When I woke up, the sound of thunder and lightning roaring nearby was deafening. The patter of rain, however, was somehow comforting, so I sat close to the entrance of our little cave and watched the rain for a while. Everyone slept in this cave- including most of the slimes and amus, so it was pretty cramped, but luckily, I was able to corrupt the area to make the hide out three times its original size. It just took a while. I also had to raise it above the rest of the ground to stop water from leaking in. But thankfully the slimes were happy to soak up the water that did leak in.

While I was enjoying the sound of rain by myself, Rigurd and Mayrne came over and sat next to me. “Isn’t it warmer by the fire?”

“Yeah, but you looked like something was on your mind,” Mayrne said .

“I guess. I was just thinking about my next step,” I admitted. “You see, for some reason the whole slavery thing bothers me. Also the villagers' mental state is bothering me as well. I don’t know why either, but…”

“So you plan on saving them? I mean, that’s noble but-” Rigurd started but I had to cut him off before he got the wrong idea.

“Not at all. I don’t plan on saving everyone. I just expect retaliation if I save a few. I mean, they have a pretty large fortress.”

“Well, from what I’ve seen, there has to be around three platoons there. Oh, there’s forty soldiers per platoon.”

“If it’s that much, I guess it’s manageable…”

“Huh?” Rigurd and Mayrene said in unison.

“It’s manageable. I mean, as long as we stick to things that can be done. For example, if we were to do this during the day, we would kill the sleeping soldiers that have night shifts. I would use the slimes for this, having them turn into liquid in order to sneak into the fortress. Then, from what I’ve seen, about twenty soldiers patrol around the village in groups of four, so it would be simple to cause a slight commotion to attract one group and ambush them. If we did this at the same time in three locations, even if reinforcements come we could handle them. The slimes would’ve already handled at least forty of the sleeping soldiers and if we can take out twenty, that only leaves about sixty right? If twenty of them weren’t enough to take on whatever force is in the village, they’ll send forty, right? That’ll leave the other twenty in the fortress alone trying to figure out what happened to the sleeping soldiers, and those guys would be ambushed and killed. We wouldn’t necessarily need to take on the forty in the village directly, but if it came to it, we could use the spider to set traps for reinforcements from the fortress itself. Oh, and have the four amus help us fight off the soldiers. And if they send a runner to ask for reinforcements, we could have an amu or two stationed outside the perimeter of the fortress waiting to ambush the runner,” I explained.

“Wow, it seems you put more thought into this than I thought,” Rigurd scratched his head.

“Well, the problem is, we can’t rescue those who can be saved and kill the last forty at the same time. We lack the manpower, unfortunately. So, we would have to find a way to ambush reinforcements. But they’re building additions to their fortress from what I saw when I was at the village, so I can assume there will be more soldiers there anyways. So our only option is to save those we can and deal with anyone who pursues us. Then, it comes to whether or not we can defend our fortress, and personally, I’d rather not even attempt it. We’ll lose if we’re just on the defensive. The only advantage we have in our meager numbers is mobility.”

“Then, why not split up our forces when it comes to it?” Mayrne suggested as she drew in the dirt. “Let’s say, we go to the village and cause a commotion to save a few of the slaves, then we could send the majority of our forces into the forest over here, and have everyone else go towards this forest, and set an ambush point there. Then we could fend off this location from attackers by using the forest to our advantage, and this force can just move to the fortress without being followed. Then we would just need to send a rescue squad to these guys here, right?”

“That’s a sound plan, but again, we lack the numbers. Even if we use slimes… they’re pretty weak. It would take three of them to take on one soldier. So to fight numbers like that, we would need at least one hundred slimes waiting in the forest. Or like six spiders,” Rigurd commented.

“Is Mayrne secretly smart or something? I honestly thought she was just ditzy,” I was honestly amazed at her intelligence and didn’t try hiding it.

“Th-that’s super rude you know! Keep it up and I’ll ask Liora to teach you how to treat a woman.”

“Please forgive me. I’ll never make a comment like that again.” Damn, she really is secretly smart. She’s not even hesitating to use my weakness against me. Where’s my meat shield when I need her?

“Well, this is all just theoretical at this point, right?” Rigurd asked, smoothly changing the flow of the conversation. “There’s no need to put serious thought into this, so just relax a bit.”

“True,” I muttered as I reflected on yesterday. Then I looked over at K, still in his jiggly slime form.

Well at least his HP is starting to recover today. I guess Luna gets to live another day. I turned back to the rain and let my thoughts drift for a few more moments before they were interrupted by Eliquis running over to me in tears.

“Gareeeeeeeem!!!! Look!” Eliquis said, pointing at nothing.

“Huh?”

“My status! Look at it!”

“Okay, okay. Stop shouting.”

Her status? HP and MP are full, she’s still a rogue, and her abilities are...normal I think? Well, she got three new ones, but that’s nothing to worry about. Oh? A section called titles...Oh. Oh, did I somehow manage this?

I felt a few beads of sweat gather on my forehead as I looked at her title: {Meat Shield I}.. Meat Shield. Wait, how did she end up with this title? Was it because I kept calling her that all last night and today? Well, I was more thinking about it than actually calling her that, but… This is amazing and hilarious. But how do I explain this to her? I looked back at Eliquis who was full blown crying at this point. Nevermind, I’ll just take this to the grave with me. Let’s see, if in front of the bran holder, DEX and END are increased. And will survive with one HP if struck fatally, but can only be used once per day. I mean… I guess that’s pretty much what a meat shield is good for. I have no complaints.

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Now, she would really become the perfect meat shield if I could find a way to summon her in front of me- oh wait. I haven’t even looked at my new skills yet! Wait, wait wait wait. If I thought seriously about using Eliquis as a meat shield, then if I think seriously about Luna becoming a sacrifice, will she? Hm… I definitely need to test this later tonight, when nobody’s paying attention to me.

“What’s wrong?” Mayrne asked.

“Just realized I forgot to see which new skills the slimes got.”

“Wha- what about my status? Why am I a meat shield? Fix it!” Eliquis tackled me to the ground and started to cry on my chest.

“Do your best, Eliquis,” I whispered in her ear, ignoring her plight. There is no way in hell I’m going to let this opportunity go. You WILL be sacrificed to Liora when I somehow figure out a way to abuse this Meat Shield title.

Alright, let’s take a look here. Oh? The spider is at level ten? But it only got one more skill point and no other option for skills. That sucks, but I guess I’ll just have to take [Burrowing I] and [Stitching I] and then hope for the best later on. However… the slimes. HOW DID YOU GUYS GAIN FOUR LEVELS?! Are you cheating? Is there a method to your leveling that I should know? I’m really jealous, you know. Well, with two skill points… OH?! IT’S A MIRACLE! All of my problems have been solved.

I internally screamed for joy as I took a closer look at the new skill that was available: [Symbiosis I]. Allows the fusing of slime bodies. However slimes may split afterwards… blah, blah, blah, but are still treated as one slime per symbiosis. So, basically, I currently have sixteen slimes, but with this skill, eight of them will merge, making my slime count to eight. But, they can split and function separately, but won’t count as two even when they split. But that’s not much of an issue since that frees up eight more slots for my Bran! Oh, there’s more to the description? Oh, I guess that button there means ‘next page’. Uh, the total number that can be merged increased by the level of the Minimize skill, and stat boosts increased by the level of the Body Armor skill times the number of slimes merged times five. And that comes out at a percent, or a whole number? Ugh, math is making my head hurt. So basically they get stronger with Body Armor, and I can increase the numbers merged with minimize. So, let’s go with [Minimize] first, then get the other one later.

Oh, and the Dryad leveled up. Only one level though- useless. Ok, [Boulder I] it is. Moving onto the amus...who didn’t get any points at level nine. Amus, you’re failing me here! Oh well, I’m most curious about mine.

TIER 1

Job System

Unlocks the Job System.

Skill Slot II

Allows for up to a to total of 2 skills and 3 passives from any Class to be used in this Class.

TIER 2

Mana Corruption III

Allows for the creation of 2 CMP for every 9 MP spent.

Replaces Mana Corruption II.

Condensed Corruption I

When creating CMP, the amount created is increased by 1.

Excuse me, what? Oh boy, the choices. Okay, Tier 2 skills cost two points, so I can either get both of those, or one of them, and finish off the tier one category. Why is this such a hard decision?! I mean, increasing CMP production is important. So if I go for the two Tier 2 skills the land production will become faster and better, right? Well, in theory. But if I go with the two tier one skills, I can focus on leveling up my fighter class and keeping some of it’s skills to be used with my Freelancer class. And I can also finally figure out what the hell a Job is. Ugh, the dilemma. But either way, I can increase my CMP productivity. It’s not a bad deal either way. The question is which way do I want to go about it. Well, I only got two AP that one time when I reached level ten, so I’ll always only get one AP per level other than… specific points. Or something like that? Yeah, anyways, so I’ll just ignore the rest of the Tier one skills for now and focus on building up as much CMP as possible. In two levels I can finish off the Tier one skills… I think. I hope. Yeah, final decision. CMP GALORE!

I took a deep breath and looked over my right shoulder at the pile of rubble. I did this. I can’t believe they had me do this. What the hell? There was only a loud ringing in my ear, and nausea washed over me heavily as I moved closely and saw my team leader kicking some of the debris away to reveal the upper half of a little girl. Ah, it’s that girl I saw on the other mission. I took one more deep breath, trying to control my stomach’s convulsions, but couldn’t resist the urge to vomit, and blew chunks all over the place.

“This is why I told you not to get friendly with the locals,” my team leader said with a wry grin.

“S-sergeant,” I attempted to ask for help, but I heaved another load of stomach contents. Fuck, it got on my rifle.

“I can’t believe you blew the entire school up…” another soldier walked over looking at the massive rubble that was a school we built a few weeks before.

“Orders are orders,” my team leader intervened for me. “Besides, the kids were already dead. Look.”

My team leader pointed at a child’s corpse- or half of one, anyways. Only the top half of the boy could be found, but the mangled corpse did reveal one truth. The boy had two holes in his head. Gunshot wounds. From the size of the hole, I’d say 7.62. At least that’s not one of ours this time.

I took one last look around the village, before moving closer to the pile of debris. A school for all of the children in this area to attend. I had helped with the project and managed to talk to a lot of the locals because of it. I recognized too many of these corpses, and every step closer to them felt like it would be my last. But slowly, I managed to stagger my way to the debris, helping my comrades clear the debris. I hope we can find at least one corpse that’s still intact, I thought to myself. Supposedly there was a weapons cache here, but, of course there were only a few insurgents with their own rifles. Not even enough ammunition to hold this area for long.

I lifted a rock and took a good hard look at the arm that was underneath. There wasn’t a body attached to it. Just an arm ripped open at the top revealing the bone that connected to the shoulder, the fingers were jammed in different directions, and part of the bone in it’s forearm was sticking out. Again, I attempted to control my breathing. It’s not like I’m not used to seeing corpses, I thought, bringing back memories of my friend’s corpses that I had to leave behind before joining the military. But this… This is just disgusting, the very sight of these mangled and ripped apart body parts and innards that were scattered among the debris was a grotesque sight that my stomach couldn’t handle. Guess I’ll get used to it someday, I encouraged myself to move on and keep working to gather their corpses and return them to their parents.

“I wonder if you even feel pain when you die that fast.”

“Any weapons?” My platoon sergeant snuck up on me while I was in thought and I jumped, dropping the rock back onto the arm.

“Nothing yet, sergeant.”

“Keep looking. They don’t want us to go back empty handed,” he ordered before walking over to the medic, who was now emptying his stomach.

Just keep killing and pretending that we’re looking for something, right? I sighed mentally and continued to dig through the debris. The stench of death crept up in my nose as I began to get closer to a group of corpses. I kept my thoughts to myself and continued looking- memorizing every face I killed only twenty minutes earlier. Remember every single one that you killed. You can atone for this later, I promised myself.