by Roy
“Let’s see... I already know you’re strong after seeing you fight today, but seeing you like this out of combat doesn’t really give a ‘strong’ impression...”
“It might be rude to put it like this, but it’s like you’re missing that certain aura... Of course, I already knew about your stamina and hunting skills, so I wasn’t worried about you being a hindrance. But I had no clue about your skills...”
“After reaching a certain level of strength, you’re supposed to be able to tell how strong another person is to a degree, nya...”
“Honestly, your fighting was more adept than I expected, too. I was surprised.”
“Aura is a perception thing so some people may have duller or sharper senses for it, but us beastkin should be on the sharp end. And yet, Ryoma’s aura is all over the place... Are you hiding your ability?”
“No, not intentionally.”
I didn’t have to keep up appearances as much as my last life, so I didn’t particularly bother with that. At most, I avoided making any actions that could be seen as threatening, but that was more within the realms of common sense than concealment.
“Then it might just be your individuality. What they call human nature.”
“You really think so? Whenever I saw bandits in the forest, they always looked down on me. Though I always turned the tables on them.”
“I get how you feel. Also, those bandits were pretty unlucky.”
“That must have felt like hunting slimes, nya...”
“The ones that actually appeared were tougher than black bears, though.”
“Cilia’s right... Does that make Ryoma a natural trap?”
Before I knew it, I was being treated as bandit bait.
Apparently it had reached lunchtime while we were talking, so we decided to return to the square.
Chapter 2 Episode 10: Monster Subjugation Break Time
“Thank you for the meal.”
During lunch break. In the corner of the square where the adventurers had gathered to eat the distributed lunches, I had finished eating. But from what I could see around me, the others were still eating.
All the time spent eating alone had trained me to eat fast without realizing it. It was a habit from my previous life, but... What should I do now? Jeff and Welanna had gone to eat with the other adventurers to gather information...
Finding myself idle, I thought about what to do for a moment before deciding to tend to my slimes.
“Excuse me.”
I called out to an employee at the temporary reception where they were collecting information and organizing non-subjugation work.
“Oh hello, Ryoma.”
“Good day, Miss Maylene. Do you have a moment?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Just letting you know I’m going to step away for a bit to feed my slimes. Can I collect the harvested monsters yet?”
“They’ve been gathered on the other side. You’re free to take them. You’ve paid in advance already, so if the guild employees ask anything just show them your guild card. I have received your notice of individual action. Take care. Make sure you’re back before the end of lunch, okay?”
“There’s a roll call by squad, right?”
“Yup. If you end up running late, come to the temporary reception first. This is a countermeasure against pay thieves that leave halfway, so if you skip this step you’ll be marked for abandonment and lose your reward.”
“I understand. Thank you very much.”
After Maylene’s warning, I left the reception and went to pick up four baskets of monster bodies before leaving the square.
■ ■ ■
“Around here should do... Dimension Home.”
I walked for a while and reached the top of a steep hill with a clear overlook and no signs of other people. I’d notice any approaching monsters or people easily from here.
After watching over the slimes that crawled out of the wide, white hole in space, I began feeding them the monster corpses.
First, I let the cleaner slimes eat the filth, then split the remainder into four. Next to the four piles, I prepared four large containers filled with water. Once I gave the signal, the poison, sticky, acid and scavenger slimes — in their big or huge forms — climbed onto the pile of food and devoured it.
I kept an eye on their energetic feasting while I prepared the metal slime’s meal as well. As I was doing that, the metal slime had used its hard body to dig a hole in the ground and eat the dirt.
So it could gain iron content from eating dirt... Though it wasn’t digging well.
It looked more like it was throwing a tantrum at going unfed rather than digging. I sped up my work and placed a container of iron content dirt on the floor, at which point it gave up digging and approached at super slow speed. I could tell it was trying to hurry through the contract, but it was truly slow. Maybe its metal body was slow?
I sat beside the metal slime as it ate and watched over it, leisurely letting the time pass. For the record, healing slimes gained their energy through photosynthesis, so they had been sunbathing behind me the entire time.
After the slimes’ meal.
There was something I was curious about, so I sent all except one of the poison, sticky, and acid slimes back into the Dimension Home.
“Thanks.”
I had the three slimes spit out the liquid in their bodies onto a plate, filling each plate with poison, sticky solution, and acid.
The metal slime had a hard body, and it even had Harden as a skill. I could tell it was strong against physical attacks, but what about poison? I didn’t know. And so I was experimenting.
That being said, I was just going to let the slime approach the plates and watch its reaction... First was the poison plate.
“...Seems fine, huh?”
The metal slime didn’t even twitch. A sticky slime would have backed away... but it didn’t move at all. It seemed as unaffected as a poison slime itself. Next was the sticky solution.
“...This one’s fine too.”
The metal slime continued showing no reaction until the next acid plate. As it approached, its body flattened as though it was melting before it wriggled and backed away slowly.
“So you’re bad with acid... Reminds me of my science projects...”
There was an experiment to put hydrochloric acid on metal leaves or something... sure brings back memories.
I didn’t want to scare it too much, so the experiment ended there. I moved the plates away and disposed of them, after which the metal slime returned to its original shape. But because it had tried to flee in a panic, its body was covered in dust.
...I should wipe it away.
I used a handkerchief to wipe it when I realized it was slowly following my hand movements to change shape. It was an impossible texture to feel on normal metal, which made it all the more fascinating. Before I knew it, I was molding the metal slime into a sphere like a child playing with mud balls.
“All right! Oops, should I be heading back now...?”
I checked the clock I previously received. It was about time to head off if I wanted to go back without rushing.
Time to return the slimes to the Dimension Home... Just as I tried to do that, I placed the metal slime on the ground.
The normally distorted metal lump was currently a very round sphere. And this was the top of a hill.
“Dimension Ho—?!”
A high pitched noise attracted my attention, and I looked over to see a ball rolling from the hill at a great speed. With a gasp, I looked to my feet to see the metal slime missing.
“Wai—”
I reflexively started to give chase when I remembered the three slimes I had left out.
If an adventurer came across them...
I hurriedly picked them up before giving chase to the metal slime that had rolled fairly far away in the span of a few seconds.
Even a human could die if they fell and hit themselves in the wrong plac
e. And slimes were creatures that could die even without that. Which is what I believed to be the reason for their soft bodies. Though this one had a sturdier body through evolution, I was still worried.
Before long, the metal slime came to a stop at the overgrown weeds at the foot of the hill. But the slime itself wasn’t moving.
“Are you okay?”
I ran over to check. The metal slime’s surface was gradually rippling. It seemed like the shock of the new experience had caused it to harden.
That scared me... Next time I should investigate how much of an impact metal can take. If I avoided the core and just tested on the metal part... No, I should increase their numbers first just to be safe.
With that decided, I picked the metal slime up.
“...! .........?”
“...!!”
“Hmm?”
A voice? I could only just hear it if I listened carefully, but it wasn’t my imagination. It was a person’s voice — a number of people’s voices. The direction... was towards the square. It must have been some adventurers on the job.
But it sounded like the voices were fighting? I couldn’t make out the details, but it sounded vaguely threatening.
“I’m curious... let’s take a look.”
Even if I were to report trouble to the guildmaster or reception, it wouldn’t help much if I didn’t know what it was about.
Having decided to take a detour, I placed the sticky slime on my head and the poison and acid slime on each shoulder as I began walking silently.
■ ■ ■
I found it.
I headed in the direction of the quarreling voices until I had pretty much reached the foot of the mines. The trees there blocked the light from shining through, creating a dim corner where armed adventurers gathered around, adjacent to a pile of red dirt discarded from the cliff. There were over ten adventurers present. I couldn’t see through the shadow of the spoil tip, but they were surrounding something there.
“You brats better knock it off already!”
“Nothing more than pathetic thieves, stealing other people’s kills!”
The men in the outer circle jeered. Was their rough tone due to their anger, or were they just a vulgar lot to begin with? Either way, the situation seemed quite tense.
Was it a fight?
“We’re not thieves! We were allowed to take them!”
Huh? That voice sounded kind of familiar...
Brats, thieves stealing kills, a familiar voice... A vague memory resurfaced from those factors.
Could it be...?
Taking care of the wind direction as though I was out hunting, I moved through the trees and grass to circle around the back of the men. I drew closer until the fifty meter mark, at which point it was unmistakable.
Three girls were huddled together in the gap between two spoil tips, sandwiched with the cliff behind them and the men before them. The three boys in their group stood in front of them, acting as a wall. They were all clearly frightened as they tried to cover each other, standing up to the men closing in on them.
Their identities were as I expected — the group of young adventurers following us in the mineshaft earlier.
...Huh? Who was at fault here, though?
“Don’t get cocky, you filthy slum brats!”
Just how did things turn out like this... While the air was tense, they fortunately hadn’t turned to physical violence yet. They weren’t bandits that would suddenly turn to weapons, so I could observe a little longer.
Having over ten grown men surround and yell at children wasn’t a nice sight, but I was curious to what the six kids had done.
They were... or at least had been, picking up kills without permission. If they had been doing that in front of these men, then the men might not be at fault. Even if the act was borderline not counted as thievery, an apology would still be reasonable to demand.
Although I did find this interrogation by outnumbering method rather questionable.
We — or rather, everyone apart from me — had also called them out before, but that was just so Jeff could give them a warning for their own good. We hadn’t blocked their escape route and yelled. There was a big difference in contempt and the freedom of mind and body going on here.
In reality, the kids had conversed with us before, but they were practically silent now. The guys yelling at them already seemed like they were a hair’s breadth away from throwing fists.
It would be best to call someone over who could calm this scene down, but I couldn’t reach the square in a single Warp... I couldn’t teleport others like Sebas and Leipin yet either. Risking an accident was out of the question. If I relied on anyone else, I’d have to go through the trouble of explaining this location.
Out of that group, there only seemed to be people prepared to fight kids and people prepared to watch on with pitying eyes... I didn’t have much time.
It may seem like I’m just spectating too, but I had the confidence I could stop things if I needed to by remaining here.
What to do...
When I thought about it that way, I felt better staying here. But that meant I couldn’t call for others.
If I called over someone high-ranking, I could leave it to them. However, there was no guarantee the boys and girls would be safe.
It’s easy to be alone until things like this happen...
When I lived alone in the forest, no one ever rushed me. But now, I was feeling the inconvenience of lacking help.
Hmm... There were a total of twelve men surrounding them. They all seemed like young men in their twenties. But there was one bearded man that looked like he was in his thirties.
He was the only one that looked formidable, the rest didn’t look that strong. Not even the bearded man had noticed I was hiding, so the bandits I’d faced until now seemed much worse than them. They weren’t too dangerous.
But they were unmistakably stronger than the other six. If they fought in this situation, the six kids would be clearly outnumbered and outmatched. There was no chance for self-defense here.
“Oi! Why don’t ya say something?!”
...Well, if they had been stealing, then 10 to 20 blows should do the trick. That was the natural punishment to receive back when I was young. Though modern day Japan would greatly oppose it, this was another world. It was a perfectly reasonable way of disciplining children.
Thievery would normally be handed to the Adventurer’s Guild or public safety agency as a crime to be judged by the law, so a couple of blows was a kind compromise in comparison.
Even if it was over behavior that didn’t quite count as a crime, Jeff and the others had already warned them before lunch. If they continued in spite of that, then they should solve this themselves. It would be pointless for me to step forward when I had only met them once.
Though I wouldn’t allow them to go too far. And blows would only be acceptable if they had actually committed the crime; if they hadn’t done anything then there was no need to hit them.
Was it the children’s fault after all? But what if it wasn’t... I tried to determine that from the conversation, but they were repeating the same words over and over like a broken record.
...It would be faster to ask them myself. Okay, let’s do that.
I set only the unrefined metal slime down at my feet before standing.
“Excuse me!”
“?!”
“Who’s there?!”
“Over there!”
“A slime?! A talking slime?!”
“Look again, dumbass! There’s a head below it!”
“Why does this brat have three slimes on him?”
“How long has he been here for?!”
“Sorry to interrupt you.”
I parted my way through the bushes and stepped forward, meeting the dubious looks of the men with no hesitation. At the same time, the boys and girls also spotted me. One of the girls unthinkingly opened her mouth.
“Ah, you’re...”
When that mutter reached the ears of the men surrounding them, their expressions twisted with creepy smiles.
“Oh, you’re one of their friends?”
“No, I’m just passing by,” I replied bluntly, making the men look skeptical.
“From what I can see, everyone here is participating in the monster subjugation job, is that correct? It’s almost time to gather in the square again, but I was walking past when I heard you all arguing.”
“Really? It seemed like these guys know you.”
“You’re not another thief, are ya?”
“You’re packin’ some awful nice armor for a brat.”
The men started to evaluate me. Their eyes were clearly fixed on my equipment.
“I met the six of them in a mineshaft before lunch. Were they stealing again?”
“That’s right. That they were.”
“We were not! They’re lying!”
“His squad let us take the monsters!”
“We didn’t steal any of your kills!”
“Oh, shut up!”
“What proof do you have?! None, right?!”
“They’re telling the truth. My party agreed to give them the kills before lunch. If you cannot believe me, then we can go and meet the other members of my team. Everyone else in the party are accomplished adventurers, so I think you’ll find them trustworthy. As I mentioned just now, it’s almost time to gather again, so it would be perfect timing.”
I stated facts to the two yelling sides and made a suggestion, but the men’s side changed attitudes when they heard it.
“Th-That would be causing trouble to your party...”
“This is our problem to deal with.”
“You’re not trying to buy time to wipe the evidence, are ya?!”
“It may just be your plot to cling to someone with a sob story to sway them! As if we’d believe you!”
“We just want to resolve things peacefully too.”
“If we made a huge deal of it, they’d have trouble finding jobs in the future too, y’know?”
I understood their words, but the atmosphere and their attitudes reminded me of younger guys who would try and hide their own mistakes. They just didn’t want other people to butt in.