By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 12

Chapter 6 Episode 12: The Boy Has Talent

“...and that’s about it,” I concluded.

That afternoon, I had introduced Nikki to one of each type of slime I had, profiling their strengths and uses, as well as giving a summary of some of their evolution processes. He was still staring at the showcase of slimes on the table before us in the now-deserted dining hall. I thought I had done well in piquing his interest.

“Do you have any questions, or a particular slime you’re interested in?” I asked.

“Um... The medicine slime! We have to go to a village nearby if we get seriously hurt or sick, so he’d be great to have around.”

He had a much more practical interest than I had expected.

“It’s true that they can excrete fluids that act as a disinfectant or ointment, so they’d be convenient for treating minor injuries. On the other hand, medicine slimes can be harder to handle because they can also excrete poison, and you have to feed them poison and medicine. Personally, I’d recommend healer slimes instead. They can use healing magic, and only need water and sun.”

“Okay... But slimes that use magic are rare and expensive, right? How do you have five different types of them?”

“The ones I have all evolved in my care, but I’ve heard that people spend years searching for just one of them. An acquaintance of mine who’s knowledgeable about monsters once told me that he didn’t know anyone else who had all five types. Now, I don’t know how much people would pay for them, but there are a lot of nobles willing to pay a premium for things other people don’t have. Maybe slimes are a relatively easy exotic pet to have, something they can brag about.”

“I get why they’re expensive, but why would anyone want a rare pet just to show them off?”

“Maybe you’ll understand someday. But if you never do, there’s nothing wrong with that either.”

It was human nature to compare oneself to other people. Nikki would grow up and battle with that urge too, just like the rest of us. And if he didn’t, well, more power to him.

“Huh... You said that they evolve differently depending on what they eat. Would they turn into a fish slime or something if they ate fish all the time? Are fish slimes, like, a thing?”

“There are so many slime evolutions that even researchers don’t know all of them... I don’t know if fish slimes exist, but there’s always a chance they do. Like, the only difference between my metal and iron slimes is that one ate dirt with numerous metal sediments, while the other only ate iron sediments. Going by the example of the iron slime, there’s a great chance that there will be different slimes depending on the metals they eat; copper, tin, lead and so on.”

I’d previously theorized that their evolutionary results differed based on their diet, but recently, I’d been starting to second-guess that theory.

“So your theory was wrong?”

“I wouldn’t quite say that. Let me put it another way.”

Throughout my experience, especially when it came to the sticky, poison, acid, and cleaner slimes that I had been working with for a long time, I had been able to control their diet and recreate specific evolutions. This made me believe that a slime’s diet did, in fact, affect its evolution.

“But I’m missing something... I’m thinking that their diet is just one of the conditions that determines their evolution, and that there are more variables involved. Take the weed slime, for example. Some of them have started eating poisonous weeds and herbs. I would assume they would evolve into poison weed slimes or herb slimes, but...”

“Wait, don’t you feed slimes poisonous weeds to evolve them into poison slimes?”

“Exactly! Previously, the slimes which ate poisonous weeds had always evolved into poison slimes. I’m still waiting for the new group of weed slimes to evolve, but if they don’t evolve into poison slimes from eating the same feed, there have to be other factors involved. Of course, it’s entirely possible that poison slimes can evolve into more specialized slimes, like metal slimes evolving into iron slimes. I feed bones to my acid slimes too, but none of them have evolved into bone slimes. I think they evolved with an advanced digestive system...”

“You sound so excited about not knowing things.”

“The fun part is figuring out things I don’t know yet—observing, hypothesizing, experimenting... And if I realize that I was wrong, I accept that and start the process over again. That makes it all the more fun when I finally figure it out.”

“Huh...”

Maybe that last bit went over Nikki’s head... I was trying to break it down for him, but I got a little carried away.

“Hm... Let’s see. Have you ever been excited to learn something new, or to be able to do something you couldn’t do before? It doesn’t have to be slime-related.”

“Yeah, I think so. Like when I first climbed a tree, or when I finished building my secret lair... And I’m having fun right now too!”

He was having fun right now? Maybe Nikki had a bright future ahead of him after all.

“Then, do you want to try looking after some slimes?”

“You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“Of course not. They mostly just need food and water, but it can take a lot of time to prepare those for all of the different species. Slimes waiting to evolve need special diets as well, so you’d be doing me a big favor. I have some stock with me, but I’d like to try out some things around here...”

“Let’s ask my mom! We’ll at least have some garbage!”

With that, Nikki and I set off scavenging around the village.

■ ■ ■

“That’s quite the pile we’ve accumulated...” I remarked, seeing the mountain of junk we had collected in a portion of the plaza where I had asked to stash it for the time being.

Nikki was definitely not shy, and had run up to every house we came across, asking if we could take anything they didn’t need. Maybe the villagers felt more comfortable answering Nikki’s request than they would have mine. I was certainly more comfortable letting Nikki do most of the talking. When I showed the pile to the slimes I had summoned, some of them showed interest, indicating a new type of feed that I hadn’t thought of!

“Wow...” Nikki muttered. “That’s a lot of slimes. They’re all yours? Space magic is something else.”

“No time to keep gawking. Let’s go through the pile and see which slime wants what. We have to get a move on if we want to get through it all by sundown.”

“You got it!”

Together, we started sorting through our findings. The kids that had been playing in the plaza, as well as quite a few grown-ups, were watching us from a distance, but we didn’t pay them any attention. The whole village already knew what we were doing anyway.

I started with the scraps produced at the processing station, consisting of the inedible parts of various fish, like innards and bones. The scavenger slimes, acid slimes, and one of the bloody slimes responded to these. The scavenger slimes were after the rotting guts and feces within the digestive tract, while the acid slimes wanted the bones, similar to their usual diet. The one bloody slime, however, was after some innards (probably the blood) while the other two showed no interest; there was a chance the interested slime was approaching evolution. The question was what exactly it was after. I gathered up a few parts that it showed interest in, and there was no uniformity when it came to the type of fish, or any specific organ. I even showed it multiple samples of the same organ and same type of fish, but it only wanted certain examples of them.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Nikki said as I was trying to piece this mystery together.

“Really?! What do you think?”

“Must be parasites... We have to be careful of them this time of the year. Mom and dad said there are a few fish that are riskier than the rest. All of the scraps you picked up belong to those fish.”

“Parasites, huh...? Appraisal.”

Pile of Fish Guts

A collection of innards from varying fish species. Each contains the egg or larva of a parasite that inhabits Lake Latoin.

“Eureka! That has to be it, Nikki! I cast an appraisal spell, and all of these have a parasite in them!”

“Really?” He let out a gleeful chuckle. “But parasites...”

“Is something wrong?”

“They just ruin the fish. There’s nothing good about them.”

True, parasites were a nuisance to most people, and doubly so if those people lived in a fishing village.

“Still, I managed to gather all this based on the slime’s reactions. I didn’t know they all had parasites until I cast my spell... In other words, there’s a chance that we can use slimes that eat parasites to determine which fish have parasites and which don’t.”

Nikki’s eyes widened as a few mutterings came from the adult onlookers.

“That’s it! If we could tell which fish are clear of parasites, that’d be safer!” Nikki yelled.

“If we can know for sure, I could try eating one raw...”

“Don’t even try it, dear. Who’s going to take care of you when it makes you sick?”

“I wouldn’t do it this time of the year! But maybe in summer...”

“Nikki,” I asked, “do people eat fish raw around these parts?”

“During the time of year when there are less parasites, yeah. Dad likes it; he says you gotta be a fisherman to do it. But he gets sick from it every year. It’s never completely safe.”

“I see.” I was reminded of the historical accounts of people who dared to eat puffer fish in the Edo period, when it was outlawed because of its danger of lethal poisoning... Albeit with less gravitas, since it sounded like eating parasite-infested fish wouldn’t kill them.

More importantly, how would the bloody slime evolve after consuming parasites? Would it enter the human body...? Since it was made out of blood, would that be a form of transfusion? Come to think of it, bloody slimes did enter the body through the wound when sucking the blood of its prey. But the blood of the game didn’t congeal, though I did hear that the blood could congeal when mixed with a different type. But what blood types would slimes...

“...Hey! Slime Guy!”

“Oh, sorry, Nikki. Just thinking about things.”

“So I noticed. Anyway, we know that one likes parasites. Let’s move on.”

“Right!”

We had barely made a dent in the mountain of garbage before us, but it looked as precious to me as a dragon’s hoard. It wouldn’t be too long before I could confirm that it was just as valuable too...