3 weeks after the whole Orc Lord incident ended…

I'm running through the forest. Everything seems weird. There’s no sound. The sounds of the forest are missing. The skittering of the small animals, the sounds of the insects, the wind… everything’s gone.

It’s just silence.

The atmosphere here isn't helping either. The sky is grey, covered in clouds. Yet, it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain.

I'm getting a bad feeling. These kinds of environments nearly always prelude to something happening, and it’s usually not a good thing.

I speed up.

After continuing running through the forest, I suddenly stop.

Why am I running?

Oh, right, it’s because… because…

Mikoto ran off this way?

I don’t really remember it, but I'm pretty sure I was just chasing after her. Odd…

I continue to run.

And run.

And run.

*Crack!*

A new sound.

I stop running and slide to a halt. I look in the direction of the sound, but I don’t see anything. Maybe it’s just hidden? I walk forward slowly. I eventually come across a cluster of thick foliage. The bad feeling I'm getting strengthens every so slightly.

I reach out my hand and push the foliage aside. On the other side is a small open area. Standing in the centre are 2 people. One of them is a man dressed entirely in black, with his identity hidden and holding a bloody dagger. The other…

A cold lifeless body, lying at his feet with blood pouring out of a wound in her chest.

All emotions drain out of me as in under a second, rage clouds my mind and I instantly find myself standing behind the man.

The man collapses, now with a hole bored straight through the left side of his chest. And in my hand…

A beating heart.

*Shatter!*

*INHALE!*

I wake up with a start. I involuntarily inhale as if I’ve been holding my breath for several dozen minutes.

What the fuck is going on!? I don’t even need to breathe, I'm a slime. My mind is a mess. I look down at my slightly shaking hands. Right, calm down, what’s going on…

Right…

Killing training.

Mikoto- “Are you ok, Rimuru?”

I look up to see Mikoto staring at me with nothing but concern on her face.

I take a deep breath and nod. I don’t need to breathe, but it seems to be a habit from my time as a human.

Rimuru- “Yeah. I'm fine now.”

My words don’t seem to convince her at all…

I'm not surprised. She knows perfectly well what I just went through.

Here’s what’s going on.

The day after we all came back home, I called Mikoto over for a talk. Specifically, it’s to make do on my decision to train Mikoto to gain resistance to killing.

She seems to hesitate a lot when it comes to killing or heavily injuring sentient beings. She’s not dumb, she’s completely aware of it too. But no one can really do anything about it, she was raised that way in modern society.

And so, I decided to change that.

The way I decide to train her to kill is through illusions. I create a sequence of runes that will put the target in an illusion. The illusion will place the target in a scenario where they will be forced to kill someone, in this case, it would be a human.

Furthermore, knowledge of being placed in the illusion will be temporarily sealed in their mind, and they will think that everything that’s happening in the illusion is 100% real. Once they kill someone or something, the target will then be released from the illusion, with the sealed memories returned.

Basically, it’s a bootleg Tsukuyomi.

Of course, I know how cruel something like this can be. The first time Mikoto went through it, I felt like tearing my heart out.

Mikoto was left in a nervous wreck, curled up into a ball, hugging her arms and knees, shivering and crying. At that time, for around half an hour, I hugged her tightly in my arms while whispering words of consolation and patting her head.

Even though I am a slime, I involuntarily shed tears at that time. Seeing her like that… hurt me more than I could have ever imagined.

And so, after that, I decided to go through the training with her.

That’s what just happened to me. What I just went through was the training.

But there are a few fail-safes in the rune sequence. For one, we only do this once a day. Furthermore, we don’t have complete memories of everything that happened in the illusion. Instead, knowledge of the events would get converted into something akin to words on a sheet of paper. This is to prevent trauma.

We can read through the sheet of paper to understand what happened, but it won't be too impactful. It would be like reading a novel or watching a movie, where the main character killed someone and that main character just so happened to share your name.

We would be mostly detached.

The keyword here is ‘Mostly’.

A few moments after we exit the illusion, we would still be ‘connected’ and our emotions would still be in turmoil, hence the reason why Mikoto ended up as a wreck after the first time and why I reacted in such a way after leaving the illusion.

But it’s also not a bad thing. We’re improving. Now, Mikoto wouldn’t cry and end up as a total wreck after exiting the illusion. Heck, just recently, she finished her illusion without so much as a flinch.

And that’s to be expected since that should be the normal reaction. My reaction just now was not expected.

Mikoto continues to look at me with worry on her face. I smile warmly, seeing her like that, and lift up my hand and drop it on her head.

Rimuru- “Thank you for worrying about me.”

Mikoto- “I-it’s not like I w-was worrying…”

She begins to speak forcefully but quickly turns into a mumble as she lowers her beet-red face while touching her index fingers against each other.

I chuckle. Honestly, she’s such a tsundere. She’s acting like a young maiden. If she had cat features, I'm sure her tail would be swishing happily.

… God, I wanna see that…

Mikoto- “*Ahem!* So… what did you see in your illusion that made you react like that?”

I lower my hand as my smile wavers. My eyes looking at Mikoto became invaded with pain and worry before I quickly hide it.

Rimuru- “Nothiiiing!~ By the way, I like your clothes.”

Mikoto- “Eh!?”

I nonchalantly change the subject while taking this chance to get some brownie points. Mikoto responds with a rather attractive squeak.

I'm not lying though. With Shuna making more and more clothes of various variety, Mikoto eventually stopped wearing her Tokiwadai uniform every breathing second and eventually went around wearing more and more types of clothes.

Thank god, because if not for her, I would be Shuna’s test subject and I don’t want to go through what OG Rimuru had to, being dressed in girlish clothes. It would hurt my pride as a man.

Mikoto right now is wearing a women's beige duffel jacket that looks slightly big on her which looks cuter on her than anything. She’s also wearing black jeans that emphasise her legs.

Her legs are honestly the best part about her. Furthermore, she’s fit, so her legs are quite shapely. Not just her legs, her ass…

*Tch*

Those damn biker shorts she always wears under her skirts really hide them well…

Sensing my gaze even while I'm using [Universal Perception] (scary intuition) Mikoto’s face somehow becomes even redder and her eyes begin to spin. She ends up turning around and running away.

Mikoto- “Rimuru you dummyyyyyyyy!!!”

If not for the fact that I'm immune to electricity, she probably would have shocked me unconscious right then and there.

A warm feeling spreads through my chest as I look at Mikoto’s retreating figure. I… don’t want to lose it.

My attention drifts back to the question she asked.

Rimuru- “*Whispering* What did I see, huh?”

What I saw was a man in black with a bloody knife in hand, standing over a dead body. That body was…

Even though I don’t really remember it, I still shiver thinking about it.

Silently vowing to never let that happen, I follow after Mikoto. Who knows, maybe she might let me take a dip in the hot spring with her?

…

Yeah, I shouldn’t get my hopes up…

-----

Name: Rimuru

Race: Origin Slime

Protection: Crest of Space

Title: Highest Tier Spirit, Leader of the Monsters

Ultimate Skills: [Illya, Heaven's Feel] [Raphael, Lord of Wisdom] [Belzebuth, Lord of Gluttony]

Intrinsic Skills: [Infinite Regeneration] [Universal Shapeshift] [Universal Sense] [Multilayer Barrier] [Enhanced Replication] [Universal Thread]

Unique Skills: [Creation] [Rune Master]

Extra Skills: [Lord's Ambition] [Thought Communication] [Control Wind] [Spatial Motion] [Dark Flame] [Control Particles]

Tolerances: [Cancel Pain] [Resist Melee Attack] [Cancel Natural Elements] [Cancel Ailments] [Resist Spiritual Attack] [Resist Holy Attack]

Equipment: Yamato, Harpe