Dahlia couldn’t keep herself from snickering at how aloof Idaea was. Growing those herbs was far from easy, and a single plant was worth at least one gold, if not more—a whole row of them? Quite a few plants, to say the least. “I’m not surprised that your father was so angry...”
“I dunno, Ms. Idaea...”
“He started it. When my blue slime had finally grown large enough to split, my father crushed one of them up and used it to fertilize the fields while I was away. ‘It’s not like there aren’t more slimes in the world,’ he said to me when I went to protest.”
“Oh, no...” That crossed the line. The slime had not only been Idaea’s research project but also her pet—well, of course she’d done what she had to return the favor. It was quite clear why there was such animosity between the two. “Then you entered the Adventurers’ Guild afterward, Ms. Idaea?”
“Immediately after college, yes. After a while, the Guild came into a lot of slime materials, and I was the single person in charge of it all. That’s how I got to where I am; I count my blessings every day.” That warmth in her smile was unmistakable: she had always truly loved slimes.
“But your family must be pretty worried?”
“They are fine. I write my mother once a month, and my brothers come to visit me in the capital every so often as well.”
“I’m sure your father worries about you too, Ms. Idaea.”
A beat. “If my mother leaves my letters out on the table, he turns away.”
Dahlia began feeling a little bad for her father, but the chances of them reconciling seemed slim.
“I guess there are all types of relationships between parents and their children out there. I don’t know about being a parent myself, but kids are great! There have been so many new baby clothes lately!”
“Ms. Lucia, are children great, or are the clothes great?”
“I bet you’ve been hooked on sewing outfits for Irma’s babies.” Both of them played along with Lucia’s quick shift back to her passion.
“Yeah, maybe. But I haven’t sewn that many, just twenty pairs of diapers and ten sets of unisex baby clothes—by that I mean for each of ’em.”
Hold your horses, cowgirl. Just because they’re twins doesn’t mean you need to go wild. Rather than bursting Lucia’s bubble, Dahlia resolved to buy a wardrobe for the babies. “Lucia, I’m sure Irma and her family would like to choose some outfits on their own too.”
“Exactly! Me, Mr. Forto, and someone else from the Guild each filled out a sketchbook for Irma to choose designs and colors from. Going outside is probably really tough on her now, what with how big her belly’s getting.”
“That’s a good point...” Irma was about seven months in, and she was pregnant with twins, no less—work had gotten too difficult, so the salon had been shuttered for the time being. Last time Dahlia saw her, Irma had grumbled that she couldn’t see her steps anymore, and that walking was difficult. On the plus side, the twins were very, very healthy—you could see them moving around, even through Irma’s clothes. There was a funny story about how Marcella had put his ear up against her belly and gotten kicked. “With a kick that strong, that one’s definitely a boy!” he’d said. Dahlia couldn’t wait to welcome them into the world.
“Irma said that because she’s got two babies, she might be producing twice the milk.”
“Huh? Is that a thing? I thought twins get half goat milk.”
“She can’t be sure until after she’s given birth, but Irma’s said that they’ve been speaking to a family who raise goats too; it wouldn’t do to not have enough milk for two.” In Ordine, it wasn’t uncommon for people to keep goats to sell milk, as parents fed it to their babies if they weren’t producing enough.
“Feeding two babies sure sounds difficult...”
“I’ll say. Why can’t parents just share everything, including morning sickness and breastfeeding?!”
The point was well-taken, but there were definitely some physical limitations involved. In any case, Dahlia promised herself she’d bring Irma more food from now on.
“Oh, look at the time! It won’t be long before Lord Bernigi gets here.”
“I’ll pack the things into the crate!”
Thanks to Lucia, Dahlia had come to understand the importance of bust pads. However, discussing their tactility with Bernigi and the others was a hurdle too tall for her. The three women hurried to clean up.
Along with another knight of the household, Jonas was standing guard outside the workshop. Seeing as Bernigi would arrive soon, he decided to send refreshments in, and he dragged over a wagon with cakes and a tea set.
“Is something the matter, Lord Jonas?” The knight wondered why Jonas was standing in the hallway with the wagon in tow but not entering the room.
“It appears that, erm, everyone inside is quite in the midst of effusing about magical tools, and I am afraid I would disturb them, you see.”
“Oh, is that right? But if it’s magical tools they are discussing, I’m sure they would not mind your presence, Lord Jonas.” All the knight heard was faint laughter reverberating inside.
But Jonas, a man with the blight of a fire dragon, could hear every word spoken by the women. He stood there unmovingly, his rust-brown eyes pointing at the ground. “No. The experts are engaging in a scientific discourse, some of it related to medicine—it is not a domain I should intrude upon.”
“This is the blue slime mixture that we enchanted with ice magic last time.” Jonas brought Bernigi into the workshop where Dahlia and the others were already waiting.
“Though not frozen, ’tis nevertheless quite cold...”
Now that they were recharged from teatime and sweets, Jonas brought in a pair of little plates, atop which were jiggling two translucent, blue-tinted gels. Dahlia made a connection with those cooling patches she’d slap on her forehead when she had had a fever back in her previous life; even their colors and textures were rather similar.
“This might be good for the summer, but are we sure it won’t cause burns with how slimes can dissolve stuff?”
“Like with the waterproof cloth, the processing nullifies the solvent power, Ms. Lucia.” Idaea demonstrated that the gel was safe by removing her gloves and touching it. She then gripped one edge and yanked, tearing a piece off. “It’s a bit brittler than slimes.”
“Wrap it in some waterproof cloth or what have you, and this may work to keep things cool. Though, as with the body heat conservation material, we know not how long this keeps its temperature, but the longer, the better.” Bernigi had hit the nail exactly on the head. The potential uses for the two products depended on how long they were effective. If the gel only cooled for a short time, it would be enough to provide relief for those fighting fevers, but its longevity needed to be measured in weeks for it to be effective in keeping food cold.
“It will need to be monitored for at least a few months. Just because it had an application of stabilization magic, that does not mean it will not deteriorate at all.” Jonas then suggested having the Scalfarottos’ mages make more to observe, and Dahlia agreed.
“I’d like to compare the dunaspherae before and after being stabilized! Granted they are still prototypes, it will be next spring before they can be brought onto market, according to Mr. Forto. Same with the blue slime material—it would be too unaffordable if they had to be stabilized, and the safety testing takes time.”
“Slime powder is easy to stabilize, but I’m afraid I am not well-versed in that matter. My apologies.”
“There’s nothing for you to apologize for, Ms. Idaea; unlike the zephyricloth, which had sat around for a while before being refined, the research on these materials has only just begun. It’s inevitable that they will take some time.”
“Products for babes and the infirm merit especial care—the solvent power and drive of slimes cannot be underestimated.”
“Sorry? Drive?” Lucia and Jonas were awfully confused. Dahlia, on the other hand, understood full well what Bernigi meant—a slime had once escaped from a glass bottle in the Green Tower.
“Indeed. At the nursery, our slimes have become more eager to break out of confinement or enter other holding tanks, and the black slime has even been trying to dissolve the glass at the seams. Certain specimens become more driven once they familiarize themselves with their environments.”
“Sounds like it’s going to get away sooner or later.” But Lucia’s off-the-cuff remark was anything but funny—if the black slime escaped containment, all hell would break loose.
“Black slimes sure are pesky. One time when I was a younger man, we bivouacked near some swampland during an expedition. It must have been a slime’s territory, and it swallowed up our supplies.”
Jonas seemed quite surprised too. “How dreadful...” Thankfully, Volf wasn’t present today, or else he definitely would’ve been on edge just hearing about this. For whatever reason, he held almost too much animosity toward this monster. That said, there was a chance he’d heard of this story already, given that he was a Beast Hunter.
“Was everyone okay?”
“None of us were harmed, though seeing it had silently dissolved our belongings overnight, it was quite the rude awakening to find the morning sun beaming directly through holes in our tents and the wheels on the wagon all chewed up. As you can imagine, the journey home was hardly pleasant...”
“Oh, no...” Everyone grimaced for Bernigi, who was staring off into the distance as he seemingly relived the pain. All in all, it could be considered fortunate—a step in the wrong direction and the knights could have been dissolved away as well.
“After a discussion among ourselves, we concluded that it had been a warning from the black slime. From then on, no knight set foot in that vicinity of the swamp—a rule that Grato still follows, I believe.” It turned out that there were indeed monsters that terrified the current Order of Beast Hunters, but they really had good reason to be cautious against a foe that had such intelligence and dynamism.