Published: August 15, 2025
After finishing the morning routine, I headed straight to work.
I met up with Mr. Eudam in front of the laundry service... but this morning, his eyes looked lifeless.
“Good morning. Did something happen?”
“As usual, or rather precisely because it’s usual... I’m confused that I’m starting to feel no discomfort at all toward the manager’s magic.”
Ah, I see.
Gathering water and floating a boat on it for transportation. Plus, maintaining it for over an hour while cleaning the road and removing snow — for an average mage, both the mana cost and the technical skill must be quite tough.
Seeing me carry it out so casually, he almost just let it slide.
It seems he’s gradually getting used to it too.
Since that’s not a problem, I quickly put the boat away and headed to work.
This morning’s workplace was just a stone’s throw from our shop—in the residential area to the east of town—doing snow removal by hand.
I’d been using Slime Magic since early morning, but with heavy snow falling all over the town, there were plenty of places that needed snow clearing.
“By the way, isn’t it better to just take the boat along if you’re going to clear snow anyway? Why bother putting it away?”
“True, the difference is whether it’s manual labor or magic, but even though it’s a small boat, it’s hard to navigate the narrow streets. And if I tried to cover every corner of the town, my mana just wouldn’t hold up.
Guzzling Mana Recovery Potions isn’t good either. So basically, this snow removal method is limited to early mornings when there are fewer pedestrians, relatively larger streets, and places where manpower is desperately short.
Once it gets brighter, adventurers hired by the Guild, personnel arranged by the local government, and the townspeople themselves start working voluntarily. So there’s no need to overdo it.”
“That makes sense. So you do run out of mana sometimes, huh? I thought since you’re doing this from early morning so effortlessly, maybe the boat was some kind of magic tool or had magic stones hidden inside as a mana source, or some kind of mana supply method.”
“No way, I don’t go to that much trouble.”
“Yeah, I didn’t get that vibe at all... Actually, it would be more understandable if you said you were using some trick or potion...”
Mr. Eudam was conflicted... though I never said there was no trick at all.
By the way, snow removal work is prone to accidents.
Snow sliding off roofs can injure people or trap them under its weight near eaves.
Working at heights risks falling, or getting buried and trapped in piled-up snow.
There are many such accident cases, so caution, preparation, and always working in groups is essential.
While we talked about this, we arrived at the site.
“Shall we start around here?”
“Yeah, got it.”
We began work on a residential street that hadn’t yet been cleared.
First, Mr. Eudam, looking experienced, opened the drainage ditch covers.
I said, “Please take care of it today too,” and used spatial magic to summon filter slimes to seal both ends of the ditch, then poured in “swedge (sewage) slimes” and “sludge (mud) slimes” from water bottles.
These two species evolved from aqua slimes and mud slimes, which feed on toxic mana attributed to sewage and sludge respectively. Like scavenger slimes, they have a foul-smell-emitting skill. Other than that, they’re not very different from their predecessors.
People usually think, “Ice slimes are just aqua slimes frozen by the cold,” and similarly, these two species often get doubted as “just dirty,” wondering if they really evolved — poor slimes.
They’re the result of heavy work cleaning gutters before the cold wave hit, and are useful for gutter cleaning.
Since they feed on sewage and sludge, putting them in the drainage ditches means they’ll eat (clean) by themselves. With proper maintenance, they could help in sewer systems or large-scale sewage treatment. Also—
“Manager? Is something wrong?”