"UWAAAAAAAAA!"
"Okay, okay. Seriously, stop crying. And please don't hug me like that. It feels incredibly strange."
Suzuki peeled the wailing blue slime off his impeccably tailored suit. He liked women—mature, beautiful women—not gelatinous blobs, okay?
Furthermore, while he might be somewhat open-minded regarding different fantasy races depending on how cute they were, he knew for a fact that Rimuru's soul belonged to a thirty-seven-year-old Japanese salaryman. There was absolutely no way he could muster any romantic or physical interest. There were lines a man simply did not cross!
"Sorry, sorry..."
Rimuru backed off, looking incredibly awkward. His featureless face somehow conveyed deep, teary-eyed emotion, despite the biological impossibility of a slime possessing tear ducts.
"It isn't a good idea to talk out here in the open. Let's head over to that tavern first," Suzuki suggested, adjusting his jacket.
"Okay."
Rimuru happily agreed, bouncing alongside Suzuki as they headed toward a quiet, dimly lit Dwarven tavern.
Meanwhile, Anrietta, Kaijin, and the rest of the newly formed Tempest group stood frozen in the street, exchanging utterly baffled glances. They had no idea what to make of the bizarre, highly emotional exchange they had just witnessed.
Once inside the tavern, neither Suzuki nor Rimuru paid any attention to the bewildered Dwarves. They immediately launched into swapping transmigration stories.
Suzuki went first, explaining how he had suddenly appeared in the middle of the monster-infested Jura Forest with nothing but the clothes on his back, trekked his way to the Blumund Kingdom, established a corporate headquarters, and finally traveled to Dwargon to negotiate a multinational trade monopoly. Naturally, he also briefly touched upon his grueling, impoverished origins back in Japan, which instantly made Rimuru start crying all over again.
"Your life has been so incredibly hard!" Rimuru wailed softly.
After all, Suzuki had only been a university student when he died; he was significantly younger than Rimuru had been. When Rimuru pictured this poor, orphaned college student suddenly being dropped into a lethal forest, surviving through sheer grit, and painstakingly building a massive corporate empire from scratch, how could he not cry?
Rimuru had been a corporate manager. He knew exactly how brutal building a business could be. It was so agonizingly tough that entrepreneurs often cried themselves to sleep, paralyzed by the fear of bankruptcy.
Compared to the crushing weight of executive leadership, the lives of average workers were vastly simpler. They just focused on their assigned tasks, collected their paychecks, and ignored the macroeconomic problems. Of course, they were entirely at the mercy of their bosses, but the mental burden was different.
However, Suzuki felt that Rimuru actually had the harder life. Rimuru had been an overworked, chronically single salaryman who literally worked himself to death, only to be reincarnated as a slime.
A slime!
No matter how one tried to romantically describe it, and despite how objectively cute Rimuru looked, absolutely no one wanted to be reincarnated as the weakest monster in the entire fantasy hierarchy—especially one that lacked the biological equipment to enjoy earthly, human pleasures.
"So, you just woke up in a sealed cave?" Suzuki asked, swirling a mug of cold Dwarven ale.
"Yeah..."
"You're honestly incredibly lucky you didn't die in there."
Suzuki sighed, taking a sip of the ale. He frowned slightly; it wasn't nearly as delicious as the fantasy tropes had led him to believe.
Rimuru mimicked the gesture, happily drinking the ale despite lacking physical taste buds.
"Anyway," Suzuki raised his mug. "We've both been given a second chance at life, so let's just do our best to survive comfortably. Cheers!"
"Cheers!" Rimuru clinked his mug against Suzuki's.
Rimuru finally let his guard down. He was so profoundly relieved to have encountered a fellow Japanese Otherworlder that he immediately began bombarding Suzuki with questions about the state of the world.
"Do you really not have even a shred of doubt or fear about me being a monster?" Rimuru asked, genuinely curious.
"Rimuru, is there even such a thing as a talking slime in normal fantasy lore? If you weren't a reincarnator, you wouldn't be talking. In most RPGs, slimes are just treated like harmless, bouncy little pets—like aggressive water balloons, or stray cats."
"..."
Rimuru deflated slightly. He knew he was a low-tier monster, but being compared to a stray cat felt a little rude. He was definitely much cuter than a stray cat!
"No, I am definitely cuter!" Rimuru protested weakly.
"...What?"
"Never mind." Rimuru knew he was being childish. Shaking off the thought, he asked the question that had been burning in his mind. "Have you encountered any other Otherworlders since you got here?"
"No, but my intelligence network confirms there are quite a few of them operating in the major nations."
"Huh? Really? Then why didn't you try to go find them?"
"Hmm..." Suzuki paused, considering the question carefully. "Because none of them are chill like you."
"..."
"Think about it, Rimuru. You're an adult. You're mature, you've experienced the crushing reality of society, and you know how the world actually works. But the vast majority of these Otherworlders are teenagers. High schoolers. You've read enough manga to know exactly how that demographic acts when they get Isekai'd."
"...How do they act?"
Suzuki sighed heavily. "They develop extreme main-character syndrome. They immediately want to become the ultimate Hero, or the edgiest Villain, or they want to enforce their personal brand of 'Justice' on a world they don't understand. Depending on their radical beliefs, talking to people like that is utterly exhausting.
"Adults are fine because we understand compromise. But young kids, who have never tasted the bitter reality of adult society, suddenly being handed god-tier cheat powers and told they can do whatever they want? It's a recipe for disaster."
"..."
Rimuru stared at Suzuki in a daze, entirely unexpecting such a bleak, sociologically grounded answer. "Aren't you overthinking this a bit?"
"I sincerely hope I am." Suzuki took another sip of his bitter ale. "But if you eventually meet another Otherworlder, your encounter probably won't be as chill as ours. Depending on the nation that summoned them, you might be hunted down on sight."
Suzuki briefly recalled the original plotline, remembering that Rimuru had indeed been violently hunted by fanatic Otherworlders from the Western Holy Church.
"...It can't possibly be that serious, right?" Rimuru gulped nervously.
"Yeah, I hope not. Anyway, they're currently operating far away from us."
"Where are they?"
"Mostly concentrated in the major Western Countries—places like Ingrassia or the Holy Empire of Ruberios. There are none in the Blumund Kingdom. It's too small and militarily weak."
"Then why did you set up your headquarters there?"
"Exactly because it's small and weak," Suzuki smiled sharply. "I can live incredibly well there. If I had set up shop in a massive, powerful kingdom, I would have been instantly drafted, heavily taxed, or forced to work for the crown."
"..."
"There's an old Chinese proverb: Better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix. It means it is vastly superior to be the undisputed leader in a small, less prestigious pond than a minor, expendable subordinate in a massive, elite ocean."
Suzuki finished his ale in one smooth gulp. "Blumund is small, but its borders are lax and its politics are free. Because I hold the capital, I can live like a king. If the political climate ever turns sour, I can simply pack up my spatial inventory and leave. But if you're chained to a superpower, the problems scale with the nation's size. I despise unnecessary problems. I just want absolute freedom and absolute comfort."
"...You are incredibly mature for a college student," Rimuru muttered, deeply impressed by Suzuki's ruthless pragmatism.
"Well..." Suzuki shrugged. In his past life, he had just wanted to be a lazy civil servant; ironically, this world had forced him to become a hyper-competent corporate titan. "If there were actually stable, modern countries here, I might have just applied to be a low-level bureaucrat and worked a quiet nine-to-five. But there are zero labor laws in this world! Every single kingdom is basically a lethal, unregulated black company!"
"Goddammit, you're right!" Rimuru violently agreed, deeply triggered by the mention of black companies.
"Anyway, I heard you mentioning earlier that you're heading back to build a new village in the Jura Forest?"
"That's right! It's pretty small right now—just a tribe of Goblins—but I'm going to build it into a proper town."
"Goblins..." Suzuki's expression instantly soured, remembering the ambush upon his arrival.
"Ah, don't worry! My Goblins are good! Actually, I named them, so they've all evolved into Hobgoblins now!"
"...Really?" Suzuki looked highly skeptical. "Rimuru, you've read the same fantasy hentai I have. Can you really trust a village full of Goblins?"
"..."
"Anyway, I believe in them!" Rimuru puffed out his gelatinous chest proudly. "If they ever step out of line or do anything evil, I will personally execute them."
Rimuru wasn't joking. He was their namer, their literal god. He bore absolute responsibility for their actions.
"Good. Then let me help you."
"Huh?"
"You're planning to build a massive monster settlement, right?"
"Ah, um, yeah. That's the plan."
"Let me be your primary venture capitalist. I might not look like it, but I have an obscene amount of liquid capital and infrastructure."
"Huh? Really?"
"Yes." Suzuki nodded seriously. "I will supply you with whatever raw materials and funding you need. In exchange, I want exclusive rights to open my corporate branch office right in the center of your new capital."
"W-Why...?" Rimuru asked, bewildered by the sudden corporate sponsorship.
"What do you mean, 'why'?"
"You aren't offering this just out of the goodness of your heart because we're from the same country, are you?"
"Absolutely not," Suzuki replied without a shred of hesitation. "I smell massive, unprecedented profit radiating from you. If I invest heavily in your infrastructure now, I am absolutely certain your nation will yield astronomical returns in the future. Plus, you're a chill guy. I'd much rather do business with a fellow Japanese salaryman than these corrupt fantasy nobles. So, let's form a corporate alliance."
"Suzuki-kun..."
Rimuru was deeply moved. He extended a gelatinous pseudopod, grasping Suzuki's hand in a firm handshake.
In that exact moment, Rimuru's Unique Skill, [Great Sage], silently pinged in his mind.
[Notice. Deep Analytical scan complete. Detected: Suzuki Tanaka is the unidentified anomaly who successfully ascended to the Enlightened Sage evolutionary stage by engaging in prolonged sexual intercourse with a high-tier Dryad.]
"..."
Rimuru froze completely. The metaphorical corporate handshake shattered.
Suzuki immediately noticed Rimuru's horrified, deeply judgmental stare. He slowly pulled his hand back. "...Do you happen to have a high-tier analytical skill?"
"Y-Yeah..."
"Did it just tell you something?"
"W-What do you mean?! I-I didn't notice anything! I definitely didn't notice that you managed to evolve into an Enlightened Sage just by doing snu-snu with a Dryad—"
"Anyway, look at the time! We really need to get going!"
Suzuki abruptly stood up, desperately trying to silence the slime before he leaked the most embarrassing secret in the multiverse to the entire tavern!
However, just as Suzuki turned to flee—
"Suzuki-kun!"
"Hmm?" Suzuki stopped and turned toward the tavern entrance. "Mama-san? What are you doing here?"
The stunning Elven owner of the Night Butterfly hurried toward him, her emerald eyes filled with genuine distress.
"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving the city so soon?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"Well..." Suzuki rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a rare pang of awkwardness. "I'm sorry. It was a sudden business decision."
"I won't accept a simple apology."
"..."
"That is exactly why you have to promise to come back to the club the moment you return to Dwargon. You owe me a proper apology, understand?"
Before Suzuki could process her words, Mama-san stepped smoothly into his personal space, leaned up, and pressed a soft, lingering kiss directly onto his cheek.
"..." Suzuki stood paralyzed.
"..." Rimuru stared in absolute, soul-crushing despair.
"..." The entire tavern, including the Dwarven craftsmen, went dead silent.
"Here. I packed you some foods," Mama-san whispered, pressing a beautifully wrapped bento box into his hands. Her expression was tinged with sadness, yet remained as breathtakingly gentle as ever. "Please be safe on your journey. I will be waiting for you."
"Ah, um... yes. Thank you." Suzuki nodded dumbly, his brain momentarily short-circuiting.
Without a doubt, whether it was Rimuru, Kaijin, Garm, Dord, or every single male patron in the tavern... they were all violently screaming the exact same thought in their hearts.
I AM SO INCREDIBLY JEALOUS!
"...Wait, did you guys just scream that out loud?" Suzuki asked, noticing the murderous auras radiating from his new business partners.
Nevertheless, ignoring the intense, burning jealousy of his companions, the newly formed corporate alliance officially set off toward the Jura Forest!
Still... hadn't they forgotten something important back in Dwargon?
---
By the way, which one do you like, Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry or Dandadan?
Or just give me a recommendation so I can think about what a good world to be in is.
But, thank you all~!