The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 6 - Chapter 322

Chapter 322:

Roly-Poly

THIS WAS OUR THIRD DAY camping by the dump. We’d originally planned to stay only one night, but since we were worried about all the magic energy at the dump, we decided after much deliberation to stay for a while and let Sol gobble it up. When Druid asked Sol for help, it gleefully bounded off into the dump. It stayed there for two whole days, just eating all the magic energy. Understandably worried, Druid went to stop Sol from overeating, but the slime ran away from him. When he watched it continue to eat as it ran, Druid drooped his head in defeat. And now we were nearing our third evening at the dump.

“Look at Sol…”

Sol was in quite a good mood after eating to its heart’s content. The symbols on its body were still there from the night before, but we still didn’t know what they meant. We asked Sol if anything was wrong, but it indicated it was fine. It was also now twice the size it had been when it was first born. It was still smaller than Flame and Sora, though, but its size wasn’t the problem—it was its roundness. After three solid days of eating, Sol was round enough to be a perfect sphere.

“It must have overeaten,” Druid said.

“I know, right?”

“Pefu! Pefu! Pefu!” Sora cried loudly in protest.

But there was no getting around it. Sol had gotten quite fat…er, round.

“Well, I guess even slimes can get fat,” Druid remarked.

“Pehhh!” Sol screamed in protest. It must have hated being called fat.

Um, sorry, sweetie, but you are quite round. You’re roly-poly.

“Umm…how about we head out soon?” Druid had decided that we couldn’t stay there any longer, so we’d planned to leave for Hatahi Village the next morning. Neither of us imagined Sol would eat so much that its body shape would change. Sora and Flame’s physiques never altered, even when they gorged themselves. Maybe neither of them had ever really eaten until they were completely full…

“Sora, Flame, have you ever eaten until you were totally stuffed before?”

They stared at me in silence. I guessed they weren’t answering because they always got plenty to eat.

“Um, do slimes get fat?” I asked the two quietly, so nobody else could hear me.

They both sat in silence, meaning slimes did not get fat. They don’t?

“Are you sure? Just look at Sol…”

We all looked at Sol, who was moving itself by rolling along the ground. I really wish it would jump a little and get some exercise in.

“Sol got fat, right?”

“Pu! Pu, puuu.”

“Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”

So I was right. Even Sora and Flame have labeled Sol as fat.

“And Sol is a slime, right?”

“…Pu! Pu, puuu.”

“…Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”

Could the two of you please not be so cryptic? Sol is a proper slime. I hope…

Early the next morning, we packed up our tent and looked around the area. We hadn’t forgotten anything.

“All right, let’s hit the road,” Druid said.

“Okay.”

I glanced at the dump. It looked the same as it had when we arrived. Sora and Flame had eaten the swords and potions, but the magic items were still undisturbed. The only difference was that there was much less monster-mutating magic energy stored up there now. I hoped that Sol’s efforts had made the dump a little less dangerous.

“Where’s Sol?” Druid asked.

“Asleep in the bag.”

“I can see why… It did work awfully hard.”

“Yeah, and it got awfully round.”

This got a chuckle out of Druid. I checked in the bag and saw that Sol was sleeping soundly. Oh, good. It didn’t hear that.

“Okay, want to go back to the village road?” Druid asked.

I gave him a confused look. I wasn’t the right person to ask.

“What do you think, Ciel?”

Mrrrow. With a short reply, Ciel bounded off gracefully in the lead. Sora chased after it, and we hurried after them both.

“They’re not headed for the village road,” Druid observed.

“Are we going deeper into the forest, then?”

“No, they’re taking us to that rocky hill I told you about, the one with the monsters that drop rare items.”

So we were headed to that cave.

“But there aren’t any monsters there this time of year, right?”

“Normally, there wouldn’t be…but after seeing that dump, I’m not so sure anymore.”

Does he mean there could be monsters that were affected by the magic energy? Mrrrgh, that’s scary.

“Ciel, let’s take a safe route, okay?”

…Mrrrow.

Hm? What was that pause for?

Druid was also worried. “Ciel?”

Mrrrow.

It says everything is okay…so I guess it is.

The thought had barely popped into my mind when we came upon a herd of the same monsters we’d encountered a few days ago. And they were berserk, too.

“They’re already on the move, I see.” Druid drew his sword and held it at the ready. I looked for a spot where I could stay out of the way, but there were boulders everywhere, leaving no easy nooks for me to hide in. As I glanced around, wondering what to do, Ciel pounced on the herd.

“You know, this path is probably plenty safe if Ciel’s with us.” With a little sigh, Druid sheathed his sword again.

There were three berserk monsters. And soon after Ciel pounced on them, there were three dead monsters. Since Ciel moved so quickly and everything happened so fast, what exactly happened was a mystery. All I knew was that the berserk monsters were dead in the blink of an eye.

“Okay, let’s burn the corpses and move on,” Druid said.

“All right. Oh! Mr. Druid, Sol woke up.”

My shoulder bag had started to wiggle. Sora was on Druid’s head and Flame was in my arms, so the source of the wiggling had to be Sol. Had it picked up on the magic energy?

“Should we feed it? It’ll only get more…” Druid’s worries had shifted from berserk monsters to fat slimes. Well, I was also worried, to be sure. I didn’t know if Sol could take any more. But…it was already awake anyway.

“Sorry, I’ll let you out now.” I opened the bag and let Sol out. Once it was outside, it spotted the dead monsters and gracefully rolled over to them.

“It rolls to get around now,” Druid said.

“Ha ha ha!”

As I watched Sol swallow the monsters, I tried not to imagine it becoming any rounder.

“Well, as long as Sol says it’s okay, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” Druid said.

I nodded in reply. Last night, Druid and I had asked Sol repeatedly just to be sure it was all right being that shape. It said everything was fine, so we’d decided to trust it.

“Ivy, is it just me, or are those symbols on Sol’s body changing color?”

“You noticed it, too?”

At first, the symbols on Sol’s body had been gray and faint. But they’d started getting whiter and whiter yesterday, and they were now quite visible against Sol’s black body. Thinking we’d overlooked something, we pored over the books about slimes again, but there was not a single account of slimes having symbols on their bodies.

“I get the sense those symbols are here to stay. What do you think, Mr. Druid?”

“Yeah, I get that feeling, too.”

At first, the symbols would glow faintly and then disappear. But now, there were no traces of faintness in the symbols—they were asserting themselves.

“There’s a bookstore in the next village, right?”

“I think so…but why don’t we faax our friends and ask them to do some research for us?”

“Huh? But what if somebody else reads our faxes?”

I was okay with telling Rattloore and my other friends like him, but I didn’t like the idea of anybody else knowing about Sol.

“We don’t have to be specific. We can say something vague like, ‘We heard that some slimes have symbols on their bodies. Do you know anything about that?’ They’re pretty savvy; they’ll know we want them to look it up for us.”

He was right. Sifar, for one, would definitely pick up on what we were really asking.

“I think that would work better than checking a bookstore,” Druid continued.

He had a point there, too, but I felt bad making other people do our research for us.

“Ivy, remember how all your friends kept telling you ‘If there’s anything you ever need, don’t hesitate to ask’?”

We had faxed back and forth many times by then, and that was always how everyone had ended their letters to me.

“So, I won’t be a bother?”

“Don’t worry about that. They’ll be overjoyed, not bothered. I guarantee that.”

That was an awfully bold claim.

“We’ll be at the next village for quite a while, so go ahead and ask them for help.”

“Okay, I’ll do that. Oh, looks like Sol ate up all the magic energy!”

We walked over to Sol and saw something on the ground next to the monsters.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Wow, you don’t see many of these this time of year. It’s a magic item.”