'I never imagined something like this would happen out of the blue.'

The Orc King had abruptly announced an attack. Thanks to that, the slime had to stay in the village, giving Smartass more time to prepare.

'Hmm, allowing for the time it takes to finish the attack... that should give me a good week.'

The Orc King's underlings would take at least three days to arrive. And if the Orc King called it an attack, a large number of orcs would come pouring in. Smartass figured it would therefore take four days to wipe them all out.

Ordinary orcs were D-rank. When he had peeked at the village's quest board through the slime, most of the monster extermination quests had been C-rank or higher. In other words, the adventurers in this village were quite skilled. With the slime joining them, Smartass judged that they could easily withstand an orc attack.

'Then I'll... get back to sorting out the magic I'm going to show Nellin and Fresia!'

Grinning to himself, Smartass spent hours selecting spells to show the companions he had not seen in so long. Like a child excitedly preparing for a talent show, he lost track of time as he focused on choosing the spells he would use that day.

-Heh, heh, hahaha! Excellent! Perfect! This is what I'll go with!

At last, he had chosen all the spells he would show the two of them. All that remained was to send an invitation disguised as a warning from a lich to the Holy City where they were staying.

'Hmm, what should I send? I have come! To rule the world! No, that's too grandiose. I could make an enemy of the entire country, not just the Holy City. Then... let us fight fair and square! No, that doesn't have enough impact.'

Smartass now faced a dilemma that would take longer to resolve than choosing his spells.

+++

Amelia had finished practicing her holy arts and was resting in her room. Her guard, Paulen, had completed his dawn training before she woke up and was in the room with her as usual, keeping watch. Just then, Gracie arrived with the people who had apparently been with the slime before Amelia and Paulen met it.

"Are these Quivery's former owners?"

"Yes, Saintess."

Amelia looked over Godric and his companions: a sturdily built man, a slender man, a man shorter than herself, and the largest man of all, who had an unassuming face. They were a very distinctive group of four.

Speaking for the party, Godric addressed Amelia first.

"Greetings, Saintess Amelia. My name is Godric."

"Heh. I'm Hawein."

"Sgol."

"I-I'm Def!"

"Hello. I'm Amelia. And this is..."

"I am Paladin Paulen, the Saintess's guard."

"A Paladin...!"

At his introduction as a Paladin, Godric and his companions stared at Paulen with wide eyes. What was a Paladin? It was the title given to the strongest of the paladins.

In their minds, the strongest person was none other than Nellin. For a moment, the sort of thought men were so prone to having flashed through their heads: Who would win if Nellin and Paulen fought?

"...? Is something wrong?"

Paulen, the focus of all that attention, could not understand why they were looking at him so intently.

"Ahem, no. It's just our first time seeing a Paladin."

"U-Um, Saintess Amelia. Did Bouncy d-do well at the Great Church?"

Though Godric had been speaking on their behalf, Def could not contain his curiosity and asked Amelia himself. They had already heard from Fresia how the slime had lived at the Great Church. Still, he wanted to hear it for certain from the person who had cared for it herself—that the slime had lived peacefully there.

"Bouncy?"

"Oh, that's what we called the slime, because it was always bouncing around. I hear you called it Quivery here?"

"Bouncy... That suits it very well too."

Thinking of the slime, Amelia smiled softly.

"I-I named it!"

"I see. I named it Quivery because it quivered when I touched it."

"I think Quivery is a cute, lovely name too!"

"You do?"

His sincere agreement with her opinion pleased Amelia. At the same time, she thought Def was far more unassuming than she had expected.

'I think he must have treated Quivery well.'

It was then that Paulen addressed Godric and his companions.

"May I ask you something?"

"What is it?"

"The circumstances of our first meeting with Quivery were quite unusual. I'd like to hear what happened when you parted ways, including how it led to that. Oh, and what life with Quivery was like for you."

Paulen, who considered the slime his muscle-building workout partner, wanted to know about its earlier life as well. There might be something he could incorporate into its exercise routine once they recovered it from the lich.

"We'd be happy to tell you."

Godric and his companions felt they had nothing to do until Nellin and Fresia finished talking, so they were grateful for Paulen's suggestion. For over an hour, Amelia and Paulen talked with them about the slime.

"So that was when Quivery first started glowing!"

"Wait, Bouncy could lift something that heavy?"

"Was Quivery really that good at killing monsters?"

"Bouncy used Detoxification...!?"

The conversation was very helpful to both Amelia and Paulen and Godric's group, since they learned things they had not known about the slime. Godric and his companions heard details Fresia had not been able to tell them, while Amelia and Paulen learned about the slime's earlier exploits.

By the end of the conversation, they had reached the same conclusion: the slime they knew was both incredibly cute and extraordinarily unusual.

As they continued talking about the slime, they felt an invisible bond forming between them. They might look different, but they all cherished the slime just the same! By the time their lively conversation ended, they thought of one another as comrades.

"Let's make sure we get Bouncy back from the lich."

"Yes! Let's do our best together!"

'Sh-Should I have joined in too?'

Gracie, who had been quietly listening by herself, felt a little left out.

+++

A week had passed since Nellin and Godric's group arrived in the Holy City. As companions of the legendary hero Nellin, Godric and the others had been assigned rooms in the Great Church. They decided to stay there and wait for the investigation teams to bring back information about the lich and the slime.

While they waited, Godric and his companions began training under Paulen. Normally, Nellin would have put them through their paces herself, but she passed the task of training Godric's Party to Paulen with the words:

"I'm busy thinking about something right now, so ask him."

Her abrupt announcement surprised them, but since the person she had handed them over to was Paulen, said to be the strongest of the paladins, they had no complaints.

"Hahahaha! A task entrusted to me by Lady Nellin! I shall give it my all! I look forward to working with you, everyone!"

Paulen's training was quite different from Nellin's. Where Nellin focused on sparring...

"Hngh! Hnnnngh! Hngh!"

"Good! You're doing well! Just one more! Let's do one more! You haven't reached your limit yet!"

"Hah! Hngh! Nnngh! I-I think I'm going to puke...!"

"Not yet! Let's run one more lap! You'll need to run ten more laps before you can puke!"

Paulen's training focused on building strength. After assessing their abilities through one-on-one sparring on the first day, he assigned each of them an exercise workload suited to them.

"What you lack right now is strength! Sparring with Lady Nellin seems to have sharpened your eyes, but your bodies aren't strong enough to keep up with them! So I'll build that strength for you!"

Paulen's training left them drenched in sweat, with its smell filling the air. Yet he did not push them so hard that they damaged their bodies. He struck a delicate balance, ending their workouts with nothing more than sore muscles, so their desire to grow stronger helped them endure.

Today, too, Godric and the others turned up at their scheduled workout time to train under Paulen, and the sight moved him.

"Ah! You're all working so hard to keep up! I'm truly touched! Now, today we'll work on the lower body..."

VMMMM!

"Paulen!"

Suddenly, an ominous aura of death began spreading from the sky. As a Saintess, Amelia was the most sensitive to it, and she immediately called for Paulen.

Everyone in the Holy City, not just those in the Great Church, looked up at the sky in alarm. Though it was clear and sunny, the aura emanating from it was sinister and redolent of death—the unmistakable aura of the undead. And then...

["I address the Saintess, the Paladin, and the legendary heroes."]

A voice sounded inside the heads of everyone in the Holy City. Covering their ears did nothing to stop it, as though it were speaking directly to their souls.

["I shall await you at Saint's Hill in three days. I shall show you the essence of my magic!"]

"Wh-What is that voice?"

"Aaaah! Oh God!"

"What? What the hell is this?"

"Could it be the lich!?"

"I've heard the lich's voice! My soul! My soul is being defiled!"

With the aura of death compounded by a voice suddenly ringing inside their heads, the Holy City descended into chaos. Fortunately, both the aura and the voice vanished after that declaration, so the confusion did not escalate into casualties.

Still, the seriousness of the situation remained unchanged. A lich, of all things, had projected its voice throughout the entire Holy City!

The Great Church's high priests gathered in a meeting room along with Fresia, Nellin, Amelia, Paulen, and, as involved parties, Gracie and Godric's companions. The subject of the meeting was how to respond to the lich's declaration.

"How dare the lich act so boldly!"

"We must recall the investigation teams at once! There is no point in continuing their investigations!"

"More importantly, troops! We must muster every soldier in the Holy City to stand against the lich!"

"Summoning us to Saint's Hill! How dare a mere lich attempt to set foot on that sacred ground!"

"What in the world is this grotesque trick of sending its voice directly into our heads?"

Even the high priests, who always displayed both discipline and benevolence within the Great Church, could not keep their composure this time. A lich was an evil undead mage. As if sowing chaos by projecting its voice throughout the Holy City were not enough, it had declared that they should meet at Saint's Hill.

Saint's Hill was a sacred place where the first saint was said to have received a revelation from God. It held even deeper significance because, fifty years earlier, Fresia and the other heroes had gathered there and sworn to slay the black dragon.

"Everyone."

As Fresia spoke, the high priests, who had been voicing one opinion after another, fell silent as one.

"I would like only Nellin, Saintess Amelia, Paladin Paulen, and myself to go to Saint's Hill."