I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level Max Level Witch - Volume 12 - Chapter 9

  WE MET A VALLEY GIRL SAGE  

We made landfall at Outofreach Island and moored very carefully. This ship was not getting swept away on our watch.

“At last, land!”

Just as I was about to take the first step forward, Smarsly leaped out in front of me.

“You must be thrilled to meet the sage.”

Smarsly was certainly in high spirits.

The skeleton crew then began plodding onto the island. I wondered what they were going to do—and the answer was sunbathing, apparently.

“They’re really gonna make the most of this, huh?”

“Ah, if the skeletons stay tooooo long on the boat, then they might get moooldy, so it’s veeery important for them to take some time in the suuun,” said Captain Imremico, who stepped out wearing a swimsuit. She was even holding a beach ball. “The skeeeletons and I will keeeeep watch over the ship, so do what you must with the saaage.”

I was sure they were just using the ship as an excuse, but they were indeed done with their job now that we’d come to the island.

All we had to do next was find the sage.

I wanted to thank Curalina again for getting help from the wave spirit, but she was already preparing to paint the ruins. That was most certainly subject matter I thought she would like. She was free to paint all she wanted here.

And so Smarsly’s escorts would be me, Beelzebub, and Rosalie.

“By the way, does this extremely out-of-the-way sage have a name? And where on the island are they?”

“Do not ask so many questions at once. I do not know. All I know is that this is a very strange individual.”

I remembered the letter that came in the bottle.

“…Yeah, can’t argue with that.”

“Well, now that we are here on the island, we may do as we please. We will find them if we look.”

“’Kay, then I’ll take a peek around the forest.” Rosalie slipped into the forest, where the trees and ruins lived in harmony.

A ghost scout—now that was the ideal for an adventuring party.

Beelzebub and I waited for a bit.

“’Twould be nice if there were any edible fruits here on the island.”

“Ooh, look, a crab.” The one walking in front of us was quite small. It collided with Smarsly and quickly scuttled out of the way.

“I tire of crab. I want something else! No crabs of any species!”

“I know, I know! Yeah, I really want something that isn’t crab, too…”

I saw some hermit crabs running around, but those were still unacceptable.

“We will see a lot of the forest, I believe. We will need to find something to eat before we find the s—”

“Big Sis, people!” Rosalie rushed out from the forest. That was fast!

Smarsly was jumping really high, too; it could barely contain its excitement. I wondered where all its springy power came from.

I guess, to the slime sage, this was like getting invited to meet some internet friends in real life.

“That was quick. Are they hiding out in the ruins somewhere or something?”

In a way, this place was kind of perfect for a hermit lifestyle.

“No, there are almost thirty of them. So I’m not sure which one would be the sage, but there are definitely people here.”

“That’s a lot!” I couldn’t believe there would be so many in such a secluded place. My mental picture of the lonely sage on a remote island was crumbling.

Thirty people was like an entire classroom. Was the leader of this community the sage?

“Well, in the demon world, there is also a myth of seven sages living together—the Seven Sages of the Lost Wood. Perhaps a community of thirty would have produced new knowledge.”

“Sounds like there are stories of sages in every kind of world, huh?”

“There were some who wanted to become the eighth, but they were all hindered by the Lost Wood.”

More sages who were hard to meet!

“But they do say that two heads are better than one—three makes for Manjushri. Imagine what thirty people could do!”

“Manjushri?”

She didn’t get it, obviously, but I basically told her that it was a sage’s name.

“And Rosalie. Did you speak with them?” Beelzebub asked cautiously. “On the off chance, were they saying nothing but ‘naa, naa, naa’?”

She was worried they were part of the Masco Tribe!

When I came to (what I thought was) a deserted island, I encountered a tribe whose only method of communication was saying “naa, naa.”

I called them the Masco Tribe for a while, but I found out later that they were demons—yetis—pretending to be islanders. All the “naa, naa” stuff was also just made up for the bit, and they could speak a language I knew.

Which means there was a chance this was a group of people pretending to be a small community…

“No, not at all. I told them about us, and they asked that I take you to them.”

It was also possible that they were wary of us as uninvited guests. I’d be a bit scared if I were a normal person, but I wouldn’t be in any danger in battle.

“Then I suppose we shall go.” Beelzebub scooped up Smarsly.

“Yes. Let’s meet this top-three (hardest-to-meet) sage!”

So as we pushed deeper into the forest…

…the sound of conversation got louder.

There were people sitting at wooden tables, chattering away. They even had wooden cups, filled with some kind of drink.

Was this just a café…?

“This is not what I expected!”

After watching them more closely, I realized that none of them were human.

In fact, they all reminded me of Sandra. There were flowers and leaves sticking out of their heads.

There were things coming off their lower backs, too, but I couldn’t tell if they were roots or stems.

And almost all of them—wait, maybe all of them—were girls. They were loud in both appearance and volume. Whatever they were, they weren’t human.

They noticed us, too.

“Omigosh, this is, like, nuts!”

“Look, that demon looks like she’s wearing a costume! I’m laughing sooo hard right now?”

“This is no costume! I am a bona fide demon minister!”

One of them made fun of Beelzebub’s clothes, so Beelzebub bit back. I wondered what was wrong with her clothes.

“And you all…appear to be dryads.” Ah, so Beelzebub was familiar with them.

“Oh yeah, dryads are a plant spirit race or something like that.”

I guess that was why they reminded me of Sandra.

“Yaaah.”

“We are for sure, like, dryads.”

“Sooo, why are you here?”

Beelzebub held up Smarsly and held it out toward the dryads.

“Someone sent a letter to the Smart Slime. Is there anyone here who claims to be among the three most difficult sages to meet?”

There was a girl near the back who raised her hand with an “Oh, that’s me!”

“I’m Miyu, one of the world’s three most difficult sages to meet! Is that the Smart Slime? No frickin’ way. Miyu cannot believe I get to meet it! It’s, like, a miracle!”

All these dryads were ditzy valley girls!

“Omigod, is that your friend, Miyu?”

“They, like, came from far away or something.”

“For real?!”

“Quite a curious group.”

“A demon and a ghost and a witch?”

I could hear all the dryads sitting at that same table react.

Most of them had that valley girl vibe, but one in particular had a fancy way of speaking.

“Big Sis? I dunno if I can handle this…” Rosalie hid behind me.

“You…don’t need to hide from them…”

Was this a punks-versus-preps thing?

“We’ve got seats open, so come sit down. Oh, and you can order your stuff over there.”

I spotted what looked like an order counter. It really was like a café.

“What do you have?” I asked the dryad at the counter. She seemed very prim and put together.

“Like, juice and sap,” she replied.

It sure was a menu for dryads…

“I’d prefer juice over sap… I guess you’d want juice, too, Beelzebub? Then two small juices, please.”

Beelzebub nodded.

“Two small juices it is. I can serve these without ice; what do you prefer?”

“No ice, Beelzebub?”

Beelzebub nodded again.

“Yeah, no ice for her, either, please.”

“Got it. Would you like sweetener?”

“For both, yes. How do we pay?”

“Non-dryads are free. Your drinks will be served on the side, so just wait a sec, okay?”

“May as well wait until they’re done.” I moved over toward the serving counter.

“You dealt with that quite handily!” Beelzebub remarked.

And that was when I first realized how smoothly that had gone.

“You’re right… I think I got the general gist of it, though…”

Beelzebub and I took our wooden cups filled with juice and brought them to our table.

The dryad sage and Smarsly were already chatting.

But Smarsly couldn’t talk, so the dryad was really just talking at it.

The conversation, such as it was, went thusly:

“Yaaaaah, exaaactly! Isn’t it craaazy? Crazy, right? Sooo crazy!”

It was like crazy was the only word she knew!

“Um, dryad sage, would you mind if we introduced ourselves to you? I’m Azusa, the ‘Witch of the Highlands,’ and this ghost girl is Rosalie. She lives with me. And this demon is Beelzebub.”

Quick and to the point.

“Okay, cool, cool. I’m Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco.”

Her full name was unique, to say the least!

“Um, that’s…an interesting name.”

“Not for dryads! We’re the only people living on this island. We just chill here like this. Like, I still am one of the three most difficult sages to meet, but I just learn things by, like, talking with everyone else, so I guess you could say that, like, everyone here is a crazy-smart sage. Omigosh, isn’t an island full of sages just, like, the wildest thing you’ve ever heard of?”

That was similar to the Seven Sages of the Lost Wood that I had heard about earlier. And it sounded like this Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco was also less of an individual sage than a part of a group.

Beelzebub was staring at this Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco with obvious doubt in her eyes.

“While ’tis the same for the Smart Slime, you do not look much like a sage to me.”

She was right—all I could sense was her valley girl–ness. Were valley girls a thing in this world?

“Well, like, yah? Wouldn’t it be kinda, like, crazy if someone was just, like, ‘I’m a sage’? They’re definitely not a sage. Like, if you’re a sage, you gotta walk the walk, right?”

She laughed Beelzebub’s concerns away.

I did kind of get what she meant, but her “crazy” had so broad of a definition that it was confusing me.

Beelzebub, still disgruntled, spread out the cloth keyboard for Smarsly.

Smarsly typed out on the keyboard, “How fascinating this is.”

“Oh, so that’s how you communicate! That’s crazy. Omigosh, it’s wild! That’s so funny!”

Miyu-miyu Kuzzoco burst out laughing. It was too much of a mouthful to keep calling her that, so I decided I’d just call her Miyu…

“Kuzzoco finds it sooo easy being a sage.”

“Wait, that’s how you refer to yourself?!”

If she absolutely had to talk about herself in the third person, she should at least use Miyu! That was cuter! And wait, didn’t she just refer to herself like that earlier anyway?!

“Omigosh, you guys are sooo funny. Don’t mind if I do!”

We were letting her have…something. Whatever it was, she could have it.

Afterward, we asked her a few questions about Outofreach Island.

The only ones really living here were the dryads, and they led a very relaxing life.

“By the way, do any of the dryads go out anywhere? I don’t think I’ve really seen any before.”

“Well, obviously!”

Miyu suddenly shot out from her chair. And then she was gone.

What on earth?! Was there something she had to run away from?

Then the cord-like object that came out of Miyu’s back stretched and held taught like a line.

“See? Dryads get their nutrients from the trees with these vines. That’s why we honestly can’t go very far. Isn’t that wild?”

“So that’s what’s keeping you here!”

That was probably why I’d never seen one before. I’d never come across any if I didn’t go out of my way to visit in the future.

“Must be tough not being able to get around. I was a spirit bound to one place for a long time, so I get it,” Rosalie said with sympathy.

The mood was turning dark, and Miyu panicked.

“Omigosh, please don’t think I’m, like, a bound spirit or something! I can go cordless!”

What? Cordless?

That was not a word I was expecting to hear.

Just then, a couple of other dryads passed the front of the establishment. These ones didn’t have any vines coming off of them.

“Hey, we can recharge our mana at these seats!”

“Woo! Score! Let’s sit here!”

Then they pulled on some leaves atop their head, producing something that looked like a cord.

They plugged it in to what looked like a socket in the table.

“Ahhh, charging super calms me down!”

“Doesn’t it feel good to charge after walking around cordless everywhere? I get sooo tired.”

“I totally get it!   I think it’d be good for a diet!  ”

What the hell, were they phones?!

“Is it really that weird? I heard that dryads couldn’t move from their trees a long time ago, but wouldn’t that just make it, like, ridiculously inconvenient for everything? That’s why everything evolved so crazy fast.”

I guess nature finds a way…or something.

“And I use a battery when I go far away!”

Miyu took out an object that looked like a potato—no, it was a potato—from her bag.

From the looks of it, I was guessing it was a sweet potato. She probably used it like a sweet snack.

“Huh? Do you eat it…?”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha! Eat it? No! Duh? This is how you use it!”

Miyu pulled on the part of the potato that was either its root or its stem, I wasn’t sure. It got longer and longer.

She then plugged the end of that potato cord into her back.

“I’ll be fine with this, even when I’m away from the trees. It’ll charge my mana right up!”

It was a mobile battery!

“Hmmm… I never thought that the dryads would have evolved in such a unique manner… Not even the demons were entirely aware of this…”

Beelzebub was overwhelmed, too. These isolated regions like the Galápagos Islands were a hotbed for these kinds of changes, I suppose. I mean, it was called Outofreach Island for a reason.

Smarsly also hopped around on its keyboard to write, “Fascinating.”

“Right? Isn’t it crazy?”

In her world, everything was “crazy.”

But even though I knew it had been worth it to come all this way, I still had one question bouncing around in my brain.

Was this dryad Miyu really a sage?

The category of “top-three-hardest-to-meet sages in the world” was honestly a bit too niche, but she also didn’t seem very smart.

No, I wasn’t trying to discriminate; just because she talked that way didn’t mean she wasn’t intelligent.

But I wasn’t really sensing any true wisdom from her. Certainly nothing sagely.

I wasn’t exactly driven to meet any sages, so I wasn’t too bothered if she didn’t really act the part, but I didn’t want Smarsly to be disappointed after coming all this way.

Sometimes you met an internet friend off-line, and their vibes were completely different in person…

Then Beelzebub patted me on the back and said quietly, “Well, now that they are set up, why don’t we leave the sages to chat? We can have a quick look around the island. We can bring along the captain or the others, if you like.”

There was also the fact that we couldn’t contribute much to the sages’ conversation. I did want to see more of the island, and we still hadn’t told the captain that we’d met the dryads yet, so maybe it was a good idea to head back and report. But—

I replied quietly, “It’s a good idea, but…can we really leave this Miyu girl with Smarsly? I don’t know if they’ll get along…”

“They may cross that bridge when they come to it. Conflict is a valuable experience. And I believe such experiences are necessary for Smarsly, considering how rarely it gets to see others.”

“Hey, that’s a really good point, Beelzebub.”

“Why do you sound so surprised? How rude!”

In the end, Beelzebub had her way; we left Miyu and Smarsly to themselves and exited the shop.

Afterward, along with Captain Imremico, we got a tour of the dryads’ island.

I wondered if the captain, a merperson, could actually walk, but she could slither and jump easily enough.

“The fish part of me is sooo muscular. This is eeeasy for me. It haaas to be, otherwise I won’t be able to staaand.”

“You do seem to have a lot of energy, Captain.”

The dryads’ island left a big impression, too.

As we proceeded farther into the forest, we found some more clothing shops and other stores selling miscellaneous goods. They all seemed to have been made from plant fiber. The dryads were fashionable, just like preppy girls would be.

Although to be specific, these establishments weren’t stores.

“How much is this?” I asked the dryad who was leading us around.

“That’s free!” she said.

“What? Free? That’s not very economical… But I guess an island this small wouldn’t have an economy…”

“Everyone makes whatever they like, and then people come and take what they want. And it totally works out. Sometimes someone will trade for sap and stuff, though.”

“Sounds as though these dryads do not have any notion of paper money or coins. Perhaps that stems from how small this island is.”

Beelzebub was taking some serious notes as we walked. It was like the minister was here for inspection.

After that, we spent a good three hours sightseeing around Outofreach Island.

It was a lot of fun getting to experience a different culture. The dryad showing us around even gave us a tour of her room. It was decorated with lots of pink flowers—it was honestly adorable.

Now the sun was setting, and the ocean on the horizon was turning red.

“I think it’s time we head back to the café.”

“Indeed. We must collect Smarsly.”

I was kind of scared. Hopefully it wasn’t bored…or disappointed with meeting Miyu…

How upsetting would it be if we found it sitting (?) by its lonesome at a café table.

There was something strange going on in the café, though.

The table where Smarsly and Miyu had been sitting was now surrounded by a bunch of dryads! Wow, it was lively in there; the place was much more crowded than before.

What was going on?

Smarsly was smoothly jumping across its keyboard.

“No, Smarsly, that’s suuuch ideational solipsism that it’s, like, insta-oblivion crazy.”

Miyu was saying a lot of really difficult words.

She wasn’t the only one—I could hear similarly difficult words coming from the gallery around them.

Smarsly jumped around again.

“No, I’m telling you. You’re taking language as so much of an absolute that it’s kind of crazy, honestly? Like, say I go up to the counter and say ‘Juice.’ The implied meaning is that I’m saying ‘Juice, please.’ But you’re not gonna, like, find that ‘please’ in the definition of ‘juice’ anywhere, right? I’m saying that words can only express so much. It’s how you use them that gives them, like, all that juicy meaning.”

Smarsly jumped—rather, zipped around its keyboard at an incredible speed. It was like a professional sidestepper…

I asked one of the onlookers, “Excuse me? Could you tell me what’s happening here?”

“There has been a difference in opinion, so they are presently debating.”

Oh, this was the fancy dryad.

“We dryads are not subject to common misfortunes such as wealth disparities and disease. That is why it is routine for us to gather here in the café to debate when we have free time.”

They were like ancient Greek philosophers!

I called out to Smarsly next. “Hey, Smarsly? How’s it going? Do you think you’ll need more time?”

Smarsly raced across its keyboard with great speed.

“It says it will need a few more days…,” Beelzebub murmured, somewhat perplexed.

Miyu looked up, too. “Oh, Azusa, Beelzebub! You’re back! So I don’t think we’re gonna finish this, so we’re probably gonna run late. I’ll let you know when we’re done. We’re getting sooo crazy into this! Sorry, babes!”

They’ve said it many times, but I needed to hear it again: Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Despite her scatterbrained demeanor, she sure knew her way around philosophy.

“What shall we do, Azusa…?” Beelzebub peered at me, trying to gauge how I felt.

“…Well, this is a rare opportunity for Smarsly, and it took so much effort to get here, so maybe we should stick around until they finish their debate…”

We left Smarsly alone and went back to our crab dinner on the ghost ship.

I would have been fed up with this whole thing if there was nothing but crab, but the skeletons had gathered some fruits and vegetables on the island for a nice variety.

I wondered how dryads felt about eating fruits and vegetables, but they just gave us veggie smoothies that they personally recommended. I was grateful for that.

“Azusa! This is delicious!”

“Isn’t it? It kind of looks like a tropical resort out here, so this might be kind of like a vacation for us in a way.”

We were going to enjoy this vacation enough to be worth all the hardship getting here.

The next day, Beelzebub and I joined the skeletons on the beach for a round of sunbathing.

The End