Black Gloves and Red Blade

Alaric was currently organizing the possessions of the dead Wurst. He came here with the intention of finding Wurst's old body bag but figured he should clear out the place for the new villagers' convenience.

After setting aside everything on the first floor, which mainly consisted of Wurst's 3 replacement sabers and pictures of a woman, who Alaric assumed to be Windy, Wurst's dead lover.

"Time to clear out the attic. Thankfully, Wurst is minimalistic."

Later, after verifying he cleared everything out, Alaric climbed up an extendable ladder into the attic. There, he saw a simple box.

"He's handled everything for me! Great!"

He quickly opened the box, scanning its contents. Although he felt it a bit disrespectful to rummage through the possessions of the dead, it was a necessary evil if he was to know what to do with this box.

'What... the fuck?'

Inside were two black gloves, with a red-ink formation inlaid upon them, and a blood-red blade. This blade very closely resembled the daggers of the cloaked assailants of the village, and Alaric was astonished.

"Is Wurst related to those robed people? An organization he ran from, so they targeted him? I'll keep this box at my house, lest the wrong people see."

It was baffling and left him with many questions, but time was of the essence. He had to feed his slimes and go find Sonic, unanswerable questions would not have his permission to delay him.

'I will certainly investigate at a later date, for now, I must keep my focus on the Ryder family.'

With that thought, Alaric brought the box to the lower floor, put all of Wurst's possessions inside, and carried it back to his home. On the way, he made sure to let Piko know that a new house was open to entry.

Soon, Alaric used the body bag he got from the late Wurst, and put three torsos inside. It would take multiple trips, but soon, all 36 slimes would be fed. Of course, he received some stares from the villagers while taking these trips, but he'd think of an excuse later.

'If they find out about these dead scrubs, I'm certain that they'll flee once more.' Alaric thought.

After dragging the 11 torsos and heads to the slimes for their meal, he left the body bag for the slimes to eat too. If slimes were good at anything, it was clearing away evidence. Alaric would do his best to make sure the newcomers didn't know that Ooze Village was built on the corpses of many.

Before going to save Sonic, Alaric wanted to further consolidate his foundations at the peak of rank 1. He would absorb some more mana, and adjust to it directly. Although rank-2 would be out of sight, something similar to the "peak of the peak of rank-1" would be possible.

Alaric quickly had Pamela turn into a ring of slime surrounding his body, which was seated on the announcement stage in the center of the village.

"I will consolidate my prowess for 3 hours, and then go out in search of Sonic, that rascal."

...

Alaric opened his deep-blue eyes, and exhaled deeply, "I'm done."

At this point, advancing further would be impossible in the short term. Being completely deprived of his soul-shard reserves, he couldn't break through to rank 2.

Although rank 2 was a rather simple realm, as you just had to double your mana reserves, it was actually a bit harder to reach than described. The doubling of your reserves after already having so much mana in the first place could be said to go beyond the limits of a human soul. From this point on, he would have to refine his soul itself until it could handle being stretched further.

'Using a large amount of mana, someone could meld it into their soul, making it much denser and more capable of expanding.' Alaric remembered.

For now, it'd be impossible. The raid against the Ryder family would happen while he was simply a peak rank-1 wielder.

Alaric climbed to his feet and had Pamela transform back into a ring. He quickly used the megaphone, which was nearby since he meditated on the stage, to notify the entire village that he would be gone for the day. Clarus was set to be in charge, and he reminded them that 2 rank-2 slimes were guarding the village.

Alaric would be leaving Gunnar here and using his own 2 feet to find Sonic. He had already discussed possible escape methods with Pamela, who was becoming increasingly useful by the day. As a slime, Alaric expected her memory to be a bit limited, but even after feeding 11 different codewords and their related actions into her, she remembered them all almost immediately.

"Okay, I have my armor, my bag, my blade, and Pamela. I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Time to go find Sonic," Alaric said.

Soon, he departed from the village. The peak of rank 1 was special in that it already showed signs of the stamina increase you'd see as a rank-2 wielder. Jogging there wouldn't exhaust Alaric or even make him sweat.

Thus, the 20-minute journey was instead halved and became a 10-minute journey.

At the forest clearing, Alaric could already vaguely sense that Sonic was still alive. Not even barely so, as his mana signature seemed stronger than when they last saw each other!

"Sonic is somewhere in the forest... and he has gotten stronger? How? I thought slimes needed to eat their fellows' cores in order to become stronger..."

The only reason Alaric could sense Sonic's mana was because of their connection, built because of his talent. Knowing that the slip slime became even stronger had greatly raised Alaric's confidence.

"His mana seems to be equivalent to a peak rank-2 existence! The upcoming raid is basically guaranteed!"

Alaric decided to act immediately, pushing an extreme amount of mana into his talent, and he said, "Sonic! Come back immediately! Your task to gather meat is voided, complete, I need you!"