Chapter 40
I'll Show You How
to Hold Your Breath
Translator : PolterGlast
【Skill Acquired: Free Diving】
As always, the skills
I acquired were ones I had absolutely no idea how to use. However, there had
been times when I had been helped by these skills with mysterious usability, so
I figured it was better to have them than not. Still, I wasn't currently free
diving at all. I was just crouching down and bubbling, and the waves crashing
against me felt rather painful.
【You might get a little better at holding your breath,
maybe.】
I checked the skill
description. It was the usual vague explanation. In that case, I decided to
bubbling to the extreme. Aside from the embarrassment, I found myself happily
engraving Lotus's small words of kindness into my memory. Knowing that I was a
child, Lotus, who usually kept his distance when these kinds of topics came up,
was actually very serious. That was the Lotus I liked, so I supposed it
couldn't be helped, but sometimes I just wanted to clash with him.
Blub-blub.
I put my face in the
shallow water and thrashed about with emotions I couldn't deal with. But I
couldn't stay like this forever. Eiya! I stood up. My MP hadn't completely run
out, so I could still stay in my adult form. Splash-splash, I made splashing
sounds as I chased after Lotus's back.
"L-Lotus."
I gently tugged on the
hem of his clothes and called out to him as he started to turn around.
"Y-you don't have
to look. You really don't."
Even in my adult form,
he was still much taller than me. I used to look older than him when I
transformed, but now we were probably about the same age. He had become a
full-fledged young man before I had even become an adult. It was easy to act
foolish, but when I tried to put it into words, it was terribly embarrassing,
as if something was stuck in my throat. "You know," the words that
came out were very small.
"But I really,
just, wanted Lotus to see, just a little bit..."
On the sandy beach,
the waves quietly receded from my bare feet and then came back again. Zazan,
the sound that reached me from far away felt incredibly distant. I bit my lip.
Looking down, I saw a pathetic figure. He must have been quite surprised. He
still didn't turn around. I didn't know if it was because I had asked him not
to, but he said, "I won't look." His voice was very small, but I
could always hear Lotus's voice clearly. His tone was never gentle, but it was
a little low and still kind. Maybe it was just Lotus's voice that made me turn
my ear attentively.
"I won't look,
though."
Even from behind, I noticed
that his ears were slightly red. "Ah," I thought.
I blinked, hesitated
with an "uwaa," but then thought, "Maybe this much is
okay," and ei, I grasped Lotus's hand. It was big and very hard. Lotus
didn't even look at me and kept facing straight ahead, but he moved his
fingertips slightly, as if a little troubled, paused for a beat or two, and
then faintly, he squeezed my hand back. Of course, it was just for a moment.
"A-ah,
ah..."
"Just hurry up
and change your clothes already. Otherwise, I won't be able to look at
you."
"I, I, I..."
"...El?"
"I, I just used
the Free Diving skill..."
"No, why would
you do that?"
Because I couldn't
breathe properly...
***
The skill I thought
had no use unexpectedly found its place in everyday life. Or rather, even
though I was being carried on his back, in his arms, and like a sack of rice
all the time, why did I end up like that when it mattered? I didn't know. I
would use the Free Diving skill a lot from now on, I announced to the skills in
my head (which, shockingly, had leveled up to LV. 2 in an instant). I returned
to my child form, washed my sticky body with the slime water I had in my water
bottle, and finished changing. Lotus did the same.
The sun was blazing
overhead, a stark contrast to Leyshan and Cloudy Country. I packed my things,
thinking it would take a while to get used to the heat. There was no issue
regarding where the location of the town is. It was reassuring to have prior
information, compared to Leyshan, where we had to probe around.
"Ichi, Nii,
San?"
They had been
incredibly excited by the sea salt from the very beginning, but had they calmed
down by now? Blue sky, white clouds. The bright sun. It was only natural for
them to be energetic. They should have finished playing to their heart's content
by now. Lotus and I followed the tracks on the sand where they seemed to have
rolled around. And then we found them. They had become three dumplings,
withered and collapsed on the rocks.
"............Wh-whaaa,
noooooooo, ooooooooo!?"
For a moment, my brain
couldn't catch up with the situation, and there was a significant pause. What
in the world---!? I hugged the flattened slimes and screamed. This was ten
times worse than their shaking up and down earlier.
--You know...
somehow... I think... we got a little... too excited, maybe...?
The slimes, who had
frolicked too much under the sun, conveyed this to us with a faint trembling. I
wanted to tell them to keep their excitement in check, but instead, I panicked
and hurriedly moved them to the shade, and Lotus and I splashed the stored
slime water on them. I was glad we hadn't used it all up. I felt relieved when
they returned to their smooth and shiny slime forms.
But I poked the three
squishy slimes and scolded them, saying they should really reflect on this, and
then Ichi and the others tilted their heads (which slimes don't have), saying
something felt strange. They seemed to be having a mumbled consultation and
conversation together. What was it?
--Somehow, it feels
like the gods are very far away, you know. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Super far
away.
Lotus and I exchanged
glances at Ichi and the others' words.
There were gods in
this world. They should have been everywhere, but there were probably varying
degrees of their presence. The blessings of the gods resided in water. It was
the gods who had created the Ichi and the others slimes, who stored water in
their bodies. Cloudy Country had water sources here and there, and in Leyshan,
it rained everywhere. But this country, Soleil, might be far removed from
water. The country had come into being as a leaf that had ripened and taken
shape, independent from the World Tree, so the surrounding sea was outside the
leaf, and one of the World Tree's branches. It was isolated from the country.
I didn't know what
that meant, but I kept it in mind a little and, fortunately, we found a
carriage. Lotus and I carried the exhausted Ichi and the others, buried them in
the straw-filled cargo bed, and headed towards the town with the sea behind us.
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