By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 12 - Chapter 11

Chapter 7, Episode 49: Defending the Trash Plant

“You’ll be all right for now,” said Ryoma to one of the injured. “You should visit the hospital for proper treatment, though.”

“Oh, thank you. I’m so glad you’re here,” the man replied.

“We’re all set over here, Chief,” Hudom called. “Lucky for us, no one’s seriously injured.”

After defeating the group of adventurers who were attacking the townspeople, Ryoma and Hudom had illuminated the area with Light magic and administered first aid to the injured.

“Thank you for helping me out,” said Ryoma. “Not that I was watching the whole time, but you seemed like you really knew what you were doing.”

“I picked up a few things when I was training to be a knight, once upon a time,” Hudom answered.

Horses could be heard from a distance.

“Is that them?” asked Hudom.

“I think so,” Ryoma said. “There are...three carriages.”

When the lit carriages came into view, the coachman of the frontmost carriage called out, “We’re constables! Is anyone hurt?!”

“Not too badly!” someone answered.

“Come on down!”

The people waved the carriages over with a great sense of relief. As soon as the carriages came to a halt, their passengers went to work.

“We received a report that there was a riot,” one of them said. “Are those the rioters piled up over there?”

“That’s right!” one of the people said. “Those two over there took care of them for us!”

“Understood. We will take the rioters into custody. Another carriage will be here soon—if anyone here requires medical attention, please get on board.” The constable turned to Ryoma. “You must be Ryoma.”

“Yes, I’m Ryoma Takebayashi.”

“I have a message from the security company. ‘Fires are starting less frequently, but many are injured. Requesting your aid at the hospital.’”

“Thank you for the message. I’ll head there straight away. I’ll leave you to take care of them,” Ryoma said.

Ryoma and Hudom headed to the hospital attached to the security headquarters.

■ ■ ■

Meanwhile, a horse-drawn wagon containing five men had made its way into the trash plant. The men produced pots of oil from the wagon and poured them into an opening in the floor, then all over the unprocessed trash piled next to it.

“That about covers it.”

“Just gotta light it up. Step back from the opening,” one of the men said. He waited until the other four had stepped away from the opening, then cast a fire spell at it. A small ball of fire materialized from his hand and lit the pile of trash on fire, then traveled into the opening in the floor. The fire spread quickly.

“Let’s get out of here?”

As the men turned to make a quick escape, they were stopped by roaring flames.

“Hey, what’s going on with these flames?”

“Th-That can’t be all from the oil, can it?”

“There must have been something flammable down there. Or the slime, or whatever’s down there. Some plant-based monsters have oil pockets.”

“Whatever,” said one of the men, who began climbing into the wagon. “We did our job. Let’s get out of here. People will be here soon, and it’d be pretty stupid to get caught in the fire we started—” He froze. He’d spotted a translucent tentacle out of the corner of his eye.

The tentacle was as thick as a log. At once, it reared up almost to the ceiling and twisted like a snake readying itself to strike. In the next moment, it carved away the burning part of the trash pile.

“Get away from the wagon!”

The tentacle attacked the men. They just managed to dodge a direct hit, but trash of all sizes flew out of the tentacle, pelting the men. The wagon took the whole force of the enormous tentacle and cracked all over under the weight of the thing, its cover and framework nearly demolished.

The two horses tied to the wagon were the most surprised by the sound and impact. The horses, who’d shown no sign of panic with the fire, were now deeply upset.

One of the men reached out to catch the reins as the horses darted to the exit, but before he could, another tentacle wrapped around his legs and began dragging him to the burning opening in the floor.

“Let go!” the man shouted. “Dammit, let go!”

The man drew his knife, desperately trying to hack off the tentacle. But the blade made no incision in the tentacle, only slipping this way and that along the surface.

“How is the knife not going in?!”

Soon, the man’s feet had arrived at the opening. His shoes, clothes, and then body caught on fire. He writhed around, screaming, begging for help.

“We don’t have time for you!” one of the other four shouted back. “Just die, already!”

The men had no bond or sense of camaraderie. They just happened to be assigned to the same job.

“How many of these big-ass slimes are there?! They’re coming out of every opening. We’re surrounded! You see a way out?!”

“Nothing this way! If you can’t cut it, can you burn it with magic?!”

“No good! It just charred the surface before it regenerated!”

“No matter how big it is, if it’s a slime, we just have to take out its core! Look for the core!”

The four began searching for the slime’s core, but all they could see was each other, the demolished wagon, and the tentacles that encircled them.

“If we can’t see the core, it’s gotta be down there still!”

“Dammit, it’s getting even bigger... The thing’s like a wall... Don’t tell me it’s all one big slime!”

“How big do you think the thing is?!”

“Yeah, it’s big, but... Physical Enhancement!” One of the intruders cast a spell to boost his physical attributes and made a running start. He leapt from the wagon and over the tentacles. His leap was high enough to clear an average fence between houses, but then a new tentacle emerged from the one he’d hoped to clear. The tentacle held the man up in the air, refusing to let him down, and began pulling him into itself. “L-Let gooo!” the man shouted.

“Slime or not, it’s trained to— Ugh!” A dwarven man, who had forsaken the idea of jumping over the tentacles, suddenly fell to his knees.

“Hey?!”

“What now?!”

“My head...suddenly...”

“Tsk! We don’t have time for a headache!”

“All of a sudden?! Poison?!”

“When would we have been— Ugh!” The man on the ground fell unconscious.

“Dammit! What is this monster?! I was gonna grit through the filth and the stench, but this wasn’t part of the deal!”

“Get a hold of yourself!”

“Shut up!”

Driven mad by the situation with no escape, the man began throwing pieces of the destroyed wagon: wheel, hinges, lumber... Everything was either bounced back by the tentacle or taken in by it, dealing absolutely no damage. The only effect this produced, it seemed, was to help the slime identify the man as a pesky enemy.

“I get this job done, and I’m back in the game! I’ll kill anything—slime, security, whatever—that gets in my way! I’m not going to—”

A flame roared up at the man, swallowing him. He was dead before he could utter another sound. Most likely, even he wouldn’t have known what had happened.

Another one of the intruders who had tried to calm down the first had just barely dodged the flame itself. His mind was going numb, however, from the rapid deoxidation of the air. “Fire...? No, a burning wind,” he said. “No wonder there wasn’t much else guarding this place... I should have tried leaving the country. At least then, I would have had a hope of—” He lost consciousness, the last of the intruders to fall.

Now that the plant was quiet again, the tentacles began swallowing everything in sight, fire and all. Once all the danger had been eliminated, the tentacles slithered back into the opening, leaving behind a completely clean floor with only a hint of burning flesh in the air.