A heavy sigh reverberated throughout the now emptier boss room. Delvin leaped off from her perch upon one of Violet’s petals and leaned her small imp body up against the single tree in the center of the room.

“That slime is in way over its head.” She said aloud, glancing over to the silent Violet. “What do you think?”

The alraune thought for a moment, but then shrugged.

“Yeah, guess it doesn’t matter much to us.” Delvin slid down and plopped her butt on the ground, waving her hand and a translucent panel appeared, its appearance somewhat like the panels used by the organization but different. Whereas the holographic panels the Organization used relied on magic tools, this one was purely magical. A tool used by dungeon masters to monitor and control the dungeon.

Delvin fiddled with the panel, causing another screen to show up besides her showing a video feed of Catherine as she abandoned her body to avoid a fiery death, landing on a rock in the middle of the lake soon after. Delvin clicked her tongue “This bitch and abandoning her body.” She said, remembering back to when Catherine would be caught in a trap that would otherwise be a sure kill on any normal person, but the slime would instead choose to sacrifice a portion of her body while securing the safety of the other part.

“At least she has survivability… “she said, closing the video feed of Catherine and pulling up an old recording of her fighting the goblins. Reviewing the content, she gave another deep, heavy sigh “Cocky, plays with her food…. “She then pulled up her fight with the slimes, noting Catherine’s visible distress at how different she was compared to her species “Ah, the trouble with being a variant.” Delvin chuckled

Delvin watched as Catherine ruthlessly slaughtered her kin, angered by them not fighting back, and as Delvin watched on she was reminded by just how young and ignorant the slime was to the world. It didn’t help with how she was summoned by her dungeon either. The core was either incredibly lucky, or unlucky, to have only summoned one slime and have it be a variant with its first instincts to consume the closest living thing.

Then, by blind luck managed to take a high elf by surprise and kill it, absorbing its brain and gaining its memories. Delvin guessed that was when Catherine was first *aware* of it’s sense of self, if not just a tiny bit. Delvin wondered just how much of the original Catherine was left in the slime who stole her name, but it hardly mattered after what happened next. The slime was aware of itself.

The slime that would of thoughtlessly slaughtered everything in its path so long as nothing intelligent was killed by it, was now aware of itself and what it could do. And it used that newfound identity to kill off an entire ship, while still being woefully ignorant to the world.

Delvin rewound the clip of Catherine and the slimes, chuckling to herself “no wonder the slimes enraged her. “she said to herself “prompting Violet to perk up. “As young as she is, she is decently powerful, if not just hard to kill. For a bunch of regular slimes that earnestly try to kill her, and for her not to even notice but instead think they won’t even try to attack her? How could she compare herself to them?”

“She can’t, even for variants she is strange. When we are born from a dungeon we are supposed to already have a sense of self, she wasn’t. hers was obtained by absorbing this “Catherine” and further developed by everyone she killed and ate. Who even is the slime named Catherine?” She said, almost mockingly. “She was probably trying to find some closure in the slimes, only for them to utterly disappoint her expectations!” She laughed.

Violet frowned, going over and placing a hand on the imp’s forehead causing the imp to stop, and look up at her before rolling her eyes.

“anyways…” Delvin cleared her throat “We sure are investing a lot in a slime with an identity crisis.” Delvin shrugged and pulled up another feed, this time showing Rose and Nyoka standing in an empty hallway “Catherine is in a good position right now, the organization is heavily underestimating her. Partially because she was so cooperative but, knowing what I know, was more out of complete ignorance then a willingness to comply.”

Delvin watched the feed of the two adventurers “I just know if I was the big head in charge someone is getting fired” She chuckled “And I would of tested if that leash could even completely kill her…” Delvin focused on Nyoka, the apparent thief that got dragged into this mess because of Catherine’s bad habits. Delvin had seen a leash go off in the past, the small ball imploding and disintegrating what ever bio signature it was attached to with extreme precision.

There was a reason why the Organization trusted and used these tools, even if you cut off your hand to remove one that was attached to you, when it imploded due to lack of direct contact to living host it would disintegrate the severed hand and the host no matter the distance and leaving nothing but the leash itself left. Delvin didn’t know how it did this, the only thing she did know was that it was persistent.

Delvin had even experimented on a few captured prisoners with their attached leashes but found no way to remove then or circumvent their rules, that was till Catherine came and somehow figured out she could place it inside her storage. And after seeing the Catherine’s core only assumed it worked without setting it off was because the storage was still inside Catherine’s body but the perk of this was undeniable, it shielded the core from outside stimulus.

Delvin was actually so sure it wouldn’t work at first she had used a valuable prisoner to insure the core would go off, one to get rid of the guy and secondly to get rid of the annoying ass slime that set off every trap she could in her dungeon. To her surprise the slime survived while managing to kill the prisoner. “Hopefully that wasn’t a mistake…” Delvin mumbled to herself as she stared at Nyoka.

She raised her eyebrow, noting they had not progressed since she started watching them and looked towards Rose who had one hand to her ear. “hrm... probably just jinxed it.” As if to confirm this Rose brought up her holographic panel a second later and started typing away “yeah, totally did, shit.” Delvin hopped up from her sitting position and brought up her feed on Catherine, instantly noticing the leash was glowing.

“Yup, bitch hit the recall button.”