By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 5

Chapter 4 Episode 5: Forest Search 4

The next day, fifteen adventurers from the guild accompanied us to where we fought the elder treant. They were going to help us collect the wood, but all the wood that couldn’t fit in Leipin’s Dimension Home was to be temporarily stored in warehouses belonging to the city and the guild. They would be delivered to Gimul by carriage at a later date.

There was a simple reason for that: we’d killed too many treants. The group of adventurers was initially surprised to see that we had slain over a thousand in total. They kept on coming, so we just had to keep killing more. We all slaughtered every treant that entered our range of attack. And adding up our kill counts, we got quite a staggering number.

We’d chopped down so many trees in the form of treants that I was worried about the forest, but according to the local adventurers, it would be fine. The trees in this forest were called torigiri trees, and while they could only thrive in certain locations, they were highly vigorous and quick to grow. They could grow back within half a year of being chopped down at the base, and even when planting seedlings, they would grow large enough to be chopped down for wood within a year. The trees that we cut down would be back to normal next year, so this had little effect on the city’s revenue, and few of the townspeople went this deep into the forest to find lumber anyway.

I was satisfied with that explanation, not to mention reminded yet again that this was a whole other world. On Earth, it would take years or even decades for a tree to grow tall enough that it could be chopped down for wood, but here, it was only half a year. Everyday knowledge I’d picked up from Earth just didn’t apply here.

“Now, begin!” Asagi declared.

We killed the occasional treant that we found as we collected the wood. The rest of the group gathered the wood in one place so Leipin and I could stuff it in our Dimension Homes and carry it to town, then come back to the forest for more. By 3 p.m., we’d finished collecting the wood. Lastly, to make sure the guild in Gimul was prepared to receive the wood, I sent Eins to my store to ask my employees to contact the adventurer’s guild. Now everything related to treant wood was taken care of, so the adventurers who helped us out headed back to town.

But there was still one job left for us. We had to tear the elder treant apart and collect its wood. The job in Gimul specified treant wood and not elder treant wood, so it wasn’t for that. In these situations, the hunter could use the materials as they wished, but if we wanted the adventurer’s guild to help us chop down and transport this elder treant, it would cost us. However, elder treant wood was top rate when it came to creating magic staffs. It would go for a high price, so leaving it here would be wasteful. As such, we wanted to take the wood for ourselves. But it was enormous, so it would probably take a while.

“Well, this is the last job. Let’s get it over with,” Welanna said and picked up her hatchet.

The first task was to chop off all the branches. We brought ladders to help with that, but this elder treant was so tall that it didn’t reach some of the branches.

The rest of the group took care of the branches that the ladders reached, while I handled the ones that couldn’t be reached. I used the sturdy rope made of sticky slime thread and tied a claw made of my metal slimes to the end to create a grappling hook. I spun it a few times to build momentum, then threw the claw around a thick branch. I tugged the rope a few times, but it didn’t budge. It seemed to be tough enough to handle some weight. I climbed the rope until I was within range of the surrounding branches, then cut them down one by one using the Wind Cutter spell. Once there were no branches left around me, I changed locations and did the same thing elsewhere.

I thought it would be easier to just knock down the tree first, but the branches were apparently better suited for making staffs than the trunk, and that would break the branches, so this was my only recourse. I silently continued my work, ultimately spending the entire day on those branches. I decided to leave the rest for tomorrow. Climbing up and down the tree once or twice was fine enough, but doing it repeatedly was inevitably exhausting.

The next day, we continued to work on collecting wood from the elder treant. We finished breaking all the branches off, so today we were going to dig out the roots and knock the tree down. But an unexpected incident occurred.

“Come over here for a second, everyone!” I cried.

My earth slimes and I were using earth magic to dig near the tree, when we found tons of decaying wooden boxes buried underneath.

“What is it?” asked Cilia.

“Did something happen?” asked Welanna.

“It looks like something’s buried here. See?”

“Are these wooden boxes?” asked Asagi.

“There’s a whole bunch of them,” said Miya.

“Why are all these buried here?” wondered Mizelia.

“In any case, we should look inside some of them,” said Leipin, who carefully pulled a box out of the ground and opened it. It was packed full of murky white rocks.

“What could these be?” I asked.

“They’re magic crystals,” said Leipin. “And they’ve already been used. They look more transparent like ordinary crystals when they still have magical energy inside, but as they lose that energy, they become murkier and harder to see through. All of these are completely empty.”

“Sounds like we’d best report this to the guild,” said Asagi.

“I’ll go tell them,” Leipin offered. “Can the rest of you keep digging and checking the rest of the boxes?”

Nobody had any complaints, so Leipin teleported to town. We stayed behind and opened up the rest of the boxes. Nearly all we found was fully used magic crystals. Some, however, had a little magical energy left over. The energy in these was either non-elemental or dark elemental. Then we learned why so many magic crystals were here.

“I have returned,” Leipin said. “Has anything changed here?”

“Hello,” a woman attending Leipin greeted us. “I was sent by the guild to—Eek!”

She yelped when she saw what lay at our feet. Anyone would have been surprised. There were human corpses sitting there, after all.

“Where did these come from?”

“They were buried with these boxes,” Asagi explained.

The bodies were thoroughly rotted, but judging by the bone structure of the corpses, they were presumably men.

“Some of their things were still with them,” I said.

“Well, thank you for explaining, then,” the woman said haltingly.

“Are you okay?”

“I handle seeing blood or injuries well enough, but seeing bodies in this state does make me a little sick. I’m sorry, but can you help out a little?”

The pale woman accompanied us in looking through their belongings. We found an accounting book indicating that the men were magic crystal merchants, and they had engaged in illegal acts such as smuggling and black market dealings. These magic crystals seemed to be their merchandise. It was unclear if they had been in the middle of a transaction in the forest away from watching eyes, or if this was a secret hiding place for their contraband, but the elder treant must have absorbed the magical energy from the crystals and grown massive as a result. And by using the power of the crystals, it created legions of treants and even gained the ability to use dark magic. The elder treant never left this spot because it had no way of taking the boxes of magic crystals with it.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the woman said. “You can get back to work, if you’d like. Farewell!”

With her investigation complete, the woman ran off. We watched her go, then resumed our work.

Once the elder treant was knocked on its side, I used a giant saw made of my iron and metal slimes to chop it into pieces, then stored them in my Dimension Home. Now we had done everything we needed to do in this town, but due to our last unfortunate discovery, it didn’t feel as satisfying as it should have. That called for one thing.

“Shall we drink tonight?” I suggested.

Since it would dispel this awkward feeling we had, we decided to celebrate a job well done after dinner. The gathering place was my Dimension Home.

“We still have to make it back to Gimul, but we’ve acquired plenty of treant wood,” Asagi said. “We can consider this job complete. Tonight, we drink. Cheers!”

“Cheers!” the rest of the party said, then began to drink and eat the snacks we prepared.

Today, our drinks were accompanied by tempura. There were plenty of vegetables to be picked in the forest where we hunted the treants, and they were on sale at a grocer in town. Only Asagi and I knew about tempura, but after all the Japanese food I had provided on this journey, they were interested. And to my surprise, the people of this country seldom ate fried food.

“They were selling fries at the Founding Festival, so I thought it was normal,” I said.

“It exists, but here’s the thing: fried food means wasting a lot of oil,” Cilia replied. “I hear that using the same oil repeatedly makes you sick too, so it gets kind of needlessly expensive. High-quality oil goes for a lot of money.”

“And if you don’t know how to fry food properly, you can start a fire,” Welanna added. “So festivals are the place for it.”

Those were the reasons why most households didn’t cook fried foods. I thought it was sad to go your life without ever frying food yourself, personally. But admittedly, it did use up a lot of oil, and reusing oil did cause it to oxidize and become unhealthy. I could use alchemy to separate the oxidized oil from the oxygen anyway, though, so I could reuse oil as much as I wanted to, as long as it didn’t get too dirty. Actually, I could just separate the oil from the filth too. I used alchemy when making juice or cooking with oil, among other things, but I didn’t know if that was a proper way to use alchemy. Either way, it was too convenient to stop now.

“But wow, your slimes sure are weird, Ryoma,” said Mizelia.

“Slimes are omnivores. It’s not strange that they can drink, but still,” said Leipin.

“It’s actually savoring and enjoying its drink. The tempura, too,” said Cilia.

In addition to the three men and four women at the party, one of my slimes was joining us. Ever since I gave it some ale, it would come up to me while I was drinking at night. I started to drink with it regularly, and at first, it devoured its alcohol all at once the way that other slimes did water. But recently, I made it start using a sake cup which was made just for slimes, and it gradually began to drink as slowly as I did. It even started to pour itself more when its cup was empty, and it ate whatever I was eating with my drinks too.

As I was telling the rest of the party about this, the slime suddenly began to quiver.

“Oh, could it be?” said Asagi.

“Is something wrong?” asked Miya.

“The slime’s evolving,” I said.

“Huh?!”

There was no doubt that the slime was evolving. When I told them that, all eyes turned to the slime. Then, much like with my other slimes, it began to release and absorb magical energy for about ten minutes.

“It appears to have stopped,” said Leipin.

I checked to see what my slime had evolved into.

Drunk Slime

Skills: Alcohol Production (4), Disease Resistance (3), Consume (5), Absorb (1), Split (1)

Blessing: Protection of Tekun, God of Wine

Now I was confused. Not because it became something called a “drunk slime,” which was hardly surprising, considering it had been drinking. I could understand why Alcohol Production would be one of its skills as well. The alcohol was obviously the cause. But I didn’t know how it was blessed by Tekun. I didn’t even know that slimes could be blessed. It would be something to ask Tekun about at some point.

In any case, I checked what magical energy it preferred and discovered it liked the dark, water, and wood elements the most.

“Ryoma, what happened?” Leipin asked.

“Oh, well, it became something called a drunk slime with a skill called Alcohol Production. I’m guessing it can spit up alcohol.”

“Another unusual slime, is it?”

I placed a new bowl in front of the slime and had it demonstrate its new skill. As anticipated, the drunk slime released fluid that smelled like alcohol. I cast Appraisal on it and found that it was 40% alcohol, safe for humans to consume, so I tried some.

“Well, that’s certainly alcohol, alright,” I said.

“Is something wrong with it?”

“It’s strong enough, but it has no flavor.”

And because it had no particular flavor, it wasn’t especially good. Rather than drink it neat, maybe it would be better if mixed with fruit. This would require some research. As I thought about the possibilities, we celebrated the evolution of my slime by drinking some more. After the party, I went to bed.