Chapter 1: New (S)Life

Aoki POV

Rimuru told me something about not getting into trouble, and I didn't exactly understand what that entailed. I did know he didn't want me killing anyone though. What he'd told me to do was explore the 'executive palace' and read the labels on all the rooms.

He said all our subordinates had already been told about me. It made me happy when he said 'our', and I didn't really know why. I guess he really did consider me an extension of himself in some way.

I walked through the hallways looking for stronger subordinates that I could ask for things. I wanted to see what they would do, or what they could show me. I needed to learn strong magic so that I could defeat my human rival.

I couldn't kill him, but I could at least make sure that Rimuru knew I was stronger than him.

Eventually I saw what I thought at first was a human, but then I got a sense of danger from their presence. They had black hair, as Rimuru called it. They were wearing mostly white clothes, but they had a sword at their hip, as Magic Sense called it.

That was bad, a weapon. A powerful weapon, I knew it was a sword, but I couldn't get anymore information from it.

I needed to confront them, because they might be dangerous, and I didn't think they felt like one of our subordinates. So I stepped out in front of them, and flared out my magic in an attempt to intimidate them.

That was a mistake. A big big mistake.

I was suddenly in immense pain as they flared out their own magic in response, and it hurt, it was like having my own magic stolen from me and dispersed into the environment.

I backed off and ran away back down the hall after that. I couldn't get hurt, Rimuru told me not to do anything that would get me hurt.

I still needed to watch that human though, so eventually, I started following them. I watched them walk into Rimuru's office, and then couldn't do a thing. It was annoying.

A few minutes later, I came across someone else interesting. A pink-haired one with white pointy things on their head. Unlike that other one, this person felt like a monster and one of our subordinates.

"You are Shuna." I said while pointing at their face.

"That is correct!"

They looked at me while doing that thing with their mouth where the corners go up.

I decided this was the perfect opportunity to ask about that.

"What is that?" I questioned, pointing at their mouth.

"I don't know what you mean, Lord Aoki."

"This." I tried for a moment to copy what they did, but I wasn't satisfied, so I grabbed my face and used my hands to make it look the same.

"Oh, you mean a smile? It's a way of showing someone you are friendly."

I nodded and made note of that, before starting to walk past.

"Where do you think you are going? Did you escape from Lord Rimuru?"

They tried to grab me, but I sidestepped.

"Exploring."

"Did Lord Rimuru allow you to do this?"

"Yes. He said, 'go explore….' Do you, know strong m-magics?"

The pink haired… Oni? She allowed me to see more about herself, including that she was a she. "I can teach you how to control your aura, like I just did. To allow you to see more about myself."

I thought about that for a few moments by accelerating my thoughts. I concluded it would be good to control my aura, as I was certain my aura could kill some things, and Rimuru told me not to kill things. "Yes."

The oni nodded softly and turned back to face down the hall, looking stiff somehow. Perhaps it was simply something she did for appearances? "Please follow me, I will take you to an office where you can practice safely. Its owner is also particularly skilled at offensive magic."

That left me more interested, I did want to know offensive magic as well. Whoever this was, they should be useful to me, was my thought process. "Ok."

I ended up following Shuna all the way to an office in the other wing of the palace, in which I saw a yellow haired demon. They appeared to not hide anything about themself from me, without even having seen me yet. "Hello there." She spoke quietly, but looked irritated while staring at the paper.

"I have brought Lord Aoki here to practice using their aura, as your walls are reinforced, and they are unable to leave the palace." Shuna neatly walked over to one of the couches in front of the demon's desk, and sat down. "Please sit across from me, Lord Aoki."

The demon grumbled silently, before stopping and nodding. Then she went back to the paper in front of her.

I went to the couch across from Shuna and climbed up onto it. I still didn't like moving around in the human form, it felt awkward and stiff. "Show me."

Shuna nodded, as she began to use her own aura, visibly in front of me. She spread it out across the surface of her body, and let it slowly seep out from there in a dark pink mist.

I silently observed, before speaking again. This human mouth was also difficult to use. "You were h-hiding before, I h-have nnot figured that out. I could sstill see it in your body tt-hough."

I decided against trying to speak in longer sentences after that attempt.

Shuna placed a hand over her mouth, but I could still see the smiling thing she was doing. "Hiding your aura is important to prevent yourself from hurting those around you, and can also be used to hide your strength."

I felt like I was being insulted in some way, but didn't have the understanding to know how. "I understand."

"How much do you know about controlling your aura?" Shuna clasped her hands on top of her legs.

"I know h-how. I can make it big and destructive." I did that thing again where I failed to use a word, it was starting to make me angry.

"Alright. That is a good starting place, generally the thing monsters learn to do first. What you were doing was called, flaring your aura. I'm sure you'd probably describe it that way. But the opposite is more important. Do you remember the feeling of taking hold of the magicules that make up your aura, and telling them to destroy whatever it was you were angry at?" Shuna gave a more careful approach in her wording for this.

I thought back to what I had done against the scary human, I did still remember the feeling. Though it was vague now. "I do."

"Good. Now, focus on those magicules, and instead of telling them to destroy. Tell them to go inert, and stick together, before pulling them into your body." Shuna demonstrated by pulling her own aura back into her body. I watched as it gathered back into a mist around her, before forming into an almost liquid state on her skin, and then finally disappearing into her body.

I attempted to do the same immediately, using thought acceleration to quickly go through many variations of how to condense magicules. Eventually I came to something I thought was dense enough, after a few hundred tries.

After that, I applied that structure to the rest of my aura, and began to pull it all in the same way Shuna had.

However, my body couldn't actually hold all of my aura. So it was as if a slime of magicules was resting just over the surface of my skin.

I didn't like failing like that, and tried to come up with other solutions. I looked through all my skills with thought acceleration, before settling on Integrator, and its Aoki Space.

It surely had enough space for my aura.

So, I started pulling all of the aura into my Aoki Space through my body. It was simple, easy, and efficient. I liked this solution to hiding my aura.

It was almost invisible as a result, similar to what I'd seen from Rimuru occasionally.

That was a good bar to hold myself to.

Shuna seemed to do the smile thing again, but this time widely and more extremely. "That is wonderful, Lord Aoki! You are just as skilled at hiding your aura as Lord Rimuru was when he was young."

At that, the Demon sitting at the desk next to us looked up to glance at me. "Hm." She made a simple noise, and looked back down at her papers.

After knowing she was a she, I decided to finally read her name as well. Carrera. It gave an odd feeling of being lazily applied.

I glanced over to Carrera, and spoke again. "C-can you teach me ssomething now?" I tried to make the little bit of aura that I still had visible, be stern in the way Rimuru did.

I could sense that she wanted to use her aura, but restraint herself, and did the smile thing, but more subtle and wider. "Well, I guess I could teach you something. Do you really think you are up for it?"

That felt more like an insult than what Shuna had done earlier, but I still didn't really get it.

"Carrera, do not play a joke on Lord Aoki." Shuna felt more protective as her aura spread out a bit again.

"I know, I know. You'd report it to Lord Rimuru." Carrera did that weird noise again, I think I knew by that time it was called laughing. "I am not. I just wanna give Aoki a little challenge."

I had a hard time keeping my aura restrained. That gave me a surge of determination, if she didn't think I could do something, I'd prove her wrong. I am the child of Rimuru. "I'll show you!"

Carrera did the laughing thing again and set her papers down to stand up before the table between the couches disappeared and a weird white panel with a set of red rings appeared in front of the desk.

Then Carrera herself stepped out in front of it. "Alright then. I want you to cast a spell, on my description of it alone. A description should be enough for you, right?"

That sounded like a challenge, but I had done so with controlling my aura. So it had to be simple enough. I'd just need to brute-force the spell by testing lots of variations. I could do that inside my Aoki Space, lots of space in there to test spells without hurting anyone. Some bits of magic power leaked out of my body as I did that, which the demon noticed.

Carrera stood next to the target and spoke softly. "I'll take that as a yes. Alright, come and stand here where the table was.

I get up and stand in front of the white panel thing, trying to stand in as stable a position as I could in this form.

"See? They seem eager, you wouldn't want to disappoint our young lord, would you?" Carrera did her version of the smile again, toward Shuna.

Shuna grumbled quietly and nodded.

After that little exchange, Carrera turned back to me and began to explain. "This spell is very simple, I believe even a young greater demon could learn it. Therefore it should be no problem for you, Lord Aoki."

If a weak demon could do it, then I definitely could. Or at least, that was my thought process. "Explain!" I lost control of my voice for a second and ended up being very loud.

"Please control your voice, young lord," Shuna told me in a light whisper.

"Very well, very well. It is simple. All you have to do is create a barrier, in the shape of a cylinder, with one open end." She paused to allow me to keep up, as she was talking very fast. "After this, you create a series of orbs of magicules, which intersect with each other. Once you have done so, pour in as many magicules you can, and excite them. It should give the intended result."

I used thought acceleration to try and imagine what would happen in my mind, it seemed like the intention was to create a massive blast of excited magicules. Something like that would be incredibly destructive, at my level of power. So she may have been using some form of exaggeration when telling me to pour in 'as many as you can.'

I closed my eyes and began trying to create spells like that inside my Aoki Space, going over a couple of variations before getting something close enough that I thought it should work.

So, I held up my hand and began channeling my magicules into a cylinder in front of me.

"Wait, Carrera, isn't that spell a nu-" Shuna tried to say something.

However, I had already finished the spell, creating the orbs of magicules, and pouring a sizable portion of my magic power into them.

What followed could be described as a massive explosion, most of which seemed to be absorbed into the white panel. The rest of it though, burned away many of the papers and blew all the objects in the office all over the place.

Carrera began loudly laughing, now she seemed to be excited herself. "Alright kiddo, that wasn't so bad. I guess you really are Lord Rimuru's kid. I can't wait to teach you more when you grow up!"

"Carrera! That was incredibly irresponsible!" Shuna began talking very loudly at Carrera.

It was the last thing I really heard though, as my magic sense faltered, and I lost my human form. It seemed I'd exhausted myself.

I knew I was safe though, so I just compressed myself as much as I could and laid there in slime form.

…

I believe Shuna carried me somewhere else, as when I woke up, I was in a different room.

I was on top of the upper part of Shuna's legs. "You must be more careful, using up almost half of your magicules like that. It can be dangerous for a young monster. Lord Rimuru said you were fine, though." It seemed Rimuru had talked to Shuna sometime after I fell asleep.

I knew what happened too. It was a simple, stupid mistake that I should not have made. I formed into my human shape, since Rimuru told me to, and tried to explain it to Shuna. "I used magic… Or, no… I l-lost it. I didn't e-expect that..."

Shuna nodded softly. "That makes sense, a space of your own is your dominion, so it is much easier to call those magicules back to yourself than in the outer world."

I knew that, and that was why I shouldn't have made that mistake, I had simply not considered the difference.

Too worked up, I concluded. The calculative part of my mind, from Great Sage, didn't like that.

"I brought you here, for a more pleasant activity. Monster children enjoy playing with the young direwolves, therefore I have brought you to Ranga's private room in the palace." Shuna explained softly.

"The canine subordinate Rimuru has?"

"Yes." She gestured around, to the room, which looked to contain many young and many old wolves. "Ranga likes to keep his retired comrades nearby to ensure they are well taken care of. Many of them have their youngest kin visit often."

That did explain the number of young wolves, perhaps not much older than myself. It seemed the older wolves were practicing skills with them.

That was something I wanted, but it didn't seem like Rimuru would teach me any of his skills. They were all very powerful, and I didn't know if I could handle them after what I experienced during my rebirth.

Instead, Rimuru sent me to explore. Maybe that is him trying to give me the opportunity to learn how to use my skills? It made enough sense to satisfy my wilder thoughts.

I saw one of those Goblins come in, on top of a wolf of their own, it seemed they were bringing the wolf to pick up their child. At least, that was what I gathered through my use of analysis.

It gave me an idea, a new idea at least. Something else to focus on for the time being. If a simple goblin could have a wolf companion, surely I should have one of my own as well.

I walked up to one of the wolves and spread out my aura to speak to them directly, through Thought Communication. One of the older ones, since I guessed they would know. 'How does one get a Wolf to ride?'

The old wolf didn't respond right away, annoying me at the time. It took them a few moments to respond at all. 'I apologize, young lord. I am not sure what you mean.'

I stared at them and could feel myself starting to get confused again. My wording and logic made sense, I thought. 'I want a wolf to be on top of, like the goblins, and like Rimuru!'

The older wolf seemed to understand that more fully, and responded more quickly. 'I am unsure if this is the right place for that. I am sure if you talked to Lord Rimuru about it, he would gladly find a young wolf willing to be your companion.'

The old wolf looked between me and Shuna, and I got the feeling they were confused from the light aura they were letting off.

Shuna seemed confused as well, as she had finally stopped hiding that stuff from me so much. However, she didn't intervene. Not yet.

I accelerated my thoughts to think about how to approach this, I didn't want to wait for RImuru. Rimuru didn't need help getting his wolf companion from what I knew, so I shouldn't either.

I also just wanted it. I wanted it.

Upon thinking about wanting it, the older wolf and Shuna seemed to look at me. It seemed like they sensed that, and when they did. 'Do not interfere! I will make an idea.'

I walked around the room for a few moments and eventually found a young small wolf that looked around the right size for my human form, and I stared at them.

I wondered if they would be able to sense my want as well, for a little bit.

It didn't seem they did though.

Another older wolf, the one that had previously been teaching them, spoke for them. 'They are yet to be named, and have a hard time communicating.'

That felt familiar at the time. Very familiar.

So, I walked up to the young wolf and tried to get on top of them just like the goblin had before. I suspected if I was more direct, they would obey me, as the child of their master.

They didn't though, instead they began moving fast and trying to get away.

I grabbed onto what Analysis referred to as their tail and got dragged along with them.

They were blowing up a small amount of dust into the air as they ran in circles trying to get me to let go, and I was dragged along with them all the way.

I didn't want to get thrown off, so I increased my grip strength.

At that, the young wolf yelped loudly, and I got a clear sense of their pain over the thoughts that leaked into their aura.

…

I didn't know how to respond to that, I didn't particularly understand it. They were in pain like I had been. It wasn't severe though, so I didn't know why they were making such a big deal of it.

I suddenly felt a tug at the clothes Rimuru had put me in, and I was through a portal, in Rimuru's lap. The direwolf was whimpering a little bit as other people came to help, it seemed like some goblins.

I let go of the wolf's tail and looked at Rimuru, my Mother was back!

"Direwolves won't let you ride them without asking first, Aoki. You need to respect their boundaries."

"Rimuru! Mother!" I hug Rimuru tightly.

"No, Aoki, I'm your father, not mother," Rimuru said something incorrect, but that may just be them having at least a few little flaws.

Rimuru turned away from me and focused on someone else. Someone who I remember tasting bad. "Hey, I guess Aoki is sorta your great-grandchild, huh?"