Tabitha ran into a moral dilemma on the way back to the village with Runa.

Why?

Because they found a slime.

On one hand, Tabitha really wanted to use a slime to infuse its—well, slime, with an alchemical combination that would allow her to make a slime-tipped spear dedicated to killing giant spiders like no other spear ever could.

On the other hand… slimes were almost extinct as far as Tabitha was aware, and she didn’t want to contribute to their extinction more than she already did. Not only did she kill a slime already, but she killed a rare slime! That was twice as bad, probably!

Though, it did attack her first, so she didn’t feel too guilty about it.

But that was beside the point. The point was that she saw a perfectly innocent, bouncing, purple slime in the distance.

“He-hey, Runa,” Tabitha said. “Could you uh… maybe remind me just how close these little guys are to extinction?”

Runa tapped a finger against her chin to think about it before answering, “Well… I still seem them once a week usually, whenever I come out here.”

“Then they can’t be that close to extinct, right? Besides, this is the countryside! There’s a difference between bein’ extinct near the big cities and bein’ extinct all the way out here. Like… ya know, ya won’t find many deer and bears near a city, but they’re still all over the countryside!”

“That’s true, but… many adventurers travelled all across the countryside to capture slimes and take them back to the cities. Their population still hasn’t recovered since then. That’s what I’ve been told… anyways. I’ve never seen how common slimes were before I was born.”

“Tch. So, they’re still strugglin’ even out here. Then uh… what can ya tell me about how they reproduce? Do you happen to know about that by any chance?”

“I do! I’ve seen it before! I was picking mushrooms one day and I saw two slimes come across each other. They merged their bodies together for a few minutes and looked like they became one big slime, but then they split the body into three slimes! They were all smaller than the two first were, and then they went off in different directions.”

“So. Just uh… hypothetically here. If I want to have lots of fun makin’ stuff with slime… I could go and capture a couple of slimes, make them breed, and then kill—I mean, uh, harvest, one of them, and I wouldn’t be doin’ anythin’ bad to the population.”

Runa nodded, though she looked nervous about what Tabitha was planning. “Right…?”

“Heh. Then it sounds like I’m startin’ a slime breedin’ program. Wait. How am I gonna keep them locked up with each other? They’ll probably be able to squeeze out of any gaps in whatever I put them in. I’d need a special box or container or somethin’ to put them in. Ah, darn it. That plan will take a while. I want to make this spear as soon as I can!”

With that being said, Tabitha stood up and walked right over to the slime without any weapon.

The slime stopped in its track once it noticed her.

“Hey there!” Tabitha shouted out to it. “I won’t hurt ya unless you try somethin’ funny! But I’m warnin’ ya, if ya try attackin’ me, I’m gonna have to kill ya and turn ya into a spear.”

“Ta-Tabitha! What are you doing?” Runa shouted.

Tabitha turned to look at Runa and flashed her a thumbs-up. “I’d feel bad if I kill it if it’s peaceful, but it’s alright if I do it out of self-defense!”

Runa stared straight at her for a few seconds before sighing.

Tabitha then turned around again to look at the slime… just in time to get smacked in the face by its entire body jumping at her.

System Menu

-1 HP

She probably would have been a bit upset about getting hit in the face with what felt like a water balloon, but she didn’t have it in her to get mad when the slime did exactly what she wanted. “Ah, darn it! And here I was hopin’ you're a friendly little guy so that I wouldn’t have to kill ya and harvest your corpse out of self-defense. Ah, what a shame. My life is in danger if I don’t protect myself from ya, and I don’t wanna die, so I’m sorry about this,” she said while sitting at 154 out of 155 health.

Then, while the slime was on the ground in front of her charging up for another attack, Tabitha punted it into the nearby tree with as much force as she could.

The slime splattered against the tree.

System Menu

Level 1 Jelly Slime Defeated

+1 Experience

Total Blacksmith Experience: 14/50

Information on Jelly Slimes has been added to your Bestiary.

“Tsk.” Tabitha hung her head low with her arms crossed over her chest. “A darn shame, I tell ya. Rest in peace, little guy. I hope ya reincarnate as a cricket or somethin’ else that nobody wants to hunt.”

She ended up jumping when she heard Runa’s voice from right behind her. “Tabitha…”

Something about Runa’s tone of voice made Tabitha nervous to turn around and face her. “U-uh… it—it attacked me first, so it was alright.”

“You don’t have to make excuses. It was just a monster.”

When Tabitha finally turned around and looked at Runa, she saw a smiling face and a gently wagging tail behind her. That made her think that Runa was just messing with her with that original tone. “But it’s close to extinction, right?”

“Well, they’re not anywhere as common as they used to be, but monsters will never truly go extinct. The Red Moon prevents that from happening.”

“Hold on now, the what?”

“The Red Moon. It’s what we call the world monsters come from. The chief tells us that every three months, the moon in the sky gets linked to another world for a night which causes it to glow red. It brings life to monsters all around the world, causing some to come back to life and causing others to exist out of nothing. They just… appear. So, even if every single slime in the world is killed, more will still appear every three months. That’s also when the Red Hunt starts.”

“I wish that old man woulda mentioned that part! Here I was feelin' horrible about wantin' to harvest somethin' on the edge of extinction! Also, what's this Red Hunt thing?”

Runa held a hand over her mouth to chuckle a little before answering. “The Red Hunt is the day after every Red Moon. It’s when all the adventurers go out hunting for monsters, either for material, to gain experience, or to protect their villages. Oh, and you probably don’t know about the Blue Moon. The Blue Moon always happens a couple nights after the Red Moon, and it brings resources back to the land. Caves that had all of their iron mined out of them will get some of their iron back, some trees might reappear where others were chopped down, and other things like that happen. The Blue Harvest comes after that.”

“So, let me get this straight. Slimes are basically extinct in the wild, but more will always come back every three months or so.”

“Right!”

“So will materials in nature.”

Runa nodded.

“So, I can go wild killin’ every monster in sight and harvestin’ everythin’ I see, and I’ll never really have to worry about drivin’ anythin’ to extinction?”

“Well… kind of. It would be impossible for a single person to make a difference. But if something like… a whole group of people are chopping down all the trees in a forest to clear space for a village, then the Blue Moon won’t restore as many trees as they cut down. If they chop down hundreds of trees in an area, the Blue Moon might only bring back five in that area. It adds up when you look at how much it does all over the world, but you barely notice it locally. It’s the same with the Red Moon. If you kill a hundred slimes in a forest, probably less than ten will come back every three months, and they get hunted by both people and other beasts and monsters, so… you still have to be careful.”

“Darn. I guess that explains why your king in the past still had to go to war even with respawnin’ resources. It don’t matter if they respawn if not enough respawn to keep up with a growin’ population.”

Runa’s ears flattened against her head and she looked away.

“A-ah, sorry, didn’t mean to make ya feel bad by bringin’ that up. Anyways, you’re really smart knowin’ all that!”

Hearing that praise made Runa’s ears twitch upward. “I—I’m not that smart. I just really liked to pay attention to the chief’s stories when growing up.”

“The smartest folk are the ones who are the best listeners. The better ya can pay attention to somethin’, the smarter you’ll be for it.”

Just like that, Runa went from frowning to smiling as she struggled to handle the praise. “I—I’m not that special,” she said while trying not to smile.

“Sure ya are! By the by, want to harvest that slime for me?”

“Sure!”

I almost feel bad for how easy it is to make her cheer up and get her to do somethin’ for me, but if she’s havin’ fun, it’s fine, right?

Tabitha watched Runa as she crouched down by the tree to collect the chunks of slime. Tabitha would have done it herself, but she figured that it would be best to continue letting Runa do all the harvesting so that they could both get the most out of it.

She also realized that she was going to have to be careful with what she asked Runa to do since Runa seemed like the kind of girl who was really bad at saying no. Tabitha didn’t want to take advantage of that eagerness even if by accident. She also needed to figure out how to make it up to Runa. Such as by making her something.

A smile curled Tabitha’s lips as soon as she figured out the perfect present that she could make for Runa to thank her for all the help.