V1C19

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And how does Tarō respond to my graciously offered helping hand?

“Yeah! That would be great! Can you imagine how embarrassing it’d be to go back to gramps’ house without having even caught enough to buy a meal, after running out like that? Yikes, right?”

By saying the most shameless thing he can with the straightest face. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be to be that old and still have to beg an eight year-old to teach you? Yikes, right?

But I have a good reason for offering to show him around. There are actually four places nearby that are crawling with slimes, but two of them are way too dangerous. Tarō would probably end up dead if he wandered into one of those.

Slimes like moist places, so you can find a lot of them around springs or in swamps. Unfortunately, monsters and other dangerous creatures like being able to slake their thirst too, so, if you go to the nearby spring, you’ll find yourself surrounded by monsters far too tough for a level zero to even shake a fist at. And don’t even get me started on the closest swamp. It’s full of venomous snakes.

Comparing bad to worse, the swamp wins, because you can’t even notice the snakes until they’re right up on you. At least at the spring, you can see the monsters from relatively far away.

As we make our way toward my preferred hunting ground, I wrap up my explanation about the two spots you definitely don’t want to go to, and Tarō looks taken aback. “Geeze! To think that stumbling into a trap like that was a possibility. I guess that must have been what gramps was trying so hard to tell me.”

Don’t you think it’s a little late to realize that gramps was trying to tell you something important, you bonehead?

Of the remaining two places, one is most popular with professional slime hunters. Obviously, I can’t take Tarō there. I don’t think he’d last an hour before causing trouble due to his ignorance.

That leaves me little choice but to take him to my preferred hunting ground—the one that only I know about.

*****************

I lead us past my usual shooting beans hunting spot and press on deep into the forest.

Tarō calls out, his face pale with fear. “Hold on a minute, kid! You sure we should be walking this deep into the woods? It’s super dark and seems like a good place for monsters to be lurking!”

Don’t be dramatic. It’s only a little dark. He talks a big game, but he’s a coward at heart, I guess. There’s nothing to worry about, since monsters can’t even enter these woods.

We walk for some time before there’s a break in the trees, and a clearing spreads out before us. This is it—my special spot.

In the center of the small clearing, water bubbles up endlessly in a small spring. The water here is particularly tasty, so I sometimes bring a jar with me just to carry some back home.

And in the area around the spring is what we came here to find.

Tarō perks up immediately. “What. The. Frick! Are those all slimes? There’s so many of them!”

Yep, there certainly are.

I take one of the sacks from my belt and hold it out to him. “You can have this. I don’t catch slimes much anymore, so I don’t need it. All you’ve got to do is hold the sack open, approach the slimes carefully, and swing it down on them from above. Do a good job at that, and you can capture a hundred slimes in one go.

“They’ll run away once you do it, but they’ll come back soon enough. As long as you bring a bunch of bags with you, you can catch a thousand in a day, easy. It might be awkward to carry that many slimes around all at once, but they’re light, so a boy like you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

With this method, you can catch a large number of slimes easily. There are only two things to keep in mind—you need to be sneaky, and you need to aim for the most densely packed area.

Tarō takes the bag from me and actually tries to do as he was told. He approaches the slimes carefully, takes aim, and then…

“Hiyah!” he yells as he slams down the bag over a dense clump of slimes. And then he yells some more, “Oh yeaaaaaah! Look, Marron! Look how many I got!”

He waves the bag around in front of me, laughing, much the way I expect a child would react to their first successful slime hunt.

Since he only has the one wide-mouthed bag I gave him for slime hunting, he moves the slimes over into the bag he brought himself and counts them.

“Frick, dude! That’s 113 slimes. You were right, Marron. I got more than a hundred in one go!” He sounds impressed, and that makes sense. He spent half a day on his own and only managed to catch twenty. He went from that to catching one hundred in a few minutes.

Tarō waits for the slimes to gather back up, catches some more, and repeats that process another three times. I don’t really feel the need to watch him each time, so I decide to do something else. Since I came all this way, there’s something I should grab before I go home.

*****************

After his fifth go around, Tarō wraps up counting his haul. “This is freaking awesome! I’ve got more than 500 in here. That’s less than the 1100 I’m supposed to get, but I can’t believe I managed to get so many in so little time. Thank you so much, Marron! You’re a real lifesaver!” he says, being surprisingly appreciative, before turning to look my way. “Huh? What the heck are you doing?”

I’m not surprised that he’s curious about what I’m up to, since I guess it does look a little strange. I’m crouched low and picking at the ground.

“Hm? Oh, this? I’m picking up some bubble fruits. They make it a lot easier to wash yourself before you get in the bath. Your hands are probably dirty from catching slimes. Here, take one, and go wash your hands. You’ll see what I mean.” I share one of my bubble fruits with him and go with him to the spring’s edge to wash my own hands.

I pluck the large, black seeds from the ripe bubble fruit and rub the remaining soft fruit between my palms. After dribbling on some water, bubbles froth up as I scrub. And, as I keep washing my hands with the foamy water, the strangest thing happens—the mud and dirt falls easily off my hands, leaving them perfectly clean.

Tarō imitates me and washes his own hands. “Are you kidding me? Looks how the dirt just comes off. I guess that’s one knowledge cheat that’s not going to help me anymore, huh?! What’s the point of knowing how to make soap when this exists?!”

No, seriously, I think I’ve been pretty clear about not wanting you to scream so close to my poor ears. I can feel them ringing.

I don’t understand what he was yelling about, but he looks depressed all of a sudden, all slouched over and everything.

I frown at him, but before I can say anything, a voice like a small bell tinkles melodiously by my still ringing ears.

“What’s this racket about? This is an important place for me and my kind. Could you quiet down a bit, please?”