Lunaria did not sleep well that night.
The road was familiar—too familiar. She had traveled it dozens of times, passed that crossroads more than she could count. Yet her mind kept returning to the same image.
A slime.
Not hostile.
Not feral.
Cooking.
She replayed the scene in fragments: the smell of warm stew, the calm voice, the way the blue body barely rippled as it spoke. No mana pressure. No killing intent. And yet—
Dangerous, but not to you.
The words lingered.
By morning, Lunaria reached the nearest waystation—a modest roadside post where couriers, merchants, and low-ranked adventurers exchanged rest for information. She ordered breakfast but barely touched it.
"You look distracted," said Garin, a spear-user she recognized. "Bad road?"
"…Strange one," Lunaria replied.
That was all it took.
"How strange?"
She hesitated, then spoke carefully. "I met a monster yesterday. A slime."
Several heads turned.
"A talking one?" someone asked.
"Yes."
"That's rare, but not unheard of."
"It cooked," Lunaria added.
Silence.
"…Cooked?" Garin repeated.
"Food. Good food."
That earned laughter—uneasy, uncertain.
"Maybe it absorbed a chef," someone joked.
But Lunaria shook her head. "It didn't feel like a monster pretending to be human. It felt like… someone passing through."
The laughter faded.
A merchant leaned in. "Where?"
She gave a vague answer. Not a lie—just incomplete.
The conversation moved on, but the seed had been planted.
---
Two days later, in a nearby town, an adventurers' guild clerk frowned as she sorted reports.
"Another one?" she muttered.
Low-threat sightings. No attacks. No casualties.
A slime seen near trade routes.
Non-hostile. Communicative.
Unclassified behavior.
She stamped the parchment Monitor and set it aside.
---
Elsewhere, deeper in the forest, a goblin scout froze mid-step.
Ahead, faint traces lingered—clean fire residue, no blood, no waste. Whoever had camped here knew how to leave no mark.
The scout sniffed the air.
"…Food?"
He reported it.
The report reached Rimuru.
Rimuru blinked, reading the description twice.
"A slime… traveling alone?"
Great Sage responded instantly.
> "Analysis: Probability of unrelated slime anomaly — low."
Rimuru leaned back.
"…So you're moving around already, huh."
He smiled faintly, then sighed.
"Of course you are."
---
Tamura was unaware of all of this.
At that moment, he was crossing a shallow stream, enjoying the sensation of cold water diffusing harmlessly through his body. The system chimed again, right on schedule.
> "Daily Sign-In Complete."
> "Reward Acquired: Passive Trait — Social Obfuscation (Minor)."
Tamura paused.
The description was brief.
His presence would be perceived as less noteworthy than it should be. Not invisible. Not forgotten. Simply… deprioritized.
"…That explains a lot," he said.
The trait did not erase curiosity. It delayed it. Pushed it aside until later.
Tamura considered the implications, then accepted it without ceremony.
He continued on.
Behind him, rumors gathered slowly, like clouds that had not yet decided to rain.
People talked.
Observers took notes.
Patterns began to form.
And at the center of it all, a slime moved lightly through the world, unaware—or perhaps uncaring—that his quiet life was already becoming a question no one could quite ignore.