The next day.
I showed my face in the store first thing in the morning. Seeing that everything was going smoothly in the store, I went to the abandoned mine.
I started making waterproof cloths today too, and as a result, I ended up idle. I tried of thinking what to do while waiting for the cloths to dry last night, but I fell sleep without coming to a conclusion. If this were back at my old word, I would read a light novel here or play so gas, but alas…
I got 45 cloths today just like yesterday. I’m already done with my part. It’s probably because I’ve started to get used to it that everything went a lot faster than before. What to do… I’ve already trained with the slis, so…
After thinking for a while, I gathered the scavenger slis and had them fuse into a king scavenger, then I fought it.
The king scavenger sli’s current skill set is as follows:
Disease Resist Lv7
Poison Resist Lv7
Lead Belly Lv8
Clean Lv8
Deodorize Lv8
Produce Deodorizing Liquid Lv6
Stench Lv8
Decompose Lv7
Physical Attack Resist Lv5
Enlarge Lv5
Minimize Lv6
Jump Lv3
Overeat Lv4
Martial Arts Lv2
It might be because the scavengers have their own Physical Attack Resist now that the king scavenger sli’s Physical Attack Resist went up one level. After all, the scavenger slis only had one level in martial arts, but the king scavenger has two.
If you compare its skill set to a single scavenger, its skill levels are higher across the board. I don’t have any data, but it’s possible that each scavenger slis pool together their experience regarding each skill sohow.
Speaking of which, because of the king scavenger sli’s Physical Attack Resist, it was really hard to make my attacks affect it during our duel. It’s body is a lot more flexible, so it’s really good at parrying attacks. It’s still only a beginner when it cos to martial arts, but it’s fairly accomplished when it cos to defense.
As proof, the king scavenger sli can endure my attacks even when I attack it seriously. Of course, I refrain from hitting its nucleus just to be safe. That being said, it still takes a lot of effort to penetrate it.
But the problem is that it doesn’t really have much attacking power. It can make itself bigger through Enlarge, making it better for suppressing others, but how much strength does a sli actually have? Not much if at all. If I wanted to I could easily brush it off. It’s attacks don’t have much power behind them either.
There’s not much we can do about that, though, so I had it extend a part of its body as tentacles and use them as whips. The king scavenger can then use those whips to stick close to the enemy and pin him down. I also taught it a couple of throws that made use of the enemy’s montum and the king scavenger sli’s flexibility and Enlarge skill.
Like this it could parry the enemy’s attack to protect itself from harm, then attack the enemy by throwing him. After that it can pin the enemy down. This is the strategy I thought up for the king scavenger sli.
That took a lot longer than expected, but the cloths still aren’t done drying, so I thought of walking the slis for a bit.
My mind made up, I gathered the slis. But just as were about to leave, one of the slis I had contracted suddenly started acting strange. I could tell its status to so extent thanks to the effects of our contract, but I don’t know the specifics.
What’s going on?
Hurriedly, I ran to where the sli was. It was the sli that I captured for the tal sli evolution experints. Its body kept on quivering, but it didn’t seem to be feeling bad.
Could it be?
“Is it evolving!?” [Ryouma]
It should still take a bit longer, but I can’t think of any other reason for this.
After observing the sli for a while, the sli eventually stopped. I could feel a faint trace of mana emanating from it.
It seems to be releasing mana. But it doesn’t seem to be casting a spell… Is it sucking the mana? It’s releasing mana and then sucking it back in? What for? Does it need that to evolve? Or is it just doing it involuntarily?
After releasing and sucking mana back in several tis, it’s color started to change. In the end, it turned into a silvery-white sli. Was the evolution successful? It’s status is… normal, for now. Nothing else seems to be amiss. Only, if this were really a tal sli, it should have a duller color. But this color is a polished silver.
I used Monster Appraisal, and this ca out.
Species: Iron Sli
Skills:
Harden Lv3
Physical Attack Resist Lv2
Jump Lv1
Digest Lv3
Absorb Lv3
Split Lv2
It seems to be called Iron Sli. It has the sa skills as a tal sli, but its Harden skill is one level higher than the tal sli. It probably ended up like this because I fed it iron, but…
“Don’t tal slis also eat iron?” [Ryouma]
They eat the sa thing, so why did they evolve differently?
“Iron is tetsu (iron), and tal is kinzoku (tal)… !!” [Ryouma]
I took out the stones I used as feed for the tals slis and used Identify on it.
Stone (Red Soil)
Soil from the mine that had been hardened with earth magic. Contains the following tals: Iron Oxide, Aluminum Oxide
“I knew it! …The red soil also has aluminum!” [Ryouma]
I rembered sothing I talked about with a kouhai of mine back at my part ti at a road construction job.
“tal slis don’t eat just iron, they also eat aluminum. There might be other tals too…” [Ryouma]
I extracted aluminum and iron from the brick soil using alchemy, then I called over the iron sli and the tal sli.
When I did, the iron sli ate only the iron, but the tal sli ate both the iron and the aluminum.
I called over the tal sli and rubbed it.
“Are you basically omnivorous when it cos to tals? In that case, since the iron sli’s body is made of iron, what about your body? Is your body so kind of iron-aluminum alloy?” [Ryouma]
I asked the tal sli that, but no answer ca.
“Well, with this I’ve at least figured out the evolution condition. It’s also my first ti seeing a sli evolve in person.” [Ryouma]
Until now, for so reason, the slis have been evolving while I was asleep [1]. So long as I feed the slis, they’re bound to evolve within half a year, but there’s not telling when they’ll evolve and watching them 24/7 is a pain.
“Oh, speaking of which, I found out a few more things about Identify.” [Ryouma]
Apparently, the neutral spell, Identify, is like a search engine in how one gets info from it. If you don’t know what it is you’re looking for, the only thing that will co up is the na, but even if you want more specific information, only simple stuff co up.
But when I used Identify on the ceiling while cleaning the latrine pits, the word ‘Sterilization’ ca up. And even the word ‘virus’ ca up when I used Identify on the filth. So the results for Identify are probably has so relation with the knowledge of the user. The information probably changes depending on how much the user knows.
After trying it for a few tis, I know now that I can get so more specific answers by asking more specific questions.
For example, the weight of this stone (hardened soil) and the ratio of its aluminum and iron content.
Stone 503.9g (Red Soil)
Soil from the mine that had been hardened with earth magic.
tal Content: Iron Oxide 4.2% 21.1638g, Aluminum Oxide 5.1% 25.6989g
And the result is sothing this specific. This too is because my questions were a lot more specific. I can use this! …Or can I?
It’s great that I can get more specific information, but I don’t actually have much need for it right now… Maybe I could weight the next iron ingots I bring to Serge’s in grams?
Or maybe I could get a common iron ingot from Serge and use that as reference to imitate? It’s worth doing if it ans my iron ingots don’t stand out as much, but as it stands, identify doesn’t really have much use right now… I can also just keep doing things as I’ve done them until now.
After that, while waiting for the waterproof cloths to dry, I made 500g aluminum-iron ingots with 80% purity as practice.
After the waterproof cloths finished drying, I gathered them and brought them to Serge, then I took the 300 cloths he prepared for and went back to the inn… Or so I was planning, but it was an odd ti, so I postponed going back to the inn, and went to the store instead. I’ll go ho after checking up on the store.
The store was as popular as usual. In fact, isn’t there more people than normal?
I entered through the employee-only door and went to the break room, but there wasn’t a soul there. Could they all be working?
Thinking that, I went to the store itself and there I saw one of the three working girls, Fina-san.
“Good afternoon, Boss.” [Fina]
“Good afternoon. No one was in the break room, so I thought everyone was busy.” [Ryouma]
“We’re not exactly free either, but it’s not that busy. There are a lot of people, after all. We’ve more or less figured out when people like to co the most, so we usually work together to deal with them.” [Fina]
Oh. It seems everyone’s already gotten used to the work here while I was gone. Looks like I worried for nothing.
As I was thinking that, it suddenly hit .
“Ah…” [Ryouma]
“Is sothing the matter?” [Fina]
“The cleaner slis are ready to split.” [Ryouma]
“Huh?” [Fina]
To the cleaner slis, this whole laundry business is nothing more than an eat-all-you-can-eat buffet. After a few days of it, it’s only natural that they’d be able to split.
“The cleaner slis will increase. Our laundry agency will beco even more efficient.” [Ryouma]
“Really! That’s amazing!” [Fina]
“What’s amazing are the slis. I’ll be here for a while, but you don’t have to mind .” [Ryouma]
“Okay!”
As Fina-san said that, she took a nearby laundry that had already been cleaned and carried it.
Now then…
I had the cleaner slis split, then I contracted them. The cleaner slis currently number 54. Although cleaner slis split less frequently than other slis, there were 10 slis that split twice. It’s probably because of the laundromat. After letting the cleaner slis split, because of their increased numbers, they started getting the job done a whole lot faster. I think they’re actually working over twice as fast. Well, if they’re this efficient, then we should make use of it.
“Ah, Fina-san, Carm-san.” [Ryouma]
They had co to pick up the new laundry, but I told them to help out with the custors instead.
I also told them to divide the work of carrying the laundry and returning them to the custors since there are more custors than usual.
“I’ll take care of carrying the laundry. You two focus on returning them to the custors.” [Ryouma]
“You want make the store more efficient, right? Let’s try it.” [Carm]
As such, they went back to where the custors where, while I gathered the laundry and carried them.
“Next!” [Carm]
“Over here please~” [Maria]
“Custor Number 18” [Jane]
“How is the quality, ma’am?” [Fina]
“Wow, it’s really clean… And it’s cheap too. This is great.” [Custor]
“Thank you very much! Please co again! Next is… Custor number 8!” [Fina]
After dividing the work, the flow of custors beca even faster. The slis are probably hungry after splitting. Because of that the laundries seed to be getting cleaned even faster.
From ti to ti, we would run out of tokens, which ant there were more people waiting too, but we were able to solve the problem with so reception service. With the increase in efficient in both the cleaner slis and the reception, the flow of custors reached a new level, and gradually, the wave of custors grew less and less.
Like that we we managed to get pass the peak ti. The rest of the day was fairly monotonous, as we managed to safely close the store as the day ended without any more problems.
[1] – Just so food for thought. Maybe the slis see evolution as a private thing and don’t want to be seen while undergoing it.?
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