A flurry of magical bolts flung themselves toward me. I used Predator to consume them, and then the tendrils of yellow wrapped themselves around me.
The demon lord Geld's Death March Dance bolts danced around in the air, as if self-conscious, before coming in to swallow me.
It was infused with Chaos Eater, and it had a mission to carry out.
In another moment, the elastic tendrils were around me. Even if they were still on the other side of my Multilayer Barrier, it still didn't feel very pleasant.
—Yeah? You wanna consume me? Well, all right. Do it if you can!
Worked up as I was, my instincts commanded me to flash a weak smile.
If you wanna eat me, you'll just get eaten first.
Silently, I removed my mask and put it in a pocket.
It was time for my clash with the demon lord Geld.
◇◇◇
Closing the distance between us, I slashed at Geld. He cleanly blocked me with his meat cleaver, sending me somersaulting.
I should've expected as much.
I couldn't take Shion in a sword-on-sword clash, and she just lost to this guy.
—And Hakuro, who was on another plane of existence from me swordsmanshipwise, could do little against him.
I tried another slash, moving at hyper-speed to confuse my foe, trying to find any weakness I could from every angle I could think of.
I knew it was pointless, but I couldn't stop going through the cycle.
Whenever I was blocked or swatted
away, I just kept going back, testing it all out. It assured me of one thing. I was weak.
Even among the most typical of skills, the differences were obvious. The ones they inherited were either downgrades or incomplete versions of my own.
Absolutely a step down, in all ways. But they were using them all far more effectively.
If I fought each one-on-one, I was pretty sure I could win.
Several at once? No way. That was how strong my fighters had become.
And despite that, the demon lord Geld probably could take them all in one go.
And win. My Sage analysis of the battle results told me so.
They all lacked a truly decisive weapon, and sooner or later they'd run out of energy and lose.
This wasn't a foe I could beat if I fought normally. Emphasis on normally.
The ogres could use their skills far more deftly than I could. Why was that?
For Hakuro, that was mainly just his high level at work, but what about the others?
There were a few reasons—they mixed the skills with their own Arts, or their instincts allowed them to unleash their full potential without holding back.
They had adopted the skills for themselves, and they could use them more efficiently than I ever could.
That's what made them strong.
Through my Sage-based simulations, I knew I'd have trouble defeating several at the same time.
But was that really the case? And…really, was I "weak" at all?
To answer that—Let's start with an assumption.
Most of my skills were wrested away from other monsters.
I wasn't born with them, so I needed to start by understanding exactly what they were in the first place.
You aren't automatically handed a driver's license just because you're tall enough to sit behind a steering wheel—and you sure couldn't expect to win a
professional race that way.
But when I found myself transferred to this world, I did already have a skill or two.
The skills I was born with—ones I could use as freely as snapping my fingers.
So all I needed was a single order.
Rimuru: 「All right, Great Sage. Smash that foe for me!!」
«Received. Switching to auto-battle mode.»
—And there was my answer.
◇◇◇
The moment the mask was off, the aura it held back began wafting across the area. Geld sensed something was off.
My imagination? I can not even comprehend the bottom of this aura…
But despite his apprehensions, Geld was greeted with the sight of this creature unleashing a flurry of pointless attacks.
Maybe it was his imagination
after all. I'll eat you first, then!
If this puny insect got in the way of his meal, Geld had no reason to show mercy.
And this creature had far more energy than he originally thought.
A high-quality hors d'oeuvre.
Flicking away the annoying pest, Geld adjusted the grip on his meat cleaver, preparing for the final blow.
But then the creature halted its silly assault, standing bolt upright on the ground.
What's it doing now?
The girlish creature's expression froze, completely bereft of emotion. And then, it looked at him.
Those eyes—they shone like gold, as if appraising him.
Geld wondered what it meant. Then he realized there was an arm right in front of him.
…?!
He knew what had happened but hesitated to accept it as fact.
His own left arm had been severed at the elbow in an instant and sent flying in front of his eyes.
Then , it turned to ashes with Dark Flame.
The sword in the monster's hand was wreathed in a dark flame. It burned without heat, but it had vaporized the severed arm in milliseconds.
The temperature levels must have been surreal.
…An enemy?
Yes. An enemy. This thing he treated as nothing more than food before.
Now, things have changed. The foe projected a much larger presence now.
The first enemy the demon lord had faced since his evolution made him anxious from head to toe.
He began to feel physically uncomfortable.
No… my arm won't regenerate?!
He checked his own arm. It was burning at the end with Dark Flame that never seemed to extinguish.
It was keeping him from healing. Its aura is now connected to his enemy's.
As long as he didn't kill the foe who had put this upon him, the flame would never disappear.
Anger began coloring Geld's eyes. He ripped the remainder of the arm off at the shoulder, consuming it in several large bites, before regenerating the arm from the socket within two seconds.
Then he thought for a moment. If he didn't have enough power before, he could just use his skills to compensate.
This foe's speed was exemplary, but Geld held the power advantage.
If he could just crush it, all that speed would be his.
Matching his meat cleaver with this monster's moves—nimbler than ever before—he blocked the full brunt of the enemy's force.
But the moment sword met cleaver, the Dark Flame swallowed it whole, melting it.
No…!
The demon lord Geld reared back, shocked.
Was this an enemy? No. It was a threat. He had to consume it with every power he had at his disposal.
Otherwise, he finally realized he would be the one eaten.
Geld's aura swelled, releasing a shock wave of force. He watched the monster elude it, then unleashed Death March Dance once more.
The magical bolt split into eight in midair, each bolt hurtling toward its target.
Each one was enhanced with 『Starved』, bestowed with the Rot property.
The monster evaded them as they flitted through the air, absorbing each one of its pursuers.
Geld laughed. Now you will be consumed!
The five fighters from before no longer mattered in his mind. All that mattered was the prey in front of him.
The monster was still distracted by the magic bolts. He confronted it, reaching out for its body.
The foe noticed just in time. It turned, then began to grapple
with him. Geld had the strength advantage.
"I could crush it now."—he thought.
But then he fell, his balance lost. The foe had kicked him in the knee, shattering it. This innocent little girl.
It was unimaginable how quick the strike was and how brutal the impact was.
Geld refused to let go either way.
Gah-ha-ha-ha-ha! I like it! I'll eat you just as you are!
The prey was in his hands, ready for the first bite. It was helpless now. A little bit of damage was of no concern to Geld.
Even that shattered knee was already regenerated, good as new.
The demon lord filled his palm with the yellow aura, preparing to infuse it into his prey.
Starved allowed him to rot his foes directly with a single touch, arresting all their life functions and converting them into more nutrients for him.
Every fiber of his being desired to eat this creature, every ounce of energy poured toward his Rot skill.
In a moment, his opponent would stop resisting as its body slowly melted into nothing…
◇◇◇
Things have unfolded just as I thought.
With the full support of the Great Sage unique skill, I was now fighting with my skills at maximum efficiency.
I was making complete use of them, but it wasn't because I had leveled up or anything.
I wasn't "fighting" so much as I was letting the Sage do the fighting for me.
It was a totally optimized approach, leaving everything to good ol' Sage.
Just as I figured, it demonstrated the perfect mastery of my skills.
Once I knew I couldn't overpower Geld, I placed a multilayer barrier over my sword and imbued it with Dark Flame.
This kept the sword from deteriorating over time, greatly boosting its attack force along the way.
Even the skills I never managed to use too well were expertly handled by the Sage.
It processed all the data at hand and always chose the most effective move to make next.
It was covering the entire board as it figured out how to handle the demon lord, like a chess problem.
But even then, I couldn't let up. Geld was starting to keep up with me speedwise, and if this battle kept going, it might get worse.
And if Flame Resistance was one of the potential upgrades, I had nothing on him.
Hell, for all I knew, we were already at that point. And besides, everything I had for myself applied equally to the demon lord Geld.
He had only just evolved; he was unfamiliar with whatever he had just inherited.
Whatever advantage I had, I was losing it with every moment I dawdled.
Geld was in the throes of evolution, much as I thought I was.
That was why I had to wage the battle this way.
Grappling with him was exactly what the Sage predicted. It would prove difficult to burn Geld to a crisp with Dark Flame only.
He healed so quickly that it'd take too much time to completely burn him up.
It might be possible if we could capture him in a Flare Circle, though, and that was why I had to subdue him first.
So, I had instantly overwhelmed my opponent, inviting him to fight using the skills he was most familiar with.
The demon lord fell for it beautifully, accepting my test of strength.
Just like the Sage predicted, Geld wanted to rot me, then consume me. If I could deploy a Flare Circle before then, I won.
I had to hand it to the Sage—it had read the guy like a book.
But now the one possibility I had given a passing thought to—the one the Sage dismissed as too
infinitesimally unlikely to happen—became reality.
"Gah-ha-ha-ha! Flame doesn't work on me, you know?!"
I had locked myself in a Ranged Barrier with him.
The Flare Circle was now under way—and the demon lord Geld, who was supposed to be bursting into flames now that it was several thousand degrees around us, was instead heartily laughing in my face.
I hate it when these worst-case scenarios become reality.
«…?! Report. Enemy confirmed to have resistance to flame. Requesting immediate alterations to plan…»
The Great Sage came back online, sounding the same as always, even if I imagined it sounding a tad unnerved.
This was terrible. Horrible, really. Right at the climax of it all, my enemy had just checkmated me.
But—why, though? There was still no anxiety or concern in my heart. As if I had hoped this would happen all along.
Rimuru: 「Oh really?」 I said, flashing a proud smile. 「Because you might be a lot happier succumbing to the flames soon.」
The Chaos Eater that served as Geld's aura was starting to make its way through my Multilayer Barrier.
It didn't hurt, but it was making me intensely uncomfortable as it wended its way around my skin.
And yet—I still felt nothing
but joy. It was what I wanted. He was my enemy, and he had to give me this much, at least.
"I got this,"—I silently told the Sage, retaking control of my body.
The Sage, while taking over, had allowed me to observe Geld at close range.
Taking full advantage of the break, I accelerated my thoughts a thousand times to consider what to do if the unlikeliest of events occurred.
A computer that never makes mistakes tends to see everything as a probability.
It seeks efficiency, cutting away anything it deems redundant. That
was why I was here.
I was a ball of inefficiency, a former human with a deliberately incomplete thought process.
"So don't be disappointed, partner."—I whispered in my heart as I sneered at the demon lord.
"You were perfect. Just leave the rest to me…"
This guy wanted to consume me. That prediction came true, at least. And that meant I had an opening.
A little while back, I was a tad overoptimistic, reasoning that I should have eaten the demon lord back when I still had the chance.
Right?
And I was, at the core, a slime. I had exactly three intrinsic skills: absorb, dissolve, and Self Regeneration.
They were gone now, merged with assorted other skills, but I
also had a unique skill—Predator—that was an enhanced version of them all.
It suited me perfectly as a slime. Nothing could've worked better with my inner essence.
I doubted that my evolved Ultraspeed Regeneration was any less incredible at healing than whatever the demon lord was sporting.
This meant that if we started consuming each other, I was bound to win in the end, right?
«…Report. The probability of you executing Predator first is—»
The "probability" doesn't matter. Quit worrying. I told you to leave the rest to me, didn't I?
Either the demon lord Geld rots and kills me, or I consume him first.
It couldn't have been any simpler, and I was ready to do it, even if my chances were exactly zero percent.
Why? Because that was my plan from the very start.
The demon lord, apparently pretty sure of his own victory, was now trying to melt me, looking every bit as elated as I was.
I could take advantage of that,
pretending to be rotting away—weakening—as my body fell apart.
Apart, and over him.
From my opponent's palm, through his arm…
And by the time he noticed, the operation was under way.
Letting my instincts take the wheel, I had engaged my enemy the way that slimes naturally did. Concern now crossed his face.
He tried to peel me off, but
he couldn't—I was already all over his body.
Rimuru: 「You see now? Sorry, but all that strength of yours doesn't mean too much now, does it?」
"Gnh… No…?! What are you trying to…"
Rimuru: 「Heh. If you thought you had an exclusive license on consuming stuff, you're wrong!」
Nailed him. And Geld knew it. He winced at my words.
But I still wasn't necessarily at an advantage. We were, for the moment, at a stalemate.
He was using his healing skills to resist my predation, and I was using Ultraspeed Regeneration to keep afloat over his Rot attack.
We were eating away at each other, like an ouroboros come to life.
The Great Sage was too much of a perfectionist to ever come up with something like this, but it was exactly what I wanted.
Whichever side consumed the other was the winner. The rules were so easy to understand.
—And getting myself into this situation in the first place was a requirement if I wanted to win.
It wasn't that I came up with the idea after the Sage's tactics failed; I just followed my instincts, and this was what resulted, really.
Instead of relying on unfamiliar, unseasoned skills, I relied on whatever my instincts willed for me, at the root, and executed what they told me.
The slime's absorb and dissolve skills had been merged into Predator, and so I was doing what those instincts wanted for me.
I am, after all, a predator.
Geld, your Starved is a powerful , nique skill, I'll grant you that.
But you're not a predator. You're a scavenger.
You can eat anything, which is incredible, but I'm adapted for catching and consuming.
And that gives me the advantage.
If we're gonna keep eating at each other, I'll be the one to gain new skills from it first.
My predatory instincts will it to be done!
I can analyze and obtain skills even from living creatures, but you, Geld—you can only steal them from their corpses.
And that's what will decide this.
I've got this in the bag, dude. Let's go!
◇◇◇
It was hard to say how much time passed. We were still consuming each other.
I concentrated on Predation, assured of my victory, when I started to hear the strangest voice.
I can't afford to lose.
I ate my own comrades.
I can't afford to lose.
I have to become a demon lord.
Because I ate Lord Gelmud.
I can't afford to lose.
My comrades hunger.
I can't afford to lose.
I must eat until I am full!
The thoughts flooded my mind. They belonged to the demon lord, I assumed.
Talk about stupid. Think whatever you like, I've already won.
But I can't afford to lose…
I ate my own comrades.
I committed…a terrible crime…
I can't afford to lose.
Look, can you forget it already?
Lemme tell you. This world's all about survival of the fittest and all that bullcrap. And you aren't fit enough.
So you're gonna die.
But I can't afford to lose…
If I die, I leave the sins of my crimes to my comrades.
I don't mind if I, alone, am sinful.
I did whatever was needed to avoid starvation.
I will become a demon lord.
I will accept all the hunger in the world. So no one else has to feel this famine!
I know I can.
I am the orc disaster.
The consumer of all.
Aaaaand you're still gonna die.
But…
But—shut up already, would ya?!
Dah, how annoying…
*Sigh* Hey you, don't worry.
I'll eat up all those crimes for you.
You…what? Eat…my crimes?!
Mm-hmm.
And not just yours…
I'll eat the crimes of all your friends, too. Why, you ask?
Duh, dude, look at me, I eat stuff!
The crimes…of all my friends…
How greedy of you.
Oh? Do you think so? Yeah. I am greedy. Does that make you feel better?
If it does, then just rest a bit and let me eat you already. I'm starving.
When did I last have something to eat?
Ah…
I couldn't afford to lose.
But…
I am tired. It is…warm in here.
Greedy one.
You know there will be no tranquility down the road you travel.
But you are still willing to take on my crimes…
I thank you. My hunger…is sated.
He was Geld, the Orc Disaster.
And now, his consciousness had vanished within me.
«Confirmed. The Orc Disaster has disappeared. The unique skill Starved has been absorbed and merged with the unique skill Predator.»
So I win.
There was no way someone as hungry as he was could beat me without starving himself in the process.
I opened my eyes, carrying the weight of him and all his orcish comrades on my back.
◇◇◇
In the quiet, I declared my victory.
Rimuru: 「I have won. Rest in peace, Orc Disaster Geld…」
I could hear the cheers from the goblins and lizardmen, along with cries of anguish and despair from the orcs.
Their conquest was over. They knew it, and from the thoughts they shared as they cannibalized one another before, they knew it was all caused by Gelmud's nefarious plans.
What bothered me most was that the person or persons controlling Gelmud were quite likely still alive.
He talked about having a demon lord patron backing him up, and there was no way to tell if that was the truth or not.
I'd probably need to be careful—but careful about what? I had no idea. And I could hardly leave these orcs to their own devices.
We had problems left to solve.
Fubuki: 「You know, I had my doubts, but I guess you handled it well in the end.」
Rimuru: 「Huh? Are you still around?」
Fubuki: 「What? You didn't expect me to do something, did you? I guess it's true. You're dumb.」
Rimuru: 「Yeah? Whatever. Let's wrap this whole thing up.」
After I said that, he turned his back to face me, staring at the sunrise.
It made it a beautiful scene. Well, with his beauty converted, I couldn't really deny his good looks.
Fubuki: 「Since you handled that fight, let me round this mess up for ya.」
Wow, newsflash! It turns out he can be really helpful when the time calls for it!
The next day, there was a very important meeting—one that would go down in history as the one that established the Great Forest of Jura Alliance.
◇◇◇
The battle was over.
Yeesh. That was…yeah, pretty rough. If he had fully completed his evolution, I don't think anyone could've beaten him.
I won precisely because we made it to him in time—just in time, as it turns out.
It would've been so much easier pre-evolution, too; I was still kicking myself over that. But I had it coming.
I should've killed him fast instead of getting all cocky. It was more than half luck that earned victory for me in the end.
But the rewards I reaped from it made all my regrets look like a drop in the bucket. That's right—it's unique skill time!
I had obtained my fourth unique skill from the spirit of the demon lord Geld, although I guess it got merged into Predator without so much as a peep.
The Great Sage gave me the rundown after the battle:
«Report. Following the merger of the unique skill, Starved with the unique skill Predator, the unique skill Predator has evolved into the unique skill Gluttony.»
The Sage had the habit of combining skills that resembled one another a fair bit, although everything was still downward-compatible.
I analyzed this new skill and then closed my eyes.
This skill, Gluttony, consisted of four old abilities—Predation, Stomach, Mimic, and Isolate—combined with three new ones—Corrode, Receive, and Provide.
The new ones worked like this:
Rot: Performs Rot on the target, decomposing it if it is organic. Monster corpses, partially absorbed in this manner, will reward the user with part of the monster's skills.
Receive: Gain the ability to obtain skills from monsters under your influence.
Provide: Grants part of your abilities to monsters under your influence or linked to your soul.
Giving each the once-over, I had to say, this was some pretty damn sweet stuff. My stomach got a huge upgrade—it felt maybe twice as big.
And Rot sounded downright scary, although handy for things like destroying armor.
Receive and Provide were the real plums, though.
This meant, basically, whatever new skills people like Benimaru and Ranga earned when they evolved, I could get 'em for myself, right?
And redistribute them to anyone on my team I wanted?
The day after the demon lord Geld fell, representatives from all the races were gathered inside a temporary tent pitched in the central part of the marshes.
On my end, I was with Fubuki, Benimaru, Shion, Hakuro, and Soei. Ranga was inside my shadow, as per usual, and I was sitting on Shion's lap in slime form.
I had pretty much revealed what I really was when I defeated Geld, so there was no point hiding it now.
Treyni was here to represent the immobile treants.
I guess she was done with whatever mission Fubuki assigned her to.
She had appeared without me having to toss a Thought Communication her way, claiming she caught the "waves" the two of us released or something.
What a case. She was hiding just
as much power as I was, I supposed.
From the lizardmen, we had the chief, the head of the chief's guard, and her assistant.
Gabiru was currently in a cell somewhere on the charges of treason.
Son of the chief or not, they couldn't exactly let his acts go unpunished.
As idiotic as he was, a lot about him piqued my interest.
But I was still in no position to provide unsolicited advice on his treatment.
The goblins were represented by each chief of the assorted villages, somewhat huddled at the far corner of the table as they marveled at all the high-level monsters surrounding them.
That was understandable, given how there was a dryad in the room, something they never would've imagined seeing even if they lived to be a thousand years old.
Finally, from the orcs, there was the sole surviving orc general, along with sixteen chiefs from their tribal federation.
The mood was understandably gloomy among them, given how they were the main catalyst of all this.
Whether the orc lord had seized their minds or not, it wasn't like they were completely free of responsibility.
They must have known that—judging by the hangdog looks on their faces.
It wasn't just guilt driving them, either. They were near the end of the food supply they had brought with them.
Soei told me they carried little with them, and Geld, the demon lord didn't offer much to them, either.
They were in danger of starving all over again, except this time, they weren't under the spell
of a unique skill that kept them pressing forward.
Cannibalizing one another to
do so.
That certainly wasn't normal orc behavior.
In fact, being freed from the spell made some of the orcs faint immediately from malnutrition.
Their current situation cast a pall over the entire tent.
The orcs had no meaningful reparations to offer, everyone knew, even if they had asked.
Their whole impetus for going to war, in fact, was the desperate starvation they faced in their homeland.
There were still around 150,000 left, and I doubted they had the ability to feed themselves at all.
All those soldiers, and they still lacked the will to continue warring.
Nothing summed up their mental state better at the moment.
Without Starved, they really would starve—and my peek into Geld's memories taught me even more.
I had mentioned the number 150,000, but those survivors also included women, the elderly, and the children.
In other words, the entirety of every orc clan was right there, in the marshes.
The issue was a famine.
The lands ruled by demon lords were generally safe zones with bountiful arable lands, protected by the great powers of those who ruled over them.
Even if a monster or magical beast stirred up trouble, the magic-borns who served the demon lord would ensure that law and order ruled the day.
All of that, of course, came at a cost—in this case, high taxes.
In exchange for living among fertile lands, the citizens were required to give up a healthy percentage of their harvest on a yearly basis.
And the orcs, who tended to multiply quickly when they had the resources, were an indispensable part of demon lord lands, their labor keeping the farms and mines humming along
smoothly.
Failure to pay these taxes, though, meant death, though not at the hands of the local demon lord himself.
The lands were dangerous. Many monsters attacked it, seeking bounties for themselves.
If anyone didn't pay their due to the Lord, they (the Lord) weren't obliged to protect them. And that was that.
The orcs were normally able to take care of themselves well enough.
Even if an attack killed off half, they reproduced so quickly that their numbers were right back to normal before long.
But the current famine made it impossible to pay their tax to the demon lord—or lords, as it happened.
The orcs' territory had the misfortune to border the domains of three different demon lords.
Attempting to raid the lands of such powerful beings would mark the end of the orc species, but without the protection their taxes bought them, they had no
way of surviving in the suddenly barren land they called home.
So they streamed into the Forest of Jura, all but chased away from their homes, in search of food.
They wandered around its fringes for a bit, fighting off the hunger, and that was when the orc lord was born.
But even that wasn't enough to make them strong enough to fend off the monsters that harangued
them constantly.
It was at that point when Gelmud extended a hand to them.
Help they readily accepted, not realizing what was motivating this unexpected benefactor.
And that was when their troubles began.
That was about all I knew about them. I didn't have the fine details, exactly, but I was still able to glean that much from Geld's mind just before he vanished.
Could I use that info to help them, though?
The thought weighed heavily in my mind—just like it did in everyone else's—as we got started.
Hakuro would serve as the mediator. I asked the lizardman's chief guard to take the position, but she refused.
"The role is too weighty for me!" —she protested.
It felt weird to have the losing side in charge of the negotiation, so I threw the
responsibility at—er, I mean, asked Hakuro to handle it since he was practically born for it anyway.
Yes, there's nothing to see here. Stop looking at me like that!! I'm innocent, alright?!
How dare you think this li'l cute slime would do such terrible things?!
Alright, let's calm down now.
It was time.
Once he declared the meeting under way, silence fell. No one dared open their mouths, instead turning right toward me.
Wait, come to think of it…
Ah, I see…
Damn it, he's done it again, hasn't he?
Leaving me to do all the work so that they'll all see me as the only one in charge—how didn't I see it coming?!
He planned this whole thing!
Don't you get it?! He did nothing, and I basically handled everything!
If we were strangers, who would you seek help from?
Me, or him?
Dah, it's obviously me, isn't it?
Shit, but the Sage should've alerted me ahead of time, right?
Like—how didn't you see this coming? Are you that incompetent?
«...…»
He outsmarted us, huh? Wow, I gotta up my game, it seems…
Man, what a pain. I really hate meetings.
Companies that hold lots of meetings never actually accomplish anything!
The important stuff should be left to people capable of handling it, really. But ah well.
Here we go again, I guess.
Rather than grumbling any further, I, instead, chose to accept my carved fate.
Looking towards the far corner, the sight of a smirking traitor filled me with silent rage.
You'll pay for this, you evil demon!!
I silently cursed as I took in the state of things.
It was a mess…