Episode 3: New――

Swoosh*. A cool breeze ran through the forest.

A clean breeze that carried the scent that reminded it of the start of the warm season.

The forest was quiet and free of noise.

A creature was walking in a place that felt as though time had slowed down.

It was a small creature that walked on two legs.

Its height was as short as a child less than ten years old, and its body was somewhat poor.

It was wearing a leather cloth that only covered its lower half, and it was barefoot.

Its skin was light green, and its arms and stomach are firm and toned despite its small size. In its hand, it held a club that looked disproportionate to its small body, and it walked through the forest, careful to make as little noise as possible.

A goblin.

A carnivorous monster, it was walking through the forest in search of wild beasts to prey on―― but they were nowhere to be seen.

At this time of year, beasts awakened from their hibernation and should be running around the forest, trying to quench their hunger, but recently, their numbers have been dwindling.

“Gugiii…”

The goblin, probably very hungry, held its belly with the hand that was not holding the club, retched bitterly, and slowed its pace, slumping its shoulders like a human.

The goblin, who had been feeding on wildflowers and river water for more than five days now, still wandered the forest in desperate search of prey, but still could not find a single deer or even a wolf to feed on.

Its hunt lasted a whole day.

From early in the morning until late at night when the sun set.

――A year had passed since the Black Ooze, a vicious mutant slime was defeated.

Some of the monsters have begun to interact with human society and have learned the culture of buying with money.

Goblins and lizardmen earned money by hunting and trading the meat and fur of their prey and used it to buy food and alcohol.

Sometimes they even use taverns and restaurants, and the more intelligent monsters have become so integrated into human society that they run stalls to buy and sell.

On the other hand, there were monsters that were hostile to humanity and live the same life as before.

If anything, the number of monsters that interact with humans was still on the small side, but their lifestyles were vastly different.

There were those who have learned how to make money and those who could not rely on others even when they know there was no prey.

The latter, this goblin, had been trying to earn its food by hunting as before, but it hadn’t had a decent meal in five days.

“Gugii…”

Its steps were heavy and slow.

It was not just hunger, but also deep fatigue, and the hand that held the club had become weak, as though it were about to give up its precious weapon.

The sky had already begun to turn dim, and it would soon be pitch black in the deep forest.

It had to get back to its cave before that happened.

The forest at night was a dangerous place even for goblins, who were monsters.

Their senses become blurred, and they couldn’t even see their feet.

Although they have good vision in the dark, they were not nocturnal creatures, so it was only natural that they would be inferior to wolves.

Even today, it was unable to find a decent meal, so it picked some weeds at its feet, popped them in its mouth, and go back to its home with its shoulders slumped like humans……

“Gugi?”

Woosh*. It felt the air tremble.

The strange sound was not very familiar, it sounded like the sound of a sharp sword being swung, only several times sharper.

At the very least, it sounded out of place in the forest at night.

The goblin was curious as to what the strange sound was and turned its gaze in the direction of the sound.

“Gi――…”

Immediately, its vision shifted.

The trees that had been standing upright distorted at an angle, and the ground filled its vision.

As it rolled on the ground, it saw its own headless body. The cut was clean, and even if it were cut off by a great sword, it would be impossible to cut it off without any distortion, as though it were a picture that was cut by a scissor.

It was made possible by the monster’s right arm, which was swung out with such force that it reduced air resistance to a minimum and split the air.

――Before it knew it, there was a person standing in the forest where its head had fallen.

In its gradually wavering vision, it saw a tall man standing on two legs.

He was tall, and a goblin of the height of a child would only be able to reach his waist.

He was wearing a simple shirt and pants, a simple cloak that hid his body, and a large triangular hat on his head, like those used by mages.

What was odd was his right arm.

It was the only part of its body that was moving in the air like a snake…… like a different creature.

It flexed like a whip and struck the goblin in the neck.

In the blink of an eye, the snake that had cut the head of the goblin changed to a five-fingered hand, and its form returned to a creature no different from a human.

The man squeezed and opened his hand as though to check the condition of his right arm, and then carelessly walked over to the goblin’s body.

The body that had lost its head was lying on the ground, the blood overflowing from the wound flowing to the ground and being absorbed by the earth.

After that, they become food for animals and return to the earth to nourish the trees.

Finally, the light disappeared from the goblin’s eyes, and it turned into a mute lump of flesh.

The man with the big hat―― the humanoid slime touched the goblin with its right arm without feeling any emotion.

“This is the twentieth one today…… How long are you going to keep this up?”

The tired voice was near the place where the goblin had just been standing.

If one looked closely, one could see a woman standing there, hidden in the shadows of the trees.

No, she had no intention to hide, but perhaps because of her many years of experience as an adventurer, she unconsciously chose places that were difficult for living things to pick up her presence.

――It was also a woman with an impressive large hat used by mages.

The first thing that attracted one’s eye was her beautiful golden hair, which could be seen even in the dimly lit forest.

Her long, slightly wavy hair, which reached her waist, swayed softly as though it had been meticulously groomed, and the beauty of her hair would attract the gaze of many men when she walked down the streets of the royal capital, Fonteau.

It was a different kind than the innocent princesses described in fairy tales.

If the princess was a dignified white lily that had grown in a flower bed, she was a large rose trained in the harsh environment.

Her strong eyes have the sharpness of the thorns behind them, and if one were to antagonize her, she would tempt them with her beauty, but a moment later, she would stab her prey with her sharp thorns.

If one lowered one’s gaze a little bit from her beautiful face, one would see that her chest was surprisingly large. It looks as though two large fruits were stuffed into a thin fabric.

The thin black undergarment was so deeply etched with obscene wrinkles that it swayed violently with each step she took.

Her waist was so thin and the thick pants she wore for traveling didn’t hide her large ass.

“You’re going to use that too?”

The blonde woman, Frederica, walked up to the humanoid slime and looked down over his shoulder at the goblin’s limbs.

By that time, the right arm of the humanoid slime had already wrapped around the goblin’s limb.

In the translucent liquid, the goblin’s limbs floated as though it was drowning in the water. The leather cloth it was wearing and the club it was holding were thrown out of the liquid.

――The change came immediately.

The goblin’s corpse was digested, its skin, flesh, and blood disappearing into the liquid.

The slime’s bodily fluids did not cloud over in the slightest, and it was as though the flesh and bones were being digested in a clear liquid―― it only took a few minutes.

The digestion was more powerful than its parent, the Black Ooze, and the hungry goblin disappeared from this world without a single trace.

……Next, the humanoid slime’s right arm changed.

It surged and raged, gradually gathering at his fingertips until it finally fell to the ground as a drop of water the size of the tip of a thumb.

It absorbed the weeds and wood around it, as well as the blood of the goblin that had seeped into the ground, and quickly grew to a huge size.

Its growth speed was also much faster than the other slimes that the Black Ooze had spawned.

As a result, in less than ten minutes, a new slime… “a goblin-shaped slime” was born.

“――――”

It was translucent, just like the humanoid, and resembled the original goblin in every detail―― or so it seemed.

The only difference was that the slime was translucent, had no facial expression, and did not speak. It did not breathe.

One could tell at a glance that it was not a goblin……

“Like the wolf earlier, you can really make something that looks like the original.”

Frederica, who had been watching the whole thing over the humanoid’s shoulder, muttered admiringly.

She didn’t seem to be surprised, and her voice sounded as she was used to seeing the scene many times.

In fact, as the words “this is the twentieth one today” and “the last one was a wolf,” which were mentioned earlier, the various forms of slime that have been confirmed in the vicinity of Fonteau were produced by the humanoid.

The translucent monsters were created by dissolving the original creature, turning them into mucus monsters.

In a world where the Demon King, the only one who could create monsters, was dead, as was the case with the Black Ooze, the number of monsters would not increase.

However, the mutant Black Ooze had taken in a man and used a woman’s womb to give birth to a child, and the humanoid that was born from the Black Ooze and grew up using the blood from the hero Mariabelle and the ovum from her sister Meltia, had finally reached the point where it had the abilities similar to the demon king.

However, it was still incomplete.

Its ability to create monsters, however, was based on digesting the original creature in its body and transforming it into slime.

It could not be called a “new life”, but rather a “life that had been remade” at best.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

The new goblin creature turned its head in a certain direction without answering Frederica’s question.

――There was nothing.

Underneath the large hat that a mage would use, there was only a head without a face, a feature that could not be called very human.

The face turned to the west.

It was not the royal capital of Fonteau, where the hero Mariabelle was, that the humanoid was so obsessed with, but the direction Frederica and the humanoid have been walking―― the direction of the old ruins in Grabalt, where they have been hiding until now.

“Are we going back?”

The humanoid nodded to Frederica’s words.

Why would a human being, albeit in a human-like form, be working with the slime?

Many people would probably wonder.

It was similar for Frederica.

(I wonder how things will change next time.)

Frederica, who was known as a skilled adventurer, was defeated and impregnated by the mutant slime, Black Ooze.

It was not that she was in love with it because she was carrying its child.

Part of it was that she was comfortable with the inhuman pleasures that the slime was giving her, but perhaps the most important reason was that her interest as a mage was overwhelmed by the sight of the endlessly growing and evolving humanoid that she had given birth to.

Originally, it was just a slime. It was just an ordinary slime that was more powerful than the original and could even use magic.

However, after absorbing the blood of the hero Mariabelle from her deflowering, it changed its shape and acted with a different will than the Black Ooze, it was a mutated species that was reborn using Meltia’s ovum, the sister princess whose father was a hero from another world, though she was not as strong as Mariabelle.

Eventually, it even acquired the ability to transform a creature into slime. What kind of changes would it make next?…… As though enjoying and watching the growth of a child, Frederica had come to accompany it as a human being.

“…………”

“What is it? Did you find something interesting?”

Frederica’s voice sounded somewhat sweet, with a hint of color.

The lower half of her body, wrapped in thick pants that emphasized ease of movement typical of an adventurer, rubbed against the skin of the humanoid who was staring in the west direction.

She was a woman who understood her beauty and used it to have fun with men.

She didn’t care if it was a monster, as long as it could give her the greatest pleasure―― in fact, the humanoid was the best partner for her, as it had a complete understanding of her “good points” through repeated skin-to-skin contact.

She leaned in close to the humanoid and sharpened her nerves to feel the same thing.

Although she could not become a knight, she was a top-notch adventurer, and she tried to sense the flow of mana, but it seemed as though there was nothing noticeable within her perceptible distance.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Something. There.”

The faceless slime spoke.

No, perhaps it was more accurate to say that it made a sound with its throat.

The sound was flat, without any waves of emotion, and so small that one had to listen very carefully to understand its words.

But sure enough, the slime spoke the human language. As she let go, it meant she understood. The meaning of the words. The parallelism of sounds.

“Something?”

Frederica asked, but the humanoid slime couldn’t utter a word to explain further.

She could see that it hadn’t grown that much “yet”.

It was only natural that it didn’t have a face or a mouth.

Then she smiled innocently, as though she was truly, deeply enjoying herself, making Frederica feel that it still had room to grow.

……To the slime. To the monster.

“Then, shall we go?”

“――――”

The humanoid nodded firmly at those words.

If they didn’t know, they could go and check. It was just that.

As the humanoid took a step towards the west, the “shield” on its left arm shook slightly…….

People call it the “Hero’s Shield,” a special divine weapon given by the goddess Fasalina to the hero from another world to defeat the demon king, and which could not be used by humans.

It should only be used by Mariabelle, who had the hero’s blood in her veins―― but the shield did not reject the monster slime, and was held by it.

It was as though it was accepting the humanoid.

……It grew based on the blood of the hero and was born from the ovum of a person who inherited the blood, and evolved as it recognized it as a hero.