(Rimuru POV)
So now we had six new residents, the ogres. Some of what Risa had to say alarmed me a bit, but I decided to ignore that for now. We had other, more important things to deal with anyways.
First up on the list was naming them. I did that over the course of three days, having the Sage help me figure out the exact amount of energy to pump into each of them.
In the meantime, I had some questions for Great Sage.
'Hey, Great Sage. Theoretically, would it be possible for me to do what Risa did?' I'd been wondering about this all day. Essentially, what Risa had done was name a spirit, evolving it into a Superior Spirit close in strength to Ifrit, then assimilate it into herself, thereby evolving to take on the properties of a spiritual lifeform in her former body, while also gaining a few other perks.
First perk, her soul's capacity to hold skills had increased. Nearly doubled overall, in fact, though about seventy percent of that new capacity had been used up assimilating Izzy's personality into her soul as something that the Great Sage called an 'incomplete Manas.'
Unfortunately, the long and the short of the Great Sage's response: 'Impossible.'
According to the Sage, the first problem was Ifrit himself. In a word, he was the perfect level of 'too strong, but also too weak.' I wasn't powerful enough to name him without massively limiting his potential, which meant that doing so would be a huge waste. And if I were to theoretically assimilate him without having him as strong as possible, it'd just add onto that waste.
Then, there was Ifrit's personality. He hadn't exactly been a fan of me eating him in the first place. Were I to name him inside my stomach, there was a chance that he'd simply break out while I was temporarily weakened, depending on how powerful he got from the naming. Were I to try to assimilate an unwilling participant…
'Report. Chances of either one or both of your souls being destroyed during the assimilation: 100%.' Yeah, nope. Were Ifrit to be completely willing, the chances still only went down to roughly 78% or so.
And then there was the big problem with the idea. My own composition.
I'd already physically assimilated all of Ifrit's skills, and even his spiritual composition, into my own body, processing it through Deviant and everything. In other words, I already had the ability to freely transform my physical body into one of a similar demi-spiritual nature to Risa's.
While it was largely thanks to Deviant that I'd been able to do that, Deviant was also preventing it from affecting me too much, so I hadn't physically evolved, even though I'd assimilated everything but Ifrit himself, already.
I could technically devour Ifrit himself, but doing so wouldn't increase the maximum amount of magicules that my body could technically hold by more than maybe 1%.
Basically, the root of the problem lied in the difference between my Predator and Risa's Processor. While my Predator analyzed something down to the base, basically copying and pasting all of its skills onto my own repertoire, Risa's Processor allowed her to take the physical data from those skills and mimic it with her own Enhanced Shapeshifting. That meant that she didn't technically intake any part of the analyzed being until she began her Breakdown process.
And as for the Breakdown sub-skill itself, it wasn't the same as my Predation, either.
Predator was, at its core, basically an improved version of the slime-intrinsic Dissolve. It converted something, anything, into pure magicules, before consuming it entirely. For example, if my magicule stores were empty and I ate something with Predator, it'd refill them. However, Breakdown was created for assimilation. Essentially, it squeezed the magicules from whatever it consumed, before adding them, and their properties, to Risa's composition. If Risa ate something with Breakdown, her physical composition would adjust to fit it, so the amount of exhausted magicules she had wouldn't change at all. This didn't mean that she could use it to constantly get stronger, because if she ate something with the same properties again, her physical composition wouldn't adjust a second time, but it was still technically superior in a way, optimized to allow Risa to get stronger. It made sense. Risa had been near the end of her natural lifespan when she'd acquired the skill, and it'd instantly extended said lifespan to near infinite.
According to the Sage, Risa's successful assimilation of Izzy was basically the product of stupid luck and dozens of skills and events aligning in just the right way. Not even I could replicate it.
…
I started naming the ogres with the red-headed leader and his pink-haired sister. He became Benimaru, for 'red circle.' It felt like a samurai's name, which seemed to fit rather well. She became Shuna, for 'scarlet plant,' she had pink hair and knew a lot about herbs and stuff.
The next day, I named the purple and blue-haired ogres, Shion ('violet garden') and Soei ('blue shadow') respectively. And then on the final day, I named the white and black-haired ogres Hakuro ('white elder') and Kurobe ('black,' but with a country flair).
Once named, all six of the ogres evolved into Kijin, the next step up in the evolutionary ladder from ogres, apparently. While normal ogres, similar to humans, had an average lifespan of about 100 years or so, Kijin were on an entirely different level, with A-ranked or higher magical stores and a lifespan of, at minimum, around a thousand years. Kijin were physically smaller than ogres, more elegant and human-like, but far stronger in just about every way.
Benimaru went from around an A-minus or so to ending up with roughly as many magicules as I'd had before eating Ifrit, putting him at the lower end of Special A, or calamity class. I'd appointed him as my General, putting him in charge of the village's formal military (which meant that his job included working with Rigur to create a formal military from our Goblin Warriors).
Shuna's evolution gave her the Unique Skill Analysis, which was basically a watered-down version of Great Sage, granting her the abilities: Hasten Thought, Analyze and Assess, Cast Cancel, and All of Creation. Unlocking the skill had dropped her magicules down to around A-minus level, but it was still a generous power increase. I'd appointed her as my Priestess. A title with little actual use, but it seemed to fit her, and it made her happy, so it was fine. As of right now, she was working with Garm to fashion clothing out of Hellmoth silk that Soei was gathering, but the plan was to have her assist wherever she was needed. She had a lot of skills and knowledge that we lacked.
As for Hakuro, he'd clearly been waay past his natural lifespan. Guy looked like he was going to keel over at any moment before I named him. Now that he was a kijin, though, his snow-white hair had turned a silvery color, and he looked like he was just beginning to approach his golden years. With his new youth came magicule density on par with Shion and Soei, just nipping at Benimaru's heels. He'd been appointed as our official Instructor, teaching Rigur, Gobta, and anyone else (including Risa and I) how to fight.
As for Shion and Soei, they'd each gained an extra skill. Shion's was Ogre Berserker, which was basically just an amalgamation of strengthening skills she'd inherited from me, such as Steel Strength, Strengthen Body, Multilayer Barrier, and Steel Skin (Something that I'd actually learned from Risa through Great Sage and Degenerate). It fit her personality rather well, terrifyingly strong, but incredibly blunt. She'd basically strong-armed me into naming her my Royal Guard, which meant that she carried me around all day. A dignified beauty carrying me around all day? No complaints here… even if she was a bit klutzy.
Soei technically had multiple extra skills, such as Shadow Motion, Sticky Steel Thread, and Replication, making him something of a ninja. He could split himself into a half-dozen different Replications, all with the same strength, and control them all at once. Officially, I'd appointed him as my Shadow, but for now, since we were short of manpower, he was gathering Hellmoth silk for us in his spare time. He did have about half of his Replications scouting out the Orcs' movements, though.
And finally, Kurobe. Out of all of the kijin, he was the odd duck. While the others all had supermodel-level looks, he looked perfectly average in every way, and his fighting force was only around B-plus grade. But, as it turns out, Kurobe wasn't a fighter by nature. He was a weaponsmith. During his evolution, Kurobe had gained the Unique Skill Researcher, which was fairly similar to Risa's Processor, but geared entirely for manipulating materials, with skills such as Spatial Storage, Full Analysis, Break and Assimilate, and Transform Material. Basically, it allowed him to mess around with whatever he had in his Spatial Storage. Somehow, he'd even managed to inherit a partial version of Risa's Breakdown ability, which not even I had. Along with Researcher, he'd also gotten Control Flame and Resist Temperature.
While he wasn't very strong in comparison to the other kijin, he was still one of the strongest people in town, not that it really seemed to matter to the man in question, who'd easily settled into his spot as the village's new official Weaponsmith, and Risa's favorite kijin. In fact, Kurobe had spent the two days before his naming basically holed up in Kaijin's workshop talking about smithing with the dwarf, and the five following days questioning Risa about materials and processes every afternoon, using that knowledge to create Special and Unique class swords for the ogres and I. According to Risa, she still didn't trust his skills quite enough to let him see Solslicer, but he made swords for all of the other kijin and I.