The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 4 - Chapter 196

Chapter 196:

Worse than Imagined

Druid’s house was definitely quite large. He had eight rooms total.

“Why did you pick such a big house?”

“Hmm…just because, I guess.”

If Druid was able to buy such a big house just because…he must have been pretty well-off.

“I only use two of the rooms.”

“Huh? Only two?”

“Well, I live alone, so two is more than enough for me.”

Right… If you lived alone, you wouldn’t need that many rooms. I didn’t know anybody who slept in a different room every night… Did someone like that exist?

“Three of the extra rooms are used for storage, and the other two are just empty. Now, let me apologize in advance—they’re dirty.”

I gave Druid a strange look. We were in the kitchen at the moment, and it looked quite tidy. Druid obviously cleaned it in a normal way, so how could the rest of his house be dirty?

“I think you should put a cloth over your mouth.”

What?! Is it really that bad? I shrugged my shoulders and tied a cloth around my face, covering my nose and mouth. Will I really need so much protection from the dust?

“Okay, this way.”

I followed Druid down the hall. We didn’t enter the first room we saw.

“I sleep in this room, so the ones after it are sort of like my storage rooms.”

Six out of the eight rooms were storage… It was actually a pretty luxurious way to live, when you thought about it. I followed Druid further down the hall. Huh? Is it just me, or is the air…stagnant? Druid opened the first door.

“Ack!”

The moment the door opened, the light illuminated a cloud of dust dancing in the air. There was a deep crease between Druid’s eyebrows. And with the door open before him, he took…no steps inside. I peeked curiously into the room…and saw that things were piled high all the way out to the door. It’s not that he wouldn’t go inside…he couldn’t go inside. And oh, how dirty it was. There was so much dust covering the objects in the room that I almost wanted to whip out a ruler and see how many centimeters thick it was.

“Um…let’s do this room later,” Druid said, shutting the door.

We then proceeded to the next door. Druid opened it, said nothing, and closed it again. He repeated the action with the remaining four rooms. Then we returned to the first door he’d opened.

“Let’s start here,” I said.

“Good idea. I didn’t think all six rooms would be equally bad.”

“And you have five storage rooms, too.”

“How strange…I could have sworn it was just three rooms.” Druid looked quite puzzled. He didn’t think he had this much stuff—even though he was the one who put it all there in the first place.

“And just who was it that saved all this stuff?”

“Me…”

“Right?”

“When I was storing it, I didn’t think much of it. I just put it in my empty rooms. Before I realized it, I had quite a stash.”

Does it really happen that easily to people? “Is that so? Well, we have to do something about all this dust first. So, um, if you could wet some papers you don’t need with water, we’ll give it a good wiping down.”

“I guess that’s a good place to start. And I can always burn the rest of the papers.”

“Right.”

Our eyes met. Then we both smiled… This was going to take a very long time.

“Sorry. I had no idea it was this bad.”

“It’s okay. We’ll get through it together.”

“Thanks.”

Well, with both of us working together, maybe we’ll finish before the day is over?

“I’m exhausted,” Druid sighed.

“Me, too. I had no idea this would be such a hard task.”

We’d cleaned up three rooms that day, but I’d been naive to think we could finish in one day. Just cleaning the dust was hard enough by itself, and there was just too much stuff. It took a long time to look at everything and see what it was.

“It was really exciting to find so many magic items, though.”

“Even I was impressed—and it’s my stuff.”

“Mr. Druid…these are all things you’ve collected throughout your life, right?”

“Yeah, you could say that. But I didn’t even bother opening some boxes because I wasn’t all that interested to see what was inside.”

I’d had the impression that Druid was very well organized, but it turned out he had his sloppy side. Or maybe it just showed that if you kept a bunch of stuff you didn’t really care about, this would be the end result.

“Well, let’s stop here for today and have dinner.”

“Sure. Oh! Do you think Sora and Flame are okay?”

I’d let the two slimes loose in the kitchen while we were cleaning the rooms. I was about to rush out into the kitchen when Druid stopped me.

“We need to sweep the dust off ourselves before we go.”

Right, we’re still covered in dust after all that cleaning. I patted my body and dust came flying off me… Wow.

“I think this is a job for that magic item we found earlier. Sit tight.”

That’s right, we did find a pretty interesting item a while back. According to Past Me’s memories, it was like a little vacuum cleaner, but it was actually an air-powered magic item that sucked up dust. All we could think of when we found it was how it would come in handy to clean our tent.

“This was it, right?” Druid asked.

“Right.”

I took the magic item from him and flipped the switch, ­resulting in a soft whirring noise. I pressed the mouth of the item to my clothes, and it sucked the dust right up.

“Ooh, how amazing!” I giggled. “This thing is really fun.”

“You’re right. Turns out it’s actually quite useful! Oh, let me take the dust off your back for you.”

I handed Druid the magic item and turned my back. He moved the tiny magic vacuum cleaner up and down my back. Its suction power wasn’t that strong—it was just right. When I was done being vacuumed off, it was Druid’s turn. And after I removed the dust from his back, we were all ready.

“It’s useful, but a little annoying that you need a partner to clean your back.”

“Mr. Druid, I don’t think this item was intended for dusty clothes.”

“Oh! Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Now that we weren’t so dusty anymore, we went to check on Flame and Sora. I was pretty sure they weren’t up to any mischief, but I still wondered how they were doing without us.

“Sora, Flame, we’re back.”

When we entered the room, we noticed them right away.

“Whoa, they sure are easy to spot,” Druid said.

For some reason, the two slimes were asleep on the table. I glanced around the room and didn’t see any signs of mischief. Well, they always behaved themselves when I left them alone in the tent, so I wasn’t that worried about it.

“Puuu?”

“Ryuuu?”

Sensing our presences, they both woke up. Whoa! Flame woke up, too. I wonder if it went through some sort of evolution of its mental state?

“Rise and shine, Sora, Flame. Wow, Flame, you woke up all by yourself today.”

Flame stared hard at me in reply. What was going on? I stared at Flame in confusion for a minute until both slimes turned their attention toward the front door. Just then, there was a knock.

“Ah, that must be my master. He never uses the doorbell.” Druid walked over to the door. Since it might not have been his old mentor, I put the slimes in their bag.

“Ya little brat… First ya give me a smug smile when that crowd nearly smothered me to death, then ya left me hangin’ out to dry?”

Druid’s guess was right—it was his mentor. I put my bag back down and hurried over to the door to greet him.

“Congratulations on your success, sir.”

“Oh, you’re here, too, Ivy? Wait, huh? Aren’t ya a little dusty, Ivy? You as well, Druid.”

I guess we were still a bit dirty. I’d just assumed that since we were no longer caked in the stuff, we were in the clear.

“We were cleaning my storage rooms.”

“Ah. So ya finally got around to it, eh?” The old mentor seemed to know exactly what state those rooms were in.

“Yeah, I wanted to clean house before we hit the road. I knew I had some stuff that would come in handy during our travels.”

“Yeah, I’m sure ya do. But ya must’ve had a hell of a time ­diggin’ ’em out of those rooms.”

He’d said the word “digging” like he was talking about artifacts. And that wasn’t too far off, since we still hadn’t found the magic sleeping mats or the tent yet. Druid had tried his best to find them, but to no avail, so they must have been in another room. Still, we did have a nice collection of magic items we’d found today. And Druid’s tent and mats would turn up eventually.

“So, Master, what brings you here?”

“Well, I went to the plaza, but Ivy wasn’t there, so I came here to ask if ya knew anything. I never thought Ivy might be at your house. Can I come in? I bought somethin’ ya might be able to turn into dinner.”

He’s been looking for me? “Was there something you wanted to ask me, sir?”

“Hm? Oh, no, I just thought you’d wanna hear what happened with Ciel.”

Oh! That’s right. I was going to go see him if he was available so I could ask him about Ciel. “Oh, yes, please! I want to hear about Ciel! Was it magnificent?” Ciel always looks so mighty when it hunts.

“Oh yeah, it was very magnificent. Though at first, we were all kinda stunned…well, more like shiverin’ messes.”

Shivering messes?

“Ciel came to rescue us when a gurbar herd had us surrounded—so at first, we misunderstood what was happening. We thought a monster even more powerful than gurbars was about to attack us. And, as ya can imagine, we resigned ourselves to die.”

Wow, I didn’t realize things had gotten that dangerous.

“But then the gurbars started retreatin’ for some reason. And by the time we figured out what was goin’ on, the adandara had already thinned out the gurbar herd quite a bit. Then, when I realized it was the same one ya told me about, Ivy, my muscles nearly gave out. Damn! Ciel really was so strong. The way it hunted was a masterpiece.”

“I’m glad to hear neither you nor Ciel were hurt,” I said. When Druid’s party was wiped out and he lost his arm, a herd of gurbars had been responsible. His mentor might have been able to survive the attack without Ciel’s help, but he would definitely have been heavily wounded. It really was a big relief.