The notification lingered at the edge of his vision, the golden text pulsing gently as if waiting for him to acknowledge it.

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +1]

"What exactly is tribute?" Damon muttered.

The system, predictably, didn’t answer. But a new line of text appeared beneath the notification, smaller and dimmer than the rest.

[TRIBUTE: A RESOURCE GENERATED BY DEFEATING ENEMIES. A SOVEREIGN’S VERSION OF SKILL RESONANCE ALLOWS THE PURCHASING OF SKILLS, SUMMONS, AND ALLY UPGRADES.]

[CURRENT TRIBUTE: 1]

Damon read the explanation twice. Then a third time.

’Strengthen subordinates? Summons?’

He studied the Skill Resonance portion of the description again. He knew what it meant. Skill Resonance was something every Resonator received with each kill, a currency used to strengthen existing skills or acquire new ones.

But from what Damon remembered after killing the slime, he hadn’t received any. And as far as he knew, Skill Resonance had never included options for summons or ally upgrades.

’Is this class-specific then?’

Damon tilted his head, then looked around just in case any slime had sneaked up on him, but he found none.

’I’m safe enough. Open tribute screen.’

[TRIBUTE: 1]

[SUBORDINATE TREE]

[SUMMON TREE]

[SKILL TREE]

Damon looked over all three options, then decided the first would be fairly useless to him for now. So he opened the [SUMMON TREE] first.

[LESSER SUMMON: 20 TRIBUTE]: INHERITS 20% OF THE SOVEREIGN’S STATS, LASTS FOR A SINGLE BATTLE, AND GAINS HALF AS MUCH TRIBUTE AS THE SOVEREIGN PER KILL.

[NORMAL SUMMON: 400 TRIBUTE]: INHERITS 50% OF THE SOVEREIGN’S STATS, LASTS FOR A SINGLE BATTLE, AND GAINS THE SAME AMOUNT OF TRIBUTE AS THE SOVEREIGN PER KILL.

Damon kept reading through the system screen and found several more summon categories. But the cost of each summon rose exponentially. From Lesser Summon to Normal Summon alone, the price difference was staggering.

The difference was definitely noticeable, but he knew he wasn’t going to use it anytime soon.

He closed the tab and moved on to the [Skill Tree] next.

[SOVEREIGN’S STRIKE: 5 TRIBUTE]: INCREASES DAMAGE SCALING BY 50%.

[SOVEREIGN’S LEADERSHIP: 100 TRIBUTE]: ALLOWS TWO SKILLS GAINED FROM EACH SUBORDINATE INSTEAD OF ONE.

Damon stared at the numbers, running the calculations in his head.

Twenty tribute for a Lesser Summon. Five to upgrade Sovereign’s Strike. One hundred to double the effectiveness of his passive.

And he had exactly one tribute to his name.

"One down, several thousand to go," he muttered.

He dismissed the screens and turned his attention back to the cavern. The spring burbled quietly in the center of the room, and scattered around it, a dozen more slimes drifted across the wet stone in their slow, aimless way.

If each slime gave one tribute, he’d need to kill twenty just to afford the cheapest summon. More, if he wanted to upgrade his skills. And that was just the start. The normal summon cost four hundred. The higher tiers would only get more expensive from there.

But for now, none of that mattered. He had slimes to farm.

Damon tightened his grip on the longsword and moved toward the nearest cluster. Three slimes drifted near the edge of the spring, their translucent bodies catching the pale light of the bioluminescent moss.

They sensed him as he approached and shifted toward him with that same slow, wet squelch.

He stepped into the cluster and swung the longsword in a wide horizontal arc. The blade passed through the first slime without resistance, then the second, then the third.

All three dissolved into puddles of glowing blue liquid before they could even react.

[SLIME DEFEATED] X3

[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 15]

[SLIME ESSENCE +3]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +3]

[TRIBUTE: 4]

"Better."

He moved through the cavern with mechanical efficiency. The slimes never stood a chance. His agility made their attacks laughable, and his strength let him cut through them like paper. After a month of pushing his body to its limits in the gym, fighting something this weak felt almost like a vacation.

[SLIME DEFEATED] X2

[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 10]

[SLIME ESSENCE +2]

[SOVEREIGN’S TRIBUTE: +2]

[TRIBUTE: 6]

He cleared the main chamber in under fifteen minutes. Sixteen slimes total, each one dropping a single tribute and a vial of essence. The essence vials were small, about the size of his thumb, filled with that same faintly glowing blue liquid the slimes left behind when they dissolved.

’Probably worth something to the alchemy students,’ he thought, pocketing them. ’Lena might know.’

He paused at the edge of the spring and checked his progress.

[TRIBUTE: 16]

"I wonder where the other students are... must be deeper in the cave. I wonder if they’re grinding bigger slimes here."

Sixteen tribute. Enough for a Lesser Summon soon, but not quite there yet. Damon wiped the slime residue from his longsword and surveyed the cavern one last time.

The spring burbled quietly, and no new slimes had spawned to replace the ones he’d cleared. Standard dungeon behavior, low-tier mobs took time to regenerate.

He checked his inventory again for his amount of essence vials and turned back toward the tunnel he’d come from. The others would be at the goblin nest by now, farming experience, and clearing the tunnels. He’d spent enough time on slimes.

Besides, to Damon, the place was already picked really clean by other students.

Slime farming was far more popular than Damon had expected.

"Someone, help! A student’s being devoured by a King Slime!"

Damon stopped in his tracks and turned just as three students burst from the corner leading deeper into the cave. A second later, a massive gelatinous blob came surging after them.

One student was trapped inside it, their clothes and gear slowly melting away.

Damon was already moving before he’d made the conscious decision to act.

The three students who’d burst from the tunnel were first-years by the look of them, their leather gear barely scuffed, their movements panicked and uncoordinated.

Two boys and a girl, all of them pale-faced and wide-eyed as they scrambled away from the massive slime surging after them.

And inside that translucent blue mass, a fourth student was suspended like an insect in amber, their limbs thrashing weakly as the acidic gel began to eat through their clothes.

The King Slime was nothing like the small ones Damon had been farming. It stood nearly three meters tall, its body a churning mass of luminescent blue gel, and its core, a dark, pulsing organ visible through the translucent membrane, glowed with a sickly yellow light.

[KING SLIME - D-RANK BOSS]

[A LARGER, MORE DANGEROUS VARIANT OF THE COMMON SLIME. ITS ACIDIC BODY CAN DISSOLVE ORGANIC MATTER IN MINUTES. CORE MUST BE DESTROYED TO KILL IT.]

"Help us!" one of the boys shouted, stumbling over his own feet. "It came out of nowhere! We were just farming the deeper pools and—"

"Get behind me," Damon said.

The words came out before he could think about them. The same voice he’d used on Matthew in the corridor, though he barely recognized it as his own.

The three first-years didn’t argue. They scrambled behind him, their breath coming in ragged gasps.

Damon assessed the situation in the span of a heartbeat. The King Slime was slow, slower even than its smaller counterparts, its massive body dragging across the stone with a wet, sucking sound.

But what it lacked in speed, it made up for in mass and reach.

Pseudopods extended from its main body, lashing out at the walls and floor, leaving sizzling grooves in the stone wherever they touched.

And the student inside was running out of time.

’Can’t use Sovereign’s Strike yet,’ he thought, his grip tightening on the longsword. ’Not with them inside. The impact could—’

He didn’t finish the thought. The King Slime lurched toward him, a pseudopod the size of his torso whipping through the air.

Damon sidestepped. [AGI 19] made the attack feel sluggish, almost telegraphed. The pseudopod slammed into the stone where he’d been standing, and the rock hissed and bubbled on contact.

"Is one of you a support-class?" Damon asked.

"I-I’m one!" One of the first-years responded.

"Then buff me, I’m going in."