The Road to Carriage*7
After thinking “Soft and springy mana…?” and then giving up on thinking altogether, I spent a while being kneaded endlessly by the slimes.
But when I suddenly realized, “Ah, is this them asking for food!?” I hurried to prepare fertilizer for them. When I splashed the fertilizer over them — the slimes all dispersed in a soft, squishy wave. What the heck. What are you guys!? I even set it up so fertilizer comes out in the greenhouse! If you’re hungry, go over there!
“Well, it’s worth investigating.”
“That’s the spirit, Asuma-sama!”
Anyway—setting the slimes aside for now… As for the mana those slimes possess, it really is something we should study.
When I rechecked the data I gathered back when I examined Generic-kun…
“…… Hmm. Yeah, I guess you could describe it as ‘soft and springy mana.’ It’s kinda like that.”
“Really!?”
“Yeah. But it’s not one single type of mana. It’s a collection. Specifically, mana like ‘repairs when broken,’ ‘maintains shape,’ ‘retains water,’ ‘softness,’ things like that combine with water to make a slime.”
Well, when you think about it, that does make sense. Slimes are apparently born from water packed with mana. Their raw material is water, so it means some kind of mana that makes water all springy and squishy is mixed in.
“… The problem is, I have no idea where the part that makes a slime a ‘slime’ actually exists… like, life? A soul? Where is that…?”
I can’t help agonizing again!
Because—there’s a clear difference between “mana-infused water” and “a slime.”
… Look, slimes are alive, right…? For water to suddenly enter that state of biological activity… thinking about it carefully, it makes no sense.
“No, well, it’s not like human life exists as some physical object either… Life is a state, so, uh, meaning slimes are similar… Wait, then what exactly triggers the emergence of life in the first place…?”
“Asuma-sama is saying something complicated again…”
Mishisia-san grabbed a nearby slime and started poking and squishing it. The slime obediently lets her squish it, while another one slithers around Mishisia-san in a soft wobbling motion. Another one is poking the grass squishily. Yeah, they definitely have self-awareness…
… But no matter how long I thought about it, I couldn’t understand any of it, so I gave up. The mystery of life is deep… and incomprehensible…
Setting aside the slime’s life, let’s talk about slime mana.
“It’s done.”
“Wow! It looks like a slime!”
… I tried reconstructing the mana that forms a slime’s body. But because it’d be bad if I accidentally created a living slime, I removed every mana that didn’t seem related to forming the body.
“Yeah… if I could make it a little firmer, it’d feel like rubber. Okay, then maybe another type of mana…… Ah, how about the ‘hardening mana’ from the holy knights’ armor…? Oh, this is good. Nice and firm.”
With a bit of trial and error, I pretty easily made something rubber-like. Nice, nice!
“As for shaping this… hmm, how should I do it? Heat and press…? No, better to make a mold in the shape of a tire first, pour water into it, add mana to the water… Okay okay, this makes forming it easy.”
And with this rubber-like stuff, shaping it is simple! I can do this!
But well…
“… The problem is, nobody except me can do this.”
Because extracting and adding mana basically uses my reconstruction ability, nobody else can reproduce it. Meaning, this method is useless.
“Uwoooon…”
“Asuma-sama, you are totally stuck. Or more like, stuck in slimes……”
And so I am buried in a mountain of slimes. Or rather, wedged into a swarm of slimes. Yeah. Very wedged. They’re squeezing me tightly. What are these things!?
“Can’t you do it like you did with Mewmya?”
“Hmm… I don’t want to kill the slimes, so…”
“Right, that makes sense…
“If I knew how to extract or add mana, that’d solve it. If I had a mana solvent or something, that could change everything.”
Honestly, the research on mana in this world seems… pretty underdeveloped.
It feels like people aren’t aware that mana comes in multiple types, and they don’t seem to know its effects change depending on combinations.
At the very least, none of the magic textbooks I bought had anything about that. They only said stuff like “focus your mind and cast magic. Here are the spells!” No theory at all…
Which means I still have no clear idea how to extract or add mana.
But… it’s not like I have zero clues.
“Uhh, mana from herbs becomes usable for anything once you turn it into a potion, right?”
“Right. Eating the herb directly works somewhat… but it’s always more effective as a potion!”
Yep. Meaning that in the potion-making process, mana is being extracted, concentrated, or processed into a form humans can use…
“… Does anything work as long as it dissolves in water? No, but without the ability to extract only specific mana, that’s no good either…”
This is worth thinking about.
“For now, the goal is to make slime-derived mana into a potion. Therefore… I’ve decided to simmer the slimes.”
“It’s a hot spring, Asuma-sama.”
“No, I’m simmering them at low temperature… Also, I’m simmering the holy knights’ armor in it too…”
“It’s a hot spring, Asuma-sama.”
… And so, I’m making a potion using slimes.
Potion ingredients are simple. Simmer in mana-rich water. That’s pretty much it.
… Depending on what kind of mana the water has, the properties vary, so I figured I’d need to experiment. And the place in the village where mana-rich water is easiest to obtain is… the hot spring.
“That looks exactly like slimes soaking in a hot spring, Asuma-sama! It’s the usual thing, Asuma-sama!”
“I’m starting to think so too…”
Right now, around twenty slimes are soaking in the hot spring, wobbling and squishing peacefully.
I mean, if all I need is to simmer them in mana-rich water, this should work… and boiling them in actual hot water would be cruel…
“… Wait, but Asuma-sama, the mana really is dissolving into the water.”
“What!?”
“See? It somehow feels different than before……”
No way, I thought, but I checked the slime-soaked water with absorption analysis. And……
“… Oh wow—‘repairs when broken,’ ‘maintains shape,’ ‘retains water,’ ‘softness’… It’s all in here.”
A potion actually formed. Maybe because twenty slimes are squishing together in the hot spring, some mana seeped into the water. No idea how. Maybe it didn’t ‘seep’ so much as the junk mana originally in the water changed shape to resemble slime mana…
… Hmm, the second explanation seems more likely. I think some of the ‘hardening mana’ from the holy knights’ armor also leaked a bit… Ah!? Wait! Because I simmered them together, the slimes absorbed the ‘hardening mana’ too!?
This is bad this is bad this is bad the slimes are getting tougher! Stay soft and squishy! Don’t get firm!! Nooo!
Anyway, after all that, the potion was successfully created.
The logic can wait. “When I do this, this happens” is enough for now. On top of that…
“… Could the hot spring’s beauty effect actually be…”
“The slimes! The broth! It’s slime broth, Asuma-sama!”
“For real…?”
… I don’t know if I’m glad or horrified, but I now know this: Panis Village’s famous hot spring becomes a beauty treatment thanks to both the herb effects and slime effects!
“So the slime’s ability to keep its shape even when distorted is basically the ‘repairs when broken’ part, huh.”
“Meaning it becomes a potion that fixes tiny wounds… So if you soak in it, of course your skin gets better…”
“And with ‘retains water’ and ‘softness’ added, even more so!”
“Yeah. Seriously, what is this even…”
It leaves me feeling uneasy and conflicted, but… this solves the biggest problem in making rubber tires.
“… From now on, maybe increase the number of slimes allowed in the hot spring from five to ten…”
“Ahh, more slimes would make the hot spring’s effect stronger.”
… At the same time, I’ve also accidentally discovered a way to improve Panis Village’s tourism… Ah, the slimes seem happily stretching and contracting. They really like the hot spring… It’s fine. Go ahead. Soak all you want and produce good broth…
Now that slime mana has been turned into potion, it’s time to figure out how to add that mana to other water.
… I mean, the mana is currently in potion form, but to make rubber tires by reacting it with water… what do I even do?
I tried pouring the potion directly into water. But nothing hardened. Well, yeah. That’s just diluting the potion.
“Is the mana concentration too low…? Hmm, but if I want to concentrate it… how do I do that…”
For concentration, I do have ideas. Vacuum distillation is a classic method… hmm.
… Now that I think about it, our hot spring facility doesn’t have that thing public bathhouses usually have.
“Mishisia-saaan.”
“Yes~? What is it?”
“I’m going to build a steam bath.”
“Why!?”
A Soxhlet extractor.
Yep, I’m going with that.
What do you think about this chapter?
