By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Episode 6: Ryoma’s Sales Pitch

By afternoon, the beach, which had once been emptied after the morning’s hunt, was once again crowded, with many children and elderly people to be seen among the fishermen and adventurers. The presence of this crowd was undoubtedly due to the horde of a thousand poison and sticky slimes surrounding me, as well as the exhausted members of Sikum’s Pier beside them.

“What do you think? My slimes aren’t half bad, are they?”

“Y-You could say that,” Shin said.

“Are you sure these are slimes?!” said Kai.

Thane grunted. “I’ve never seen slimes move like that...”

“Me neither,” Peyron agreed.

Kai spoke up as well. “Aren’t slimes supposed to be slow and soft and weak...and not use weapons?”

Despite their befuddlement, I could assure them that my familiars were most certainly slimes. “I just taught them a few things.”

“You must be one hell of a teacher...”

“They’re much stronger than I expected. Never thought I’d see slimes hold spears and make coordinated movements.”

“There are just so many of them.”

“You can only fend off so many at a time, so when they keep coming at you like that... They make sure to dodge attacks to their core, somehow.”

“How do you plan on using them, Ryoma?”

That’s the question I’ve been waiting for, Kai!

“They can move faster than wild ones, but their mobility is not their strong suit, so I would like for them to protect the processing station. As you’ve just seen, the poison slimes can form a multi-layer spear barricade to defend against charging mad salamanders; this should take out a good number of them. I can also have them leave a few gaps in the barricade to narrow down the salamanders’ attack route, allowing the sticky slimes to ambush them. Their sticks are heavy enough to generate decent force. With a dogpile of five or ten slimes to one salamander, they should be able to beat them down. Even if the sticky slimes can’t finish the job, they should weaken the salamander enough to make our job easier!”

“Right...”

“I’ve never seen Ryoma this excited.”

“Except for maybe the first time we met him.”

“Ambush and dogpile, huh? They could do the job.”

“Even if they can’t kill the salamanders, they just have to thin out the horde or slow their attack down.”

Both Thane and Shin had covered what I wanted to say. In order to accomplish that, the slimes would need to successfully lure the salamanders through the gaps in the barricade, as well as maintain the barricade itself. In order to make sure that happened, I had one more trick up my sleeve.

“Dimension Home.”

I summoned the familiar flock of six limour birds onto the beach, as well as the magical slimes—earth, wind, dark, light, and healer. They had mostly supported my day-to-day stuff outside of combat, so they had never really had a place to shine until now. Still, they had been practicing their magic everyday.

“The healer slimes will recover the other slimes, and the light slimes will provide support. The rest will provide back-up with their respective spells.”

“I heard spell-casting monsters are high-rank or hard to find... But you’ve got so many of them.”

“And they’re pretty much all slimes.”

“I can’t help but be impressed, on multiple levels.”

I could sense the team’s impression of me changing before my eyes...but there was still more to say!

“These dark slimes finally learned the intermediate spell, Dark Mist!”

Unlike other elements, the dark attack magic cast by dark slimes would not physically damage the enemy, but drain their life force instead. Dark Mist was a spell that spread life-sucking darkness like a cloud of mist, attacking multiple enemies at once... Or at least, that’s what I had read in a book on dark magic I had come across at the duke’s. Seeing the words “Edited by the Magic Guild” was enough to earn my trust until I could observe the spell in action.

“To be honest, the dark slimes only learned the spell recently, so I haven’t been able to find a suitable enemy to practice it on.”

“But it won’t hurt us, right?”

“I’ll see that it won’t. There shouldn’t be any collateral damage if I keep them on the very front lines. Plus it only affects an area of about five or six people lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, so I might actually need to try and contain the mad salamanders within that range...”

With the weapon-wielding poison and sticky slimes aided by magic, I doubted that my little experiment would negatively affect the hunt at large. It would have been perfect if the metal and iron slimes, who could move with much agility, could join the flank. But unfortunately, the weight of those slimes became more of a hindrance than I’d thought when they were on sand.

They moved by slightly transforming the rear of their bodies, almost jumping into a roll. I knew that the beach wouldn’t be the ideal location for such a maneuver, but after trying it in action, they could barely move in a straight line. That apparently struck a nerve for them, which had led to them starting a jog (if I could even call it that) on the sand. Although they had kept at it while I introduced the poison, sticky, and magic-wielding slimes to the team, the metallic slimes had barely improved... They couldn’t fight in this condition. When I tried to tell them that, perhaps because they had always taken part in combat as my “weapons,” I sensed some discontent from them.

Isn’t there some way I can include them...? Maybe they could transform and serve as part of the barricade...?

“Hello?”

“Great, lost in his own thoughts.”

“He’s a good kid, but definitely a bit weird.”

“Hey, you guys see that crowd...?”

“Let’s just leave Ryoma be and tell them what’s going on.”

I snapped out of my trance, and realized that most of the villagers had now started referring to me as “the slime freak”... Where did I go wrong?