by Fuse
The leader he picked, a man named Bach, was brought here by his father, a relative of Mjöllmile’s who’d asked him to train his son in the business. He proved quick-witted enough to live up to his end of the bargain; however, Bach’s family had faced difficulty after his father’s business failed, leaving him with nowhere to return to, so Mjöllmile decided to formally hire him as head clerk. At the moment, that family was living off Bach’s income, and Mjöllmile felt too guilty about having him go off on this risky venture. He had no complaint about his work; no doubt the business would work fine under his watchful eye.
“B-Boss… I couldn’t be happier to receive this offer from you. But I hoped that we could perhaps join you…”
Bach, no doubt, was too young to readily accept this. He was reluctant to go fully independent yet; perhaps he thought he still had things to prove to Mjöllmile. It was cute of him, but Mjöllmile didn’t like it. If Bach wanted to stand out on his own, he had to be let out in the wild sooner or later. This was a golden opportunity.
“Bach, I am not your father. I’m offering you a position running this business, but I’m not giving it to you. Listen: Even after I leave here, you better not do anything that puts this business on the rocks, all right? In fact, once you’re able, I’d like to see you buy this outfit out from under me! So make it a big success and bring your parents back here someday, all right?”
He gave him an affectionate smile and patted him on the shoulder. It was a tender moment, even if he still intended to work out a contract with Bach and keep a piece of the proceeds. He was a merchant, occasionally a hard taskmaster, but never a philanthropist. Besides, he reasoned, if he can’t even pay me for my share of the business, he’d never have what it takes to succeed in the first place.
“Thank you,” Bach said, choking up a bit, “thank you… I promise you that I’ll make a man out of myself and repay this favor!”
“I hope you do,” replied Mjöllmile, smiling ear to ear.
Now he went to work, choosing who to bring and who to keep behind.
“If you ever have any problems,” he advised Bach, “tell me about them, and I’ll help. But I believe in all of you. I know you’ll do just fine. Don’t disappoint me!”
The group remaining in Blumund all nodded at him. Mjöllmile had trained them thoroughly; none of them would fall out of line. Even if they were dealing with high nobility, he was sure they’d never do anything ill-advised.
“You’ve taught them all well. Rest assured they will not let you down!” Bach said in return.
“Well said. Also, while I’m sure you’re aware of this…”
“Do not worry, sir. I promise we will maintain the sales markets you’ve built up here. If you ever need access to them, we’ll give you first priority.”
“Good. I hope you will!”
Just in case, Mjöllmile wanted to be sure he got first dibs on any goods he might need. He always kept an eye on every facet of the situation, and Bach was in perfect sync with his thoughts.
He’s still a little green, but he’s starting to look the part, at least…
Now he was sure Bach wouldn’t let him down.
The last of his affairs were now squared away, and it was time for Mjöllmile to make the journey to Tempest with his retainers in tow.
Leaving Mjöllmile’s house, I breathed a sigh of relief. So glad he said yes to that. He seemed ready to take the invite, too, so I should be expecting him shortly.
One thing I couldn’t say about my monsters is that any of them were good on financial matters. I was having Shuna handle the account books for us, but she couldn’t do that forever. A village is one thing, but a full-fledged nation is another; Shuna would be in over her head. Lilina in the management department and Vester from the Dwarven Kingdom were helping, but I’m not sure even that would be enough.
That’s why Mjöllmile came to mind. His brain revolved around money in ways few people ever experienced, he had connections with nobility, and he was running businesses in multiple countries. It seemed a waste for him to remain a merchant forever; I was sure he’d be a great help to me. Besides, we had a good working relationship. If he could handle finances for us, maybe he’d allow me a little more spending money to work with. I had been running a few side hustles with him before, but now I could picture that extra income ballooning.
I mean, our treasury’s pretty well-endowed, you know? But taking money out of it for myself, despite not paying any salary to my staff, seemed kind of low. Everyone always said “Oh, it’s all yours, Sir Rimuru,” but that just made me all the more reluctant. It felt wrong, and I wanted that money to help with expanding our nation.
Still, I needed some of it. I wanted to take people like Gobta out at night every now and then, even if I didn’t have much interest in it. Veldora was whining at me about that, too, and you know how you go through cash pretty quick at nightclubs…not that I had much interest, that is. (No, really.)
But while it was a drop in the bucket for our treasury, if it was my personal money, I’m sure Gobta and Veldora would burn through it like it was nothing. Plus, Shuna usually provides me with money, but if I tell her where I’m going, she snaps that wallet shut, and I can’t really tell her it’s “my” money then, so…
This was why I was running a few side jobs for extra spending cash. And with my future expansion, I had a feeling money wouldn’t be a worry for much longer.
That battle tournament was a pretty neat idea, too. Mjöllmile is such a talented guy. I wasn’t sure how he would take it, but he demonstrated some real enthusiasm as we brainstormed the plan. It barely took him a moment to suggest running a tournament to attract visitors, then take advantage of the crowds to sell potions and equipment. He’s got a forward-looking eye and a knack for great ideas, that’s for sure.
Once I get back, I’ll need to get ourselves an arena to work with. Geld was busy with urban-planning work over in the Beast Kingdom, and Mildo was supporting him. Without our two main building specialists, I’d have to oversee the operation. But that’s fine. After running all these construction projects, one after the other, we were starting to build a well-trained staff, enough so that I was mostly giving orders and not doing much else. I knew about this craftsman named Gobkyuu, who worked under the tutelage of Mildo, and he was involved with town architecture enough that I thought an impressive circular arena would be in his wheelhouse.
The job would normally take a decade or so, I’d imagine, but if you run the job with monster muscle, I thought we could cut that down a lot…like, down to maybe the two months or so we had until the festival. Even I had to admit that was far too little time to get everything done, so for now, I at least wanted the central fighting stage to be completed.
But how would we design it?
Understood. From my master’s memories, I have found the Colosseum of Rome. Building blueprints using it as a base… Completed.
Well, that was easy. I had some paper on hand, so I drew up the plans, adding my own style to it. This alone would normally take several months—surveying the site, calculating soil strength, that kind of thing. You could often spend a whole year on that kind of preliminary stuff. And here I was, drawing up blueprints that’d normally take several days at a computer on our equivalent of a cocktail napkin… Raphael’s support helped a lot even with detailed work like this. It honestly felt unfair to me, but I had no plans to give it up, so…
Now I had my plans. Next I’d have to discuss them with Gobkyuu— But before that, while I was here in Blumund, I may as well stop at the Free Guild. I could forward the plans over to Gobkyuu in the meantime; once I was free, I could assemble a team of craftsmen on-site to get down to business.
“Ranga, you there?”
“Here, my master!”
He popped his head out from my shadow. With things settled over in Farmus, everyone except Diablo was back home, with Ranga lurking in my shadow like it was his personal den. I gave him the arena blueprints I had just whipped
up.
“Take these to a craftsman in town named Gobkyuu. And can you tell him we’ll meet up at the west gate once I’m free?”
“Very well. But are you not returning, Sir Rimuru?”
“No. I wanna see Fuze first, while I’m here.”
“Will you not need a bodyguard?”
He looked a bit nervous, tail down. But I wasn’t concerned. I am a demon lord, and I had Absolute Defense activated. If I ran into an attack that could penetrate that barrier, I wouldn’t be safe anywhere in this world.
“I’ll be fine! We’ll just chat a bit, and then I’ll head back. But I should be concerned about Mjöllmile, huh? He’s gotten kind of tangled up with this one bottom-feeder noble, and there’s no telling what the fallout from that is gonna be like.”
“Ah, that vulgar man from before? Would you like me to snuff him out?”
Please, no. Doing that in a foreign city is how you trigger a diplomatic crisis.
“You know, I think you’ve been hanging out with Shion too long. You’re getting too aggressive for your own good. I think you need to learn some more common sense.”
“I—I do?!”
Ranga looked shocked. He must not have realized it.
“Look, are you really sticking to what I told you back at the last fight? You weren’t going too far, were you?”
“I—I would never do that, my master!”
He looked uncertain, and I was starting to get suspicious. Gobta and Gabil, I recalled, would only say things like “Oh, uh, he was fine!” and “Y-yes, having Sir Ranga at our side was a tremendous boon!” when I asked for a report. It sounded fishy, but I never followed up on it. It just seemed like an invitation for further headaches, and I was leaving that to Diablo anyway. If he had no complaint, I just assumed all was well.
Maybe I was just kicking the issue down the road…but ah well. If there really was a problem, I would’ve heard about it. Better trust in Ranga for now and make sure Shion doesn’t poison his mind any further.
I patted Ranga on the neck. “Um, Ranga, buddy? Seriously, don’t do anything crazy, okay?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he replied, solemnly nodding.
“Good. Now go relay that message, okay? And if anyone’s free on our security team, I’d like them to guard Mjöllmile for me. Check on that, could you?”
“Yes, Master!”
He disappeared back into my shadow.
So now Mjöllmile was under guard, albeit behind the scenes so he didn’t pick up on it. I didn’t know who would come to guard him, but there weren’t that many people on the security staff I’d trust with solo duty. The new guys were out of the question, so it’d have to be at least a seasoned sergeant-class officer. Here, sergeant refers to a sort of team leader, the head of the groups of five that the force usually operated in. They were usually around a B rank in adventurer parlance, more than qualified enough for bodyguard duty.
I could personally keep tabs on Mjöllmile’s whereabouts once he was in my town, but in the meantime, if something happened to him over here, I’d find out immediately. Thus, I felt safe in saying hello to Fuze for a little bit.
So I headed into the Free Guild’s headquarters in Blumund. Last time I was here, I made more of a splash than I meant to, so I was worried about a repeat—but despite a few threatening glares, I made it to the reception counter without a peep. I was wearing that mask the previous time, wasn’t I? Maybe nobody recognized me. But hey, if they wouldn’t let me see Fuze, I could just leave an invitation letter for him and head back home.
“Hey-yo, I’m Rimuru, but can you take me to see Guild Master Fuze? Oh, here’s my ID.”
I burped the card out of my Stomach and handed it to the woman at the counter. “That little girl’s an adventurer?!” I heard someone exclaim behind me, but no matter. I was used to it.
The lady remembered me, at least. “Ah yes, Rimuru! It’s good to see you here again. How have you been?”
“Mm? Oh, great, great! You’re looking quite well, yourself…”
“I sure am! And I see you’ve passed the examination over at HQ and made it to B-plus, huh? Well done! You have my respect!”
“Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I? I really wanted to score an A, but I got kind of busy, so…”
…Or really, it was too much of a pain in the ass to bother. Being ranked B or higher gave you a lot of perks, but it also came with more responsibilities. B-plus was enough drudgery to deal with, so I figured I could earn my promotion only when I really needed to. Not like it was a salaried position or anything. Like a volunteer fireman, I’d be tapped for duty whenever certain kinds of danger came along. In exchange, I got easier admission into foreign countries, as well as free food and boarding at Guild branches. I appreciated the perks, sure, but I didn’t really like being forced to do anything.
But why rain on people’s parade?
“Oh, I’m sure you’d pass with flying colors, Rimuru! I’ll be cheering you on!”
“You think? Well, thank you! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”
I sure can’t resist a young lady looking at me with those sparkling eyes, no… At least, not until she drops a bomb on me.
“By the way, Rimuru, it must be annoying to share a name with a demon lord, isn’t it? If you like, you could take advantage of our Renaming System to change your name in the Guild archives, if you find it’s causing you trouble. That’ll let you conduct Guild activity in areas where your face isn’t well-known yet, albeit at one rank grade below your current one. What do you think?”
Oh, crap, I forgot! Here I am, a demon lord, and I went and put that same damn name on all my paperwork! And now that Rimuru Tempest, the Newbie in the Octagram, was a household name around the world, I guess being Rimuru the adventurer would present a few issues. Time to retire from the Guild, maybe? If I really needed to work as an adventurer, I guess I could consider that Renaming System. It’d be starting at the B rank, but that’s good enough for me. Pretty helpful system, there.
“Thanks for telling me about that! I’ll keep that in mind. Now, do you think I might be able to see the guild master?”
“Right away. And yes, feel free to ask anytime!”
It took a little conversation, but she let me right in. I could hear shouts of “Are you kidding me?!” and “Who the hell is that girl?!” among the rabble behind me, as well as commentary from a few people who must’ve seen me here last time.
“Oh, no way! I never knew she was so cute?!”
“Unbelievable… That’s the face of a person who swatted down a Lesser Demon like a mosquito…?”
“And she had the same name as that demon lord, huh?”
“You think it might actually be him?”
“Ha! What are you, stupid?”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, yeah…”
Sounds like more rumors would be spreading soon. Although, maybe I had less to worry about than I thought. Sharing a name didn’t seem to arouse too much undue suspicion. Maybe the name Rimuru wasn’t that uncommon after all.
So I breezed into Fuze’s office. The first thing he did upon seeing me was bring a hand to his temple. I ignored it.
“Hellooooo! I’m back to pay a visit! Something up? Why the long face?”
“Well, things were pretty slow for a while, until this demon lord came out from nowhere…”
“Whoa, really? Sounds like bad news. You sure you should be chilling out in here?”
“I’m talking about the demon lord here in front of me. So what is it this time…?”
“Oh? Well, you better feed that demon lord some tea, shouldn’t you? I think he’d enjoy a little bit of cake, too.”
“Cake?! You think I can pull that kind of luxury out from under my hat?! I swear, why’s a demon lord like you just gallivanting around without a care in the world?”
Fuze poured out some tea as he complained. He was diligent like that. I thanked him and took the cup, sipping from it before we got down to business.
“So I’m sorry abo
ut everything that happened, Sir Rimuru. I tried putting pressure on the Western Holy Church, but it didn’t work too well, and then the Crusaders got deployed…”
“Nah, I doubt you could’ve done anything to stop them. There was this band called the Seven Days Clergy masterminding the whole thing.”
“Wha?!”
“Yeah, that’s probably why Hinata never listened to me when I tried pleading my case.”
“The Seven Days…? That legion of great heroes, tasked with protecting humankind…?”
“Apparently, yeah. They snared her, too, but…all’s well that ends well. We worked out all the misunderstandings, I think. But there was one casualty, unfortunately—a commander named Garde is missing in action.”
“Garde of Fire…,” Fuze muttered with a frown. “He’s one of the Ten Great Saints, the protectors of humankind. Quite gifted with a spear and flame-based spirit magic, albeit not as gifted as Shizu was…”
I didn’t know Garde personally, apart from how he was after the Clergy got to him. I couldn’t say anything about his personality, but apparently he was a well-known name, at least. Someone as well-connected as Fuze would certainly know him. I described him as “missing,” but “killed,” I suppose, was much more likely. Hopefully he’s in a better place now. I felt bad for him.
Moving on, I gave Fuze a recap of recent events—including the Walpurgis Council, since I knew he was concerned about that. There were now eight demon lords united under the name of the Octagram, and I covered all of that, along with my conflict with Hinata and the fall of Seven Days. I made sure, of course, to blur the true identity of Luminus—I had a reputation for blabbing when I shouldn’t, but I wasn’t dumb enough to let that vital a secret out.
“I see… You know, no matter how much we tried to make contact with them, they always just flatly denied us. The Church’s Blumund branch was a nonstarter, so I sent someone over to their headquarters, and they still said we couldn’t meet with anyone at the level of minister or above… I had no idea the Clergy was behind all this.”