Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 8

by Ryo Shirakome

  Silence followed Hajime’s speech. Kouki grit his teeth in an attempt to hold in his rage. He wasn’t angry at Hajime, but at himself for being so weak. He’d unconsciously felt a sense of safety, knowing that even if he was distracted Hajime and the others would be able to clean up anything that came their way.

  The whole reason he was here was because he didn’t agree with Hajime’s methods or his morals, and he wanted the strength to prove that Hajime was mistaken. And yet, after forcing his way into Hajime’s party, here he was relying on him. He wanted to punch himself. But if he let himself get carried away by his anger, he’d just be proving to Hajime that he didn’t have the mettle to keep going. Kouki took in a few deep breaths, letting his anger and impatience dissipate, then slapped his cheeks.

  “Nagumo. I’m fine now. I can keep going!”

  The light had returned to his eyes. Hajime gave Kouki a small nod, then turned to Suzu. Suzu started trembling, but then she too slapped her cheeks and renewed her resolve.

  “I’ll go too. I’m not done yet!”

  “I see. Good. Remember to stay focused.”

  That was all Hajime said before turning around and resuming his trek. Ryutarou stepped up behind Kouki and gave him a slap on the back.

  “Ow!” Kouki exclaimed, then gave his best friend a rueful smile. Kaori and the others encouraged Suzu in a similar fashion, and she gave them a slightly less forced smile. The party advanced in a straight line toward the giant tree. The forest was deathly silent. Not only was the sound of insects absent, but there wasn’t even any wind to rustle the leaves. The surrounding silence made the noise of Hajime and the others’ advance even more pronounced.

  “Hmmm... There’s something ominous in the air.”

  “Yeah... It’s like when we were ambushed in Orcus.”

  “You’re right... but I can’t sense any monsters anywhere.”

  Tio raised her eyebrows suspiciously, while Kaori and Shizuku thought back to the time Cattleya had ambushed them in the Great Orcus Labyrinth.

  “I’ve sent my Arachnae up ahead to scout, but they didn’t find anything either. I doubt we’ll get through this forest without anything happening, but...”

  Hajime was referring to his multipurpose spider-shaped golems.

  “...Hm? Rain?”

  “You’re right, it has started raining.”

  Kouki scrunched up his face and looked up at the sky. Suzu held out her hand and nodded in agreement. A second later, chills ran down their spine as they realized what they’d just said. There was no way it could be raining inside a tree.

  “Tch, Yue!”

  “Okay... Hallowed Ground.”

  Realizing what was going on, Hajime called out to Yue. Without a moment’s delay, Yue deployed a barrier. A second later, a heavy downpour hit them. Yue’s Hallowed Ground had come up just in time to keep the rain off them. However, no one looked relieved. In fact, they now looked more worried than before.

  Considering what was happening outside, it was only natural. The liquid sliding down Yue’s Hallowed Ground was most definitely not rainwater. It was either poison or some kind of strange new monster.

  It was Shizuku who noticed first.

  “Nagumo-kun, look.”

  Despite her strained voice, she was still calm enough to analyze the situation. And what she saw was some strange opaque milky liquid oozing out of the trees, the foliage, and the ground.

  “Are those slimes? Damn. Not only are they masking their presence, but I also can’t even see them with my Demon Eye. Just what kind of concealment magic are they using?”

  “Nagumo, they’re at our feet!”

  Hajime mentally clicked his tongue, then looked down to see the slimes sprouting from the ground directly underneath them. As Hallowed Ground formed a fully spherical barrier, it prevented the white slimes from burrowing through from underground, but it couldn’t protect against creatures that were in the part of the soil it encompassed. The few slimes that had sprouted within Yue’s barrier attacked the party.

  “Kyaaa! You little... Disintegrate!”

  Kaori hurriedly attempted to obliterate the slime that was crawling up her leg. The slime burst into tiny white particles and crumbled away. Slimes tended to attack by engulfing their target and dissolving them, as it was the best way to make use of their high physical resistance. But it appeared Kaori had managed to get rid of it before it could do anything.

  “Raaaaaah! Get off me!” Ryutarou slammed a fist into the slime trying to swallow him from behind. His gauntlet artifact sent ripples through the slime’s body, and it burst apart.

  “Hey, Ryutarou, stop! Don’t send their pieces flying over here!”

  “You muscle-headed moron! Don’t use your full strength against them!”

  “Huh? Oh, my bad!”

  “Bleh, I’m all sticky. This stuff’s disgusting.”

  Kouki and Shizuku protested hotly against Ryutarou’s hasty actions, while Suzu examined the white goop covering her.

  “Seriously dude, you gotta stop doing this. Are you alright Shizu—”

  “Yes, I’m just fine, Kouki. At least these things die pretty easily... Is something wrong?”

  “Huh? Oh no, it’s nothing! Nothing at all!”

  “Huh?”

  For labyrinth monsters, these white slimes were quite weak. Shizuku kept her guard up in case they had another trick up their sleeve as she gave Kouki a puzzled look. Kouki averted his gaze, doing his best not to look at Shizuku. Not only that, he was avoiding looking at Suzu as well. Even though there were slimes popping up from everywhere, he kept his gaze focused firmly ahead. Shizuku grew even more curious about Kouki’s strange behavior, but she put in the back of her mind for now and focused on eliminating the slimes with her katana’s special skill, Thunder Blossom.

  The reason for Kouki’s strange behavior lay in the milky-white composition of the slimes. More specifically, the fact that both Shizuku and Suzu had been splattered with their dead bodies. It wasn’t hard to imagine what being drenched in milky-white liquid looked like from a guy’s perspective. Though it appeared neither Shizuku or Suzu had noticed that yet. Naturally, Yue and the others weren’t spared from the deluge of white either.

  As Yue was using fire magic to burn away the slimes their corpses weren’t splashing onto her, but she’d been hit by a little bit of the initial deluge, and sticky white liquid dripped down her cheeks and neck. Shea, on the other hand, had used Drucken’s shockwave to blow away the first wave of slimes, landing her in the same situation as Ryutarou. She was splattered with the white liquid of the monsters she’d killed.

  Tio had had it even worse though. She’d been hit by most of the splatter of Shea’s first few kills and was completely drenched. Shea hadn’t aimed for Tio or anything like that, Tio had just been unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong spot. She resembled one of those variety show contestants who’d had a pie thrown in their face. Her black hair and kimono were slathered in sticky white liquid. It was hard to look at her and not be aroused.

  Kaori, however, had come out relatively untouched. Thanks to her disintegration abilities, she didn’t need to worry about the slimes she defeated splattering her. However, traces of the slime who’d first caught onto her leg were still there, so she wasn’t in that much better shape than the others.

  Hajime had opted to surround his entire body with Lightning Field, making him more or less invincible against the slimes. As he electrocuted wave after wave, he considered poking out Kouki and Ryutarou’s eyes again so that they wouldn’t accidentally see Yue or the others in compromising poses. But while the slimes appeared weak, there was no telling what might happen inside a labyrinth. Hajime didn’t particularly want to leave two party members vulnerable by robbing them of their sight.

  Besides, if they end up seeing something, I can always just beat the memories out of them later. Kouki shuddered. He instinctively sensed the threat Hajime posed and did his best not to look in Yue and the others’ direction
.

  Soon enough, the party had wiped out the few slimes who’d made their way into the barrier. After making sure there were no enemies left inside, Hajime turned his attention to the wriggling mass outside. He sent his Cross Bits and chakrams out of the barrier and started mowing down slimes.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me...”

  From the visual feed his Cross Bits sent back to his Demon Eye, Hajime could tell there was an enormous amount of slimes waiting outside the barrier. To make matters worse, more were still raining down from the sky. The forest was buried under a sea of milky-white slimes. Had Yue not been able to put up a barrier as fast as she had, the party might have been overrun by the sheer number of them.

  “Yue, reinforce the barrier. I’m gonna blow everything up at once.”

  “Okay... Leave it to me.”

  Hajime sent all seven of his Cross Bits and all seven of his chakram up into the sky.

  “Are you fucking serious!? You’re going to bring that hellfire back!?”

  “Not this again...”

  “Ugh, if it wasn’t for Kaorin’s restoration magic, my barrier would have been destroyed back then. I thought we were all done for. Honestly, I was more scared of Nagumo-kun than the enemy!”

  Ryutarou trembled in fear while Shizuku’s eyes glazed over. Suzu teared up, as memories of Hajime’s traumatizing attack came back to her. Kouki looked silently up at the sky. He was more worried about being blinded right now than anything. Unfortunately for Ryutarou, he’d already made the mistake of looking. While Hajime was currently busy dealing with the slimes, he made a mental note to put Ryutarou through his special memory-erasure course later.

  “Kaori, use your disintegration to get rid of all the slime goop on you guys. It doesn’t look pretty,” Hajime sent to Kaori via telepathy.

  How come he only sent that to me? And why telepathy? Kaori tilted her head, but in the next second she realized what Hajime had meant by “it doesn’t look pretty.” She looked down at herself and blushed. “Yeah, this isn’t...” she muttered. The reason Hajime had used telepathy was out of consideration for Shizuku and the others, who still hadn’t noticed. It’d be embarrassing if a guy pointed it out to them.

  “Th-Thank you, Hajime-kun. I’ll clean us up right away. Also, please don’t hurt Ryutarou-kun too much.”

  “...I’ll think about it.”

  Kaori had already guessed what Hajime was thinking of doing to Ryutarou. She smiled ruefully at his response and swiftly dissolved the sticky liquid clinging to everyone. Hajime returned his attention to the feed from the sky that his Cross Bits were sending him.

  How long is this slime rain going to go on for? Is there an infinite amount stored up there? In that case, I’ll have to do something about the ceiling first. He glanced down at the rising tide of slimes and decided to push his chakrams even faster toward the ceiling. The rotating chakrams sliced through the slimes falling in their path and lodged themselves into the ceiling. Half-sunk into the bedrock as they were, the chakrams resembled mini-arches. It just so happened that the inside of those arches were portals that Hajime could control at will.

  Hajime then took a few spare charkam and a lot of Arachnae out of his Treasure Trove. Shizuku, Suzu, and Kaori froze when they saw a swarm of mechanical spiders appear in mid-air. Hajime paid no attention to their discomfort and dropped them through the chakrams. They reappeared through the portals on the ceiling, and started scuttling around in all directions. Since they weren’t combat-oriented, Hajime could control up to 100 of them at once. The swarm of spiders glowed red as they scuttled across the ceiling, and Hajime activated his Transmutation through each of them. Hajime’s goal was to seal up all the cracks the slimes were dripping down through. His plan worked. With every crack he sealed, the deluge of slimes slowed.

  “Alright, that’s the ceiling dealt with. Now we just have to get rid of the slimes on the ground... I guess I’ll have to burn everything down again.”

  Hajime sounded more like a terrorist than a Synergist, and Kouki’s expression cramped up. Hajime ignored him and manipulated his chakram to dislodge themselves from the ceiling and circle above the sea of slimes. Then, like before, he started teleporting vast quantities of taur through them.

  “This is what you get for spraying that disgusting goop over Yue and the others.”

  It felt as if these slimes had been purposely designed white by Haltina in order to create a situation like the one that had just happened.

  This liberator sure likes to mess with people. She reminds me of the one in Reisen Gorge. Haltina’s little prank had gone too far though, and now Hajime was pissed. While he didn’t let his anger show, it was clearly boiling beneath the surface. His resolve to overcome his temper seemed to already be forgotten.

  “He’s turning into a devil, Shizushizu! I’m scaaared!”

  Suzu hugged Shizuku, terrified. Like a protective mother, Shizuku gently patted Suzu on the back.

  “Holy shit, Kouki. That guy’s totally gonna get arrested one day.”

  “What a coincidence, Ryutarou. I was thinking the same thing. He’ll probably show up on the news one day.”

  Considering Hajime was about to scorch an entire forest with a smile, Kouki and Ryutarou were justified in thinking he’d end up a terrorist. In a sense, he was actually more terrifying than a terrorist. Hajime’s smile twitched a little as he heard Ryutarou’s assessment.

  Do I really look that evil? He didn’t really care that much about Ryutarou or Kouki’s opinions of him, but he was worried he might have creeped out Yue and the others too. And so, he glanced back at Yue.

  “...Hm? I prefer you like this.” As always, Yue could tell what Hajime was thinking without him having to say a word. And after hearing his beloved Yue’s opinion, Hajime’s evil grin grew eviller.

  “You’re amazing Yue-san. Even now you keep finding ways to make Hajime-san like you more. And so naturally too. I didn’t think that was possible. But I won’t lose to you! Even when you’re acting like a brute and evil incarnate, you’re cool, Hajime-san!” Spurred on by Shea’s cheering, Tio and Kaori also voiced their support for Terrorist Hajime.

  “Will you all please shut up?”

  Hajime glared at the lot of them. Then with a sigh, he returned his attention to the task at hand. It didn’t take long for a layer of black to cover the sea of white.

  “This should be enough.”

  Hajime grinned, and the counterattack-cum-elimination began. A series of explosions rocked the forest, and the earth shook so hard they could feel it through the barrier. The very air trembled as Hajime rained down a barrage of bombs from his Cross Bits.

  These particular bombs were basically napalm bombs. Hajime had filled them with yet more taur, and as they landed in the sea of slimes, they burst apart, spraying 3000-degree flames everywhere. In contrast to the earlier white rain that had poured down, now there was a rain of black as Hajime sent more taur down into the burning conflagration. The mass of slimes writhed and squirmed, but all they succeeded in doing was sucking the taur further inside the blob. That helped spread the napalm’s flames even further. In seconds, the sea of slimes had turned into a sea of flames. The conflagration licked at the nearby trees, threatening to set the whole forest alight. The crimson tide was like a physical manifestation of Hajime’s anger, and it charred everything it touched. Soil transformed into lava, and the air itself burned away. Kouki and the others swore they heard the slimes screaming in pain as they were scorched to cinders.

  Outside the barrier, a veritable hell awaited. A hell of fire and screams. Eventually, even the slimes crowding around Yue’s barrier started to burn. The view of hell became visible to Kouki and the others who didn’t have remote viewing tools. They all watched with haggard expressions as the world burned away. Finally, the flames withered away. The ground had been turned into a sea of bubbling lava, the trees and plants burned to ash. Smoke blanketed the forest’s remains.

  “That was a good blaze.” Hajime
looked proudly at his handiwork. In response, Yue smiled faintly at him and asked a question.

  “Can I drop my barrier now?”

  “Hold on just a bit longer. Let me make sure none of the slimes burrowed underground.”

  The spiritstone ring on Hajime’s finger began to glow. Countless black objects dropped from the ceiling, thin threads trailing behind them. Hajime’s Arachnae.

  “Kyaaa!?” Shizuku squealed as the numerous mechanical spiders hit the ground. No one had expected such a cute scream to come out of Shizuku’s mouth, but they were tactful enough to ignore it. Though they couldn’t suppress their faint grins as Shizuku blushed in embarrassment. Hajime set his Arachnae to transmuting the ground on their path to the large tree. He closed his eyes in concentration and spoke.

  “It’ll take some time to transmute the whole path. We still don’t know how many of those slimes are left. Even if it takes more time, it’ll be more convenient to secure our route than stop and kill them each time they pop up. I know it’s a pain, but please keep the barrier up until I’m done, Yue.”

  “Okay...”

  Realizing they were safe for now, Kouki and the others relaxed. Thanks to Kaori, everyone had been cleaned of slime goop as well. Unfortunately, though, Ryutarou’s fate remained unchanged.

  “Rest while you have the chance,” Hajime said, then sat cross-legged on the ground. Transmuting the area around their path was going to take time. And while Hajime wasn’t physically exhausted yet, it was a rule of thumb among adventurers to rest when the opportunity presented itself. The rest of the party followed suit, resting as best as they could.

  Some time later, the glowing barrier around them faded away. Hajime then felt something soft lean against his back. He turned around, confused, and found Yue hugging him. Just as he was about to ask why she’d suddenly dispelled her barrier—