By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 12 - Chapter 1

Chapter 7, Episode 39: The Great Cold Front

“Brr... Another biting day.”

With less than a week left in the year, the city of Gimul and Duke Jamil’s territory at large had been hit with a historic cold front. The recent streak of heavy snowfall meant that I had to start my commute before daybreak. As I stamped across waist-high snow in my handcrafted snowshoes, I found myself thoroughly relieved that I could cast long-distance teleportation magic using stone slimes as targets.

Before long, the familiar Gimul city gate came into view. The pair of guards on either side of the gate gave me a wave.

“Good morning!” I called out.

“Morning!” one responded.

“It keeps getting colder, doesn’t it?” the other added.

The snow slowed my tread, so I arrived at the gate just as we finished greeting each other.

“It’s got to be a tough trek, what with the snow,” one of them added.

“Especially when it piles up day after day.”

“It doesn’t make it easier, for sure.”

I presented my ID, and they checked it during our brief small talk.

“You’re good to go. And you’re doing your thing again, right? We’ll help you get set up.”

“Thank you. That’d help me out a lot.”

“You’re the one helping us!”

“It’ll get our blood pumping, at least.”

I assumed they really did want to warm up with a bit of exercise. And two extra pairs of hands would help me out.

I began to produce the series of tools needed for the job from the Dimension Home. “With how cold it’s been, some of my aqua slimes evolved into ice slimes recently.”

“Aqua slimes are made of water, right? I’m no expert, but are you sure they didn’t just freeze?”

“I get that a lot, but it looks like they’re a different species.”

An experiment I’d performed earlier had proven that aqua slimes were resilient to temperature changes, for the most part, but that they either loved or hated freezing temperatures. Every aqua slime that preferred the cold had also shown an inclination for Ice magical energy. What was more, I’d kept all the aqua slimes in the same environment, but only the ones that had been drawn to the Ice element had changed into ice slimes. It didn’t seem like the aqua slimes had merely frozen over.

“Speaking of ice,” said one of the guards, “any chance we can get our hands on some more of those anti-slip things for shoes?”

“Oh? I consigned the sales of them to the Morgan Trading Company.”

“From what I’ve heard, word got out from us guards about this anti-slip...rubber, was it? Well, it really works. As soon as they’re restocked at Morgan’s, they sell out.”

The other guard chimed in, “Most of the injuries in town lately are caused by snow or ice. I’ve seen some adventurers using the equipment they’d use to climb mountains in the snow, but most people in the city don’t have anything like that.”

“Right...”

A specialized boost in demand. Winters of past years in this region had been more forgiving; this year’s cold front was unusually severe. No one in the city had prepared for snowfall like this, and no shop would carry a large stock of winter wear that wouldn’t sell under normal circumstances. Not many shops would, anyway.

On the other hand, I had learned of this cold front by chance before it hit, when I’d spoken to the gods. That had allowed me to pass the information along to my departments throughout the city, and the Morgan Trading Company had been the quickest to react. Maybe he’d had his own intel that had tipped him off to the impending extreme weather, but either way, Serge had jumped into action as soon as I’d told him that a massive cold front might be incoming. What had followed was a rapid production cycle that had fully utilized the new factory and staff to develop, mass-produce, and sell various types of snow gear, like rubber non-slip soles that attached to the bottom of the shoe.

The boat the guards were now assembling was another example of those devices. I had designed the boat after the one I rode in Fatoma, adding a small grill to the back with a contraption that resembled a tall pot with a coil wrapped around it. In short, I had built a Pop Pop Boat that looked almost like a toy. After the skeleton of the boat was assembled, I placed one filter slime in each of the pair of metal pipes that extended out from the rear, along with an ash slime amid the charcoal in the grill. Then I lit it. Finally, I put an aqua slime in the pot and generated enough water by magic to fill the pipes.

“Can you put this up as well?” I asked the guards.

“Sure thing.”

While they erected a yellow flag that read “Street Cleaning & Desnowing” in red font, I had one more task to do. The water in the pan was beginning to heat up, and I asked the aqua slime within if it was ready. It seemed eager and excited. I double-checked the streets beyond the gate to make sure there were no pedestrians as far as I could see.

“Here we go.”

Now that the aqua slime had synchronized with the water around it, I gave it magic and asked it to move. The water in the pot immediately began to swirl around, until it shot out and formed a sphere above the street before me. The ball of hot water slowly descended onto the snow piled in the street. The sphere popped like a bubble, spreading out and melting the snow. The melted snow mixed with the original dose of hot water and aqua slime to increase its volume. With the additional water continuing to be moved by magic, it spread farther and consumed more snow piles.

Desnowing the streets through aqua slime magic had become a part of my morning routine. Back in Japan, I had heard that desnowing with water would only result in it freezing over again, turning the snow into a more dangerous sheet of ice. But that only happened if the water was left on the street. Physics on Earth had made it very difficult to recover the spilled water, but there was magic in this world. With the use of slime magic—and its meticulous control of the elements, enabled by a synchronized slime—I could collect every drop of the water from the street before it froze again!

While I was daydreaming up a pitch like that, the aqua slime had grown quite sizable, having accumulated all the moisture from the street. Now in a dome shape, the mass of water almost looked like one enormous slime. That was enough to start with.

“I’ll get going now,” I called to the guards huddled around the grill at the back of the boat as I jumped onto it.

Since the pair knew what was coming, they promptly moved out of the way, albeit with a longing glance at the warm fire. Just as they did, the giant ball of water settled under the boat. The aqua slime traveled through the pipe and the filter slime to reenter the pot, along with some water. The rest of the water remained on the street, upon which the boat now floated. I was all set.

“See you tomorrow!”

With a sendoff from the guards, the boat glided into the city. Using water slime magic for desnowing, street cleaning, and transportation all at the same time was one of my solutions to deal with the snowfall as efficiently as possible. People from the city clerk’s office or the Adventurers’ Guild could have performed this task in my stead, but this was my way of doing a little charity for the city, since everybody was short-staffed because of the weather. I always had a surplus of magical energy anyway, and using slime magic apparently pleased the gods.

Besides, it was kind of nice to cruise through the city in the early morning. While most people didn’t come out this early, I usually passed some people who were up before it was bright outside—either because of their job or the snow—and I got to know them a bit.

At first, some of them would look completely dumbstruck or freak out, thinking they were hallucinating. By now, though, they’d gotten used to it. Even if I didn’t know their names, the people I saw every morning had begun to wave or call to me.

“Hey, little mage! Can you come over here for a second?!” The lady who ran a food stand called to me. She was one of the ones I’d become acquainted with.

Manipulating the water flow below it, I pulled my boat up to her. “Good morning. How can I help you?”

“Take this with you. On the house.” She gave me a wooden bowl of warm soup, chock full of chopped sausage and vegetables, complete with a spoon.

“It’s so warm. Thank you!”

“And don’t forget this. I appreciate your hard work, kid.” To go with those kind words, she gave me a firm piece of bread.

“Thank you again. I’ll get back to it!” I took my boat back out onto the streets and returned to desnowing.

I took a spoonful of the soup, and the heat and flavor seeped into my mouth. When I swallowed, it warmed me from the inside out. More and more people now cheered me on or gave me gifts like this when I worked early in the morning.

Dawn was slowly breaking. I continued making my way through the still silver-coated streets of the city atop a cruising boat, enjoying my breakfast. While this work didn’t make me a single sute, it more than made up for it in how much it fulfilled me. These cold mornings weren’t so bad.