The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 6 - Chapter 286

Chapter 286:

Sol Food

WE TROMPED OFF TO THE DUMP, leaving fresh footprints in the snow. Ciel was back in its true form, frolicking mightily in the drifts. Sora was also merrily body-slamming the adandara as it played. It was their usual way of having fun, but since Ciel was in particularly high spirits today, it was much more intense. Sora was bouncing in every direction.

“I feel like Sora is treating Ciel kind of ridiculously… Oh, it jumped away.”

I watched Sora fly straight into a tree. A big pile of snow landed on it.

“Ahh! Sora!” I ran over to dig it out of the snow, but the pile jiggled and Sora jumped right out. Its momentum carried it all the way back to Ciel.

“I guess it’s okay,” Druid observed.

“Yeah, Sora seems to be getting stronger every day from playing like that.”

“You can say that again. Well, I guess if that’s the way you play all the time, you’ve got no choice but to toughen up.”

He was right: That was quite a violent way to have fun. Sometimes their playing got so intense that I wondered whether it was only a game. That was just how much their playing had gone berserk…evolved, rather. It was hard to believe that Ciel used to do nothing more than toss Sora around with its front paws.

“Looks like Flame and Sol don’t want to come out of the bag,” Druid said.

“Yeah. I checked on them, and neither of them has even the slightest desire to come out. Do you think they don’t like the cold?”

“Hmm…slimes are supposedly resistant to both heat and cold, but then again, we can’t rely on conventional slime knowledge with these guys, can we?”

I chuckled.

No, we can’t. No matter how much research I’ve done on slimes, I’ve never found anything that applied to Sora and Flame. Maybe we really should check out older records.

“Mr. Druid, where could we find some older records?”

“Libraries in big cities ought to have them, especially the capital. We won’t be able to access the classified documents, though.”

Oh, so they have libraries here. I guess smaller towns wouldn’t have those records, though. And for that matter, isn’t the area around the capital the only place where you can even find big cities? I guess our search lies in the future, then.

“What are the classified documents like?” Do they have anything on rare slimes in them?

“Well, take this village’s guardian deity. It’s a giant serpent monster, but since the villagers think of it as their guardian and it’s become very important to them, all documents pertaining to it are probably classified and hidden from the public. It’s true with other villages, too. Any documents about monsters that are considered very important tend to have their access restricted.”

Aha. So, if a slime were significant to a certain village, I guess you’d have to go to that village to read the documents about it. Actually, no, even if you did go there, you probably still wouldn’t be allowed to see the documents.

“Wow, look at the dump. It’s pure white.”

Oh, wow! Yeah, the blanket of snow is making it impossible to see anything. For that matter, the dump looks so different with snow on it that I didn’t even notice where we were.

“Wow, even the dump is pretty when it’s covered in snow.”

It looked like a giant white plaza.

“It’s weird, though, knowing what’s under all the snow.”

“Hahaha! Yeah, true.”

My, how white everything is. It’s going to be quite the task finding everything we need in these conditions, but we’ve just gotta do it!

I checked over my list of items I’d need to make the traps. They were all things I always saw at dumps, so all I had to do was find them.

Okay, let’s do this! I stepped into the dump and was about to scoop the snow out of the way with my hands when Druid stopped me.

“No! Wait! If you dig like that, you’ll definitely catch cold. Let’s use an item.”

An item? I gave Druid a curious look and ran back over to him to find he’d pulled a stick out of his magic bag. He set it on top of the biggest drift of snow covering the dump. After a while, the snow began to melt around the stick.

“Wow! It’s melting the snow!”

“This is the magic item they use to clear snow off the roads in villages and towns. Well, it’s a miniature version of it, of course.”

I stood there and watched…and after a while, I could start to see the trash under the melting snow. Noting this, Druid moved the stick to a different position to dissolve more snow.

“The sticks they use to clear the streets are much longer, and they can melt much wider areas of snow. This item’s range is limited, as you can see.”

The melted area was about the size of an adult’s arm span.

“Oh, no, I think it’s more than adequate. In fact, it’s a lifesaver.”

“You really gave me a scare when you tried to scoop the snow with your hands.”

“Well, I didn’t know you had such a handy item in your bag.”

In my birth village of Ratomi, I’d never seen a magic item like that. It never snowed enough there to even call for such an item.

Druid moved the magic item again and again until all sorts of trash peeked out from under the snow. I was a little sad to see the pretty snow go, but I shook off my blues and started looking for what I needed.

“The thing we need the most is rope, I assume,” Druid said.

“Yeah.”

The monsters Druid told me about that only came out in the winter were much bigger than any I’d trapped before, so I needed stronger rope, too.

“I can’t find any long pieces.”

“They don’t have to be long,” I told him. “We can always tie them together.”

“But wouldn’t that weaken it?”

Weaken the rope? I dunno, I think I tie them together pretty tightly.

“If the rope is weaker, couldn’t we always double it up or something?”

“I guess that would work for the traps we have in mind.”

We collected the things we needed: rope, baskets, and mesh bags.

“Pu! Pu, puuu.”

“Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”

“Pefu!”

Um…huh? When did I take the slimes out of their bag? I looked under the tree where I’d left our things and saw that the slime bag’s mouth was wide open. I looked in the direction where I’d heard their voices. I didn’t see Ciel, but I spotted the three slimes right away.

“Ivy, did you leave the bag open?”

“No, I didn’t. That wouldn’t be fair to Flame, since the cold would wake it up from its nap.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

And yet the bag’s mouth was opened wide. Come to think of it, Sol also got into the bag this morning…

“Do you think…maybe Sol opened the bag?”

“Probably, yeah. So I guess our new friend is a bag-opening slime.”

If Sol ever goes missing, will we need to check all our bags to find it? That sounds like a hassle. I’d better tell it which bags it’s okay to be in up front. Now, where did Ciel run off to? I know it should be okay out there, but I still worry…

“Pu! Pu, puuu.”

Pong.

I glanced over at the familiar sounds. Flame was merrily regenerating magic stones. Sora was grandly swallowing swords for lunch. And Sol was… Huh?

“Mr. Druid…what…is that?”

“What’s up? Um…er, yeah, even I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Not far away from Sora and Flame sat Sol. All sorts of black fuzzy things were floating around it. Druid and I stared in silence at the surreal sight for a while until one of Sol’s tentacles suddenly grabbed one of the black fuzzies and ate it.

It was just such a shocking sight that we forgot how to speak for a few moments. But when we saw Sol chomp on another one of the black things, we realized it was having its lunch.

“Is that its food?”

“Looks like it.”

Okay, so those black fuzzy things are food. Sol swallowed all the black fuzzies floating around it, then bounced over to a different spot. The slime sat there for a while until another big bunch of the fuzzies appeared out of thin air all around it. Then Sol used its tentacles to eat them.

“Those black thingies…how do you think we’re supposed to take them back with us?”

“Maybe…a bottle?” Druid suggested. “Wait, we need to find out what those things are first.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Well, at least we found out Sol gets its food at the dump. That’s good news…or is it?