“You leave one here, and extend the other one like a string,” Air went on.
“U-Ugh…like this?”
“Make it thinner and longer!”
What am I making right now?! Is this one of those things that I shouldn’t think about too much? Fine, I’ll just empty my thoughts and do it.
I tore the slime in half and stretched it.
“Stretch it longer.”
“Even longer?!”
Could you at least tell me how long it has to be?
I kept pulling and stretching it until eventually, when it was six feet long, Air said it was enough. After that he told me to draw an empty circle on the floor with it.
What now?
“Now tear the other slime in half too.”
“Again?!”
Do you have some kind of grudge against slimes, Air?!
I tore the divided slime in half again, while its beady black eye looked up at me like it was pleading with me to stop.
This thing really is alive! Now I feel bad for it!
“S-Sorry…” I whispered.
Eew, the eye got cut in two…
“There, we’re ready now,” Air declared. “This teleportation slime will be used to transport the Holy Woman. Revireus, was it? I’ll teach you the spell to teleport directly there.”
“Yes, please,” Lord Revireus said.
“Uh, is this slime special somehow?” I asked.
“Yes, this is a divine slime that’s only found in the divine realm,” Air explained. “I could teach you teleportation magic, but you lack offensive spells, so I thought the slime might double as a bodyguard. If you teach the slime to take this shape, it’ll be able to change to it on command. Leave one in your room, or in the hands of someone trustworthy. If you bring the second half to the circle you made, it’ll allow you to jump into the divine realm. When you go back, you leave a half there to mark the point you’ll be returning from.”
“Ew… So this one’s always gonna have to be split into four?” I felt bad for it.
“You just have to keep half with you, the part that forms the circle. That’ll mark the point of return.”
Huuuh?! The poor thing!
“Don’t worry, divine slimes are strong creatures,” Air said nonchalantly. “They’re a divine beast that doesn’t exist in this world—it’s my personal minion.”
“That’s a god’s minion?!” Lord Revireus asked, shocked.
I can understand why you feel that way…
“You’ll protect Tina…?” Renge asked.
“That’s right. You can’t always stay by her side, right?”
“Well, yes, but… No, it’s fine. Tina having more guards is a good thing. Besides, my fur is fluffier!”
Renge? Why are you competing over? I mean, yeah, you’re an animal-type Mythical Beast, so you have great fur…
“Hey! My fur is peak fluff! I’m a god, you know!” Air countered in a huff.
And why are you acting competitive back, Air?! Wait, you can get fluffy, too? I guess if you’re the uncle of Renge’s father, you’d be from the same race…
“Well, you’re in for some disappointment, Uncle. I’ve been using Tina’s shampoo to wash my fur, so mine is much softer, sleeker, and fluffier! It’s definitely better than yours.”
You’re still fighting over this?! And why are you dragging me into it?!
“Well put, then… Let’s have everyone here decide who has the finest fur!” Air declared.
“Fine by me! But to keep it fair, we can’t let people who know our identity decide. We’ll let outsider humans decide,” Renge proposed.
“Oh, an interesting concept. Very well!” Air accepted.
“Huh? Wait, what?” I blinked, confused by how this argument was spiraling into unexpected territory.
I turned to look at Jiril and Mirage, who looked more confused than I’d ever seen them before. Lord Revireus had the gobsmacked expression of a stunned cat, too.
Air and Renge were enveloped in black smoke and took on the forms of large hounds. True to his word, Air was a black Cerberus like Renge. Both glared at each other for a moment and then briskly walked toward the gate.
Do I stop them? Can I even stop them? This is the strongest man in the Mythical continent going up against the god who made this world.
“Aren’t you going to stop them, Holy Woman, mm?”
“Just let them have their way until they’re satisfied…” I muttered, resigned.
I’m not entirely uninterested in their fur… But that said, what do I do about the slime? I looked down at the slime sitting in my palm, and it swerved its one beady eye up to meet my gaze. …Is this what they mean by the abyss staring back at you?
“Whoa!”
The slime began to reassemble its divided body with a squelching sound and returned to its original form. It then jiggled and looked back at me again.
Wait, is it just me, or is it kind of…cute?
“Maybe I should give it a name?” I pondered aloud.
“You’re actually going to keep this sliiiiime? Slimes can be pretty usefuuuul. They clean up sewage and eat traaaash.”
“Oh, right. Slimes do that…”
The Mythical beast slimes brought over from the Mythical continent typically handle things like that. They’re not found on other continents, but in Deshmel, we used them for waste disposal. And since feeding them made them multiply, we’ve been selling them for cheap to merchants.
Incidentally, slimes don’t die from lack of feeding. They can subsist on only water, but if they lack that, they can shrink until they melt away and die. That felt like a sad way to go.
For how useful they were, slimes were weak, sluggish lifeforms. It’s been roughly three years since merchants in the human and demi-human continents started selling them, and I could see them becoming indispensable to people’s lives in the coming years. They were, without a doubt, one benefit we got from dealing with the Mythical continent.
That said, I’d never heard of anyone giving their slime a name, which made me think it might not be a good idea.
“Hmm, but it’s going to help guard me…” I muttered.
“Mm, yes, that’s true. It’s also a god’s minion, so lumping it in with the other slimes feels wrong, mm.”
“It’s hard to believe a sliiiiime would be a god’s miniooooon…”
I agreed with them. With Air having the same Cerberus beast form as Renge, it seemed funny that his familiars would be slimes and not something fluffy, fuzzy, or animal-like.
“Hey, are you sure you don’t want to see Renge and Air’s fluffiness contest?” Lord Revireus asked.
“Do you want to go see it?” I asked, a bit surprised.
“I mean, when it’s those two? I’m worried the humans might do something reckless around them,” he replied.
“They’ll be fine…probably.”
The people in Deshmel knew about Renge’s beast form, so if they saw another one, they’d just assume they’re related. No one here would do anything foolish to a Mythical Beast, and Air really was his relative, so surely they’d know their place.
“But the fluffiness contest does sound tempting…” I mused.
“Mm, it is!”
“If we’re lucky they’ll let us paaaaat them.”
“Right! It’s not every day you get a chance to touch Renge’s fur!” Lord Revireus nodded excitedly.
Everyone was letting their ulterior motives show…not that I was any better!