[Slimy Slime] Chapter 39: Slimetopia!

Urghh… you know… designing a city is a lot of work.

Now, what I wanted to, was just thrown down the absolutely basic minimums of huts and houses, and then deal with all the rest later. After all, who knows when more goblins could be coming! Just throw down a bunch of houses for them to rest in and there you go.

Sandra had almost smacked me and that was saying a lot.

“King Slime…” Sandra had said, heaving great amounts of air. “Even if you only keep goblins as citizens forever… that would be incredibly…” Sandra struggled but finally couldn’t manage to stop herself. “Stupid.”

She looked like she had just bit into a lemon.

“Alright alright. I know when I’m beat. Why though?”

Sandra sighed, seemingly in relief and exasperation.

“Roads, for starters! You need to have roads connecting to your future gates. How else is your army going to efficiently move? And you’ll need barracks and trainings yards. Even though goblins are monsters, they still have brains. They can be trained, maybe even taught basic combat skills in the future. You’ll also need a sewer system and proper ways to relieve that. So a latrine perhaps or…”

And on and on and on it went. Turns out, there’s a reason for damn near everything in a city! Even if I was a king, if there was ever going to be anything even approaching law and order, I’d need at minimum a city or town hall to deal with the minutiae of the city. Already, it was making my head spin. But still… it wasn’t like I needed to design a palace. A bare outline would suffice. Unlike in any other city, the houses could be unmade and remade, moved, easily expanded upon. I was mentally patting myself on the back. Dungeons are stupid! Giant holes in the ground? Labyrinths of floors? Ha! Why do all that when you can’t just make a kingdom?! Well… a city. Well… part of a city. There was only a 15 mile radius for the [Dungeon Core] after all.

By the end of it, I unmade all the houses I’d just made. It strangely made me feel bad. I mean, I’d just given Michael and Sandra a house and now I’m taking it away. Absolutely shameful. I’d have to make it up to them somehow. I’d make sure to make their house extra fancy this time around.

Next… came the roads. That was both easy and annoying. Roads signified direction. They were a firm decider of where the entrances and exits of my City would be. In time, all the trees and the land around here would be modified. The cave I had would be my ‘basement’, while a castle was built on top of it. The castle would be large enough to ‘meet up’ with the surrounding land in a way so while it’d be on a hill, it wouldn’t feel or look too out of place. I personally approved of that design very much! It’d be slightly raised, allowing everyone to see it.

Now that I wasn’t ignoring my egotistic, childhood dreams… of course I was going to make a castle! What kind of king didn’t want or have a castle?! I had to deal with all the bad, I should get all the good too right?!

Still, that put things in a pickle. I very much could have a road leading directly from my castle to the four gates. I vaguely remembered that wasn’t even too uncommon. But it had a strong advantage and negative. The advantage was streamlined access, the negative was it worked both ways. An invading army would just need to walk straight up my roads without dealing with anything else. I knew some castles were kind of built on the ‘edge’ of cities, such as against a river or the back of a mountain or cliff or something. But it just felt… wrong. Strategically sound, but without that strategic element… a castle should be in the middle.

Sandra had mulled over the castle placement a little.

“One problem is size of the land. A castle is large and the area around it, larger still. If you put it down in the middle, the whole area has to get much wider to accommodate it.”

She drew a line on our outline and then another and I grimaced. It would practically double the distance between one side of the city to the other. Still… I’d just have to make it worth it! Somehow.

Next came the placement of houses, which was annoying, because I was quickly realized I was going to need a specific ‘area’ for it. That wasn’t so bad. It was the distances involved. All of my citizens were currently my army. I couldn’t have them be literal miles away right now. It wouldn’t be that bad to start but everything I put down now would be important. And then came the next part.

“You’ll also need an industrial area.” Sandra said and I looked up, blinking, before looking around us. Worriedly, I called out.

“Sandra…. We’re in a forest.”

She snorted, lightly rocking Tilia with one arm.

“Yeah but what about afterward? What do you plan to do after winning this war?”

Ah.

“Honestly… I planned on traveling.”

Sandra looked at me with horror in her eyes. It was almost somewhat amusing, considering I’d been laying on the table, drawing part of the city outline with a spirit hand.

“What? You’re leaving?”

I frowned but nodded. Well, used my slime to frown.

“But… why?” Sandra asked.

And for the very first time… I felt struck dumb. My plan had always been to win this war, get strong, kill that damn wolf at some point, kill the person coming in a year, and then… leave. Go out into the world. Become stronger. Forge myself through battles and all that.

And I could still do all of that but… why? I would never be content sitting and doing nothing in some Castle, doing nothing but pouring over laws or some nonsense. Hell no, that was the way of the stupid! That was what delegation was for. If I have responsibilities, just find good people to do it for you! Then I could travel and adventure to my heart’s content!

But… why? Specifically… why do I need to leave to do that?! What would the human world ever offer me, a quick death? Why did I need to look for potentially life rending danger and adventures, when the deeper, darker part of the forest was literally right over there? I could literally have my cake and eat it too!

I could build up a kingdom, go deeper into the forest, come back and deal with all the kingdom bullshit, and rinse and repeat. Eventually, I’d reach the end of that ‘difficulty’ and might need to really go out… but that wouldn’t be for a long while. Hell, by that time, the difficulty might be coming to me… after all, my evolutions would mark me as worse than a plague, apparently, to a kingdom and that was only at Tier, what, 3? [Prince Slime] almost certainly evolved into [King Slime]. At that point, the whole world would be gunning for me, if the description of [Prince Slime] was accurate. It had to be. How bad does an evolution line have to be to specifically mention that it’s actively hunted down out of fear of what it could become?

But I shook all that off. Sandra needed an answer. And I had one.

“Honestly… you’re probably right. I’ll never be content sitting on my slimy behind but that doesn’t mean I need to build up and abandon my kingdom. I don’t know… it just… always felt like I would survive for a year, rip that damn [Dungeon Core] out of the ground, and leave and go on a journey. Huh.”

I looked over to my [Dungeon Core], or more specifically, the cave I put it in. I never expected… this would be where I put down roots. Or that this would be the permeant location I left it at. How strange to think about.

I shook my head.

“Anyway! The future is the future, we need to finish this!”

It took time, a lot more time, and I could tell this wasn’t going to be a one day affair. Worse, is that there was no possible way I had the mana for this. Already, I’d gotten plenty from Krrrgg, Michael and Sandra, and the few dozen goblins. I was practically salivating at the idea of a whole kingdom’s worth of people giving me mana.

A quick calculation. Say I somehow, one day, reach the same heights as the [Goblin Chief]

100,000 citizens. Half their mana a day so, I don’t know, 50? Mana was certainly not that quick to come back and I knew I had more, and more regen, then most.

Already, that was 5 million mana a day. Within 100 days, I’d have 5 Billion.

And if I got more people? With higher stats, higher evolutions, higher mana caps?

A wide slimy smile grew on my face… and it was most certainly slimy.