The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 1 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13:

Heading for Ratoto

I LIKED TO TAKE THINGS SLOW when I was about to hit the road again, so I spent the morning in a leisurely way. It was my first time sleeping without my guard up in a long time, so my body felt light. Maybe it would be best for my health if I slept in plazas like this when they were open to the public. I was scared that fatigue would dull my focus.

I kept my eyes and ears open as I headed to the center of the village. It seemed the big hunt was a success—even this early in the morning, all the men still smelled like liquor. Excited voices rang out in shops where the adventurers gathered. I wasn’t sure how much they’d hunted, but it was clear enough that it’d be safer to travel now even if I needed to keep my guard up.

I left the village a little before noon. I was far from Ratomi Village now, so I probably wouldn’t be recognized if I walked on the village roads. I wasn’t worth chasing this far. Besides, I didn’t want to risk running into any tusked hogs that had escaped the hunters in the forest.

I passed a popular meeting spot on the way out, and that’s when I finally saw a dead tusked hog. I’d read about them in books, but it was a lot bigger than I’d thought. If one of those things hit me, I’d be in real trouble. Should my luck go bad, one of them might even show up on the village roads. Thinking about it made me pretty nervous as I left. Still, the road out was fairly worn from all the travelers. 

Looking back, that meat seller had probably noticed that there was something off about me. Why would a child under ten years old sell meat without an adult in sight? But he hadn’t asked any questions, and the price he paid seemed fair.

I wish I’d thanked him.

Three days after leaving Ratone, I started listening carefully for the sounds of rushing water, so I could fill my canteen. I checked the trees for fruit, too, because I’d learned that edible fruit was easier to find closer to the river. That paid off a few times before I reached the water.

There, I filled up my canteen and put it in my magic bag. Just when I was about to head back, a slime burst out of the foliage. It was a normal green teardrop-shaped slime, sort of like a triangle with rounded corners. Untamed slimes were monsters.

This was terrifying!

The slimes in this world aren’t very cute, Past Me piped up. Cute? What kind of idiot thinks a monster’s going to be cute? 

I had to get away. Slimes were considered weak, but they could still body slam or shoot sticky projectiles at you. I had no offensive or defensive magic, and my sword wouldn’t do much against a slime. Running was the safest bet, so I fled to the mountain road while avoiding the slime. When I got there, I felt around for auras. Good…it wasn’t chasing me. I’d been lucky enough to encounter a slow-moving slime.

People said you could beat up slimes with survival magic if you had enough mana, but that wasn’t really an option, either. My mana was just too low.

Oh, right—survival magic. In this world, people could use limited magic in everyday life. It’s called survival magic, and you could use it to start fires, create water, and clean. Anybody could do that stuff.

Even I could…well, sort of. Like I said, the problem was my mana. I had so little that I couldn’t afford to use it. Survival magic could be used more or less by different people, all determined by how much mana somebody had.

Kids usually start using survival magic at age five, gradually honing it and increasing their mana a little at a time so that they could reasonably survive. Not me, though. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t increase my mana…or at least not enough for it to matter.

In my case, using fire magic just once nearly drained my mana. If my mana reached zero in the woods, I’d lose my ability to read auras. Reading auras doesn’t take mana, but hitting zero mana weakens you. In the forest, zero mana means death.

If I had to fight something and needed to use mana for it, I’d be in danger even if I won. Something else might find me, after all. So I couldn’t fight anything, not even the weakest of slimes—I could only run away.