That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 3

by Fuse

  This was probably less Dolph’s personal invitation and more his interpretation of Gazel’s feelings, I imagined.

  “All right. In that case, tell King Gazel that I would love to be extended an official invitation. I look forward to visiting again and giving my report.”

  “Excellent! I am sure His Majesty will be overjoyed. Kaijin, Garm, and the rest are also welcome to return at any time. They could join you, if they chose to.”

  Dolph was already excited about the idea. I’m sure Kaijin and the gang would like to visit home sometime. Taking them along could be nice, and I’m sure that’s the whole reason Dolph brought this up with me. He might have that gruff military veneer, but I guess he really looked out for others, too.

  After that and a few other small pleasantries, the Pegasus Knights were busily hurrying their way back home. I felt truly grateful, from the bottom of my heart, that none were hurt.

  With the danger past, I went back into slime form. But just as we were about to head home…

  “Ngh… Where—where am I? What happened to me…?”

  I heard confused muttering.

  Phobio had awoken. It put Benimaru and Shion on their guard, but Phobio wouldn’t have had any energy to fight right now. His wounds were fully healed, but his magic power was exhausted. Plus, with Charybdis fully extracted and eliminated from him, he was back to “merely” being a high-level magic-born—nobody we couldn’t take, if it came to that.

  “Hey there. You up? Do you remember what you did?”

  I spoke slowly to the bleary-eyed Phobio, who was gradually regaining consciousness at the sound of my words. Then he jumped up and, incredibly suddenly, prostrated himself before me and Milim. Guess he remembered.

  “I—I am sorry! I mean, I deeply apologize to you! I’ve done something horrible to you, Lady Milim…and I’ve put so much trouble upon all of you a second time!”

  The pallid magic-born before me was a lot more impulsive with his emotions than I had thought. It seemed unnatural, in a way, someone like that causing so much chaos.

  I was just about to ask what drove him to do all this when Treyni asked an even more pointed question.

  “How…did you know where Charybdis was sealed away? Because I highly doubt you merely stumbled upon it.”

  That was a good point. This was a proud magic-born; if revenge against Milim was what he wanted, I bet he figured he could do that by his own hand. But pursuing revenge to the point that he instilled Charybdis into his own body? That seemed quite unusual, and I had been wondering about that for a while.

  “Well…”

  To his credit, he didn’t hide any of it and fully explained what happened to him—the request he made to the two masked agents of the Moderate Jesters.

  “A pair of strange-looking masked clowns? But that location is secret—only we knew where it was, and it was the hero herself who told us. A formidable foe, indeed, if they were able to track it down… And masked, you say?”

  This seemed to trouble Treyni in particular. She seemed to know them.

  “Was one of the masks asymmetrical, perhaps? Drawn to look like they were making fun of you?”

  “N-no. There was a girl whose mask made it look like she was crying, and then a fat man with an angry mask. They called themselves Teare and Footman.”

  Not the guy Treyni knew, then. But…wow, mysterious masked magic-born, huh?

  …Wait a sec.

  “Hey, I think Benimaru said there was one there during the attack on their homeland…”

  “Yes. I just thought of that myself. A rotund magic-born wearing a mask of anger. That was one of the people controlling the orcs!”

  So that was it. The figure who pitted me against Benimaru and the other ogres in the first place.

  “Indeed. One of the orc generals working away from my command was accompanied by a high-level magic-born bodyguard, hired by Gelmud. That man’s name was Footman,” Geld added.

  Then—

  “And come to think of it, when Sir Laplace rescued me, he said he was in Gelmud’s employ as well… He said he was the vice president of the Moderate Jesters, which he described as a jacks-of-all-trades group. And the mask he had on… It was just as Treyni described. Asymmetrical—and with an arrogant expression on it!”

  Gabil dropped the bombshell.

  Events from across the land were suddenly being connected together.

  “…I see. The man was called Laplace, you say?”

  “And…Footman? I will be certain to remember that.”

  Treyni’s eyes were filled with a dangerous light, and Benimaru wore a defiant smile.

  I was surprised to hear that Treyni had made contact with these guys as well. Given her penchant for popping in and out of existence all over the place, they must have crossed paths somewhere. And while Footman had not personally interacted with the ogres back there, he was certainly a major factor behind the destruction of their homeland. They were not fully our enemies, perhaps, but they certainly had something against us all.

  The Moderate Jesters. A mysterious band of jacks-of-all-trades. They sounded like trouble, so I decided to ask Milim if she knew anything.

  “Mmm? I’ve never heard of that group before, no. Nobody said anything about using guys like those to cause strife among races or anything. How interesting! I wish I could’ve gotten to meet them.”

  Milim, at least, had heard nothing from her demon lord cohorts. She didn’t know many details about the whole orc lord operation, I suppose. Gelmud was the main man behind all that, apparently—Milim just got the outlines of it, not the little details like hiring a bunch of jokers to help push things along.

  “Maybe it was Clayman scheming behind the scenes with this, not Gelmud. He had the connections for that,” she indifferently continued.

  “Clayman? Who’s that?”

  “Mm? One of the demon lords. He just loves dirty little schemes like that.”

  Geez. She was exposing him like it was no big deal, but what the heck? The guy was still just a suspect; we didn’t know if he was the real criminal here yet—but as Milim put it, Clayman was the kind of guy who’d arrange something like that. Not because Gelmud wasn’t up to the task, but because Clayman was always trying to set it up so he’d have an advantage over the other demon lords.

  The orc lord operation was devised by three of those lords, who assigned the job to Gelmud in order to keep things balanced among themselves. If any of them was gonna try to game the system, as Milim described it, it was definitely Clayman. I didn’t have much to comment about on that point, so I filed the fact away in the back of my mind.

  I had thought this whole affair was over, but there were still plainly some issues left to tackle.

  “Something does bother me. This Laplace… He said he was not among the monster tribes.” After Milim was done speaking, Treyni offered another observation.

  In this world, a monster tribe could still be defined as pretty much anyone who was hostile against the human races. Saying you weren’t a monster was another way of saying you were allied with humans and so on. Assuming you weren’t lying. But if they had no quarrel with the human race, that seemed feasible enough to me—there were bound to be other magic-born who took my approach.

  Or… Hang on.

  “He said he wasn’t magic?” I asked Treyni.

  “Yes, Sir Rimuru. He might have supporters in human society.”

  Aha. Yeah, this was rough. A major issue, in fact. But I had no way of confirming it. Without any evidence, debating over it was useless. So I resolved to keep an eye out for this weird group and wrapped up my interrogation of Phobio.

  We now had a fairly ample amount of info to work with. Putting it all together, one truth became clear about this incident: These Moderate Jester guys liked approaching their targets with claims of offering help. It allowed the Jesters to achieve their goals without dirtying their own hands.

  With the orc lord, they attempted to set off a war among monster races
. This time, they wanted to have Charybdis fight us—or Milim, at least. It sounded to me like Phobio had simply been taken advantage of. The real mastermind was someone else.

  “Sounds like they used and abused you, huh? Try to be a bit more careful about taking fishy offers like this in the future, all right?”

  Phobio wasn’t exactly free of fault here, but given that the real culprit was elsewhere, it didn’t seem right to punish him. I didn’t want to stir up added trouble, besides. If he swore he wouldn’t bother us anymore, I was glad to let him go free.

  “…Huh?”

  He was still prostrate before us.

  “I, er, I don’t deserve to be forgiven. I accepted this offer at my own discretion. It had nothing to do with Lord Carillon, so please, allow me to pay for this with my life…”

  It was weird, seeing him act so bold and brave while bent over in front of us.

  “N-no, really, I have no reason to kill you. Right, Milim?”

  “Mm-hmm! Of course! I wanted to give you a wallop, sure, but I’m all grown-up now. I’m not angry at all, so consider yourself forgiven!”

  A wallop, huh…? Doesn’t sound all that grown-up to me. But oh well.

  “See? And if she forgives you, I wouldn’t worry about any of us.”

  “…But I let my anger take control of me…”

  “Mm-hmm. And probably… That guy with the angry mask? He was probably using those emotions of yours.”

  Phobio looked up at my observation. “Come to think of it…that bastard said he was attracted to me by my feelings of anger and disgust…”

  His face was astonished as it dawned on him. I was just giving him a bit of a lecture, but maybe I was more on target than I thought.

  “Yeah. See? So don’t worry about it.”

  “He’s right. And you’re fine with that, too, aren’t you, Carillon?”

  Huh? Carillon?

  As if to answer my question, a man appeared from the underbrush. He had an attractively rough, unpolished look, sporting a well-tailored but well-worn outfit. His short blond hair stood on end, his sharp eyes only adding to the intense atmosphere he presented.

  “Heh. You noticed, huh, Milim?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yeah, of course,” he replied.

  Between the name Carillon and the obvious friendliness they shared, I could guess the identity of this wild-looking man projecting his inner strength in the quiet. He was nowhere near as large as Charybdis, but he presented exactly that sort of overpowering aura—if not more of one, like he’d blow you away with a thought.

  So this is Carillon the demon lord, huh?

  “Hey. The name’s Carillon. Thanks for helpin’ this guy out without killing him.”

  Thus the demon lord Carillon greeted me, looking me straight in the eye.

  The air grew suddenly tense.

  I had no words to overcome the daunting aura of strength that overwhelmed me. Once again, I recalled how the term demon lord wasn’t just for show. But as the leader of this land, I couldn’t let myself be cowed like this.

  “I wasn’t expecting the man himself to show up. My name is Rimuru Tempest, the leader of Tempest, our nation of monsters here in the forest,” I declared, summoning all the courage I could.

  “Pfft! A single magic-born person, establishing a new nation? Perhaps I woulda believed it in the past, but in this world, you’d have to be suicidal. I was told the orc lord killed our mystery magic-born, but I guess that report wasn’t too true, huh? You’re the masked magic-born that killed Gelmud, aren’t you?”

  You look at this slime, and that’s the conclusion you reach? That was the only thing I could think. But Milim was here, and maybe he got to witness the battle against Charybdis as well.

  “Yep. You’re right.” I transformed into a human. “So are you here to get back at me for that, or…?”

  I doubted it, but I asked anyway. Carillon grinned at the question.

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha! Funny. No wonder Milim likes you.”

  The laughter instantly dispelled all the tension. But once he was done guffawing to himself, Carillon’s face stiffened. Then, he did something none of us was expecting. He admitted he was wrong.

  “Well, sorry one of my men went berserk on you. Guess I neglected to supervise him well enough, and I hope you’ll forgive me for that.”

  He didn’t bow his head or anything, but he did apologize in the only way he could. Plus:

  “You could say I owe you one now, I s’pose. Lemme know if you have anything I can help ya with.”

  Really, he couldn’t have been more sincere with us. Carillon, this demon lord who was far more powerful than myself, was acting in good faith with someone like me. I suppose it just proves how incredibly, deeply broad-minded he was. He owes me one, huh? If that’s how he sees it, I can think of something…

  “In that case, it’d be nice if you could sign a nonaggression treaty with us.”

  “…Is that all you need? All right. By my name as demon lord—or should I say, as the Beast Master Carillon of the Beast Kingdom of Eurazania—I swear I’ll never turn our blades on any of you. That assumes, of course, you promise the same to us.”

  He accepted it easily—another sign of his incredible capabilities. I found it quite admirable.

  Since we were already flustered enough, we agreed to send envoys later on to work out the details.

  I didn’t know how much I could trust in this pact; given how impulsive Phobio turned out to be, could his master Carillon be much the same way? It should mean that he wouldn’t butt in on our affairs for a while, at least.

  If I could learn more about Eurazania, maybe we could open diplomatic relations with them, too. That’d be the best thing.

  And that pretty much wrapped up the day. Carillon let his fists do the talking with Phobio, putting him near the brink of death once more, but we all have our funny traits like that, I suppose. He lent his limp subordinate a shoulder as the two of them shuffled away and teleported themselves back home.

  It was time for us to return home, too. The day had its ups and downs, but things were finally starting to settle down a bit.

  EPILOGUE

  A NEW ARTIFICE

  Several days had passed since Charybdis’s defeat. The land of Tempest was calm once more. A lot had happened, certainly, but our nation was finally starting to get recognized, and I couldn’t have been happier.

  We were now on friendly relations with the Armed Nation of Dwargon and the kingdom of Blumund. The road between us and Dwargon would be opening up soon, and my official invitation had already arrived. I needed to make my report, but they were planning more to receive me as an official state guest.

  Over in Blumund, Fuze was doing a lot for me by going around royal and noble circles and convincing them that given how this latest crisis had turned out, it’d be much more to their advantage to work with us, not against us. Blumund wasn’t a large nation, so “noble circles” didn’t encompass that many people, as he said. None were putting up a lot of roadblocks against him, so I doubted I had much to worry about.

  “Oh, trust me, I’ve got so much dirt on the nobles that the carrot-and-stick approach’ll work just fine with them,” he had told me as he left. And given the sneer on his face, I felt safe in leaving all that to him.

  Kabal and his cohorts seemed pretty intent on staying here, but they still had a job to carry out—escorting Fuze back home.

  “Can we visit again?”

  “Yeahhh, I’m not sure I can live without Shuna’s cooking any longer.”

  “You can say no all you want; we’ll be back soon!”

  They very reluctantly left, taking Fuze along with them. I wasn’t going to turn them away; they were more than welcome to return, and I set up bed space for them and everything.

  And there’s another nation I shouldn’t be forgetting—the Beast Kingdom of Eurazania. If our talks went well there, that’d be one more nation to build formal ties with. We got put through the
wringer, but we sure earned a lot from it. There was no telling how our discussions would turn out yet, but building a formal friendship with one of the bigger demon lords was a major coup. I wanted to see it succeed.

  So we gained a lot, and if anything I, personally, gained just as much. The Charybdis-specific skills Magic Interference and Gravity Flight, for one. That, and Resist Magic, the ultimate ace in the hole against any magic thrown at me. I was having the Great Sage analyze all these to the hilt, so I was sure it’d be connecting them to other skills before too long.

  That was one other reason why I asked Milim to keep Phobio alive. I mean, I did want to wrest Charybdis away from him, but it’d also be nice, I figured, if I earned a few new skills as a side effect. With all the trouble he put me through, I felt I deserved to reward myself a little.

  So what were we doing now?

  Thus! Swishh! Thwam! Bash!

  I think the ambient noise speaks well enough for itself.

  Benimaru, Soei, Shion, and I were being pummeled.

  “Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Save your breath!!”

  The woman laughing shrilly at us was, of course, the demon lord Milim. She was training us, which I thought appropriate given how unfairly strong she was. It was four of us against the one of her, but it was hopeless. The Dragon’s Eye from her saw completely through every trick and attack we attempted.

  That’s Milim for you. She’s incredible, I thought, more intensely than ever before.

  Milim was wearing a Dragon Knuckle around her fist—the weapon present I had promised her long ago. Such knuckles were originally meant for punching with your bare hands without hurting yourself, boosting the force of your strikes in the process. Not this one—this was the exact opposite. Put this on, and it restricted your punching power by around 90 percent. The magisteel at its core applied the Reduce Speed and Power Drain inscription magics to the wearer.

  When I gave it to her, she peered at it with intense curiosity, then gladly accepted it. She’d been wearing it every moment since—including during meals, which I had to warn her about, much to her whining chagrin. I was glad she liked it, but she had to learn the right time and place.