I had power. That was good and all, but I had no choice but to accept that my current situation was extremely dire. It had already been three days since I had a proper meal. It was good news that my wounds were healed, but at the rate things were going, I was going to slowly starve to death.
“Hey, Lily. I need to secure food and water. Can you do anything about that?”
In response, I felt Lily’s will telling me, “Certainly,” in my mind.
I see. This is convenient. Is it some form of telepathy? I can feel a connection between us, like some sort of “mental path.”
In any case, it seemed something could be done about my needs. I had basically thrown that question out there without expecting anything to come from it. This was a pleasant surprise.
“Okay, then could you get something ready right away?” I cheerfully asked.
Lily gave an “affirmative” through our mental path and stretched out a feeler toward me. It shone with an aqua-colored light.
“Huh?”
Water-attributed magic activated, and a large quantity of water poured down atop my head.
“...”
The sound of water splashing across the ground echoed throughout the cave. Despite being indoors, I was drenched head to toe, as if I was out in the rain. I ended up standing stock-still as I watched droplets of water drip from my bangs. Lily’s gelatinous body shook about in a somehow triumphant manner.
“Okay. You’re really talented, Lily.”
There was no mistaking this fact. However, it seemed we needed to spend some time on understanding each other a little more. First, I needed to get across that humans couldn’t absorb water through their heads.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Achoo!”
I warmed my body by a bonfire while stuffing my cheeks with a whole roasted skink on a stick. My talented partner and guard Lily helped me forage for dry sticks to use as kindling, as well as a number of these small lizards for food.
My soaked school blazer had dried, and my belly was full. I had an abundance of water at my beck and call. Meaning, now I had to decide on what to do next.
“What do I even start with?”
The first thing that came to mind was securing my own safety. In this case, it meant finding a means of protecting myself from potentially hostile monsters as well as from the students who came to this world with me.
Lily was extremely talented. Her—it was bothersome to skirt around it, so I decided to refer to her as a girl—ability to use magic was a tremendous boon. She apparently specialized in water and wind magic. It was somewhat outside the norm for a slime to be able to use magic. I’d never heard of such a thing while I was at the Colony.
However, as a result of asking her several questions, I determined that Lily was unfortunately not a particularly strong monster. From purely the perspective of combat potential, she was apparently a low-ranked monster among those in the forest.
Even so, it didn’t mean Lily was just some trash mob. I was able to grasp her nature through our mental path, which indicated that she was a monster called a mimic slime. Her special ability was mimicry. Simply put, she could transform into anything she ate. I was quite surprised when I had asked her what she was capable of and she responded by transforming into a skink.
If she were to eat a monster who specialized in combat, she could power up by mimicking it. However, to do that, she had to start by defeating a powerful monster. It was a bit of a dilemma. Having said that, this was only the case before she became my servant. There were multiple ways of accomplishing this now.
“Alright, Lily. I’m going to gather more servants. Please lend me a hand.”
I could enhance our combat potential by acquiring more servants. I believed this to be the natural course of action to take. Lily would have to fight while protecting me if she were on her own. But with another servant available, one of them could be assigned as my guard. The simple act of multiplying our forces was advantageous, and above all else, it allowed for Lily to become stronger by eating a more powerful monster if we could defeat it by combining our powers.
Besides, just taking the future into consideration, there was meaning behind gathering more servants. That’s because I believed my ability to tame monsters was inferior to the abilities of the other cheaters. Those of the exploration team who used cheats could easily kick about the monsters in the forest. While I relied on monsters to fight, it put me at a disadvantage against other cheaters. My only choice was to make up for quality with quantity. In that sense, having more servants was indispensable.
I was worried whether I would actually be able to tame them properly, but there was no other choice but to give it a try.
“...Don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll go well.”
Perhaps having sensed my anxiety, Lily brought her over-two-meter-tall body closer and gently patted me with her silky surface. Apparently, the mental path transmitted my emotions to her to a certain extent. And in return, I could feel her sense of concern for me.
It seemed that Lily was earnestly thinking about me now that she had become my servant. This made me happy, even if those feelings were born of my cheat to begin with. A warmth filled my heart. I wasn’t alone. I surely wouldn’t have felt like this if a human was with me. That’s because I never knew what they were ultimately thinking.
“I’ll need to stay in hiding for a bit.”
I enjoyed poking the springy surface of Lily’s body for a while as I muttered to myself. It was fine for me to run around and stock up on strength for now.
“There’s one problem though... I’m not convinced my cheat will activate when facing off against a monster...”
The cheaters of the exploration team all naturally understood what kind of abilities they possessed. I was the same in this regard. I had no worries whatsoever concerning Lily. The fact that I didn’t share the same conviction when it came to taming other monsters meant it was completely unknown territory to me.
“Although... I won’t get anywhere by hiding in this hole forever.”
There was a need for me to be somewhat proactive.