The Dryad’s Sapling
“Then. Take these children. These sisters will serve you well.” From within the slime queen, six smaller slimes ooze out and surround you. Blue. Green. Purple. Pink. Orange. Red. There is one of each colour. The slimes bob around in greeting. “Hi!” “Hello!” “Hullo.” “Purupuru.” “G’day!” “Fuck.” Hm. Didn’t one of those greetings sound different?
“These children. High potential. Please take care of them,” continues the queen politely. “Anything else. Needed?”
You make a show of thinking before finally nodding. “There is one last thing…”
***
Before you return to Grahferde, you set up a teleportation circle in the slime clearing and tasked the slime queen with looking after it. You had also requested her slimes to salvage whatever they could spare on their daily roamings and to hoard it for transport. A forest as untouched as theirs would harbour herbs, perhaps even rare ones, and closer to the mountains there would probably be mineral deposits to be found. You cannot control what they hoard, but the job of sifting through the salvage could be safely given to the goblins. This way, you would have a frequent – if random – source of materials.
Upon your arrival in the goblin village, the first thing you notice is the slender sapling – tall for its apparent age – planted in the middle of the village.
“What is this?” You frown at the tree. It’s in your way.
“Ah, welcome back, Master, Aria,” says Arlin, the first to greet you. He is watering the sapling together with Petze.
“Mistress Rinnefiela brought this back from the northern forest,” says the goblin scout. “It has something to do with the dryads.”
“It’s kinda pretty… No, Lucy, don’t try to chew on it!” shouts Aria, pulling Lucy back.
The slimes you brought back crowd around the small tree, oohing and aahing. “What’s this?” “This? Tree?” “Smells nice!” “Shit!” Again, you hear something different from amidst the slime chorus.
“Ha, how about it, Erdrick Mercant? I can get things done by myself!” You hear a boastful, jovial taunt. Turning, you see Rin standing there, smiling proudly with her hands on her hips.
“You went north and met the dryads?”
“Did you expect me to sit around doing nothing?” she snorted. “Of course I did.”
“And the tree?”
Rin gives you a smirk before beginning to explain. It seems that while you were busy with the slimes, she snuck off to deal with the dryads. Unfortunately, she arrived a little too late – the goblins were not the only ones who had heard of the dryads’ presence. A group of mercenaries from Galbaldy had also arrived in the forest to hunt down the dryads. From what Rin gathered, when dryads were in fear or in pain, their skin would become bark-like in an attempt to protect themselves. In that state, the skin was in tremendous demand as highly efficacious reagents for magic.
“Really? How much do they sell for?” you ask, interrupting Rin.
“I don’t know, find out yourself,” she replies, annoyed. “Anyway…”
Continuing her story, she explains how she came across the dryad settlement in the aftermath of the attack. There, she found a dying dryad, bereft of her skin and left to die. The dryad had managed to conceal a small sapling from her assailants. This, she passed to Rin, sensing that she was not human. If the tree was nurtured properly, it would grow into a new dryad.
“That wasn’t all. I managed to catch up to a band of adventurers that had been guiding the Galbaldian mercenaries. From them I obtained some samples of dryad skin that have been passed on to Zayan. Oh, and I also took one of them alive,” says Rin with more than a little hint of pride. “Bring it out!” Waving her hand about, she orders the goblins majestically in a manner befitting her royal heritage.
The furry little critters snap to attention and haul out from one of the huts a naked man, bound and gagged. His hair is blonde and his skin fair. Besides numerous red welts across his muscular, bare torso, he seems otherwise unharmed.
Your first question to Rin is “Why is he naked?”
“Oh, uh, when I caught up to him, he was already…” Rin blushes and looks away for a while. “He was the only male in the entire band, and he was… cavorting with his female comrades.”
“He was, was he?” You give the man a withering stare. Not one of jealousy, of course, but any sympathy you might have had for the captured adventurer evaporates faster than a drop of water in a scorching desert. The man glares back, his eyes rimmed with red. It seems that he has been crying. He screams angrily through his gag, struggling until the goblins poke at him with their spears to keep him docile. “Why did you bring him back?”
“I thought you might be interested,” Rin shrugs. “For information. And other things.”
You are not sure what other things she thinks you have in mind, but you press on. “And his comrades?”
Rin grins wickedly. “Dead, of course. I made sure to dispose of the evidence.”
The bound man screams again, raging muffledly as he writhes and twists in the mud like a helpless worm.
You glance back at your prisoner, wondering what to do with him.
“Shall I torture him for information?” asks Rin helpfully.
***
A. You let Rin torture the man for information. Surely she must have gotten better?
B. You hand the man over to Zayan. You have a feeling that she is better at this business than Rin is.
C. You will handle the interrogation yourself. Persuasion is a skill that needs sharpening from time to time.
***
Even though you were not pushed anywhere near your limits, your experiences in the slime forest have made you stronger.
A. Your stamina and mana capacity have increased. Moderate increase to Vitality and Mana.
B. Your physical ability has increased. Moderate increase to Physical Attack and Physical Defense.
C. Your magical ability has increased. Moderate increase to Magical Attack and Magical Defense.
D. Your offensive capability has increased. Moderate increase to Physical and Magical Attack.
E. Your defensive capability has increased. Moderate increase to Physical and Magical Defense.
and funny to read. That's why A is my preference.
). Also, I briefly considered sending off the slimes to play with him, but I don't believe I would like to read the following scene.
