NOVEL NEXT Chapter II – His day is marching on!
Here we see the generic slime monster in its natural habitat, and it is quite a sight to behold. With its smooth, semi-transparent body containing blueish tinges that take on the color of the environment, it can camouflage itself and manage to survive in a variety of ecosystems.
The Gemeinplatz slime, a term referring to many species of slimes that are commonly grouped into one, is a distinct member of the protozoa. This unicellular organism can be easily seen with the naked eye unlike its microscopic cousins, commonly reaching the size of a fully ripe cabbage when fully developed. This odd creature is a very opportunistic omnivore, feeding itself with plants and carcasses whenever it can find them.
The blue Azdavay slime, one of the subspecies of Gemeinplatz slime, is currently in great danger. Its body is very fragile, making it a target for predators looking for easy sustenance. While the slime does travel in packs of three or more to defend itself against its enemies, it has found itself under increasing pressure by a new predator that has introduced itself to the environment.
This newcomer is an old member of the homo sapiens who has found himself outside of his usual ecosystem. Like most members of his species, he has two arms, two legs, and two spears waiting to be thrown at his next meal. This human has spent the last day crafting these spears, sharpening wooden sticks with a knife looted from another human in hand. This wild human lies in wait, patiently hiding behind a bush while he waits for a trio of slimes to unknowingly approach him. Slowly the slimes hop over to their doom, in ignorant bliss as they know not what is about to come at them.
Finding that the time is opportune, the human jumps out of the bushes, screaming to scare the slimes. The slimes’ hesitation is what brings about their end; the big blue blobs freeze for a moment in fear before aggroing (‘aggro’ is a very professional term used by biologists studying the nature of Gemeinplatz). A moment is what your average human needs. He throws one of his spears at the slime closest to him, killing it when its nucleus is pierced and destroyed by the spear. Even then the human isn’t done. He readies his second spear, this one piercing the other slime, the third one successfully running away as slimes tend to do in such a situation.
Thus concludes the wild hunt of the human: two slimes left on the ground marking the results of today’s hunt. He picks up the slimes by the spears still attached to them, muttering a prayer in thanks to a Lord that nobody in Gemeinplatz is yet to be made aware of.
Nature is indeed wonderful, yet it is also unnecessarily cruel to slimes.
Old Brown was back in his even older cave, returning “home” with a fresh harvest of two slimes. They have been his only source of food in these lonely mountains, and they’ll mostly continue being so for a good while. He had seen no other soul since the slaver (whose body had long ago been eaten by wolves, slimes and bipedal bears) and his slave.
It was quite the troublesome situation, to say the least. While the local fauna had been easy to defeat up until now, Brown knew not what to do if he encountered something fiercer. Nor did he know how he’d survive if winter came by to visit again. Even worse, exiting the mountains might be more dangerous than staying in them. What were the people of this land like? For all he knew they might all be cannibals who would eat Brown for breakfast. At least it wasn’t likely that he was anywhere in the United States, he was pretty sure he’d have heard of slimes if they resided somewhere in Kansas or Virginia. Perhaps he was somewhere farther away, like the Orient? He had heard that Japan was a mountainous land, and this place had a pretty big mountain, and his first encounter looked like he came from the Far East. That’d be quite troubling for him though, as far as he knew the Shogun wasn’t too keen to welcome foreigners or Christians visiting his land unless they were Dutch. Maybe Brown could trick them into thinking he was speaking Dutch if he slurred his English enough? Or, yet another maybe, he was thinking too deeply into such a far-fetched hypothetical scenario constructed from the grand total of zero information he had.
John Brown had died 6 years before the what most would call the grandfather of isekai, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was first published. He was quite uninformed on how to survive in a completely different world, the concept of “isekai” being as foreign to him as the hypothetical Shogunate he was going to encounter.
Brown set aside troubling questions of survival for now though, he was sure that Providence would guide His faithful to safe shores one way or another. It was time for him to get occupied with making some of the good stuff.
Putting down the slimes, while making sure that their liquid didn’t spill out on to the floor, Brown took ahold of a steel helmet that he’d looted from his only visitor. He wasn’t an uncivilized man; the old man wouldn’t straight up scoop up some raw slime if he could help it, and help it he could. He took ahold of a flint and scraped it on the helmet’s surface, using it as a makeshift firestarter to create sparks to light up the kindling he had already prepared. This firestarter was then promptly promoted to a bowl that’d hold the slime’s former innards. The blue fluid quickly began bubbling inside the bowl, emitting a smell that was a queer yet oddly satisfying (to someone as desperate as Brown at least) mixture of fat and sugar. This process of boiling the slime got rid of excess water and harmful germs (though Brown had also died before the Germ Theory of Disease was widely accepted, meaning that he didn’t exactly know what he was accomplishing by doing this).
Brown now put aside this “solid blue stew” to allow it to cool down to a gelatin-like consistency, for it was easier and more civilized to eat something solid with your hands. He didn’t remain idle though; for idleness was a tool of the Devil, and Brown wanted nothing to do with the Devil.
Thus, while his mind was wandering off in search for a way to relieve this sinful idleness, Brown stumbled upon an idea. He knew that people were present nearby to wherever he was. The steel helmet of the slaver showed to Brown that the humans nearby were civilized enough to achieve a decent enough level of metalworking (though apparently not civilized enough to have abolished slavery), meaning that they’d also be civilized enough to engage in trade and business. It'd be quite beneficial if Brown had some way of engaging in trade if and when he encountered human so-called civilization once more. But what would the people here want to buy? He needed something that’d appeal to a market that he knew nothing about.
By now the fire in his cave had left a great pile of ash, one that Brown had no idea what to do with. Wood ash, slime liquid that smelled of fat, smelling… Eureka! At this moment Brown would have actually shouted “Eureka!” if he wasn’t concerned about attracting unwanted attention.
Brown emptied the helmet, which now contained solid blue soup resembling the slimes it had been made from. He then began engaging in the making of consumer goods in another world.
While Brown’s day marched on, busy with his new commercial venture, so marched on the day of the inhabitants of the small town of Azdavay. This town was mostly a stopping point used by travelers between the copper mines of Curry and the grand dwarven city in Zon’guldac. Azdavay had a highly developed service industry to thanks to these travelers going to and fro in their merriest of ways.
One individual of note to our tale of John Brown being isekai’d was a certain demi-human named Ayomide, who toiled away in a corner maid café as a waitress. This establishment was run by an otherworlder that had the idea to bring the concept of a themed café over to Gemeinplatz. It had a small but loyal entourage of patrons who were enamored by the concept of getting to lord over people without having to actually pay money for a slave.
“Welcome home master, I welcome you to La Isékai!” May you all burn in the underworld, you sons of asses.
Not only was she working in the hellish service industry, she was forced to work in the service industry. As if dealing with the dregs of humanity (formally referred to as ‘customers’) wasn’t enough, she wasn’t getting paid to put up with them.
“What do you want honorable master?” ‘Honorable master’ my arse!
Her internal objections were for naught, for the gods had cursed this world with magic. She was directly controlled by the proprietor (or “master” as he fashioned himself) during business hours, her body moved with no volition of her own.
It was hell on not-Earth.
Ayomide sometimes wished that the proprietor’s magic was better so that he could at least bother to wipe her capability for thought during working hours. At least she would suffer less that way.
“Here’s your sweet brioche, master!” …
Her propensity for silent insults would slowly give way to tired silence since she became more and apathetic as the day marched on. The fact that she hadn’t completely given up in her silent insults by this point was quite an achievement by itself. By the evening her head would be completely empty; her brain simply had nothing to process as she couldn’t control herself.
Thus, the day marched on, and on, and on, as if it would never end.
“Please have a nice day master!” Ayomide and the rest of her fellow staff waved a stiff goodbye, with an even stiffer smile on their faces. Things quickly changed when the last customer was seen outside. In a manner that’d be most uncanny if any outsiders observed it, all of the waitresses stopped smiling and waving in unison. They didn’t make any sound, no relieved sighs or humorous banter that’d mark the end of a normal business day, only marching on in an orderly manner to their quarters.
Their quarters were a cramped one, as is oft the case for slave quarters, only containing the bare minimum needed to contain the dozen slaves. Bunk beds with only straw bedding, a bucket in the corner that constituted a latrine, a lack of windows making the air inside feel more than metaphorically suffocating… The slaves heard a ‘click’ from the lock of the steel door. The master always made sure to lock them in to keep them from escaping during the night.
The room was eerily silent after that.
The silence was broken with the sound of a dozen bodies collapsing. The magic controlling their bodies had stopped and it took a good few seconds on the ground for the slaves to remember how to control their own bodies. A couple silent expletives flew around in the air during this process. After that no other words were muttered from the tired slaves who immediately headed to bed. It was useless to strike conversation; they barely knew each other due to not being able to converse during or after “work”.
Tonight though, Ayomide didn’t plan to be asleep. She waited an hour to make sure that all her coworkers were sleeping before slowly moving her aching body towards an empty corner of the room to do her nightly training. Silently she cast a few weak spells to warm up. “[Breeze], [Breeze], [Breeze]…” Her ginger hair waved ever so slightly at every cast. It was easy, even in her tired state, for her to cast such simple spells by speaking them out loud. Such simple, vocal spellcasting wasn’t her goal though. [Breeze]! [Breeze], godsdamnit! Her hair stood still. She didn’t give up, silently shouting ‘[Breeze]’ deep into the night. Yet, her hair stood still, no matter how many hopeless tears she shed, even as the birds outside began to chirp to welcome the coming morning.
Ayomide heard the footsteps of the master slowly descending the stairs. Did she really want to welcome another captive day of having no control over her life? Was she to forever remain a disposable slave to a hellish corner café? Would she die yet another forgotten living corpse, comprising a simple, small cog in the monstrous economy of Gemeinplatz?
…N-No, I want to live! [Breeze]!
Suddenly she felt her hair move, a cool breeze embracing the back of her neck.
Ayomide had managed to cast a spell with only her thoughts.