Well, that was easy. I had some paper on hand, so I drew up the plans, adding my own style to it. This alone would normally take several months—surveying the site, calculating soil strength, that kind of thing. You could often spend a whole year on that kind of preliminary stuff. And here I was, drawing up blueprints that’d normally take several days at a computer on our equivalent of a cocktail napkin… Raphael’s support helped a lot even with detailed work like this. It honestly felt unfair to me, but I had no plans to give it up, so…
Now I had my plans. Next I’d have to discuss them with Gobkyuu— But before that, while I was here in Blumund, I may as well stop at the Free Guild. I could forward the plans over to Gobkyuu in the meantime; once I was free, I could assemble a team of craftsmen on-site to get down to business.
“Ranga, you there?”
“Here, my master!”
He popped his head out from my shadow. With things settled over in Farmus, everyone except Diablo was back home, with Ranga lurking in my shadow like it was his personal den. I gave him the arena blueprints I had just whipped up.
“Take these to a craftsman in town named Gobkyuu. And can you tell him we’ll meet up at the west gate once I’m free?”
“Very well. But are you not returning, Sir Rimuru?”
“No. I wanna see Fuze first, while I’m here.”
“Will you not need a bodyguard?”
He looked a bit nervous, tail down. But I wasn’t concerned. I am a demon lord, and I had Absolute Defense activated. If I ran into an attack that could penetrate that barrier, I wouldn’t be safe anywhere in this world.
“I’ll be fine! We’ll just chat a bit, and then I’ll head back. But I should be concerned about Mjöllmile, huh? He’s gotten kind of tangled up with this one bottom-feeder noble, and there’s no telling what the fallout from that is gonna be like.”
“Ah, that vulgar man from before? Would you like me to snuff him out?”
Please, no. Doing that in a foreign city is how you trigger a diplomatic crisis.
“You know, I think you’ve been hanging out with Shion too long. You’re getting too aggressive for your own good. I think you need to learn some more common sense.”
“I—I do?!”
Ranga looked shocked. He must not have realized it.
“Look, are you really sticking to what I told you back at the last fight? You weren’t going too far, were you?”
“I—I would never do that, my master!”
He looked uncertain, and I was starting to get suspicious. Gobta and Gabil, I recalled, would only say things like “Oh, uh, he was fine!” and “Y-yes, having Sir Ranga at our side was a tremendous boon!” when I asked for a report. It sounded fishy, but I never followed up on it. It just seemed like an invitation for further headaches, and I was leaving that to Diablo anyway. If he had no complaint, I just assumed all was well.
Maybe I was just kicking the issue down the road…but ah well. If there really was a problem, I would’ve heard about it. Better trust in Ranga for now and make sure Shion doesn’t poison his mind any further.
I patted Ranga on the neck. “Um, Ranga, buddy? Seriously, don’t do anything crazy, okay?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he replied, solemnly nodding.
“Good. Now go relay that message, okay? And if anyone’s free on our security team, I’d like them to guard Mjöllmile for me. Check on that, could you?”
“Yes, Master!”
He disappeared back into my shadow.
So now Mjöllmile was under guard, albeit behind the scenes so he didn’t pick up on it. I didn’t know who would come to guard him, but there weren’t that many people on the security staff I’d trust with solo duty. The new guys were out of the question, so it’d have to be at least a seasoned sergeant-class officer. Here, sergeant refers to a sort of team leader, the head of the groups of five that the force usually operated in. They were usually around a B rank in adventurer parlance, more than qualified enough for bodyguard duty.
I could personally keep tabs on Mjöllmile’s whereabouts once he was in my town, but in the meantime, if something happened to him over here, I’d find out immediately. Thus, I felt safe in saying hello to Fuze for a little bit.
So I headed into the Free Guild’s headquarters in Blumund. Last time I was here, I made more of a splash than I meant to, so I was worried about a repeat—but despite a few threatening glares, I made it to the reception counter without a peep. I was wearing that mask the previous time, wasn’t I? Maybe nobody recognized me. But hey, if they wouldn’t let me see Fuze, I could just leave an invitation letter for him and head back home.
“Hey-yo, I’m Rimuru, but can you take me to see Guild Master Fuze? Oh, here’s my ID.”
I burped the card out of my Stomach and handed it to the woman at the counter. “That little girl’s an adventurer?!” I heard someone exclaim behind me, but no matter. I was used to it.
The lady remembered me, at least. “Ah yes, Rimuru! It’s good to see you here again. How have you been?”
“Mm? Oh, great, great! You’re looking quite well, yourself…”
“I sure am! And I see you’ve passed the examination over at HQ and made it to B-plus, huh? Well done! You have my respect!”
“Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I? I really wanted to score an A, but I got kind of busy, so…”
…Or really, it was too much of a pain in the ass to bother. Being ranked B or higher gave you a lot of perks, but it also came with more responsibilities. B-plus was enough drudgery to deal with, so I figured I could earn my promotion only when I really needed to. Not like it was a
