Ch.244[Episode 244] Greedy Things

“?”

The slime was chewing on something broken while maintaining an innocent expression.

No, describing it as “chewing” might be somewhat ambiguous.

To be precise, it would be more accurate to say that fragments were floating inside the slime’s body.

“Um, could you please let me go…?”

Unryu Hime spoke almost pleadingly to the slime that was firmly holding her and refusing to release her.

Sir Dominic only then realized that what had captured Hime was a black slime that inhabited the S.P.Y app.

For some reason, the slime revealed in the torchlight was almost as massive as Sir Dominic’s spider tank, which meant that the rest of it hiding in the darkness was even larger.

“Why on earth are you buried in slime?”

Sir Dominic asked Hime.

No matter how he thought about it, there was no reason for Hime to be stuck in slime.

“I don’t know. It suddenly jumped out from the darkness, and then suddenly—”

With a gulping sound, the black slime completely swallowed Hime.

To be precise, it would be more accurate to say that Hime was accidentally sucked in while the slime was wriggling, but to observers, it simply looked like the black slime had devoured her.

After swallowing Hime, the black slime grew even larger and began to consume the walls, floor, and ceiling.

“…What on earth is that?”

Aaa asked Sir Dominic.

Despite having seen all kinds of monsters, terrains, bugs, and errors during various speed runs, the black slime before them felt strangely familiar yet new.

“It’s a slime.”

Sir Dominic replied as if stating the obvious.

“I, uh, picked it up before.”

Aaa responded to Sir Dominic’s words with apparent disbelief.

“…Is it Sir Dominic’s pet?”

“Probably.”

The slime should have been inside Sir Dominic’s phone.

Sir Dominic vaguely answered Aaa’s question while searching his pockets.

And only then did Sir Dominic realize that he had lost his phone.

Normally, he would have retraced his steps to find his phone, but this was Glitchburg.

Sir Dominic had no confidence in finding his lost phone in this dark and complex space.

Glitchburg was so dark and complicated that even the confident Sir Dominic was overwhelmed.

Instead, Sir Dominic completely abandoned any attachment to his phone with its remaining contract and installment payments, and focused on the question before him.

The question of how this slime had grown so large in such a short time.

Sir Dominic might have forgotten, but this slime was actually a species mutated by a bug.

This slime, which had survived between the cracks of splitting and twisting dimensions, was a species with excellent regenerative abilities from the beginning.

And the slime, once mutated in the cracks between twisted dimensions, gained the power to restore not only itself but everything that touched it.

Sir Dominic thought that the slime’s ability connected him and Sir Dominica through the S.P.Y app, but all of this was related to the properties mentioned above.

The nucleus that had been split in two between the dimensional cracks became a medium between two dimensions due to its property of trying to restore itself across dimensions.

Thus, the black slime was highly effective at restoring things that were shattered, twisted, messed up, and split.

“!”

“Ouch!”

The slime spat out the mechanical device it had been chewing on.

At the same time, Hime was able to escape through the gap.

“Ugh. My goodness. Isn’t it sticky…?”

Hime shuddered at the mushy sensation she had felt inside the slime.

It was a strangely pleasant feeling of being slippery and soft, yet simultaneously unpleasant due to the slipperiness and stickiness.

Hime shuddered at the sticky sensation after being spat out, but when she reached out to remove the stickiness, she felt nothing unusual.

Rather, her skin seemed to have become more fluffy and smooth.

“…Sir Dominic?”

Hime flapped her ears while looking at her arm, which was strangely free of blemishes.

“Does this slime have beauty effects too?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t particularly interested…”

Sir Dominic awkwardly answered Hime’s question.

Of course, the beauty effect was a secondary effect derived from the slime’s recovery power.

Due to its property of trying to restore its surroundings, it restored the skin to its best condition, coincidentally returning it to baby-soft skin.

“♬”

“Huh?”

“Where is it going?”

The slime seemed to find this whole situation amusing.

The slime made a happy singing sound, then suddenly began to move somewhere.

Being an amorphous life form, the slime began to slip through gaps in the ceiling, floor, and walls.

“Where on earth is the slime going?”

Sir Dominic had a big question as he watched the slime that had suddenly started moving.

If it weren’t for Aaa’s intervention as he watched everything from the side, Sir Dominic would have followed the slime, losing sight of his goal again.

“Sir Dominic! Think about the objective! Now that we’ve rescued Hime, shouldn’t we escape from here first!”

“Ah.”

Sir Dominic made a dumb sound at Aaa’s words.

“Right. I almost forgot again.”

Sir Dominic had a personality that made him focus on one thing until it was resolved, which was both a strength and a weakness.

Being absorbed in one thing meant he had excellent concentration, but it also meant losing sight of his original purpose and becoming absorbed in something else.

Well aware of this fact himself, Sir Dominic thanked Aaa.

“Thank you. I tend to be like this sometimes…”

“It’s fine. Now let’s prepare to get out of here. From here… Yes, it would be faster to take a slightly different route.”

Aaa took out a map while accepting Sir Dominic’s thanks.

In his eyes, the shortest route to escape from here was being drawn.

…

“Heh, heheh.”

The miner who had disappeared, almost fleeing from Hime, finally succeeded in finding the future data she so desperately wanted.

Holding ash-colored equipment and laughing like a fool, she put down her pickaxe and took out a monocle, placing it over her left eye. Through this monocle, the settings and specs of the equipment were being transmitted.

“This one increases attack speed by 12% compared to the existing one… This is for tanks only? Favoring tanks again?”

Of course, checking the stats of equipment that would be updated in the future like this was illegal, and the monocle she was using was also an illegal item, but she didn’t care.

Since she was already doing something illegal, adding one or two more crimes wouldn’t make a difference.

She memorized as many stats as possible.

In the past, she used to record them directly in notebooks, but after being caught once for illegal data mining, she relied on her excellent memory instead of keeping written records that could serve as evidence.

“Good. Now that I’ve memorized all the stats, I can go back…”

Having finally extracted all the information, the miner put away her monocle and picked up her pickaxe.

As she was congratulating herself, thinking “The information I’ve gathered so far is worth at least 270,000 Credit,” she suddenly paused at something she saw.

And as she slowly turned her head, she fixed her gaze on the object that had stopped her in her tracks.

“…They’re adding something like that in the next update?”

The miner gulped.

What she was looking at was of such great value.

“A map of new materials and their supply locations…!”

The miner’s eyes gleamed with greed.

The equipment she had seen so far were T6 equipment being newly updated.

Naturally, new enhancement materials would be needed to strengthen these items, and it seemed the system had already determined the locations where these materials could be obtained.

“If I knew that information, 1 million Gacha Stone… No, even ten times that wouldn’t be a dream.”

The miner greedily reached out toward the map.

But soon, having regained some of her reason, she quickly withdrew her hand.

“No, no. I shouldn’t be greedy. I’ve already gathered enough information to pay off my debt, right?”

The miner glanced sideways at where the map was.

Since it was before the update, the map had no effects, but to the miner’s eyes, it seemed to shine with brilliant gold and rainbow colors.

“But, but money is never a bad thing to have in abundance. If I just… check just one or two locations…”

The miner’s hand moved toward the map again.

“No, no! Checking equipment stats and peeking at such confidential information are different security levels from the start!”

The miner abruptly turned her body away from the map, trying to avert her gaze.

If that map truly recorded the locations where new materials would appear, even touching it might trigger a system warning.

Especially for someone with a criminal record who was already committing illegal data mining.

No, it might not end with just a warning.

She might have to prepare for expulsion…

She poured out all sorts of reasons to herself why she shouldn’t look at the map, but the miner secretly glanced at the map again from the corner of her eye.

And despite all her efforts until now, the greed that had risen in her heart eventually filled her to the top of her head, numbing both reason and emotion.

“Yeah, since it’s already illegal, what’s one more addition going to hurt…? As long as I don’t get caught!”

Having rationalized her actions, the miner finally reached out toward the map.