(Vol.7 Light Novel) That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

Chapter 1: Demons and Schemes

Once we settled on the name Octagram, Mizari and Rain, the green-haired and the blue-haired maid in Guy Crimson's service, prepared an extravagant meal for us all. They were decked out in dark-red maid's outfits, and their kitchen skills, it turned out, were second to none.

As Ramiris told me, the original purpose of the Walpurgis Council was to let demon lords hang out and swap information. As a vestige of this, perhaps, the space we were in featured a separate room...a sort of casual lounge, you could say. Attendance wasn't mandatory, and all the demon lords did their own thing—some left immediately after the meeting ended, some stuck around long enough for dinner, and others whiled away the time by chatting in the lounge.

Me, I went for the food. You don't get a chance like this every day, and honestly, considering how much more overpowered Guy was compared with the rest of us, I wanted to see what his diet was like. The resulting meal was more exquisitely delightful than I ever could've imagined. Each dish was an astounding new discovery, the best of its type in the whole world, and as I lingered over each one in reverie:

Report. Component analysis complete. It is now possible to re-create the recipes black tiger stew, grilled sage rooster, golden peach sherbet, and roast earthensleep dragon steak.

I stole all the recipes. Is that mean of me? It seemed kind of unfair, not that I really understood what made them work. Steal makes it sound illegal or something. This was just intelligence gathering. These recipes called for meat from monsters rated A or higher, which you don't exactly see walking into town every day. But once I had the right ingredients, I think I would know how to prepare them now.

The feast was rounded out with a bountiful selection of fresh fruit. Six of us were at the table, by the way—me, Guy, Milim, Ramiris, Dino , and Dagruel. Valentine and Leon had left long ago.

I took a moment to admonish Milim for tricking me as she gorged herself. She was still playing dumb, but I needed to give her a taste of reality. Meanwhile, I had Carrion and Frey promise me that we'd all discuss the future at a later time. Once we cleaned up after the war, I figured I'd be consulted about the upcoming city-rebuild work. This was going to be a brand-new nation, one with Milim at its head, and I intended to approach those discussions so they benefited me as much as possible.

Ramiris was still bugging me about moving to my hometown. I refused her point-blank, of course, but she wasn't giving up. You could see it in her eyes. I figured Treyni would be nice enough to pacify her a bit for me, but I had the sneaking suspicion that Treyni loved spoiling Ramiris more than anything else. It seemed that was practically what she lived for, so I reminded myself not to expect much as I resolved to keep an eye on them.

Dagruel and Veldora seemed to be hitting it off pretty well, and Guy and Deeno were engaged in friendly conversation. I decided to offer all of them some of Tempest's world-famous brandy, distilled from our own wine. Part of my branding efforts, you might say. Spreading the word about how useful a nation we were would oil the gears for diplomacy later. That much is true whether you're dealing with a demon lord or your next-door neighbor.

"Not bad."

"Well, well, look at this..."

"Hack! Cough, cough cough! Man, that's got some bite..."

It was maybe a bit too much alcohol for Dino to handle, but Guy and Dagruel enjoyed it. So would you please not drink all of it first, Veldora? I had a pretty decent stockpile left in my Stomach, but I didn't store it in there just so Veldora could guzzle it all. And Milim immediately grabbed at the brandy, too, of course. I didn't let her have any. You know she'd be an angry drunk. And considering how she tricked me, I had to put my foot down on this.