What is it like to be wrapped up inside a "Greed Slime II"?
A fragrance as fresh as green plants curling around your nose.
The greasiness left behind by an all-nighter peeled away, thread by thread.
The tangle of your thoughts slowly smoothed flat.
Your whole body so clean and light it felt like being born again.
In short, comfort beyond imagining!
A pity that this ultimate indulgence could only last fifteen minutes. A genuine shame, that.
...
Just as Dark and Senior Pandora were sinking together into that blissful comfort, the "Greed Slime II" stirred, lifted them both upright with exquisite gentleness, and then dissolved in a wash of light, devolving back into the "Trash Slime."
Dark turned, bent down, and gathered the Trash Slime up against his chest before asking with a grin, "So how was it, Senior? Comfortable?"
Pandora wore the look of someone who hadn't had nearly enough. "It felt like every scrap of exhaustion just vanished. If it knew how to give a massage on top of that, nobody would ever be able to give it up."
"Glub-glub-glub—" The Trash Slime wobbled its body. It had clearly taken her words to heart.
Dark laughed and simply sat down where he was, still holding the Trash Slime, and tipped his head back to look at the starless sky, drawing in a light breath. "The air before dawn is always this fresh."
Pandora sat down beside him and hugged her knees. "Somehow that makes it sound like you sneak out at this hour all the time."
Dark leaned back. "Do I look like that kind of person?"
Pandora looked up at the sky too, unhurried. "You don't. But maybe you are."
"Heh heh." Dark changed the subject. "Senior, where are you planning to go over the long end-of-term holiday?"
"Why bring that up all of a sudden?" Pandora asked, puzzled.
"Just curious," Dark said.
Pandora sighed. "How should I put it. I've always stayed at school before. If Ms. Bella had business away, she'd usually bring me along."
"And this year?" Dark pressed.
"This year..." A thread of longing surfaced in Pandora's eyes. "This year I'm going to go out and travel a bit."
Something clicked for Dark, and his earlier guess gained a good deal more weight.
After a while he added, "If you happen to pass through the capital, don't forget to drop by my house."
Pandora turned to study his profile, and her voice softened. "If the chance comes up, of course I'll visit. Just don't shut the door in my face when I do."
"I'd never," Dark said.
Pandora looked back up at the sky, her voice taking on a faraway quality. "I really would like to see the Valkyrie with my own eyes. Did you know? A lot of the goddesses at our academy have your mother as their idol."
Dark rubbed his chin. "Makes sense."
Alvit was, after all, a genuinely first-rate idol.
And if he remembered right, Diana's idol was Alvit as well.
In any case, worshipping the Valkyrie beat worshipping any number of dubious people, didn't it?
But then Pandora came out with, "It would be wonderful if I got the chance to duel the Valkyrie."
Dark: "..."
Pandora brushed a strand of hair back. "Do you think I'm overestimating myself?"
Dark shook his head slightly. "Not at all. It's only that I've never once seen her duel anyone. If you wanted to cross swords with her, she'd say yes without hesitation. But a duel..."
Pandora looked a little let down. "Is that so? I wanted to measure exactly how far I still am from the true elite. Doesn't sound like I'll get the opening."
Dark thought it over. "It's not necessarily hopeless."
"Meaning?" Pandora said.
Dark weighed it for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Never mind."
...
Time slipped away.
Far off at the horizon, a thin band of eggshell white began to seep upward.
As the bell for five in the morning chimed quietly, curfew passed with it.
Only then did it dawn on Dark that the two of them had been talking for over an hour.
"Curfew's over."
"Mm. Let's head back, then." Pandora drew a deep breath and rose to her feet.
"Remember to sleep in."
"I will."
"Good night."
"It's morning."
"Good night!"
"All right. Good night."
Smiling, Dark watched her fly straight off the top of the Castle toward the Magic House tower.
Only when her silhouette had vanished behind the bulk of the Castle did he summon the "Flying Charm," turn, and fly toward the Noble House tower.
Back in the dormitory, he summoned Gatomon, the Trash Slime and Ditto, and then, heavy with exhaustion, burrowed into his blankets.
He slept straight through until past noon.
When he woke, the tiredness was still plainly sitting in his body. He sat on the edge of the bed thinking it over carefully, then gave up on the secret passage exploration for this week.
Once he was fully awake, he washed up, ate the takeout DemiDevimon had brought, and glanced over today's Great Sage Daily while he was at it.
Weekend papers always ran more gossip than weekday ones. There was no bombshell that demanded his attention, but plenty of entertaining pieces.
"Looks like the Holy Church intends to take the Demon King's escape from the seal to the grave."
Dark took a small sip of coffee and turned over whether he ought to send Alvit a letter.
In theory, even though the Holy Church had chosen to hide it from the world, they had to be moving their forces in the shadows to hunt for the vessel the Demon King had reincarnated into, and moving them hard.
The moment they mobilized on a large scale, there was no reason the Eldest Princess's people wouldn't notice.
After all, the Holy Church had no idea that the reincarnation process had gone wrong. They would treat this as an existential threat, without question.
Of course, all of the above was nothing more than theoretical deduction.
Perhaps a difference in position and outlook would push the people in the know within the Holy Church into moves that made no sense at all.
Or perhaps someone cleverer had arranged something cleverer still.
In short, there was even a chance the Holy Church had done nothing whatsoever.
And if the Holy Church had done nothing, then naturally nobody else would have anything to detect.
"How things unfold was never bound by reason in the first place. Fixating on logic only walks you into a loop."
"Either way, even if it turns out to be redundant, this letter still has to go out. The only thing worth being careful about is how I send it."
Dark considered for a while, then picked a cipher that honestly wasn't hard to crack and wrote down the fact that the Demon King had already reincarnated through a vessel.
As for anything else, he mentioned not a word of it.
But once he'd finished, a second thought struck him. He turned to a fresh page and wrote an ordinary letter instead, chatting about academy life, sharing small happinesses with his mother.
Then he mixed up a quick potion that revealed writing on contact with water, added a short passage at the end of the letter, and set down the fact that the Demon King had already reincarnated through a vessel.
"That'll do."
Dark tore off the filled pages, folded them into a heart, and made plans to head to Traveler Street that afternoon.
Traveler Street naturally had letter-posting services, but in an age when transport was hardly developed, mail took an enormous amount of time.
Depending on distance, the fees ran fairly steep, and even then there was no guarantee the letter would ever arrive.
After resting a while post-meal, Dark took out the "Fusion Factor" potion recipe he'd obtained the previous night and worked through it line by line against the formula.
"There are a few of the reagent interactions I don't fully follow, but the brewing technique really isn't difficult. It's the handful of core materials that are genuinely hard to come by. Especially this one... it's most likely an academy specialty. Outside the academy there'd be a price on it and no market at all."
With some regret, Dark stowed the recipe away carefully and fetched over the vial of potion named "Fusion Factor."
The potion was a deep, saturated black. If not for the violet fluorescence flickering inside it, anyone would have taken it for ink.
"Next month, then. Next month I'll extract a little more 'Pride' and use Dragon Grass to cultivate a 'Fruit of Pride.'"
"Whether it works or not is another matter. Since Senior Pandora has already tacitly accepted that I'm going to melt down the Christmas present she gave me, my last hesitation is gone too."
"'Fruit of Pride (Dragon)' + 'White Dragon Pearl' + 'Fusion Factor' + '[Dragon's Reverse Scale]' = ?"
"It would be perfect if it Forged that light-attribute dragon species cleanly... but the grade of the materials might not be high enough. It could just as easily produce some lesser Magic Guide Spirit, or the Forging could fail outright."
Dark sat with his head tilted, turning it over for a long while, then put the potion back and went out to Traveler Street to post his letter.
...
Seven-thirty the following evening.
Dark was hard at work studying material related to the "[Zoo]" when the Sorting Card in his card pack began to vibrate.
At first he assumed it concerned tomorrow's class schedule. When he opened it, he found an invitation from Professor Steven Harvey.
"The 'Soul-Sucker Spell' refinement is done?"
A thought sparked. Dark threw on his coat at once and strode off toward the faculty dormitories.
Standing before Professor Steven Harvey's door once again, Dark felt thoroughly at home there by now.
Knock, knock, knock.
He rapped on the door, and Professor Steven Harvey opened it almost right away.
"Good evening, Professor."
"Good evening, Demon."
Professor Harvey stepped aside to let him through.
"Professor, you finished refining it this fast?" Dark asked as he came in.
"Fast?" Professor Harvey shut the door, smiling. "It's been nearly half a month already. Come in and have a cup of tea first."
Dark walked into the room and found a pot of black tea and a selection of delicate pastries already laid out on the tea table.
He hadn't expected Professor Harvey to have a taste for this sort of leisure. He had no choice but to push down his impatience and keep the man company for the better part of an hour, drinking tea, eating pastries, and talking.
It was only once the conversation had run its pleasant course that Professor Harvey brought up the "Soul-Sucker Spell" again.
He had indeed refined it. Broadly speaking, he had taken the entry-level "Soul-Sucker Spell" Dark had drawn from the "Holy Grail" as his foundation and extrapolated forward from there.
By now he had not only completed the extrapolation of the basic-tier "Soul-Sucker Spell," he had finished the overwhelming majority of the intermediate and advanced tiers as well.
The breadth of Professor Steven Harvey's learning was beyond question.
Just as he'd said, the "Soul-Sucker Spell" was a minor art as far as he was concerned.
But even a minor art was not something he used carelessly, and he was extremely cautious in passing it on.
"The refined basic-tier 'Soul-Sucker Spell' is right here. You may copy it out. As for what comes after, you'll need to master the basic tier to the point of true proficiency before I can teach you further."
Professor Harvey produced three sheets of manuscript paper covered edge to edge in cramped handwriting, fastened at the top left corner with a single staple.
Dark read through it from beginning to end, and once he was satisfied there were no errors, he summoned the "Magic Guide Scribe" and ordered it to record this refined basic-tier "Soul-Sucker Spell."
"That Magic Guide Spirit of yours is certainly convenient." Professor Harvey took a sudden interest, examining the "Magic Guide Scribe" with great care.
Dark, however, withdrew it back into its Magic Guide Card the instant the recording was finished.
Professor Harvey let his disappointment show openly, then said, "It's getting late. If there's anything you don't understand, come ask me here directly. Most evenings I'm in my rooms."
"Thank you, Professor!" Dark said quickly.
"Be very careful when you study it," Professor Harvey said.
...
It was already late.
By the time Dark got back to the dormitory it was past nine-thirty.
After thinking it through, he didn't start experimenting. Instead he summoned the "Magic Guide Scribe" and set about memorizing the basic-tier "Soul-Sucker Spell" cold by copying it out over and over.
Committing it to memory without a single omission alone took him two days.
On the evening of the second day, he began working through the content of the basic-tier "Soul-Sucker Spell" line by line.
With the entry-level "Soul-Sucker Spell" as a foundation, Dark's study went very smoothly.
His grasp of the basic tier deepened at speed.
Even so, he still didn't attempt it lightly.
The "Soul-Sucker Spell" touched the soul itself. One slip could produce catastrophic consequences. Caution upon caution was mandatory.
Through all of it, Dark didn't let his absorption in the "Soul-Sucker Spell" make him forget the secret passage.
On Friday night he restocked his supplies, and early Saturday morning he set out into the passage and began another round of exploration.
Walking through a secret passage where nothing changed was, in truth, a tedious and hard-to-endure experience.
There was no way Dark could hold himself at peak alertness the entire time.
Before long he'd settled into sitting on Leomon's shoulder reading to pass the hours, then every hour having the "Trash Slime" evolve into "Greed Slime II" for a fifteen-minute sweep.
From the moment he first entered the passage, he'd prepared himself for a long campaign.
Since he wasn't carrying much hope to begin with, coming up empty didn't cost him any disappointment either.
After a full day of walking he pushed deeper and deeper into the passage, and this time he'd chosen a route entirely different from the last.
When he had the "Trash Slime" evolve into "Greed Slime II" this round, he had already begun scanning the terrain around him, looking for somewhere suitable to unfold "[Paradise]" and make camp for the night.
But not long after, the "Greed Slime II" jolted with excitement.
Dark snapped alert and ordered Leomon to speed forward along the direction the "Greed Slime II" indicated.
Just as the "Greed Slime II" devolved back into the Trash Slime, the white datura "Flower Cards" in Dark's hand finally responded. Blossom after pure white blossom came flying out of the card faces, linking into a long chain that drifted forward like a string of wind chimes.
Dark's eyes flashed. "Found it!"
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