Itâs been two days since the End of Fishing Season Festival.
I finished my shopping needs yesterday, so my goal for today is to catch the mud slimes. Sereriputa said that I could find them if I used mud magic, but to be honest, Iâve never used it.
But I have seen it before, and I know that itâs just a fusion of water magic and earth magic, Iâve used fusion spells before too, so I should be able to make it work if I give it a try.
âOnii-chan! Over here!â [Nikki]
Early in the morning, Nikki and I entered the forest and went to a place where the ground was especially muddy.
âAlright. Letâs get to it then.â [Ryouma]
Mud magic⊠Mud is basically a combination of water and earth.
Water magic uses water-type mana, while earth magic uses earth-type mana.
I mix the two types of mana and let it soak into the mud.
For the spell Iâm using, I imagine waves forming on the mud just like with the water spell âWaveâ.
If I were to give a name to this spell, it would beâŠ
ââMud Waveâ!â [Ryouma]
The moment I casted the spell, a small ripple formed on the surface of the mud that then turned into a wave of mud.
THe mud wave pushed into the surrounding trees and engulfed them. It was then that they appeared.
âYeah⊠I didnât expect there to be so many.â [Ryouma]
Just as I thought that the choppy mud was moving strange, one mud dumpling after another started appearing. With just a cursory glance, Iâd say thereâs about 30 of them. They looked like they were about to fall apart due to too much water, but they still hurriedly wriggled away from us.
âLetâs catch them. Do it just like we planned.â [Ryouma]
âAlright!â [Nikki]
On land, the mud slimes were as slow as the other slimesâ On second thought, theyâre even slower than them.
Niki-kun scooped them up one after and threw them into the jars I took out from my Item Box.
There were a lot more of them than expected, so some were able to assimilate the mud again, but we still managed to catch 27. Using Monster Identifyâ
âMud Slimeâ
Skills:
Scatter Lv3
Clump Lv3
Moisturize Lv5
Digest Lv1
Absorb Lv2
Split Lv2
Assimilate (Mud) Lv5
âWowâŠâ [Ryouma]
âOnii-chan, did you learn anything?â [Nikki]
âYeah, its skill set is similar to the Ash Slimeâs.â [Ryouma]
Scatter and Clump havenât changed, but it has Moisturize in place of Dry. Of special note is the Assimilate (Mud). Itâs my first time seeing a skill with parentheses. These are probably meant to indicate that it can only assimilate mud.
Anyhow, with this Iâve managed to acquire another slime. And since I was able to catch nearly 30 in just one go, we might be able to catch enough to form a big or huge mud slime.
I want to gather some more. I told Niki-kun that, andâ
âIn that case, letâs keep looking!â [Nikki]
âHe happily agreed.
And so we ran around the forest for a few hoursâŠ
It was easy finding the mud slimes with mud magic. They pretty much bit at every cast, although we werenât exactly fishing. We took a break from time to time, but while I was only intending to change locations and catch as many as we could without pushing ourselves too much, we were able to catch over 600 slimes and successfully form a contract with them.
Regardless where I casted the spell, at least 4 to 5 mud slimes would come out every time. There were so many of them it made me wonder if most of the mud around here were just mud slimes.
âAh.â [Nikki]
âWhatâs the matter?â [Ryouma]
âLook, over there.â [Nikki]
âAh, itâs your secret base tree.â [Ryouma]
I turned to the direction Niki-kun pointed at, and there I saw the tree he hid in when he ran away from home.
âWait here for a bit!ăIâll be right back!â [Nikki]
Nikki-kun entered the roots of the tree where his secret base was.
Meanwhile, I sat on the thick roots while wondering to myself what he was doing.
2 minutes later, Nikki-kun came out with something in his arms.
âSorry to keep you waiting. Onii-chan, Iâll give these to you.â [Nikki]
âThese are?â [Ryouma]
From a glance, they looked like a handful of different sized rocks.
âThese are Humid Light Stones. They can be found inside mud, but if you wet them, theyâll glow in dark places. These are some super rare stones, you know!â [Nikki]
âWow!â [Ryouma]
Come to think of it, during that incident, there was a light source inside his secret base. I wasnât looking carefully back then, but it seems the light back then was due to these. But why would he give these to me?
âOnii-chan, youâre going back today, right?ăYou taught me all sorts of stuff, so Iâm giving these to you to celebrate. Besides, I donât need them anymore.â [Nikki]
âYou donât need them anymore?â [Ryouma]
To be honest, these stones really give me that âfantasy stoneâ feeling, so Iâm very interested in them, and having them would indeed make me happy, but why does he not need them anymore? Doesnât he need them to light his secret base?
âChildren are still allowed in this part of the forest, but itâs still a considerable distance away from the village, right?â [Nikki]
âThatâs true.â [Ryouma]
âIt would be dangerous if something like before were to happen again. My parents talked to me, and while Iâm reluctant since I went through all the effort to build my secret base here, I decided to rebuild it somewhere closer to the village. Iâll make it more visible too to keep my mom and dad from worrying. Iâve already decided on the location, so I donât need these stones anymore.â [Nikki]
âYouâre amazing, Nikki-kun.â [Ryouma]
âHeh heh. Iâve grown big enough to help with the adults now after all!ăNikki the prankster is no more! Iâve graduated from that already!â [Nikki]
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