Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 1 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The First Servant

“...That’s right. Humans are nothing but scum.”

I woke up to my own voice. I was in a dark place that seemed to be a small cave. I couldn’t remember what had happened before I fell asleep. What exactly was I doing? I put my hand to my sluggish-feeling head and got up. And that was when I first realized the presence of something else in the cave.

“U-Uwaaah?!”

A monster that we called a slime was right next to me.

“...Aah!”

I suddenly remembered everything. I let out a pathetic scream and huddled into a ball. It didn’t need to be said that this was a reflexive action with no meaning whatsoever. I shut my eyes tight and simply waited for my inevitable demise. But after a few seconds...

“...?”

I suddenly opened my eyes. The slime wasn’t attacking me no matter how long I waited. For some reason, it was simply sitting still where it was. It definitely realized I was there. It just showed no signs of attack.

“Why...?”

As I looked down at my hands, I noticed something else extremely important.

“...My arm is fine?”

If my memory served me correctly, the slime was digesting my arm right before I lost consciousness. At best, it should’ve been badly injured. At worst, it wouldn’t have been strange if it was severed from my body entirely.

However, my arm was just fine. My fingers all moved as I willed them. There wasn’t a single injury to be seen. Yes, not a single injury anywhere. Even the small scratches I had gotten from running through the woods were gone. And this didn’t only apply to my arm. The dull pain that had been running through my entire body was completely gone as well.

“How...?”

The slime approached me as if to answer my doubts. For some reason, I could tell it bore me no ill will.

How can I tell? I’m fully convinced of this.

If it really wanted to kill me, this slime could’ve dissolved my entire body while I was unconscious. But that wasn’t the logic behind my conviction. There was no fundamental reasoning as to how I knew this slime wasn’t hostile to me. A more instinctive portion of my mind was convinced this wasn’t an enemy.

“Hmm?”

While I remained bewildered by this strange conviction in me, the slime stretched out several feelers toward me. The feelers touched my knee. I apparently scraped my knee when I panicked and rolled into a ball earlier. A slight pain ran through my body, but the feelers had a far silkier touch than I thought they would. A small white light took shape at the tip of the feeler brushing my knee.

“?!”

The white light drew a complicated geometric pattern in the air. I knew from my one month of being in this world that this was called a glyph. I had seen the cheaters use them before. The color of the glyph revealed its attribute. White represented the attribute of light, which specialized in healing and exorcism. By the time the feeler finished touching my knee, the scrape was no longer there. I was able to understand what it had done just from that.

“Did you... save me?”

It didn’t reply. That only made sense. This was a monster. However, no matter how I looked at it, it was friendly to me. Another groundless conviction of mine told me so. There was no logic to it. I simply knew. And after receiving so many hints, I finally grasped the situation I was in.

“Ooh... I get it. So this is my cheat.”

Of the 1000 people transported to this world, 300 of them awakened to cheats. The haves and have nots. I often wondered what differentiated us. And now that I thought about it, I was approaching the question from the wrong direction.

The remaining 700 students simply didn’t realize what their own power was. For example, the ability to tame monsters wasn’t something you’d notice while staying in a safe location.

“...This is perfect.”

Power was required for me to survive in this world. Power only I could use. I couldn’t trust anyone else. There was no way I could. They had all betrayed me. Even those who had sat next to me in class every day laughed with scorn as they broke my ribs. I could never forget that.

I needed to survive on my own. And this ability I awoke to was the means to do so. Mysteriously enough, I felt no revulsion toward having a monster servant despite my inability to trust humans. My instinct was telling me it was alright. It was strange, but it felt natural to me now.

“Thanks for treating my wounds.”

I petted the slime’s body. Its silky surface was pleasant.

“...I suppose you’ll need a name if we’re going to be traveling together.”

It was a bit of an inconvenience not to be able to call it anything. I stared at the slime’s body. It looked like a jelly. And so, a name which rhymed with jelly randomly came to mind.

“Okay. You’ll be Lily.”

I didn’t really have a reason for giving it a girl’s name. Thinking of it normally, it was strange to give a girl’s name to a creature who might not possess the concept of sex. The slime could have even been male, or maybe my cheat simply knew it wasn’t and chose that name for me.

“Best regards from here on out. Please lend me your strength so that I can survive.”

Despite being unable to trust humans, I had no trouble saying such things to a monster. It was entirely possible that my humanity was fatally damaged. However, I didn’t mind that. Nothing like that mattered as long as I could survive.

And that’s how I acquired power.