CHEATER.

  Falc ignored the consistent chatter of his instincts, watching the five sentients descend beyond his properly schemed design and into the realm of his foolish forced ascent.

  Luckily, even back then when his instincts had forced him to go to the surface, he had enough sense to make the journey as difficult as possible. From constant meandering to... Well, just constant meandering and futile busywork. His young self knew naught of the finer details of scheming even if he was indeed born for the craft.

  But it was fine, it would be a waste to worry about lack of scheming. Though it was a shame to see that the sentients passed through with speed far greater than before, or maybe it was the opposite of shame- Pride- To have confirmation that his schemes weren't a total waste of time.

  It wasn't really important, while it was disappointing his first two collapse attempts were surpassed due to unexpected speeds. But it was going fine now, just now he had taken out some of that mana sentients mana again.

  It wasn't exactly going that well, but there was some good news. He had already learnt a few counters to a few of the sentients, specifically the mana user and B. Well, actually B's downfall was still in the initial phases of research, but the mana user's was already in motion.

  

  CHEATER.

  The mana using sentient was a pain, that Falc could guarantee. They both made barriers to stop his righteous slimes from killing them and their friends and warned their companions of wind-earth mana whenever it approached!

  -At least he assumed they communicated the neigh arrival of the chimeric mana type, they reliably made pretty similar air ripples whenever he tried to push some wind-earth mana after them.

  After the first one or two encroachments of wind-earth mana the mana using sentient even made some weird cocoon of mana around them and their team, and it seemed that they just knew when he interfered with it. It even repaired itself automatically occasionally while he was testing it with wind-earth mana out of caution, which he originally thought would be a problem.

  Which it was, honestly. Though not in the way he thought it would be, because the layer of mana was surprisingly easy to break through. Just a pittance of wind-earth mana and he could force a good bit of mana through without resistance, but then the sentients would know to counter and snuff out the wind-earth mana with their own mana.

  And he couldn't exactly push an endless amount of mana onto them right now, he was preparing the next generation of experimental slimes. And who knew if they had some kind of counter to that? Well, he'd test that later on when he had no clue what else to do. On that note; Falc collapsed another part of his realm.

  Then he also took about 20-ish mp and made 15-ish wind-earth mp, brought it over to the sentients before raising it up two layers in four dimensional plane before dragging it across the mana that made up the sentient cocoon. Now with sentients none the wiser, he decided to target the one that could undo the damage he caused.

  Though the dust mana only had a few seconds before it was escaped and then enclosed before Falc could give chase, luckily he could drag the mana up a few layers and place it back on the panicked and frantic healer with minor flesh wounds.

  Showing the counter he had devised for the puny mana sentient's petty tricks, just moving his mana up a layer or two in the dimension that differentiated the slime weaves of a slime from each other. For some reason or another, the sentient only moved mana on the regular layer where mana usually was. They could only sense it on that layer too, though they did notice it still when the dust mana was just one layer above their mana as it passed by.

  This was presumably because the dust mana still affected the mana because of its nature, though it was easily countered by just moving it another layer up.

  Though sentient B was as annoying as ever.

  

  CHEATER.

  Well said, instincts.

  Falc once again collapsed the tunnel, this time to divert the mana sentient while he took out some dust mana to once again besiege the healer. But he found the healer themselves interfering with his design for their insignificant lives, a travesty he could not accept.

  So he collapsed the stone above them once more!

  Then another three times just for good measure.

  Sadly, their advance was merely dampened and had not halted. But such was to be expected when he looked back to previous usages of the collapsing method, still, Falc kept at least a moderate amount of his wits as he kept thinking about the few chinks he could see in their metaphorical armour.

  He could bypass the mana-using sentient, and it seemed all of the sentients that could use mana to snuff out his wind-earth mana had finite amounts. So he could probably use pure quantity to squash them, but he was saving that mana for the next prototype...

  Moving his thoughts to another chink, he collapsed another section with practiced efficiency. Sentient B, the most annoying sentient when it came to . Able to somehow divert the movements of anything that neared them without any reason, and also having shown the same ability but at a far more intense level when they used their fingers to divert a large piece of stone out of the way.

  But that moment, when Falc watched B almost get hit by a gigantic piece of rubble and then saw it swiftly change its direction to blow past him, had given him a certain insight. While B had seemed completely impenetrable when they had first entered his recesses, diverting every single shot of acid that had come. But now that varying sizes of rubble had come to take down the little mysterious sentient, the mechanics of their ability had been at least partially divulged.

  The larger the object, the larger the size of the rubble, the less their momentum drifted away from their original direction. Whether it was actually the size or something that changed because of the size, he wouldn't be sure, he'd need to take the time to specifically look through the specific differences between how sentient B affected the different sizes.

  The most important thing was that Falc knew that it would be less effective when dealing with larger things, which had been already taken into account while creating the newest slime. With this in mind, after another collapse of the stairway, he first found one good section of winding hallway that was basically horizontal.

  Because the sentients would probably just dig through it since the tunnels were basically directly next to each other as they made something akin to a coiled snake, he first stripped away the walls and everything else and then increased the width of the entire thing by a few more meters.

  Then he increased the height of the newly constructed super large room- It being so large that he actively needed to keep up so that the roof didn't fall apart on its own- As to let the planned giant section of stone speed up for maximum collapsing power. Creating a room 166 meters long and wide and a total of 7 meters tall, for a resounding total of 192892 cubic meters.

  

  CHEATER.

  While yes, this would probably decrease the time it would take for the sentients to pass through. That was only considering the giant room without taking into account of 166 meter wide, 166 meter long, 20 meter high cube that Falc was preparing.

  Though it was a bit annoying that his influence was being split between preparing a good ol' trap, looking for more sentient-slaying opportunities, causing more classic collapses, directing a bit of dust mana occasionally and also refining the design of the next experimental slime or two. it was fine, honestly, he still had a good bit more time.

  But more importantly, it was time for the next experimental slime to finally enter its first and probably last encounter with anything sentient related. The five sentients were nearing, and he had a plan to facilitate a more favourable face-off between the two sides, for his own faction of course.

  What he had created was a simple little creature, five elder slimes weaves of D-4 capabilities with three D-4 wind-earth weaves with double width strings included along with another five full-weave D-5 weaves which had the strings that made it up hold more that four times the width.

  The intent of increasing the width of all the skill weave's string width was clear to see, to increase the amount of acid produced as to decrease sentient B's ability to interfere with it.

  Though he was also interested in how the thicker strings for the wind-earth mana would influence how it interacted with the rest of the weave, maybe it'd be less stable? Originally when he had tried to make a thicker weave without increasing the width of the normal weave, the skill weave had actually had something quite similar to the wind-earth freeing itself happen. Though it most certainly was not the exact same, it was not inane to think there was at least some connection or overlap.

  Then to properly facilitate its introduction, he designed a large scale collapse a bit before the newly created slime. And while waiting for the five sentients to arrived, he started to ramp up his wind-earth mana encroachment initiative, increasing his mana per minute investment rate from 30-40~ mp to 150-200~ mp.

  

  CHEATER.

  While he was doing all that, he was also in the process of creating even more effective wind-earth restrainment methods to allow for maybe even a D-10 wind-earth weave or beyond. Though any hopes for a full-weave wind-earth was still a good bit away, likewise was true for a normal wind-earth elder slime weave.

  But beyond that, the idea was simple, the reason he could only use three weaves to keep a wind-earth weave in check was because the other weaves could not get through the weaves above or below them. So he just needed to give them a method to start interfering with it, whatever that method may be.

  He had already formulated a design to get the entirety of the weaves one layer above and below to fully take part in imprisoning a singular weave, strings of mana not overlapping as they passed through the wind-earth weave and keeping it from diverging from pre-planned designs. But that was not enough to keep a wind-earth skill weave two orders beyond the warden weaves in line, he needed more.

  Shown by a regular D-1 slime with three weaves perfectly used to constrain a D-3 wind-earth weave dying in due time, though not instantly.

  Whether that be by increasing the size of the regular weaves, shrinking the size of the weave or increasing the amount of weaves that acted as wardens.

  The first idea he came up with was to just create holes in the upper and lower weaves in order to let any weaves beyond them pass a restraining string through said holes, but that didn't help much. Though it did do something, the amount of restraints the method already used could allow for had basically reached it limits.

  So, then, he needed to increase the amount of strings could be used to restrain its wind-earth mana. But just increasing the size of the skill weave wouldn't work, that would actually walk in direct conflict with his goal as the influence of the weave the Wind-earth weave was implanted within would then decrease.

  It had taken a lot of time to finally get any kind of inspiration, leading to a dull in possible innovation as he diverted more attention into designing his massive counter to sentient B.

  

  CHEATER.

  Speaking of sentient B, they finally clawed their way out of the rubble of a larger than usual collapse along with their companions. And were instantly faced by an assault of both acidic dust and normal acid, by a slime directly under the control of its creator.

  And in the meanwhile, they were also besieged by a good... 30 mp of wind-earth mana as well, just to try and get a proper wound on that damn healer.

  Of course, the biggest of them rushed forwards to kill the slime without even a moment of hesitation while both the mana user and healer snuffed out the wind-earth mana simultaneously. But that led to the acidic dust and regular acid of the slime to not be stopped by any thing even akin to a barrier.

  Though mostly evaded by the large sentient, a bit of the acidic dust had come onto the outer shell and arms of the sentient. Easily eating into it and then into the sentients own body, which sadly was far less vulnerable then other sentient's physiques.

  But all of the evaded acidic dust and acid hadn't disappeared willy nilly, they had merely gone beyond their previous goal of killing the large sentient and had shifted to attacking the sentient stack of the mana-using sentient, the weird useless sentient that was a waste of time targeting and sentient B.

  Predictably the acid had easily been diverted merely by nearing sentient B, but the dust itself only had a part of its particles change directions- Even if said particles did so to a seemingly violent degree.

  As Falc watched a bit of acidic dust finally touch the previously thought to be untouchable sentient B, he felt a bit of stress instantly fly away to bother some other unfortunate juvenile core. It was most certainly a shame that the experimental slime had died an unworthy death, but watching sentient B finally get a bit of damage on their flesh was also definitely a wonderful thing.

  At least it had proven that they weren't invincible, if he could just shoot out enough acidic dust he could probably tear down the sentient's puny hegemony. But he would need to counter those barriers if he wanted to do that, probably by once again preoccupying the mana-using sentient with wind-earth mana.

  He had also done a bit of damage to the large sentient of slime-felling, so overall the now dead slime had done a good bit more than the rest of its kind. Though the dungeon's core wouldn't say the thing had come to equal the renowned slime apostle 1 or prototype, it had done its job admirably.

  Though Falc found that the same strategy had lost its previous effectiveness the second time he used it, the sentients had once again adapted to his methods.

  It was fine, his latest magnum opus of earth aspect usage was soon to be revealed.

  

  CHEATER.

  It was sure to be effective, how would it not be?

  Still, it was reasonable to cause a few more collapses in order to buy more time. Even if it sadly prolonged the amount of time the sentients had left to live before they met their inevitable fate when faced with 551120 cubic meters of stone.

  Though that also didn't mean he could slack off in designing the next generation of experimental slimes, if he could keep up this innovation streak for even a bit longer it would absolutely support his future endeavors; whatever they may be.

  He needed to think, ponder even. There was no new discoveries to be made with the sentients, at least not in the short term. So there was no need to keep his eyes directly on them for now, he just had to occasionally let a collapse hinder them- As he did just now.

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  He also had his massive trap set-up to crush five sentients under an astronomical amount of stone, to the point that he wouldn't be surprised if it actually affected the surface at least tangentially. So that didn't require any of attention anymore, the only thing that really required his direct attention, was his slime development initiatives.

  But he couldn't instantly start designing new schematics the moment he returned to the research project currently in motion as his 'Schematic mechanic' title would suggest, he still had not inspiration to guide his current schematic-design capabilities.

  As he pondered, and his mind wandered, he let two entire collapses interfere with his intruders before coming to a realization.

  Why do the warden weaves need to directly restrain the captive weave?

  He was able to interfere with sentients indirectly by using his slimes and such, why couldn't the other weaves indirectly exert their influence over the wind-earth weave? While it wasn't a perfect example or anything, it was at least enough to get the young ruler of the dungeon's more innovative mental processes to finally near their proper potential once more.

  He didn't come to an idea to bring the notion into reality instantly, it took some time to come up with what the weaves would use to affect the skill weave. Even he needed a conduit to interfere with the sentients indirectly, and that would be the slime in his case.

  It was just that the conduit for the weaves was not instantly clear to him, it would almost certainly need to be a string of some sort, but how would he design it to bring out the full potential of the weaves he decided to use?

  But he did realize eventually what the conduit should be, a simple solution even if it might seem too simple to any uninitiated eye; a large string that went through the centre of the skill weave.

  But that alone would not be enough, Falc needed to change the design of the elder slime weaves he used to restrain the skill weave as well, even if only to a moderate degree.

  He cut out the part of the weave that the large string would have to go through, the hole's size about half that of the weave that would be imprisoned. With the size of the string itself also being dependent on the size of the skill weave he was planning on interfering with.

  Though the specifics of said ratio were still in the process of being ascertained and prone to change, currently he had decided for it to have at least five times the radius of a regular string when in a standard size weave.

  

  CHEATER.

  While his instincts did certainly grate at his nerves recently, with its consistent and useless messages. He was just in to good a mood to be bothered, progress sustaining his more jovial than expected mood considering that there was a quintet of delvers attempting to reach his deepest recesses.

  But when taking into account that they were quite close to reaching their graves, it wasn't all that surprising either.

  But ignoring that, he continued to design his next ingenious innovation. With the large string ready to be used as a conduit for the influence of other weaves, all Falc had to do was how to have it act as a conduit. It was obvious that he had to attach a few strings to it in order to it and then get another few strings to have it keep the wind-earth mana in line, but how?

  It wasn't obvious to him, there was no relevant information on his outside of using that transcended method of chaining down the wind-earth weave. Falc Navator hadn't really put in much time in experimenting with things that worked between the weaves of slimes, he actually only really began properly looking into it a small while ago with .

  As such there obviously wasn't really a lot of data about it, but he couldn't really use the fact that those sentients would die anyways as an excuse to waste mana in such possibly dire times.

  ...He turned his eyes to the sentients nearing his precious little trap of massive proportions, it would only take a bit of time before he could watch the large chunk of stone level up- If stones could level up, maybe they could, who could possibly know? Maybe sentients did, but he certainly didn't. Actually, maybe he would need to create the stone himself for him to get a notification about it leveling up- If it did, of course.

  But that wasn't really important in the short term, what was most important was that he collapsed the final stretch and sent a little wind-earth mana their way.

  Then he watched them feast their eyes on the completely dark abyss, barely illuminated by their own light source. They seemed to hesitate for a moment before they continued on their journey without changing directions, the sentients were certainly lucky that he hadn't had the time to do a bit of tomfoolery and change to exit.

  But that didn't mean he couldn't do that later, actually with that thought he had already started preparing to make the real exit of the trapped room the right side of the room instead of on the direct opposite end of the entrance.

  Beyond that, there wasn't much to do in all honesty. He just had to wait, with his mind ready to cut off all connection to his defacto experimental subject for leveling up inanimate objects. It would take a bit of time for the sentients to reach the most optimum location to spring his make-shift scheme and counter to sentient B, said location being the centre of a room that could be considered larger than the slime plains in certain aspects.

  Luckily, whatever the sentients used to determine which way they should go didn't warn them of their destiny. When they finally neared the perfect spot, he started to release the highly metaphorical- And actually inanimate- Beast.

  

  CHEATER.

  Watching the enormous amount of rock fall directly atop of the five sentients, Falc couldn't help but laugh mentally, not even bothering to properly watch his victims die.

  Waiting for a sudden influx of essence, he wondered about how to have that conduit of a string do its job properly.

  But no essence came knocking.

  He looked back at the sentients that should have died, and found they had somehow created a hole in the floor of the trapped room and the giant stone block deep enough to not instantly die via crushing.

  Though the rubble that broke off their designated executioner did cause some problems for them as they rapidly clawed their way through the giant 20 meter thick block of stone diagonally with both sentient B and that large sentient, at a speed he far surpassed former mining efforts.

  ...At least sentient B didn't divert it, right?

  That thought, even if made to make him feel at least a little better, plunged his mood into a deep sea of less than good emotions.

  Stifling any reckless thoughts, he reluctantly changed the exit of the trapped room and made sure that it wouldn't be viable to mine through the wall where the exit originally was.

  

  CHEATER.

  Could you just shut the hell up for once?

  

  CHEATER.

  If you're sooooo~ mad about them cheating, then help me out rather than just complaining about it! I don't CARE how, just do something useful or SHUT THE HELL UP.

  ...

  Falc took a very deep and literal breath to calm himself down, he couldn't reason with his instincts anyways. He couldn't waste a single second, not a single one. He needed another junction to finally bring them down, or at least one of them. Either the healer or sentient B would be his target, and personally he leaned towards the former.

  While the newest edition of his experimental wind-earth line hadn't been finalized, he had accumulated enough for a D-9 or D-10 wind-earth slime already. While it would be pretty wasteful to not have a slime with a D-11 wind-earth with D-9 warden weaves, if he could get even a single proper wound on even a singular one of those sentients he would've already gotten something.

  But he couldn't risk wasting so much mana, the amount is just... Not a reasonable amount. Luckily he already had a lot of time to think, and he had decided to once again collapse a good bit of stone atop them.

  

  CHEATER.

  ...

  Calm down, Falc needed to calm down. He couldn't afford to do anything stupid, he needed to think.

  Collapsing some rock on top of the sentients that had somehow found the new exit of the already sprung trap room, the core needed a way to get any kind of permanent or at least semi-permanent damage afflicted. Any way, anything at all.

  That's all he needed, he just needed to look at the signs, look at the previous successes and hope they hadn't adapted to far that his new strategy didn't work, really needed to hope.

  Increasing the scale of the collapse wouldn't work, or at least wouldn't be feasible. Acidic dust was a good counter to sentient B, or at least an adequate one, so no normal weaves. It was also possible that they had maybe recognized a pattern with a strong slime appearing directly after a collapse, so collapses to accompany a slime's appearance was off the table.

  If he just repeated any previous schemes, it was totally feasible that it would be a waste of both time and mana. But doing nothing would also cost him time! If he could just get some kind of wound on any single one of them, then that healer would finally start losing some mana, he couldn't directly sense their mana but nonetheless any little bit of progress was highly- So very highly- Valued.

  There was still a good bit of buffer left, he had about two thirds of his entire dungeon left. While it might not be personally schemed up, it was still made-up of relatively high quality stalling strategies.

  ...Speaking of stalling, he still needed to collapse some stone like the good ol' days. That was something that was consistent and he didn't have to worry about being adapted to, it was guaranteed to work.

  ...

  ...

  As all of the rubble fell from the roof of the sort of new room formed after the gigantic trap had sprung, they all seemed to divert to the sides ever so slightly. At a pace beyond what sentient B had been capable of without direct contact, even if not allowing them to directly bypass any troubles, the sentients breezed past with minimal troubles as the stack of three sentients and two autonomous sentients maneuvered the remaining relevant rocks.

  ...Think, he needed to think. Or calm down, that would be good too. He couldn't lose rationality, he needed to find out how sentient B had somehow adapted.

  But he couldn't know that, he only knew that it had adapted somehow, that it had gotten better at something somehow. He just needed to find a counter, the large cube method didn't work, and the size of rock determined how effective B was... Maybe he could personally take up the duty of designating the sizes of the rubble in place of the laws of reality?

  That could work, it could work, he just had to separate the stone as he wished when he collapsed it. It wouldn't even be hard, he just had to be a bit more precise and measured than with collapses of the previous era.

  He just had to keep his wits about him, they had brought him to where he was now unlike a certain non-individual he knew.

  He quickly predicted the path the sentients would travel based on previous data, while also determining a place far enough along their determined path that Falc could be confident to make his new theory a reality; even determining where- Based on his previous collapsing habits- The next collapse should happen in order to not alert the sentients.

  He didn't know how intelligent the sentients were, but even if they were merely autonomous thoughtless adapting core-hunters, he couldn't risk a single mistake.

  

  CHEATER.

  .......

  ...Keep calm, He needed to keep calm. If he just kept calm and let it all work out, it'd do something- Surely.

  Falc continued silently, keeping true to the scheme he had come up with. However likely it was to actually kill one of them didn't matter, just that it would probably hurt or at least cause more mana exertion than normal. From what he could predict the amount of mana he would have to use was not even that large an amount, not even in the triple digits; if there was even a slight wound, it would already be worth it.

  It was easy, he had even finished in a small time frame than expected. Underestimating himself hadn't done any harm, actually, it was most certainly the greatest thing he had done this entire ordeal. As he could see clearly, the five delvers had sped up to a pace not yet before seen. Maybe because the threat of the trap had spurred them- It didn't matter, it was good to know that he could easily.

  Having dropped the first collapse upon them, it did basically nothing as he suspected it would. Though it was to be noted that the healer threw something to sentient B after sentient B threw over the two sentients riding them onto the biggest of them while they were nearing his meticulously prepared sentient B-countering collapse, maybe a new form of adaption? There was a liquid in what sentient B got, though he had no clue why they put it inside themselves.

  He wouldn't understand and couldn't understand, all he could do was note it down for the future.

  Considering it came from the healer, it could be a something restorative in some way. Hmm...

  A bit before they reached the special little trick, Falc started to gather wind-earth mana a small ways away. Not to use, but to add to the next iteration collapse as to counter any possible adaptation.

  Of course, he needed to use compression to accumulate more mana than the allocated self would normally allow for.

  But still, that wasn't the most important thing, the most important matter was easily watching those sentients suffer any kind of actually noticeable consequence for their attempts at arrogation.

  He personally initiated the next collapse, personally breaking apart the already fragile connections between pre-cut rubble. And it was beautiful, seeing those rocks tumble on down and actually confirm his previous conjecture that size mattered when dealing with sentient B as they merely shifted to the sides ever so slightly.

  But his hopes and dreams were crushed by both B and the biggest sentient, the latter directly punching through any rock that dared near and the former doing some weird poses with their hands before briefly communicating; directly pulling the rubble to the sides in a manner closely resembling something under his authority being manipulated.

  ...

  ...

  

  CHEATER.

  ...Shut up, shut the hell up, don't make another damn noise you- YOU- SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU!

  ...

  ...

  

  CHEATER.

  SHUT THE HELL UP! You hear me?! You keep on restricting me, ON and ON and ON. THEN, you finally- Finally- Stop restricting me because you're mad, okay, I can accept it- But then you keep saying the same STUPID line! 'CHEATER', wow, I'm sooooooooooo surprised. I'm so, 'Wow', 'Whoa', right? RIGHT? Yea, I am, so Shut. The. Hell. Up.

  SHUT THE HELL UP, I don't want to hear that damn line even one more DAMN TIME. If you're so mad, then help me, yea. HELP ME or SHUT THE HELL UP. I don't care how, I don't care why, I don't care the reasons for why you keep saying that. Single. Damn. Line. OVER AND OVER. So let me make it clear, let me make sure even a stupid thing like you could POSSIBLY understand: HELP ME OR SHUT THE HELL UP, KILL THEM OR STOP WITH THAT DAMN LINE.

  ...Okay... Falc felt a bit better now, it was probably a good idea to dwell on that outburst sometime in the future; but not now. Many important things to do, far too many to count. Far too goddamn many.

  So- So, B had an ability that he didn't know about, that could be seen as making the experiment worth it. Or not, if it was only developed due to it adapting to the experiment mid-test. Though the large one didn't show any new powers, it did use previously shown abilities in a new scenario where he did not know the used ability could be applied in said scenario.

  But he didn't know the mechanics of B's new ability and the large one's old ability, even if B's was similar t-

  Huh? Falc felt something strange, a tug. A consistent tug at himself, not a yell, not a plead, nor a repeatable line- But instead a consistent tug that asked him to allow... To allow his instincts to use his self to act?

  The juvenile was more confused than scared as he felt the tug never waiver, but it also didn't intensify at any moment either. Just noticeable enough that he could feel it, but not enough to actively bother him while doing something else. He wasn't sure what to do, how to even allow his instincts to act, why this had never happened before.

  But he was really out of options, while he could develop more options he currently had none on hand. The sentients had adapted to the point that his collapses were mere trivialities, and he was worried that any random test might heighten their adaptions to a whole new level... But he had to remember those few times his instincts were actually reliable, like when he asked about how to make slime nuclei and it gave the vague hint 'Guide mana'.

  When it was actually trying to help it usually wasn't actively detrimental and at worst only inconsequential, and he was also just a slight- Teeny weeny tiny- Bit desperate.

  He looked at the tug, at least in a mental sense, and first tried to strengthen the tug actively. Work with it in order to allow it to gain enough strength to do something, but that didn't work. So he tried something else, he tried to just surrender a part of himself to the tug... That also didn't work. So he came up with another idea, he just... Affirmed the tug. Not in the simple way, he didn't say to the tug 'Do as you wish'. He had actually tried that already.

  No, he turned his internal gaze towards the tug and the instincts that drove it and... Gave it a mental thumbs up? Encouraged it? It wasn't just that, he then also pushed himself towards it as well, but the most important part was that affirmation, though he couldn't put his finger on how to explain it specifically.

  But it wasn't important, his instincts had instantly taken action the moment whatever conditions required to let it take action had been fulfilled.

  It reached out towards multiple places in his domain simultaneously, there was no moment of consideration or attempt to refine some forethought, it just took action.

  Mana was pulled away from his stock piles, both the one for the experimental slime and the one for besieging the sentients with wind-earth mana. Decompressing and compressing as needed, it rapidly shot out a spike of rock from the ground while forming a D-2x3 slime with a D-8 wind-earth with the bare-minimum of imprisoning methods along with a basic nuclei a small ways behind the sentients.

  The spike actually caused some minor damage to the unimportant sentient's leg- A surprising fact to be sure, it could easily healed by but his instincts had actually done something beneficial for cheap!

  But it wasn't the end, it had already started forming another collapse just a bit after the exit of the room- The kind whose rubble sizes were directed by a higher power- All the while multiple more D-4 or D-5 slimes were formed with highly compressed wind-earth weaves integrated.

  Then, with a good few dozen spikes constantly forming where they went and a minor collapse to distract them, the short term D-2x3 with a D-8 wind-earth included was forced back under Falc's direct authority for a pretty steep price- Not to the point of bankruptcy, but to the point that he really felt it couldn't be called efficient- And then launched towards the sentients at full force, reaching speeds not often seen.

  And of course, as seen from the fact it had been offered a non-elder slime nucleous by instincts, the slime was directly forced to shoot towards the stack of three sentients. Though the high density difference between the wind-earth weave and regular weave had- In mere seconds- Already caused the deterioration of that skill weave's accuracy.

  Causing it to not land on the highest on the stack, on the back of the mana using sentient just a bit before a barrier was formed to protect it, but instead on the middle sentients arm. Specifically near the base of the arm, it was a shame it hadn't been on an important sentient but it wasn't as if he had asked his instincts to specifically target the dangerous sentients.

  Taking in the intense conveyance of damage, the owner of the slime plains found himself in a somewhat better mood. Finding his instincts- Not having imparted a single mention of that line for a reasonable while now- A lot more agreeable.