Rimuru and Iruma's Adventures in the Netherworld

Tour Around Town

You'd expect people to be annoyed by the hold-up, but if anything, the people all around me seem more excited than anything; included in them is Katelyn, who after noticing, seems to have a thrilled sparkle in her eyes.

I mean, I've definitely seen slimes around in the brief time I've spent in Tempest (not counting Rimuru in that number) but never so many at once. All of varying sizes, yet the same blue-ish color, the large collection of slimes are all moving in one direction across the road, bordered by people cheering and even throwing some kind of food for the slimes to eat as they pass by.

"This is one of the famous slime migrations of Tempest! I've never seen one from so close up before!" Katelyn squeals, any formal demeanor shattered by the slimes.

"Oh, so this is a normal thing?" I ask.

"A normal thing? Only during the summer, I believe. I haven't been in this country all that long myself, so I haven't actually gotten to see something this special yet! It's something that many people look forward to when visiting here since Tempest is the only country to have anything even close to this!" She happily replies.

She starts rambling about how during the summer, slimes herd and congregate, migrating in large droves before shallowly burrowing into the soil and going dormant during the winter.

"I have somewhere to be! I'll just shove my way through all those stupid blobs!" a nearby man shouts out of nowhere, his anger and frustration clear in his voice and expression. I immediately feel the cold glares from the crowd honing in on him as they all scowl at the man's impatience with the situation.

He takes one step toward the stream of slimes before another man roughly grabs his arm from behind. The first, angry, man is human, but the man that grabbed him is clearly a monster; an ogre, I think, based on the thick horns coming out of his forehead and the color of his skin and hair. His eyes are practically glowing with fury at the person he just grabbed and stopped from trying to squeeze his way through before the slimes are done passing by.

"Don't you dare disrespect the rules of my country, human! Those are sacred creatures and you are not allowed to interfere with them!"

"Oh yeah?! All I see is just a buncha mindless blobs that just look like the Demon Lord of this country, but they are nothing but animals! Why should I waste my time waiting for them to slide by so slowly?!"

The ogre grabs the man by his shirt using one hand and reels back with his other, looking like he's about to punch the human in the face. But, before they actually come to blows, one of the sign-holding people managing the slime migration steps in and rips the two men apart, scolding them both for their misbehavior.

"Violence in these streets is just as great a disrespect to the Great Demon Lord Rimuru, who wishes for peace among all races. Human, the rules regarding the slime migration and their importance are posted all over the city during summer, please show respect, if you need to get somewhere within Tempest, you will not be faulted for delays caused by the slimes." the guard explains.

The man, still looking disgruntled, listens but doesn't seem to like what's being said. Even so, this, combined with the people around him clearly not agreeing with his actions, quickly de-escalates things. He did end up getting some sort of ticket for his actions but wasn't arrested or anything like that one guy that tried to attack Rimuru during my first visit here.

Katelyn is shaking her head disapprovingly at the sight, like someone witnessing a child acting up.

"Here you go little slimy!" I hear a child nearby say as he holds out a hand to the swarm of slimes.

One of them scootches out of the flow and up to the child before springing onto the kid's hand and eating whatever it was he was holding. The little boy giggles as the slime takes a few seconds to finish eating before rejoining its group.