Chapter 74: Everyone's amazing.

“You can eat the trash, but let’s stop absorbing mana. If you keep draining mana, Earth might block the mana supply again.”

When we stopped absorbing mana, Mother’s growth slowed down a little.

But it’s still fast.

Growing quickly is a good thing. Yeah. It’s a good thing.

“Here’s the list of <Slimes> we need to make today. Can you make them instead? Take your time. I’ll wait here.”

Mother stopped growing and immediately started producing <Slimes>.

I started making <Slimes> beside her.

There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of stock.

Maybe it’s because of her size. She’s fast.

My [Control+] skill has a macro function.

I can also use [Link] to tie the entire process together.

But it’s not like I don’t need any processing power at all, so it takes a bit of time.

When I’d produced about 10%.

Maybe she finished optimizing-Mother’s production speed suddenly shot up.

She finished today’s <Slimes> before I did.

If Mother grows even more, she’ll get even faster, right?

If I work with Mother, we might even be able to meet the global <Slime> demand.

Before long, Mother might be able to handle it all by herself.

“Mother, you’re amazing.”

She really is amazing.

So amazing that…

“I’ll get going now. Please take care of the trash.”

For some reason, Mother stretched out a tentacle. I gently pushed it away and turned around.

Now that the restriction was lifted, Mother’s growth sped up.

I thought it would take a few more months to deal with all the trash, but if things go well, she might finish by tomorrow.

I guess it’s about time to seriously plan <Slime Land>.

I’ll have to run both the amusement park and the waste processing facility at the same time.

It’s not a great sight to have garbage trucks driving around in an amusement park.

I just need to make a road where people can’t see and put a hole at the end.

If you drop the trash into that hole, Mother’s outstretched tentacle underneath will catch and eat it. Done.

Actually running the waste processing facility isn’t that hard.

The problem is traffic.

The roads nearby are wide.

After the dungeon break, we just turned the paths the monsters made into roads.

But I’m not sure if that’ll be enough to prevent massive traffic jams from all the people coming to Slime Land.

I took out my smartphone and checked the nearby roads.

I’m not sure.

I guess I need to study up.

***

I kept increasing the number of <Vending Machine Slimes> and <Mascot Slimes> one by one.

Good, good. Broke into triple digits.

Thanks to improving the blueprints with [Analyze+], it’s gotten easier to control them with the [Control+] skill.

Not only that, but I’m learning how to control them better at a faster rate.

I tried to make a new <Vending Machine Slime>.

[Insufficient mass.]

Ah, it’s been ages since I saw this alarm.

I’m running low on mass stored with [Store+].

I usually keep myself well fed. Last time, I ate a ton and compressed it to store up mass.

Why did I eat so much again?

Well, I must’ve had a reason.

I picked up a <Glutton Slime> that I’d stuffed full of monster materials.

I tried to put it in my mouth, but my hand wouldn’t move.

I lost my focus.

The <Slimes> started going wild.

A <Mascot Slime> kept poking a <Vending Machine Slime>.

Another <Mascot Slime> smashed its head into a <Vending Machine Slime>.

The <Vending Machine Slime> twisted up a <Mascot Slime> and turned it into candy.

The dice spat out by the <Vending Machine Slime> bounced off my head and flew away.

<0> <0>

I was about to reabsorb the <Mascot Slime> and <Vending Machine Slime> I’d made, but lowered my hand.

Might as well study.

I still can’t think of a solution to the traffic problem.

Inside the land designated as the alchemy testing ground, I can do whatever I want.

I can lay down tons of roads and make as many entrances as I like.

Even parking, one of the main causes of traffic jams, can be solved easily.

Just like storing small items, I can swallow entire cars and take them out when people ask for them.

No need to circle a packed parking lot looking for a spot.

No need to twist your body like a cat to squeeze out because your door is pressed up against the next car.

No need to tremble between ridiculously expensive cars.

You can just drive in, park, and get out-so at least inside Slime Land, the traffic problem is pretty much solved.

The problem is outside Slime Land. That’s beyond my reach.

I’ve been studying road law.

But it’s not like I can just build a road wherever I want.

And I don’t really know where to put a road to solve the traffic problem.

Ding.

Today’s report arrived.

Is it that late already?

“Haha….”

Building an underground transportation network using <Slimes>.

Hans submitted a report based on number one’s idea.

Where to open tunnels so that traffic to and from Slime Land will flow smoothly.

And where to build so that getting permits will be easy.

They organized all that info and asked about feasibility.

Is it a coincidence?

It must be a coincidence.

Traffic jams and amusement parks always go hand in hand.

That’s why the quick-witted ones…

Underground road construction?

Of course I can do it.

I can handle every part of building an underground road with <Slimes>.

First, tunneling. I can easily do it with [Decompose+] and [Absorb].

If there are safety issues with the road, I can fix them with <Slimes>, or reinforce it with rebar and concrete and then cover it with <Slimes>.

For earthquakes, I just need to design it to be earthquake-resistant from the start. With scientific technology and <Slimes>, people inside the tunnel wouldn’t even notice an earthquake.

Any pollutants will be instantly absorbed by <Slimes>.

Even ventilation is simple if I leave it to <Slimes>.

Even if there’s a fire, <Slimes> will absorb the heat and put it out instantly.

If there’s flooding, <Slimes> will just gulp it all down.

For lighting, <Slimes> can emit light, or I can just install lamps.

As for electricity, I just need to secure it with [Convert].

If I have enough time and budget, I could tunnel a slime passage throughout the entire underground of Seoul.

With Mother growing day by day, the time needed for a slime underground transportation network will be shorter than anyone expects.

Of course, the opposition would be intense, so it’s not realistically possible.

I tossed aside the book I was reading.

The answer came out much faster than if I had studied and agonized over it myself.

Even if I start studying now, I’ll never be better than Hans.

I opened another book.

You have to know the basics to be able to apply them.

But if you become too much of an expert, your thinking can become rigid.

Slime Land is not a place bound by common sense.

Normally, you’d use stairs or elevators to go up and down floors, but in Slime Land, you can make leaps of faith like an assassin in a game. On the way up, you might jump high by stepping on slime platforms. You could even travel by riding a slime capsule.

Conversely, sometimes the store moves instead of the person.

Even the walls can hardly be called walls.

Slime Land is a place where, like speedrunning gamers, you can move around in all sorts of wild ways.

I wonder if traditional architects can really adapt to such an unconventional space.

I think it’ll be tough. That’s why I hired number one and number two to guide them.

Still, wouldn’t it be better if I just did it myself?

—

A report came in.

Maybe because I said we’d build an amusement park, this time it was another idea for an amusement park using slimes.

Even the way the zones were divided was no ordinary feat.

They designed the flow so customers would be guided along different routes based on their type, letting them explore Slime Land efficiently.

For those who seek fun rather than efficiency, they added secret doors here and there to create a sense of adventure.

But the most shocking thing was the means of transportation suggested by number one.

How does someone even come up with the idea of picking people up and moving them around like claw machines?

Well, grabbing and moving characters is a feature in games.

But the idea of doing that in real life is astonishing.

If you think of it as a type of amusement ride, maybe it’s not a bad method.

It could even be used for emergency bathroom requests.

It could help with missing child problems too.

If the child isn’t afraid of heights, you could attach wings to them.

“We are looking for this child’s group.”

Then let them hover in the air until they meet their winged mom or dad-maybe that’s a solution?

Maybe I’m the one trapped by common sense.

Of course, there are a lot of shortcomings in number one’s layout.

You can tell safety wasn’t really considered.

Compared to what I imagine for Slime Land, the scale is quite small.

But that’s because I limited the information I gave.

If I revealed all the information, what kind of Slime Land would they imagine?

Could I make a better Slime Land than that?

I put the book away.

***

[Sole Alchemy unveils a shield that can replenish mana using monster waste.]

When hunters go into dungeons, they almost never bring out the whole monster. They just dismantle the valuable parts for sale. Of course, a lot gets thrown out. They’ve now released a shield that uses those discarded parts as an energy source to protect a certain area.

Naturally, it must be a product using Glutton Slime.

I could make one too, if I wanted.

I’ve eaten monster materials used for shields before.

But I don’t make them.

The barrier to entry for the alchemy product market for hunters is extremely high.

Hunters do use a lot of my Slimes.

So if I made a hunter-exclusive Slime, wouldn’t it sell well?

But when I look at the current sales of Explosive Web Slime, I really feel how conservative hunters are.

Just because they buy a lot of my Slimes, does that mean they’ll buy a lot of hunter-only Slimes too?

“You want me to trust my life to a gun made by a company that makes insoles and cosmetics?”

That’s what it feels like to a hunter.

For ordinary people, it’s like a car.

You’d be really uneasy if a company that made laxatives started making cars.

And as soon as it’s for hunters, the competition becomes fierce.

There aren’t many alchemists making alchemy products for ordinary people.

Compared to Awakened, ordinary people are weaker, so they’re more likely to suffer side effects. If you try to minimize side effects, the medicinal effect and stats drop too.

There’s also the mana issue. If you design it to absorb the user’s mana, ordinary people can’t handle it. If you make it run on mana stones, each one costs money.

And you have to compete with scientific technology.

If you finally Awaken and become an alchemist, why would you want to compete with ordinary people? A proud alchemist wouldn’t choose that path.

So the fact that there are few alchemists making products for ordinary people-

Means most alchemists are making products for hunters.

There’s a lot of research and a lot of good products.

This is the typical growth route for an alchemist.

You get a recipe for an alchemy product and work hard to make it. Once you can produce it stably, you get a harder recipe and work hard to make that. When your reputation is big enough, you can finally make what you want.

Right now, I’m a grade B alchemist.

Unlike the Explosive Web Slime I made as a grade D alchemist, the hunter-only alchemy products I make now might actually work.

But should I bother?

There are so many people better than me.

Like Ash.

***

I watched a mukbang.

Not my own video, someone else’s.

Mukbangs are always popular.

When I started mukbangs, challenge mukbangs were already dying out.

Thanks to my Poison Jelsl, challenge mukbangs made a comeback.

And with Pure Jelsl, Poison Jelsl, and Laxative…Gargle Slime making health management easier, people seem to have loosened their belts a bit. In the past, a lot of people would criticize mukbangs for ruining your health for money. Now, that’s much less common.

More people can eat comfortably and a lot, so the overall view count for mukbangs has gone up.

There are even quite a few people who, following my lead, put on a Raincoat Slime and dump food into their mouths.

Most of them are dismissed as knockoffs and fade away.

But every once in a while, someone shines for a moment.

Even aside from this kind of mukbang, there are plenty of mukbangers out there with more subscribers and views than me.

That means there are plenty of mukbangs to watch besides the ones I upload.

***

These days, instead of selling what I made, I sold Slimes made by Mother.

The Submarine Patch notes didn’t mention any major changes.

I don’t think anyone has noticed.

If Mother, Hans, and number one work together, Slime Land construction will go very smoothly.

The hunter market was never a place I could even set foot in. There are plenty of people better than me.

Even if I don’t film mukbangs, there are tons of videos to watch.

I thought there would be no substitute for Slimes that have conquered the ordinary market.

And in fact, there isn’t.

But the producer can be replaced.

Mother can stably produce Slimes, unlike me who overthinks everything.

In this world, there are…

So many people who can produce much better results than someone like me.

Far better than anything I could ever do.

Drip.

I heard a sound like a pillar breaking.

Suddenly, I started getting confused about how to make a <Slime>.

I tried making a simple <Tear Slime> as a test.

But the slime in my palm couldn’t hold its shape and just slipped away.

“Hahaha. What is this? Can I not even make a simple <Slime> anymore?”