Thank You, Slime*2
After soaking the five slimes we’d picked up outside in the hot spring…
“… We put out a slatted wooden platform for them, and now they’re enjoying themselves after their bath.”
“Right? They’re so cute, Asuma-sama.”
Once I set the slatted platform beside the hot spring, the slimes wriggled their way up onto it and sat there, plrup-plrup, jiggling happily. They looked relaxed, which was good.
“Ah, their color just changed! It changed, Asuma-sama!”
“Oh… the cloudiness went down? They’re still kind of brownish, but they’re clearer now…”
“Their shape changed from amorphous to something closer to a sphere, didn’t it?”
The five slimes we’d picked up had calmed down a lot, no longer trying to attack us, and on top of that, their appearance had changed.
First was their color. This was the biggest change.
Originally, they were an opaque, ochre-like yellow-brown… but now the cloudiness had decreased, and they’d turned into a translucent pale amber. Kind of like the color of sunburned cellophane tape… or rather, a deep candy-gold? They weren’t the completely colorless slimes from Panis Village, but they were pretty in their own way.
And their shape, which had previously been completely amorphous, wriggling all over… had become much rounder.
Not perfectly soft-and-round, though. They still seemed to struggle a little to keep their shape. Sometimes a part would go droop, collapse, stretch, or shrink.
“Ah, it’s about to leak through the slats! Let me move it, hey, hey, hey, stop squirming!”
Because they couldn’t maintain their form well, they were once again about to fall back through the slats into the hot spring, so I quickly scooped one up, only for it to panic and thrash around in my arms: wiggle-wiggle, flail-flail, squirm-squirm. Calm down!
“They’re probably not used to people yet. I think they’re scared.”
“Well, they’re creatures that attack humans but also get attacked by humans… so I guess that’s natural.”
Mishisia-san and Lisas-san’s words made me think for a moment. If you’re living in a way where you might get killed, you have to accept the risk of being killed… that was these slimes’ life. Poor things. They aren’t even that strong…
“Ah! I have an idea!”
Just then, Mishisia-san’s eyes lit up as she turned to me. What?
“Asuma-sama! Can you make oil?”
“Oil? Uh… what kind? There are lots of types, right? Animal fat? Vegetable oil? Mineral oil?”
“Plant oil! Something as light as possible! Hmm… let’s see… oil pressed from raw grape seeds! Can you make that?”
Oh. So she meant grape seed oil. Sure, that was easy.
I broke down some grape seeds from Panis Village for reference, linked the fatty acids together, combined them with glycerin, added some esters… and since we needed a container, I shaped a bottle from crystal and filled it. Done.
“Thank you! Ah, and also a bowl, please!”
“Crystal okay? Here, I made one.”
“Thank you! Now I’ll add the scented oil…”
Mishisia-san took out a small ceramic vial from her pouch and dropped a few drops into the bowl. A soft, pleasant fragrance spread out. She’d called it “scented oil,” but I wondered what kind of base it used. It smelled floral, maybe herbal—very forest-elf-like.
“Dilute it with the grape seed oil… aaand done!”
After mixing the scented oil with the grape seed oil, she smiled at the slimes.
“Come here! I’ll massage you!”
… The slimes, however, did not respond to “come here,” and just trembled hesitantly. So Mishisia-san captured them one by one.
“Heheh. Feels good, doesn’t it?”
And the kidnapped slime was now being oil-massaged.
She coated them in that pleasantly scented oil and kneaded them mocchi-mocchi.
At first, the slimes were bewildered, scared, and tried to escape. But after Mishisia-san caught them with a firm, “Hey! Don’t thrash!” they slowly relaxed under her hands. Soon enough, they were lying still, just letting her massage them.
“Asuma-sama, Lisas-san, want to try? It’s fun.”
“Uh, can I—oh wow this is fun, this is REALLY fun.”
“Oh… I see. This truly is enjoyable.”
Lisas-san and I each grabbed a slime, applied oil to our hands, and began kneading.
The slimes that had tried to escape soon calmed down and let us massage them. And honestly… kneading a warm, freshly bathed slime felt… really soothing.
So soft! So warm! Smells nice! And cute!
“Oh? The last two slimes want massages too? It’s okay. We’ll massage all of you!”
While we were massaging one each, the two remaining slimes on the slats timidly approached. So we traded off and took turns massaging all five.
“We’ve created ridiculously glossy slimes.”
“Right? Look! They turned nicely round!”
And in this way…
The slimes we massaged turned into shiny, glossy, radiant, plump round slimes.
Well, they were covered in oil, so of course they were glossy, and also slippery. Lisas-san said, “They’ll probably absorb this amount of oil soon enough. They eat human fat, after all…” Don’t suddenly make it horror! That’s scary! Stop that!
“This change in shape probably means they finally have enough mana, right?”
“That’s what I think. After all, we mixed your grape seed oil with Elf Forest scented oil… so there must’ve been plenty of mana. Umm, Elf Forest scented oil calms the mind and eases pain!”
I see. An oil-based potion.
… No, no, research later! I bet it synergizes with the Panis hot spring, which makes me really curious, but Elf-style scented oil research comes later!
Observing the slimes again… they now looked like soft, plump balls, similar to the slimes of Panis Village, the “gravity-squished round” shape of a satisfied slime. No more wriggling amorphous blobs! They could maintain their form without trouble!
“Oh, they’re energetic.”
“They jumped! They’re lively!”
The slimes bounced poyon energetically. Panis Village slimes are more laid-back, moving with slow mocchi-mocchi steps. These ones were a bit more active.
“Their color is still… candy-colored.”
“Well, it makes them easy to identify. Right?”
While they still differed from Panis slimes due to their color, I felt confident that they’d be good for growing crops.
Alright. We’ll put them to work tomorrow.
The next morning.
“Here’s your food—”
As I sprayed fertilizer water from the hose as usual, the slimes came mocchi-mocchi toward me… and among them were the five candy-colored slimes, hesitantly joining the group.
They were being accepted normally by the other slimes, neither welcomed nor rejected, simply treated as part of the group… Do my slimes lack any sense of caution? Is it really okay to ignore unfamiliar slimes wandering in…?
Well, whatever.
The five candy-colored slimes lined up politely like the others, marched mocchi-mocchi through the fertilizer shower, then plrup! shook their bodies vigorously.
“Do you like it?”
And while the Panis slimes left afterward as usual—“We’re done eating, bye”—the candy-colored ones stayed behind, unsure and stiff. Maybe they were still nervous.
Well, fine.
“All right, time for you to work too.”
I planted seeds on their heads. Tomatoes for now.
They were confused, but when they saw the other slimes also growing crops on their heads, they seemed to accept it: “Oh… so that’s how it is…”
Eventually, they too mocchi-mocchi’d away with the others.
Come back at this time tomorrow.
And the next day.
“… The harvest is a little small, but this is good enough.”
The candy-colored slimes shook their bodies plrup, each bearing a few small tomatoes on their heads.
Looks like the experiment was a success!
“Which means… the only problem left is ‘how do we give slimes more mana,’ huh…”
All that remained was one issue:
Even if Panis Village supplied enough mana to calm slimes, how would we maintain that mana supply when deploying them in the capital or other regions?
This was the bottleneck.
The initial reason I judged that slime-based farming couldn’t be used in the capital was exactly this—slimes won’t achieve speed-farming unless they’re in a mana-rich environment.
So I had to find a way to constantly supply mana to them. Hmmm…
“Even if mana doesn’t increase, slimes have the potential to become super-huge super-slimes…”
“Ah~ you mean because of the blessing?”
“Yeah. With Saintess Satie’s blessing, even with low mana, activation efficiency goes up, allowing big effects from little mana… effectively increasing their mana.”
Since soil and water were using magic, it meant slimes learned to use new magic too. Probably they simply improved at using mana, allowing that super-huge growth.
“I want to recreate that artificially. There’s the Taming Potion, but the running cost is insane… agh, isn’t there some other way to activate mana? Making mana-infused water for potions is expensive… and transporting water costs too much…”
Increasing mana itself was hard, so I wanted to apply “blessing” principles. That was the whole point of my research…
“Do I also need to set up facilities for brewing potions…? A big cauldron… or what if I just dunk the slimes in the brewing pot? Wait, that’s the same as dunking them in medicinal hot spring water…”
“Asuma-sama, are you okay? You look like you’re about to steam out of your head.”
“… If putting slimes in the hot spring makes potions… doesn’t that mean mana becomes activated, moves easily, flows easily…?”
Think. Think harder. I was so close. Right on the verge of something…
So I put the slimes in the bath and got in myself. Since Mishisia-san was around, I couldn’t get naked even in a child’s body, so I bathed fully clothed. It was like the scene of an accident.
“Umm, Asuma-sama? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m improving circulation to think better.”
“Um… Asuma-sama? Are you sure that’s a bath? You’re buried in slimes.”
“I don’t know anymore…”
Bathing to organize my thoughts had turned into something that wasn’t really a bath. I added too many slimes!
But then—
Something sparked inside me.
“A bath… and being submerged in slimes… what’s the actual difference…?”
“A lot, I think!”
Mishisia-san was alarmed, but something bothered me.
Elf Forest scented oil might be an oil-based potion.
Which means… potion solvents don’t have to be water.
In other words—
“Could it be… even without soaking in water, soaking in slimes does the same thing…!?”
That’s right. Why hadn’t I realized it sooner?
Up until now, I’d just assumed “potions are something you boil in water.”
But that doesn’t have to be true at all!
“Think. Is boiling slimes in water the same as boiling water in slimes!? No, of course not! It should work the opposite way!”
“Asuma-sama? Hey, are you okay?”
“Can slimes not be used as a solvent!? No—there’s no way! Don’t boil water… boil slimes! Use slimes to boil slimes!”
“mUm… boil what in slimes? Hey, Asuma-sama? Hey? Hey?”
And then it came to me.
“A bath. I’ll make a bath. And I’ll fill it with tons of slimes. The slimes will be the bath. That should probably solve everything.”
“… Asuma-sama, are you really okay?”
Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine. Probably. Yeah.
… The following week.
“Time to ship them out!”
With ten candy-colored slimes, each sprouting tomatoes, beans, carrots, and the like from their heads, and a bath kettle loaded onto the wagon, we headed for the royal capital!
What do you think about this chapter?
