Saga of Slime and Devil (Remake)

Vol 3 | Chapter 2 | Economic Expansion

The mid-day sunlight bled through the uncovered windows, filling Tanya's office with a warm clear light. Her blue eyes and blonde hair both glimmered from the light entering from behind her as her elven ears poked out the sides of her head.

To her right was Gabiru, though posing as the human Kazuma. Despite his fairly casual and lightly armored attire, it was ultimately intentional for him to look that way. Unassuming yet visibly armed would go a long way for her. In Tanya's eyes, it was best for their enemy to underestimate them and make bold and sudden moves. In doing so, leaving them vulnerable.

Even in a homunculus like she was in now, Tanya could easily deal with the average person who tried to attack or intimidate her. But someone who is both smart and powerful could be a threat. Besides, due to how limited her homunculus body was, it was best to leave its defense to Gabiru when she could spare it. Gabiru was just as busy as she was after all, and while he could fly at a rapid speed to guard her, he still needed to at times be with his unit. She was basically working the poor dragonewt overtime, though she paid him handsomely for it.

To her left sitting at another desk was Mia, a woman with luxurious and well-kept blonde hair and blue eyes, dressed formally in a three-piece suit, happily working away at paperwork. Tanya wouldn't blame anyone if they assumed that she was some noble, because, in the end, they weren't entirely wrong.

The girl had grown up in the slums, effectively organizing a band of poor thugs into a large criminal organization that ran circles around the regional nobility. She was not born in the slums, however, far from it actually. Tanya knew of her true nature, not that even she knew. Finding and recruiting her was a massive pawn on her side, but one she was finding herself needing less and less. She could make a good figurehead, sure, but the time of feudalism was on the way out. She would make sure of it.

Mia was no doubt a brilliant girl, and her scheming potential had often rivaled Tanya's own. Tanya's new economic reach was spreading across the western nations fast, and while its initial growth and foundations were created by Tanya, the rest was accelerated rapidly by Mia. Tanya's main contribution had been subversive, using her status as a Demon to aid poor nobles or merchants who sacrificed their gold in a summoning ritual she manufactured. In doing so, they bound themselves to her, and all she had to do was give them financial advice and favorable loans.

It was all because of Mia that Tanya was so easily able to multitask being both the Chancellor of Tempest and the head of a large growing corporation. The former was starting to require more of her time with Rimuru's absence, but unsurprisingly a Federation designed to limit the actual power the central government has on its states can run quite well without the central government's direct input. The fact that Tanya and Rimuru themselves only made up about a third of the Central Government also certainly helped.

Tanya's mind for now wasn't on the company, nor was it on Tempest. Rather her mind was focused on the Charybdis Core. She had to give a lot of thanks to her [Sage] skill for how well it allowed her to analyze things. For a while, she had thought it to simply accelerate her thinking capabilities, but more recently she had begun to look into its analyzation capabilities as well. Unfortunately, without its more advanced 'Great Sage' version, Tanya had been unable to automate the process and had to do it all herself.

She had learned quite a lot from the core itself. Mostly its implications for building bodies. She had been researching her homunculus since the day she obtained it. Being able to replicate it was something she was interested in, and if possible she wanted to upgrade it as well. Progress in that department had been steady, albeit slow.

Charybdis' core however seemed to introduce numerous factors she hadn't accounted for. Pooling together research she had done herself or heard from others from all aspects of her third life, she had begun to piece together a few possible blueprints for bodies.