Chapter 41 - Slice of Life

Chapter 41 – Slice of Life

It was a bright morning.

The sun was shining, the birds were twirping, and the wind was blowing gently.

As it was a national holiday in Japan, all shops were required to close. Well, not required but they were definitely not going to get any customers.

To Tempest Café, this wasn't much of a concern however, but nonetheless they still closed.

"We're going on a date!" A very happy Rimuru exclaimed, leaving a puzzled Artoria Alter and Medea.

"The shop's closed, so there won't be any customers. Takin advantage of this, we're going out! You two are free to do whatever you want, just no killing, no murder, no genocide, no destruction, no-"

"We get it, please have a good trip."

"Thanks and bye!"

Expectedly, Rimuru was the more immature one, who rushed out of the door like a kid, and Ciel soon followed more graciously, but still quite giddy.

...

"So what now?" It was quite an awkward atmosphere inside the café, as the two sources of conversation just left. Salter first broke the silence.

"I don't know. Did you even expect this to happen?"

"No, you?"

"No."

"Well, I don't blame you."

"So... do you have any plans on what your going to do now?"

"Me? I don't really know. Perhaps I will go outside." Even though it was a question, she just left the café straight away.

Medea was actually thinking how weird it was for the corrupted Artoria to speak so much on her own accord, but she was just getting her hopes up.

Sighing to herself, she looked around the place and teleported herself somewhere, leaving behind the silence once again.

...

With Rimuru and Ciel.

"So, where we going?" A curious Ciel asked.

"I don't really know, haven't thought that far yet."

"Oh, then why..."

"Because it will be interesting to go with the flow, you know?"

"Oh."

After an hour of mindless wandering, and an interesting conversation later, they soon found themselves in the middle of the ocean.

"Oh."

"Oh."

...

With Medea

(This library seems big and vast enough. Maybe there would be something interesting here...)

This wasn't the first time she teleported into a random library. This was one of her strange hobbies. She would always just turn invisible and go to random libraries to read the books and see if there were any that interests her.

Normally, she would just end up at local ones and sometimes maybe a national one, but those paled in comparison to this one she was in.

Flipping through the books, she examined the details and craftmanship of the covers.

(These are all intricately designed. This must be a grand national library or something of this era.

These titles though... are a bit strange aren't they?

The history of the Gremory Clan...

The magic behind the evil pieces...

Who are the four satans?

What is a sacred gear?

Autobiography of Leviathan...

What is the dimensional gap?)

Meanwhile, loud alarms were ringing outside.

"QUICK! AN INTRUDER! TELL SIRZECHS ABOUT IT!"

"GOT IT!"

The entire estate was in a panic. An unfamiliar person was detected in the secret library of the Gremory clan, and the anomaly was only just noticed.

...

With both Artorias

(What are you doing?)

(Shut up)

(Where are you going?)

(None of your business)

(But I am you)

(Shut up)

(Where did that attitude come from?)

(None of your business)

(...)

(Heh.)

Achieving victory, she looked smug on the outside and approached a restaurant.

In the short span of that conversation, she somehow went from Japan to Italy. Because of time difference, it wasn't as light out but she didn't care.

Artoria Alter has been to almost every single country to test their cuisine at this point, and Italy was one she hadn't went to.

The infinite bowl was great and all, but it didn't give the full experience.

She went to the most expensive and grand looking restaurant she found, and discovered that this place was a grand place for the most expensive food.

(As I previously discovered, expensive doesn't always equal good, but oh well.)

With a chilling aura around her, she walked inside.

She didn't want to cause too much of a commotion however, so she manifested a nice dress before walking in.

She was first greeted by service, and they brought her to a single table.

As she expected, the experience was quite overwhelming. There were bands playing in the background, there were even waterfalls flowing out of walls, and one could actually see the chefs cooking due to a wall being made of glass.

Noting these details, Artoria ordered everything on the menu.

The waiter was about to question but one stare from her eyes completely shut him up, and he quickly sped off.

The people who overheard such thing began to whisper about her. Although she used to be the king of Britain, then going to Japan, she spoke every language fluently. She obviously heard their doubts and gossip but paid no attention, and patiently waited for her food.

(I didn't even expect this to happen today...)

(Can I have some?)

(No.)

...

With Rimuru and Ciel

Diving deep into the ocean, they both played around like children.

At the very deepest depths of the ocean floor, one can see two almost identical figures, throwing massive boulders at each other like they were playing with toy cars.

For some reason, although underwater, physics just didn't apply to them.

"Take this!" A piece of stone with a diameter of a kilometre was chucked at Ciel.

On the other hand, Ciel commanded millions of fish to circle and protect her. She pointed one finger at the stone, and countless fish swarmed to it, completely engulfing the shape. The momentum then slowed down until it completely stopped.

"Crabs, use stone barrage."

Behind her was an impressive army of massive crabs. In their claws held small stones which would probably not cause anyone any damage. But set these stones on fire, increase their numbers to the millions, and receiving them at Mach 3 was enough to intimidate anyone.

Not Rimuru however, and he stomped onto the floor.

The seabed shook, and out of the ground came a massive tentacle.

Around Rimuru appeared multiple of these, and a huge mass then rose from the depths.

It was a giant, and I mean a giant, octopus with an eery amount of eyes.

"Octopus, use shield." The arms then encroached around Rimuru in a circle shape just in time for the stones to hit, but they did not cut through the arms. They merely bounced off.

"Octopus, use ink!" Immediately, darkness surrounded the entire area. A radius of 10 kilometres just became free of light.

Ciel narrowed her eyes at this.

"Fish, use whirlpool!"

All of the tiny fish then simultaneously swam in a circle. This was actually really effective, as the area of ink began to shrink and concentrate in one area.

The darkness cleared off, only to reveal the golden glowing eyes of Rimuru.

"Finally... I'm gonna end this... swordfish mark 9, use spearhead!"

At a speed invisible to anyone but Rimuru and Ciel, the swordfish charged towards Ciel.

As part of the rules of the game, if one attack lands on the opponent's body, they will lose.

They are also not allowed to use their own strength to attack, only the fishes and sea creatures in the ocean. And they also could not dodge attacks, or move on their own accord for that matter.

This also meant that Ciel had no time to respond, and the swordfish struck straight in the centre of her chest. Worryingly, the fish swam right through her, causing a gaping hole to open in her chest. The size of it was about twice the size of her own head, but Ciel seemed to pay not attention to this.

"I... lost?" Her knees collapsed and she looked down towards the floor.

"Mwahahaha, you are no match for me Ciel. It seems... I win!" Thoroughly enjoying himself, Rimuru laughed at Ciel and the sea creatures began to dissipate. The giant octopus also swam away after being confused why she was there.

"Not fair... that octopus was a semi-divine spirit."

"Then it is a shame you didn't get to it first isn't it. We had an hour prep time, and what did you do? You recruited millions of fish and crabs. Be more like me! Quantity over quality you know!"

"I thought I had you at the stone barrage..."

"Fufufu, I will never fall for such a cheap aoe attack."

"Rematch?"

"Rematch, I'll crush you either way."

...

With Medea

(Meh. These books are interesting enough but really useless. I don't get which national library would store such information.)

Still walking around invisible, she sporadically picked up a book of a shelf and quickly skimmed through it.

After a while of doing this, she heard the door to the place open.

(That's a door?)

In came a very intimidating and peaceful looking red-haired demon, followed by a couple maids and soldiers.

"Where is the intruder?"

(Intruder? I got caught? Damn it, I was too careless. I didn't know that this teleportation can send me to places other than human libraries. As always, the King of Imanity's products are not reliable. Hmm, what should I do now?)

"I don't know sir, but they can't escape. I have activated the anti-teleportation barrier around the estate. The only exit is through the doors behind us."

"Good, search every corner of this place. Although there is nothing of special importance, to be able to sneak in without warning is already an offense. Be careful, they might be dangerous."

"Yes sir!"

One got very near Medea, but just walked on.

(As expected, the lower soldiers can't sense me. I don't know about that guy however... he's guarding the door like his life depended on it...

Has he noticed me yet? I don't think so. Eh, there's nothing else really to see here anyway.)

She disappeared from the place.

Back at the café, she laughed to herself, "heh, they're really stupid. What anti-teleportation barrier? It was purely for looks."

Back at the library, even after thorough searching they did not find anything. Eventually, the maids guarded the door instead and Sirzechs went to search personally.

He did not find anyone, however, he did find some clues.

(This aura... I'll have to show it to Beelzebub. He can probably track them from there.)

"The intruder has escaped... but we can track them. Inform Beelzebub of my visit later."

"As you wish!"

...

With Rimuru and Ciel

After countless battles, this one would decide it all.

And Rimuru won.

His last attack was using the suction of the same divine octopus to pluck out a chunk of the tectonic plates underneath them. He then sent the oceanic crust to crush Ciel and it flattened all in it's path.

She resisted valiantly. The entire population of sharks in the ocean bonded together to make many strong pillars, but alas the block of molten earth was too much even for them.

After she lost, they revived the entire shark population and sent them to their correct areas around the world, since they did not want to cause mass extinction and panic.

They also patched up the gap on the ocean floor, so no more magma came spewing out.

However, little did they know that by doing this and were having fun playing games, the commotion they made under the sea had an impact on the surface.

They fixed what's under the water, but not over.

Ciel thought of this but Rimuru completely forgot, and since he didn't mention anything, neither did Ciel. After cleaning up, they left.

Maybe not the best idea to play this game, as an absolute monstrosity of a tsunami was forming in the ocean, and it was heading straight towards Italy...