Chapter 62 (2/2)

“Yes, I do.”

Loren pulled out his large knife hanging from his waist with his right hand and held the torch Lapis had handed him in his left.

Lapis lighted the torch with a flint, and Loren raised it high over his head.

“What’s he doing?”

“Don’t mind him. Let’s go. We haven’t met Parme’s party yet, so they should still be ahead of us.

Nodding at Ain’s decision to move one, Cloud moved next to him at the front and started walking ahead.

Walking behind Feim and Al, Lapis said to Loren, sounding slightly impressed.

“Loren, you know how scary slimes can be.”

“These guys are dangerous. They don’t have any unnecessary thoughts or emotions, after all. That makes them able to accurately respond to prey. It’s true they’re slow and can be killed easily…but if the conditions are met, they could even take down experienced mercenaries.”

“Any experience?”

“In a battlefield before.”

Loren said with a grim look on his face.

Loren went silent for a moment, recalling that time, and started telling her the story.

“It was a terrible battle. Well there aren’t any battles that aren’t terrible. Anyways, I’m not sure who was playing around, but there was a lot of magic used, and lots of allied and enemy soldiers died, so after the battle there were way too many bodies to clean up.”

“That’s…According to one research, slimes are creatures that appear in places where mana is built up or disturbed, so I guess a slime sp.a.w.ned there.”

Lapis told Loren that if enough magic was used in situations such as battles, the mana in the area becomes disturbed momentarily.

And when water, blood, and corpses are added to that disturbance, slimes are born.

Loren had experienced such a battle, but in general, slimes were creatures that ate anything they found that could be consumed.

“There were so many bodies, we decided to let it eat some of them.”

“Ah…I can already see how it ended.”

“We knew it would grow bigger as it ate, but we didn’t expect it to multiply.”

Regardless of how it sp.a.w.ned, slimes were living creatures.

Of course, they would grow when they ate, but slimes proliferated by splitting into two after they had gotten large enough.

The slimes, which had an abundant supply of bodies to consume, grew rapidly and multiplied, and continued that cycle.

“In the end, there were so many slimes, they became like a giant tidal wave in the battlefield.”

Loren muttered about how much of a nightmare that was.

The slimes ate everything they could, including water and dirt along with the bodies, and multiplied in number and size, then started consuming everyone in the area, allies and enemies alike, and that was the horror that Loren had experienced.

“A giant wave full of melting bodies mixed with a lot of other things…”

“I don’t need an explanation. What will you do if I start imagining it?”

“I still have nightmares about it sometimes.”

“You’re making me lose my appet.i.te…Well, at this rate, today’s dinner will be disgusting rations…”

Since she rejected an explanation with such a disgusted face, Loren didn’t need to force one.

But when he looked around, hoping that the students would now feel some of the feelings of dangers that he was feeling, but they just had disgusted expressions on their faces and didn’t seem to feel any sense of danger at all.

Seeing that, Loren decided that it was hopeless, but then Lapis snuggled up next to him a lot closer than she needed to.

“Lapis?”

“It’s nothing special, but I just thought that this is probably the safest place right now.”

Loren could understand some of what Lapis meant by that, so he didn’t say anything and continued walking.

To those who didn’t understand the situation, it seemed like they were just flirting with each other, as Ain immediately looked away, while Cloud clicked his tongue and glared at Loren.

Al immediately lost interest in them and turned around, but Feim was looking at Lapis, who was hugging Loren from the side.

“Are you two in that sort of relationship?”

“What do you mean, that sort?”

“You know…”

“Feim, there may be a little bit of what you are expecting, but this is different from that.”

Feim turned red as Lapis interrupted her question in a flat voice.

“If you understand our current situation, you would understand that this is the safest position…but I guess it’s a bit difficult for you to that.”

“Safe?”

Since Lapis had used the word safe, it meant that they were currently in danger.

But Feim seemed like she didn’t feel the amount of danger that Lapis was currently sensing.

“Feim! Don’t mind them. Hurry up, we can’t move on because you’re the one with the lantern!”

Feim was still wondering about Lapis’ words but chased after the others when Cloud called her.

“Man, it’s full of slimes. What do we do about this?”

“It’s a lot of work, but let’s crush them one by one. It won’t hurt to lessen every possibility of danger.”

Agreeing to Ain’s suggestion, Cloud and Al started stomping and hitting the slimes on the floor and walls one by one.

Ain also started running his sword through the slimes’ cores, so their progress slowed down.

“They won’t last two seconds if something attacked us right now.”

Lapis, who was still clinging onto Loren, said it like it was someone else’s problem, but Loren’s eyes followed Ain and his party.

“Do you think there’s something that would attack with all these slimes around?”

“I wish there would be.”

Lapis lowered her tone and hung her head.

Slimes were creatures that consumed anything that they could.

In a situation where so many slimes existed, Lapis couldn’t imagine something other than slimes being there.

“Hey! I found something!”

Lapis’ thoughts disappeared as she heard Cloud’s loud voice.