DAY 120
EVENING
Ack! I’ve got an order of faux flowers to fulfill! No time to dilly-dahlia!
OMUI CITY, ON THE FRONTIER
CHANGE IS IMMUTABLE. As the world turns, so does it change. All things must pass; that’s the logic the universe runs on. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is eternal. Stasis is little more than a distant dream. Nothing, and I mean nothing, ever stays the same.
“Except for this bulletin board! I thought a listing might have gone up while I was away. But no! Not so much as a pushpin has shifted! Frankly, I’m impressed. We ought to use this bulletin board to plug the entrance to a dungeon, because it’s clearly immutable and indestructible. I’d like to see a monster try to peel one of these notices off, let alone bust through the board!” Wheeze, wheeze.
Yeah, it was exactly how I left it?
“Excuse me? What right does a non-adventurer have marching himself in here and complaining about our bulletin board? Worse, you had the au-freaking-dacity to start your complaining before you were barely past the front door! You hadn’t even looked! Where do you get off, marching in here with your whining locked and loaded? Who—who!—in their right mind sneaks up to the door, flings it open, and yells in sonorous tones a ‘change is permanent’ diatribe? The world will move on. You need to work on changing yourself first!” Wheeze, wheeze.
Ack! My soaring tenor, strengthened by many an alchemical transformation and breathing exercise, was no match for the guild lady’s roaring riposte! She truly deserved her title as Madam Receptionist, Guardian of the Unchanging Board. She boasted the most stentorian shouts, the most gladiator-level glares. Ah…I loved me a good glare.
“No, no, no. You flubbed your line. It’s ‘Change is immutable.’ You’ll never be ready for the big stage with such shoddy memorization skills! Actually, I’m a bit of a playwright myself, and I’m picky about my actors knowing their lines. No one has asked me to star in their productions yet, but I’ll have you know I was a brilliant child actor. I brought tears to many an eye in my performance as ‘Horse (Hind Quarters)’ in the school play! I stole the spotlight, and from that day on, people spoke with awe about the runaway mustang. I brought down the house!”
My scripts sold like hotcakes, yet I could never win a leading role. The universe worked in truly mysterious ways. Perhaps the philistine theatre scene in this world had decided their productions were too small-scale for a man of my mighty talents. Truly, it was a curse to be so gifted!
“There he goes again… You’ve already talked to the guild master. Go home. And to correct the record, you did not bring down the house in the conventional sense. You sent everyone running and screaming from the literal runaway mustang you let into the auditorium! You were not supposed to be the draw of the show. You were supposed to sit in the back half of the horse and be still! How did you mess that up?! You let in a horse that ran amok and bit people! You stole the spotlight, yes—and took it home with you!”
Wait, how’d she find out that last part?
“But there’s no denying it was a memorable performance. I don’t see the issue anyway. They needed a horse, and I happened to bump into a random horse on the way to the play, so I brought it along? Did I not fulfill my role providing a horse’s hind quarters? Along with the rest of the horse? I don’t see what anyone’s so mad about.”
“How on earth did you bump into a random horse?”
“Wait…I heard about this on the news. That was Haruka-kun?!”
“Yup. That was him. It was a complete disaster. Once we turned the horse out, the teachers did a headcount and realized Haruka-kun was missing. We panicked all over again, and it turns out he was safe at home all along.”
“You couldn’t even handle a role like the back half of a horse?!”
We stepped outside, still arguing, only to encounter the general store lady charging at us full tilt. I raced to meet her, plugged her opening mouth with as many mushrooms as was necessary to defuse her, and stepped back once more. That mushroom addiction withdrawal could sure be brutal! And she had a terminal case!
“Mrrmphh mmmph! Mummmph scrummpff mumph fummph!” (Translation: You’re late! I’m out of stock, dammit!)
“Uh, lemme see… Mmph? Grrmph mmpff scrmmff mrrmph?” (Translation: I thought the frontier was self-sufficient now. Don’t you have a working economy? And trade networks? And stuff?)
There were workshops and factories everywhere now. Every town and village was hooked up to the trade network carrying goods to and from the Kingdom and beyond. Surely my freelance production gigs were obsolete. Right?
“Mmmph! Mmmph grmph ffmfh! Mmrph ffrmmf!” (Bullshit! Who’s going to make me my churches, bridges, and boats? And don’t forget the mushroom bento!)
“Like, mmph? Mrrmpf grrmph fmmmfh?!” (Who the hell is ordering churches, bridges, and boats from a general store?!)
“Haruka-kun, stop talking in the parentheses. And please stop shoveling mushrooms into the poor lady’s mouth. You’re making it hard for her to breathe!”
Long story short, I never got to finish the conversation, the general store lady saddled me with more orders (looked like we’d both bit off more than we could chew), I got paid my dues, I went off to spend my new hard-earned wages at the blacksmith, the old dude wasn’t in, and then I went back to the inn? Apparently, the blacksmith was out directing the construction of an ironworks plant or something.
“Yeah, you can only get so far using charcoal alone. But there’s lots of different types of charcoal, and each one comes with different use cases. I only know what to do with activated charcoal and high-grade binchou charcoal, which is kinda embarrassing… Wait. How do I know so much about charcoal? What am I, a nerd?”
And how come the nerds were a font of knowledge for everything from charcoal up to boiler construction yet knew how to build nothing but steam locomotives and steam boats? There were so many more practical technologies: the power loom, the milling machine, the various nuts and bolts of the Industrial Revolution. How come those didn’t stick in their heads? What was this obsession with steam? What were they trying to do, change the genre to steampunk?
“Heya, guess who’s home? I guess I should say, home away from home. I gotta get back to my cave sooner or later. Gotta clean up, cut the weeds, clean the pool before it grows moss… Plus, Sleeping Beauty ought to see the place. I’ll make her a room too. Funny how I never seem to spend any time at home… For a NEET, I sure spend most of my days gallivanting about the overworld. Whaddya think, Slimey? Is this too novel of a twist for an isekai story?”
Jiggle jiggle.
Some things never changed. Like the inn! Poster Girl had kept the place neat and tidy in anticipation of our return. She didn’t know if or when we’d ever be home, but she’d held out hope just the same. Poor Poster Girl, working tirelessly all by herself day after day. Poor, poor Poster Girl, who was even now…petting the twins? So she worked when we weren’t looking and goofed off whenever we came home, huh?
“Oh! Hello, Haruka.”
It was too early for dinner, so I went to my room first. My to-do list was growing to monstrous proportions; all that procrastination was not doing me any favors. But could you blame me? With a third combatant added to the late-night showdown in the sheets, I was run too ragged to work. All right. Focus time. I had a million drop items from the Theocracy to go through. Let’s start at the end of the list and work my way back. So first up, the Corrosion Fog dungeon king’s drop item: “Diffusion Crystal: Monster Core Diffusion. Computational Parallelization.” So, it was some kind of magic crystal? I’d seen enough weird rocks to know what to do, so I waved it under Slimey’s nonexistent nose. He burbled with satisfaction.
Burble burble!
“Monster core,” huh? Is that like a spellstone? Actually, what’s the difference? So far, Jupiter Eye had failed to find the core on only three monsters: Slimey, the Corrosion Fog, and the Sand Giant. Speaking of the Sand Giant, it had dropped a “Treasure of the Monster Core: Allows for monster core creation and manipulation.” So I could make cores, and now I could scatter or diffuse them.
Wiggle wiggle!
That was a happy, dancing wiggle wiggle! The Sand Giant and Corrosion Fog were difficult foes as-is. Take their lack of centralized core, add it to a dungeon-emperor-class monster so it could produce and disseminate cores… Yeah, Slimey was nigh on indestructible.
Jiggle jiggle.
There had to be more to Slimey than just the visible slime, right? Was he compressing himself or something? He didn’t feel heavier nowadays; his weight had never changed. He could eat an entire metric ton of rock and never grow any heavier… There was probably some Void magic at work keeping him to a certain, fixed size. Run that in parallel with core production and manipulation…and only Miss Armor Rep stood a chance of beating him—but not outright vanquishing him. No, there was no destroying this lil slimy guy.
Bobble bobble!
If even Miss Armor Rep didn’t stand a chance of eviscerating the critter, then I had nothing to worry about—except for keeping Slimey far, far away from the darkness… Slimey’s powers in the darkness’s nonexistent hands wasn’t just bad news, it was world-ending news. Waves of infinitely replicating darkness-powered slimes? Are you kidding me? The world would be gobbled up lickety-split. I had to make Slimey stronger and then protect him for all I was worth. He was my protector most of the time, so it was only right that I took a turn whenever the darkness was the threat.
Bounce bounce.