That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 8, стр. 31
But why rain on people’s parade?
“Oh, I’m sure you’d pass with flying colors, Rimuru! I’ll be cheering you on!”
“You think? Well, thank you! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”
I sure can’t resist a young lady looking at me with those sparkling eyes, no… At least, not until she drops a bomb on me.
“By the way, Rimuru, it must be annoying to share a name with a demon lord, isn’t it? If you like, you could take advantage of our Renaming System to change your name in the Guild archives, if you find it’s causing you trouble. That’ll let you conduct Guild activity in areas where your face isn’t well-known yet, albeit at one rank grade below your current one. What do you think?”
Oh, crap, I forgot! Here I am, a demon lord, and I went and put that same damn name on all my paperwork! And now that Rimuru Tempest, the Newbie in the Octagram, was a household name around the world, I guess being Rimuru the adventurer would present a few issues. Time to retire from the Guild, maybe? If I really needed to work as an adventurer, I guess I could consider that Renaming System. It’d be starting at the B rank, but that’s good enough for me. Pretty helpful system, there.
“Thanks for telling me about that! I’ll keep that in mind. Now, do you think I might be able to see the guild master?”
“Right away. And yes, feel free to ask anytime!”
It took a little conversation, but she let me right in. I could hear shouts of “Are you kidding me?!” and “Who the hell is that girl?!” among the rabble behind me, as well as commentary from a few people who must’ve seen me here last time.
“Oh, no way! I never knew she was so cute?!”
“Unbelievable… That’s the face of a person who swatted down a Lesser Demon like a mosquito…?”
“And she had the same name as that demon lord, huh?”
“You think it might actually be him?”
“Ha! What are you, stupid?”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, yeah…”
Sounds like more rumors would be spreading soon. Although, maybe I had less to worry about than I thought. Sharing a name didn’t seem to arouse too much undue suspicion. Maybe the name Rimuru wasn’t that uncommon after all.
So I breezed into Fuze’s office. The first thing he did upon seeing me was bring a hand to his temple. I ignored it.
“Hellooooo! I’m back to pay a visit! Something up? Why the long face?”
“Well, things were pretty slow for a while, until this demon lord came out from nowhere…”
“Whoa, really? Sounds like bad news. You sure you should be chilling out in here?”
“I’m talking about the demon lord here in front of me. So what is it this time…?”
“Oh? Well, you better feed that demon lord some tea, shouldn’t you? I think he’d enjoy a little bit of cake, too.”
“Cake?! You think I can pull that kind of luxury out from under my hat?! I swear, why’s a demon lord like you just gallivanting around without a care in the world?”
Fuze poured out some tea as he complained. He was diligent like that. I thanked him and took the cup, sipping from it before we got down to business.
“So I’m sorry about everything that happened, Sir Rimuru. I tried putting pressure on the Western Holy Church, but it didn’t work too well, and then the Crusaders got deployed…”
“Nah, I doubt you could’ve done anything to stop them. There was this band called the Seven Days Clergy masterminding the whole thing.”
“Wha?!”
“Yeah, that’s probably why Hinata never listened to me when I tried pleading my case.”
“The Seven Days…? That legion of great heroes, tasked with protecting humankind…?”
“Apparently, yeah. They snared her, too, but…all’s well that ends well. We worked out all the misunderstandings, I think. But there was one casualty, unfortunately—a commander named Garde is missing in action.”
“Garde of Fire…,” Fuze muttered with a frown. “He’s one of the Ten Great Saints, the protectors of humankind. Quite gifted with a spear and flame-based spirit magic, albeit not as gifted as Shizu was…”
I didn’t know Garde personally, apart from how he was after the Clergy got to him. I couldn’t say anything about his personality, but apparently he was a well-known name, at least. Someone as well-connected as Fuze would certainly know him. I described him as “missing,” but “killed,” I suppose, was much more likely. Hopefully he’s in a better place now. I felt bad for him.
Moving on, I gave Fuze a recap of recent events—including the Walpurgis Council, since I knew he was concerned about that. There were now eight demon lords united under the name of the Octagram, and I covered all of that, along with my conflict with Hinata and the fall of Seven Days. I made sure, of course, to blur the true identity of Luminus—I had a reputation for blabbing when I shouldn’t, but I wasn’t dumb enough to let that vital a secret out.
“I see… You know, no matter how much we tried to make contact with them, they always just flatly denied us. The Church’s Blumund branch was a nonstarter, so I sent someone over to their headquarters, and they still said we couldn’t meet with anyone at the level of minister or above… I had no idea the Clergy was behind all this.”
“Yeah, Hinata said the same thing. The only thing uniting them, as she put it, was Lu—um, the god Luminus. Their faith, you know; that was the real thing.”
“Humans are inherently weak, after all. They cling to the gods—and their strength.”
“Would you include yourself in that, Fuze?”
“Ha-ha! No, not me. When my strength fails me, I’m prepared to call it a life, so to speak. I’d hope for