Chapter 200: An Unexpected Evolution (1

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The next day.

“Brr… It’s cold!”

The cold slipped into the gaps of the futon and jolted my consciousness awake.

I knew it would be cold every morning, but this morning is particularly cold.

It won’t be long now before the season completely turns over to winter. After making up my mind, I slipped out of the futon and began preparing for the day.

There was just one problem.

The clothes I prepared next to my bed have completely chilled!

“Looks like I have to wear something thick today…”

I opened my Item Box and chose something else to wear.

The clothing I chose was the ‘Down Jacket’-like jacket I made by stuffing a fabric with the fluff slime’s fluff and then using the sticky slime’s sticky liquid to make the exterior part waterproof.

I couldn’t recreate the zipper, so the front was made to be closed with buttons instead. For the wrist part, I’m using rubber made from the latex slimes’ liquid to close it. I moderately tightened it to prevent the cold from getting in. This winter garment is one of the preparations I made for winter.

After confirming that the jacket was comfortable enough and that the anti-cold functions were functioning properly, I left my room.

Alright! I’ll do my best today too!

After resolving myself like that, one week passed in the blink of an eye.

From morning until noon, I would generally help out with the fishes by fighting the mud salamanders. In the noon, I would take care of the slimes and explore new evolutions with Niki-kun. In the evening, I would help make supper and do my preparations for the next day. I pretty much just repeated that the whole week, but there were some minor differences.

I thought back to the events that occurred during the week, and…

On the first day.

The morning was the same as the previous day, and I made my preparations for the mud salamander hunt, but the rimel birds were acting weird after getting out of my Dimension Home.

When I tried asking them what the problem was, they replied,

‘It’s not bad enough that we can’t work, but it’s really cold.’

The rimel birds were migratory birds. Around this point in time, they would already have started migrating to a warmer region.

…As such, from this day onwards, I retired the rimel birds from participating in the mud salamander hunt and had them stay in the Dimension Home instead.

Of course, to let them release their stress, I would let them out to fly, but even then, they would only fly for about 30 minutes before going back in.

Fortunately, the Dimension Home had a fixed temperature, so it was easy for them to stay there.

When I get back to Gimuru, I’ll get their opinion and look for a way to protect them from winter.

I also asked if my other bird-type monster, the clever chickens, would want to go out from time to time, but their representative, Kohaku, said I didn’t need to worry about it. …As usual, they had a roundabout way of saying things. I should give them something delicious next time.

Later in the evening, I studied how to make sake (preparation) using kotsubuyarikusa from the mother of the family I was staying with.

while we were making the sake, the mother let off a lot of steam. The cooking duty at the processing plant was apparently done by rotation and it would be her turn two days later. She said a lot of things, such as, ‘It’s so hard to decide what to put on the menu’ ‘the men are always complaining that they’re bored with the food’ ‘I’m doing my best to keep them healthy and strong, but they’re so…’ And so and so forth.

In my past life, I died without getting married, but this time I might marry, so I better take note of her complaints.

Second day.

The morning fishing and the mud salamander hunts continue for three days followed by a rest day.

Today is a rest day, but I ended up waking early, so I went and did some light jogging along the beach.

I used this as an opportunity to let the iron slime and metal slime out too since they had a hard time moving on sand. I let them run at their own pace, and by the time I was done with my run, there were three among them who clearly ran faster than the others.

I used Monster Identify on these three slimes and I found out that they learned a new skill called ‘Running on Bad Roads’. It was only at level one, but since there’s a skill like this, the slimes should be able to train themselves until they’re eventually able to move as they do on normal roads. At least, that’s what I think.

I talked to Niki-kun about it later at noon while we collected trash. During our collection, the village chief gave us a large old net (the seine net used for fishing in the morning fishing) from the shared storage used by the village.

The net is one of the feeds that might allow the slimes to evolve, so I’ll be happy to get as many as I could. I thanked the village chief from the bottom of my heart, but the village chief became troubled by how thankful I was, so he asked me if I was willing to help collect firewood. I happily accepted his offer.