by Fuse
This visitor kneeled before me, turning an eye toward the other monsters seeking an audience. I knew this guy—it was Abil, Gabil’s father and chief of the lizardmen. Seeing him reminded me of the good old days—or it would have, if he didn’t look virtually like another person by now. He had transformed into a square-jawed warrior in the prime of his life. Giving him a name must’ve evolved him to this point—to a dragonewt, one far closer to humanoid than before. Gabil sure didn’t change that much, but Soka had gone almost entirely human, so maybe it depended on what the individual wanted.
“It has been far too long since we last spoke, Sir Rimuru. It pleases me greatly that you have risen to demon lord, er, the status of demon lord, and all of us er, are…”
Abil was acting oddly stiff. He was probably more on the “worship” side of matters. Gabil himself said demon lords weren’t that worth freaking out about. He already should’ve known what I was like, so why all the nerves?
I tried to be informal with my response. “Hey, Chief. Good to see you again. No need for the formalities here. We’re all part of the same federation, right? Keep up the good work.”
Benimaru snickered, and Shuna sighed at me, but I didn’t care.
“It is not that simple, Sir Rimuru. As a demon lord, you have grown into something extraordinary. You are not only our lord, but the de facto ruler of the entire Forest of Jura…”
As always, Abil was too serious for his own good. But that’s what I liked about him.
“All right, all right. There aren’t any other races in this chamber we’re in right now. You don’t have to be all nervous. Your son, Gabil, is working hard under my leadership. He’s become a full-fledged part of my administration. I couldn’t have done this without him.”
I decided to name-drop Gabil to ease the tension a bit, reminding Abil of his son and indirectly hinting that he ought to let him back into the family already.
“Ah, there is no fazing you, Sir Rimuru. So that no-good son of mine has been of service to you? He’s such an incorrigible fool, so…”
He must’ve noticed my intentions. The fact of the matter was, Gabil had still been kicked out of Abil’s family, so he must’ve thought it improper to ask how his son was doing without some kind of prompting. Now that I brought him up, that wasn’t an issue. I could already see his usual bold attitude coming back.
“Incorrigible? Hardly! I’m having him lead our research and development department, and he’s doing an excellent job for me. Aren’t you, Gabil?”
“Wha? Ah—yes !!”
Gabil, meanwhile, was frozen solid through all this, blushing all the way back to his ears, and when he was suddenly expected to join the conversation, his voice cracked.
“That stupid kid of mine…”
As Gabil continued to work himself into a panic, I unleashed just a little bit of Lord’s Ambition. That was enough to turn everyone’s attention back to me.
“Abil, chief of the lizardmen… Though I may be demon lord, I request your continued support as a member of my federation.”
“It shall be done! By the name you’ve given me, I will never forget my allegiance to you!”
He bowed down, head nodding deeply at me. He was the classic noble warrior, and he looked the part, even in this strictly formal setting. I nodded back, then glanced at the still-panicking Gabil.
“…?!”
He can be so dense sometimes. I guess he didn’t see what that glance meant. I’m sure it wasn’t because I was in slime mode and didn’t have eyes, either.
Rigur, exasperated, jogged over to Gabil and whispered in his ear. “Sir Rimuru would like you and your father to speak to each other privately. If he doesn’t let you back into the family now, you won’t have another chance for quite some time to come, you realize? And having an estranged son accomplishing so many great things puts Sir Abil in a delicate position, too, no doubt…”
Nice one, Rigur. Way to perfectly understand what I meant, unlike Gabil here.
The step-by-step explanation finally shook the fog out of Gabil’s brain. He saluted me, still a little flustered, and accompanied Abil out of the chamber.
Next up were the assorted high orc tribal chiefs, each with a little entourage along for the ride. They must’ve trusted me enough to not bring guards in; the entourages were composed of children and grandchildren. With their food situation much improved, life had plainly gotten a lot easier for them. They were fathering children now, and these children were themselves high orcs, which surprised and elated them so much that they wanted to show them off to me.
Well, why wouldn’t they be high orcs? Apparently, that wasn’t as much of a given as I thought. Normally, they’d just be regular orcs; the mutation into high orc was seen as a one-and-done kind of thing, generation-wise. With birth rates going down among them, they’d be able to devote more time and effort into raising each one, I imagined. I wanted to be sure of that, so they’d become the next generation of manpower for us. Children really are treasures, thinking of it that way—a fact that remains true no matter what world, or species, you’re talking about.
I was a little concerned about how their names were being passed on, but apparently it was going well. I had given those names almost at random, but I guess they all sounded natural enough to them, so…great? It’s all about getting used to it, I suppose. Call someone anything long enough, and it’s bound to stick. They didn’t really need names anyway, so maybe I was over-worrying it.
Fully reassured, I saw off the high orcs and their entourage.
Next came the final group of the day—the treants, the other major players in the Forest of Jura Alliance after the lizardmen and the high orcs. Actually, the only individuals who made an appearance were the dryads Traya and Doreth, Treyni’s younger sisters. But hey, treants can’t move anyway. No helping that. Besides, the dryads acted as the treants’ representatives, so no issues there.
I had been visiting the treant colony on regular occasions; Zegion and Apito had been keeping it well protected, and we were receiving regular shipments of high-quality honey from them. Thus, the atmosphere at this audience was pretty casual.
“Charmed to see you again, Sir Rimuru. Congratulations on being appointed a demon lord.”
“We hope you will continue to provide us with your benevolent protection.”
They both smiled at me without hesitation. That saved me a lot of trouble.
So we filled each other in on recent happenings. For now, nothing was particularly amiss. The only real concern to report was the thinning out of magicules around the Forest of Jura, which made transport a tad inconvenient.
They both looked exactly like Treyni, and I could feel vast amounts of magical force in them, but apparently they were still affected by the lower magic concentrations around them. In fact, Doreth did look a little thinned out to me.
“Hmm… I didn’t think that far. That’s probably the magic barriers along the highways doing their work. Better think of something for that…”
“Oh, no, it’s not that serious a problem.”
“We sisters use magicules to form the magical bodies you see before you, and they are merely more susceptible to the barriers, is all.”
“But outside of that, Sir Rimuru…”
“We have important matters to discuss!!”
They didn’t see it as important. Very few creatures around Jura would be affected by magicule concentrations like that, dryads and treants among them. Thus, since they were the last people I was seeing today, I offered to continue our talk in a private room that night.
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The moment I entered the room, the two spoke in unison.
“So what we wanted to talk to you about…”
“We wish to serve the beautiful fairy queen just as our great elder sister does.”
You know, now that I think about it, I don’t like that “fairy queen” name. It was overblown, way too fancy for such a teen
sy little thing. And beautiful? I recalled a smiling Ramiris in my mind. No way. Not beautiful. We were picturing totally different things, I was pretty sure about that. If Ramiris was beautiful, you could describe Shizu, the base for my own looks, as a goddess. I’m used to it now, but even I was a bit taken by my own appearance in the past.
Benimaru and Shion, who joined me in here, seemed to agree with me—but Traya and Doreth paid them no mind.
“This is not just our opinion, but that of all the treants.”
“And we hear that, in this very town…”
“…Lady Ramiris has built her residence.”
“If so, we can only hope to be of some service to her…”
In their uniquely sequential manner of speaking, they begged me to let them serve Ramiris. If they had already requested a different master, that’d make it hard to ask them to serve me, I suppose. Besides, Treyni, their big sister, was already Ramiris’s. I had no real reason to be opposed.
“Um, you wanna ask her?”
“…What?!”
“Is that all right?”
The reaction was swift and forceful.
So off we went to Ramiris’s place, where we found Beretta silently working and Treyni falling over herself to cater to the fairy’s whims. Man, Beretta must have it pretty tough.
But as I thought that:
“Ahhh, Lady Ramiris, you are so ravishing…”
“As beautiful as always—and so elegant! The perfect master for us to serve!”
Just as before, Traya and Doreth were crying their eyes out over her.
Treyni just nodded in response. I wasn’t sure who they were talking about at this point. “Elegant” was one of the last words I’d ever use to describe her.
“Did you hear that?” Ramiris huffed, tossing her head. “Hey—hey, did you hear that? Better not look down on me any longer, you hear?”
Man, shut up. Now she was flying around the room, lording it over us as best she could with her size. Ah well. Everybody likes a compliment. But judging by this, the answer to the dryads’ question seemed pretty clear.
“Well, Ramiris? I think all the treants want to serve you, too, not just these two.”
“Huh? But…”
Ramiris gave me a hesitant look. I suppose she still felt like a freeloader in my city. So I threw her a life preserver.
“How about we have them move into your labyrinth? We moved the beastmen’s camp without breaking a sweat, so could it be much harder to move the treant colony?”
Or did the distance involved create an issue? I felt like she said she could build a corridor into the maze from anywhere she wanted…
“Are you sure?” She beamed, nodding at me. “In that case, I’ll head out as soon as tomorrow! Expanding this labyrinth was a snap when I borrowed some power from my master, and I feel like I’ve gained some power, too. It’d be kind of fun to make some of the empty floors into a jungle section!”
That part about borrowing power from Veldora concerned me a little, but whatever.
“But as creatures who live in the Forest of Jura, shouldn’t they be placed under Sir Rimuru’s rule?” Treyni pointed out.
She must have been worried about that. But there was eager anticipation written all over her face. Clearly she would love to live with her sisters—and like I’ve said before, I had no reason to deny them. Ramiris did rule the labyrinth, a unique space with her living quarters and a zone left to my management. For the parts under her control, perhaps I should recognize them as extraterritorial from Tempest.
I explained this to them, showing how I wouldn’t question their moving here. Her rule over the labyrinth was unstoppable, and besides, it’d be nice for them to be reunited with their original master.
“We, the treants and dryads, wish to reposition ourselves under the blessed protection of Lady Ramiris.”
“We know it is selfish of us, but would we be able to receive permission for this?”
They’d have it, of course.
The treant colony would be placed on Floor 95, the level on which the beastmen camp was located. It was the largest floor in land area, a circle with a radius a bit over three miles, so we had space to work with. I was intending to build the rest stop on that floor, too, so this worked out well for that, too. People talk about how refreshing a walk in the woods is, and I didn’t want our resting post to be this depressing, clinical thing.
Moving day went pretty fast. It was more of a moving moment, really. Ramiris just opened a door to the labyrinth at the treants’ location, then moved them right inside. The actual process took a few hours, but all it took was opening a door next to each treant, so it was pretty straightforward.
Now Ramiris had an even greater domain to rule over, and I had a more stable labyrinth to work with. Managing the magicules was much easier now, to say nothing of the air conditioning, and the treants couldn’t have asked for anything more. Thanks to the high levels of magic concentration in the air, they were all brimming with energy.
None of the beastmen living in their temporary quarters had any complaints, either. Treants are generally pretty chill, usually asleep and looking like plain old trees—and besides, the beastmen would be going back to the Beast Kingdom sooner or later, so they didn’t mind having some neighbors for the time being. If anything, they welcomed them, since it made the whole floor more comfortable to live in.
They had also extracted a promise from the dryads to help maintain the labyrinth—or really, the dryads volunteered to help. “We’ve had a paradise made for us, so that much would be simple,” Treyni said. Her sisters, and the other dryads, all nodded their agreement.
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With that, we had a small forest village in the labyrinth, along with some very unexpected helpers.
Floor 95, being a multiple of five, was a safe zone. Since we had a bunch of extra floors anyway, I decided to use Floors 91 through 94 as a storage site, a greenhouse for gardens, and a processing facility. To be more specific, Floor 91 would contain storage for metal ore; Floor 92, a plant for producing magisteel; Floor 93, a garden; and Floor 94, another facility for producing honey. There was also free passage all the way to Floor 95, which made movement easy, and the save point in the center of 95 included doors back to other floors above and a single, foreboding stairway going down.
This was a pretty convenient setup, one that cheerfully ignored all the laws of physics but still seemed to work just fine.
By the way, defeating the boss at Floor 90 granted you access to stairs down to Floor 95—if you somehow made it this far, I was happy to give you a bit of a shortcut. Your final, hellish challenge would begin on Floor 96, and before journeying onward, you’d naturally want to rest up and inspect all your equipment. I made sure to put up a door before the stairway down, along with a notice explaining the dangers below, and I also planned to provide an inn and weapon/armor shop near the door.
This inn would be connected to the other safe zones in the labyrinth. The doors were all connected, which helped with this setup a lot. The shop, meanwhile, could offer valuable equipment not available anywhere else, all lined up in front for sale. We were unlikely to see much in the way of customers, so I imagined the shop would be more of a hobby of mine than anything else.
I fantasized about putting some of my own creations in the shop down there as I decided to discuss my idea with Mjöllmile.
So after talking to monster species all day in the audience room, I spent much of the evening helping Ramiris and her new subjects with their move.
This new floor we built would eventually blossom into a forested city of its own. We called it Labyrinth City—a final oasis for those who made it through the Dungeon, a fantastic town that granted visitors more power than they ever thought possible…
…but at that time, I hadn’t imagined that far down the line yet.
My itinerary for the following day involved meeting with the relatively stronger specie
s, including the biggest factions in my recently conquered territory. Guess most of ’em will be in the “observing” camp again, I thought, only to notice a commotion in front of my audience chamber.
A couple of different factions were having a verbal argument. Shuna was staring at them, scowling, while Shion’s eyes were flashing with barely repressed rage. Hoo boy. Hopefully this all works out…
These were the bovoids and equinoids. They had each brought along about a dozen warriors, currently attempting to intimidate one another. It turns out they didn’t get along too well—in fact, they had been at war for over a century. They were fighting to see who would get an audience with me first. I guess they thought being granted my protection ahead of their rival would give them a leg up, but I really didn’t want to get involved. It was all just an annoyance to me.
The two races stood by the door, keeping each other at bay. The situation looked ready to devolve into physical combat at any moment—and given their positions high up the Forest of Jura food chain, they were both intimidating presences.
A magic-born with bullhorns spoke to me first. “Ah, the demon lord! If you want a stout ally in battle, turn to us first! Let the bovoids join your side, and you’ll get to strut around the forest with authority! And once we wipe out those wimpy equinoids once and for all, you won’t find any race in the forest to defy us!”
He certainly was bold, making this proclamation to me without a hint of fear, and he had the strength to back it up. He had more magical energy to him than the ogres and lizardmen I first ran into, that’s for sure. Conservatively, I’d say there were a few A rankers in the group. You’d need that kind of force to wage a hundred-year war, and in terms of pure fighting ability, they may have been the best the Forest of Jura had to offer.
But before I could answer, one of the equinoids erupted in anger. “Hmph! Fool! Any demon lord would have the perception to see that pairing with the equinoids is clearly the decision to make. We’ll destroy any race who dares to claim otherwise, from those bovoids on down!”