No Step On Slime

Chapter 9: Me, My Little Shotgun, Mother Nature

Hello, guys. Seems I was right on my prediction of no chapter for last week. Hoping this doesn't become a once-every-two-weeks thing, but I can't be too sure.

. . . . .

Rimuru had just named the Ogres, or at least that was what his memory said. Despite there being only six of them, it took enough magicules out of the slime to knock him out for a few days.

They were now lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in front of him, having evolved from Ogres to Kijin. He decided to call a meeting over how to deal with the Orcs that were possibly on their way here.

There was one problem, though.

"Where is she?"

Rimuru looked around the room.

"Who?" one of the newly-evolved Kijin, Benimaru, asked.

"The Automaton girl," Rimuru replied. "Brown hair, a bit taller than me, the one who..."

...Shot Shuna. Yeah, it was probably better not to bring that part up.

"Nevermind that. Have any of you seen her lately?"

None of the Kijin seemed to want to speak. Rimuru guessed that they didn't have too great an opinion of his Automaton companion.

"I'll go look for her, we have a few important things to discuss here."

Rimuru was about to step out of the tent, but Shuna spoke up.

"The last time I saw her was days ago."

"Huh?"

The humanoid slime stopped.

"What do you mean, Shuna?"

Whatever it was, the Kijin seemed hesitant to bring it up. Rimuru noticed this and stepped in front of Shuna, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Did she do anything to you again? The first time was a mistake, and I'll vouch for my unnamed Automaton companion for that. But I won't tolerate it if she decided to threaten you further—"

"She didn't!" Shuna exclaimed. "No, she just... on the night of the festival, she just packed up and left."

The night of the festival?

"How long was I out after naming all of you?" Rimuru inquired.

"Around three days..."

Three days... if the Automaton was really insistent on putting distance between her and the village, that was a lot of surface area they'd need to search for to find the gal.

"We can't just have her running away, it's dangerous out there," Rimuru said. "Especially with the whole Orc problem amok. Souei, we'll need to prepare a search party. I'll gather up the Goblin Riders to sweep out—"

Shuna grabbed Rimuru's arm, stopping him from stepping outside the tent.

"I've... overheard some of what she said. She's going to return at some point, but I don't exactly know. She might react with hostility to a search party."

Rimuru stared the Kijin in the eyes.

"Shuna. It's not that I think you're lying. But that doesn't mean I don't doubt what you're saying."

"You can ask the blacksmith Dwarf that was there when she left, I promise I'm not trying to mislead you."

"You're talking about Kaijin?"

Rimuru sat down at a chair nearby. Kaijin and the other Dwarves were pretty close to the Automaton.

Now that he actually thought about it, the humanoid slime had to admit that he didn't know much about his fellow Reincarnator. He did originally assume that she was Japanese at first, but several of her mannerisms were chipping away at that.