Intruders 1

It was a few days since Demon Lord Milim had decided to move into Tempest; they were, to Rimuru at least, pure chaos, as he tried to juggle keeping her from destroying something, running the city and the daily training with Hakuro and the others. Somehow, however, he managed to do it. He certainly though he deserved a pat on his slime back for that.

With Milim at least, he could at least leave her be with Shuna to be her dress up doll; she seemed content enough to just try anything new, even if it was just clothes she didn't need. And so far, even when he wasn't around, she managed to hold herself back well enough to not cause too much trouble...relatively speaking. Rigurd was still twitching from all the doors she had destroyed, but otherwise nothing major. He would buy the old hobgoblin a drink later. To alleviate some of his problems in the form of an overpowered teen girl, he tasked Kurobe and Kijin with making Milim a special pair of gauntlets that would reduce the strength of her punches; it was a daunting task but somehow the two succeeded, and Milim quickly took to the 'Dragon Gauntlets', even wearing them with outfits that just didn't match, and didn't seem to mind at all the real reason he gave them (even if he didn't tell her, he was not foolish enough to think she didn't realize; that Dragon Eye was scary). Today, he left her with Shuna to try on more outfits.

Right now, he was located in Veldora's old cave, having a meeting with Vesta and Gabiru about their potion production. After a quick report on Gabiru's efforts to grow hipoku plants, Vesta brought out a vial and placed in on the table in front of slime Rimuru

-'This is my latest version of the healing potion...' he said proudly, though unlike their time in Dwargo it was absent of arrogance and more genuine. 'What do you think, my lord.' Rimuru gave the potion a quick once over, absorbing part of the liquid to allow Great Sage to analyze its content. After a short pause, he replied

-'Its the same thing that I make..' 'With the help of Great Sage' he added to himself ''Its a full potion; a drought that will restore full health. Well done!' he praised them honestly. Gabiru threw his hands in the air and cheered, while Vesta had a look of disbelief cross his face. Kaijin came behind him and gave him a good, hearty pat on the back, much to Vesta's embarrassment. The two had, over the last few weeks since Vesta arrived here, gotten friendly and Rimuru would have found it hard to believe the two were bitter enemies not long ago if he didn't saw it for himself. In fact, he thought that the two were a little too friendly, chatting away in their difficult to understand technical jargon that just went over his head. After a while, he realized he was basically forgotten and, not finding a good moment to interrupt, decided to just leave silently.

He quickly made his way through the cave lit up by the newly created magicsteel light cables and arrived outside via the teleportation pad set up by Vesta...and just as he was hopping off it, a massive column of flame shot up from one of the main streets ahead of him. 'Oh no...' he though as he quickly took human shape, grew a pair of wings and flew over as quick as possible. As he landed, he saw a large crowd, among which stood Soei.

-'Soei, what the hell is going on?'

-'My apologies sir...' he said as he bowed ''we detected some intruders, but were too slow to respond...' he followed Soei's gaze and landed on a sight that filled him with a dread feeling. Milim was standing over a guy he never saw before, with another pair some distance away shaking in abject fear from her aura. And closer to Rimuru was Rigurd, who was kneeling on the ground with his back to him. As Rimuru moved closer to get a better look, the hobgoblin turned to look at him...'AAAArrrgg!' Rimuru screamed internally at the sight of half of his face literary melted off, one eye socket empty. It made him thankful slime didn't have a nausea reaction, because that would have definitively made him puke otherwise... before he could say anything, Rigurd spoke up

-'Oh, Lord Rimuru, thank goodness...' he stopped when he saw his lord's reaction to his injury and quickly tried to talk it off as if it was nothing 'Ah, no no, please, this is fine! I'm fine!' Rimuru was not convinced

-'What...there's nothing fine about that! Here, have a healing potion, idiot...' he splashed some healing liquid directly on the hobgoblin's face; miraculously, everything was back to normal in a blink, even the eye restored as if nothing happened. As he was investigating to see if anything else was wrong with Rigurd, he heard Milim quickly approaching them

-'Hey, Rimuru! These jackasses were harassing your people, but don't worry! You're bestie took care of em, wahahahaha!' she proclaimed, looking proudly about herself. Rimuru was kinda mad; he was ready to explode at her, and she must have noticed because she quickly started to try and make excuses 'Ah, no, its fine! They're not from you city so it doesn't count, yeah?'. As far as he was concerned, it did count. He was about to say as much when Rigurd hastily interjected

-'Lord Rimuru, wait! It's not Lady Milim's fault at all! In fact, she saved us! Please listen...' until then, Rimuru had never heard Rigurd talk about Milim with anything short of annoyance, so to hear him say that made him pause 'Its true, sir...as much as I hate to admit my failure' he heard Soei speak from behind. Then the two began to recount the earlier events

The city square was busy as always, with various workers moving to and from; it was a peaceful day, with the sun shining brightly and a cool but refreshing autumn air about. Rigurd was making his daily paces through the city, ensuring everything was in working order, when a commotion on the main street caught his attention. The crowd parted to reveal a quadruplet of what he assumed were beastmen from their beastly features, including tails (also called lycanthropes for their ability to turn partially or fully into a beast form). There was a tall one with cat like features sporting dark armor and a haughty smirk on his face, a large ape-like man, a thin one that had goat liken horns and a small, rodent like one. They strode into the city as if they owned the place, stopping when they reached the middle of the square

-'This is a nice town you have here! Perfect for Lord Carrion to rule, don't you think?' he asked no one in particular as he looked around. Hearing the man say that riled Rigurd's ire, but he contained himself; he had to follow Lord Rimuru's rules of not picking fights with strangers, after all. He approached the four calmly and said

-'Welcome to Tempest, may I be of assistance? I am the main administrator of this city, Rigurd.' he said politely, but the tall man did not seemed keen on returning the favor

-'I said, this would be a nice place for my Lord, Demon Lord Carrion to rule over, did you not hear me?' the man retorted with anger; at this, Rigurd had only one thing to say

-'You must be joking...' this angered the tall beast man even further, and with no warning hit Rigurd across the face, sending him flying across the pavement. But he wasn't finished, as when he turned to the gathered crowd he saw they were less scared and more outraged, scowling at him.

-'Know your place, weaklings!' he shouted and created a ball of flames in his right hand. In a flash, he launched it straight at the crowd; the ball created a large amount of flames in its wake. Right before it hit the panicking crowd, however, a blur of pink appeared right in front of them. With a quick motion that even Soei, who had just arrived on the scene, could't discern, Demon Lord Milim deflected the wall of flame into the air, away from the city. The tall beast man was shocked to say the least, but this quickly turned to terror as he saw a dangerous red aura surrounding the girl; that was when the realization of who she was hit him...

-'Demon Lord Milim?!' he screamed, preparing another fireball, but it was too late; before he could even blink, Milim had appeared right in front of him, striking him with a heavy fist straight in the stomach, knocking him unconscious before he even hit the pavement.

As Soei finished the explanation, Rimuru could really only stare in disgust at the sprayed, unconscious body of the beast man in question. Whatever anger he had with Milim for breaking her promise was gone, as he was now fully focused on him. He absentmindedly heard Soei continue

-'There were even children among the crowd. He still didn't hesitate to shoot...'

'Okay, now i'm really pissed. How dare this trash...' Rimuru took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down before he let his anger take over and cause him to take rash decisions. He turned to Milim, who had an unusually serious look on her face as she observed him.

-'Milim, thank you for protecting my people. I don't like that you picked a fight, but thank you for that. Just...let us handle it in the future, okay?' he said softly to her, and was a bit taken aback when she scowled at him

-'I live here too, you know!' she proclaimed, balling a fist 'I can't just stand by and watch, right?' she sounded like she was trying to convince him, so he decided to let her be for now and sighed

-'Yes, you live here but unless it looks like we can't handle it, stay out of it, okay?' she didn't look entirely convinced, but nodded as she crossed her arms. 'She's pouting again...' he thought as she took the now fairly familiar 'pouty face', which he certainly did not find cute. Not at all. In any case, his attention was drawn to Rigurd, who had bowed his head to Milim

-'Thank you very much for the assistance, Lady Milim.' he said with sincerity, followed by several of the citizens from the crowd she had protected. It must have took her seriously off guard because her face flashed a shade of red, but only for a second 'Ah, of course, of course! No problem at all for me, wahahahaha!'

'She must really not have thought much of it, huh?' he thought as he gauged her reaction. He decided that maybe he could thank her too, later, with a special dish of food...until then, however, there was the issue of what to do with the intruders...

-'Want me to take out the trash?' he heard Milim say, pointing at the unconscious beastman. He decided to cancel the dish.

A while later, Rimuru was sitting in the lobby of their new governmental building, with the leader of the beast men, who had regained his consciousness and introduced himself as Phobio, sitting across from him. His councilors were sitting behind him, while Milim was sitting on a sofa a way back, eating lunch as if nothing was wrong. He supposed to her, this was nothing. After the man introduced himself, Rimuru realized he was by far no weakling; Great Sage estimated his magicules to be higher than Benimaru. He really hoped he could salvage the situation, but he made no effort to hide his displeasure at Phobio's actions, allowing his aura to emerge freely. It seemed to work, or at least he thought it did. Having Millim around certainly seemed to knock the haughty idiot a peg or two down.

-'So, let's get straight to the point: why are you here?' Rimuru asked

-'Why the hell would I answer to some lowly slime?' Phobio shot back, earning himself the full and undivided anger of the ogres