveled up! – Lvl 17 > Lvl 19!

[Basic Magic Script] has leveled up! – Lvl 7 > Lvl 10!

Your class, [Runic Mage], has leveled up – Lvl 1 > Lvl 3!

In addition to [Rune Inscription] leveling up, the last several days had also helped him level up his class and other skills. It was good to witness the improvement.

Even aside from the level ups, this success proved that his [Rune Inscription] skill had real practical applications beyond just combat. He could solve everyday problems with runic work, creating magical solutions to mundane challenges that improved people's quality of life in measurable ways.

Not to mention, this whole experimentation had proved something far more interesting…

…Inscribing runes on the body worked a lot better than anything else.

He was excited just thinking about what he could inscribe on his body.

***

The law required Patreon plug:

Patreon - /itsnectar