By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 22

Chapter 6 Episode 22: Experimenting with Slimes and Ryoma’s Deduction

That night, we had returned home, our labor having been rewarded with high praise and the promised ten small gold coins from Lord Fatoma, which were split evenly between myself and the Sikum’s Pier. Well, at least that was my intention, but they insisted I keep it since the knowledge, cleaner, and slimes used for the cleaning all came from me. Only when I insisted that I would feel horrible leaving them without any pay after they helped me with the job did they agree to my terms.

After splitting up the reward, each member of the Pier hurried off to buy their own desired amenities—drink, food, or some sort of household item—before taking the boat back to the village. This had led to us having to rent another small boat to get all of us and the merchandise back to the village. Even when we returned to the village, people spotted their haul and started a commotion about how we’d hit the jackpot. It was a lot to deal with, but I had fun.

I stretched my legs out in bed, reminiscing about the day.

“Well, I got the cleaning job done, and I have a clue regarding the new dish... And best of all, I found a new use for the acid slimes. All in all, a pretty productive day... Oh, right. One last thing before I turn in...”

I produced the leftover acidic cleaner from my Dimension Home in its container, along with the conches I had been feeding the pearl slime. When the acid slime first evolved into a pearl, I’d thought of the resemblance to mayonnaise pearls, but I had another thought come to mind after today’s cleaning job. To test the hypothesis out, I made sure the pearl slime saw the conches as food before soaking one in each of the three acidic cleaners. Soon, bubbles began to form on the surface of the conch in the most acidic variation.

Once the frothing stopped, I rinsed the conch with water and had a cleaner slime wick all the moisture and other impurities away. The shell had begun to dissolve, but there was still some sand attached to it. I repeated the process three times until I was running low on cleaner, so I decided to let it soak overnight. After returning the slimes and my tools to the Dimension Home, it was time to hit the hay.

■ ■ ■

The next morning, perhaps out of curiosity about the progress of my experiment, I woke up earlier than usual. After making preparations to leave, I checked on the conch I had soaked overnight.

“Just as I expected.”

The cleaner had dissolved the outer layer of the conch, revealing patches of pure white. I gently buffed those patches, and a beautiful nacre was revealed. Nacre, just like pearls, was a lustrous substance composed of calcium carbide from the shell. In addition to the type of shellfish that create pearls, some conches also contain nacres. One of those species famous in Japan was the marbled turban, the meat of which was edible. Although the marbled turban was a saltwater shell...

“Appraisal.”

Sandril

A freshwater conch that uses its mucus to adhere minute sand and pebbles to its shell for camouflage. Edible, and most often consumed steamed. However, the heat of cooking it will cause its nacre to lose its luster.

“The lake had a similar shell, and it evolved into a pearl slime by eating the hidden nacre... That makes a lot more sense than trying to connect acid + egg = mayonnaise to mayonnaise pearls.” I’d finally gotten a satisfying explanation for its evolution.

“Now, what to do with this information...”

Serelipta—who was technically a god—had told me that pearls were even more valuable than I thought. I expected to be able to turn a shell with the same glimmer into a quite popular product... We’d passed a jeweler’s stand on our way out of the city yesterday, but out of all the jewelry made from vibrant shells, I didn’t see any using shell nacres. Considering how I was able to acquire so many of these conches as trash from the villagers every day, it was safe to say that they only saw them as food.

It seemed like an incredible waste. Still, I couldn’t tell any of this info to the villagers, let alone Nikki. Just like Serelipta said, that would be extremely dangerous. Even though I had connections with Lord Fatoma, I was hesitant to tell him as well. I didn’t take him for a bad person; we’d barely spent two afternoons together, but after a few conversations with him over dinner, it was plain to see that he was indeed down-to-earth and deserving of the respect his people gave him. I doubted any of it was just an act, but all the same, something was bothering me.

“I wonder if Lord Fatoma is lacking in strength... Or maybe he’s further down on the noble food chain.”

There was one particular thing which brought that thought to mind—the goblins we had encountered when we were searching for Nikki. I’d heard that other nobles would occasionally send goblins to Fatoma as a form of sabotage or harassment. There was no proof to back up those rumors, but I had seen the goblins with my own eyes, and we did come across a cage, which implied some sort of human involvement with the goblins’ appearance. And this was apparently a common occurrence.

Something wasn’t right. Even though those goblins were relatively weak, they were still monsters. Someone could have gotten hurt, or worse. Nikki would have been in serious danger if it wasn’t for his secret lair. So why was nobody doing anything about this recurring problem?

It would have made some sense if Lord Fatoma didn’t care about his people, but that went against their perception of him, not to mention mine. Maybe it wasn’t that the problem was being ignored, but rather that it couldn’t be addressed. I did hear something about how Fatoma’s wide-open layout made it difficult for the lord to deal with sporadic harassment like that, and that the land was so poor that the people were starving until the travel road was eventually built.

Protection against monsters and enemies required soldiers, and soldiers required food for sustenance. Eagerness wouldn’t fill an empty stomach, after all. How could a land whose people were already starving afford to maintain an army? Even if some minimal level of force had to be kept to defend the land, there still wasn’t enough food for everyone. Without enough food to go around, one way to minimize the suffering of the people was to keep the army’s numbers at a minimum.

So one possible explanation for this was that Fatoma simply didn’t have enough fighting power. If that was the only problem, though, Lord Fatoma could just ask neighboring lords for help. That would come with a cost, of course, and perhaps he just found the idea too shameful. But was it that much more shameful than the level of incompetence being displayed by refusing to deal with the goblins’ harassment at all? This led me to believe that Lord Fatoma did not have a good relationship with his neighbors. While I didn’t take the rumor about how a noble from the neighboring land was responsible for sending the goblins at face value, it certainly checked out. And people were talking; if all this was true, logically, they would have figured it out by now.

The thought reminded me of something I witnessed in my days as a student. Early in my middle school years, I came across a typical bullying scene; the same thing that happened at every school. I helped the male student that was getting beaten up, and asked what happened. The student told me that his bully had gone to the same grade school as him, so he decided he wasn’t going to tolerate any more bullying from him once they both entered middle school. He’d started learning karate a month earlier. He’d boasted about that to his bully, and the bully proceeded to beat him up even worse than usual.

The kid was too honest for his own good, really. I understood how he was sick of being bullied, and he had every right to object to it. But what did he expect to accomplish by telling his bully as much to his face? There was no guarantee that a teacher could solve the problem, but there was no point in trying to fight back on his own without training well enough first. Furthermore, it would have only been prudent to keep it a secret until he was ready to fight. He was just a cocky amateur who gloated a little too much. He’d done nothing but show his own hand, and that caused the bully to ramp up his aggression.

Why would an oppressor wait for the oppressee to grow stronger when they’d declared their intention to fight back? Of course there would be retaliation if they openly declared as much.

“Maybe Lord Fatoma is the same.”

He had invited scientists to Fatoma to improve food production and also learned sumo. Both of these seemed to be implying a desire to improve his own situation. Perhaps he was trying to build his strength under the guise of not being able to deal with the harassment? If that was the case, any information about pearls or similar valuables was extremely hot property. As Serelipta’s warning reminded me all too well, it would only bring danger to those too weak to protect it.

“I’d better not tell him any of this... But it doesn’t change the fact that these things exist in the water. Someone will have to catch on eventually.”

Serelipta had said it was a jewel that could not be harvested in Rifall yet. He was the kind of god who blurted out whatever thought happened to occupy his head at that time, and I didn’t see a reason for him to lie about this. The key word here was “yet.”

“Oh?”

I heard footsteps. The morning was fast approaching, and I decided to put my thought process on hold. I still had a few more busy days ahead of me, after all.