Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"Ellie, how is the new room?"

Seth asked the slime rancher while entering the slime compound, which was how they came to call this place. Ellie had joined Minas Mar soon after the meeting and asked for a room to work with her slimes.

The room was filled with many shallow basins of various kinds because all slimes needed a certain level of humidity. He had built the room for her, but the interior was left to the rancher.

She possessed all kinds of special ones such as acid, poison, blood, or even lightning slime. And very kind of slime needed its own basin tailored to its needs. It was quite impressive to see many different variations of the same beast in one place.

"it's great! It was so hard trying to deal with these guys in the city. Hon was so nice and helped me make some special basins. Come, I will show you!"

The room, or rather the hall, was filled with rows of basins, fish tanks, and terrariums holding the huge variations of slimes. The quirky girl went along the rows and kept calling out names.

"That's Humbold, you already know him! And these are Jim, Jimbob, Jimmy, Jimmy Jr., Jimmy Sr., Jeremiah... and over here we have the rare breed like... Oh, here! This is Loona, a rare Moon slime and those are Looney and Lunatic, her offspring." she lifted up a pale slime, giving off a bioluminescent blue glow, before pointing at two other, similar, slimes.

This kept going for almost an hour, during which the girl showed her impressive memory for names and slimes. She introduced at least 200 different slimes to him.

"Sorry, I got absorbed in showing you around. Why did you come by again?" she finally finished the slime introduction as they sat down at a small table crammed into a corner. While she did her best to make everything perfect for the slimes, her own place was almost nonexistent.

"I actually came by to bring you one of these guys," Seth said relieved and put a Minigol onto the table.

"Wow! Finally, I get one, too! Thank you so much!"

She immediately grabbed the golem under its arms like a doll and lifted the minigol into the air, looking at it from all sides.

"I will call you...Humpty!" she immediately named the golem and put Humpty on the ground.

"By the way, did Alison already come by?"

"Alison? Do you mean that serious alchemy girl? Yes, I gave her some slime acid and boy fluids. It doesn't really hurt these little guys anyway." she said with a chuckle.

They talked for a while longer, when Mary suddenly walked in on them.

"So this was where you've been hiding! I need you to look over the agreement for the trade route and sign a few other things off."

"What do you mean hiding? Are you implying I have been evading my duties as the Tower Master?" Seth exclaimed indignantly at which Mary only stared at him coldly.

"Fine, fine... Let's go to the office. It's been nice talking, Ellie. See you later."

Mary and Seth vanished from the slime ranch and reappeared in the tower master's office where Seth sat down on his table. Mary handed him a stack of paper which was an extensive agreement on the rights and duties of Minas Mar in case they opened up a trade route to Y-City.

He already got tired just reading all of this.

"I think I don't tell you often enough how much I appreciate your work, Mary."

"You don't. But it's okay. It's nice to know that I am needed and that I am able to use my education in times like this." she answered but did not look him in the eyes.

Was that a slight smile he could see at the corner of her lips? Who would have thought that this shy and insecure priest girl he had picked up as a poster girl for his shop, would turn out to be his biggest help when founding an organization?

He had to praise her more often. What would he do if she were to leave? He would be lost. Who would buffer all this paperwork?

"I think you should give yourself a raise, Mary."

"Hehe, are you finally realizing my worth? And I already did when someone tried to poach me."

"What!? Someone tried to-"

"The princess did. I simply raised my salary to rival her offer."

"I'm glad you are this loyal."

"You saved my life after all. And where else could I work as freely as here?"

"Right, right, better be king of the pond than another fish in the ocean."

"So, since we have the agreement, how far did the Chimeras actually progress?"

"They haven't done any long travels yet. Mostly because they have to be careful thanks to the golems. They will proceed slowly as the golems grow. What's the progress in Beta?"

Mary gave him another stack of reports. Roughly twenty bigger guilds were now involved, together with the army troops and a great number of smaller guilds and miscellaneous parties. There were also many people from beta that had joined the efforts instead of seeking refuge.

30% of the estimated refugees had already arrived in Y-City where they moved into the sparsely populated region at the rim of the growing safe zone.

It was one of the reasons Y-City agreed to start such a costly and wide-scale evacuation. They had a lot of empty space after the war with the maritime empire.

Seth had seen it for himself when they went to get Evee. If those depopulated places were once again filled with people, it would drastically increase the safety and strength of Y-City.

They went over some more paperwork before Seth could finally leave. He planned to look for Mina and Fin when Ellie suddenly came charging at him. Her hand tightly grasped around its tail, it dragged the Imugi along.

Why was the Imugi with her? Did it sneak out of his pet space?

~Mom, help! My tail hurt! ~

"Seth! This is your pet, right? I demand reparation!"

Both had tears in their eyes, but obviously for different reasons.

"W-What happened?"

"He ate Harry, Hedwig, and Hermione!"

~Not on purpose! ~

"Okay, okay! Everyone calms down! Ellie explains first."

After calming down a little, she described how "this little scamp" had snuck in her ranch while he was not looking and she found him eating three of her dark slimes. Namely harry, Hedwig and Hermione.

The Imugi eating slime, Seth almost couldn't believe it. The snakelet had behaved really well since they returned to Minas Mar. It had spent most of its time playing with the children or practicing magic with him and Alison.

Why would it suddenly behave like this?

~Mom! Did I do something bad? I didn't do it on purpose...~ it communicated with big teary eyes.

"How did you accidentally eat three slimes?"

~I was just looking around, and those dark ones looked so delicious, and before I knew it, I ate one, and I couldn't stop, and...and... ~

"It's okay, it's okay."

"it's not!" Ellie interjected. Seth signaled her to stay silent.

"Why did you go into Ellie's room in the first place?"

The Imugi now looked from left to right, as if it was embarrassing. If it could, it might have blushed.

~I-I heard all the names while in the pet space and became envious and i-~

"You were envious! That's why you ate them!" Ellie hollered peeved.

~No! Mom, I didn't! Believe me! I only went to look at their names b-because I don't have one of my own! I know Mom will give me one when the time comes, but... ~

Seth sighed. So this was the reason. He had procrastinated giving the little snakelet a name because he did not want to be too casual about it.

"You still haven't given your pet a name!? You monster!" Ellie suddenly stood on the Imugi's side. Harry, Hermione, and Hedwig's fates were forgotten.

"To be honest, I have been looking up names and thinking about it, but I was just unsure... A name is for a lifetime. It should be a good one."

Ellie blushed a little at the indirect slap to the face. She simply named everything randomly depending on her mood.

~Mom looked for names all the time? ~

"I'm not that free... but I narrowed it down to two. Falkor or Tatzel, which do you like?"

Falkor was the name of a lucky dragon from a story Seth liked as a child. Tatzel was derived from a Dragon race called Tatzelwurm which was one of the few wingless dragons. Overall, it had many parallels with an Imugi.

~I like the ring of Tatzel! Yes, I am Tatzel! ~ Tatzel said and kept happily chanting its name.