Published: August 15, 2025
As planned around noon, a meeting was held in the commercial guild’s conference room with three guild masters, Mr. Dammeyer—the city’s security captain—Mr. Arnold, the head of the town hall, and Mr. Rible, the community leader of the slum district. Including myself, there were seven representatives from relevant parties present.
About two hours later… since the meeting ended about 30 minutes early, we held a simple tea gathering.
Taking the opportunity, I asked Branch Chief Taylor about the recent “shared sensory experience with the slime.”
“Hmm, that’s probably the ‘magical beast’s sight.’ In your case, you said it was the slime’s vision, or more precisely, mana sensing, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to it as ‘sight’—meaning what the magical beast sees.”
I nodded, and the branch chief continued.
“First, the magical beast’s sight that the practitioner sees through beast taming magic’s sensory sharing isn’t exactly the magical beast’s original vision. You might think this is obvious when put into words, but humans and magical beasts have different body structures (………), you know.”
Come to think of it, that’s true. I hadn’t paid much attention before, but humans and magical beasts have different sensory organs like eyes and ears. It’s hard to imagine that a bird-type limule bird and a human like me share the same vision.
“You’ve probably realized it already, but even when humans and magical beasts look at the same thing or scene, what they actually see differs. Under normal circumstances, that is.”
“So, under normal circumstances, the visions differ, but beast taming magic adjusts the vision to suit the human so they can comprehend it?”
“Exactly. The effect of the contract enables communication with the magical beast. It not only conveys the beast tamer’s orders to the magical beast but also communicates the beast’s feelings to the tamer. Similarly, visual information is converted from the beast’s form into a shape the tamer can understand. That’s the ‘sensory sharing’ of beast taming magic.
But in your case, Ryoma-kun, your hypothesis and experiments apparently allowed you to ‘intentionally’ see the slime’s original vision—the world perceived solely through mana sensing.”
In other words, my hypothesis that “slimes perceive their surroundings through mana” seems correct!
“I hate to spoil the fun, but if you plan to continue that research, be very careful. I’ve never heard of anyone else doing that, so I don’t know the details. But consider that humans normally perceive the world through multiple organs, while you’re trying to perceive it all with a single ability—mana sensing—there’s a strong possibility the burden will concentrate on that one point. In fact, the amount of information you sensed from the slime’s vision was enormous, and you got sick just from looking briefly, right?”
That’s definitely true. I appreciate the concern, and I will be careful when conducting further experiments.
I decided that and told the branch chief I would be cautious. Then he said,
“Good. By the way, changing the topic, I heard you started keeping goblins? According to registration, you have eight, right?”
“Yes. I captured some goblins that were damaging the fields and made contracts with them to assist me and the slimes with work.”
“How is it going? Are you managing well?”
“Well… not quite as well as with the slimes, but I can communicate with them, and since a hierarchy was established at the time of capture, they don’t rebel, so I’d say it’s going well.”
However, there are some concerns.
“Such as?”
“They feel different from the goblins I’ve seen before. More gentle, with less tension. It’s better that they’re calm, so I’m leaving them be.”
“Hmm… How exactly do you mean ‘less tension’? And how do you usually interact with them?”
“What I expect from them is labor. But I don’t intend to push them too hard, so they engage moderately in various tasks. Apart from work hours, I forbid them from leaving the abandoned mine and from attacking people, but I mostly leave them free.