By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

Chapter 4 Episode 2: Forest Search 1

We had been riding in the carriage for three days now. My main job during that period was preparing the food, and Mizelia and Miya taught me how to handle the horses. Once we were far away from Gimul, the carriage was attacked by goblins and other monsters a few times, but Leipin’s magic made quick work of them. No matter how great their numbers were, they couldn’t match this party of top-rate adventurers. I was hardly needed for anything, so I found myself with plenty of time on my hands. Still, I heard that it’d be helpful if I steered the carriage, and when I asked if they could teach me how, they were happy to oblige. Thus, I got to learn a skill that I had zero experience with on Earth.

“Looks like you’ve pretty much got the hang of it. You should be fine after some practice.” Mizelia offered her approval as she watched me from off to the side.

“Thank you, Mizelia.”

But I couldn’t claim to have mastered it yet. If I didn’t stay in practice after this mission was done, I’d probably forget everything I learned. I considered buying a carriage after I got home, but I couldn’t think of many situations where I’d need one, so that sounded like a waste of money. I’d also need to buy horses, so I had to think the whole idea through before I came to a decision.

About four hours later, it was announced that we were near the town closest to the forest. After another twenty minutes, the town gate was in sight. There were a lot of pedestrians here, so Mizelia took over steering the carriage for me.

I gazed out at the gate and the streets. This city seemed much smaller than Gimul, but still fairly lively. All of the buildings were made of wood, and we passed by several carriages packed with lumber. It seemed likely that forestry was this town’s main industry.

As I was thinking about the city, we arrived at the inn. We took two rooms, one for the men and one for the women. After that, we went to the adventurer’s guild to gather information about treant sightings to prepare for tomorrow.

■ ■ ■

“Is everyone ready?” Asagi asked us as we stood outside the forest the next day. After we nodded, we set foot inside the forest.

Miya and Mizelia stood at the front of the group, followed by Cilia and Welanna, then me and Leipin, and Asagi guarded us from behind. The forest was dim and gloomy. It was similar to the Forest of Gana in that regard, but also somehow different. The air was stagnant, and almost suffocating.

“I believe we have our first encounter already,” Leipin said. “Miya, look. About ten meters ahead. See that one tree that’s somewhat thicker than the others?”

“That one?” Miya asked, pointing at one tree.

“Yes, that one.”

The trunk of the tree looked to be about thirty to forty centimeters in diameter. It was around four meters tall, and seemed to be a conifer. By appearance alone, it was nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding trees. Leipin was right; it was definitely thicker, and its branches looked longer, but those features would be practically impossible to notice at first glance.

When Leipin gave us confirmation that this was a treant, and we made sure that no other treants were in the area, Miya and Mizelia approached it with axes in hand. Since we were up against treants today, the women were wielding hatchets and small axes.

When they got close to the tree, it flailed its branches at them like whips. They nimbly dodged, but while the treant’s branches looked hard, they were surprisingly flexible. One of them tried to wrap up Mizelia, but she promptly chopped the branch in half with her axe. The rest of the treant’s branches drooped a bit, and the trunk slowly leaned over.

“We’re good!” said Miya.

“It’s dead!” said Mizelia.

They beckoned for us to come over, and when we did, we found Miya’s axe lodged inside the treant. I couldn’t see it from where I had been standing, but she struck it in the face. The axe was right in the middle of its forehead.

“If you just dodge the branches and land one good hit like this, you can take them down easy,” said Miya.

“One treant by itself is relatively easy to beat, so if we find another one on its own, I think we can let Ryoma fight it,” said Mizelia.

“Thank you,” I said, then noticed that Leipin looked unsure about something. “Leipin, is something wrong?”

“We found this treant rather fast. Treants prefer the darkness deep in the forest, so it’s rare to spot them so close to the forest’s entrance,” Leipin said. Which reminded me, nobody at the guild yesterday reported any treant sightings near the entrance either.

“Maybe there’s hordes of them further inside the forest?” Mizelia suggested.

“It’s possible that one stray treant found its way here, but we must proceed with caution,” Asagi said.

Keeping our guard up, we broke the branches off the slain treant. Once Leipin had stored them away in his Dimension Home, we got to walking again. Sometime later, we found another treant.

“There’s one. Ryoma, give it a try,” Leipin said.

“Right.”

I stepped forth and drew my big iron slime katana from its big metal slime sheath. Thanks to its Harden skill, the blade was more than solid enough, and cut quite well, too. Now that I was used to transforming the slimes, I had faith that I could instantly repair any fractures the blade might suffer.

I used my magic detection to reaffirm the location of the treant, then covered my body and blade with qi and held the katana in the hasso stance. This treant was thinner than the previous one, but just as I crept into range, its branches attacked me from above. I evaded the attack by dodging to the right, and sighted the protrusions that made up the treant’s weak point. I wasted no time in swinging my katana at the treant, severing the protrusions with a downward slash from the side, like one might cut off a man’s face.

The treant emitted a wail the instant it took the slash, but it did me no harm. The protrusions fell against the roots below and clattered on the ground. It looked like I took down the treant in one shot. Its magical energy rapidly disappeared, and just as with the last one, its branches drooped, and its trunk slumped over.

“Looks like you did well,” Leipin said.

“We need a lot more than this, though. Let’s keep it up.”

The most dangerous thing about treants was how they disguised themselves as trees to take people off guard. But this also meant that if you could detect a treant before entering its range, it was significantly less dangerous. In a one-on-one fight, at least, they didn’t seem to pose a problem. I didn’t know how that would change if we encountered several at once, but that was something we could find out later.

From then until the afternoon, we slew tons of treants. Right around when I had gotten pretty used to fighting them, we found a whole horde and exterminated them together. Then, counting our kills, we found that we had slain a stunning 147 treants. We were in an open area that people often used to rest, but it had been so thoroughly filled with treants that it seemed to be like any other part of the forest. We received no information about this yesterday, either.

“There’s still plenty of time, no need to rush the job,” Asagi said. “Though, I’m curious as to why there are more treants than yesterday’s information suggested. The sooner the guild knows about this, the better.”

The current state of the forest did seem quite different from what our sources said. Between the last horde of treants and the ones we slew before that, we had already killed close to two hundred of them. The goal was to kill at least three hundred, but we were already more than halfway there, so we decided to return to town early. At the guild, there was an older woman at the reception desk taking reports about the state of the forest. When we told her what we saw, she looked mystified.

“I see. Thank you,” she said. “Actually, a group just came in and told us the same thing. We were discussing the idea of sending someone to investigate.”

“Interesting,” said Leipin. “Do you have any idea what might have caused this outbreak?”

“There may be an elder treant. Treants thrive in that forest all year round, and once every several years, we hear reports about an elder treant.”

“I knew it. Do you mind if we continue to enter the forest? Are there any restrictions?”

“You’re free to enter as you wish. Shouldn’t be any problems, since you’re all either A Rank or B Rank.”

I was E Rank myself, but decided not to bring that up. It didn’t seem like the woman was going to stop me alone from entering the forest anyway. Rather, as long as we were going to the forest, she decided to show us a job posting for slaying treants.

Adventurers were allowed to accept multiple jobs at once. For example, taking multiple jobs which could be completed in the same location for more income was something any competent adventurer would do. In this case, we could both collect money for slaying the treants, and receive our payment for taking the treant wood back to Gimul. The objective of this job was to slay the treants, while the one in Gimul was centered around gathering their materials, so it wouldn’t take us any extra time. If we just hunted more treants the way we did today, we could complete both jobs. Thus, while acquiring the information we needed, we also accepted this request to slay treants.

We wouldn’t re-enter the forest until tomorrow, so we had time to kill until then. I had no plans, but I didn’t want this time to go to waste, so I entered my Dimension Home to train with my slimes. Today, my main goal was to train my poison slimes to use spears.

Close to an hour later, in the middle of training, I wondered what would happen if I gave Melzen’s spear to the poison slimes. It was just taking up space in my Item Box. I thought it might be a little heavy, but I figured that the poison slimes would be able to use it well enough. I was curious, however, as to whether the slime could utilize its magic capabilities. I knew that slimes released magical energy when they evolved, but I still didn’t know if that only happened when they evolved, or if it was something they could do all the time. I would have to test it to find out.

I called one poison slime over and tried to make it emit magical energy. It was surprisingly easy to make it do what I asked, so maybe it could use a magic weapon? I took Melzen’s spear out of my Item Box, had the poison slime hold it, and commanded the slime to fill it with magical energy. Fire burst from the tip of the spear.

“Success! Can you swing it around while doing that?” I asked the poison slime.

It handled the spear admirably. It wasn’t that quick with it, possibly because the spear was heavy, but it could get the job done. As it kept swinging the spear, though, it slowed down even more. It was tired and seemed to be out of magical energy, so I decided I should let it stop. But just then, the poison slime dropped the spear and started to shrivel up.

“What’s wrong?!” I cried, running over to the slime. It didn’t seem sick or wounded, but it was a little feeble. It had shrunk to half the size of a regular poison slime, and had grown sluggish. I decided to give it some poison magical energy and see how that helped.

The shrinking couldn’t have been caused by the Minimize skill, because typical poison slimes didn’t have that skill. I used Monster Appraisal on this one to be sure, but my hunch was right. With that result in mind, I considered that it might have been because I made the poison slime use magical energy. That was all I could think of, but now the question was, why would that have caused this?

Maybe its body was running out of magical energy. I couldn’t be sure, but it was possible that slimes were made of magical energy. If so, that would explain why using that energy would cause them to shrink. In fact, I couldn’t come up with any other possible explanation. But magical energy was invisible and intangible, unlike a slime. All the same, when a slime died, its body vanished. Assuming that slimes were made of magical energy, maybe that would explain this phenomenon, but it would only create more questions. I decided to put those questions aside for now and work based on the assumption that slimes were made of magical energy. I wanted to ask Leipin about it later.

I asked Leipin at dinner that night, but he said that he didn’t know either. It never even occurred to him to give a valuable magic weapon to a slime, so he was even surprised that they could release magical energy and use magic weapons at all. He ultimately concluded that it was a possibility. Monsters contained more magical energy than ordinary animals to begin with, and there were plenty of monsters that couldn’t use magic despite that. So there was nothing unusual about slimes possessing magical energy. But if their bodies were composed of magical energy, and using it caused them to shrink, that didn’t explain how earth slimes or healing slimes could use magic without shrinking. This was going to require a lot more research.

■ ■ ■

The next day, we were out hunting treants and collecting wood in the forest again. The number of treants was getting ridiculous. We took turns slaying them starting in the morning, and by noon we had collected at least six hundred treants’ worth of wood in total across the two days.

“My Dimension Home is running out of space,” Leipin said. “I think this should be enough for today. How about it, should we call it here?”

We had reached our goal with time to spare. Nobody had any objections, so we decided to wrap up our work for the day.

“Ryoma! Look over there!” Leipin cried as we were on our way out of the forest and pointed at the sky. Peering through the trees, I saw a small, green, floating orb. On top of it, it looked like there was fluff from a big dandelion. “It’s a slime!”

“A slime?!” I exclaimed.

“It’s called a fluff slime. They have the ability to fly. I don’t think you have this type of slime yet.”

“You’re right, I don’t. I didn’t even know about these. Can it be caught?”

“Yes, quite easily,” Leipin said, then held his hand out at the slime and cast a spell called Pickup. The slime suddenly appeared right in front of him.

“What was that spell?”

“It’s space magic for teleporting an object close to you. But it only works if the target is within your line of sight. It’s also difficult to aim properly, so there’s little use for it most of the time, but it’s good for capturing certain opponents unharmed. That’s why I use this spell to capture monsters I intend to research. I also use it for capturing grell frogs.”

“I see.” That reminded me that he mentioned using magic to capture grell frogs during the hunt. Presumably, this was that magic.

“Anyway, I would suggest making a contract with it quickly. This isn’t exactly a safe place.”

“Right.”

I hurried through the contract process with the fluff slime. It was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I put it in my Dimension Home, thanked the rest of the group for watching for monsters in the meantime, and then we got walking again.

We got to town before sunset. I headed straight to the inn and used Monster Appraisal on the fluff slime.

Fluff Slime

Skills: Flight (1), Growth Acceleration (5), Reduce Weight (10), Photosynthesis (3), Absorb (1), Split (8)

Thanks to photosynthesis, it didn’t need the Consume skill, presumably. The absorb skill was probably for water. This was my first time seeing the Flight, Growth Acceleration, and Reduce Weight skills, and they seemed unique. Lastly, this slime’s Split skill level was especially high. Considering the dandelion fluff, maybe it could multiply the way that dandelions did.

Seeking to test the fluff slime’s abilities, I picked it up and had it use the Reduce Weight skill. Suddenly, the slime felt weightless. It was lighter than other slimes from the start, but it still felt like it had had some weight until now. Its size hadn’t changed at all. I had to wonder how its mass could change, but in any case, it only seemed to be able to reduce its own weight. If it could have reduced the weight of other objects, that would’ve been convenient for transporting goods, so someone would surely have figured that out by now.

When it was in this lighter state, the slight breeze from just moving my arm could send it flying. This was probably thanks to the Flight skill. It was more akin to floating, but it could adjust its altitude by changing its weight. That didn’t change the fact that it was reliant on the wind, though.

I asked Leipin about it, and he told me that fluff slimes could travel long distances on the wind, so they were a type of slime that could show up anywhere. However, they seldom appeared in great numbers. Their Split skill level was high, so I wondered why that was the case. Leipin said that the dandelion fluff flew off when they multiplied, as I suspected, but also that not all of the fluff would become new fluff slimes. And when large numbers of fluff slimes did happen to appear, their fluff became a nuisance for any nearby towns, so guilds often put out requests for their extermination. I felt like I might be able to do something with fluff slimes, but decided to take some time to think about it after this job was done.