That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 7

by Fuse

  Hinata even let out a smile as she coldly laid out the facts.

  “In that case,” Grigori asked, “should we just sit here and tolerate whatever Rimuru cares to do?”

  “Yes. We should. The demon lord has declared his disinterest in hostilities with the human race, and there is no further reason for us to be hostile in return. Archbishop Reyhiem of Farmus was part of the invasion team, and I myself attempted to defeat Rimuru. We have both failed. And now that he likely sees us both as enemies, I’m not sure there is another option for us besides keeping quiet.”

  “But those are the mistakes of the Western Holy Church—and of yourself! It is not the mistake of Lubelius!” Grigori bellowed.

  Hinata stood strong, her smile turning frigid. “Exactly. And that is why you need to stay hands-off. If worse comes to worst, I will declare that it was the arbitrary decision of the Western Holy Church to act against him… In other words, me.”

  “Wha?!”

  “Lady Hinata!!”

  The paladins voiced their objections as Hinata addressed the Master Rooks. Even Saare found himself unable to answer.

  “Calm down. I doubt he wants to wage war with us as well.”

  The statement offered no comfort.

  “C’mon, Hinata, you really trust him that much?” Saare asked.

  “I know this sounds unlikely from someone who tried to kill him earlier, but yes, I think we can trust him. He told me himself that he’s also an otherworlder. I ignored it at the time, but it seemed he was trying to avoid conflict with me.”

  “An otherworlder?! So he was reincarnated as a magic-born, like the demon lord Leon?”

  “No. According to what he said, he died on his home planet and was resurrected as a slime on this one.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You should know how much I dislike jokes, Saare.”

  “Pfft. But I’ve never heard that pattern before. There are cases of people being reborn, yeah, but that’s just a matter of retaining your memories from your previous life. But crossing worlds while doing it…? Maybe, but…”

  “I haven’t heard of it,” Renard said, consulting his own memories.

  “But what are even the chances of being reincarnated as a slime?” Arnaud asked. “I mean, what if that happened to you, Litus?”

  Litus’s well-defined face twisted into a grimace. “I wouldn’t want to imagine it. If I can’t even speak the language, how could I explain to people what I’m thinking? Given the literacy rates around the world, I’m not sure I could even convince people that I’m not a dumb animal. Slimes aren’t supposed to talk.”

  No speech, no arms or legs. Even if you shared a language, you wouldn’t be able to use it. Thinking about it, Litus even began to pity Rimuru a little.

  “Yeah.”

  “True…”

  “I had dismissed his talking as the ravings of a monster,” Hinata said, “but I think he was probably telling the truth the whole time. At this point, I do feel I was a bit needlessly rough on him.”

  If Rimuru wasn’t lying—if he was trying his hardest to be honest with her—Hinata realized now that he probably hated her guts for not making even a perfunctory effort to communicate.

  “Well, who can blame you?” Saare reasoned. “He’s a monster.”

  “Yes,” Renard said, “and our faith forbids contact with them.”

  Both of them likely would’ve done the same thing Hinata did in that situation. Their faith did not deal in gray areas. Lending an ear to a monster was unthinkable, and if Hinata did do that, it would lead to serious questions.

  “Plus, I was told that Rimuru was the one who killed my master…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve talked about it before. Those Eastern merchants were using me. They told me that the monsters were transforming into people to eat their way into other nations—forming their own country and tricking the ones around them. They also said Rimuru, the named monster leading them, killed my master. I immediately resolved to kill him.”

  Saare dejectedly shook his head. “And you let him get away. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing now, huh…?”

  He was right. By this point, it was clear this tip Hinata picked up from the merchants had given her nothing but trouble. She knew it, and she also knew that no matter how her encounter with Rimuru ended, she’d still be dealing with tons of fallout.

  “I tell you, though, he has a natural talent for fleeing. And now he’s a demon lord. He’s undoubtedly evolved, so taking him on again couldn’t be a good idea.”

  No one objected. The missive was given; there was no use trying to argue this on religious grounds. They would have to make an attempt at reconciliation.

  “So what are you going to do?” Renard asked.

  “I can’t do anything,” Hinata calmly replied.

  If this was a human being, she would readily risk her life to fight him. But if the demon lord Rimuru wants to build relations with other countries, Hinata was ready to silently accept that. She had no intention of turning her back on the will of Luminus. If Rimuru’s actions start diverging from his words, on the other hand, that’s another matter.

  “Then what if Rimuru sees you as his enemy?”

  “Yeah, you did try to kill him. Now that he’s got a bunch more power, maybe he’ll try to get back atcha, huh? I wouldn’t blame the guy.”

  Hinata brushed off the concern. “I told you—I’ll just say it was all my own selfish decision. But before we engage in any hostilities, I want to try going over and talking with him. If need be, I’ll give him an apology, too.”

  She made it sound so casual, the way she put it, but nobody in the joint meeting could let this pass.

  “That’s crazy!”

  “It’s incredibly dangerous!”

  “The demon lord might set a trap to kill you when he has the chance, Lady Hinata!”

  “Yes! And even if he doesn’t, what if all his legions of monsters descend upon you?”

  “Calm down. I’m not saying I’ll simply waltz over there tomorrow. I need to make sure I correctly understand Rimuru’s mind-set first…”

  But as she attempted to simmer things down in the room, Hinata personally didn’t expect much of a problem. The reports all painted Rimuru as a pretty softhearted person. In her brief experiences with him, she saw nothing that made her question this. If they could both speak frankly with each other… It was a selfish hope, she knew, but it seemed worth pursuing.

  It was hope, however, that could never be fulfilled. Among the tangled desires of so many players, all at the mercy of their own motives, things were now moving in a worse direction than even Hinata anticipated.

  There was a knock on the conference-room door. “Come in,” Hinata curtly replied, assuming it was finally Reyhiem. The guards on the other side obliged, opening the heavy door, and inside strode exactly the man she expected—Cardinal Nicolaus, one of her most trusted of friends, and a nervous-looking Archbishop Reyhiem behind him.

  That much had all been scheduled in advance. But it was the group filing in behind them that made Hinata’s eyebrows arch upward. The Seven Days Clergy was here.

  (Good to see you again, Hinata.)

  (Are you in good health?)

  (What are you looking so surprised for?)

  Hinata couldn’t hide her astonishment. “Why are all of you here…?” she unconsciously whispered. The normally staid cardinal was looking nervous himself, and Reyhiem was white as a sheet.

  “Who are these guys, Hinata?” Saare asked.

  “S-silence, Saare!” Nicolaus hurriedly replied. “You are in the presence of the Seven Days!”

  Nicolaus sat up straight, startled. “…The Seven Days? The ones of legend?”

  “Exactly,” Hinata admitted—and when she did, everyone in the room stood up and saluted.

  The members of the Seven Days Clergy were all wise and well trained, surpassing the realm of Enlightened and charged with training the next genera
tion of Heroes. Their existence was the stuff of legend, shrouded in mystery, and they never went out in public, content with being discussed in the context of fairy tales. Not even the paladins knew about them—only a few directly interacted with them, including Hinata and Nicolaus. One had to be at the very top of the Western Holy Church to be introduced to them.

  This was the group that administered the Seven Days Trial undertaken by Hinata, a test to help determine the next Heroes and champions of humanity. This responsibility made the Clergy a vital part of the Church.

  But Hinata hated them. They were top-level advisers to the Church, ordered by Luminus to oversee the organization and educate its staff. However, before Hinata took up her post, the Crusaders were an organization in name only. To her, it was sheer negligence.

  Looking back, I should’ve stripped them of their powers when I had the chance.

  Hinata’s unique skill Usurper worked in two ways. One, called Seize, took away its target’s skills; the other, called Copy, let her learn them for herself. During her Trial, she thought of the Clergy as legendary contributors to the Luminist cause, so she naturally exercised Copy to learn from their powers and improve herself. One could call her an apprentice to the Clergy along those lines…but the Seven Days were not having it. They shunned Hinata for daring to rise above them, interfering with her in any way they could find.

  This was a crafty group, one that had lurked in the darkness of the Church and called the shots for an untold amount of time. But there was nothing productive in their actions. And once she took the Trial and realized that, Hinata immediately judged them to be useless relics, took their skills, and left. Now she was using what she learned to train Arnaud and the rest of the division commanders.

  I wonder if that’s why Luminus had me take the Seven Days Trial in the first place…

  If she did, she had to hand it to Luminus. Such incredible wisdom. To her, the Clergy had plainly abandoned their mission to train the next generation, instead focusing on covering their own backs. But if Luminus let them dodder on, there must have been a reason for it. That was why she never defied them. Not in public.

  Once everyone was seated again, Hinata addressed the group.

  “So may I ask what brings you here today?”

  (Hee-hee-hee! No need for alarm.)

  (No, no. Archbishop Reyhiem here has brought back some information about the demon lord Rimuru, has he not?)

  (We were simply interested in hearing about it ourselves.)

  The voices echoed around in her mind. The Seven Days Clergy used Thought Communication to answer her. She sized them up again.

  There were three of them present—not the entire contingent—and in her judgment, these were the most corrupt ones out of the entire group.

  Among them was Arze, the Tuesday Priest who governed fire. His force was like a disposable lighter compared with Shizue Izawa’s. He had nothing to teach, and Hinata didn’t even need Usurper to complete his trial—but for some reason, he must’ve assumed she was incapable of Seizing his skills. That made him look down at her constantly, which rankled her.

  The other two present, Dena, the Monday Priest, and Vena, the Friday Priest—Hinata couldn’t guess at their motives. Helping Arze out, probably.

  What a chore. Luminus ordered me to make this as quick and painless as possible, too…

  Hinata grew nervous. Rimuru already had a poor impression of her. If she let this Clergy get in her way here, she might never be able to reconcile with him—but as long as she didn’t have a bead on their goals, she had to focus on Reyhiem. She turned off her mind as she lent him an ear.

  “I was foolish,” Reyhiem began. “We challenged a foe that was fearsome, far too fearsome for any of us. He is a demon lord, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Through our own foolishness, we have engineered the birth of a new demon lord!”

  His memories of the event put him into a frenzy, his eyes bloodshot and his voice raised to a near scream. He continued, recounting the events that led to this birth—his misguided deeds, all laid bare without omission. It wasn’t on someone’s orders; he was being driven by the compulsion that he simply had to do it. He needed absolution for his sins, if he ever hoped to be free from his pain and forgiven by his god.

  As he told the story, the paladins began to murmur among themselves. The sheer force of this adversary, beyond all common sense, made it hard for them to contain their composure. Neither an anti-magic barrier nor a long-range, magic-specific defensive wall was enough to stop these monsters—not even a holy barrier could mount any defense against those flashes of light.

  But Hinata stayed resolute. Based on Reyhiem’s testimony, she surmised it was an attack involving concentrated sunlight. And as if to back up that theory, the Seven Days Clergy began to provide their own commentary.

  (Hmm. Perhaps this is sunlight magic, the kind Sir Gren was always so gifted at.)

  (Light-bending magic? Wouldn’t an anti-magic barrier shut that down?)

  (And Gren’s didn’t have that much force to it.)

  Gren, the Sunday Priest, was head of the Clergy, his magic commanding light. One of his spells concentrated sunlight in a similar way, and while the Clergy was on the wrong track with their theories, if they and Hinata had the same impression of this, Hinata assumed she was right.

  Idiots. It’s not directly bending the sunlight with magic; it’s reflecting the light off something else to focus it into a beam. Otherwise, a barrier could’ve easily blocked it. Were water and wind elementals cooperating with him, then? But that would take a lot of complex calculation…

  But she had nothing to fear. Once she knew the trick behind it, it was easy to counter. Just put up a protective film to diffuse the heat and scatter dust in the air to refract the light, and the threat was neutralized. If sunlight was the only thing it harnessed, the attack was full of holes to exploit. To Hinata, the attack was worthless.

  As far as I can tell, he was using his scientific knowledge from the other world for that attack. No wonder people here couldn’t deal with it. They couldn’t even understand it. Using it to poke holes in their magical defense was smart, though. Not a stone unturned…

  It took a lot of computing power to engineer that attack, as well as multiple ongoing spells at once. That was a serious threat, but now that Hinata knew what it really was, it didn’t seem that fearsome any longer. But Hinata was making her conclusions too quickly. Reyhiem wasn’t done talking. There was more… The main course, in fact.

  “One moment. That mystery attack was a dreadful thing. Sir Folgen was helplessly killed; Sir Razen could do nothing against it. Nearly ten thousand of our finest knights were felled by it, I think. But…”

  He paused here, nervously swallowing, sweat running down his head, trying his best to hold back the terror.

  “…The real horror came after that. The next moment, the battlefield went completely quiet.

  “Some were unconscious, fatally hurt; others were wounded and screaming on the ground; still more were healthy but wandering around, scared out of their wits. The cacophony they all created together set the battlefield to a frenzy. And yet…the very next moment,” Reyhiem said, “all the noise was gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I said, Lady Hinata. At that moment, the surviving members of that twenty-thousand-strong force died. Only three remained alive: Sir Razen; Edmaris, the king of Farmus; and me. Seeing it made me lose my sanity. I was so stricken with fear that I fainted.”

  At Reyhiem’s tale, a similar silence fell over the holy cathedral. A single monster killed a force of twenty thousand in an instant. The truth of that could hardly be commented on in words. And amid the solemn tension, everyone was recalling the same legend in their mind—the tale of a single person laying waste to an entire city and becoming a demon lord.

  Then Hinata recalled something Luminus herself told her.

  The precursor to the Western Holy Church was launched a good dozen centurie
s ago—likely longer, but that is as far back as the records exist. Its people, however, had first moved here two millennia ago, driven away after Veldora destroyed their kingdom. The dragon’s strength and immortality put them beyond hope; trying to engage it would only add to the dead.

  To the vampires that called this place home, Veldora prancing around and destroying humanity would lead to food shortages. The purest of high-quality vitality could only be obtained from human beings, and while Luminus and her family were safe, this was a matter of life or death to the lower-level vampires. Thus, Luminus was forced to come up with their current co-op approach to protecting humanity. She rescued them, really, and now they worshiped her as a god.

  And it was all the fault of Veldora on the rampage. He was worse than any natural disaster, a threat impossible to prepare for—a Catastrophe. That classified him as Special S on the scale, something humanity just couldn’t deal with…but he wasn’t the only large-scale destroyer of worlds. The only creatures in the Special S rank right now were the four dragons known to exist. But that’s only the public story. In mythology, meanwhile, there were records of two demon lords exacting a similar campaign of death and madness. These were Guy Crimson, Lord of Darkness, and Milim Nava, the Destroyer. Demon lords all got an S rank, but there was disparity in these rankings. Some creatures, like these two, could be rated Special S behind the scenes—and as Luminus explained, it happened when a potential demon lord was awakened by engineering massive destruction, taking in the souls of the resulting dead. Evolution beyond imagination would result.

  The term demon lord technically referred to the true ones who underwent this evolution, and even then, it could take place across several levels. It left some demon lords as powerful as dragons, and Luminus wondered if Guy and Milim had evolved beyond that. Even Luminus, as a true demon lord, had no chance against them. “If I fought Milim,” she told Hinata, “maybe I could outwit her. Maybe it’d be a good fight, if it came to that. But I’d never win in the end.” And what about Guy? “Ha! It vexes me terribly, but it would be hopeless. He’s in his own world.”