(Rimuru POV)
Apparently, giant ants had lots of edible meat. After a brief use of cleansing magic to rid it of the poison that Risa'd injected into it, we'd set the humans that she'd saved up in one of our tents and fed them the giant ant meat. Apparently, they'd freely told us that they were adventurers who'd been assigned to check out the area near the Sealed Cave, because obviously, you can trust any random group of monsters that you meet in forests.
I already knew from the dwarves that the Forest of Jura was considered neutral territory by every nation, but that was likely because of Veldora, who'd already disappeared.
If these guys were an expeditionary force, sent by some country planning to seize the forest, then we might end up with a problem, but worrying about that wouldn't do any good.
So, as soon as I heard what'd happened, I hopped on Rigurd's shoulders and had him take me to them.
…
"Wh-whoa! I wanted that!"
"Too bad! This particular piece of meat tried to eat me first!"
"Hey, don't you dare try to take this food from me!"
"Munch, munch." Dignified bunch they were not… except for the girl in the mask, who just silently slipped the food into her mouth through the mask somehow, ignoring what seemed to be a rather tense battle for their meal.
"Umm… apparently, the ants made off with most of their luggage, and they hadn't had something to eat for quite some time…" Rigurd explained.
"So, you had a meal brought to them? Good job, Rigurd!" I was glad. Back before his evolution, he'd needed to come to me for every little thing, and now he was making smart decisions by his own merit, becoming more and more of a leader.
"Thank you, Lord Rimuru! I will endeavor to improve my rule with all of my being, so that I am less of a burden upon you!" Still way too formal with me, though.
As soon as I entered the tent, four eyes locked onto me. Huh. I'd seen them before, three of them, at least. They were the adventurers from the cave. The idiots who hadn't sensed Risa and my magical signatures, and a new lady.
"Our guests, allow me to introduce you to our master, Sir Rimuru!" Rigurd introduced me.
"""A slime?!"""
"Munch, munch." All of them, except maybe the masked lady, I wasn't so sure about her, reacted with shock. Well, that made sense. It was incredibly rare to see a talking slime, after all.
"Nice to meet you! I'm Rimuru, a slime. Not a bad slime, slurp!" I decided to start things off with an icebreaker. A joke that I knew they wouldn't get. The only reaction was a spluttering sound from under the mask. With all the food they were chewing, it probably wasn't pretty.
Since they were still eating, I told the goblins to escort them to my tent once they were done. The adventurers asked about Risa, but she was busy doing something-or-other with Kaijin.
…
In my tent, I got the full story. The adventurers were Kabal, Eren, and Gido, a B-ranked party. The masked person was Shizu, who'd apparently latched onto their party for the one mission. For some reason, she gave me the air of a Japanese person.
And these people were definitely idiots. They seemed to have no qualms at all about the fact that they were inside a den of monsters. According to them, they'd been sent by their local guildmaster to investigate anything suspicious about this area, but the mission was proving harder than they'd expected. Apparently, they weren't sure what 'suspicious' meant. So, when they'd run into a big boulder with a suspicious hole in it, they'd drawn their swords and stabbed… the giant ants nest.
From there, they'd spent three days running from the ants before catching Risa's attention. It was a genuine miracle that they were alive at all. Had to hand it to them for surviving something like that.
Naturally, they didn't really know anything else that I hadn't already figured out, more or less. Every country was freaking out about Veldora's disappearance, nobody really knew what was gonna happen with the forest, since most of the surrounding countries didn't wanna touch it with a ten foot pole, due to the monsters, and most importantly, they didn't think anyone, at least from their country, was gonna have any reservations about us building our city here. Even if their host nation did, they'd need to prove their claim to the land first, and nobody wanted to deal with the armies of all the other nations surrounding the forest.
But just as we were finishing our conversation up, Shizu took off without warning, racing out of the tent at an impressive speed.
Shizu almost made it out of the area we'd cleared for the town when she collapsed, emitting mystic force.
"Whoa! That's summon magic!" Elen shouted in shock. We'd all followed Shizu as soon as she'd started running.
"Whaa?! What rank?!" I asked.
"At least B-ranked, maybe higher, based on the size!"
"We gotta stop it!" They were high level adventurers, after all. Only a few words, and they were instantly leaping into action.
But before they could, Shizu stood up. And raised her finger. That was all it took to create an explosion right in front of her. Though I was unaffected by the shockwave, Kabal, who was getting ready to land a Knockdown on Shizu, had taken the brunt of the blast, flying right over my head. Elen and Gido had ducked back just in time, though.
Kabal seemed to be fine, though, if his shouting about hazard pay was anything to go by.
"I knew Shizu was a magic user, but summoning, too?!"
"What's she summoning, anyways?!" I asked Elen.
"I didn't even know you could launch magic without a chant during a summon- Wait… No way! The Conquerer of Flames!?" Gido shouted, his eyes growing wide as he realized who Shizu actually was. This felt really bad.
'Risa! Ranga!' Immediately, I called my two strongest companions to my side, before ordering Rigurd to get everyone evacuated before anyone got hurt. Despite having some reservations, Rigurd immediately sped off to follow my orders, just as three people shadow-traveled to my side: Risa, Raya, and Ranga.
Honestly, though, I could tell that the only ones here who stood a chance of doing anything against this menace were Risa and I. No hobgoblin was gonna stand up to something of this level.
In fact, I didn't even really consider Ranga and Raya fighting companions here. I'd just wanted Ranga here in case the adventurers were using this to somehow pull the wool over our eyes. If they were planning to kill us all anyways, their loose lips suddenly made sense tactically. Honestly, I didn't expect that, but it was best to be careful.
Getting onto Ranga's back, I called out to Gido, asking about the Conquerer of Flame thing. Apparently, she was a hero, active around fifty years or so ago.
'Oh, crap.' I thought to myself, as the mask fell off of Shizu's face, broken.