- Shari -

My name is Shari!

I’m a seventeen years old girl with short red hair, blue eyes, and average height.

I live out in the middle of nowhere in my country named Rakis.

Yes, you guessed it, it’s the typical world of swords and sorcery, where adventurers seek to slay monsters to get rich and famous, or much more likely, die trying.

Me?

Well, I’m not really involved with that.

First, my family lives in a village.

Well, more in the forest that surrounds it rather than with the other buildings.

The reason is that we earn our living by cutting wood and collecting wild ingredients like mushrooms, berries, and common herbs.

As I said, there is nothing of interest close to the village.

It's so mundane that even the monsters seem to have forgotten us.

Actually, the only pathway to the main road, which connects the nameworthy towns, barely ever gets used.

So even if I would want to make a living by fighting for my dear life, there is no real way I would ever come close to even choose such an occupation.

And at the moment I am not dissatisfied with my way of life.

It’s just in terms of marriage I don’t see a future in this village with anyone.

I simply cannot see any of the boys I grew up with that way.

However, I’m not deeply concerned about that.

So while my life is not noteworthy, it’s enough for me.

As a second reason: To be blunt, I cannot fight.

I’m not strong enough to be able to do close-range fighting, not dexterous enough for ranged weapons, and as far as I know, I have no magical aptitude.

Well, the last thing is difficult to check.

Yet, I’ve heard, that if there would be anything noteworthy, there would be indicators like odd feelings caused by the energy or a natural attraction to your element, which isn't something I ever had.

Now you might say that one should be envious of those privileged by life like this.

But as far as I'm concerned, magic isn't that great!

Yes, magicians have some nice tricks, but to be honest, most are just one-trick-ponies and only one in ten knows more than three different spells.

Those spells are also quite limited in power, only giving you a shock or throwing fireballs that cause moderate burns.

And this while most of them run out of energy after three to seven shots.

So it isn't anything outrageous.

Someone without powers could still stand his ground against a mage.

Only a prodigy of this already very rare group would be able to control no more than one element.

That means, only one in a hundred people has the potential to be a mage, and less than one in a hundred mages is talented enough to be a prodigy.

So notable mages are scarce and if not for their non-combat utility they wouldn’t be worth more than normal fighters.

Well, they can also be fighters, but the training required to be able to use magic is too time-intensive to allow much training in other areas.

It requires a strict training schedule of meditation and practice for a mage to be able to channel magic into their bodies and expand the limited capacity a human body can hold.

If that’s neglected, the abilities of the mage will deteriorate the same as the muscles of someone who stops his training.

Without training, for example, a fire mage wouldn't manage more than a spark to light a campfire.

On the other hand, you won't find a mage that isn't training.

The word affinity holds true in this regard, that such persons are drawn to their element.

I pity the parents of a fire mage; to keep their house standing would take quite a bit of effort with a child like that.

With all of that in mind, it’s pretty obvious that mages with secondary skills and roles are extremely uncommon.

To sum it up: I'm no mage.

My third reason should be the most obvious, I hold my life dear!

There aren’t any real threats nearby that would be enough to endanger even one family on their own.

While we don’t live in luxury, what we have is decent and I am rather content with my lifestyle.

So there is no real need to go for any risks.

It’s not that I’m completely opposed to excitement in general, but I'm not too keen on a lifestyle where I have to sleep in the wilderness, always at risk to lose my life.

I mean, there is no reason for me to live in constant danger.

You would need to be rather stupid to get yourself killed in the deeper part of the forest, where monsters actually exist.

And I mean to get killed by them, because the monsters here are nothing impressive.

By my talk about mages you should be able to estimate the level of danger that exists in general when I tell you that a group of four adventurers is generally enough to cope with nearly anything.

Even monsters that can wield magic don’t have many shots and those are only about as dangerous as the spells of an average mage.

While legendary monsters exist, they have always an extremely low population, as they breed quite seldom.

Don’t know why it is that way.

Maybe some god didn’t want to see his creation overrun by millions of dragons that have no real enemies and then starve to death.

That would be a very big flaw in the plan!

So like I said there are no real threats that endanger us in a noteworthy way, and this village is especially void of monsters.

All we have here are direwolfs, grindingboars, and worst of all… urrgh, slimes!

First direwolfs; basically what the name says, a slightly bigger-than-average wolf, that is hostile towards humans.

They hunt both in packs and alone.

Here you will only find the latter since they are scarce in these parts and so superior to the rest of the fauna that they can hunt effectively alone.

On the rare occasions my family goes into the deep forest where they can be found, we always have a bag filled with strong-smelling herbs that can be thrown to spread their contents.

Those “smellbags” are enough to send them running.

It's a family-approved recipe!

Then grindingboars; not much to say about them.

They’re basically big pigs with horns that rush at everything they find in front of their snouts.

If they would manage to strike you the wound should be so bad that there is no chance of escape.

If you're on your own in this kind of situation that you'd be done for.

Still, they are just herbivore show-offs.

They aren't stealthy, announce their attacks, and charge in straight lines.

In a forest pretty harmless since they don’t chase behind.

And smellbags work on them too.

And lastly, those goddamn slimes.

Slimes are the sole reason why adventurers would ever come to our village for a quest.

Because I can almost hear the question: "Are they so dangerous?"

Answer: No!

Slimes are simply the most recent pests our world has to deal with.

As far as I know, they are artificial creatures, created by a mage, that escaped from said mage’s dungeon about 150 years ago.

They’ve spread almost everywhere since then.

By the way, thank you nameless mage for creating the most annoying and useless creatures the world has ever seen!

They are half-liquid creatures just tall enough to reach your knee and are controlled by the crystalline round core that is inside of them.

They can basically eat anything they can get ahold of but generally tend towards living things.

When one has devoured enough, they can kind of split by using the absorbed nutrition to form a new core and so you have two slimes.

Don’t worry though, they aren’t going to be the harbingers of one of the most inappropriate apocalypses you could imagine.

First, they are slow, almost immobile.

Because of this, it’s easy to kill them.

Well, there are some difficulties, like their dissolving ability that utilizes some kind of extremely powerful acid.

Maybe that's a clue to how they escaped in the first place.

This dissolving ability leads to many ruined weapons while trying to destroy the slime’s core since it’s their only weak point.

when you have the right tools to handle them just about anyone can take care of them as long as they don’t touch the slime like an idiot.

However, as hitting the marble-sized cores is difficult and farming tools are hard to replace in the countryside, people commonly hire adventurers to do that job.

Another reason there probably won’t be a slime apocalypse is that they’re mainly carnivores.

While they can devour plants and are sometimes found targeting specific parts like fruits, it seems it does not work out for them.

There were even some cases when a single slime caused terrible damage to a harvest.

However, they generally go for animals and monsters.

Still, because of how slow they are they aren’t really a threat and their success rate is abysmal.

Finally, because they are artificial creatures, you can’t use the logic of living creatures on them.

To clarify, stupid wouldn’t quite get the point across correctly, as it would imply they even have any intelligence at all.

It is more the fact that slimes are just not programmed for survival.

They have no real self-preservation instinct and won’t run away when spotted.

Or in their case, slowly crawling away.

Also, they are not too keen on creating offspring.

Sometimes they do it once and never try again since they only act on a whim.

But they have no urge to raise their population.

However, I’m definitely not going to thank their creator for not programming his little pests to be something that would cause the end of the world.

To conclude, they aren’t really a danger.

Now the question of why are adventurers even coming to your village just to do this annoying, tool-wrecking work?

A good question.

Especially since the only valuable thing about slimes are their cores, which are worth far less when broken.

And you have to break them, because otherwise, the core will use whatever energy it gets to make more slime and break free.

Because of that, breaking the core is the only way to end the problem.

The reason why anyone would do such an unprofitable job is that it’s necessary to kill them.

Although they don’t create offspring frequently, it still happens.

Not like rabbits, but at least in considerable numbers.

That alone normally wouldn’t be a problem, but they have no natural enemies.

As they aren't edible, there are no creatures to hunt them.

Still, because monsters are territorial, they do attack slimes.

The first issue with that is that monsters don’t aim for the core.

For the second issue, remember when I said to not touch those bags of acid?

Well, monsters have limited ways to attack and are too aggressive to leave them be.

That’s one source of nutrition confirmed.

The aggravating thing is that these creatures are so damned resilient.

The only way to kill them is by breaking the core.

How effective is magic on them?

Lightning can stun them for a short while but doesn’t damage the core.

Ice seems to be almost useless since the acid seems to have some kind of anti-freeze property.

Fire does work a bit, but heat alone doesn’t threaten the core and while the flames will destroy parts of the slime, it’s like throwing fireballs at a liquid and would exhaust the mage by the time it causes a noteworthy effect.

Meanwhile, earth magic has simply no real offensive potential.

It would be more effective just to throw rocks.

And what the hell do you think wind can do?

So the only practical way to do the job is by using a weapon on a small target that is in a moving blob that dissolves the steel in less than ten seconds.

Talk about unwanted jobs!

The only silver lining in all of this is that at least the slimes are easy to spot because of their randomly generated colors.

It is easy to spot yellow, red, pink, or blue dots in nature.

Well, that’s just about everything there is to know about slimes and the other monsters close to my village.

And because I can already see this question coming.

Why does a village girl know so much about slimes?

The answer is simple.

While the only ones coming here are adventurers forced by the guild to do pest-control jobs, looking for a base for their operations, what do you think is the one thing all of these groups coming here are commonly rambling about?

Well, I won't complain since what they do is beneficial for my family’s business.

You know, walking through the forest with fewer annoying traps you might step on.

That’s everything about me and my life.

In my remote village.

In the middle of nowhere.