“It was because We realized your seal had come undone!”
Nintan came to stand before the elder god.
I had a feeling Nintan would move things along a lot faster than simply letting Godly Godness chat with it. It’d probably only take half as long.
“It’s been a long time, Dekyari’tosde! Do you remember Us? You are the ruler of the underworld—We must keep you in line, otherwise— Bwuh!”
“OH NO!”
The elder god in slime form leaped right at Nintan’s chest and tackled her!
Nintan fell flat on her back.
“Nintan! YOU’re angry! I’M scared! If I run, I WIN!”
The silver slime turned on its heel (well, I wasn’t exactly sure if slimes had heels) and leaped out the window.
“No! It’s getting away!” shouted Nintan.
“Stop, Nintan,” Godly Godness said. “It ran away because it thought you would harm it. You did not approach it properly.”
“But if it brings strange creatures from the underworld up here, we will all be in terrible danger! We must act!”
“Based on our meeting just now, it seems good-hearted.”
“Does a slime even have a heart?! One can have a good heart and still cause problems!”
This was an emergency, and now the gods were bickering.
I rushed to the window, where I could see Beelzebub and the rest of them standing in the hotel garden.
“Keep an eye on where that slime went!” I yelled.
“What?” Beelzebub called back. “Was that silver slime a new species? But, Azusa, slimes hardly matter right now.”
Oh no. They didn’t realize the slime was the elder god. Of course, no one had told them it had taken the form of a slime, so that was hardly their fault.
“That slime is the elder god! Chase after it, but keep a safe distance! Try not to stress it out too much!”
I wanted to believe the elder god didn’t have any malicious intentions to destroy the world or anything. If it was considering something that terrible, it probably would have done it ages ago, and it wouldn’t have introduced itself to us so casually, either.
“Can I fight it, Mistress?”
“Absolutely not, Flatorte!”
Anyone would think someone asking for a fight was a threat. And there was no telling if Flatorte would be okay going up against a god.
“We have no choice but to pursue!” Nintan grabbed my hand—and leaped out the window!
“Gaaaaaah! At least warn me first!”
“We are only jumping from a fifth-story window. You will be fine.”
Still, I didn’t like being dragged around.
“Elder Sister, the slime went over there! Toward that area being prepared for development!”
“Got it, Pecora! Thank you!”
Nintan, Godly Godness, and I rushed in the direction she’d indicated.
A shadow formed above us—Laika had taken her dragon form and was flying over the underground city.
Unlike the surface, the outdoors here didn’t include an infinite sky. She might hit her head on the ceiling of the cavern.
“Lady Azusa, the slime is straight ahead!”
“Got it! We’ll take it from here!”
We didn’t know how much power this elder god had, so I didn’t want Laika or any of the others getting close if there was even the tiniest chance a fight might break out.
That meant it was up to me and the gods—the ones really responsible for this mess—to settle the matter.
We pulled open a boarded door marked NO ENTRY to find a wasteland stretching out before us. There were no demons with pickaxes here, just an abandoned lot.
It was there that we found the silver slime.
“OH! YOU are here!”
“Elder god! Please, let’s just sit down and talk! We can work this out!”
But once again, the slime flew through the air like an arrow, straight into Nintan’s stomach.
“Bwuh! Why do you only attack Us? We do not understand!”
Nintan crumpled to the ground. If even Nintan was no match for it, we must be up against a powerful opponent…
“All I know is that YOU’re angry, Nintan! I WIN if I can escape, so I need to get OUT of here!”
“Even if We were not angry to begin with, such abuse is more than enough reason… You hit…quite hard…”
“You ARE angry!”
The slime rushed away again.
“Wait, wait!” I called out. “Please don’t run away!”
I chased after it as fast as I could.
“I have to dig a hole and ESCAPE underground! You won’t find ME there!”
Wouldn’t that just cause eldritch creatures to start spilling out into our world? I needed to stop it…
“And if I don’t WIN, I’ll be the LOSER!”
Next, the slime flew at Godly Godness. It might have been fleeing, but it seemed to think it still needed to attack its pursuers.
“Hah!”
Godly Godness deflected the attack, forcefully pulling her hands apart in a breaststroke-like movement.
“Whoa, nice one, Godly Godness!”
“Heh-heh, that’s nothing for me,” she said smugly. “But…that is all I can do.”
In the end, she fell to her knees. “My hands hurt… My palms are stinging…”
“You’re a god! Be more useful!”
“It’s all right. There’s still someone we can depend on.” Godly Godness pointed at me.
“Uh, don’t you know it’s rude to point?”
“I’ll leave the rest to you, Azusa.”
………So this was it. It was all riding on me.
But it would be bad news for this world if the elder god got away. It seemed I had no choice.
“Um, elder slime god,” I said. “We aren’t going to hurt you. Please just hear us out.”
“But Nintan IS angry. That’s the face she makes when she says, ‘We’re not going to be angry with you, so just tell Us,’ and gets angry ANYWAY!”
That was pretty easy to imagine…
“Forget about Nintan. Trust me! I’m very hard to anger. Instead, I tend to jump at any chance to compromise.”
“I do not KNOW who YOU are!”
Of course it didn’t.
“I’m Azusa, Witch of the Highlands. Er… Nice to meet you, I guess?”
My introduction made me sound a lot like a transfer student just arriving at a new school.
“I don’t know what that means, but YOU are Nintan’s FRIEND, YES? I don’t want to talk to YOU!”
“I understand what you’re saying, but please! Your actions could endanger the whole world!”
“If YOU do not get out of my WAY, I’M using force!”
The silver slime leaped at me!
This should have been obvious, since it was actually an elder god, but it moved much more quickly than a normal slime. It was so agile.
“Gaaaaaaah!”
I threw myself back, dodging the attack.
The slime hurtled some distance away, then came back.
I guessed it was trying to do some damage to me before running away. I wasn’t sure if I should be glad it had returned instead of escaping.
“You dodged MY attack. YOU’re quite quick FOR a god!”
“But I’m not a god. I’m just a witch trying to live a relaxing life.”
Nothing about this situation warranted me bringing up my relaxing life, but asserting myself didn’t cost me anything.
“Here I GO again!”
This slime was unbelievably fast. As it flew through the air, its round body morphed into the shape of a thorn. If there was such thing in this world as the ultimate slime, this would probably be it.
Still, I managed to dodge it again.
“Huh, I guess that worked…”
I could hear Godly Godness saying, “Wow! Look how cool you are, Azusa!” But I would have preferred she join the fight instead of just cheering me on from the sidelines.
“Your ultimate stats are the real deal! You’re doing well! One god-tier dodge after another! It has to be god-tier when you’re up against a god!”
“I’m not doing it consciously… My body’s just moving on its own…”
Even if my stats were god-tier, I didn’t think I had a skill or a spell that let me dodge without even trying. But in that case, what was going on?
“Oh, I know what this is!”
“…Do you plan to tell us, Godly Godness?”
Did she expect me to read her mind?
“You must have killed so many slimes that your very body has memorized their movements!”
“What? Is that a thing…? So you mean…”
“Yes, exactly! Your opponent has taken the form of a slime, thus limiting its movements! Thanks to that, your body can predict its attacks!”
To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure I totally trusted what Godly Godness was saying, but I was, in fact, dodging the elder god’s attacks.
“YOU ARE quite nimble! But I’M a god, too! I will hit YOU once!”
The elder slime god sounded fearless. Still, I kept dodging every one of its attacks.
It was so strange… It was as if I could predict the path of each strike, as if I knew where each hit would land.
At some point, Nintan got up.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha! We see not even you can defeat Azusa, the Super-Divine Ultimate Weapon, the Violence Machine!”
“Don’t give me weird nicknames!”
I wished she wouldn’t make me sound like a monster. Violence Machine? No mother could raise her kids well with a name like that…
“Um, Nintan. Think you could help me out here?”
“We have never fought with anything so small as a slime before, which makes its movements hard to read. Therefore, We pass.”
There were three of us, and yet I was being forced to fight one-on-one…
“Y-yes! That’s right! Nintan and I cannot predict the slime’s movements, and that is why we were defeated! There is no such thing as an overpowered slime, and so we were outwitted! It’s simultaneously the strongest and weakest character—a god cannot handle such a paradox!”
“That may be a reasonable explanation, but I get the feeling it’s still just nonsense…”
“You’re perfectly suited for the job, Azusa! Everyone associates the Witch of the Highlands with slimes!”
“No they don’t.”
I had a feeling this was all just an excuse to make me deal with everything alone. But it was still true that I was dodging each and every one of the slime’s attacks.
“Wow, HOW strange… I DON’T UNDERSTAND!”
After I’d dodged thirty times, the slime came to a stop.
“Please just let ME hit YOU! I’M speeding UP!”
Zoom! The slime flew right at me.
My body, however, reacted just as it had before.
I couldn’t follow the slime’s movement anymore, meaning my ability was positively supernatural.
I twisted, dodging each of its attacks and landing a light punch to what looked like its weak spot. Even this was mostly subconscious.
It connected, and the silver slime crashed to the ground. Smoke and dust rose from the earth.
“…I guess my body has adapted specifically to kill slimes.”
I had three hundred years of experience, after all.
Now that I’d met a particularly powerful slime, I’d finally noticed my abilities. There just weren’t any slimes that impressive. The only possible exception was Fighsly.
“Oh! Slime Killer Azusa did it!”
“I knew the Slime Killer could pull it off!”
“Please stop giving me weird nicknames! I don’t want them to stick!”
That said, I could hear the happiness in my own voice.
It was true I’d had the advantage in this battle, and if I’d managed to force my opponent to step down, the situation would be resolved.
When the smoke cleared, the slime was still there. And since it was a slime, I had no idea if it was even injured or not.
“YOU ARE truly powerful! AMAZING!”
“Um… I’d be very happy if you acknowledged your defeat and listened to what we have to say—”
“But it sounds like the only reason YOU defeated ME was because you are especially strong against slimes! I can take ANY form I want, so I’LL just CHANGE!”
Gah! That would mean I’d lose whatever bonus I had against slimes.
“Oh no! That’s not good…”
“To think it would see through your weakness…”
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login