By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 11

Chapter 6 Episode 11: A Surprising Discovery

“Whoa!”

I barely dodged the enormous jaw of a mad salamander, and delivered a blow to its head. Before I could even check whether the strike was fatal, a few more of them rushed me all at once. With the swipe of the staff in my hand, I cleared them away and pressed on through the opening.

I had to move forward—every step and every second counted! With the staff in my hand and a dark slime on my head, I struck down salamander after salamander before finally arriving at the frontline of our defense. Here, we wouldn’t affect the metal and iron slimes.

“Now!” I shouted, and the dark slime on my head answered.

The sun had already risen high above the eastern horizon, but the morning light seemed to fade away, signifying that the dark slime had cast its wide-range attack spell, Dark Mist.

Magic-generated darkness spread out like mist, engulfing the targets. The mist robbed its victims of their strength, rapidly weakening and even killing them. Sure enough, the mad salamanders breaching the shore near me started to slow down, crumbling as if they were buckling at their knees. The mist seemed to have reached the water, as numerous salamander carcasses rose to the surface.

After ten seconds or so, the horde of mad salamanders charging the processing station ceased to be.

“Collections, please!” I called, and the temporarily empty-handed fishermen and adventurers came over the slimes’ defense line and gathered up the salamander carcasses.

The slimes were effective in their defense, but as they couldn’t carry off the slain salamanders, humans needed to come and gather them in between waves. Unlike the previous day, the salamander bodies began to pile up until the later waves gave up on climbing the mountainous carcasses and began circumventing them. Luckily, Sikum’s Pier and I were able to take care of them before they caused any damage.

Good thing I came prepared.

“On the double, men!” the leader of the adventurers shouted. “Their numbers are dwindling, it won’t be much longer!”

The crowd responded with an energetic roar, and I returned to running, grabbing a carcass near me.

The morning hunt lasted for another hour.

■ ■ ■

“Great work today!”

“You too!”

“Great job out there!”

After completely packing up the operation, it was time for lunch. The members of the Pier and I headed to the processing station as we chatted.

“Hey, it’s Nikki!”

“They’re really putting him to work over yesterday, huh?”

“Don’t slack off, now!”

“I know!”

We could hear the adults ahead of us jokingly giving Nikki a hard time.

“Looks like you’re hard at work.”

“Oh, Slime Guy! Ready for lunch? I’ll bring it right over, so take a seat.”

“Thank you. Looks like you’re doing a great job around here.”

“Ha! You’re the only one who’d say that.”

Nikki rolled his eyes, but soon regained his smile. The grown-ups teasing him almost seemed like a part of the rite of passage. Somewhat relieved, I took a seat nearby and waited, wondering what was for lunch.

“Here you go!”

“Thank you!”

I accepted what Nikki served me in awe. First, a bowl of white rice with the familiar color and fragrance, albeit with grains that were rounder than those back in Japan. Today’s horice soup, served with every meal, was obviously tofu. Combined with grilled fish and a small bowl of pickled vegetables, this truly added up to...

A truly Japanese breakfast of champions!

“Is something wrong?”

“This is rice, isn’t it? I heard that’s an expensive import.”

“Really? We get rice in our village every now and then. Is it that expensive?” Nikki asked.

Shin answered, “Imported rice is expensive, but this rice is made here, by the scientists of our lord. So it isn’t that expensive.”

“That being said, it only became affordable to our people a few years ago. It’s a bit of a treat, but I guess it’s just a normal dish for kids of Nikki’s age.”

“You sound like an old man, Thane,” Kei chimed in.

Thane gave him a defeated-looking sneer, even though he was too young to be worried about coming off old, in my opinion.

“I see... So that’s why you have rice here.” I’d heard a few things about Lord Fatoma before I came to the village, but I didn’t know he had things like this in the works.

“So rice is like a new food...” Nikki muttered. “Oh, right! I still have work to do!”

“Okay, I’ll see you later!” I answered.

First, I took a bite of the rice, which was of a stickier texture than the rice in Japan, but perfectly delicious. I switched to the soup that turned out to be tofu. This meal certainly brought back memories.

“You look pretty content.”

“It’s been a long time since I last had these dishes... Can I buy them anywhere?”

“Why don’t you have Nikki show you later?”

“His grandma’s the one making tofu for our village.”

Now that was a great tidbit!

“I promised to meet him later, so I’ll ask him then.”

“Sounds great. Speaking of...” Kai suddenly looked solemn. “The goblins we took out in the forest yesterday—there were five in total, right?”

“Yes, I believe there were...” I turned to the rest of the team, and they concurred.

“I overheard when we were cleaning up this morning that they found a cage in the woods over by the village yesterday.”

That information struck me with a sense of danger, but the other five seemed to be just annoyed.

“Um... Isn’t that kind of a big deal?”

A cage would have been used to capture something. Judging by the way the conversation had flowed, that “something” was goblins. If someone found a cage in the woods, didn’t that mean that someone had intentionally released goblins close to the neighboring village?

Shin answered my curiosity. “You’re right to react that way. Thing is, the same thing happens a few times every year around here. It just becomes a nuisance in time.”

Furthermore, the team suspected nobles in the neighboring land of doing this, as an attack of sorts against Lord Fatoma. Someone must have been behind them, but there was never any trail that led to the culprits. A decent space mage would suffice for leaving the cage open and fleeing the scene.

“Do the lord and the neighboring nobles not get along?”

“It would be more accurate to say they have an unwarranted vendetta against our lord. I don’t know the details about them, but our lord’s a great person, really down to earth. He works hard to get us rice, for example. I hear about a lot of things he does to make our lives better.”

“The soil around this village isn’t suited for farming, so our village used to survive on hunting and gathering... Children used to starve if the fish dried up. Luckily, our generation’s never had to experience anything like that... We owe that to our lord and his predecessor, from what I’ve heard.”

“I hear that the lord next door is an arrogant show-off, but not ours.”

“I’ve actually heard that he’ll walk around his hometown, looking for good restaurants and eating among his own people... He’s not your typical nobleman.”

He certainly sounded like someone well respected by his subjects.

“In any case, the cage is nothing new. The lord will hear about it in due time, then send someone to look into the matter, and we’ll just have to watch our backs for a while. Same as always.”

“Tomorrow’s hunt is a bigger concern for me right now.”

“You mean the part about sending some of the adventurers off? They said they’re still talking about it...but it looks like that’s a given by now.”

“You heard that today during the hunt, right?”

“There was a lot of downtime when we weren’t picking up carcasses. If we just time our collections right, we could manage with less people... What do you think, Ryoma?”

“I agree, Kei. The slimes can prevent them from attacking the processing station, and that would amount to good training for me as well.”

Since I could leave most of the work to the slimes, I could focus on training myself. Even the carcass gathering could serve as a workout for me as I repeat it, or even practice for space magic.

As the saying goes, if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life!

I voiced my excitement, and the team began to laugh. When I asked them what was so funny, they just said I was a hard worker. And they gave me a rather strange look... Not that I sensed any malice or anything from them.

■ ■ ■

The conversation shifted to small talk, and soon enough, we finished our lunch.

“See you later, everyone.”

I saw the Sikum’s Pier crew off, and waited at the dining hall for Nikki to get off work, in order to fulfill my promise of teaching him about slimes.

But how should I approach this? I wanted to make it fun, since he showed interest. On the other hand, I don’t want to be too pushy. Such are the plights of spreading the good word...

“Uh, Ryoma? Watch yourself... Is he even listening to us?”

“Lights are on, but nobody’s home. He’ll be back by dinner. May’s there too.”

I thought Kai and Kei were calling me... Maybe it was my imagination. I looked around, and pretty much everyone had left the dining hall.