Reporting. Your body’s remaining store of magic has gone below its acceptable threshold. Entering sleep mode. Expected to fully recover in three days.
I was still conscious. I didn’t need to sleep…exactly, and I could hear the Sage’s voice.
Slowly but surely, it began to dawn on me. I’d used too much of my…magic? Like hitting zero MP, sort of? What’d I do to manage that? Had I been wearing myself out this whole time without realizing it? It sure didn’t feel that way.
I tried moving. No response. “Sleep mode” must be something like hibernation. I wasn’t asleep, but I couldn’t move at all. All I could do was sit around—which was fine, because the goblins had prepared a seat of honor for me by the fire, so I might as well bask in it. Nothing else to do, or that I could do.
✦ ✦ ✦
I took the opportunity to reflect on what just happened. Why did I run out of magic after I started naming people? Did doing that consume magicules somehow? Come to think of it, it really started to flow out once I named the direwolves’ leader, didn’t it?
It was still just a theory, but it seemed clear to me that naming monsters actually required magic. That conclusion took around two days to reach.
It sure explained why Rigurd was so aghast at what I was doing, among other things.
This… Oh, crap, this isn’t common knowledge among monsters, is it?
“Guyyyys,” I wanted to shout, “you gotta tell me these things!!” But there was no point lashing out at others. Not that it’d stop me once I could move again, I imagined.
Initially, the goblins seemed kind of worried about how I fell stone silent, but…somewhere along the line, the question of who had the right to wipe my surface and take care of me almost erupted into violent conflict. What are they doing? This is one harem I seriously wish I weren’t involved in. I was starting to feel like a magic lamp people could rub for three wishes.
Finally, the third day passed.
✦ ✦ ✦
R E C O V E R E D !
✦ ✦ ✦
Despite depleting my magic earlier, I felt stronger and more magic-rich than I had before my little accident. Magic was the power to exert force upon the world, and the particles around me were the energy driving it. That seemed to be about the extent of it.
Is it one of those “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” types of things? I pondered experimenting with it further but decided against it. There didn’t seem to be much need, and if I died in the process, I’d look like an idiot. Yet another case of me going overboard too soon.
Anyway.
The worker goblins, realizing I was awake, began congregating around me. They were joined by the direwolves, who were streaming in from their outside base. Which was fine, but…
“Um… Hey, guys? Have you all, like, gotten bigger?”
They had. Goblins averaged a little under five feet tall. Now they were all nearly a full foot taller. The guy next to me looked as if he was pushing six and a half, even.
These…are goblins, right? And check out the wolves. I remembered them being a lot browner. Now their fur was straight-on black, with a lustrous sheen. They had grown, too, with the bigger ones now pushing nine or ten feet in length. I didn’t remember any of them being much longer than six feet before.
The one that really caught my eye was the wolf at their forefront, walking silently forward. I swear he had to be at least fifteen feet. I could feel the mystic force lashing out of every pore. This was nothing like the boss I beat a few days back—between his looks and his sheer force of presence, he had to be some higher-level monster. The star-shaped birthmark on his forehead and the magnificent-looking horn also raised a few red flags.
Kiiiinda scary.
“My master!” this beast of my worst nightmares bellowed in a fluent human tongue. “How it elates me to see you well once more!”
Holy… Is this Ranga? What happened over the past three days? I was left to wonder that for myself as the cheering, howling monsters surrounded me.
✦ ✦ ✦
All right…
So in the three days I was checked out, all the monsters around me grew. That was freaky. The only thing that could produce something like that was…evolution, I suppose. So does naming a monster evolve them?
And didn’t Veldora go on about something like that for a while…? The difference between “nameless” and “named” monsters?
Oh, right! Something about how earning a name provides a sort of “divine blessing” that helps boost your ability as a monster. Hence the evolution.
Well, hell, no wonder everyone was so happy. And no wonder it tapped all my magic reserves at once.
✦ ✦ ✦
Monster evolution happens fast. I’d say they didn’t “grow” so much as become completely different creatures. The tepid, void-like eyes of the goblins now shone brightly with the pale light of intelligence. And the females… Yow! They actually kind of look like women now!
I was so shocked, I could barely even speak.
Huh? …Huh?!
It made me literally do a double take. These guys were like little imps a moment ago, maybe closer to baboons than humans, and now—well, to use their official terminology—the males were “hobgoblins” and the females “goblinas,” although the latter sounded pretty stupid to me. They had both evolved, and according to Rigurd, they had heard the so-called World Language when they did—something that all evolved creatures experienced. A very rare occurrence, and one that excited Rigurd to no end, judging by how he couldn’t shut up about it.
This wasn’t entirely a happy thing for me, though. The female goblins had covered their entire bodies in rags before. Now, thanks to their evolution, the skimpy clothing allowed one to see certain…things. There would be no brushing them off now. The males certainly seemed happy about it. Even though they were wearing nothing but loincloths themselves…
The village was in desperate need of food, clothing, and shelter. Better start with clothing first, I figured.
✦ ✦ ✦
Another issue I had to deal with was Ranga. He was so delighted that I was back to full consciousness that he wouldn’t stop following me around and bothering me. If you like those fuzzballs, I assume you’d be in paradise, but I was always more of a cat person. It wasn’t the worst thing, but still.
“So, Ranga,” I said, “I’m pretty sure I only named you out of the pack, so…how come all the other direwolves evolved, too?”
It was true. My magic stores conked out the moment I named this thing.
“My master! We, the direwolves, are both one and all. My brethren and I are connected together—my name is the name of our tribe!”
Huh. So the whole gang evolved together.
The “one and all” thing was something the previous boss never quite fully believed in, as Ranga explained. If he had, that battle might’ve gone in a different direction. Ranga, meanwhile, had already gained full control over his pack, it seemed, allowing them all to evolve from direwolf to “tempest wolf.” “More power for everyone” is the way he put it.
“Nice work!” I said, since he seemed to be desperately fishing for praise. He whipped his tail back and forth, a display that was adorable on such an enormous beast. On the other hand, a happy five-yard wolf could produce nearly enough wind to launch me right out of the village.
“Hey, watch what you’re doing with that thing!” I warned him. The downtrodden look he gave in response made me chuckle—and the way he then shrank his body down to around three meters long made me stop. His race could adjust their sizes, apparently. How useful, I thought as I instructed him to stick to the small side from now on.