by Fuse
I was glad Rigurd got me, at least.
“Yeah, you guys are lucky,” chimed in Shion, who was already back from the arena. “If it wasn’t for those unwelcome visitors just now, I would’ve joined with Rigurd to do you all in. Why, for all the unbearable things you said, I would have plucked your tongues out so you could never speak again! So thank Sir Rimuru for his mercy, and try to show some obedience from now on!”
The bovoids and equinoids all nodded, shaking uncontrollably. “We—we promise we’ll live up to your expectations! Please forgive our disrespect!” And given how they were acting, I could believe they wouldn’t try it again.
“If you swear loyalty to me, I will consider it. First, though, stop your fighting and be quiet until you hear from me.”
I didn’t need to speak to them directly, but I thought it best to be doubly sure. I wanted to invite the bovoid leader over later under one pretense or another, so I could negotiate with him about working in the labyrinth. Given the (unintentional) fright we gave them, he ought to be cooperative.
Really, the chance at getting such a great boss for my project made all the stress of the day just fly out of my mind.
The audiences went smoothly after that. Rumors of Shion taking control of Daggrull’s sons spread like wildfire, enough to make even the powerful bovoids and equinoids lie low, so nobody was looking down on me now.
I was hoping things would end on a high note, but…
Soon after, an elder from the elven race and a few of his men arrived. I say elder, but he looked like a regular young man to me. No women were among them, which was kind of a shame, given how gorgeous lady elves tend to be.
Elves, of course, had a reputation for living practically forever. Both they and dwarves were originally spirits brought to physical life (or fallen from higher planes of existence), who became fairies and were eventually granted material bodies. Apparently, you could trace the genealogy of goblins back to the fairies, too: Fairies bearing the earth element eventually became dwarves; those with the water element became merfolk; fire became goblins; and wind became elves. Their ancestors were the results of fairies intermingling with creatures from other races long ago.
Apparently, goblins had little in the way of fairy blood left, which made their lives comparatively short. Even ogres, the next evolution up from them, only made it up to a hundred or so. When you got to ogre mage level, that reenergized the power from your spiritual ancestors, giving you skills that bordered on the divine.
But back to elves. Their lives were said to span between five and eight hundred years. Even elves with human blood mixed in could make it up to almost three hundred. This could vary a lot, though, since the more fairy blood you had in you, the longer you tended to live. Elves grew into maturity around the age of twenty, and beyond that, the passage of time simply did nothing to them. Only when on death’s door did they suddenly begin to rapidly age, and in about twenty years, infirmity would finally take their lives.
Staying young for a few centuries might sound like a dream to most humans. But another trait of theirs was how you never really saw them produce a lot of children. Living such long lives, they didn’t have much of a natural inclination to keep their bloodline going. That’s why they still numbered relatively few. (Bear in mind, of course, that I learned all this from the ladies at the Night Butterfly, a nightclub in the Dwarven Kingdom I was well familiar with, so I couldn’t say how much of it was true.)
By the way, fairies themselves still existed—they were pretty common monsters, actually. These were smaller spirits given monster form by the effects of magicules around them; they were about the size of Ramiris and had a reputation as pranksters. They had intelligence, but they couldn’t procreate and didn’t live long. The personification of a major spirit was a far cry from them, enough so to be classified as a different monster entirely.
Ramiris tended to be bunched in with these fairies, but she was actually something different. She was fallen from an upper-level existence known as a spirit queen, which meant she may’ve been higher up the evolutionary ladder than the ancestors of elves or dwarves. It sounded like she went through an eternal pattern of reincarnation, although it didn’t seem like she understood the process herself too much…
…But I’ve gotten way off track. I lent an ear to the elder.
“It is an honor to lay eyes upon you,” he said with a salute. “We have come here today to celebrate you and offer our heartfelt gratitude…”
Normally, this would be the time when they’d offer their loyalty to me. Some of the races—the initial entries into the Federation—even expressed their thanks at their safety being guaranteed. But this was the first time I had ever met this elder. I wasn’t sure what he had to thank me for, so I had Rigurd ask for me.
“Ah, that would be—”
As the elder put it, it had to do with the bad blood between the bovoids and equinoids. It turned out the biggest victims of their hundred-year war were the elves.
According to him, elves, a race that lives off the blessings of the forest, fear the expansion of war zones more than anything else. To protect their hidden enclaves from outside enemies, the elves install “barriers” that scramble one’s sense of direction, but these barriers had fallen with the trees in the midst of the wars. Directional confusion didn’t mean much, after all, if the enclaves were in plain sight.
They tried to move their settlements, keeping casualties as low as they could, but the war kept growing bigger and bigger. It made the forest’s animals and monsters flee for their lives, it razed the local fruits and vegetables before they could be harvested, and some elves even resorted to taking work in the Dwarven Kingdom. (I guess that was what the ladies at the Night Butterfly were up to.)
Over time, the loss of population grew to become a crisis, making it hard to keep the enclaves going. Some of the elves considered making yet another move elsewhere, but as large as the Forest of Jura is, it wasn’t that easy to find a suitable destination.
“Thus,” the elder continued, “we considered appealing to those violent thugs to see if we could reach some kind of agreement. But before we could, my lord, the events of just now transpired. Now all we need is somewhere to move to…”
Hopefully, as he said, that would convince the elves who left to come back.
This gave me an idea. Someplace to move to? Yeah, I got that. Right here in town.
There were fewer than three hundred elves in the forest. At one point, there was a lot more, enough to build a prosperous kingdom in ancient times, but those glory years were long past. The elves were forced to turn nomadic, spreading to the four corners of the world—but regardless, I knew a place that could fit three hundred just fine. Remember that little forest I had just built down in Floor 95 of the Dungeon? There you go.
I could even put them to work—helping Apito run our honey operations, cultivating rare plants that only grew in magicule-rich forests, maybe running the inn I planned to open on Floor 95. They could run the weapon shop down there, and if any monsters appeared on that floor (not that I expected it), it’d be great for this town to have a little elven protection. I heard that elves and treants got along well, so I doubted Treyni or the others would be against this.
Plus, with all the jobs on offer, I figured it’d help attract the more distant elves back here. Maybe the ladies from that nightclub would venture back, too—and then I could build an elf-run VIP room down there, maybe…?!
Yes. This was excellent. There was already a tavern in town, but that was more of a gastropub geared for adventurers. If you wanted someplace for a quiet drink and relaxation, you’d have to go to our administration-exclusive dining halls. I’m sure Shuna would be glad to serve me in my own room, but I didn’t need alcohol that badly. I’m just talking about, you know, taking a breather. It’s not that having Shuna around would make it impossible to relax or anything—or impossible to BS with Gobta, or have private discussions with Mjöllmile, or whatever.
&
nbsp; …No, really!
I’m just saying, if we had something like the Night Butterfly on the ninety-fifth floor, it’d be useful for a lot of different situations.
I decided to offer this idea to the elder at once. “Elder, I think I know someplace that’d be able to accept you…”
When Rigurd realized I was speaking, he took a step back and listened. I don’t how he got trained to do it, but he could calmly handle just about any situation by this point. If I ever went off script during an event like this, he could keep up without any blank stares. I loved that.
“Ah! You do, Lord Rimuru?”
“Mm-hmm. If it’s about three hundred of you, we’d be able to fit you all in…”
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“…Thank you so much! I will inform my people of this the moment I return.”
“Great. I’ll get it all set up so it’s available for move-in when you’re ready. But do you mind if I ask a favor in return?”
“Of course not, my lord. If our powers can be of help to you, nothing could make us happier!”
The elven elder was even happier about it than I thought. It’d save them from having to wander the forest in search of a safe haven, which I’m sure came as a relief. It sounded like he was sending an envoy over right now to get people ready.
So now we had elves moving into our labyrinth.
I figured that was the end of the conversation, but one thing did concern me. The elder mentioned that elves had been leaving their enclave to work and not coming back. With a race as tightly knit as the elves, it seemed odd to me that any of them would abandon their homeland. Some elves even reportedly went out hunting and never returned, which disturbed me.
Elves could be very individualistic by nature, the elder said, so perhaps a passing whim drove them away from home. But then I remembered what I heard in Mjöllmile’s shop—the proposal from Viscount Cazac of Englesia. A place that dealt in elven slaves, wasn’t it?
Maybe it wasn’t a matter of these younger elves choosing not to go back. If my hunch about the criminal group Cazac was fronting turned out to be true… Well, hopefully it wasn’t, but if it was, that would be a big problem.
My dream of launching an elf nightclub was so close at hand. Seeing the elder off after we said our goodbyes, I thought that I’d better investigate this thoroughly.
Thus, I gave Soei behind me a Thought Communication message.
(Soei, I want you to investigate a man named Viscount Cazac in Blumund.)
(Yes, my lord!)
In a moment, he sent out a Replication of himself, beginning his work at once. That should be enough. He’d probably find something out before my audiences were over.
I’ll probably want to ask Mjöllmile what he knows about criminal slave merchants, too. If it turns out Cazac’s involved, there’d be no mercy for him. It was an affront to the deep love I had for elves—a love that drove me to open my very own elven nightclub. I wasn’t about to let anyone keep me from that dream.
The long, long audience period was finally in its last day. Once I was through this, I’d kick off the Founder’s Festival in three days.
No problems of note occurred after the elven contingent. It was going smooth as silk, and there were no major issues among the monsters staying in town. The little scuffle with Daggrull’s kids was the talk of the town in pretty short order, which probably kept anyone who wanted to show off their strength in line.
Geld had taken some time off, which let him return to Tempest a few days ago, and Diablo and Hakuro also arrived back the previous day.
“Ah, Sir Rimuru! You are as stately and dignified as always. My heart bursts with joy at being able to see you again!”
Diablo was buttering me up once more, punctuating the flattery with his usual ominous snickering. There was nothing “dignified” about a slime, so I reasoned that he probably needed glasses or something. I wanted a report from him, but that could wait—which disappointed him, but I needed to keep today free for an important discussion.
That was how major today’s visitor was to me. No letting my guard down around them, that’s for sure. As I saw it, it’d be my toughest audience yet. That was why I had my whole crew in attendance for today’s sessions.
Right now, this entourage was being welcomed into town by Benimaru, my right-hand man. (This should also say something about how crucial this was to me.) Already, on the other side of the door, I could sense a violent force approaching like a tidal wave. The rumors, I realized, were true.
The door opened, revealing a posse clad in full armor. These were the tengu, an independent force residing in the Khusha Mountains on the horizon of the Forest of Jura—outside my jurisdiction. While Benimaru had met with them once before, this was less of an audience and more of a summit between two factions.
Standing in front of this armored crew was a beautiful young woman. The tengu were humanoids known for their almost comically long noses, but this girl looked like any normal human. Tengu, bearing the same name as the figures of Japanese mythology, were apparently a hybrid species between angels and wolfmen—
Report. To be more accurate, they are not a hybrid. They are angels incarnated into the bodies of wolfmen.
Right—a type of incarnation. That.
Wolfmen were a type of beastman—a proud, isolated race who held an almost divine presence in people’s minds. Thus, calling the tengu long-nosed was often more a metaphor than anything else, a way of referring to the supernatural sense of smell they boasted.
Now then, for this species worshipped as the gods of the mountains—
Report. To be more accurate, they are not a species. They are a group born from a single individual, much like the subject Ranga.
Um, sure. Right. Honestly, I don’t really follow it all, but anyway, a bunch of crazy-powerful gods decided to create a bunch of crazy-powerful wolfmen, and then an angel incarnated themself in one, creating a new sentient species. The single individual that led to this species was the tengu elder—the mother of the girl before me. And since creating all these children apparently weakened the elder to the point of powerlessness, this girl was essentially the tengu leader.
This is why it’s more accurate to call this a summit. And not even that fully described how important this meeting was.
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Benimaru had come to the tengu’s domain once. They had been kind to us at times, permitting the migration of high orcs through their territory, but they were also proud, and if I floated the idea of enforcing my rule over the mountains to them, it’d almost certainly result in war.
I, of course, didn’t want that. I didn’t see any need to fight this race revered as mountain gods. Benimaru understood that, so he was on strict instructions to just get their permission to build a highway on their lands between Tempest and Thalion.
“The negotiations went successfully,” Benimaru had said when he later reported back. “Everything went well with them. Not even the tengu can afford to ignore you, Sir Rimuru, so they mentioned plans to come see you sometime.”
The news sounded good, but Benimaru looked exhausted.
“You sure there weren’t any problems?”
“No, not exactly, but…”
He was dodging the question. And Alvis, whom I sent along with him, had seemed off her game—or at the very least, miffed about something—ever since she got back. It seemed like something I was better off not asking about.
So I decided to force it out of Benimaru anyway—in private, over a few drinks, since he didn’t seem interested in telling the rest of our administration about it. The way he described it…
Benimaru had headed over to the tengu’s hidden homeland with Alvis and a dozen or so members of Team Kurenai. The journey over went smoothly, but in front of a cave near the peak of the Khusha Mountains, they were stopped by a young tengu warrior, dressed in white with a katana on his belt. On his back we
re two white wings, and he also bore a tail and doglike triangular ears.
Based on the refinement of his posture, he was clearly trained in battle, Benimaru thought. Speaking with him, they asked for permission to go through the “barrier” placed within the cave. The warrior agreed but allowed only Benimaru and Alvis to follow him inside.
On the other side, they found a flowery paradise. It was neither hot nor cold, the temperature always pleasant—a beautiful land, befitting the powerful race who called it home. In the courtyard they were taken to, Benimaru was greeted by a beautiful woman—one who looked human, unlike any of the other tengu. Her hair came down to her shoulders, pure white at the roots and fading into a crimson red around her ears. Her small, soft lips were the color of cherry blossoms, but her long, sharp eyes were the eyes of a wolf, watching Benimaru like a beast sizing up its prey.
Benimaru realized he couldn’t let his guard down. The commanding presence she had over the room was reminiscent of the demon lord Carillon—or perhaps even stronger than that.
“My name is Benimaru. I come on behalf of the demon lord Rimuru.”
“Welcome, kind messenger. I am Momiji, daughter of the tengu elder. What brings you to us? Are you aiming to take over this land?” the girl asked with a beguiling smile.
Her words were poison-tipped. Benimaru could tell he wasn’t welcome at all. But he didn’t let that bother him.
“I have no such intentions. What we seek is permission to venture over the Khusha Mountains along the border with the Forest of Jura. And, if possible, we’d like to request permission to dig a tunnel into this mountain.”
“Hmph. No ambitions of a land grab, then? You may pass through the mountains all you like…but what is this tunnel you speak of?” Momiji seemed less than enthusiastic about this conversation, but the word tunnel piqued her interest.