Chapter 198: A Brilliant Young Boy (1/2)
Afternoon.
“And that’s the gist of it.” [Ryouma]
After thinking about it I decided to introduce Niki-kun to all of my different sli variants, as well as their good points. I also gave him a simple explanation of so of their evolutions.
The people had long left the cafeteria and my slis were lined up on the table. Niki-kun is looking at them with interest, so I think things went fairly well.
“So which sli are you interested in?” [Ryouma]
“Hmm… That would be the dicine sli! With it around, if I ever got really sick or hurt, I won’t have to go to a neighboring village to treat myself. It’s really convenient!” [Niki]
An unexpectedly acute reason…
“True. It can secrete a liquid that can serve as an antidote or as a disinfectant, so it can be quite useful for minor wounds. But it can also secrete poison and it feeds off of poison and dicine, so it’s hard to manage. In that regard, the heal sli is superior. It can use healing magic, but only needs water and sunlight for its food. I would recomnd this one instead.” [Ryouma]
“I see… But slis that can use magic are rare, so they must sell for a lot when sold, right? Sohow you have five different variants that can use magic, though.” [Niki]
“Yes. In my case, I raise my slis and evolve them. I don’t know how long it would take if I had to go look for them out in the wild. An acquaintance of mine that’s privy to monsters says that there’s barely anyone with five different variants of magic-casting slis.
I don’t know how much the magic-casting slis would actually go for, but there seem to be a lot of people among the nobles who want ‘things that other people don’t have’, so it should be fairly high. A ‘rare pet’ they can boast to others about that’s easy to raise.” [Ryouma]
“…I get the reason, but I don’t understand the feeling.” [Niki]
“You don’t have to worry about it so much. I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually. And even if you don’t, it’s not really a big deal.” [Ryouma]
It’s man’s nature to compare himself with others, so he’ll probably understand it in ti as he becos an adult and suffer for that. But if he is able to grow up without thinking about such things and not suffer because of it, then I think that’s fine too.
“Hmm… Ah, by the way, you ntioned that the slis will evolve differently depending on what they eat, right? So does that an that if you keep feeding slis fish they will turn into a fish sli? Is there even such a thing?” [Niki]
“There’s a lot of evolutionary paths for slis. In fact, there’s so many that not even the researchers are able to grasp all of them. It’s possible there just might be a fish sli out there. Of course, I don’t actually know for certain.
For example, my tal sli and iron sli went down different evolutionary paths according to whether they ate a soil with multiple tals in it or just iron. Perhaps just like the iron sli, there are other slis too that could be born after eating only one type of tal. Like for example, aluminum, lead, and tin. Maybe then a different sli could be born.” [Ryouma]
I went on to tell him that slis going down different evolutionary paths according to what they eat is really nothing more than a hypothesis of mine, and recently I’ve even begun to wonder that that might not actually be the case.
“Not the case?” [Niki]
“Yeah. But it’s not that it’s a completely wrong hypothesis. Rather, it’s not wholly accurate.” [Ryouma]
Based on my observations of the slis until now – especially, those I’ve been researching from the start like the sticky, poison, acid, and cleaner slis – I have been able to control which evolutionary path they take by controlling what they ate. That’s why I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my hypothesis in that food influences their evolution.
“But I feel like there’s still sothing missing… I think that other than the food they eat, there might be another condition that dictates what evolutionary path the sli goes down on.
As for why I’ve started to think that, that’s because of the weed slis – slis that evolved after going through weed diet – but so of these so-called weed slis have actually began eating poisonous herbs and dicinal herbs. Because of that I expect them to evolve into poisonous herb slis or dicinal herb slis, but…” [Ryouma]
“Huh? But doesn’t feeding them poisonous herbs lead to poison slis?” [Niki]
“—Exactly! That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. All this ti, the slis that ate poisonous herbs have turned into poison slis! In other words ‘doku (poison) sli’! I’m still waiting how this weed sli is going to turn out, but if it doesn’t evolve into a poison sli after eating the poisonous herbs, then there must be ‘sothing else’ that causes the slis to branch out between poison and poisonous herb.
There are so many different variety of slis that researchers can’t ‘fathom’ them all. There’s so many that it wouldn’t be strange if there were more specific evolutions like in the case of tal and iron slis… Besides, if you look at the acid sli, you’ll note that even though it feeds on bone, it didn’t turn into a bone sli. I’m guessing what happened in its case is that it increased its digestive powers in order to feed on the bones.” [Ryouma]
“…Onii-chan, you look like you’re really having fun. Even though you keep saying there’s a lot of things you don’t understand.” [Niki]
“No, it’s precisely because I don’t understand that I want to understand. And it’s that pursuit of understanding that’s fun. Observe, hypothesize, experint. From that discern where the hypothesis is wrong, make adjustnts, and try again. And if I can find the answer after doing that, that’s where the fun really lies.” [Ryouma]
“Oh.” [Niki]
Oops… Was that too hard to understand? I’d intended to simplify my explanations, but I ended up getting too into it…
Reviews
All reviews (0)