บท 24: chapter 23
"Are you sure you don't want to come back with us? We could always use another girl in the group." Elen once again asked with a pout causing Shizu to laugh as she pats her head.
"Sorry, but I've made up my mind."
"But whyyyy,"
"Someone has to keep an eye on Rimuru,"
I rolled my eyes at Shizu's words but didn't bother defending myself, after all it was a pretty good excuse to why she was staying.
"I guess, having a tiefling lead a few monsters would alarm people... but with Shizu here, the guild master wouldn't be that worried."
Kabal voiced his agreement with the idea as Gido simply nodded with a smile, of course it they didn't know the true reason why Shizu was staying.
Only she and I knew of that.
"By the way, Rimuru-Sama..."
"Hmm? What is it?"
"Why are you in that form?"
Elen asked and everyone's eyes naturally fell on me, specifically the body of a bat that I had polymorphed into.
"Well," I jumped off from Shizu's shoulder and into her palm as she brought me up to Elen's eye level.
"I'm... currently replenishing my magicules at the moment, and being in a tiny form makes it faster for me."
"Ooooh, "
"Does having a small frame actually speed it up?"
Of course not
"Yup!"
I nervously chuckled and perched myself up on Shizu's shoulders once again, hoping that they won't catch on to my real intentions.
It was easy for the original Rimuru to be carried by girls so I had to improvise myself.
And so I decided to polymorph into something small, to be less threatening and to give me reasons on why I would be clinging to the girls more often than not.
"But what happened, did Sir Rimuru get into a fight?" Gido asked and Shizu turned towards me with what I assume a curious stare.
"I just did something, thankfully it was a success."
Now that one wasn't a lie, neither was the one about me losing a ton of magicules.
See, in order to save Shizu and to stop her from aging rapidly the moment I separated Ifrit from her soul, I had to come up with a substitute to stop her soul from collapsing.
It was a very difficult task, mainly because finding a spirit with the same strength of ifrit without the help of Ramiris was very difficult at my current level and because it wouldn't have changed anything at all.
At first, I had thought to just let Shizu die so we can get things over and done with, but then I remembered a part in the novel that had solved my problem.
Soul corridors existed in this world, it was when two people were connected and bound together by their souls.
Not only did it provide a way for the two souls to communicate each other, but it was also a way to have them support each other, as proven by Rimuru when he was hurt when Veldora was captured.
Shizu was reluctant at first when I first presented the idea of bounding our souls together, and for some reason she had slapped me which was incredibly rude by the way! I was simply suggesting it to save her life!
"Are you an idiot!? I just met you!"
She screamed with a red face when she had slapped me, which really just added to my confusion even more, I was hurt being called an idiot but I let it slide since she was pretty.
I explained to her that, in order to save her from her curse and from dying, I had to bound our souls together in that way I would still supply her with magicules without the risk of something taking over her body.
"Can I trust you on that." She whispered in an accusing tone and wrapped her arms around her body, not that I blamed her but why would I steal her body when she was there in front of me.
Women, honestly.
In the end, it all came down to her asking herself if she wanted to continued to live. She didn't hate the world, but I was sure she wasn't attached to it either. So to be bound to a fiend for all of her life or to just end it there, that was the question for her.
In the end, she made the right choice, for me at least.
"How's the new gear though?" I asked the three of them, who was exceptionally looking more like proper adventurers than they did before.
I supplied them with new gear, courtesy of the blacksmith Brothers who had kind enough to give them the experimental works.
They were good will gifts, yes, definitely not used to market how kind I am and to test out if the armor and robe worked well enough or not to sell.
Yes, definitely not.
"They're amazing Rimuru-sama! I love the robe!"
"Yeah, this scale mail is fantastic!"
"Honestly, they feel like they could be family heirlooms!"
Good, good praise us more.
"By the way, Shizu, we were all wondering." Gido asked, calming down the excited atmosphere that was going on.
"What is it?"
"What happened to your arm?"
Keuk
"Oh, I just lost it helping Rimuru on his experiment, it's no big deal. Right?"
Shizu answered with a sweet voice but I knew well enough that she was glaring at me behind her mask.
"Y-yeah! I have full potions and a couple of weeks, shizu will be good as new!"
Darn it, I was too greedy.
It seemed like Shizu caught on and knew that I didn't need to cut off her entire left arm at all, but I just really needed to because I had to perform another experiment.
I really needed [Degenerate] since it was used to evolve great sage to Raphael, so naturally I was greedy for it.
Maybe it would work with just a body part?
Was my train of thought and asked to cut off her entire left arm, she obliged but made me promise to heal it back which was easy enough for me to do, so I ate her arm with predator and the result!?
A Resounding success!
And with that, Shizu was kept alive, I had Degenerate, and Ifrit was safe inside my stomach with Veldora.
...RIP Ifrit.
And with that out of the way, I was sure that the future would be vastly different than it was in the novel.
Shizu was alive
The trio doesn't know how powerful I an
Hinata's teacher didn't die
And I'm sure a lot more had changed but I wasn't about to get into detail with all of them, as with a strong beauty by my side, I had practically already won.
"You were thinking of something lewd, weren't you?"
"Uh... no?"
Okay. Gotta be careful
สถานะพลังงานรายสัปดาห์
-- การจัดอันดับด้วยพลัง 
-- หินพลัง