V1C3

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

I take a fresh, hard look at this boy, thinking all the while about how rude he is. I haven’t really looked at him this whole time, since I’ve been hoping not to get involved at all. But now, actually doing so, I notice a couple of things.

The first thing is that this guy’s got black hair. Pretty much everyone in the village, including me, has brown hair. I’ve seen people with blond or even silver hair before, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone with black hair.

The second thing I notice is that his clothes look really, really soft – nothing at all like the stiff ol’ clothes I’ve got on. He’s wearing a gray top and a matching gray bottom. They look super easy to move around in.

Right now he looks completely lost in thought, muttering to himself again. But suddenly…

“Holy crap! Is that a slime?!” he yells out of nowhere, picks up a stick from the ground, and lunges forward. He swings the stick down wildly and squashes the slime.

“Ahhh! What the heck are you doing?! Why would you do that to a slime!?”

“Hm? This is like a old-school, Showa-era RPG, right? The Cypress Stick is the first weapon, and slimes are the first enemies. Even the mightiest heroes start off farming slimes. My dad used to talk about it all the time.”

I don’t know what an ‘old-school, Showa-era RPG’ is, but it looks like this guy’s dad is a moron too. Seriously, killing slimes?

I glare at the boy, truly astounded.

He shifts uneasily. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Is this one of those RPGs where the slimes are all like, ‘I’m not a bad slime!’, or they’re all good guys or whatever?”

“Are you… are you stupid? Slimes aren’t good or bad. Everybody knows that. My dad used to call them a precious natural resource. You can make good money selling them to the Slime Merchant in town – one copper for one slime.”

“Slimes are a ‘natural resource’? Like, how? How do you use them?”

“You’re really going to make me say it? I might be little, but I am still a girl.”

This guy really, seriously, truly doesn’t know anything, does he? There are things that even kids shy away from saying, but I guess I have no choice.

I clear my throat. “Slimes will eat anything. So we catch ‘em and put ‘em in the toilet. Please don’t make me spell the rest out.”

They have other uses too, of course. For example, butchers love them apparently. They put them in a little hole and feed them the parts of the animal we can’t eat, like tendons and bones and stuff. Slimes don’t care – they happily eat it all.

“That’s it? You scared me! I thought that, like, something horrible would happen because I killed one.”

“Well, it is horrible, isn’t it? A horrible waste. You can use ‘em in your toilet, or you can sell ‘em. Plus, there are people who make their living capturing slimes. Those people would be pretty annoyed to see you killing ‘em for no reason.”

I don’t think anyone would get too mad over one slime being killed since there are so many, but he would definitely get in trouble if he was just killing them all willy-nilly near somebody trying to catch them.

It’s obvious to everyone in this town that slimes are a useful resource. This guy’s going to cause problems if he doesn’t get his wrongheadedness sorted out.

The boy looks agitated. “Alright then, so what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to level up?!”

There he goes yelling again.

I don’t have an answer for you, bud. More importantly, why are you bringing up levels again, after I specifically told you not to? Do you need to actually get hurt by your stupidity before you learn?

“Look, bud. Did you forget what I told you already? You can’t say that in front of other people. If you do and you wind up dead, that’s on you. Also, no matter how many slimes you kill, that will never get any higher.”

“Oh, that reminds me, why is it such a big deal to talk about ‘levels’? I followed you out here in the first place because I wanted to ask you that. And why can’t I raise my level by killing slimes?”

Is this guy for real? He’s not even trying to be quiet, and he won’t stop saying it. What if someone hears him?

“I’m not here to teach you things. Just burn it into your brain that that word is taboo, not allowed, no good! Also, it wouldn’t hurt you to actually think sometimes. Like, the Shooting Bean that I just killed is a monster too, right? And I’ve been hunting ‘em every day for more than three years now, but that hasn’t gotten any higher. So it would seem like killing weak monsters doesn’t have any effect on that.”

“Ugh, this game really is impossible! How am I supposed to take down a strong monster without any equipment? Worse, apparently I’m not allowed to even talk about levels. And, you know what, what’s even up with this rude, little brat? Aren’t the kids in the tutorial town supposed to be nice? Nope, nope, nope – I wanna go back to Japan!”

Did he really just call me a rude, little brat? What a rude, little boy. Isn’t he the one who decided to follow me in the first place? And why does he expect me to just waste my day answering all of his questions?

Hold on a second. Did he just say what I think he said? Did he just say ‘Japan’?

Maybe, just maybe, this could be a good chance to make a bit of extra coin.

T/N: A ‘Cypress Stick’ is traditionally the weakest weapon in Dragon Quest. Also, in Dragon Quest, friendly slimes greet the player with “I’m not a bad slime!”