I GOT A NEW DAUGHTER
It was easy to get back to the house on the highlands by dragon, so I put Halkara on Flatorte and sent her home to rest.
But Halkara kept warning me to be careful: “I believe the source of this terrible sense I have is from that Wynona girl.”
She was hypothesizing that Wynona had greatly changed the forest somehow, but there was no way to tell whether that was true or not.
I didn’t want to overwhelm Wynona by appearing suddenly with the entire family, so only four of us went—Falfa, Shalsha, me, and Laika, who took us there.
We walked down a long, narrow mountain path. There wasn’t much room to move; this wasn’t a place anyone visited very often. The trees around us had grown in densely, so it was hard to see ahead. There wasn’t as much poison gas here compared with where the Great Slime was, but getting lost in here would be extremely dangerous.
“Falfa wonders what she’s like. Do you think she’s like us~?”
“I cannot say. We should not get our hopes up. It is unclear if she even has a human form.”
I didn’t think whatever way she would greet us would be as ridiculous as Shalsha was imagining (she was calling herself a margrave, after all), but it was true that we didn’t know anything about her personality.
“I hope we will be able to have a friendly chat.” Laika, unsurprisingly, seemed a bit anxious. “Our only precedent here is Falfa and Shalsha, so we have no choice but to come face-to-face with her.”
“Either way, we’ll know when we meet her. That’s for sure,” I said, as much for my benefit as hers.
“We should be at our hut soon,” Falfa said.
“Sis and I lived a modest life there.”
We were getting close to our destination.
We rounded a corner, and a magnificent sight greeted us.
There in the forest stood a splendiferous, chalk-white manor.
“Oh my god!” I couldn’t help but shout aloud in wonder.
Hadn’t they called it a hut? This was a manor fit for nobility…
“Whoa…,” Falfa said in shock. “Our hut is a mansion now… What happened…?”
That would shock anyone. I’d never even lived here before, and I was surprised.
“Margrave Wynona of Idell should be inside. This is not the time to be intimidated.” Shalsha was ready to go.
“But, Shalsha, someone really important must live here. You think it’s okay for us to say hello without making an appointment or something? We’re not going to be chased out?”
We weren’t in the right mental state to meet the little sister.
That said, we couldn’t back down now. We had to look into this mystery.
“She’s a slime spirit. She will understand. We will go in first, and we will figure out the rest. Dialogue is important.” Shalsha briskly made her way toward the manor.
She really was into it today!
But then a massive white dog emerged from the side of the manor gates. It stopped in front of Shalsha and barked.
“Grrrrrrr~ Woof!”
I guess it was a guard dog.
“…Strategic retreats also have their place.”
And Shalsha whirled right back around to us. Yeah, dogs were pretty scary.
This was my chance to show off my strength as a parent.
“Leave this to me, Shalsha.” I stepped in front of the white dog and stared straight at it.
“Woof, woof!” it said.
Staaare.
“Woof… Woof, woof…”
Staaare.
“Awooo…”
The dog then flopped over to show its belly, a sign of obedience.
Phew, solved that one. Aww, good puppies are so cute.
Animals could sense another person’s abilities, so I guess it understood I wasn’t someone to tangle with.
“Wow! That’s so cool, Mommy! You’d never lose to a doggy!”
“Even the gods of destruction will turn back before you.”
Was that something you said to compliment a parent? Well, whatever…
“All right, now we can keep going.”
I knocked on the door.
I didn’t know if this would catch the attention of anyone living in such a big house, but it was also rude to just walk in.
No response. Guess I was right; she wasn’t going to see us so easily.
“Mommy, there’s a sign on the side here that says, NO SOLICITORS, NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY, BEWARE OF DOG. NUISANCES WILL BE REPORTED.”
Yeah, she wasn’t going to see us.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not selling anything. Yep, doesn’t look like it’s locked, so let’s go in.”
I opened the door, and a white tiger immediately leaped at us.
“Roooaaar!!”
The white tiger growled at us.
“I’m surprised she managed to get one of these in here!”
Either way, I was going to avoid fighting with this animal the same way I did the last one.
I stared hard at the white tiger.
It growled at me for a while, but twenty seconds later—
“…Mrow~ Mrow!”
—the white tiger rubbed its face against my legs.
Solved. Power is justice. Justice is power.
“Go home now. You did good. I don’t think your master will blame you, either.”
The white tiger went into a big box labeled MARSHMALLOW’S HOUSE, which sat inside the building. I guess it was being kept just like a cat.
Marshmallow made me think of a little dog, though…
“Wow, Mommy! Even the tiger acts cute with you!”
“You are the true king of beasts.”
I didn’t know how to feel about my daughters’ compliments. “It looks like security’s tight, but we’ll just keep going. Also…Laika, could you wait outside, just in case? So you can contact the house or Beelzebub if we don’t come out.”
That would be safer for all of us. I was fine protecting these two alone, though.
“Yes, Lady Azusa! I will wait for you as I play with the guard dog.”
Laika must really like pets…
It would be awkward to make her wait with nothing to do, so it was perfect.
We left Laika behind, and the three of us continued into the manor.
The narrow corridors just led deeper and deeper into the building.
This place felt like it was made to be a dungeon, or as a way to wipe out intruders. Certainly not to function as a living space.
Just as we reached a blind spot at a ninety-degree turn in the corridor, I sensed something.
I quietly peeked around the corner, and there, I saw a white snake, its tongue flicking in and out.
It didn’t really try to bite us. I guess this snake was gentle.
“Why is she so into the color white?!”
It was hard to tell if they were supposed to be gatekeepers or pets at this point.
Anyway, the white snake was adorable, with its cute little eyes. Even though I wasn’t the biggest snake fan, I still gave it a soft pat on the head.
At the end of the straight hallway, there was a door.
“Be careful when you open it, Mommy!”
“We cannot observe the inside of the room until you open the door. Anything could be lurking within.”
She was right. Considering how things had gone so far, nothing in there would surprise me.
There was a polar bear inside.
“How did she get a polar bear?! That’s not something you can find wandering around in a forest!”
This was the first time I’d seen one in this world.
The polar bear didn’t try to attack us at all, either.
I used my ice magic to cool the room down, and it was super happy with that. I guess they like it cold…
“Such a big bear!”
“It has a nice coat. It seems smart. Shalsha wants one.”
The polar bear was cheering the two up. I even got it to let Falfa ride on its haunches. This place was like a petting zoo— Although bears are a little too scary for your typical kid’s attraction.
“Yaaay! Falfa’s so high up!”
“Falfa, we’re gonna keep going, so get down from the bear, okay?”
We opened the other door in the polar bear’s room and found a spiral staircase leading up to the second floor. I guess we had to go through the polar bear’s room in order to get to the upper floor. The first floor was literally like a dungeon.
The second floor, huh? Maybe we’d finally be able to see Wynona.
But to be honest, my enthusiasm for meeting her was going down a bit… Whoever lived here was a total weirdo.
Still, no turning back now. Even if a daughter went a little off the rails, a parent still had to be responsible for them.
But the lady of the house sure seemed to be tough on intruders.
As we were halfway up the stairs, an attack came at us from the second floor.
Something white was hurtling right at us.
I really wish they didn’t underestimate my senses.
“Falfa, Shalsha, don’t move.”
I stood in front of the two of them and took the attack.
The object turned out to be a white boulder. It stung a bit, but not enough to have an effect on me.
“What a terrible greeting. I didn’t think anyone could be more stubborn about it.”
I looked up the stairs and saw a girl in a white dress standing there. Well, I say girl, but she didn’t look much younger than me.
“What?! Why did that not kill you? What a terrifying foe…” The girl seemed somewhat panicked herself.
“You’re Wynona, right? We’re not here to hurt you. We just wanted to see you. Can we talk?”
“All right, very well.” The girl nodded.
Good. That should settle this for now, I thought—but I was naive.
“I shall hear what you have to say within the white gaol.”
A white cage appeared around us; this was relatively high-level magic, I could tell.
“You cannot use magic whatsoever within the white gaol. And now you—”
I punched the cage, and it crumbled to pieces. That must have broken the spell outright, because the cage itself vanished.
“What?! To think the white gaol would be physically broken! This is ridiculous!”
Sorry, but I know my own strength.
“Urrrgh… What a fiendish intruder!”
The girl in the white dress must have been getting really upset if she was groaning aloud about it.
But still, considering her high-level magic, I wondered if this slime spirit really had only been born recently. I had a feeling she’d been alive for centuries at least.
“We don’t have any plans to harm you. Let’s just talk.”
“What could you possibly want? Are you here to tell me you are my mother?”
“Yeah, actually. That’s exactly it.”
Got it in one.
The girl in the dress stared at me blankly, as if she’d suddenly been possessed.
Phew, at least that’s settled.
—But again, I was naive.
“Ahhh-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You are just a con artist! Too bad, I am a slime spirit! So I don’t have a mother!”
Whoops! She just doubted us instead!
“I already know what you are going to say. You were taken from me soon after your birth. I accidentally embezzled money from my company, and now I need thirty million gold so I don’t get sued. Please lend me some money. I won’t fall for that trick!”
What was this remittance-fraud scam knockoff?!
The premise that a mother had been separated from her child her whole life was hardly useful to begin with. It was extremely unlikely that the person being targeted had a missing mother. On top of that, the embezzlement part was also hard to believe…
“My apologies; the premise of a mother embezzling money was a bit too much. Although it is most certainly the type of idea a foolish con artist might try to use.”
“Wait, I mean, I think it sounds shady, too! I’m not that stupid! And I’m not scamming you!”
Not only did she think I was a scammer, she thought I was really bad at it.
“Be buried in pure-white snow. Snow Wind!”
The girl extended her right hand forward, fluidly drawing lines in the air. If she was using that as a magic circle, then it was most definitely high-level magic.
A ferocious blizzard blasted toward us.
“It’s so cold, Mommy!”
“The cold hurts my ears…”
It barely affected me, but Falfa and Shalsha were in pain!
“Hide behind me!” I stepped in front of them, blocking the blizzard.
But the snow was piling up with terrifying speed.
I almost wondered if this magic was for building an artificial ski slope.
It wasn’t long before the whole first floor of the spiral staircase was buried in snow, and it was starting to stick to my body, too.
Falfa and Shalsha were enduring the whole thing as well. I was glad neither of them was injured.
Oof! Snow got in my shirt! It’s so cold on my back!
Damn you, Wynona! How could you do this to us?!
“Heh-heh-heh. You are all buried in pure-white snow. Ahhh, white is so beautiful. Everything should be covered in it.”
I could hear her gloating.
But she couldn’t see us from the snow, either.
She was really obsessed with white. Yeah, she was a weird kid.
“My dream is to one day bury this world in snow and paint it all white. White, white, white everywhere. What a blessed world it would be!”
Her ideals were way more dangerous than the demon king herself…
But maybe we’d come at just the right time.
If my daughter (assuming that was the right term) was plotting to cause others trouble, then I had to stop her.
I flew out of the mound of snow.
She looked at me as if that was the last thing she was expecting.
“Sorry, but that’s not enough to freeze me.”
“What?! You are such a sore loser, you scammer!”
I’m not a scammer!
“If it’s going to be this way, then you should learn from the beautiful white egret.”
Don’t change the subject so quickly!
She was a wizard, which meant I could manage something if I could catch her off guard.
I landed on the ground right in front of her—and I grasped both of her shoulders.
“Say what you like, but you’re going overboard. I would have been in huge trouble if I were a normal person.”
“No normal person would be able to get past a white tiger or polar bear.”
Okay, you have a point…
“Urrrgh… You evil scammer… Even if you defeat me here, my second and third selves will envelop this world in proper, pure white…”
I think you’re talking like the evil one here.
“Just give it up already.”
“All right. I, Wynona, have done all a slime spirit ought to do. I suppose it would be nice to end my life while I am unsullied and honest.”
She sure had guts to talk about her terrifying ambitions like that and then call herself unsullied!
People who believed they were on the side of justice could be way more dangerous than people who thought they themselves were bad, after all. That convinced me.
“Now finish me!”
Thunk.
I butted my forehead against Wynona’s. Softly, of course—no boulder cracking here.
“Think about what you’ve done.”
“Wh…what is this…?”
Maybe she was in a little pain with me pressing against her forehead. I really was being gentle, though.
“It’s because I could very well be something like your mother. Scolding you is part of my job.”
“Mother…? I knew this was a daughter-help-me scam…”
Just stop with the crappy-sounding scams.
“You’re a slime spirit, right? Then you’re the same as Falfa and Shalsha.”
Falfa then leaped out of the snow. “Shalsha and her big sister, Falfa, are slime spirits who were born before you. So that would make them your big sisters, Wynona.”
“Slime spirits…? Ah, the Great Slime did say I had two elder sisters…”
Wynona finally seemed to believe us.
“I never thought I’d see the day someone would bring out the it’s-me-your-slime-spirit-sisters scam.”
I really wanted her to tell me who else that scam would work on besides her.
Even a guardian spirit asking for money would have more versatility.
Wynona slowly approached Falfa and Shalsha, reached out, and grasped one shoulder each.
“Yes, there is no doubt that the two of you are slime spirits.” There was a weak smile on her face. “It’s slight, but I still feel a little of your slime resilience.”
It was a mystery how she could tell…but maybe there were some things that only fellow slime spirits could understand.
She finally believed we weren’t here to swindle her.
“And that’s our mommy!” Falfa reached out toward me.
“Mom has been killing slimes every day for three hundred years. And that’s how Shalsha and my sis Falfa were born,” Shalsha added.
“I have already heard about that from the Great Slime. I see, so that’s how this works. You should have said so earlier in that case.”
But you’re the one who attacked us without waiting for us to explain ourselves, I thought. It took a lot of effort to keep my mouth shut.
“I apologize for the trouble I’ve caused, my elder sisters. I am Margrave Wynona of Idell, your younger, slime-spirit sister. I was born from a collection of souls from slimes killed all across the world. There is no doubt that you are family.”
Wynona graciously introduced herself like a noble.
She tended to jump to conclusions, but there was a proper young lady in there somewhere.
“And you are—”
“Azusa, Witch of the Highlands. You’ve heard that name, right? I’m a witch who’s been killing slimes for three hundred years.”
“Yes, I know. And you are the one who led to the birth of my elder sisters, so to me, you are—”
Was this the birth of a new daughter for me?
“—my stepmother.”
“What…? Your stepmother…?”
A mother was still a mother, but I still felt a bit sad. At least, I couldn’t muster quite the same emotional response.
“Yes. I was born not because of the slimes you killed. That is but one fraction of countless others. That is why I cannot say my existence is a direct result of your actions. You are not my birth mother. That would make all of nature my parents.”
“Yeah, I get what you mean…”
“So your we-were-born-in-the-same-universe-so-please-help scam will not work with me.”
“That’s not a scam; that’s just emotional blackmail.”
“That said…” Wynona gave a dry cough, then looked up to me with round eyes. “If you are my sisters’ mother, I do not think it odd to consider you my stepmother. And so I will call you Stepmother.”
Oh, part of it was because she was embarrassed. Yeah, it would be a little strange to embrace a random woman and call her Mama.
“Well, I think that’s a fine point of compromise.”
“Now, Elder Sisters, Stepmother—since you’re here, please come with me to the parlor.”
I’d been killing slimes for a little over three hundred years.
And now I had a stepdaughter.
The parlor was a brilliant white.
I guess this girl wanted everything to be white. I doubted someone in this world with the name Wynona meant for her name to sound like the word white, but her interests and name did match.
Wynona served tea for us with all the manners of a girl from a noble family.
I called Laika in, too, and so the five of us sat around the table.
“Hey, so why can you use magic so well? And why do you have such a beautiful mansion?”
Now that we had the chance to chat, I had a few questions for her.
“Please ask one question at a time, Stepmother.”
She was so distant with me…
“First, regarding magic, I was apprenticed to a wizard slime named Wizly, who lives in a workshop in Mount Modadiana in the province of Tomriana.”
“That’s where your slime network is?!”
Wizly was a wizard slime who we met when Falfa was stuck in slime form and we were searching for a way to undo it. Wizly looked like a fifteen-year-old girl, though, so I didn’t really think of her as a slime.
“When I said I wanted to learn magic, the Great Slime directed me to her.”
Maybe the Great Slime had all sorts of answers about slime matters…
“The snow fields I saw on my way there still remain fresh in my memory. How beautiful it was. The world should be pure white.”
She was already obsessed with white even back then…
“I reached full proficiency in magic in a short amount of time under Wizly. And so I established myself as a wizard.”
Wynona took a sip of her own tea. Even her tiniest actions were so graceful.
“So how did you build this mansion, then?”
Wynona placed a brochure on the table.
“You’re a successful adventurer!”
I see. I guess you could make some money as an adventurer if you’re good at magic. That’s actually a respectable way to do it…
I had a feeling that one of those judges was kind of sketchy, but I wasn’t going to touch the subject.
“I successfully earned quite a bit of money. And I used that to remodel my house all in white.”
“Remodel? I feel like you just knocked the hut down and built a manor on top of it…”
“The hut was mostly empty, but I saved all the equipment that was inside. Please look over it later, Elder Sisters.”
That was a nice thing to do.
“I understand. Shalsha is proud that her younger sister is an upstanding adventurer.” She already seemed to have accepted Wynona as her little sister. “Treat Shalsha as your big sister in the future. It would be helpful.”
Yeah, she was genuinely happy to be able to act as a big sister.
“Yeah! Same here, Wynona!”
That was exactly what I thought Falfa would say. She doesn’t build walls with anyone.
“Indeed. I would like for the both of you to teach me all a slime spirit needs to know.”
They looked opposite in age, so this was a little complicated.
“Oh, Wynona, your big sister Falfa has an idea!” Falfa said, her eyes glittering. “Why don’t you move into the house in the highlands, too?!”
Of course, it was natural to want to live with a sibling.
There were still empty rooms in the house in the highlands, so it wasn’t a big deal if we had one more.
Shalsha was looking hard at Wynona, wanting to know what her answer would be.
Nervous, I inhaled deeply.
“I already have my own house, so I will remain living here. I’m certain you would prefer to live in your home as well, Elder Sisters, Stepmother.”
What a polite way of saying no!
And the title of stepmother was really a heavy one.
“The house in the highlands is in the province of Nanterre, no? It’s too peaceful for adventuring work. It is not suited to my lifestyle.”
Right, this girl already had an independent foundation.
“That is why I am unable to live with you, Stepmother.”
“Could you try and not say stepmother so much…? Couldn’t you just call me mother?”
It was really stressing me out. I felt even more distant from her whenever she said it.
“But I will go and visit Stepmother’s house every once in a while, so fret not, my sisters.”
Didn’t I just tell you not to say that…? That was definitely on purpose.
But that’s when I saw Wynona’s expression relax a little. “Of course, I do not mind you coming to visit me, either.”
“Okay! ”
“Understood.”
The two girls replied enthusiastically.
I guess I should be happy that I have a stepdaughter now. “Sure, I’ll come over when I feel like it, too.”
Wynona was silent for a moment. “Fine. If you insist, Stepmother.”
She was a little curt about it, but a yes was a yes.
Maybe being a stepmother came with its own delights.
On the way home, we played with the polar bear. Thanks to Wynona’s snow, the bear seemed to be having a grand old time.
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