"Ellie, how is the new room?"
Seth asked the sli rancher while entering the sli compound, which was how they ca to call this place. Ellie had joined Minas Mar soon after the eting and asked for a room to work with her slis.
The room was filled with many shallow basins of various kinds because all slis 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 sli. And very kind of sli needed its own basin tailored to its needs. It was quite impressive to see many different variations of the sa 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 make so special basins. Co, 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 slis. The quirky girl went along the rows and kept calling out nas.
"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 sli and those are Looney and Lunatic, her offspring." she lifted up a pale sli, giving off a bioluminescent blue glow, before pointing at two other, similar, slis.
This kept going for almost an hour, during which the girl showed her impressive mory for nas and slis. She introduced at least 200 different slis to him.
"Sorry, I got absorbed in showing you around. Why did you co by again?" she finally finished the sli introduction as they sat down at a small table cramd into a corner. While she did her best to make everything perfect for the slis, her own place was almost nonexistent.
"I actually ca 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 imdiately 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 imdiately nad the golem and put Humpty on the ground.
"By the way, did Alison already co by?"
"Alison? Do you an that serious alchemy girl? Yes, I gave her so sli 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 agreent for the trade route and sign a few other things off."
"What do you an hiding? Are you implying I have been evading my duties as the Tower Master?" Seth exclaid 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 sli 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 agreent 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 tis 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 soone tried to poach ."
"What!? Soone 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 agreent, how far did the Chiras 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 mariti 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 so more paperwork before Seth could finally leave. He planned to look for Mina and Fin when Ellie suddenly ca 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 slis. Naly harry, Hedwig and Hermione.
The Imugi eating sli, Seth almost couldn't believe it. The snakelet had behaved really well since they returned to Minas Mar. It had spent most of its ti playing with the children or practicing magic with him and Alison.
Why would it suddenly behave like this?
~Mom! Did I do sothing bad? I didn't do it on purpose…~ it communicated with big teary eyes.
"How did you accidentally eat three slis?"
~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 nas while in the pet space and beca envious and i-~
"You were envious! That's why you ate them!" Ellie hollered peeved.
~No! Mom, I didn't! Believe ! I only went to look at their nas b-because I don't have one of my own! I know Mom will give one when the ti cos, but… ~
Seth sighed. So this was the reason. He had procrastinated giving the little snakelet a na because he did not want to be too casual about it.
"You still haven't given your pet a na!? 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 nas and thinking about it, but I was just unsure… A na is for a lifeti. It should be a good one."
Ellie blushed a little at the indirect slap to the face. She simply nad everything randomly depending on her mood.
~Mom looked for nas all the ti? ~
"I'm not that free… but I narrowed it down to two. Falkor or Tatzel, which do you like?"
Falkor was the na 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 na.
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