“…?!”
He can be so dense sometimes. I guess he didn’t see what that glance meant. I’m sure it wasn’t because I was in slime mode and didn’t have eyes, either.
Rigur, exasperated, jogged over to Gabil and whispered in his ear. “Sir Rimuru would like you and your father to speak to each other privately. If he doesn’t let you back into the family now, you won’t have another chance for quite some time to come, you realize? And having an estranged son accomplishing so many great things puts Sir Abil in a delicate position, too, no doubt…”
Nice one, Rigur. Way to perfectly understand what I meant, unlike Gabil here.
The step-by-step explanation finally shook the fog out of Gabil’s brain. He saluted me, still a little flustered, and accompanied Abil out of the chamber.
Next up were the assorted high orc tribal chiefs, each with a little entourage along for the ride. They must’ve trusted me enough to not bring guards in; the entourages were composed of children and grandchildren. With their food situation much improved, life had plainly gotten a lot easier for them. They were fathering children now, and these children were themselves high orcs, which surprised and elated them so much that they wanted to show them off to me.
Well, why wouldn’t they be high orcs? Apparently, that wasn’t as much of a given as I thought. Normally, they’d just be regular orcs; the mutation into high orc was seen as a one-and-done kind of thing, generation-wise. With birth rates going down among them, they’d be able to devote more time and effort into raising each one, I imagined. I wanted to be sure of that, so they’d become the next generation of manpower for us. Children really are treasures, thinking of it that way—a fact that remains true no matter what world, or species, you’re talking about.
I was a little concerned about how their names were being passed on, but apparently it was going well. I had given those names almost at random, but I guess they all sounded natural enough to them, so…great? It’s all about getting used to it, I suppose. Call someone anything long enough, and it’s bound to stick. They didn’t really need names anyway, so maybe I was over-worrying it.
Fully reassured, I saw off the high orcs and their entourage.
Next came the final group of the day—the treants, the other major players in the Forest of Jura Alliance after the lizardmen and the high orcs. Actually, the only individuals who made an appearance were the dryads Traya and Doreth, Treyni’s younger sisters. But hey, treants can’t move anyway. No helping that. Besides, the dryads acted as the treants’ representatives, so no issues there.
I had been visiting the treant colony on regular occasions; Zegion and Apito had been keeping it well protected, and we were receiving regular shipments of high-quality honey from them. Thus, the atmosphere at this audience was pretty casual.
“Charmed to see you again, Sir Rimuru. Congratulations on being appointed a demon lord.”
“We hope you will continue to provide us with your benevolent protection.”
They both smiled at me without hesitation. That saved me a lot of trouble.
So we filled each other in on recent happenings. For now, nothing was particularly amiss. The only real concern to report was the thinning out of magicules around the Forest of Jura, which made transport a tad inconvenient.
They both looked exactly like Treyni, and I could feel vast amounts of magical force in them, but apparently they were still affected by the lower magic concentrations around them. In fact, Doreth did look a little thinned out to me.
“Hmm… I didn’t think that far. That’s probably the magic barriers along the highways doing their work. Better think of something for that…”
“Oh, no, it’s not that serious a problem.”
“We sisters use magicules to form the magical bodies you see before you, and they are merely more susceptible to the barriers, is all.”
“But outside of that, Sir Rimuru…”
“We have important matters to discuss!!”
They didn’t see it as important. Very few creatures around Jura would be affected by magicule concentrations like that, dryads and treants among them. Thus, since they were the last people I was seeing today, I offered to continue our talk in a private room that night.
.........
......
…
The moment I entered the room, the two spoke in unison.
“So what we wanted to talk to you about…”
“We wish to serve the beautiful fairy queen just as our great elder sister does.”
You know, now that I think about it, I don’t like that “fairy queen” name. It was overblown, way too fancy for such a teensy little thing. And beautiful? I recalled a smiling Ramiris in my mind. No way. Not beautiful. We were picturing totally different things, I was pretty sure about that. If Ramiris was beautiful, you could describe Shizu, the base for my own looks, as a goddess. I’m used to it now, but even I was a bit taken by my own appearance in the past.
Benimaru and Shion, who joined me in here, seemed to agree with me—but Traya and Doreth paid them no mind.
“This is not just our opinion, but that of all the treants.”
“And we hear that, in this very town…”
“…Lady Ramiris has built her residence.”
“If so, we can only hope to be of some service to her…”
In their uniquely sequential manner of speaking, they begged me to let them serve Ramiris. If they had already requested a different master, that’d make it hard to ask them to serve me, I suppose. Besides, Treyni, their big sister, was already Ramiris’s. I had no real reason to be opposed.
“Um, you wanna ask her?”
“…What?!”
“Is that all right?”
The reaction was swift and forceful.
So off we went to Ramiris’s place, where we found Beretta silently working and Treyni falling over herself to cater to the fairy’s whims. Man, Beretta must have it pretty tough.
But as I thought that:
“Ahhh, Lady Ramiris, you are so ravishing…”
“As beautiful as always—and so elegant! The perfect
