Adventures in the Cardinal World After 1000 Years

Notice

                                                                              [ What is this story?]

That's probably the question that you, dear reader, seek to have answered here. 

To be curt, this is a Rimuru disappears for a really long time and then comes back story.

                                                       Dammit, I had to spoil it in the first chapter. : (

[No really what is this?]

Okay, to offer a more thorough explanation, this story is an attempt at the classic "End of Light Novel/Web Novel/ Story Rimuru leaves the cardinal world for whatever reason and then comes back after a sufficiently long period of time, where everything has drastically changed, and he gets to interact in a Cardinal World in which no-one knows he's an extremely overpowered Slime God story."

[Why not read another one of the X # of stories that use this same trope?]

Well if they're good go ahead and read them. (Give me the links if you got any good ones that are actually finished plz.) In all seriousness though, in this story I do seek to do something different. Most of the time stories like this follow a very particular formula, one I really dislike. Rimuru gets paperwork -> Rimuru Gets Bored -> Time Travel. While I can understand why this approach is taken; it greatly moves the most boring parts of a story along. It's simply out of character for Rimuru to abandon all of his friends and his nation simply out of boredom. Also Rimuru has always been a delegator. Meaning he's always passed off work to his subordinates if it's within their competency, as any member of a modern corporation should. The reader must remember that this was a guy who was middle management of a well off construction firm. If he had to do absolutely everything he would've died of stress before he got stabbed. If paperwork piled up it would be in Rimuru's nature to delegate to the relevant underlings, or if one didn't exist to train them to do said paperwork. Furthermore if we're talking end of story Rimuru, the dudes got a supercomputer that he'd just have to tell "Do it like you'd think I'd like" and Ciel would knock that shit out in a picosecond.

[Why'd you go on a paragraph long rant about stories that start with Rimuru doing paperwork?]

I really don't have anything against them. They blitz through events to get characters in a new situation, so you can skip the boring setup and get to the actual meat of the story. It may be sloppy, but setting up a new exciting adventure in one or two paragraphs isn't going to be easy otherwise: in fact it may be quite deleterious of the overall work. I still don't like it though. Perhaps it's a mental defect, but I'd like the challenge of doing something more. This leads to my main answer.

[...Seriously get to the point.]

(Got to love dialogues, no wonder the ancient Greeks and Romans used them almost exclusively for philosophical works.(Correct me if otherwise.))

The real goal of this work is to do the following. Provide an engaging story that stays true to the established world and characters of Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken by Fuze, only changing said characteristics when various happenstances have sufficiently molded the weltanschauung (best translated as something similar to worldview, but more comprehensive) of said characters. In short I seek to have my characters act consistently, as consistently as human beings (or humanoid monsters) would naturally act (as humans are notoriously fickle). And if their behavior is to drastically change it is going to be because events led to them adopt different behaviors. A character isn't going to decide to abandon all of his responsibilities and friends just to move the plot along. My goal with this story is to go through the (probably unreasonable) challenge of making a story that's grounded in the lore of Tensei Slime ( but not realistic, as you can't have a realistic story with magic in it). I set out to deliver a story with consistent characterization and world building (Hopefully I can actually deliver).