By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 32

Chapter 3 Episode 32: Meddling On A Whim

“That’s a fifth one found,” I said. My limour birds found the general location of the colonies from above, and my slimes took advantage of their numbers to hunt down the colonies; I then recorded their locations. Now all that I had to do was report our findings, but this job was so easy that it left me a little unsatisfied. Finding the colonies was the whole point of the job, but I felt like I had more energy left in me, so I tried to think of a way to improve the quality of my reports.

I thought it would be nice to know the size of the colonies and the number of enemies in each, and that I could send slimes inside to investigate. But then they would encounter the ants dwelling within. If that happened, there was a high chance that the investigation could turn into a battle. Maybe I could wipe out all the ants myself, but if there were too many of them, I could actually get overwhelmed. That was especially true since tunnel ants moved around underground.

I tried to cast Investigate, but it didn’t work very well. The narrow passages of the ant colony made the flow of magical energy too complex. I couldn’t detect anything past the entrance. Thinking of it like pouring something into a mold made it clear that I would be consuming too much magical energy.

I thought about what to do for five minutes, then looked at the ground near my feet and saw a footprint I left in the dirt, which gave me an idea. I cast the Investigate spell again, but rather than making it non-elemental, I used earth energy this time. As with when I would cast Rock or Break Rock, I imagined the energy permeating through the ground.

The spell was a success. The magical energy spread through the dirt, and only through the dirt. The empty space in the search area gave me an accurate outline of the colony. The tunnel ants didn’t seem to react in any way. I hadn’t investigated the inside of the colony, so I didn’t know exactly how many enemies there were. All I knew was that it didn’t seem like I agitated them. And considering the size of the colony compared to the size of a tunnel ant, I could make a vague guess as to how many could fit inside.

I decided to make a model before I forgot the shape of the colony. Casting Rock made it easy. All that remained after that was to write down the time of investigation, and then I was done. I decided that I should use the earth-elemental Investigate spell for the rest of them. Also, ‘earth-elemental Investigate’ is awkward to say, so I named this spell ‘Earth Sonar.’

I led my slimes to the next area to search. There were a few to both the left and right, but I didn’t know which one to go to first. Then, through Eins’s eyes, I saw a group of six people pulling a small cart. Judging by their stature, they were children. Then I noticed they looked familiar, and realized that it was Beck and his friends. While they were in the middle of a break, I called over to them.

“Oh, if it isn’t Ryoma?” Beck said. “We’ve been running into each other a lot lately. Are those slimes I see behind you?”

“We’re both working in the same city, after all. And yes, these are my metal and iron slimes.”

“Th-That’s a lot of slimes,” Wist remarked, his face tense. Maybe he was afraid of slimes.

“So, what do you want?” Beck asked.

“I’m just here looking for tunnel ant colonies. It’s a job from the tamer’s guild. But I happened to see you, so I wanted to say hi. Are you here for the same reason?”

“We’re slaying them. Well, we’re supposed to be,” said Martha the half-elf.

“We’re mainly after their exoskeletons,” said Finia the half-dwarf.

“My bro in the slums is an apprentice to an armorsmith. If we bring him materials, we can get armor made for cheap,” said Ruth the dog beastkin.

“He says it’s for practice, but this’ll be proper armor approved by his own boss!” his sister, Rumille, added.

“What they said. Ant exoskeletons are lighter than metal and sturdier than leather, so they can be used in armor and shields,” Beck explained. “They said that we’ll get a little discount if we bring a lot of materials, and we get money for all the ants we slay, too. Hopefully we can all use this chance to get our equipment up to snuff.”

“Also, w-we pick herbs in these plains all the time. I want to get it back to normal already,” Wist said. But I looked at their cart, and they only had one tunnel ant corpse.

“Well, you can see how well it’s going.”

“We just can’t find any tunnel ants.”

“Maybe it’d be better if we came at night.”

“That’s what the lady at the guild said.”

“But it’s dark at night, and we don’t know how many there’ll be.”

“I-If there’s a whole ton, that’d be bad too.”

It sounded like they were considering the risk too. “Then, what if I told you where the ants were?” I offered.

My job was to find the colonies. I didn’t need to slay any ants, but if I got close to a colony and its guards came out, I would have no choice but to defeat them. Or alternatively, I could guide Beck’s party to the colonies and let them take down the guards.

“I mean, that’d help us out, by why would you do that?” Beck asked.

“Call it a whim, I guess,” I said. The way that we met wasn’t great, but they were trying their best. After seeing them like this so many times, I kind of wanted to offer my support. That was all the reason I needed.

“You’re weird. But I’ll take it,” Beck replied, then told the rest of his party that break time was over. It looked like he was interested. With six new allies at my side, I got back to work.

■ ■ ■

Later, we’d just finished up the seventh colony we found since we met up. Beck’s party was proactive about doing the fighting, while I stood back and kept an eye on their things. I thought they would rely on me a little more, but all I did was find the colonies. Which is to say that my familiars found the colonies, mostly, so I didn’t actually do much of anything.

“Ryoma, let’s make the next one the last,” Beck requested.

“You’re done already?”

“We’ve got plenty of materials. Nothing else will fit in the cart.”

There were already twelve tunnel ant corpses in the cart. If they had only taken the exoskeletons, they could have fit more, but the armorsmith told them that an amateur trying to remove the exoskeletons themselves could damage the quality. I had no experience dissecting ants either, so I listened to that advice. I could also have put them in my Item Box, but in any case, leaving after this next one would be the best time to go home before sunset.

“Got it,” I said, then piled the defeated ants onto the cart and got moving. We walked along at a leisurely pace.

I was surprised by the sheer number of colonies. My best guess was that the ants were in the middle of breeding season. Many types of ant monsters had an individual that served as the queen. But tunnel ants would create colonies and breed with or without a queen, and the presence of a queen only meant that they operated on a larger scale, so it was hard to judge if these ones had a queen or not.

“I think there’s one around here,” I said and cast Earth Sonar to confirm the location and size of the colony while the others prepared for battle. But something was off. “Beck, this might be bad.”

“Is this a huge colony?”

“No, the opposite. It’s the smallest one I’ve seen yet. There isn’t much space between the entrance and the deepest room, so you might have to deal with more than guards this time.” It was maybe a third the size of the others. That presumably meant there would be fewer ants in total too, but judging by what I had seen of Beck’s party thus far, they could only handle up to three or four ants at a time. “Should we try another colony?”

“I don’t know, I’d like to get used to fighting lots of enemies at once. Could you give us a second?” Beck’s party huddled together and shared their opinions before they got back to me. “Ryoma, we want to fight here. You never know when something like what happened before could happen again.”

At least the tunnel ants wouldn’t be able to kill them. “I’ll join in, then,” I said. If they got overwhelmed, I could handle a few.

“Are you sure?”

“I can just act as backup. That’s fine, right?”

This reminded me of my company. Whether it was my subordinates there or these young adventurers here, you could pick out any number of flaws in them if you really looked. But they were new to their job, so it was only natural. Not many people pick up all the skills they need right away. There are those rare few who can quickly learn on the job, but if you really want someone who can do their work right from the start, you’d have to hire someone with experience from another company. Newbies were always educated within the company, and over the many years I worked there, I was responsible for training them many times. Unfortunately, I was never very good at it, but I’m at least confident that I had more patience than most.

Let’s say that a competent employee could complete ten tasks in one day, and there was a new hire who could only complete one, if any. I had ten different tasks to do, and my boss also wanted the new hire to do ten tasks. I had to take care of all the tasks that the new hire failed to do, so I would end up with nineteen different tasks.

Even so, you wanted to give the new hire a task to do just to be sure they were getting something done, and when they got familiar with that, you could give them two tasks. If they couldn’t even do a single task without fail, there was no sense in giving them several, and at least nineteen tasks was less work than twenty. I just had to gradually work them toward being able to handle ten tasks. If they were lacking in some way, I could support them, if they were wrong about something, I could correct them, and if they had questions, I could answer them. It didn’t matter how long it took.

Beck’s party wasn’t that strong just yet, and they might have found it hard to find the colonies on their own. But they could kill tunnel ants once they were right in front of them. Therefore, now was a good time to let them master fighting tunnel ants. In doing so, they could also learn how best to move and coordinate, among other things. Once they did that, they could either move on to other opponents or learn how to find the colonies themselves. To get them to that point, I wanted to make up for what they lacked for the moment. Most of those subordinates quit once they were given three tasks to do, though.

“Ryoma? Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

I pushed those memories aside. Beck and his friends weren’t subordinates, so they didn’t count. I was sure that they would be different.

As we got that cleared up, I turned another of my iron slimes into a katana and prepared for battle.