The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 1 - Chapter 33

Chapter 33:

Red Potions

AFTER MY RUN-IN with the tree monster, I’d gotten a lot more sensitive to sounds and auras. I couldn’t really help that—I’d almost died, after all—but it made it hard to sleep. If only I could just spend a night in a village plaza. I’d feel bad for Sora, but…still.

Ratosu Village was close, though, so we made the trip in just five days. Since it was near Otolwa, I’d expected it to be another big town, but nope. To my surprise, it was about as small as Ratomi, where I was born. It seemed proximity to the city wasn’t linked to size after all, to my surprise. The villagers seemed dispirited. There weren’t many adventurers, either. Fewer adventurers meant it’d be harder to gather useful information. For now, I made my way to the center of the village, keeping an eye on how people were acting. There were a few taverns at the center of town, but none of them seemed very lively. I approached, ears open for local rumors.

Apparently, the chief had been arrested two days ago for embezzling taxes. Worse, the village’s last chief had been arrested, too. The tavern owner was yammering on and on about it, slinging drinks to adventurers all the while. The members of his captive audience exchanged wry grins. 

I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a really sad village. Maybe I’ll hit the dump and then get going. It’s a small village, so I can’t expect much from its trash…but I’ll still take a look.

I left the village and quickly found the dump. There was a lot more there than I’d expected. You could tell they didn’t have a tamed slime—there was just so much stuff. That must’ve been rough for them.

As usual, I put Sora in a safe spot near the dump and surrounded it with bag handles. Despite my friend’s evolution, it still rolled everywhere for some reason. Is that just how slimes are? I’d seen others up kind of close, but I’d always run away from them, so I didn’t know what happened when the wind blew. Next time I had a chance, I’d try to see what happened.

There were a bunch of potions in the dump, so I took every single blue potion like usual. One of my red potions had expired, so I also looked for a replacement for that. The red ones here were beginning to go bad, but I still took a few. They were in better shape than mine, after all. I also found some surprisingly not-too-stale green potions, which I swapped for the ones I’d been carrying.

Jeez, though, this village’s trash was really dirty and torn up. They had a lot of stuff, but very little was usable.

I went back to Sora to grab the potions I was going to discard from my bags. None of them were blue, of course, because Sora could always eat those. I took out the expired green and red ones and set them on the ground beside me, ready to be tossed.

Next up, time to find some magic bags. When I was searching the river, one had caught on a tree and torn. I had a backup, so I was fine for the moment, but now I needed a backup for the backup. You never know what’ll happen in the forest, so you always needed extras. I didn’t find anything suitable, so I’d have to hope for the next village. People didn’t throw away magic bags very often.

I checked my bags one more time to see if there was anything else I needed to discard. Nope. Okay, then we’re ready! I reached out for the potions I’d left next to me to take them into the dump, but my hand bumped into Sora instead.

“Hm?” I looked over and saw Sora devouring a red potion. The expired red potion fizzled and disappeared inside.

While I blinked in confusion, it finished its meal. I rushed over and found another red potion in the dump to set in front of Sora. It quickly ate that one, too.

“You ate it? Um…how about this?” This time, I took a green potion that I was going to toss and offered it to Sora. No reaction.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but it seemed my slime could eat red potions now. So I picked up more red potions for Sora and put them in my bag. Thinking about it too hard would be a waste of time, so I decided to just be happy that feeding my friend would be easier now. Sora was a true slime of mystery.