by Fuse
A pure enough magic crystal was, according to Dold, much more effective raw material for crafting a magitool than run-of-the-mill magic stones, but any monster who could offer that level of purity would have to be A rank or so.
As he put it, there just weren’t many avenues for obtaining magic stones in the first place. Their production required a large-scale workshop, and only one of those had ever been built, at the central Free Guild headquarters. Guild branches would take the magic crystals harvested on rare occasions from monsters and send them to the home office—which, in turn, provided support payments in exchange. That kind of system. Which meant adventurers fought monsters for commercial reasons, too, not just to prevent harm to others.
This was the way the dwarves put it to me, and it sounded pretty darn efficient, really. I tried cutting to the chase.
“So you don’t think we could build a workshop like that here?”
“Ooh, no, no, boss, that’s just asking too much…”
So much for that. We’d have to purchase magic stones with cold, hard cash, then?
Understood. It would not be a problem to directly harness the energy from a monster’s core. Through the use of certain revisions in carving methods—
The Great Sage suggested a pretty startling idea out of the blue.
It wasn’t a problem? Huh. I was pretty dubious, but I told Dold about it anyway. So just as doubtful himself, he began crafting a tool.
“So just change the carving right here?”
“Yeah. Apparently, that’s all.”
“‘Apparently,’ boss…?”
“Ha-ha-ha! Don’t worry. It’ll be fine!”
I tried to laugh off Dold’s concerns as he created a showerhead and applied a carving to its handle. Grasping it triggered a magic response that would warm the water flowing through it. It’d use magic from the user’s body, but no more energy than would be used for other household spells. With just a little magic, anyone could use it, and that went double for monsters.
It was a groundbreaking magitool, and with a little effort, you could also modify it to draw a hot bath whenever you wanted. With the right temperature-adjustment carving on the tub, you’d just fill it with water, apply magic for a bit, and wham, it would be heated to a lovely temperature.
Ironically, it was the creator himself who was the most shocked at this.
“Whoa, is this for real? I know I’m not one to speak, but this little method was all you needed? I mean, equipment like this installed in every home? I don’t think you’ll find another town like that, boss…”
Plainly, though, this invention had stimulated Dold’s creativity. He was curious about what else he could research—and along the way, we could create an environment that used a limitless supply of magicules to ensure we never ran out of fuel. Only a monster town could pull that off, and soon, we’d have a litany of magic stone–free magitools at the ready. I’m sure he’ll develop a ton of other useful things for us soon.
So basically, all of my biggest hang-ups were already taken care of.
Our homes for everyone had been completed. And that, of course, meant we now had to focus on the residents’ own issues.
Compared to before their evolutions, the monsters’ reproductive rates had shrunk down to around the same as human families. You could expect five to ten offspring per live birth before, but now it was just one or two. That wasn’t a bad thing at all—they were high-level hobgoblins from birth, which proved that these really were evolved creatures I had “created.” But it meant I had to come up with a formal marriage system before long.
When it came to goblins and orcs, the stronger members of the tribe reportedly had the right to select any partner they wanted. It was a custom meant to ensure their children were as hardy as possible.
The question, though: Should I be allowing polygamy, or what? It seemed practical in the case of (for example) female widowers who lost their husband, but I didn’t want the alpha males hoarding all the ladies exclusively for themselves. That would cause all kinds of discontent. The ogre mages told me they could procreate with one another, although they chose not to. But if, say, Benimaru or Soei decided to start a harem, I wasn’t sure too many of the females would turn them down.
However, as Benimaru put it:
“You know, Sir Rimuru, you’re about the only creature in the world who doesn’t have to worry about exhausting their magicules. A monster’s magicule count is similar to a human’s life force, you could say. Sometimes, giving a name to one of your disciples would sap your magicules to the point that you never recovered. You wouldn’t even see a demon lord–class creature tossing out names to everyone, you see? And if we do something like sire children, my lord, that would affect our strength gravely.”
This shocked me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I’ve given out, like, a zillion names, man! Don’t tell me that now!”
“Y-you didn’t know, Sir Rimuru…?!”
I hated it when Benimaru gave me that disgusted look.
Maybe I should thank my lucky stars that my magicules have kept refilling up to now. Going forward, I’ll really have to start thinking about who I name and when. I thought it was a given that you recovered your magic force over time. I was sure it was fine, but… Yeah, let’s be more careful.
Anyway.
Apparently, with monsters, there were two different ways of creating offspring. The normal way, where you simply impregnated the female, and then the “let’s do it for real this time” way. With the former, the child would have some of the parents’ abilities, although it’d start out pretty weak. This method consumed very few magicules, so a male could have at it pretty much all he wanted, although the threat of bottoming out his magicule count still loomed with too much activity.
The latter, meanwhile, made the resulting child quite powerful and a bearer of all the parents’ skills—but doing it “for real” could even affect the father’s life span.
To quote Benimaru: “I’m fine with being single. Evolving added more than a few years to my life. I don’t care about leaving any descendants anyway.”
“More than a few” didn’t begin to describe it. A run-of-the-mill ogre had a life expectancy of around a hundred years; for an ogre mage, it was over a thousand. No kidding, you didn’t need kids. I could see why Benimaru was so disinterested.
With ogre mages like Benimaru, at least, I wouldn’t have to worry much about population control. But what about the stronger of the hobgoblins? I decided to ask them, and while they weren’t quite as adamant about it, they largely shared the ogre mages’ views on parenthood. Monsters didn’t work like humans—produce a child, and it’d rob you blind of your magicules. Sometimes, beyond what you could recover.
So basically, nobody was stupid enough to just go mating willy-nilly. Childbirth didn’t affect the regular goblins as much—they had to produce a lot of offspring if they wanted the tribe to survive another generation—but for hobgoblins, it took up a huge amount of magic.
As they rather bluntly put it, the moment you consummated the act, you knew right then and there whether the impregnation “worked” or not. Kind of graphic, but it was the truth. If a healthy pregnancy resulted, it would cost the father around half of their maximum store of magic. This would fill back up over time, but not if you kept at it repeatedly—that might permanently dent your magicule capacity.
Thus, I suppose, even if you had a bevy of girls to choose from, you couldn’t just go and sire a huge herd of children. Realistically, a man would take multiple wives just so he could protect them, not to build a family.
This didn’t apply to the females, by the way. In fact, the way they put it, they were capable of willfully refusing impregnation, unless the sheer strength of the seed overpowered their bodies.
Therefore, if an undesirable partner violated ethical boundaries to commit the act, a child still wouldn’t result. Only those whom the women deemed worthy had the right to become fathers—and this was also true for other high-level
monsters and magic-born.
You could say, surprisingly enough, that monsters mated strictly out of love a lot more than you’d think.
Sub-race demi-humans who crossbred with the human race didn’t quite have this level of influence over the outcome; they were hardly different from humans that way. I suppose, if you asked me which way was better, I’d have trouble providing a comment on that.
So I decided to make a rule:
“With regards to leaving behind descendants, polygamy is allowed strictly with widowed females seeking children.”
Widowers who didn’t want offspring could receive subsidized care from the nation, I figured. If this caused problems, I could always change it later. Like, maybe have a kind of ceremony at the start of each month where residents could confess their love to one another, and then we’d give out homes to the couples it created. That’d be a nice tradition to start. Single men or women could live in the dorms, although those with higher posts could have the right to a freestanding house, too.
These were the kinds of things I thought about as I watched a few intimate monster couples pass me by. I can always fine-tune things later, I thought. Gotta make sure everyone stays happy.
With our homes in place, my initial goals were all but complete. We had food, shelter, and clothing.
Shelter, I just got done explaining. For clothing, meanwhile, the goblinas apprenticing under Garm and Shuna were cranking out new clothes like no one’s business. Our recent upswell in population, meanwhile, made food a bit chaotic. All the new high orcs made procuring provisions for everyone rather difficult.
Fortunately, during his outer patrols, Rigur—the captain of our security force—had bagged a fairly massive amount of prey for us. He had beefed up the number of units under his control, and by now, he had roughly a thousand hunters procuring supplies in every direction. Growing vegetables and such, meanwhile, was Lilina’s jurisdiction, and it was going well. Shuna was also evaluating the wild grasses and such that Rigur’s teams brought in and making seedlings from them, producing even more edible goods.
The next job for our construction crews, meanwhile, was developing the area at the outer limits of town. Our fields grew at a dizzying rate, doing wonders to improve our food situation. Barring disaster, we no longer had to worry very much about famine.
We now looked, by and large, like a real town.
There’s one other person I ought to mention. Gabil.
About a month ago, that fool traipsed into town like he didn’t have a care in the world, eating our food like it belonged to him.
“Ha-ha-ha! Well, you see, Sir Rimuru, I, Gabil, hurried over at once because I wanted to serve you!”
“What are you doing here?” I implored at his shameless attempt at sycophancy.
“Shall I kill him?” Shion asked, face serious enough to even give me pause. She absolutely, completely meant it. You joked around with her at your own peril. Even a slight nod from me right now, and she might really slice up that dude.
Gabil, perhaps sensing this, turned pale and promptly prostrated himself before me. “I’ve had hardly a decent meal for weeks, and I let my arrogance corrupt my head. Please, have pity upon me! We would do anything to become your loyal servants, Sir Rimuru. I promise we will be of great assistance to you, so please!!”
On cue, the hundred-odd fighters he had with him kneeled before me. That was enough to make Shion resheathe her longsword, a satisfied look on her face. Now, at least, we could get to talking.
It would seem that Gabil’s father disinherited him, leaving him with nowhere to go. It was such a pathetic tale that I agreed to his request. Besides, given the way he freely ate our food, without looking out of place at all among the hobgoblins, I figured he had a talent that I shouldn’t make light of.
We currently had no defensive wall in place, since it’d only hinder our construction efforts. It must’ve been easy for them to breach our boundaries, but I could only guess that he convinced our patrols that he was one of my men.
“This was your plan from the start, wasn’t it?!”
“Well, I hardly had anyone else I could call upon…and besides, I had not the least intention of serving any master besides you, Sir Rimuru…,” Gabil breezily replied.
“It may not seem so, but he does regret his actions. Please, if you could grant him the chance to atone for himself…,” added another member of Gabil’s entourage.
Looking more closely, I realized that it was the captain of the lizardmen’s royal guard—the team that guarded Abil, their chief. Abil’s daughter and Gabil’s younger sister, if I recalled correctly. I was pretty sure she was acting as an adviser to Abil when I christened him.
“Oh? Why are you here, too, Captain? I thought you’d be involved with building whatever new system of government Abil was working on.”
“Indeed. Unlike my brother, I have not been banished from our people. I come here by my own free will.”
The name I had given Abil, she explained, had the effect of extending his life quite a bit. For lizardmen, the average was fifty to seventy years—for dragonewts, two hundred or so. And even that figure was just from the reference books; nobody was sure exactly how long he may live.
Just like with Rigurd and the rest, I had basically turned back the clock for him. Any squabbling over his successor would thus have to wait at least a few decades. So he agreed to have his daughter travel the land, perhaps to teach her more about the world she lived in.
“My father wishes you well,” the captain closed by saying.
“What?” Gabil shouted. “I thought you had joined me out of care for my well-being!”
“I do respect you, my brother,” she countered, “more or less. But if anything, I am more enthralled by Sir Soei. If possible, I would love the chance to serve him directly.”
“Whaaa?!”
“Is this a problem?”
They really must have been related. The guard captain was just as odd as Gabil was.
Most of Gabil’s own retainer was more obviously loyal to their lord. But some of the royal guard were among them—no doubt at their captain’s request. Huh. Well, if they wanna help out Soei, let ’em, I suppose.
“If that’s what you want, I could talk things over with him. But he’s more of a covert agent, you know. Do you think you’d be of help?”
“Oh, certainly! Unlike this spoiled brat, I’ve got spirit for miles!”
“Wha?! I have sat here and put up with your carrying-on for too long! You will not berate me, you little girl!”
Not the best relationship, then. Or is it one of those deals where they fight because they love? The guard captain must’ve resented how she was also captured when Gabil hatched his coup.
She should’ve just left him alone. It was no story I wanted to get involved with, so I didn’t.
According to the story I heard later, though, there was another reason for this. It seems Abil, out of concern for Gabil, asked her to monitor the guy for him—hence why it was better for their group to travel undercover. Depending on his actions, the lizardman chief was apparently ready to welcome him back in.
That was all kept secret from Gabil, though. He’d let it go to his head the moment someone told him. Best to let him feel sorry for a while longer.
So we now had a small lizardman team on our side.
And hey, if they’re going to be working with me, they’ll probably need some names. (Benimaru hadn’t warned me off reckless naming at this time, so I was still pretty unrestrained about it. A little knowledge—or lack thereof—can be a dangerous thing.)
I started with the guard captain. “Well,” I said, “if you’re gonna be serving Soei, maybe Soka would work?”
She had four guards with her, two female and two male. For them, I went with Toka, Saika, Nanso, and Hokuso. Each received one cardinal direction in their names—east, west, south, north, in that order. To this I added “ka,” or flower, to the female names and “so,” or spear, to the males.
>
No particular meaning to it. Just seemed nice.
The moment I was done, the evolution began. Gabil looked on, clearly jealous, but he had a name and I saw no reason to add another.
“Quit acting so envious,” I said as I rolled by him. “‘Gabil’ is a fine enough name, wouldn’t you agree?”
But before I was wholly past him, I could suddenly feel my energy draining. Oh, crap, did I just do what I think I did? I turned around. Now Gabil was looking right at me, eyes sparkling. His body was already starting to glow—wait. Is this…evolution?
Thus I managed to inadvertently name Gabil…Gabil.
I had no idea that you could, um, overwrite them like that. Maybe the fact his original christener was dead meant the wavelengths were aligned with me instead, or something. I couldn’t know why, but either way, I named him. I was hoping to make him dwell on his crimes a bit longer, but what’s done is done.
Maybe I could have him follow in Gobta’s footsteps and show him hell at the hands of Hakuro. Otherwise, this new evolution would just make him more self-absorbed and prickish than before.
He’ll definitely need to be assigned a job later, I thought as I drifted away into my now-familiar sleep mode.
The next day, I set out to naming the other hundred lizardmen. I had spent my immobilized time thinking up names, mostly random bits of alphabet strung together. As high-level a monster as the lizardmen were, I had to take a break after around twenty of them. The while process thus took five days.
Now they were all dragonewts.
A dragonewt was classified as a sort of demi-human with dragon’s blood. Surprisingly, you could far more easily tell the males and females apart. The males didn’t look much different from lizardmen, save for the dragon-like wings, the horns, and the firmer scales. The biggest difference was the color of those scales—changing from a greenish-black to a purplish one.
The females, meanwhile, looked practically human. Rather pretty, even. They did have those dragon horns and wings, though, and with the dragonewts’ Scalify skill, they could transform their skin into leathery scales at any time—or for that matter, look even closer to a full-blooded human.