The Evolution he had been waiting for finally appeared.
'That's more like it. This is what a chink-made game should be.'
The appeal of Chinese-made games was rapid growth.
His growth had been far too slow until now.
This Evolution would allow him to become a powerful Demon Beast.
[Evolution: Medium Slime (Medium Mud Monster).]
[Eat more. Grow stronger.]
'Is that all? Don't I get a Special Evolution or a Hidden Evolution?'
Something like a Venomous Slime, a Flying Slime, or a Transforming Slime.
[We apologize. This feature is unavailable to free-to-play users.]
[Make a purchase?]
'Fucking shit game. You f*cker. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?'
He had refused to spend money because it was a chink-made game.
Even so, this was too much.
'Fine, I'll pay. How much do you want?'
[Make a purchase?]
'Yes. How much is it?'
[Make a purchase?]
This was clearly petty revenge for all the time he had enjoyed the game without spending money.
It was a xianxia-style revenge tale where kicking a stray dog brought its owner out to massacre the entire village.
'Argh. Fine, I'll just do it. Is that enough?'
There was only one choice.
In the end, he underwent Evolution into a Medium Slime, or Medium Mud Monster.
'Did anything change?'
His appearance had not changed in the slightest.
He was already the size of a Medium Slime.
'It feels like I can eat a little more.......'
The description had said that he would eat more and become stronger.
He tried eating some mud from the floor.
'Maybe my Devouring has grown a little stronger.......'
The difference was too faint to notice.
'So it's just wordplay.'
They had simply changed the label in front of the same character.
Game companies often used methods like that.
Adding new models and functions was troublesome.
All of that cost money.
Changing a prefix and the character's color was cheap.
'Damn chink-made luck-based shitshow.'
He had known all that and still enjoyed playing the game.
As long as it was fun, he did not care if they drew a beauty mark on someone's face and insisted it was a different person.
'Right. By now, it's time to summarize all the abilities and items I've gained.'
The slime's abilities were......
[Devouring. Acid Production. Acid Resistance. Bloodsucking. Body Transformation. Poison Resistance. Reproduction.]
Those were his six abilities.
'It doesn't look bad when I list them like this. Ha ha.'
They were basic abilities possessed by members of the demon race, but......
Each was reasonably useful.
Acid Production could be useful if employed properly.
Strong acid could dissolve even a cultivator of the human race at the Qi Refining Realm if it struck them unprepared.
Protective talismans were not all-powerful.
They took time to activate.
Depending on the protective talisman, it might have a weakness.
Their effectiveness also differed by Grade.
Poison Resistance was similar.
Many members of the demon race used poison as a weapon.
Poison Resistance was essential.
The problem, however, was the level of those abilities, which this world called a realm.
He could raise them slowly over time.
'My items are disappointing.'
[Mud Slime Bloodsucking Mosquito Proboscis. Quantity: 14]
He had acquired no items in the latest waterway.
Apart from nutrients and spiritual energy, the Sewer Rats had been worthless.
The beetles had been much the same.
'I wish I could have eaten the Poison Snails.'
He might have gained poison more than 100 times as agonizing as capsaicin.
'Well, I have to be able to eat them before I can gain or extract their poison.'
The extreme agony made it impossible for him to touch them.
'I've gained everything I can here, so shall I move on?'
If his prediction was correct, stronger creatures would appear in the next stretch of the waterway.
There would be something to gain there.
***
'Just as I expected.'
He followed the narrow, gently flowing waterway upstream.
A broader space appeared.
The spiritual energy also grew somewhat denser.
More animals lived there......
And larger, stronger creatures appeared.
'It's tiered like a beginner hunting ground.'
The hunting grounds were divided by level.
That was a feature of old MMORPGs.
Various games still used it today, but......
'This isn't how a chink-made game works.'
These days, such a system was rarely used for early progression.
People no longer enjoyed investing time to slowly raise a character.
Explosive early leveling was the bare minimum.
In this game, characters disappeared when they died.
If a character someone had carefully raised early on vanished in a single blow......
'They'd be furious.'
That was why it was called a luck-based shitshow.
Rather than slowly raising one's realm by hunting mobs in a hunting ground......
It was far more profitable to kill players and advance quickly.
That tendency was even stronger among the demon race, who struggled to advance through training and cultivation methods.
'The demon race is the true battle royale.'
This game was a place ruled by the law of the strong, where everyone killed or was killed.
The existence of a place like this meant......
'This is a tutorial that was never implemented in the game.'
A tutorial was an area that helped players adapt to a game.
As people came to seek rapid leveling and immediate fun, tutorials......
Became little more than decorations to veteran gamers.
Just as the game's fantasy genre had been converted into xianxia......
The tutorial remained only as a vestigial appendix.
It had been quietly stored away inside the game.
'If this really is a tutorial, then it's effectively a hidden secret realm, or hidden dungeon, for me.'
The demon race's rapid growth could sometimes be poisonous.
Only the unique cultivation power and abilities of a particular member of the demon race would grow excessively strong.
Rapid growth without balance created major weaknesses.
When they met an incompatible opponent, they could suffer an absurd defeat to someone at a lower realm.
Some people enjoyed that all the more because it made the game a luck-based shitshow, but......
'That method won't let me become a Great All-Encompassing Immortal.'
A cultivator of the demon race was similar to someone who used magical artifacts to cast spells without training.
Without a proper foundation, they were heavily affected by the matchup of their magical artifacts.
They had no fundamentals.
'Right. Something like this makes the game worth playing. Ha ha.'
Unlike the demon race, the human race was well balanced.
Their early growth was slow, but their foundations were solid.
This kind of tutorial was equivalent to a cultivator of the human race building a foundation through immortal cultivation and cultivation methods.
'I'll become a Great All-Encompassing Immortal as a cultivator of the demon race and take revenge on this chink-made game.'
Once he escaped the game, he planned to visit the game company and make a scene.
'If nothing else works, I'll shit in front of their office. Heh heh.'
***
He examined the new section of the waterway.
Powerful creatures such as centipedes, venomous snakes, poisonous toads, and poisonous spiders could be seen here and there.
They were species players could choose when starting as a member of the demon race.
After hunting those creatures to accumulate spiritual power and increase their strength, they became Demon Beasts.
Upon becoming a Demon Beast, they gained spiritual intelligence.
They gained humanlike intelligence, accumulated cultivation power, and could become even stronger Demons.
For the demon race, the Demon Beast stage was comparable to entry into the Qi Refining Realm for the human race.
It was equivalent to a human possessing a spiritual root.
The Demon stage corresponded to the Qi Refining Realm.
That was the stage where one embarked upon the path of immortal cultivation.
The paths of immortal cultivation followed by the demon race and the human race differed, but...
Their destinations were the same.
Whether a bird flew through the sky on its wings.
Or a dragonfly darted through it on its wings.
Both were still flying.
All Streams Return to One.
The demon race merely had an easier beginning and a harder end.
One way or another, its members could still ascend to become Great All-Encompassing Immortals.
The problem was......
'Those creatures won't be easy opponents in my current state... What should I do?'
The benefit of becoming a Medium Slime was that he could eat, or use Devouring, on more.
The problem was that this was the only benefit.
'They'll probably eat me before I can eat them.......'
His larger body had only made it harder to hide.
Fortunately, slimes had tough hides and tasted terrible.
Unless a creature was desperately hungry, it would not try to eat him.
'I need to enter the mud beneath the waterway.'
Water concealed scents.
Translucent slimes were difficult to see underwater.
If he hid in the mud on the waterway floor, other creatures would not deliberately try to eat him.
That was how slimes survived.
He returned to the natural way of life of a slime.
***
'This place isn't so bad either.'
Perhaps because it was close to the surface, the mud was relatively rich in nutrients and spiritual energy.
If he diligently shoveled down mud with his enhanced Devouring, he could withstand his hunger.
'The occasional passing fish is a delicacy.'
Fish also lived here.
They supplemented the nutrients and spiritual energy the mud lacked.
He laid traps here too.
'Body Transformation is surprisingly useful.'
He could use Body Transformation to create tentacles.
Those tentacles could be used in many different forms.
First, they served as bait.
'No fish can resist a worm.'
Just as a sparrow could not pass a mill without stopping......
A fish could not pass by a worm without reacting.
When he shaped a tentacle like a worm and made it wriggle......
The fish mistook it for food and approached.
He used tentacles woven like a net on the approaching fish......
'Got it! Yes. That's more like it.'
He dragged the fish caught in the net of tentacles into the mud.
It entered the slime's stomach......
And became nutrients and spiritual energy.
'Humans really do need to use their brains.'
Even an ordinary human was more intelligent than a clever member of the demon race.
That was his greatest advantage.
'But... why couldn't I make use of it in the game?'
It was because he had thought of it as nothing more than a game.
He had not wanted to complicate a game meant to be enjoyed as simply as short-form videos.
Even without games, the world overflowed with headaches.
'Games have to be fun above all else.'
He did not play games that gave him a headache.
Momentary thrills were the best.
Worrying about survival in a game was foolish.
'This time, I'll do it properly. I can step up when I need to.'
Even people who disliked thinking sometimes had to use their brains.
Different circumstances demanded a different attitude.
***
Slimes were not the only creatures living in the mud beneath the waterway.
Because it was rich in nutrients and spiritual energy, there were other creatures that ate mud.
In a sense, they were competitors for food.
Creatures like earthworms.
'Was this what they called earthworm soup?'
He devoured those creatures as nourishing food.
Then other slimes filled the space they left behind.
There were Mud Slimes here too.
He fattened them up, inserted straws, and slurped out their bodily fluids.
'Work hard, slaves. Ha ha.'
This time, he became the bloodsucking mosquito.
Whenever they grew plump enough, he harvested a suitable amount of bodily fluid.
Thanks to that, life here became tolerable.
'I can't stay like this. I need to expand into the upper part of the waterway.'
More tempting prey lived on land above the water.
They ate well and overflowed with nutrients and spiritual energy.
He had to reach dry land.
Only then could he move on to the next stage and the next hunting ground.
He could not play in the beginner zone forever.
Eventually, he would reach his limit.
If he remained there, he would eventually be left behind.
Otherwise, he would remain in the beginner zone forever.
In the end, a cultivator in the early Qi Refining Realm would kill him to make a medicinal pill for advancing their realm.
'Isn't there a good way to do this?'
He extended a tentacle above the water and examined the area.
The land above the water was rich in spiritual energy and nutrients, making competition for them fierce.
'Now that's a true battle royale.'
Snakes and praying mantises tangled together.
Centipedes and spiders fought each other.
A toad swallowed a snake.
A scorpion waiting for that opportunity drove its stinger into the toad.
'If this were before....... Ah, my fists are itching.'
If it were a game, he would have plunged into the chaos and claimed a place for himself.
If he died, he would immediately......
He would call it a luck-based shitshow and a chink-made game before creating a new character.
'Ah... what a shame.'
It was a game, but......
Only for him, it was no longer a game.
At that moment, a slime boldly plunged into the maelstrom.
[Strong Slime. A powerful slime specialized in combat.]
[Abilities: Devouring. Acid Production. Acid Resistance. Poison Resistance. Hard and Tough Skin. Regeneration.]
The sight filled him with unbearable resentment.
'Ah, f*ck! Luck-based shitshow. Why does that one get [Strong] while I'm only [Medium]?'
The modifier [Strong] was proudly attached to its name.
If a Medium Slime was common, that creature was at least rare.
Its prefix was different.
'How does it make any sense for a slime not to have Regeneration......?'
For slimes, Regeneration was as fundamental as Devouring.
The bastards who even sold those basic features through gacha......
Were the company behind this chink-made luck-based shitshow.
'I absolutely have to steal that Regeneration ability.......'
To do that, he had to use Devouring on the Strong Slime.
That would give him a high chance of unlocking Regeneration.
'Can I pull this off......?'
A Bloodsucking Mosquito Proboscis was attached to the end of the tentacle he had extended above the water.
The tentacle crept almost within reach of the [Strong] Slime.
'Now!'