Volume 4 Chapter 103 I Am a Slime
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
”Fly a ship… using a slime,” Beckus said.
Honestly, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My mind just couldn’t picture it. Was that even possible?
But… we’d seen it. With our own eyes. Back on the dungeon’s 6th Floor, that huge slime had floated like a hot air balloon, dropping molten lava from above. If it could carry that much lava, maybe a ship’s weight wouldn’t even be an issue.
And these two old dwarves—Beckus and Nokiroul—weren’t just any smiths. They were the best in the whole Kingdom of Nakuos, and probably among the best in the world. If they said it could be done… maybe it really could.
Still, our ship. Flying through the sky. My heart started pounding.
”Conventional airships,” Nokiroul began, the younger of the dwarf brothers, “float by generating gas lighter than air and stuffing it into a big bag.”
”But the gas leaks from poorly made bags,” he went on, folding his stubby arms. “You have to keep making more. And for propulsion, they use magic engines that eat magic stones like candy. Burn through them in no time. Even then, you can only carry a few people, and you need a high-tier sorcerer just to steer the thing.”
”Basically, junk,” Beckus snorted, then grinned wide. “But with that thing, it’s different.”
He jerked his chin toward the little milky-white slime being toyed with by Lifia and the others. It squeaked as they poked and rubbed it, then it bolted and dove straight into Tifi’s chest.
”Eek—! H-hey, stop that!”
Tifi yelped, clutching her chest, her face going red.
”…Lucky slime,” Beckus muttered, eyes twinkling. “I wouldn’t mind being in there myself.”
Honestly… same. I sighed, forced a grin, and slipped my hand into Tifi’s cleavage to fish the slime out.
”Y-you’re impossible, Mr. Taro!”
The slime was cool to the touch, soft like a water jelly, half-transparent and glowing faintly.
”I get the idea,” I said, “but how long would it even take for this thing to grow big enough to lift a whole ship?”
”No clue,” Beckus said flatly.
”Figure it out with your ability,” Nokiroul added, just as blunt.
…Wow. Just tossing it on me like that. Seriously, how was I supposed to—
Wait. My Love Hotel. Maybe…
I pulled a small mirror from the pouch at my waist. A magic tool for appraisal.
I held the silver-framed mirror up to the slime. A faint light shimmered for a second… then blinked out.
”No result, huh.”
Normally it would show at least a name, some traits, a danger rating. But nothing appeared at all.
”The stronger the monster, the harder they are to read,” Nokiroul said, watching me.
”That mirror’s probably made by some average craftsman. City-grade tools have their limits.”
Then he pulled out a small monocle from his breast pocket—delicate silver with tiny etched sorcery runes.
”I made this from dungeon materials,” he said, “and even then, all I got was the name.”
Right. He was a magic tool forger. Of course he’d have opinions.
Come to think of it, I’d only ever appraised monsters up to the 5th Floor. Maybe that was just this tool’s limit. Kind of disappointing.
But maybe… my own skill could work. My ‘Love Hotel’ skill.
I called up the Love Hotel menu. A faint see-through display blinked into the air. No appraisal function, but there was something close enough. I tapped ‘Guest Info.’
A list of our names popped up—plus a new one I didn’t recognize at the end.
’Heaven Ooze (天空槽 / Tenkuu-sou)’
That had to be its real name. Somehow my Love Hotel could read what normal tools couldn’t. As expected of my Love Hotel.
Heaven Ooze, huh. Who even named it that?
We were the first humans to ever set foot on the 6th Floor, the first to beat and catch one of these lava slimes. So how did it already have a name? Maybe someone else had seen one outside the dungeon. Whatever. I kept scrolling through the info.
———
’Heaven Ooze’
Its basic biology is the same as ordinary slimes. It can absorb most organic matter. Needs magic stones or other mana-rich food to grow stronger. Needs huge amounts of water to get bigger.
Created by the dungeon’s creator to regulate the environment inside the dungeon.
———
I see. We could just feed it the 6th Floor dragons and other monsters. That was its native habitat anyway. And water—we could dump it in the pool room back at the Love Hotel. That part was easy enough.
But the shocking part was the last line.
’Created by the dungeon’s creator.’
So the dungeon really was artificial. Not necessarily human-made, but definitely made by someone. I mean, those stairs linking each floor always looked way too precise and clean to be natural. But still… why? What was the point of making a whole dungeon?
I thought back on everything I’d seen. Each floor had its own environment—caves, foggy forests, open plains, snowy mountains, deep seas… and then the molten hellscape of the 6th Floor. Like someone had built stage sets and filled them with monsters on purpose.
Especially that 6th Floor, where we caught this slime. Magma flooding the land, huge lava slimes drifting in the air like living balloons. And now I knew—they weren’t wild creatures. They’d been made to maintain the environment itself. That’s what the data said.
So then… who made them? And why?
Monsters that spawn endlessly, treasure chests and magic tools that appear from nowhere, spaces twisted like reality didn’t matter. The dungeon wasn’t just mysterious—it was something beyond human. What kind of being could make a place like this?
And what for? To test humanity, to shield something from outsiders, or just… for fun?
Dungeons had existed for centuries, but no one had ever reached the 6th Floor before us. Had it just been sitting there doing nothing? If it was meant to challenge people, why make it so impossible to enter for so long?
The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. But one thing was clear.
We were walking inside someone’s giant handmade garden.
* * *
”Wait.”
Plop. The little water jelly quivered.
”Not yet.”
Plorp…
I held out a magic stone in my right hand, keeping it from jumping.
”Shake.”
Plup. It bounced into my left palm with a soft cold touch.
”Good.”
Sploosh.
At my signal, the slime happily swallowed the magic stone. The red gem fizzed and dissolved inside its body.
I couldn’t help but smile. I never thought I’d end up training a slime like a puppy. But this slime… it was smarter than I expected.
The Love Hotel’s laundry service had made it harmless, but that only meant it lost its hostility to humans—it didn’t mean it would obey us. If we were going to use it to float a ship, it needed to follow commands. And with food as a reward, it seemed to get it.
”Master, it’s so cute!” Lifia said, her eyes sparkling.
”What should we name it?” Tifi leaned in close, practically bouncing. Like kids picking out their first pet.
* * *
We kept pushing deeper into the dungeon.
There was no point overthinking what the dungeon really was. We could only move forward, beat what was in front of us, and hope the answers waited ahead.
The ground was black rock, split open with rivers of glowing magma. Heat blasted against my skin and burned my lungs. This was the 6th Floor—’Burning Dragon Peak.’
With a rumble that shook the ground, a huge crimson dragon emerged. It roared, spewing searing flames across the battlefield.
”Heehee, over here! Come on!”
Korukona’s voice rang out as she twirled away from the fire. Her brown skin glistened with sweat, cat ears flicking, her dancer’s outfit fluttering as she spun and hurled her chakrams, teasing the dragon into chasing her.
”Ssloualbo, Shirwaku Eus (Scorching Tree Bind)!”
The ground split and glowing red trees burst upward, tangling the dragon’s legs—Rozmiaque’s plant magic.
”Absolute Ray!”
Yomi’s clear voice echoed. She stood tall in her high-leg leotard, black tights, long black hair flowing under her pointed magician hat. A cold beam shot from her hands, piercing the dragon’s thick scales.
The dragon roared and the world shook. Its massive foreleg slammed down—and I caught it on my sword head-on. My arms went numb, but I held.
”Leave it to meee!!”
Kéa’s red ponytail whipped through the air as she kicked off the ground. Sunlight caught on the twin blades in her hands as her body, wrapped in barely-there bikini armor, shot upward. The swords crossed in a flash of silver light—
—and the dragon’s head toppled. Gravity dragged it down, and the whole massive body crumpled like a falling cliff, shaking the scorched ground.
”Alright. No problem here.”
Red dragons were supposed to be one of the stronger monsters on this floor. But we could handle things on this level now. We’d gotten that strong. We were really growing.
And now came the part that was, in a way, the main goal.
”Go, Puni-maru!”
I pulled the milky-white slime from my pouch and tossed it onto the dragon’s corpse.
It quivered, then slipped inside through the wound, melting the flesh from within. Flesh, blood, organs—it dissolved them all at alarming speed, slurping them into its body like they were nothing. Bit by bit, the corpse caved in, until nothing remained except sharp fangs, hard bones, and shimmering crimson scales.
Saved us a ton of work on butchering, at least.
Sure, all that meat and blood could probably sell well in the markets, but honestly, we didn’t care. Right now, it was all just slime food.
What shocked me was what happened next. Or rather… what didn’t happen.
Even after devouring an entire dragon, Puni-maru hadn’t grown at all. It was still palm-sized. When I picked it up, it didn’t feel a bit heavier. Where had all that mass gone? An elephant-sized dragon, just… gone. It made no sense.
”Hey, Taro? We all agreed her name’s ‘Petit,’ remember?”
Korukona’s voice rose in protest, her tail flicking. Oh… right. Was that what we decided? The girls had started calling it that instead. I still thought Puni-maru sounded perfect, though.
* * *
We headed into one of the Love Hotel’s facilities—the indoor pool. The one everyone just called “that pool.”
Usually, it served as home to the demon sardines. Tiny silver fish-shaped demons glimmered like stars as they darted through the air and water, circling us with curious eyes. No hostility, just cautious interest. Now and then, one brave little guy swam right up to us. Since being purified by the Love Hotel’s laundry service, they were completely harmless.
”You better grow up big and strong, okay!” Kéa declared.
She crouched down and gently set the slime onto the water’s surface.
”Don’t eat the demon sardines,” I warned it, just in case.
For a while it only floated there, quivering softly. No sign of going after the sardines. But then, it started to change.
”It’s… getting bigger,” Lifia whispered.
And she was right. The slime was absorbing the pool water, gulping it down, swelling bigger and bigger. The ripples vanished. The water level dropped.
Soon, the pool was completely dry—and the entire basin was filled with one enormous half-transparent slime. The displaced demon sardines spun in lazy loops through the air, looking annoyed.
”Amazing…”
”Hey, it’s safe to touch it, right?”
Korukona poked it cautiously with one finger. It didn’t sink in, just squished back with a springy bounce.
”Kyahoo!”
”Ah, me too!!”
Kéa leapt up onto it, landing with a soft thump. Korukona followed, and soon the two of them were bouncing and laughing, boing-boing like kids on a giant waterbed.
Honestly… they looked like they were having fun. Maybe I should try it too. And hey, this thing would make a pretty interesting bed for, uh, night activities…
Then the whole slime gently rose from the drained pool, floating up toward the ceiling. It was actually hovering. Even with two girls riding on it, it floated like it was nothing. Just like we hoped… maybe even better.
But there was a new problem. Could it even get out of here? If it could stretch itself thin enough, maybe it could slip through the door…
Turned out, that wasn’t a problem at all.
”Come here, Petit,” Tifi said softly, holding out her hands.
The slime glowed faintly—and shrank. Its whole body compressed like air leaking from a balloon, faster and faster, until the massive pool-sized blob had collapsed into a tiny palm-sized jelly in less than half a minute.
It wobbled just like it did at the start. Except now, at this size, it didn’t float—just curled up quietly in Tifi’s hands.
* * *
We fed it dragons in the dungeon, then water from the pool, and sometimes gave it little sips of Ambrosia juice. Over and over. And Puni-maru—our slime—kept growing.
Tests showed something incredible: it could freely expand or shrink its size. When it went full size, it had more than enough buoyancy to lift a ship.
That meant the biggest problem with making a flying ship—buoyancy—was already solved. All that was left was modifying the ship itself to actually fly. And that job, of course, belonged to Beckus and Nokiroul.
When I peeked into the motel where we docked our ship, it had already turned into a full-blown work site. Brownie sailors hammered away while Beckus barked orders at them in his booming voice.
”Mr. Beckus, the goods you ordered are in! We stored them in Warehouse No. 8!”
”Good work,” Beckus grunted without looking up.
The one reporting was a boy around ten, dressed like a perfect little butler—Quatro Shell. He was the young heir of the famous Shellmerchant Guild in the free city of Latipak. After a bunch of twists and turns, he’d ended up as one of my allies.
”Ah, Sir Taro! Good day!” he said when he saw me, smiling like sunshine.
”Hey, you too, Quatro. So… what goods?”
”Iron, mithril, and various other things,” he said.
”We placed the order with the Shellmerchant Guild,” Beckus added from behind a cloud of sawdust.
Quatro led me through a Love Hotel door that now linked directly to a Shellmerchant warehouse in Latipak. Inside were piles of metal, timber, and all kinds of materials. Tiny fairies carried the pieces out, flying them into the motel where Beckus had set up his makeshift forge.
”This is… a lot,” I muttered, watching the flood of supplies roll in.
Enough to build a whole new ship, honestly.
”We won’t even use half,” Beckus said. “We’ll extract the best parts and cut only the strongest pieces.”
That sounded like him. Total perfectionist about materials.
Still, I couldn’t help worrying. Even if the Shell family was one of the biggest merchant guilds in the free cities, this had to be tough to pull off. Sure, I’d offered them payment in goods, but still—wouldn’t this disrupt their other trades?
”No problem,” Quatro said with a confident puff of his chest.
”Our family made a fortune from the recent war. Father said to spare no cost when investing in Sir/Mr. Taro.”
The war. The recent clash between the Kingdom of Nakuos and the Demon Race Country. We’d sabotaged the opening move and stopped the war from starting at all. Apparently, that had ended up making the Shell family rich.
”War makes goods move,” Quatro said. “Food, medicine, horses and their feed—everything goes scarce, prices soar. Or they would have. But since the war stopped, prices collapsed when all the merchants who hoarded stock started dumping it at once.”
So if war stopped, prices didn’t just stay low—they crashed.
”Sir Taro’s act was a miracle,” Quatro said with total seriousness. “No one could’ve predicted it. But we believed your words, and we went all in—massive short selling on the futures market. While other guilds took losses, our family alone made a huge profit.”
They really bet big on me. Honestly, we had no guarantee our plan would work.
”It was close to gambling,” Quatro admitted. “But they were your words. Of course we believed.”
His trust felt good. Heavy, but good. I’d have to make sure I thought carefully from now on—to live up to that trust. Not that I understood economics, but if their wealth meant more investment in me, that worked out fine.
Anyway, thanks to everyone’s help, the material problem was solved.
Our ship, the Kamadeva, was finally on its way to becoming a true airship.
—
The slime: “I am a slime. I go by many names.”
Notes:
• Kingdom of Nakuos – The nation where the protagonist and companions were summoned as heroes.
• Korukona – A cat-eared girl with amber eyes. She is brave but vulnerable, showing honesty and gratitude. Taro rescues her from the pirate and plans to send her to her village.
• Rozmiaque – High-ranking elf investigating large-scale Spirit Magic usage. Condescending, believes a High Elf is involved. Uses 6-letter Spirit Magic to trap targets. Displays contempt for half-elves and humans. Aggressive interrogator, possibly capable of sensing hidden information.
• Brownie – A little sailor fairy.
• Latipak – A small independent state centered around its port town. Located in a strategic trade hub, it maintains neutrality despite being surrounded by large nations and Demon Race territories. It is a bustling city where humans, elves, dwarfs, and Demon Race people coexist. Known for its vibrant streets, diverse languages, and lively atmosphere.
• Quatro – Male. A young boy, the son of a council member of Latipak. His appearance is androgynous and delicate, wearing butler-style clothes. He was rescued by Ore and now spreads the ‘Room of Love’ teachings, believing Ore to be a divine figure. He is charismatic and speaks with regal dignity.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
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