[Slimy Slime] Chapter 61: A Great Day

Today was an absolutely great day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the goblins were all passed out from exhaustion, the yells of the many mind controlled goblins wasn’t too loud, and my slimy self could finally actually move.

I slimed myself underneath my door, an odd but interesting feeling. It was like ducking your head except, you know, your whole body. Krrrgg was still sleeping behind me and she deserved some rest… especially after last night. It’d be good to have her relax.

I made my way to what I was honestly going to start calling Sandra’s workshop. The look of my city had changed a few times but there was ultimately an outer wall and then in the middle here, my courtyard. In said courtyard, with walls of stone and doors of stone, was Michael and Sandra’s house. It was a bit closer than I’d like all things considered but we could always move it later. Outside it was where Sandra either held lessons or, like she was doing now, sitting at that table I’d first made and sketching out blueprints and more. She was working hard today, no Michael or Tilia in sight. I assumed they were just inside.

“Hey Sandra!” I called out, a slimy smile on my face. Well, kinda. Eyes were easy ish, a smile was harder. Dang slime control.

Sandra smirked at me and I got a bad feeling.

“Enjoy the celebration yesterday?” She asked.

“Uh, a little- no. Honestly, no, I can’t lie to you. There was a… there was a whole god dang public orgy! I’ve seen things my slimy eyes will never unsee. Horrors beyond the mortal man. We may have actually lost a goblin or two if I wasn’t there… spears should never be used like that, even if it was only the blunt end. The horrors… the horrors…”

Sandra chuckled but it was a bit stiff.

“Better get used to it.” She said.

“S-Surely it’ll get better when they all start evolving right? Surely!”

Sandra just smiled weakly and changed subjects.

“And after the celebration?”

“Hmm? Oh, you know, went to sleep. Was really tired. Went directly to bed even! Had to be up bright and early today after all and besides, I need all the bed rest I can get!”

“Mhm. Directly to bed you say?”

“Y-Yes. Directly to bed.”

“Mhm. And, King Slime, where exactly is your Captain, the leader of our military, Krrrgg?”

“...” Damn it, think damn you, think! “I’m sure she… is with the other goblins of course!”

“Mmmhm. Did you know that a wooden door is not especially soundproof? And that caves can echo?”

If my Slimy body could turn red, I was positive it would be doing so. She couldn’t have really heard… right? Right?!

She smiled at me like a cat that had caught a canary and I felt my slime sinking in on myself.

“How does a slime even-”

“Anyway! So, uh, what are you doing anyway huh?!”

Sandra just chuckled.

“I’m working on blueprints for… well… everything. The more I explore the [Dungeon Menu] the more amazed I become. There’s so many different forms of buildings, and so many different buildings. Actually, King Slime.” Sandra’s voice turned serious and I shaped up.

“I am not… a professional [Architect]. Getting the class only requires you having had “Build something” and that even includes a sand castle. If it wasn’t for the [Dungeon]... I should have talked to you more about this before becoming one. I’m going to need to learn how to actually build housing. That means I need someone to teach me. A lot of someone’s, even.”

I frowned lightly.

“Are you saying you need me to hire senior architects?”

“Or I need to go to the capital and be taught underneath someone but…”

Yeah, I could see a few issues with that right away. Namely, she wouldn’t leave for a possibly multi-year apprenticeship without her husband and daughter. And that would mean moving her whole family away. Well… huh.

“There’s monster kingdoms… pretty far away. I don’t know how humans would feel about a society of goblins run by a slime… but I do know how they’ll feel about a [Dungeon Core]. We’ll figure something out but it might not be a while. Are there any books or something you could learn from instead?”

Sandra waved her hand a little.

“The class itself, especially as a [Dungeon] variant, will help. There also might be some books in the dungeon menu on it but… I’ll still need a teacher, someone with a decade of experience at least.”

“I’ll work on it… but it might not be soon. I’ve already seen what you can do. I leave the building of the city in your hands. For now though, well, we need to deal with this whole war business. Is the horrible, terrible, disgusting meat and people grinder still working flawlessly?”

“Yeah, almost too well and we’re already running into an issue.” Sandra said, suddenly looking exhausted. “I’m doing too much.”

“Huh?”

“I’m teaching the goblins Common, designing the city, and organizing goblins on who to collect the hearts and store them and now I’m even directing how many go to which goblin. And goblins are… greedy. That’s been a whole thing but I’ve figured it out with the help of Krrrgg and the [Hob-Goblins] while you were out.”

“I was only for like a day or something…”

“We need people. Teachers, assistants, an actual mayor, builders, woodworkers, craftsman, and more.”

I was floored.

“Isn’t it too soon to be thinking about all that? And well, what about the goblins themselves? They’re a bit rough not but after they evolve-”

“They will still be fresh minds without years and years of experience, and having been taught nothing at all. It would take thousands of years to reach the same level of civilization as others without having experienced hands to help organize it and help push it forward. You’re lacking an educated work force.”

Sandra said, offering no rebuttal. I had no idea what to think. I’d never considered that I’d needed, well, people. A lot more people apparently. I already thought we were kinda pushing it, not exactly in terms of population, but in just… doing so much so soon. But apparently I wasn’t thinking ‘now’ enough.

I looked at Sandra, really looked at her. She was doing so much for me. Michael wasn’t slacking off either. They both worked tirelessly to make sure this whole nonsensical kingdom worked. Honestly… I don’t even remember how much I’d told them and what I haven’t. I knew I’d told them I was kinda stuck here… I think? I definitely hadn’t told them I used to be human.

Michael had worked tirelessly to chop down every tree he could, spending nearly every waking moment doing so, so we could see the enemy. Without that… building the damn people grinder thing wouldn’t have even been possible. Hell, seeing the goblins before they just showed up would have been difficult enough. And it wasn’t like we knew which direction they were coming in from.

And Sandra, she had switched to [Architect]. Michael had told she originally planned on being a [Seamtress]. Classes were serious things, partially deciding your whole future. You could take others but it’d be slow going, and slower if you made another switch later. You were essentially locked in, maybe not for life, but a lot harder than anyone on earth would have been. That big of a change… it wasn’t even just me or the situation.

Michael had seen the destruction, the death, the loss of his village and had confided that not switching to a [Fighter] was hard, but he didn’t want their daughter to grow up fatherless.

Sandra though… she had been clear what she wanted from the beginning. Somewhere powerful for Tilia to grow up. Somewhere safe. She still considered that to be Kingdom which was… ridiculous at times. That she actually believed in me to that extent, in what I was doing, that I could really build a city, a Kingdom, am Empire. The [Dungeon Core] helped a lot in proving it was possible but still, it was an incredible risk and gamble to side with a monster and a goblin. But Sandra… Sandra was exactly the type of women to do anything for her daughter. Most people thought they were, and theoretically were, but Sandra was the type to not need the push. She didn’t need an ultimatum or a mass tragedy to change her whole life, she would just do it. Nothing was stopping them from going to the capital, giving all this up, returning to normal lives.

Except Sandra, and Michael, thought I was better the choice for their daughter. That… that was a lot of trust, effort, and loyalty. More than I deserved, for sure, for only being a slime with a little bit of power.

“Sandra… can you get Michael? I’ll go wake up Krrrgg. There’s some stuff I need to share with you all.”

Sandra blinked but nodded.

She left not long afterwards and I went to go wake up a sleeping [Hob-Goblin Captain].

It was time to share the truth with everyone.

*****

“...and that’s how it all happened.”

I had started explaining my journey and then hadn’t stopped. It had taken so much longer than I expected. I felt like it could take up nearly 10 chapters of a book or something. Phew. It’s a good thing I didn’t just drop all that onto someone the moment I met them, it would be a whole lot of infodump right at the start and no one liked that. Although it might make a lot of future things easier and more easy to understand. Not to mention that it was a pretty fascinating journey and I got to talk about meeting such interesting characters and options and abilities. Hmm…

Anyway, I had talked and talked. Going all the way from my life on earth as a human, the Gods and Goddesses, my choices, to my first few days as a Slime nearly getting eaten. Then… then I’d gone over the disconnect area of time, where I’d spent months just by myself, trying to train up and learn. And then I’d met Krrrgg and all hell had broken loose with the Alpha wolf and stuff.

My sense of time got really, really blurry, but somehow, here we were, nearly half a year having passed, fighting a goblin war. Ta-da.

“Wow.” Michael said, eyes wide open. “I can’t believe it.”

“I knew it.” Sandra said, causing all eyes to turn to her.

“Even for a [Dungeon Master]... who ever heard of a Slime that could talk? Well… an [Acid Slime] that could talk. I knew you had to have been human before! But wow. That’s amazing that you can do all that and went through all of that. You even chose to be a slime!”

“Well… some of the future evolutionary options sounded really good! I couldn’t help it. Could you imagine me one day really becoming a [Slime King]?”

“The world is going to try to kill you.” Michael said, deadpan.

“Well, not like they wouldn’t anyway. Maybe I can find a stand in or something… or just become too powerful to kill. Either or.”

“So,” Krrrgg said and for fairly obvious reasons, I very much cared about her opinion right now. That single word had me anxious. “Your goal is to become a God?”

Michael and Sandra both blinked, but I nodded, uh, bobbed up and down.

“Absolutely. It’s not the same way [Heroes] do it, though some prior analogies of mine were pretty terrible. Basically… [Heroes] become Gods because they overcame self. They became legends and myths. They are a singular kind of rise. But [Crowned Monsters], also known apparently as [Dungeon Masters] or [Demon King]’s originally, have to overcome all others. I don’t just need to be strong… although I do need to be that… I have to be the undisputed ruler for starters, or at least that much. I need to become an Emperor.

“That alone won’t really be enough but… if there was any kind of ‘set’ way to do it, the Gods and Goddesses would have already made it happen.”

“I still can’t believe there are Gods above our Gods.” Michael said.

“Why not? Do you really know the current hierarchy of Gods on the planet here? There might already be lesser and higher gods.” I said.

Michael looked thoughtful at that.

Suddenly, Krrrgg saluted with her fist against her chest in military salute.

“I will help you become a God my King!” She announced with fervor.

“Uh… well… not to burst that bubble but… apparently the quickest person to have ever done it took around 600 years. The ‘average’ is around 3000 but the pool of people is so small that the ‘average’ might mean nothing at all.”

““3000 years…”” Michael and Sandra said, trailing off.

“Well! There’s no reason to worry about it. One step at a time right? It’s all about the journey, not the destination! And right now, well, we just need to deal with the current War and then uh…” My mind blanked. “We’ll cross that road when we come to it!”

Sandra sighed but nodded. She clearly didn’t think much of my ‘wait and see’ attitude to things. Michael just shot me a thumbs up and Krrrgg a large gremlin like smile. She seemed more than a little excited to help me reach Godhood. Well, I suppose she would be. She wasn’t exactly servile but she definitely reminded me of a knight at times.

“For now… let’s just enjoy today. It’s a good one and who knows what the [Goblin Chief] has in store next! Hopefully, we’ll be ready.”