Chapter 15: Meeting, Departing.

Somewhere in the continent, Unknown timeframe.

I am inside a dark room, and I am sitting at a circular table.

Why would that matter?

Because the person to my left is my master. Why did I become the retainer to such a weird master?

He doesn’t like to be called master. He doesn’t want to rule over others, but he also will kill you the moment you go against his word.

Thus, whenever we speak, I feel like I could burrow my head into the ground. I have to call him by name, I can’t use honorifics or a respectful tone.

When master gets angry he’s scary.

“What’s wrong, Zara?”

His voice, it exerts so much pressure on me whenever he speaks I unconsciously want to call him master.

But I can’t.

“Nothing, Selfarion”

Master is weird.

Today, too.

Whenever we have to sit on a table, it has to be circular shaped.

He will not allow the table to not be circular.

Because that would mean someone would end up in a position above the rest, so it is not allowed.

I met master two years ago. I didn’t think much of him at first, but the moment he spoke, I was mesmerized.

It wasn’t like love at first sight, but the feeling you have when you meet an extremely important person, a King who rules over the world.

I couldn’t resist, so I had to beg for him to take me in as a retainer.

I don’t regret it, but I still have that sentiment, ‘this is not what I expected’ kind of thing.

Master is extremely strong. I came to understand how strong only a year and a half ago, though.

Yes, I decided to follow him without knowing just how strong he really was. The pressure he exuded that time was that strong.

The door opens while issuing a creak due to how slow it was opened, and another person enters the room.

“Welcome back, Tauro”

Tauro. Another weird guy.

He is the biological son of Selfarion.

They don’t give that impression to the others, though.

The only thing they have in common is their weirdness.

He dresses like a beggar.

Once I asked him why he enjoyed doing so.

His answer was ‘because I come from the dust, and to the dust, I will go’.

Don’t ask me what does that mean, I don’t understand it either.

“I’m back, Selfarion”

“Hello, Tauro”

“How did ‘that’ go?”

Tauro had left the base some days ago. It was a sudden thing, none of the other 5 were informed. I wonder what happened that made him leave in such a hurry.

“It went better than expected. I found the perfect scapegoat, there should be no hints leading their King to us”

“Good work. Then we will begin 2 months from now, Zara”

“Yes, Selfarion”

Is it finally my turn?

“Go meet the Murloc lord, and give him this along with this letter”

“Yes, Selfarion”

“Also”

“Yes?”

“Bring Falnir with you”

Falnir. A very secretive person, the only one among us who is an Elf. Being an Elf, Selfarion likes to use him as a means of espionage.

“Yes”

And so I stand up, and instead of bowing in a show of respect, I bid my farewell with a wave of a hand.

And then I exit the dark room.

“Hey Falnir”

“Hey Zara, what’s up”

“Master said you have to accompany me to the coast while I meet the Murloc lord”

“Oh? did Master tell you so? well then, let’s go”

“Alright. will you do as you always do?”

“Yep, I’ll come back to tell you if anything untoward happens. Otherwise, we will meet right before you get to the coast”

“Alright, let’s hope we don’t screw up Master’s plan”

“Right. do you want to invite Varus to come as well?”

“He came back?”

“Yeah, he should be in the machine's room. I heard his experiment was a success”

“A success? just who did varus find that was good enough. Didn’t the last five explode right after being injected?”

“It seems like he found himself a vampire”

“Really? just where did he manage to find himself one…”

“Anyways, if you want to bring him with us, you should go now”

“Right. wait for me at the entrance while I go and ask him”

“Okay, see you later, then”

“Later”

I enter Varus’ room, which doubles as the ‘machinery room’.

Originally, this was just the machinery room, but since whenever Varus is in the base he eats and sleeps inside of it, we decided to have it double as his room.

It looks as untidy as ever, there are machine parts everywhere I go. Nails, Engines, Mechanical arms and legs and many other metal-made parts litter the ground, along with many things made of a thing Varus calls ‘plastic’.

If Varus hadn’t lived for two thousand years already, I wouldn’t believe everything in this place was made by Varus. from the theory to the experimentation to achieving success, it was all started and finished by Varus alone.

A so-called ‘Genius’.

“Varus?”

...

“Varus where are you?

“Over here”

When I turn my head towards the origin of the sound, I can see what I thought a first was a 3-meter tall automaton, waving his hand towards me.

“This is?”

“Do you like my new invention? I call it the ‘power suit’”

“Are you inside of it right now, or are you controlling it ‘remotely’?”

“I’m inside of it, it is basically a full body armor, Look”

As he says that, the top half of the Automaton opens up, revealing inside a person. A male that looks similar to the humans, except it’s not a human, but the form this person attained after using a skill. Varus enjoys making himself look like a neat, blonde haired and blue eyed person, although right now, he’s wearing goggles.

“Do you control the, Umm, ‘power suit’ using those handles?

“Yes! By infusing the power suit with electricity with my hands, I can utilize the handles to control the arms and legs of the robot. You can’t see it right now, but when the cockpit closes down a helmet comes along with it which cover my head and grants me a superior sense of sight. This is currently my masterpiece!”

“I see. by the way, I was told by Falnir that your experiment was a success?”

“Indeed. I finally could use the strengthening serum on a living being without destroying it thanks to the vampire’s high regeneration. now all I need to do is work on improving it by further experimenting on him, trying to spot where are the most conflicting areas of the body, the ones more, huh, prone to violently exploding”

“Congratulations”

“Thanks. Anyways, why did you come looking for me?”

“Yes, I came over to invite you with me to the Murlocs, I have to meet the king and hand him something from Master”

“The Murlocs eh. Sure, I’ll bring the power suit with me. It will be a great opportunity to test it out. is Falnir coming too, this time?”

“He is. Falnir is waiting for us at the entrance”

“Alright. let’s go and meet the Murlocs, then”

Doraig’s POV

Ah, sunny day. this is what happiness is all about.

“Good morning, Kelsi” (Doraig)

“Good morning, Doraig” (Kelsi)

Today is the fourth day since Rize left to the capital. that means today is the day he will come back with Robin if nothing bad happened there, and the day we travel to the hellhound lava zone to begin our Journey of filling the kill quota.

“Good morning children” (Doraig)

“Good morning father” (Blobs #1, #2, … , #n)

The blobs are ready, they can now speak fluently and they’ve also learned many things, like fishing, hunting, and how to gather fruit.

“Father, will you really leave with Mother today?” (Blobby)

This is Blobby, he’s the slime that learns the fastest, the one who managed to speak fluently first and also the one who acts as the ‘big brother’ among the slimes.

“Yes, we will leave. But don’t worry, we will come back from time to time to say hello” (Doraig)

“Father, you really can’t take us with you?” (Blobby)

“Father—” (All blobs)

“Impossible. Children, you need to be independent now that you’re all ‘Adults’. I and your mother can’t forever take care of you, and also, you need to settle down the slime race. you can’t forever live like hobos, right? I expect all of you to build the slime empire!” (Doraig)

“Slime empire?” (All blobs)

“Yes, like the human empire, the elven kingdom or like many other races with sovereignty over a territory, I want you to make a civilized place, a place with a leader chosen amongst you, rules and a growing economy. If you guys do that and forever settle the slime race, you will make me the proudest dragon and father in existence. will you do that for your father, my children?” (Doraig)

“Yes, Father!” (All Slimes)

“Good. now, come with me so I can teach you how to build a house. I learned how to do it when I lived among humans, a long time ago” (Doraig)

“House? that’s a place where some races live, right? (Blobby)

“Yes, you’ve got it right, son. A house is a lot better than a cave, it can keep you warm, it’s not as dirty as the inside of a cave and sometimes you don’t even need a fire when it’s cold outside. you can put a bed and you can also have a kitchen in which you can prepare meals. It is also a place where you can form a family and spend some time enjoying the company of people you love” (Doraig)

“So that’s a house… Dad, teach us how to make a house!” (Blobby)

“House!” (All blobs)

“Alright, follow me to the forest, because we will need a lot of wood!” (Doraig)

And so we walk towards the nearest forest, The starter area with level 1 critters, ‘Gamrur’s Forest’. It is a fairly small zone that was ruled over by a 2-meter tall and 4 meters long Wolf called Gamrur. a shame Gamrur was killed by me when I was helping Kelsi level up, so now the forest has no ruler, and is filled with nothing but low-level critters which pose no threat.

“Okay, begin with those trees over there. make sure you cut near the base; you can cut the trees by using your racial ability and turning your arms into an ax. this is an ax, make sure this end is a bit sharp, so it cuts into the tree easier”

“Good, Blobby has it. look at Blobby kids, and try to imitate him”

“Okay, Blobby come here for a second”

“Yes, Father”

“Alright, so to cut down a tree you need to hit it like this… make sure to move out the way so you don’t get squashed”

Bang! the first tree falls down

“Good, now all of you begin to cut down the tree. make sure you all cut down facing the same direction, so you don’t have the tree fall into someone else’s tree, or squash them down”

I say as I make three examples of my words to bring the point home

“See, if you were to begin cutting the tree in this place, then the tree would fall onto your brother, you could injure or even kill him, so make sure you listen”

“Yes, father” (Blob #2973)

“Alright, now begin to cut! I’ll go and clear a space to put the houses down” (Doraig)

“You can stay here and make sure no accidents occur Kelsi. I’ll come and get you all once the place is ready”

“Alright, see you later sweetheart”

“Yep, later”

I fly away and stay floating above the zone. I look around at the lush ground filled with grass and take aim. ‘Minor Destruction Ray’. I use the ray to remove the grass and leave just the earth below it. This should do, now let’s see…

How can I level the ground?

Damn, this might be harder than I thought.

Hmm…

Ah, I know! Let’s just put wood Planks in the ground to level the place, and then we can construct the house over it as you normally do.

Okay, then this part should be done. I’ll go and see how are the children doing.

‘Fly’

10 minutes later

I’m flying above the area, I can see it is now devoid of trees, so It looks like the job is done. I have to compliment these kids, they even knew to remove the branches and pile the logs together without me saying it out loud. the trees are around 40 meters tall and with a diameter of 1.5 meters... if I remember correctly… that old guy said that with a tree like that you need one tree to make four houses, and we should use 1,000 or so trees worth to level the ground. we have around 13,000 trees here, so it should be enough for 48,000 houses…

“Good work kids, now carry the logs with you. 50 of you should be able to carry one tree, so let’s go, with the amount of you there are we shouldn’t take more than 4 trips, after the third trip some of you will stay behind to begin work while the rest continue to bring back the rest of the logs” (Doraig)

“Yes!” (All Blobs)

I know this way there will be 4 or 5 slimes per house, as there are close to two hundred thousand slimes, but later on, they can just make more homes so they can live separately, or for when the slime population grows more. It’s surprising the number of slimes isn’t in the millions... until you think about how each dungeon cave had not more than a thousand Slimes each.

So we begin the operation to move the logs towards the construction zone.

8 hours later, the 3rd trip is over.

“Good, now this group will bring back the rest of the logs” (Doraig)

“Yes!” (Blobs)

“The rest of you, follow me. I’ll teach you how to build a house now” (Doraig)

“Alright, Listen here”

“First, we need to convert all these logs into planks. to do so first transform part of your body to make a saw. you need to cut the logs like so…”

“When the logs become planks, there should be around 120,000 square planks for these logs, and for each house, you need around 30,000 square planks. that means we can make 4 houses for each of these logs”

“Alright. now let’s level the ground for each house, otherwise, it will be either crap-looking in the inside, or not very stable if we decide to make some planks ‘float’”

“To level the ground, you first find a place where the soil seems sunken, then you put a plank in that place, then you use soil to have the plank stay in place. once that’s done, you can begin the work”

“we don’t have nails, so instead what we have to do is something called ‘timber frame’. what you do is you take a plank, and you cut a joint, which will be used to make it stay in place and form the structure. like so—”

I say while I use my claw to remove a piece of wood from a plank.

“Then when the joint is made of two planks, you can put one in the middle and two…”

3 hours later

“...and then you put the structure up. and that’s done”

“Okay, now it’s your turn. work in groups of 20 to make each house, it should take you around 2 hours that way”

Man, every other race has such overpowered racial skills. Rize’s invisibility, and now the slimes shapeshifting skill which makes them the perfect workers… maybe we could begin a construction company?

The next day, the previous valley is no more. what used to be a prairie with nothing but lush green grass, is now a village, filled with houses which look the same, giving off the impression that it was made by a professional company. this is now like any other newly-built village in the continent, minus the fact that its inhabitants are slimes instead of your usual bipedal group of people.

“Okay guys, that should be it for now. if you want, you can go to the forest and get more wood to make more houses, in case you decide 4 of you living in one house is too much. I’m not sure why my friends didn’t come last day to come and get us, but today is probably the day we will say goodbye, at least for a while. Before they come, I’ll teach you, kids, how to make some furniture, so your houses don’t look like a closed cave and begin to look like actual houses!” (Doraig)

“Thanks, father!” (All blobs)

“Okay, first, let’s teach you how to make a basic piece of furniture, a table…”

5 Hours later

“What the hell happened in the last 4 days…” (Rize)

“What do you mean? this looks like a village. where are the slimes?” (Rob)

“They should have been here… I don’t believe I got lost… I—” (Rize)

“Hey guys, you finally came back!” (Doraig)

“Doraig? what happened here, where are the slimes? why is there a village now? what the fuck did you do!?” (Rize)

“Woah, calm down. one question at a time. I and the slimes made a village, you don’t think I’d leave my children living in some caves, do you?” (Doraig)

“You made a… village? how the—” (Rize)

“Well, you see, at one point of my life, I spent a hundred years among humans. During that period of time, I managed to learn some crafts. And I mean learn, because doing some stuff like sewing or fishing with a rod is hard when you have hands as big as these. but at least the knowledge is up there—”

I say as I point a finger towards my head.

“Fuck me, for real?” (Rob)

“So what’s up with the helmet, Rob?” (Doraig)

“Look at this” (Rob)

Says Rob, as he proceed to extend wings—

“Wait, hold on, wings?” (Doraig)

“Yeah, do you like my new helmet? I can now fly instead of being stuck on your back” (Rob)

“Really!? Fuck yeah Rob, now all we need is for Rize to find something similar, and I will finally stop being a mount” (Doraig)

A few minutes after we begin speaking, Kelsi joins us.

“Hello again Rize” (Kelsi)

“Hello, Kelsi” (Rize)

“You must be Robin, right? I’m Kelsi, it’s a pleasure” (Kelsi)

“The pleasure is mine. Umm, I heard from Rize that you would be our healer, is that true?” (Rob)

“Yup, she will be the Healer. or maybe we should say, she already is our healer” (Doraig)

“?” (Rob & Rize)

“While you guys were wasting your time, I took Kelsi leveling, so she is now level 15 and ready to fight. She also learned a bunch of skill to make her job as a healer a reality” (Doraig)

“Really? what did you make her learn?” (Rize)

“I learned these skills. Basic Heal, Slime Limb, Aura of calmness, Slime Barrier, and Minor Cauterize. I think those should be good enough— at least to begin with, right?” (Kelsi)

“Hmm… sounds good. But it seems like Rob will suffer quite a bit if he ever loses a limb or needs to have a wound closed up” (Rize)

“It’s okay, as long as I can hit level 20 and then 25 all enemies will have a hard time trying to hurt me whatsoever” (Rob)

“Why?” (Doraig & Kelsi)

“Here, look at these items” (Rob)

He hands me a set of armor, while he hands Kelsi a shield and a sword for us to look at.

Holy shit, what is this. Unique armor? high level, too. Damn, even I feel jealous.

“It’s a really good armor, are the shield and sword unique as well?” (Doraig)

“Yep, I struck it rich inside the dungeon” (Rob)

“Amazing! did you find any skill books for me?” (Doraig)

“Uh… I didn’t. I guess it’s time to tell you guys what happened there” (Rob)

“Here, these items look really good. Congratulations Robin” (Kelsi)

“Thanks” (Rob)

“Okay, so what happened once we met, is that I first entered a desert…”

30 minutes later

“Wow, and once you defeat just 5 ‘Gemril’ let you approve with full marks? that’s amazing. And what happened then?” (Doraig)

“Once the test was over, he made me walk with him to the treasury. you wouldn’t believe the number of things that were inside. I bet if I had looked at it directly for a little longer, I’d be blind by now!” (Robin)

“And then?” (Rize)

“And then… he let me take only the items you just saw. Gemril said that I could only get the rest of the things once I mastered all of the skills” (Rob)

“The skills… as in the skills in these items?” (Rize)

“Yeah, I think he wants me to use the third method of learning so that I don’t require the items to use the skills” (Rob)

“That… sounds quite hard to do, in all honesty” (Kelsi)

“I know, right? when I pointed out that, he went all ‘oops’ because he forgot I’m human…” (Rob)

“Hahaha—” (Doraig)

“Well, then you will just have to spend a long time trying to do it. with so many things in that treasury it’s worth the time, at least I think so” (Rize)

“Yeah…” (Rob)

“Well then, Let’s get started now that we are together. Let me and Kelsi gather the slimes so that we can say goodbye” (Doraig)

Once I say that Kelsi hops on my back and moves to my head, sitting there, waiting for me to move.

I Fly up and once every house is in my view, I yell.

“Everyone, please come outside your house for a moment!” (Doraig)

Once I say that every door of every house opens up, and all the slimes that were inside their new homes come out.

Once I see no more slimes moving, and all the blobs are looking up to me, I say.

“It is my biggest joy to have become the father of all of you. I’m really glad to have such great kids, and I really hope that one day I will have some of your own kids calling me grandpa.

Right now, you have just begun your journey in this new life, and I hope that you make the best out of it. Make use of your newly found intellect, and learn, my children. Because by learning you will be able to advance the slime race, and because by learning you will make a better world for you and the ones that will come after you.

at the same time, I hope that you will use part of your time living with each other, because this is too, a part of learning. You will face hardships at some point in life, but if you stick together as a family, I trust that you will never succumb.

Don’t forget to be clean, and also, be kind to everyone else around you. treat others like you would like to be treated, and if someone does something in your favor, say thank you.

it’s okay to make mistakes, but when you make them, you need to make up to them one way or another. never be afraid to say ‘sorry’, ‘thank you’ and ‘please’.

I won't say something like ‘never take more than you need’, but if you have a little more, maybe take a look at the person next to you to make sure they have ‘enough’.

this is all I can say to you, my children. I hope that you will find joy for yourselves in this life” (Doraig)

“Father!”

“We love you father”

“We will be respectful to others!”

“Look at the person next to us to make sure they have enough!”

“Be greedy, but never at the cost of the well-being of others!”

“Find the joy in life”

“...”

“My children” (Kelsi)

“Mother!”

“Today, I and your father are leaving. we will meet again, but since today, you are all grown up slimes. we didn’t spend much time together, but I want you all to believe me when I say, you are all my children. I care for every single one of you, and forever will.

As your father said, try to find happiness in this life”

“And please, Until we meet next time, be well. I Also want to meet little ones who will call me 'Grandma'” (Kelsi)

“Mother!!” (Kelsi)

“Goodbye, my children” (Kelsi)

“See you, kids” (Doraig)

After that, I descend towards Rize and Rob.

My eyes— I’m… crying?

“Let’s… Let’s go” (Doraig)

Rize and Rob nod to me. Rize gets on my back while Rob conjures his wings, and so we fly away, towards the next place, Grendel.