By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 25

Chapter 6 Episode 25: A Hasty Departure

Two days had passed since the festival marking the end of fishing season. I had bought everything I wanted the previous day, so I had moved on to capturing mud slimes. Serelipta had told me that I only had to use mud magic to find one, but I had never used a mud spell before. That being said, I had seen mud magic before and knew that it was a combination of earth and water magic. I was certain that I’d get the hang of it if I tried hard enough.

“Over here, Slime Guy!”

Nikki and I had come to a particularly muddy spot in the forest.

“Okay, let’s give this a try.”

Mud magic... In simplest terms, mud was a mixture of water and earth. I combined magical powers of both elements and imagined seeping it down into the muddy ground to make waves in the mud, like the water spell Wave.

If I were to give that spell a name, it’d surely have to be...

“Mud Wave!”

Upon casting, ripples formed in the mud, growing into waves. Just as they crashed into the surrounding trees and swallowed their roots...

“Whoa! Here they come, Slime Guy!”

“Wow... There’s so many of them.”

The waves of mud were disturbed as a bunch of mud balls appeared one after another, just about thirty of them. Nearly crumbling from the excess of moisture, they tried to scramble away from us.

“Right, just as we planned.”

“Let’s go!”

Mud slimes slithered across the ground like the other slimes, but quite a bit slower. Nikki scooped up one after another, tossing them into the pots I was producing from the item box. With so many of them, a few had sunk back into the mud, but we had caught twenty-seven of them on our first attempt. I cast Appraisal on one of them.

Mud Slime

Skills: Disperse (3), Condense (3), Hold Moisture (5), Consume (1), Absorb (2), Split (2), Synchronize (Mud) (5)

“Seriously?”

“Didja learn something new, Slime Guy?”

“Yes. Its skills are similar to an ash slime.”

Disperse and Condense were the same, but it had Hold Moisture instead of Dry Out. Most notably, however, I saw Synchronize (Mud). I had never seen a skill name with parentheses in it before, but it must have meant that it could only synchronize with mud.

This made for another new slime in my arsenal. Since I was able to catch nearly thirty of them in one go, I could gather enough to turn into a big or huge slime with a little more digging. I let Nikki know that I wanted to look for some more mud slimes, and he was happy to tag along.

■ ■ ■

The two of us spent the next few hours running through the woods. Using mud magic made it ridiculously easy for me to find mud slimes; it was rather like casting a net into a pond packed full of fish. Taking some breaks along the way, and moving from location to location, I managed to capture and contract over six hundred of them without us straining ourselves too much. No matter where I cast mud magic, there were at least four or five of them that sprung out, so I was wondering at this point if most of the mud in the forest was made up of mud slimes.

“Ooh!”

“What’s up?”

“Look, over there,” Nikki pointed.

“That’s the tree near your secret lair, right?”

“Hold on a minute! I’ll be right back!”

Nikki ran off into his lair, so I sat on a thick tree root to wait for him. After a couple minutes, Nikki emerged with something cupped in his hands.

“Here, Slime Guy. They’re yours.”

“What are these?”

They seemed to be rocks, all unevenly shaped and sized.

“Those are soak lights. You find them in the mud, and you wet them in a dark place to make them glow! They’re super-rare!”

“Really now...”

Come to think of it, I recalled how Nikki’s secret lair was all lit up when I found him in there; he must have been using these.

“You’re leaving today, right? You taught me a whole bunch of stuff, so I wanted to give them to you as thanks. I don’t need them anymore, after all.”

“You don’t?”

To be honest, these fantasy gem-like rocks definitely had me intrigued. But how was he going to have light in his lair without them?

“Kids can come to these parts of the woods, but it’s still far from the village.”

“Yeah, and?”

“After what happened before, I talked with mom and dad...and I decided to rebuild it closer to the village, somewhere they can easily come see and not worry about me. So I don’t need them anymore.”

“I’m proud of you, Nikki.”

“Heh! I’m big enough to help out the grown-ups around the village now! My pranking days are through!”

He was talking about helping out at the processing plant as his punishment for running away, but he did seem to enjoy the work. Maybe that was a good learning experience for him... Still, with all the energy he displayed, I wasn’t entirely sure he could keep himself from pulling pranks just yet.

“Say, you wanna go build that lair now?” I offered.

“What about the slimes?”

“We’ve caught at least six hundred of them already. I’d be happy to help out; consider it thanks for these stones. I’m good with using magic for construction, so just tell me what you’d like me to do.”

“Can you build it on a tree?”

A treehouse? I could probably manage a simple one, but...

“I’d have to see the site first.”

We hurried back towards the village so Nikki could show me the location, which was on the border of the village and forest, at the corner of the lumbering area where I had visited often. Nikki had his eye set on a tree that had grown too thick to mill and was left alone.

“Dad talked to the village elder and the other grown-ups, so I can use this tree and some of the space around it. He said he’d help me build it too.”

“All right... The trunk and the branches are thick enough. They should support a good amount of weight.” The big decision to make was where on the tree to build the lair. Nikki had told me on our way here that he had envisioned a tree-top cottage.

“Right! Dimension Home.” I called the wire slime out.

“Uh, Slime Guy? You’re not going to cut the tree with that, are you?”

I reassured him that I wasn’t going to use the wire slime to cut any part of the tree, and gave the slime my orders.

The mangrove-like tree branched out often, so I had the slime pull and bend those branches with its wires to make space. And then...

“Grow!” I cast a spell that made plants grow, making the branches slowly grow in size, digging into the wire. By forcing growth while the branches were bent, I was trying to keep the branches in that formation.

“Wow! You’re changing the shape of the tree!”

“There’s actually an art form called bonsai, where you change the shape of a tree. That’s normally done with a potted tree over years and decades, though!”

I tugged on a thin, flexible branch and wrapped it around a neighboring branch, twining them together. Once they were thick enough, it didn’t even budge when I dangled from it. I ought to set up a swing here. After all, it’s not a proper treehouse without a swing, is it?

“I’ll help!”

“Okay, Nikki. I’ll cast the wire, so help me pull.”

We spent an hour bending the branches of the large tree. Most of the branches now stretched out of the trunk horizontally before curving up. They weren’t exactly uniform, but it almost looked like a giant table. You could pass boards through the spaces between the branches to build a comfortably sized cottage.

“I think all that’s left is to set up the swing, plus a rope ladder so you can get up there.”

“What about the cottage?”

“You should ask your dad about that. He said he’d help you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah! We’re gonna make a wicked lair together, and when you come back here, you’ll totally have to see it.”

Then, we gathered up enough lumber and built the rope ladder and swing together, and got it all set up.

“Finished!” We exclaimed together.

Granted, it was just a foundation right now, but I still thought it went well, all things considered. It was almost time for me to take my leave anyway.

“You’re leaving, Slime Guy?”

“Not before I say my goodbyes to the villagers first.” I had told them that I would be leaving by the end of the day, but it would have been rude to leave without saying goodbye.

We quickly cleared up our workspace and returned to Hoy’s house, where I had been staying.

“There he is!”

There was a crowd outside the house, the Sikum’s Pier among them. Before I could even wonder what was going on, the crowd swallowed me up as everyone began talking to me at once.

“Heard you’re leaving today, kid?”

“Y-Yes! Thank you for everything!”

“You were a great help with our fishing, and the festival too!”

“Why don’t you rest up here for another few days?”

“Things have finally settled down after fishing season, you know!”

“Um, I...”

I was starting to get overwhelmed when Kai, Kei, and Shin called to the crowd.

“That’s enough!”

“I think you’re overwhelming the poor lad.”

“Everybody give the boy some space!”

That same moment, Thane and Peyron pulled me out of the crowd.

“You okay?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Sorry about that... They just wanted to see you off.”

“Most of us have bugger all to do outside of fishing season, after all.”

Even as we spoke, the crowd seemed to be growing. Then, May and her mother emerged from the house and handed me a large leaf wrap. Whatever was inside, it smelled delicious.

“Take this with you, Ryoma.”

“Maybe I’ll use it for dinner tonight.”

Hoy stepped out of the door and said, “Take care.”

“Everyone, I have to thank you all for your kindness while I’ve been here! This was a great experience for me!” I said, loud enough for people in the crowd to hear.

“As long as you enjoyed yourself.”

“Hey, take this too.”

“Want some mad salamander jerky?”

“Come back whenever you want.”

“This is from last year, but it should still be good. If it tastes funky, give it to your slimes.”

Everyone in the crowd started chatting me up again, some of them giving me souvenirs and food. I struggled to keep up with all of the energy, but the community around me was so bright and warm... I certainly didn’t expect a farewell party this big. Of course, I knew they had more time on their hands after the fishing season, but still... Everyone continued talking, and though I felt a little sad to leave them, almost everyone was telling me to come back whenever I wanted... So I decided there was no need to be mopey about it.

“Thank you so much! I’ll be back!”

“Take care!”

“You better come back! We’ll be right here!”

“Write us sometime!”

My send-off was a fiasco right to the very end. As I repeatedly gave them assurances that I would be back sometime in the future, I bid farewell to this village full of incredible kindness and hospitality.