Escorting Goblin Slayer through the first floor of her house— through the entry room, down the white-painted walls of her decorated hallways— Slime Girl waddled over to the side of the archway leading into the kitchen; allowing for the ten year-old boy to walk inside first, before slowly following behind him with a happy expression plastered on her smooth-gelatinous face. "Thank you… So much… For being… So nice… To me," Slime Girl said slowly with gratitude in her voice, as she watched Goblin Slayer walking across the white-tiled floor of her fancy Victorian-styled kitchen. "Most people… Don't ever… Want to… Come inside… My house… Because I'm… A slime…"
" I see… Sorry to hear about that, ma'am," Goblin Slayer replied, as he continued to walk toward the center of the kitchen, carrying all of the heavy groceries within his small arms. Placing the parchment-covered wrapped vegetables and fruit onto the wooden kitchen island counter, beside where he had set down all dozen bottles of "Londobell Milk", Goblin Slayer couldn't help but to feel slightly uncomfortable with the way Slime Girl was watching him putting her groceries away. Given her black cartoon eyes that had simple eyelashes and even simpler eyebrows plastered on her round face that was attached to the rest of her blue-translucent body, the ten year-old boy couldn't stop finding the short-stacked greater slime more uncanny than goofy-looking.
'She looks like a bowl of gelatin trying to be feminine… It's sort of cute, in a weird way,' Goblin Slayer thought to himself while giggling quietly to himself, as he began patiently listening to Slime Girl's slow-pattern of speech, in order to know where she wanted him to specifically place the groceries onto each individual shelf inside of her ice box. Completing the mundane task within seven minutes, Goblin Slayer closed the wooden doors to Slime Girl's ice box before turning away from the wooden appliance; feeling an odd sense of mild dread coursing through him, after noticing that the greater slime was blocking the only exit out of the kitchen, save for the window that was above the washstand placed in between the kitchen counters.
Standing on the other side of the kitchen island, where he had placed the groceries before storing them into the wooden cold box that was now behind him, Goblin Slayer smiled uneasily at the uncanny grin that the excited monster girl was giving him; waiting awkwardly for about five minutes, expecting her to talk before finally taking the initiative to engage with her. "If… If there's nothing else you need assistance with-?"
"-Would you… Like to… Join me… For brunch…? I'm making… "Isicia omentata"… Or "hamburgers"… As modern… Common translations… Call them," Slime Girl announced, while interlocking her goopy-stubby fingers together while nervously awaiting for her house guest's answer.
Although he was rather famished, Goblin Slayer couldn't help but to feel confused as to how Slime Girl was proposing to make hamburgers, when he didn't see any meat inside her ice box earlier. "Uh… Sure, but… What sort of meat would you be using for the patties? If you don't mind me asking," Goblin Slayer inquired, while still doing his best to remain cordial with the anthropomorphic slime creature. "As far I've seen, you've only got vegetables in there."
Needing a brief moment of time to register Goblin Slayer's question, Slime Girl began unnaturally laughing once she understood the point he was trying to make; doing her best impression of a school girl giggling to sound cute in front of her house guest. "HAEHAE— HEEEEEEE— HAEHAE— HEEEEE— HAEHAEEEEE~!" Slime Girl bellowed forcibly with her cartoon-beady eyes growing into large hollow circle-outlines; her short-stacked gelatinous body jiggling violently, until she suddenly stopped her terrifying laughter without any warning. "Silly little…! Human child…! I don't…! Use meat…! In my…! Cooking…!"
"… I made… Black beans… Yesterday morning… Let me… Show you," Slime Girl said, as her eyes went back to being black dots with eyelashes and thin brows over them. With her curvy thick legs reverberating each time she took a clumsy step forward, Slime Girl accidentally bumped her hip against the stunned boy as she made her way past him, stopping once she got to her ice box, where she proceeded to open it by its handle using her sticky fingers. "See, look…! Beans…!" Slime Girl said proudly, as only her upper half turned around one-hundred and eighty degrees to show Goblin Slayer the glass container filled with black beans she had in her hands; her bottom half still kneeling down and facing toward the ice box, as a single tendril of goo shot out of her thigh to shut its wooden door close.
And from there, Goblin Slayer was invited to take a seat at the one of the wooden dining chairs that Slime Girl had tucked underneath the rim of her oak table; placing the glass container of beans down on her kitchen island, before going back inside her ice box to pull out a glass container of milk. "So, child… What is… Your name…?" Slime Girl asked curiously, as another tendril shot out from the back of her goopy hair to extend backwards to where her cabinet full of glass cups were; opening it and fetching one without needing to look at what she was doing.
Hearing the cabinet door shut while watching as his hostess placed the sturdy looking glass cup down on the cabinet to begin pouring milk inside of it, the ten year-old boy placed an elbow down on the table, in order to lean the side of his head against his raised hand. "My name's Ren Ashta, but lately people have been calling me "Goblin Slayer", so there's that," Goblin Slayer responded with a somewhat bored tone; one part of him still feeling bummed over the disappointment he felt over his hunch that he wouldn't be going out on any actual adventures that day.
Capping the top of the glass bottle without managing to get any of her goop inside of the container, Slime Girl's cartoonish eyes sparkled as she once again showed off her stretchy body by extending her arm several meters backwards with the milk in hand. "Ooooo…! A celebrity…! I've read…! About you…! In the…! Morning newspaper…!" Slime Girl said in what sounded like it was meant to be a starstruck voice, as she blindly placed the milk back into its proper shelf, before closing the appliance door as her rubber-like arm snapped back into place. "Defeated an…! Entire army…! Of goblins…! By yourself…! Hard to… Imagine that… A child… Did that…!"
Watching her dump the beans out of their container and into a glass mixing bowl she pulled out from the kitchen island's bottom cabinet, Goblin Slayer couldn't help but to smirk softly as he let out an amused chuckle. "Heh hehe… Yeah, so I've heard," he mused playfully; expressing to her that he had gotten used to hearing that about himself, as he watched her pulling out a mashing utensil to begin using it on her beans.
"I can…! Only imagine…! And by… I… Mean literally… This is… The longest… Conversation I've… Ever had… With anyone… In a… Very, very… Long time," Slime Girl expressed with a bittersweet smile on her face, while beginning to form the mashed beans into patties with her bare hands; too focused on her task to notice the sympathetic look she was receiving . "You see… I run… My own… Business… Merchants travel… From all… Corners of… "Nova Korinthos"… Come to… My farm… To buy… My adhesive… Gel product," Slime Girl explained slowly, all the while having been gathering the vegetables and seasoning she needed to make her dish; pausing momentarily, once she placed all the items onto the countertop of the kitchen island.
"Silly me…! My apologies…! You probably…! Do not…! Know what…! "Nova Korinthos"…! Is, huh…?!" Slime Girl mused aloud with an admittedly cute look on her round face; her blue cheeks turning a dark shade, as she smiled to herself while taking out a large knife from her drawer. "What I…! Meant to…! Say was…! "Pathway Kingdom"…! Forgive me…! Dear child…! I have…! Been around…! For quite…! Some time…!"
Watching the greater slime beginning to pull out even more knives from the drawer— holding all twelve of them with different hands that she had grown out of her short-stacked body— Goblin Slayer found himself giggling softly under his breath, from how amused he was to see Slime Girl using all her extra appendages to skillfully chop all of her ingredients at once; slicing and dicing the vegetables into fine slivers, all within seconds, and without ever needing to look at what she was doing.
Not wanting Slime Girl to do all the talking— especially since she was the one making him food, and clearly struggled to string together sentences— Goblin Slayer asked her what "Nova Korinthos" was, to which the greater slime explained to him that it was the name of the empire that controlled almost all of the supercontinent that Pathway Kingdom was a part of: Zemuria. "Although I… Nor any… Non-humans were… Allowed within… The cities… Of the… Imperium Empire… The many… Innovations in… Art and… Mathematics were… What first… Sparked my… Interest in… Human ingenuity…"
"… I was… Just a… Lesser slime… Born within… The pond… That I… Have in… The back… That was… When I… Saw my… First human," Slime Girl reminisced, as she scooped up all of her finely chopped ingredients before placing them into a glass bowl; carrying it with her over to where her wood-fire stove was. "A human… Child too… It's been… So long… But I… Believe he… Looked almost… Exactly like… You… Red eyes… Light messy… Hair, and… He had… Pale skin… Just like… Yours," Slime Girl recalled vaguely with a nostalgic smile on her smooth-gelatin face, while allowing the large iron-cast skillet to warm up as she poured some olive oil inside of it.
Hearing the oil beginning to sizzle while staring at the back of Slime Girl's head full of goopy hair, Goblin Slayer smiled softly with a bit of guilt eating away at him from the back of his mind; beginning to feel bad for having judged the greater slime when he first saw her, only realizing that now after he realized how lonely she was. "Really? What was he like?" The boy asked; wanting to feed into Slime Girl's sense of nostalgia, which elicited a pleased jiggle from the short-stacked monster-girl.
"It's been… So long… Since I've… Talked about… Him… But I… Will try… My best…" Slime Girl mused with a slightly apologetic tone behind her excited voice, as she lacked a clear enough memory to give a detailed explanation of who her first human she interacted with was like. "The boy… He would… Come to… My pond… Covered in… Bruises… He used… To cry… By the… Shoreline… He would… Just wail… And wail… His anguish… Would scare… Most of… The lesser… Slimes off…"
"... Once he… Stopped crying… He would… Spend hours… Staring at… The pond… At the… Moon's reflection… Wading within… The water's surface… Until one… Day, he… Stopped coming," Slime Girl said with a twinge of sadness in her gentle voice, as she placed two veggie patties into the sizzling skillet; coating them both with a thin layer of her own gel, so as to hold their shape as they cooked. "Those of us… Who were… Evolved enough… To have empathy… Went searching… For him… We found… Only a house… Empty, and abandoned… Not too far… From where our… P-Pond was… He must have… Lived alone… Poor child… It was so… Sad…"
Infatuated with the savory aroma from Slime Girl's kitchen that was filling the kitchen, Goblin Slayer felt comforted by how welcoming the greater slime's home felt; however, it was when the monster-girl mentioned there being an abandoned house not too far from the aforementioned pond did something click inside of the boy's head. "Is… Is this the same house that you found abandoned back then?"
Nodding her head slowly, Slime Girl used her wooden spatula to flip both patties in order to cook the other sides; stilling facing toward the stove top as she did so. "It used to be… That was… Centuries ago… I've been rebuilding it… Expanding upon it… Ever since… I finally took on… This form…" Slime Girl explained, before softly telling Goblin Slayer about her old days of going out into the old empire's capital, "Genesis", where she would disguise herself in a suit of armor, pretending to be an adventurer that completed quests for the ancient Adventurer's Guild. Upon mentioning that she had been an adventurer in her past life, Slime Girl began to listen to Goblin Slayer talking about how he never used to think "adventurers" were an actual thing, and thus began answering all of the questions he had for her while she extinguished the small flames underneath her stove top.
"During the… Imperium Era… The Adventurer's Guild… Used to be called… The "Bracer's Guild"... They haven't changed… Since the early days," Slime Girl stated, as she placed the cooked veggie patties onto their own plates; serving them on top of a bed of lettuce and tomatoes, before walking back to the dining table to set Goblin Slayer's plate down in front of him. Sitting down across from the boy, the translucent-blue woman began going over how each person looking to join the guild had to fill out a "character sheet" with one of the clerks who worked behind the front desk; describing the small dog-tags that one got with their title etched onto it. The material of the tag would indicate the rank of the adventure, with the possible ten ranks ranging from the starting rank— porcelain— to the highest rank available: platinum.
"Think of it like… How you got assigned a… Job from the "Londobell Hiring Temp Agency"... The Adventurer's Guild essentially acts like a… Third-party business that accepts a finding fee from those who seek help with… Needing someone to complete a request; oftentimes being… Civilians, and sometimes even directly… From the government themselves," Slime Girl finished explaining, while watching with excited stars in her eyes as Goblin Slayer happily ate her cooked dish with nothing but interest inside of his dusty-rose colored eyes.
Thanking her for the delicious meal, and for telling him all about the basics of what the Adventurer's Guild were, Goblin Slayer couldn't help but to notice just how much more talkative she had become since he first came to her doorstep. 'She's starting to speak in longer sentences… I wonder if she was only speaking like that earlier because she was rusty when it came to having conversations?' Goblin Slayer thought to himself, as he noticed the nostalgic way that she was looking into his eyes; silently admiring them, while thinking to herself as she took a small bite from her own veggie patty.
Before Goblin Slayer could even come up with something to say, just in order to break the silence in the kitchen, that's when Slime Girl let out a longful sigh as the bite she took quickly dissolved inside of her gelatinous head. "I cannot understate just how strikingly similar you look to him… Those eyes… Longing for love, and to be loved… To be cared for…" Slime Girl spoke slowly with a soft tone within her voice, except that time it was because of the way she was beginning to get choked up as she continued to lock eyes with Goblin Slayer. "... You two have so far been… The only two humans I've seen with naturally colored eyes like that…"
"... But I digress… I'm certain that a child your age isn't interested in hearing about an old slime's glory days… Instead of just telling you about myself, will you allow me to show you a relic of my past…? You certainly would find it to be most exciting…" Slime Girl offered; closing her goopy eyelids happily, after seeing Goblin Slayer's head nod with childhood curiosity and intrigue.
Getting up from the table, Goblin Slayer took the dishes from the table before heading over to the washstand to clean them off; receiving compliment-after-compliment from the grateful monster girl, who mused to the boy about him being the first human who had done anything out of the goodness of their heart for her. Once he had finished drying off her plates and even the skillet that he had washed, Goblin Slayer dumped the dirty water out of the basin into the receptacle built into the nearby wall that led into the outdoor waste bin.
Pulling the dining chair out for the happy greater slime, Goblin Slayer followed behind the short-stacked jiggling woman as she led up out of the kitchen, and up the flight of stairs leading into the second floor of her large farm house. Traveling through the white-painted hallways of her home, Slime Girl lead the ten year-old boy into the oak-paneled walls of what she called her "trophy room"; watching proudly as Goblin Slayer took a gander at all of her collected treasures that she had found within her centuries of life. Opposite to the door, there was a wood mannequin standing near the decorated wall. Wearing grubby looking leather armor and chipped chainmail that resided underneath a damaged steel-plates of armor, the set of old armor was fitted with an intriguing metal helmet that had vertical slits where the face visor was; the two white keratin stubs on the side of the intricately built helmet were once horns, as Slime Girl told him.
Although the full suit of armor was ragged and looked as though it had literally been through centuries of battles, everything from the makeshift scabbard on its hip, to the torn red-plume that was attached to the upper-back of the helmet resonated something within Goblin Slayer; eliciting deja vu from the child, even though he knew for a fact that he had never seen such a suit of old armor before in his life.
Noticing how fixated her house guest was on what she used to disguise herself as a human long ago, Slime Girl stood silent for a while as she stared into the black-abyss behind her old helmet's vertical face-guard; taking a moment to think back on all the times it served her. "I used to wear that all the time… But once the empire was broken up after so many civil wars had caused it to crumble in on itself politically… I no longer had a reason to wear it, as the royal family who founded Pathway Kingdom granted me this land; a reward for having fought for them, once the leader of that rebellion promised to unite the area… Under the promise that elves, dwarves, and every other species of non-humans would be welcomed in his future kingdom… So long as they co-existed peacefully, and followed the laws of the land…"
"But now… Now my armor is but a mere relic of a bygone era; a remainder of how far the world has come since then… It's too large for you to wear, Goblin Slayer… But since you are young, and have so much promise behind those eyes of yours… Allow me to give you a parting gift," Slime Girl said with a soft sigh escaping her mouth, as she brought herself to part with her old possessions. Removing the leather belt and her old scabbard from the waist of the wooden mannequin, the greater slime melted her lower legs into the floor once she got behind the stunned boy; measuring out the belt, before carefully securing it around his waistline.
Staring down with a fascinated look in his eyes, Goblin Slayer reached to the leather pouches that were a part of the utility belt; brushing his fingers along their aged material, as he heard Slime Girl's gelatinous body sloshing around, as the monster-girl reformed her mass into a pair of curvy legs once again. "T… Thank you, Slime Girl, I-"
"-It's "Grace"... My name is Grace; I earned that name from Pathway's first King, who gave it to me for being his army's "saving grace"," Slime Girl politely interrupted with a fond smile across her slightly derpy-looking round-face, as she waddled past Goblin Slayer toward one of the few wooden chests that were laid out in a row, near where the set of armor was. "And do not thank me yet, for what is an adventurer without his own sword…?" The greater slimed mused, as she took out a short-sword from the chest; carrying it over to Goblin Slayer, before lowering her hands down to offer it to him.
Already having been stunned by the greater slime's act of generosity, Goblin Slayer was astonished at the weapon being gifted to him; his eyes marvling the solid-gold triangular-guard and pommel, and at the blue-grip around its handle. "Sl- Grace… I… I don't know if I can accept something like this… It's… It's a lot to give to someone, isn't it?" Goblin Slayer asked rhetorically, as he eyed the short-sword's wide blade, while Slime Girl continued to hold it out for him to take.
"Perhaps you're right… If taking this as a gift is too much for you to accept… Then how about you accept my sword as part of a deal; that way, you'll have earned it…? An accord, if you will," Slime Girl stated; playfully raising her eyebrows up-and-down at the curious look that Goblin Slayer was giving her, as he tried to look up past her plump breasts to see her cartoonish face.
"... What sort of deal are you talking about?" Goblin Slayer asked with a mild tone of caution in his voice, as the greater slime hadn't given him any reason to completely think of her as having an ulterior motive behind her genuine sense of kindness.
"The deal is simple… Every once in a while, I would like it if you were to come back to visit me again… I can pay you to deliver my groceries to me directly, instead of writing letters to the temp-agency like usual… That way, you and I can be… F-Friends…?" Slime Girl suggested with a bashful look coming over her darkening cheeks; as she suddenly felt herself becoming vulnerable at the thought of being rejected by the ten year-old.
Seeing nothing wrong with visiting Slime Girl whenever he had freetime, especially since he had come to know her as someone who would be more than a good fit for him to befriend personally, Goblin Slayer was about to accept the monster girl's half-serious terms and conditions when all of a sudden BB appeared beside the translucent woman. In order to not alarm the soft-spoken slime that there was someone literally standing right beside her, Goblin Slayer did his best to maintain eye-contact with her as BB quickly caught on to what he was doing.
"My apologies for being away for so long; I got caught up watching "Sailor Moon"," BB explained half-heartedly, while not caring much that she knew for a fact that neither Fairy Knight nor Goblin Slayer knew what she was referring to. "Anyways— it doesn't matter— I overheard what was going on through my computer's speakers and thought now would be the best time to tell you about a little something called "fast traveling"," BB announced with a smile, before side-eyeing Slime Girl before shrugging.
"But uh, it's pretty fair to say that neither I nor you have the time for me to go over what "quantum entanglement" is… So instead of me trying to teach you about math, why don't you just let me do all the work from my end, and just focus on asking Grace over here if she would be willing to let you take up residency within one of the unoccupied bedrooms she's got inside her house?" BB instructed, while at the same time more-or-less ordering Goblin Slayer to do what she said.
Sighing softly through his nostrils, Goblin Slayer took a moment to close his eyelids to meditate; the boy needing a moment to silently complain to himself about how ironic it was that he was called a "master", but yet felt more like a mere pawn, between the amount of commands he had to take from BB and Fairy Knight. "... Grace, forgive me if what I'm about to say oversteps any boundaries, but… How about instead of occasionally visiting you once in a blue moon, I… I-I instead just move into one your bedr-"
"-DEAL,"Slime Girl practically shouted with an overzealous voice; beads of hot-gel trickling down her smooth-round face, while grinning as she extended her arms down to the point that Goblin Slayer had no other choice but to take her sword from her. Gazing down at the sword in hands while listening to the ecstatic monster girl cheer about how her days of living in isolation were coming to an end, Goblin Slayer tested the scabbard on his hip by placing his new blade into it before suddenly being dragged out of the room by Slime Girl.
No longer needing to speak in intervals, the excited greater slime began rambling about all the things she had always wanted to do, but never got to do them since she lacked any friends to do various activities with. From talking about Goblin Slayer possibly helping her expand her business by lending her hand by helping her bottle up more gel, to going on a tangent about possible vacation destinations, Slime Girl was more than thrilled to give the ten year-old boy the bedroom right beside her's; reassuring the overwhelmed child that he was more than free to climb into bed with her at night, if he ever got lonely.
With a safe area available to them, BB took the liberty to establish an invisible portal made up of photonic particles within the walk-in closet of Goblin Slayer's new bedroom; explaining to him that only he would be able to see it, and that it would only activate upon her command. Having a feeling that BB had purposefully created a fast-travel point that she alone had control over, for the sake of her restricting his travel without her, Goblin Slayer silently thanked the advanced AI for her help.
Being told that the portal would allow him to travel back to the tavern, as well as any more future fast-travel points that she had plans to create, BB once again flexed her authority and control over who she saw as Hakuno's living vessel by telling him that she would only let him go back to the tavern after he had indulged more of Slime Girl's social-cravings; explaining to him that he needed to reassure her that he wasn't using her, when in fact that's exactly what BB was doing to her through him.