Seeing so many people concerned about him, Rimuru felt secretly pleased, even as his mind raced.
Well, it's also possible this girl in front of me has a pretty high status. I think I remember something about her—
Achelotte... Wait, what did they just say?
Clock Tower?! Lord?!
Achelotte... Achelotte!
Rimuru studied the girl in front of him for a few moments. Gradually, her figure overlapped with that of a tall seventeen-year-old girl from his memories—
May Liddell Achelotte?!!!!
Holy crap!!!
Rimuru jolted, paying no attention to the girl and the guards still scolding everyone. He shoved open the window and leaned his whole body outside!
In an instant, his magical perception swept over the pedestrians and vehicles on the road like ripples, then kept expanding.
"Great Sage, can you construct a map?!"
"Report: Beginning simulation of a comprehensive virtual structural map!"
One street after another appeared across Rimuru's retinas as virtual models. A blue blob marking his position emerged midway up a tall building beside the street.
Then one phantom building after another shot up into the sky. Everything scanned by his magical perception was projected onto the virtual 3D map—
"Zoom out. I want to see the whole area!"
"Understood."
The view slowly pulled back. At the end of a nearby street, a huge museum and a statue in a plaza gradually took shape.
"Large-scale bounded field detected. High concentration of magical energy detected. Breach?"
"Will I be noticed?"
"Report: Highly capable beings may detect fluctuations in magical energy, but there is no cause for concern."
"Report: The threat levels of living beings can be projected onto the map. Activate?"
"Breach it. Activate it."
Rimuru answered without hesitation. Drawing the attention of powerful people in an unfamiliar place might not be the wisest move, but his status was apparently high enough that people had already tried to assassinate him. He'd be exposed no matter how cautious he was, while his enemies remained hidden. In that case, he might as well be bold and figure out his situation first.
Most importantly, he had an excuse.
For instance, after being attacked, why shouldn't he scan the area on a large scale to find the culprit? (hands on hips!)
Even if he annoyed the powerful people, they couldn't say anything.
Then, in an instant, a vast area appeared on the previously pale blue, translucent map. It lay behind the museum, and countless red dots covered both the museum and the hidden area. Among the people coming and going on the streets, countless red dots also appeared, marking those with some degree of ability.
The magical scan continued to expand, and the view rose higher and higher. The Great Sage even helpfully identified the hidden area's name, along with the tall clock tower that had suddenly appeared—the Clock Tower.
Ugh!
Rimuru pressed a hand to his aching forehead and gave up resisting. "Stop the detailed scan. Just scan the terrain. What's the maximum range?"
"Report: For a scan similar to a satellite's, simply distribute magical energy evenly. If it rains, all connected raindrops can be used to conduct a more detailed scan."
"What about on a sunny day?"
Rimuru glanced at the sky. Naturally, not a cloud in sight.
"Report: Cannot determine. The range depends on the user's magical energy."
Fine. Rimuru withdrew his magical perception and looked at the buildings already mapped out, along with the tall clock tower—
He'd basically figured it out. There was no point resisting.
Yes, he looked out the window, his heart sinking.
This was... London.
And not just any London... This was a London with mages...
Chapter 2: This Damn, Wonderful Start
Nasuverse.
Just two simple words, yet they crashed down on Rimuru's heart with the weight of a thousand tons.
He'd thought he'd been transported to another world, but it turned out he'd been transported into another world on top of that?
But that wasn't the main issue. More importantly... Good God, didn't you think the difficulty of this world was a little too damn high?!!!
If this had been Rimuru's world, at least he'd have been an overpowered protagonist... But in the Nasuverse, it was like starting a punishing difficulty run the moment he left the tutorial village...
How could it be anything but miserable?
With a sigh, Rimuru drew back and sat on the sofa beside the window. He looked at Liddell and asked, "Did they catch the intruder?"
His shaken state had made his voice rasp slightly, with a barely perceptible tremor. Liddell noticed at once. Frowning faintly, she dismissed the guards who looked like servants, then turned back to him. "A professional. We can rule out the Church. Probably a hired killer who specializes in targeting mages... You don't look well. Are you hurt?"
Then she added abruptly, "Well, if you were fine, they wouldn't have been able to retreat so easily—"
"I should be fine." Rimuru shook his head and quickly tried to recall more of Liddell's memories, hoping to understand how they were connected.
Fragments of memory surged through his mind. To Rimuru's surprise, his predecessor seemed to have had a great deal of contact with this girl named Liddell. It wasn't a romance or a crush; she simply occupied a huge part of the memories he had inherited.
A friend. Someone he could trust completely.
That was the clearest impression in Rimuru's subconscious—
Phew, good. Looks like Liddell is the first ally NPC I've found in this world...
"I just can't figure out why anyone would want to kill me."
As Rimuru tried to use the question to learn more about his situation, he wondered:
Maybe I should hurry up and sort out my status and relationships in this world. At the very least, I need to make sure I'm safe first.
From the moment he'd woken up until now, barely fifteen minutes had passed. The sudden turn of events and his unease at finding himself in the Nasuverse left him feeling pressed for time.
The memory fragments in his mind were basically a tutorial, weren't they? But starting him on a death-flag scenario without even letting him see the tutorial was going too far, wasn't it?
If Rimuru's natural talent hadn't made him immune to this kind of firearm attack, even an ordinary mage couldn't have withstood a powerful armor-piercing round like that. They'd have gone straight to the game-over screen.
"The Director's summons have made you the target of a lot of people's hostility," Liddell said after a moment's silence. "Quite a few people suspect that if your meeting goes well, the next time you see the Director will be at a department meeting."
"Huh?"
Rimuru blinked, his beautiful face full of confusion—
You've said a lot, but I honestly don't understand any of it!
"In any case, the Achelotte Family will support you, so don't worry." Liddell gritted her teeth slightly and stood up. "I still have some things to take care of. Get some rest for now."
"...Okay."
That worked, too. He could use the time to sort through his memories.
He wanted to learn more from Liddell, but he didn't even know the basics of his situation yet. Asking too many questions wouldn't help him understand, and might even give him away.
Honestly, he should've pretended the attack had succeeded and left him seriously injured with amnesia...
After seeing Liddell off—still worried, and looking as if she wanted to say something—Jiang Rui closed the door and drew a deep breath.
"Is he out?"
At the first-floor entrance, beneath the stairs, a blond man leaned against the wall and lazily raised his eyes. "Is that guy all right?"
"What could be wrong with him?" Liddell walked straight ahead, arms folded across her chest and expression calm. "How did Yuri Phis react?"
"If Rimuru becomes a full professor, he'll probably be seen as part of the Achelotte Family's faction. That's not good news for them."
"Come on, don't always assume the worst of that old man Yuri Phis." The blond man laughed when he heard her. "But if Rimuru really does become a professor, wouldn't that mean—time for a shake-up?"
"Mm." Liddell nodded slightly. "The events of ten years ago earned him enough prestige. All he lacks is the Mage's Association's recognition."
"And his own acknowledgment..."
"..." The blond man lowered his head and considered this for a moment before saying gravely, "Can you be sure he'll move on from his family's destruction?"
"He will." At the mention of family, Liddell's hands clenched. She answered with certainty, "Support him, Tes. Trust me."
"Mm... You have to understand, if my family supports him as well, it'll send a very bad signal to Yuri Phis." Tes ran a hand through his hair, looking helpless. "And if you can't give me a reason for taking such a big risk, I can't convince the other family members. Especially not my old man."
"The Director's meeting with him is tomorrow. I think... it's time he explained why, after fourteen years, he still looks the same as he did as a boy, don't you?"
"Tch." Tes blinked, staring blankly for a moment. Then he spat out, "Fine. Gaiusling is willing to become an ally of the Achelotte Family, but only on this one matter."
If that guy admitted he, too, had once sought Akasha... then he did have what it took to become a Lord.
At last, Liddell's mood improved a little. She smiled. "You won't be disappointed. The Department of Zoology and the Department of Botany have always been one family."
The Clock Tower had three main factions. The first was aristocratic elitism, which prioritized protecting the interests of the aristocracy and advocated that "the resources of Magecraft should go first to aristocrats whose generations of inheritance are their greatest asset."
The second was democracy. It claimed to prioritize most mages and the interests of the mage community as a whole. It seemed selfless and noble, but it was also driven by self-interest. Its members advocated that "more consideration should be given to talented mages from ordinary backgrounds, and the hierarchy should not be fixed; those with ability should be able to rise."
The last was the neutral faction, a nest of contradictions that argued endlessly among itself in the name of letting a hundred schools of thought contend.
Although they shared the same broad aims and principles, even families belonging to the same aristocratic faction were divided into smaller sects over their approaches and views.
For example, the Yuri Phis faction regarded all ordinary people as tools, disdained involvement with the mundane world, and was an extreme proponent of inherited privilege.
Liddell's family, the Achelotte faction, was the exact opposite. Having made its fortune from coal during the Industrial Age, it had begun as a group of capitalists and loved interfering in mundane politics and the affairs of other financial powers. It was skilled at manipulating the media and the economy, and had even meddled in the UK's military.
Though it belonged to the aristocratic faction, it was a new faction quite unlike the conservatives. Its ideology fit the modern way of thinking, but at its core, it was still a group that put its own interests and those of the aristocracy first. When it came to the lives of ordinary people or common-born mages, it didn't care in the slightest. It was a traditional Magecraft faction through and through.
"Looks like none of these families are any good..."
In his room, Rimuru was pondering the same question. He flopped face-down onto the bed, gloomy, and rolled around a few times. "Why did I have to come to this world? Aaaaaah!!"
With the Great Sage's help, Rimuru had finally sorted out his background. But this fucked-up résumé just made his balls ache with a strange, cool sensation.
The Great Sage was every bit the name of a wise assistant—an excellent helper. It could even turn his inner consciousness into a memory palace, organizing all his memory fragments into something like a library for him to browse.
And because of that, after going through it all, Rimuru could only wonder why he hadn't lost his memory!
His name was Rimuru Tempest, and he was currently a lecturer at the Clock Tower, quiet and well-behaved.
He'd been transported in soul alone—or, no, strictly speaking, he'd arrived in this world as a soul, but his predecessor had been a genuine native. Rimuru was baffled as to how a Slime had ended up in the Nasuverse, becoming part of a prestigious family that had lasted for more than ten generations, only for the family to dwindle until he was the sole survivor.
But the fact was that before he came to this world, the person named Rimuru hadn't awakened the Slime panel of the Demon Lord. He'd just been a conventional Magecraft user—
Though even calling him conventional wasn't quite right.
After all, this guy had been a genius mage with a compound affinity for Water and Imaginary Numbers, and his family had possessed a terrifying 173 Magic Circuits. On top of that, his life history was also a little suspicious.
"Can someone tell me why I was childhood friends with Liddell and Kuonji Alice?"
Yikes! If his memories hadn't shown that his predecessor had no foreknowledge, and if the Tempest Family hadn't been on friendly terms with the Achelotte Family for generations, he would've thought he'd been transported into the body of another reincarnator.
He'd landed on his feet a little too perfectly!
What shocked Rimuru even more was that he'd been involved in Walpurgisnacht—
If he hadn't been a boy, then besides the Witch of Fairy Tales and the Witch of Coal, the Witch of Water, Rimuru, would've been added to the list...
Power and prestige.
This opening was almost unbeatable. So why was he still just a minor lecturer?
Rimuru was confused, but he couldn't find a single memory about that. He could only chalk it up to his predecessor having a mild, indifferent personality and not caring for worldly affairs.
"A mage with Color Rank, who turned down the title of Blue Twins alongside Aoko, then went and changed his color to black..."
Tch. If he hadn't been protected by two great witch families, and if the other Magician, Aoko Aozaki, hadn't taken the heat for him, he'd probably have been sealed away for good over what he'd done.
Even so, people outside still called him the "Blue Lecturer" and the "Fairy Tale Lord."
The latter title was simply because, for more than ten years, he'd been alone in the abyss of his family's destruction. He avoided socializing and had no interest in personal gain, like a lonely lord who never grew up.
Yes, never grew up.
Rimuru held up his small hand and lightly touched his youthful-looking skin. It was smooth and pale, like a girl's, but this was exactly what Rimuru was supposed to look like in his usual state—
Anyway, with his immense prestige, strength, and status, it seemed he'd inherited a pretty good starting setup—
But... Rimuru rolled around a few times, then looked at his hazy reflection in the window, his heart full of unease.
Before you continue