The second floor of a wooden inn.
We, having separated from the knights we’d travelled with till now, were currently spending our day in an inn the outskirts of Selatta.
After speaking with the merchant of the knights, Leader was able to get an empty property loaned out to us as a temporary inn.¹
“Milord, this art interesting.”
Thanks to that, I was also able to exchange words with my family under a roof.
Wiping my wet hair with a towel, I turned to look at Gerbera as she spoke cheerfully for some reason.
I’d worked up a sweat from training with Silane, so had hopped into the bath to wash it away.
My body felt tired yet satisfied nonetheless.
Since I first started training under Silane, not only had I grown accustomed to the art of fighting itself, but I also felt I was beginning to actually learn sword arts.
Mikihiko was also encouraging me, despite growing more rapidly than me, and recently I was beginning to feel not only a sense of accomplishment but also genuine comfort from my training.
“What’s that?”
“It art something Rose-dono gave me.”
In Gerbera’s hands was a dull, black rod about twenty centimeters in length.
“Yaaaah!”, with a scream of fighting spirit Gerbera swung the rod, and a pipe differing in width shot out from the end of it.
Jutting out, the pipe fixed into place from friction.
“Ah. That’s right, she did make something like that.”
The rod she was holding was a special throw-style baton, one of Katō-san’s ideas.
As she herself did not know the details behind what it was, Mikihiko provided his knowledge during its creation.
Rose was developing new things through the process of trial and error, and as part of that, was actively gathering new knowledge and ideas, and putting them into practice.
It was for future prospects, so for now, she wasn’t thinking about whether it was usable or not.
The fruits of her labor so far were mostly Gerbera and Kei’s toys.
Just like how my heart raced when it came to magical-related items, they might’ve found the small gimmicks to be something new.
“Besides that, look at this! I also got something like this!” Gerbera spoke elatedly, taking out a palm-sized carved wooden doll.
It was about ten centimeters in height and disformed. This…is Lily, right? There were no arm parts, but instead they were drawn onto the side.
“It’s cute.”
“Mhm. But that art not all. This part opens here.”
With a clack, the stomach section split in two.
The inside of the doll’s now-split body was hollow, and inside was an even smaller Lily…
“A nesting doll?”
Mikihiko, just what are you teaching Rose?
Well, Gerbera looks happy, so it’s fine.
Gerbera split the tinier Lily, and took out a fox doll from inside.
This one…looks like Ayame.
“So cute, so cuuute~”
“…”
Appearance-wise, Gerbera was the same age as me, if not a bit higher.
Though I wasn’t thinking that she was enjoying herself on Kei’s level—
“Don’t break it.”
—I did think it a little.
Watching Gerbera, her blood-red eyes sparkling like a child’s, I felt a little happy.
It was a bit different than the happy feeling I got when I saw Kei frolic around.
I was happy, of course, but that wasn’t all.
It made me feel like I wanted to gaze at her smile forever.
If anything, it might’ve been similar to how I felt when I was with Lily.
With a natural smile plastered on my face, I gazed around the room.
Other than Gerbera, Lily and Silane were in the room as well.
Rose, Katō-san, and Kei were in the next room over.
I knew that they, with the connections of the knights, bought some dyes in the town yesterday.
I was told they were making clothes. They did not give me the details.
From the other side of the thin wall, I could hear the faint cheerful voices of the girls, and a feeling of calm washed over me.
Would this become an everyday scene if I followed Leader-san to her homeland—Aker?
At the thought of that happy future, a numbness ran through my chest, though it might have been just my imagination.
Including Silane, there were three knights accompanying us.
The remaining knights had been split into two groups: those guarding the other transferees, and those waiting outside the town with the soldiers.
As for Leader-san, she brought some knights with her and headed to Selatta after making arrangements for us to stay in this lodging.
Mikihiko also went with her. This all happened yesterday.
Selatta was a metropolis with over ten thousand people living within it, and therefore had room to house the hundreds of Empire soldiers fleeing Fortress Tilia, if only temporarily, unlike the previous towns.
Leader-san was supposedly engaging in conversation with Earl Lawrence right now.
I cast my eyes to the scenery outside the window.
There, I could see the townscape of Selatta where Leader-san was visiting.
Earl Lawrence’s fief was closed off by the Sea of Trees to the south and a dark forest to the northeast, but the west bordered with Earl Long’s dominion, the granary region, and to the east lay one of the Three Eastern Countries, Viscum.
Selatta, located on the highway running to Earl Long’s dominion and Viscum, and also near Margrave McLoughlin’s fief to the north, was one of the trading hubs in the southern part of the Empire.
It was for this reason that Selatta was also called the Trade City.
However, the city’s splendor was unimaginable from its name.
A defensive wall equipped with defense towers surrounded the city; it was the so-called fortress town.
The ramparts surrounding the city were made of two encirclements—one small and one big.
It could be inferred that the expansion of the walls went in accordance with the city’s growth.
This scenery was commonplace for towns in this world.
In this magic-filled world, earth-attribute magic could be used for construction.
In addition, the need of responding to the overly excessive thread of monsters probably gave a boost to the civil engineering of this world.
I’d thought the pioneer villages’ protective walls were surprisingly well made, but after seeing this I could only think of it as paper-thin.
However, something gave off a more pompous feeling than the thick ramparts.
That would be the huge fortress standing prominent in the center of town.
It was known as Fortress Selatta.
Instead of sharing the same name as the city…it would be more proper to say that the town was given the name of the fortress.
Just like Fortress Tilia, which I had just stayed in until recently; and Fortress Ebenus, where the Scouting Corps were welcomed into to the east, it was once a stronghold that stood at the forefront of the Sea of Trees.
The world’s largest cities were, save a few exceptions, castle towns built around the centers of fortresses like this one, all having served their original purpose.
Considering the protection made towards monster attacks, I guess it’s extremely natural for cities to be made in forms like these, I thought.
The fortress currently housed Earl Lawrence, the Lord governing this area; his troops; and a part of the Empire’s Southern Army.
Due to the loss of the long-range communication method furnished in Fortress Tilia, Leader-san went to the nearest town.
Selatta was the town chosen because it had the same kind of fortress as Fortress Tilia.
As a lot of work needed to be done—including the receiving of soldiers, it would take three days at minimum before Leader-san returned from what I was told.
If possible, we would then immediately leave for Aker.
For now, though, I had to get ready to face that.
“Ahh, dang. Another failure”, Lily’s voice rang out as I talked with Silane about today’s training and the coaching of my family from here on out. Gerbera had gone to the room next door with Katō-san after she poked her head through the door and asked for her.
Lily sat down on the bed, falling onto her back with her hands stretched out.
Or to be accurate, her arms stretched out…as right now, her arms had nothing after the wrists.
She wasn’t injured.
Attempting to partially mimic another creature while retaining her girl form had undone the mimicry on that part of her.
As I’d mentioned previously, Lily had been recently trying her best to partially mimic creatures. However, this appeared to be no small feat.
Slime body tissue bubbled up from the ends of both her wrists and rose to form her usual hands.
But Lily remained collapsed on the bed. Her troubled face stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t push yourself too hard”, as I moved next to the bed, I poked the wrinkle between Lily’s eyebrows.
“Yaaaan. Jeez. Master?”
“How about taking a break?”
“Fufu. If you’re taking a break, shall I prepare some tea?”
Watching our exchange, Silane smiled and got up.
“Ah. Then, I can help too.”
Lily raised herself off the bed, but Silane shook her head.
“You don’t know how to use it, and you should be resting.”
Silane left the room, a smile on her face. The sound of her descending the staircase could be heard soon after.
Now that it was just the two of us, Lily leaned onto me.
“Hrrgghhh…I guess it’s no good.”
Lily often snuggled up against me, but right now it was more accurate to say that she was leaning on me instead.
She let herself relax onto me.
“Lily”, I spoke, hugging her soft body. She didn’t resist.
Her relaxed body slid down into a horizontal position.
She adjusted herself to get comfy and eventually settled with her head on my thighs.
“Mmm.”
The sight of her rubbing her cheeks on my thighs like a spoiled child vaguely reminded me of a cat.
I spoke whilst fiddling with her bangs, “…Hey, Lily.”
“Yeeess?”
“Are you depressed?”
Lily turned her head to face up, looking at me.
“A tiny bit.”
A weak smile showed on my face.
“I knew, somehow, that this might be the limit of my slime mimicry ability.”
“…”
She talked about her partial mimicry training from after we left Fortress Tilia to when we arrived at the first pioneer village. Twenty days had passed in that time.
Nevertheless, Lily’s partial mimicry had yet to show a single sign of success.
Not a single bit of progress had been made.
Lily let out a small sigh.
“I have to bring out the most of the monsters within me. I absolutely have to, yet…”
“I get what you want to say…”
If she could partially mimic monsters’ abilities, then that would be the best of both worlds.
For example, when we fought the White Spider, Gerbera, head on. She was the strongest monster in the Deep Part of the Sea of Trees; normal monsters couldn’t even hope to hit her.
Her strength was solid, and regenerative powers incredible. Gerbera’s fighting abilities were all top-class, so being better than her in even one of those was difficult. And even if you could compete with her in one of those areas, she would crush you to death in another.
But what if Lily learned partial mimicry?
It might even become possible for her to catch up with Gerbera.
…If only it was possible, though.
“You can’t do what you can’t do. If you’re depressed about that, then there’s nothing to do, is there?” I spoke gently, touching Lily’s cheek.
“Humans can kick and jump off the ground but cannot fly. They can paddle through the water with both hands and swim, but cannot dive down thousands of meters. You might be a monster, but even you have limits.”
“But humans can fly in the sky and dive down to those depths,” Lily interposed.
A smile forced itself onto my face at Lily saying something a stubborn child would say.
Lily behaved like the older sister of the family, so it was rare that she showed her weakness like this.
She was always supporting me, so it felt nice to see her acting spoiled like this.
“That would be by plane or submarine, though.”
“…Yeah. That’s true.” Lily replied, closing her eyes as I gently brushed her forehead as though to comfort her.
Time passed with only us there.
“But, Master?” And before long, Lily finally spoke.
“What’s up?”
“Even though you’re relying on other things, you’re still flying in the sky and surviving in those depths.”
…Why does that feel…off?
Suddenly a chill ran down my spine.
Perhaps the reason was because the calm expression her drooping eyelids were making looked too calm, like a martyred clergyman.
“If I was human…”
“Lily..?” As I called out to her, Lily slowly opened her eyelids.
And then she blinked in surprise.
“Hm? What’s wrong, Master?”
Lily looked at me from atop my lap, and made a confused face.
That was the usual Lily.
The words I should’ve said died out, and I scratched my face.
“…Nah, it’s nothing.”
“You’re weird, Master.”
Lily snickered before getting up.
“Thanks for spoiling me. I feel a little better now.”
“Oh? That’s good.”
She had seemingly regained her usual manner.
I was happy that I was able to cheer her up from her depression.
“If I can’t do it one way, then I’ll just have to think of another. Besides, it’s not like it’s certain that I can’t do it. I’ll keep trying my best for a little while more.”
Lily clenched her tiny fish and smiled before her eyes suddenly darted elsewhere.
“Hmm? Someone’s coming?”
Noises came from downstairs.
Almost immediately, restless footsteps made their way straight up the staircase.
I put myself on guard reflexively, and the door swung open without a single knock.
My hand paused midway as it reached for my sword.
After all, the visitor barging into our room was my friend with unkempt hair.
“What’s up, Mikihiko. Have you returned?”
Did he run back here? Mikihiko breathed heavily before speaking.
“Just what happened to get you in a rush like that. Weren’t you with Leader-san…”
“Something went wrong.”
The first words out of his mouth made the relaxedness within me tense up.
“What happened, Mikihiko-dono?”
Silane and two other knights from downstairs came into the room following Mikihiko.
Glancing back at them, Mikihiko spoke in a low voice.
“Leader has been detained.”
Translator’s Notes
¹ – Not sure about the first part of the sentence ‘騎士団御用達の商人に団長が話を通して、ひとの住んでいなかった物件を仮の宿として貸し付けてくれたのだ。’
The second floor of a wooden inn.
We, having separated from the knights we’d travelled with till now, were currently spending our day in an inn the outskirts of Selatta.
After speaking with the merchant of the knights, Leader was able to get an empty property loaned out to us as a temporary inn.¹
“Milord, this art interesting.”
Thanks to that, I was also able to exchange words with my family under a roof.
Wiping my wet hair with a towel, I turned to look at Gerbera as she spoke cheerfully for some reason.
I’d worked up a sweat from training with Silane, so had hopped into the bath to wash it away.
My body felt tired yet satisfied nonetheless.
Since I first started training under Silane, not only had I grown accustomed to the art of fighting itself, but I also felt I was beginning to actually learn sword arts.
Mikihiko was also encouraging me, despite growing more rapidly than me, and recently I was beginning to feel not only a sense of accomplishment but also genuine comfort from my training.
“What’s that?”
“It art something Rose-dono gave me.”
In Gerbera’s hands was a dull, black rod about twenty centimeters in length.
“Yaaaah!”, with a scream of fighting spirit Gerbera swung the rod, and a pipe differing in width shot out from the end of it.
Jutting out, the pipe fixed into place from friction.
“Ah. That’s right, she did make something like that.”
The rod she was holding was a special throw-style baton, one of Katō-san’s ideas.
As she herself did not know the details behind what it was, Mikihiko provided his knowledge during its creation.
Rose was developing new things through the process of trial and error, and as part of that, was actively gathering new knowledge and ideas, and putting them into practice.
It was for future prospects, so for now, she wasn’t thinking about whether it was usable or not.
The fruits of her labor so far were mostly Gerbera and Kei’s toys.
Just like how my heart raced when it came to magical-related items, they might’ve found the small gimmicks to be something new.
“Besides that, look at this! I also got something like this!” Gerbera spoke elatedly, taking out a palm-sized carved wooden doll.
It was about ten centimeters in height and disformed. This…is Lily, right? There were no arm parts, but instead they were drawn onto the side.
“It’s cute.”
“Mhm. But that art not all. This part opens here.”
With a clack, the stomach section split in two.
The inside of the doll’s now-split body was hollow, and inside was an even smaller Lily…
“A nesting doll?”
Mikihiko, just what are you teaching Rose?
Well, Gerbera looks happy, so it’s fine.
Gerbera split the tinier Lily, and took out a fox doll from inside.
This one…looks like Ayame.
“So cute, so cuuute~”
“…”
Appearance-wise, Gerbera was the same age as me, if not a bit higher.
Though I wasn’t thinking that she was enjoying herself on Kei’s level—
“Don’t break it.”
—I did think it a little.
Watching Gerbera, her blood-red eyes sparkling like a child’s, I felt a little happy.
It was a bit different than the happy feeling I got when I saw Kei frolic around.
I was happy, of course, but that wasn’t all.
It made me feel like I wanted to gaze at her smile forever.
If anything, it might’ve been similar to how I felt when I was with Lily.
With a natural smile plastered on my face, I gazed around the room.
Other than Gerbera, Lily and Silane were in the room as well.
Rose, Katō-san, and Kei were in the next room over.
I knew that they, with the connections of the knights, bought some dyes in the town yesterday.
I was told they were making clothes. They did not give me the details.
From the other side of the thin wall, I could hear the faint cheerful voices of the girls, and a feeling of calm washed over me.
Would this become an everyday scene if I followed Leader-san to her homeland—Aker?
At the thought of that happy future, a numbness ran through my chest, though it might have been just my imagination.
Including Silane, there were three knights accompanying us.
The remaining knights had been split into two groups: those guarding the other transferees, and those waiting outside the town with the soldiers.
As for Leader-san, she brought some knights with her and headed to Selatta after making arrangements for us to stay in this lodging.
Mikihiko also went with her. This all happened yesterday.
Selatta was a metropolis with over ten thousand people living within it, and therefore had room to house the hundreds of Empire soldiers fleeing Fortress Tilia, if only temporarily, unlike the previous towns.
Leader-san was supposedly engaging in conversation with Earl Lawrence right now.
I cast my eyes to the scenery outside the window.
There, I could see the townscape of Selatta where Leader-san was visiting.
Earl Lawrence’s fief was closed off by the Sea of Trees to the south and a dark forest to the northeast, but the west bordered with Earl Long’s dominion, the granary region, and to the east lay one of the Three Eastern Countries, Viscum.
Selatta, located on the highway running to Earl Long’s dominion and Viscum, and also near Margrave McLoughlin’s fief to the north, was one of the trading hubs in the southern part of the Empire.
It was for this reason that Selatta was also called the Trade City.
However, the city’s splendor was unimaginable from its name.
A defensive wall equipped with defense towers surrounded the city; it was the so-called fortress town.
The ramparts surrounding the city were made of two encirclements—one small and one big.
It could be inferred that the expansion of the walls went in accordance with the city’s growth.
This scenery was commonplace for towns in this world.
In this magic-filled world, earth-attribute magic could be used for construction.
In addition, the need of responding to the overly excessive thread of monsters probably gave a boost to the civil engineering of this world.
I’d thought the pioneer villages’ protective walls were surprisingly well made, but after seeing this I could only think of it as paper-thin.
However, something gave off a more pompous feeling than the thick ramparts.
That would be the huge fortress standing prominent in the center of town.
It was known as Fortress Selatta.
Instead of sharing the same name as the city…it would be more proper to say that the town was given the name of the fortress.
Just like Fortress Tilia, which I had just stayed in until recently; and Fortress Ebenus, where the Scouting Corps were welcomed into to the east, it was once a stronghold that stood at the forefront of the Sea of Trees.
The world’s largest cities were, save a few exceptions, castle towns built around the centers of fortresses like this one, all having served their original purpose.
Considering the protection made towards monster attacks, I guess it’s extremely natural for cities to be made in forms like these, I thought.
The fortress currently housed Earl Lawrence, the Lord governing this area; his troops; and a part of the Empire’s Southern Army.
Due to the loss of the long-range communication method furnished in Fortress Tilia, Leader-san went to the nearest town.
Selatta was the town chosen because it had the same kind of fortress as Fortress Tilia.
As a lot of work needed to be done—including the receiving of soldiers, it would take three days at minimum before Leader-san returned from what I was told.
If possible, we would then immediately leave for Aker.
For now, though, I had to get ready to face that.
“Ahh, dang. Another failure”, Lily’s voice rang out as I talked with Silane about today’s training and the coaching of my family from here on out. Gerbera had gone to the room next door with Katō-san after she poked her head through the door and asked for her.
Lily sat down on the bed, falling onto her back with her hands stretched out.
Or to be accurate, her arms stretched out…as right now, her arms had nothing after the wrists.
She wasn’t injured.
Attempting to partially mimic another creature while retaining her girl form had undone the mimicry on that part of her.
As I’d mentioned previously, Lily had been recently trying her best to partially mimic creatures. However, this appeared to be no small feat.
Slime body tissue bubbled up from the ends of both her wrists and rose to form her usual hands.
But Lily remained collapsed on the bed. Her troubled face stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t push yourself too hard”, as I moved next to the bed, I poked the wrinkle between Lily’s eyebrows.
“Yaaaan. Jeez. Master?”
“How about taking a break?”
“Fufu. If you’re taking a break, shall I prepare some tea?”
Watching our exchange, Silane smiled and got up.
“Ah. Then, I can help too.”
Lily raised herself off the bed, but Silane shook her head.
“You don’t know how to use it, and you should be resting.”
Silane left the room, a smile on her face. The sound of her descending the staircase could be heard soon after.
Now that it was just the two of us, Lily leaned onto me.
“Hrrgghhh…I guess it’s no good.”
Lily often snuggled up against me, but right now it was more accurate to say that she was leaning on me instead.
She let herself relax onto me.
“Lily”, I spoke, hugging her soft body. She didn’t resist.
Her relaxed body slid down into a horizontal position.
She adjusted herself to get comfy and eventually settled with her head on my thighs.
“Mmm.”
The sight of her rubbing her cheeks on my thighs like a spoiled child vaguely reminded me of a cat.
I spoke whilst fiddling with her bangs, “…Hey, Lily.”
“Yeeess?”
“Are you depressed?”
Lily turned her head to face up, looking at me.
“A tiny bit.”
A weak smile showed on my face.
“I knew, somehow, that this might be the limit of my slime mimicry ability.”
“…”
She talked about her partial mimicry training from after we left Fortress Tilia to when we arrived at the first pioneer village. Twenty days had passed in that time.
Nevertheless, Lily’s partial mimicry had yet to show a single sign of success.
Not a single bit of progress had been made.
Lily let out a small sigh.
“I have to bring out the most of the monsters within me. I absolutely have to, yet…”
“I get what you want to say…”
If she could partially mimic monsters’ abilities, then that would be the best of both worlds.
For example, when we fought the White Spider, Gerbera, head on. She was the strongest monster in the Deep Part of the Sea of Trees; normal monsters couldn’t even hope to hit her.
Her strength was solid, and regenerative powers incredible. Gerbera’s fighting abilities were all top-class, so being better than her in even one of those was difficult. And even if you could compete with her in one of those areas, she would crush you to death in another.
But what if Lily learned partial mimicry?
It might even become possible for her to catch up with Gerbera.
…If only it was possible, though.
“You can’t do what you can’t do. If you’re depressed about that, then there’s nothing to do, is there?” I spoke gently, touching Lily’s cheek.
“Humans can kick and jump off the ground but cannot fly. They can paddle through the water with both hands and swim, but cannot dive down thousands of meters. You might be a monster, but even you have limits.”
“But humans can fly in the sky and dive down to those depths,” Lily interposed.
A smile forced itself onto my face at Lily saying something a stubborn child would say.
Lily behaved like the older sister of the family, so it was rare that she showed her weakness like this.
She was always supporting me, so it felt nice to see her acting spoiled like this.
“That would be by plane or submarine, though.”
“…Yeah. That’s true.” Lily replied, closing her eyes as I gently brushed her forehead as though to comfort her.
Time passed with only us there.
“But, Master?” And before long, Lily finally spoke.
“What’s up?”
“Even though you’re relying on other things, you’re still flying in the sky and surviving in those depths.”
…Why does that feel…off?
Suddenly a chill ran down my spine.
Perhaps the reason was because the calm expression her drooping eyelids were making looked too calm, like a martyred clergyman.
“If I was human…”
“Lily..?” As I called out to her, Lily slowly opened her eyelids.
And then she blinked in surprise.
“Hm? What’s wrong, Master?”
Lily looked at me from atop my lap, and made a confused face.
That was the usual Lily.
The words I should’ve said died out, and I scratched my face.
“…Nah, it’s nothing.”
“You’re weird, Master.”
Lily snickered before getting up.
“Thanks for spoiling me. I feel a little better now.”
“Oh? That’s good.”
She had seemingly regained her usual manner.
I was happy that I was able to cheer her up from her depression.
“If I can’t do it one way, then I’ll just have to think of another. Besides, it’s not like it’s certain that I can’t do it. I’ll keep trying my best for a little while more.”
Lily clenched her tiny fish and smiled before her eyes suddenly darted elsewhere.
“Hmm? Someone’s coming?”
Noises came from downstairs.
Almost immediately, restless footsteps made their way straight up the staircase.
I put myself on guard reflexively, and the door swung open without a single knock.
My hand paused midway as it reached for my sword.
After all, the visitor barging into our room was my friend with unkempt hair.
“What’s up, Mikihiko. Have you returned?”
Did he run back here? Mikihiko breathed heavily before speaking.
“Just what happened to get you in a rush like that. Weren’t you with Leader-san…”
“Something went wrong.”
The first words out of his mouth made the relaxedness within me tense up.
“What happened, Mikihiko-dono?”
Silane and two other knights from downstairs came into the room following Mikihiko.
Glancing back at them, Mikihiko spoke in a low voice.
“Leader has been detained.”
Translator’s Notes
¹ – Not sure about the first part of the sentence ‘騎士団御用達の商人に団長が話を通して、ひとの住んでいなかった物件を仮の宿として貸し付けてくれたのだ。’
