Prologue

That day had been noisy since morning.

By the time the sky began to whiten, armored soldiers were already walking the main thoroughfare, and once the sun's light began to climb, mages joined their ranks.

While the mothers of the households busied themselves preparing breakfast, the soldiers paced restlessly back and forth, and by the time the stalls had lined up along the main thoroughfare, knights had begun to take up positions throughout the Royal Capital.

It was an unusual sight, and yet a familiar one as well.

Back when the [Demon King] had still existed, the Royal Capital had not been as large or as expansive as it was now, but even so, knights and soldiers had remained on watch day after day throughout the elven Royal Capital, always ready in case of a monster attack.

But once the [Demon King] had been defeated, the frequency dropped, and of late soldiers only made routine patrols to mediate thefts and brawls.

It was precisely because the world had grown peaceful that the figures of soldiers and knights had become a rarer sight, and yet this morning was different.

That the city would be lively was a matter of course, the everyday norm, but today the patrolling soldiers, the knights wrapped in armor and helms, the mages cloaked in thick robes.

Even those who normally served at the Royal Castle, faces rarely seen out here, briskly scrutinized every inch of the Royal Capital's main thoroughfare, and not only that bustling main road but the back alleys with few passersby and the abandoned houses where no one lived any longer were carefully examined one by one, after which they walked off again with visible irritation.

The whole scene was deeply abnormal, and it unsettled those who watched it… and yet the patrolling soldiers and knights had not even noticed they were doing it.

That was just how desperate they themselves had become.

The other day, one of the maids who attended Queen Leticia had vanished from within the castle.

The culprit had been presumed to be a thief or some such who had infiltrated the castle grounds, but with the appearance of the monster within the castle yesterday, Leticia had grasped just what the culprit was.

While inwardly reproaching herself for being too late, her actions from that point on could only be called swift.

That very day she summoned the Knight Order, explained the situation, and doubled the night watch. And today, from the morning, she had ordered not only soldiers and knights but mages as well to be mobilized in search of any trace of the monster.

The monster that had appeared within the castle, attacked Leticia's daughter Meltia, and been barely cut down by Leticia in the nick of time—a slime.

The very specimen that had appeared in the abandoned mithril mine had, by some means, found its way all the way to the elven country of [Fonteau], and not only that, had infiltrated the castle grounds themselves.

And on top of that, the total number of the enemy was unknown.

Was it just the single one slain yesterday, or were there more…?

Leticia, having heard from Fiana and Alfira, who had gone to the abandoned mithril mine to subjugate the slime, about the slime's characteristics, believed that the slime certainly existed in multiple bodies, and so she remained on guard.

And in fact, the slimes were not a single one.

To begin with, whether the concept of [one body] still applied was itself dubious, but it would be too much to ask anyone to have realized that.

Such was Leticia—the soldiers and knights, ordered by their superior the Knight Commander (who in turn served her), had been walking and running through the Royal Capital since morning, breath ragged, sweat pouring, questioning the residents.

The mages strained their senses for places where the flow of mana ran abnormally, taking turns to keep the whole Royal Capital under surveillance.

Even so, no trace of the slime was found, and only time passed by.

Then there was that recent incident, the ten people who had gone missing.

The culprit had been assumed to be some person with a deranged mind, but the knights had decided to treat the fact that it turned out to be a monster as somewhat good news.

That way, they could kill the culprit without reservation.

Whatever sort of being the culprit might be, if it was a person… a being with the same form as themselves, then to a greater or lesser degree they would feel guilt over it. No matter how grave a criminal, for a person to kill one of their own kind always left something unsettling in the depths of the chest.

But if it was a monster. If it was a being that was not a person.

Then there was not a shred of guilt, nor any need for even a sliver of mercy in the killing.

"Tch. Won't they find it already."

One of the knights muttered as much beneath his iron helm. With every step he took, his iron armor scraped together with a jarring, grating clatter.

Helm and full plate, plus a cloak (mantle) and the sword belted at his waist. Some of them carried not just swords but spears as well. The weight was tremendous, but no one was foolish enough to step out before a monster without armor just because the opponent was a slime.

The knight, sweating beneath his armor, was searching for someone to take this exhaustion and anger out on.

They moved in groups of three. Three to a unit, scouring every corner of the Royal Capital. Two knights and one mage.

The mage hunted for suspicious flows of mana, and the knights followed the traces.

This country was a country of elves. The commoners living in the Royal Capital used magic too, and their traces lingered. So the knights often ended up tracking residual mana left by commoners by mistake—no, in fact most of the traces were the residue of magic used by commoners, but even so, sweeping through every last one was the only way forward at present.

The slime's whereabouts, its dwelling-place… none of it was known.

So all they could do was [search every suspicious thing].

It was inefficient, wasteful work. That was precisely why irritation built, killing intent welled up, and even knowing that their armored forms unsettled the commoners, they ended up marching roughly down the main thoroughfare.

Whether sensing the knights' inner state or not, the main thoroughfare itself lacked its usual liveliness and had taken on an oddly distant atmosphere.

A subtly off-kilter, abnormal mood.

A mere slime.

Every one of the knights and mages who had heard the story from Leticia held that contemptuous opinion.

That was because the [Demon King] was no longer in this world. The [Demon King] had been defeated, and monsters were treading the path of decline… such was the world.

That was exactly why, in the minds of the people, [monsters] were no longer a threat but the weak, foes one could overcome if enough people gathered.

A slime, the weakest of monsters, was the foremost example of that.

… Or so it should have been. No one had thought of it any other way.

"I want to wrap this up quick and relax at home."

"For real."

One of the knights muttered, and the mage nodded in agreement.

Hearing those words, the other knight… the leader of this group of three asked,

"So, mage-dono. Where's the next place with disturbed mana?"

"Hm. Up ahead."

So saying, the mage took the lead and proceeded into a back alley. The two knights followed him in.

A sharp, sour stench reached their nostrils.

It was the filth thrown up the previous night by some drunk. The smell it gave off as it dried over time.

"Tch."

One of the knights clicked his tongue. By contrast, the mage seemed unbothered by the smell and kept advancing.

He was tracing a residue of mana invisible to the knights' eyes. His feet showed no hesitation, his gaze fixed on the empty air ahead.

Though it was midday, the dim back alley felt uncanny, perhaps because of the monster's presence, and the two knights walked with their full attention on their surroundings.

How far had they gone, he wondered.

At a corner of the back alley, the mage came to a stop.

The spot was where, just the other day, Tiana and Freya had been violated by the slime.

"Here, something…"

"… Here?"

The three looked around.

A wooden crate and an empty barrel. The crate held stacked empty bottles, and the barrel's lid had been left open. On the ground a stain of someone's vomit had spread wide, dried into a large black circle.

There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

That was the judgment of the two knights, but the mage bent his knee, knelt, and traced the black stain on the ground with his finger.

"This is it."

He looked around once more. Surveying his surroundings from a lower position than before, he sharp-eyedly spotted a drainage gutter leading to the sewers, and crouching there, peered into it.

Of course, midday or not, the inside of the drainage gutter was pitch black, and even with an elf's eyes, no human-shaped eye could look into its depths.

But a mage's eye was different. Those eyes could see the flow of mana as a kind of shimmer.

Impossible for an ordinary slime, but the Black Ooze, and the children born from the Black Ooze's seed, harbored mana within their bodies, and just by crawling along they left behind residual mana.

That said, there were limitations: the mages capable of both knowing that slimes could use [magic] and seeing residual mana were few in number, so only a small fraction could be sent out for the search.

"The slime must have been here too."

"Here, then."

He looked around once more. But still, nothing in particular caught his eye.

For a while after that, they tipped over the empty crate and barrel and searched every corner, but they could find no other traces of the slime.

That made sense, because what they were searching were the corners of walls and the insides of empty crates. The kinds of places where at most a rat or other small animal might be.

A drainage gutter came into their field of view several times, but it did not occur to them that what they sought lay beyond it.

A slime was a soft-bodied creature, and yet it possessed a certain size and mass.

At the very least, back in the era when the [Demon King] had existed, even the small ones had been about the size of a puppy, and a drainage gutter was only wide enough that a person's arm could just barely fit through.

There was a preconception that an ordinary slime could not pass through—

That was precisely why, appearing here and there throughout the Royal Capital as though it could come and go from anywhere, kidnapping people, breeding them in the sewers, and multiplying through their offspring, it could carry on its work; but the knights' minds did not stretch that far.

The other knights were the same.

No matter how many slime traces they found, they could not reach the next link in the chain.

The slime had appeared in back alleys, in abandoned houses, in a corner of a convent, within the castle, and yet no one could even imagine its escape route. They thought no further than that it had crawled along the ground.

Hence, they could find neither the slime's dwelling nor even its means of movement, and only time passed by.

The slime search, which had begun before the sun even started to rise, was already approaching midday without yielding any results.

The temperature climbed, and the insides of their iron armor grew sweltering.

Sweating beneath their helms, the knights left the back alley.

It was to chase yet another residual trace of mana.

Whatever traces of the slime might lie at the end of it, they would gain no more information than what they had…

 

*

 

The Royal Castle of Fonteau. Within the throne room of that chalk-white castle, Leticia was irritated.

Knowing it was unbecoming to let her inner state show on her face, she rested her weight against the back of the throne and let out a great sigh while gazing up at the ceiling.

Last night she had set the mages to watching over the Royal Capital with far-sight magic, and from the moment the sky began to whiten she had mobilized knights and soldiers to search every inch.

And yet they could not find the slime's whereabouts; far from it, they could not even catch sight of it.

To move knights and mages required commensurate funds.

The knights' equipment. The mages' equipment. The opponent might be a mere slime, but a monster was still a monster. Sending them searching wearing nothing but ordinary clothes was dangerous, and if any were injured there were medical costs, while if any died there were condolence payments to their bereaved families.

It was tiresome, but it was a fact that precisely because of the peace, the number of knights willing to risk their lives for the country had dwindled, while the number working for wages had grown. The more they worked, the more pay they demanded, and that put a strain on the country's finances.

Fonteau as a nation was not so weak as to be shaken by that much, but still—

"This has become troublesome, Your Majesty."

"Indeed it has."

The man before her was one of the nobles in charge of the country's finances—and when his voice reached her ears, Leticia drew her thoughts back to the present.

He was the noble who oversaw the monthly wages paid to the knights.

That such a noble was here in the throne room implicitly meant he had come to discuss the [costs] incurred in mobilizing the knights and mages.

Normally this would be the sort of conversation held in one of the castle's meeting rooms, but with monsters having infiltrated even the interior of the Royal Capital, Leticia, unable to move freely from her position as queen, was forced to remain constantly in the throne room, where she received the reports of the Knight Commander and the head of the Mages' Order alike.

And so she heard out this noble's matters as well while still seated upon the throne.

"Once this matter is settled, let us discuss that subject."

"Quite so… I do hope it can be settled by day's end."

"As do I—"

Murmuring as much, Leticia turned her gaze toward the Knight Commander and the head of the Mages' Order.

The heads of the orders were likewise tied down by their duty to receive reports and could not move freely; pinned to the castle, such was the current state of things.

To begin with, by the time men had risen to head an order, their age was nearing fifty. There was no way they had the stamina left to walk the Royal Capital decked out in helm and armor.

The footwork was left to the younger hands; the elder leaders used their heads to search for the slime.

… That said, the information being brought back by the knights and mages was, almost without variation, the same.

A trace of the slime had been found somewhere in the Royal Capital.

A noise in a back alley at night.

A woman in a neighborhood had gone missing.

The soldiers who had been searching had vanished.

And so on.

From any of those they could not trace a path to the slime's dwelling, and the credibility of the information itself was uncertain.

With nothing more than that, finding the monster's lair was utterly out of reach, and infuriated with themselves for being able to gather only this much in half a day, when they looked to Leticia for instruction, she too let out a sigh that did not quite conceal her irritation.

That was half a day.

Another half-day and the day would be done. And to report having nothing at all to show for it, with what face was anyone supposed to deliver such a report?

"Clever, aren't they."

"Pardon?"

Leticia, who had been exhaling a sigh, murmured the words.

Her gaze remained fixed on the ceiling, taking in no one present in the chamber.

What was in her head was not the accounting of pay for the soldiers and knights, nor the irritation at not knowing where the slime might be.

Pure thought.

Something curious. That with this many people mobilized, with this much time spent, the thing still could not be found.

As if it were reading our thoughts.

As if it understood how we would act, and was second-guessing us.

What was most chilling of all was that it was not targeting skilled knights or mages—those who would take time to bring down. It was striking soldiers of only ordinary ability, or commoners living in the Royal Capital. That was what frightened her.

It's tiresome, thought Leticia.

The slime was somewhere within the Royal Capital.

Without revealing itself, leaving only traces, hunting only the weak who fell into the trap of those traces.

It was, she thought, almost human.

Like the elves of old who, possessing no territory, had lived in the forests, luring prey into traps, eliminating threats first and then attacking.

Snapping the fangs, shattering the claws, draining the stamina, draining the concentration, and only finishing it with the arrow once the prey had been rendered powerless.

That kind of hunting.

It's similar, she thought.

And at the same time, she also thought there was no way a slime had that kind of intelligence.

A slime. A soft-bodied monstrosity.

She recalled the words of her husband, the [Hero] from another world.

Slimes are stupid, sluggish, and weak.

Just as he had said—a sluggish and weak being. Swords and spears were ineffective against them, but they feared even the flame of a torch and could be easily burned away with fire magic. Being soft-bodied, they were also weak to cold and could be rendered helpless by freezing.

But the slime now attacking the Royal Capital was no fool.

It was clever. It had divided up to find its prey quickly, and from among them it was singling out the weak.

It knew how to hunt.

What's more, from yesterday's battle, Leticia had felt that that slime was not ordinary either. She had conveyed as much to the soldiers, but when she asked herself just how much of the [weakest monster] image she had managed to dispel, a question mark hung in her mind.

Because it was the weakest, no one was on guard against it. Precisely because it was the weakest, one might call it the worst existence of all.

Because they knew it was weak. Because they understood that. So they assumed they could defeat it easily.

"Let us pull the soldiers, knights, and mages back, for now."

"But, we have yet to see noticeable results…"

"At this rate, the casualties will only mount. Let us shift our approach for now."

So saying, Leticia rose from the throne.

The colorful sunlight pouring down through the stained glass of the ceiling painted the floor of the throne room in hues.

"I shall be away for a while—things will grow busy again by evening, so until then, rest your heads and bodies."

At those words, the Knight Commander and the head of the Mages' Order briefly exchanged suspicious glances, then met each other's eyes and went down to one knee on the floor, bowing their heads.

The several nobles also present lowered their heads in the same way.

Leticia, without watching them do so, departed the throne room. Spine straight, chest out, she walked away with composed bearing.

Her silver hair, catching and scattering the sunlight, swayed and spread with each step, almost like a thin silk veil that let her back show through.

A white dress with its back cut wide open. Skin white as fresh snow, a cinched waist, peach-like buttocks that swayed left and right with each step. The thin-fabric dress hugged the shape of her rear so plainly that with every movement of her legs, lewd creases formed in the cleft of her behind.

The pink-haired head maid, who had been waiting at the entrance, followed after her.

"You should rest, too."

"—Is that all right?"

"Things will become busy from evening… I may need the personal-guard maids to act as well."

"Understood."

After walking some distance, once they reached a deserted corridor, the head maid bowed and stepped away from Leticia's side.

There was no sound.

She wore leather boots, and the corridor was made of stone, yet the head maid vanished without a footfall. Literally, from behind Leticia.

Leticia did not turn around.

The maids she employed to handle her personal protection were all capable in proportion to that role.

Which was exactly why it was strange.

Tiana, one of those maids whose ability Leticia recognized, had vanished. That she would have been gotten the better of by a mere slime was unbelievable, and that she had left no trace of being attacked was likewise unbelievable.

No matter how skilled, no one was infallible. Failures did happen, several times a year.

But still.

In a fight against a monster, in a life-or-death moment, leaving nothing behind was not like her, Leticia thought.

Against humans, perhaps, but not against a slime with no intelligence and no cunning.

She knew the slime's nature. From when she had traveled with the [Hero], and from even further back.

Back when the [Demon King] had existed in this world, slimes had been a dime a dozen, spilling across the world.

But those slimes had been powerless, with no thought of attacking humans, simply beings that moved forward.

The eyeless monsters (slimes) merely moved forward, dissolving the grass and insects ahead of them to eat, and if a village happened to be in their way by ill luck, they intruded into it.

And then if, even more unluckily, a person stood in the way of that forward motion, they took the person in, dissolved them inside, and ate them.

That kind of being, nothing more.

If you spotted a slime, all you had to do was not interfere with its progress.

Circle around to its side and burn it with fire. That was enough to deal with the opponent.

Or it should have been.

But—

(In Meltia's room too…)

Recalling it now, that slime had been abnormal.

It had seen through the barrier Leticia had set up in an instant and infiltrated through the unwarded floor below.

Until now she had thought it mere instinct—something like raw intuition, but what if it had been an action taken with understanding of magic?

Doubts welled up.

Once she had thought of it as clever, that possibility came home.

Fiana had said that [the slime of the abandoned mine] used magic.

In the middle of the corridor, she stopped. She brought a slender finger, sheathed in a long white glove, to her well-shaped chin. Her gaze drifted outside the window… to a position from which the inner courtyard, where yesterday she had burned the slime outdoors, was visible.

The form of the slime she had burned to death in that twilight surfaced in her mind.

If, only if.

What if the slimes a slime had produced could likewise use magic—the slimes it had had a woman bear? What if, like a talented mage, they could read the flow of mana?

What if they were deliberately leaving residual mana behind, truly setting traps?

Above all—just how many such slimes were being born, right at this very moment?

"Whew."

She breathed out.

She shook her head, driving that ugly conjecture out of her mind.

"Slimes are creatures that multiply—but even so, they are not inexhaustible."

She knew. Slimes converted what they digested in their bodies into their own bodily fluids. The more they dissolved, the larger they grew, but they also evaporated and shrank under sunlight and heat.

This world was not kind to slimes.

For a slime to keep growing inexhaustibly, it would have to keep catching prey in the very depths of an abandoned mine, where light did not reach, the way Fiana and the others had gone.

—In this Royal Capital, there was no place where the light did not reach.

Even at night, the country was lit blazingly bright with artificial lights. The most prosperous country on this continent.

The country that the [Hero] from another world, her husband, had idealized.

There was no place in it for a slime.

So Leticia, without thinking any deeper on it, started walking down the corridor. Her destination was the room of her second daughter Maria, where her elder daughter Meltia was resting.

The beloved daughter who had been attacked by a slime yesterday. Her room had had its every surface fouled by slime mucus and was in no condition for her to rest in, so last night they had slept together in Maria's room, so she had heard.

In truth Leticia had wanted to sleep beside them as well, but she had chosen the safety of the country over reassuring her two beloved daughters.

Precisely because she had heard from Fiana that this slime violated women, today she was keeping both of them home from the magic academy and letting them recuperate in the room.

They had only been left in their underwear and smeared with mucus—but they were daughters of a sensitive age.

In the safest castle, by her side, she wanted them to rest for a little while. The thought that they might be attacked again somewhere out of her sight was almost enough to stop her heart.

"Are you all right, Meltia?"

In front of the door of her beloved daughter's room, she took a single deep breath to calm herself, then knocked lightly on the door.

"Ah, yes."

A bright voice came back.

A voice that did not at all sound forced. Letting her mouth relax just a little, Leticia opened the door.

Inside the room, a beautiful young girl who looked like a slightly younger version of Leticia, with the same silver hair and red eyes, was seated on the edge of the bed. Beside her, sitting on a chair she had brought over, was a beautiful young girl with black hair and black eyes, hugging a stuffed animal to her lap.

The silver-haired girl was the elder daughter, Meltia. The black-haired girl was the younger daughter, Maria.

The younger daughter, who had so strongly inherited the blood of her [Hero] husband, was, for a daughter of the [Hero], a little timid, but Leticia thought the sight of her holding a cute stuffed animal suited her well.

Call her a doting parent if you must; she did not want her daughters going off and doing bloody monster-slaying work; she wanted them to be like Maria, holding a stuffed animal and laughing.

Seeing the two of them, Leticia let the tension drain from her shoulders.

"That said… have they grown in number again, a little?"

Glancing around the room, Leticia said as much.

What entered her vision was a great many stuffed animals. Dogs and birds, dragons and manticores. Stuffed dolls modeled on all kinds of animals and monsters were displayed on shelves and by the bedside.

Before, there had not been quite so many, but ever since Maria had started attending the same magic academy as Meltia, their numbers had been increasing sharply, she thought.

She probably bought whatever caught her eye while passing through the main thoroughfare on the way home from the academy, Leticia thought.

That in itself was perfectly fine. A noble's daughter, a daughter of the royal family.

Once she came of age her chances of coming into contact with the common world would drop dramatically, so if she could think of it as practice in how to use her own money, then it was a meaningful purchase.

Of late, she had heard, in noble households still bound by old customs there were many marriageable daughters who did not even know how to make a purchase at a street stall.

Whether that was really all right was a question Leticia carried only because she had traveled the world with the [Hero] and broadened her own perspective.

So she gave Meltia and Maria an allowance, and within that range allowed them to buy whatever they liked. Well, since they traveled between castle and academy by carriage, even "shopping" only meant a stop at the lively places along the main thoroughfare.

"Has anything changed, since then?"

"No, Mother."

"… And no monsters, either."

"You needn't worry about the monsters anymore. I'll deal with them soon."

She smiled as though to reassure them and sat down beside Meltia on the edge of the bed. The bed creaked faintly, swayed, and from the recoil Meltia lost her balance, leaning toward Leticia.

Leticia's right hand gently drew her daughter's head close.

"It's all right."

"… Yes."

Once more, as if reassuring her, she murmured into Meltia's ear, combing her fingers through the beautiful silver hair her daughter had inherited from her, then held her to her chest with a little extra force.

Watching that, Maria, just like Meltia, hugged the stuffed doll on her lap to her chest.

A modest chest, compared to her mother's or her elder sister's. The head of the stuffed animal, pressed to twin hills that did not even cause a faint swell in the front of her dress, deformed slightly.

"Hee hee—come here, Maria."

Leticia called her name. Maria rose from the chair, and as bidden, sat down on the opposite side from her elder sister, and was likewise drawn against Leticia's chest.

"Hee hee. You two are my treasures. I won't let any harm come to you."

She murmured, putting strength into the arms that held her two daughters.

Meltia's and Maria's faces sank into the bountiful chest. The bodice of the white dress was disturbed wide, and she gently combed their hair with her fingers. So that her two daughters could settle. And in doing so, Leticia's own irritation softened too, little by little.

Her heart calmed.

Leticia felt the body warmth of her daughters softly loosening her heart, which had been irritated by her position as queen.

How much time had they spent like that?

That her two daughters said nothing was likely because they too could feel, through the skin, that Leticia was struggling… that she was irritated at the present state of things.

Leticia was the queen.

Before being these two's mother, she had her standing as queen.

Standing before people, composed, she had to prioritize her standing as queen over that of mother.

That this mother, in broad daylight, in the middle of a working day, had come to visit her daughters.

It was something that, even when they had still been children, had never happened.

That was precisely why, sensing the change in their mother, the two of them said nothing and let themselves be held as she wished.

We can calm down too—they thought such things, but what mattered most was their mother.

A mother who loved her daughters. Daughters who loved their mother.

The sight was precious, and dazzling besides.

Sunlight pouring in from the window. The coolness of a breeze stirring the curtains. Silver hair that scattered the light, and black hair that drank it in.

The room's furnishings, and the cute stuffed animals.

It was as if they were a single painting, a sanctum that no one had any right to violate.

"… I'm sorry, both of you."

After a while, Leticia murmured.

The strength left the arms that had been holding the two, and the two daughters, hair faintly mussed, were released.

"It's all right."

"… … … …"

Meltia said as much and shook her head, while Maria, this time of her own accord, tilted her head toward that bountiful chest, wanting to be held a little longer.

Mother of two daughters though she was, the firmness of her chest was the same as in her younger days—the days she had met the [Hero]. No, with the passing years it had only gained in softness and bountifulness, as if giving off a sweet fragrance like the sugar confections sold in the Royal Capital's confectioneries.

When Maria buried her face in that chest, despite its being wrapped in dress and undergarments the chest rocked greatly, and a deep crease formed in the cleavage.

Apparently finding the changes in that bountiful chest amusing, the younger daughter wrapped her arms around Leticia's waist and held her tight.

In her own way, she had probably sensed Leticia's unease.

Realizing that, Leticia simply let the clinging Maria do as she pleased and used her free hand to straighten Meltia's hair, mussed from the earlier embracing.

"Mother, please be careful."

With her face buried in her mother's chest, Maria said as much.

Her expression could not be seen, but her voice was sunken, and the anxiety in it was plain to feel.

"It's all right. The opponent is merely a slime, after all."

So Leticia, without letting the slightest trace of the anxiety she had been feeling earlier show on her face, said with conviction.

A mere slime.

It might be a little cunning, and it might be able to use magic, but judging by yesterday's fight, it was no match for Leticia.

Even if there were ten of them, or a hundred.

There would be no problem. So she thought. So she had thought.

In the first place, did the concept of [one body] even apply to a slime?

There was no one left in this world who had the answer to that question.