Home/I Am the Youngest Granddaughter of the Monster Duke Family/ch 2

Chapter 2

So it was true that the World Tree fed on monsters as nutrients. To avoid having more of my strength drained, I began struggling to escape.

[Kyaaaah! Help, slime in trouble!]

As soon as I did, an intense light engulfed me.

⁞

When I opened my eyes, I had... become the fruit of the World Tree.

Before I could even properly grasp the situation, something entered the World Tree's territory.

'Huh? Wh-what? A human?'

One head. Two arms and two legs attached to a torso in the middle.

Putting everything together, it was definitely a human.

Inside the territory, a bloodied human woman, clutching her slightly swollen belly, desperately reached out her hand toward me.

The human woman who picked me—the fruit—moved her lips.

"Please... spare... Ah, sav...e my child..."

Then the human woman opened her mouth.

I thought, no way, no way—but I never expected her to actually swallow me in one bite.

I lost consciousness like that, and when I opened my eyes, I was reborn.

Beautiful! Brave! Very strong!

"...Gooooo!"

That's... not it. As a slime.

I was born again.

---

Squish, squish.

I raised my 'hand' and despaired.

Semi-transparent and squishy, somewhere between liquid and solid.

My familiar body.

So, I'm a slime.

'Again. I'm a slime again.'

With so many different kinds of monsters in this world, of all things, a slime.

'At least I'm not in the forest—that's the only small mercy...'

I lifted my head with a gloomy heart.

I was in a soft, fluffy place, and peeking out slightly, I could tell it was a spacious room.

I didn't know right after being reborn.

But two days later, when my blurry vision fully cleared, I realized that this place was the human world.

'Is it okay for a monster to be in the human world?'

All my forest friends were afraid of humans.

I was too.

That is, until I happened to acquire a book from the human world in the forest.

It took two winters to learn human script, and another five winters to read my first book from cover to cover.

As I encountered human culture, my fear naturally diminished. Rather, I even grew curious.

'But is no one coming?'

My puzzlement was short-lived; I soon fell asleep from the exhaustion of being reborn.

I don't know how many days passed in between, but over three days had gone by since I woke up, and no one had entered this room.

But just as I thought that, the door suddenly burst open.

"Goo!"

Startled, I let out an involuntary cry.

"Oh?"

The human woman approached me.

"You woke up early, didn't you? I heard everyone else slept for a whole month."

"Goo, goo?"

'What is this human woman saying right now?'

While I was confused, the human woman reached out her hand toward me.

As a hand bigger than my body came closer, I instinctively bit down on the human woman's hand.

The human woman, whose hand I had bitten, widened her eyes.

It belatedly occurred to me that I was a slime and had no offensive power, but I didn't give up.

I bit down on the human woman's hand with all my might.

Nom, nom.

'How do you like that, human? The attack of a slime!'

The human woman furrowed her brow as if in pain. Then she broke into a wide smile.

"I see! You're hungry, aren't you!"

That's not it!

---

"Please, have some."

The human woman, Irin, pushed a plate toward me.

Wherever she had brought it from, it was a chunk of meat dripping with blood.

"Goo!"

How am I supposed to eat this!

Seeing a piece of meat at least twice the size of my body, I recoiled in shock, and Irin tilted her head.

"Not this?"

Irin eventually took the plate away.

"Then, shall we take a walk or something?"

Saying that, Irin scooped me up.

Having always had a ground-level view, suddenly being so high up was frightening.

Since I had only seen Irin a few times in this unfamiliar place, I squirmed and burrowed a little deeper into her arms.

We passed through an incredibly long hallway and arrived at an incredibly large rear garden.

It was so vast that, if not for Irin's explanation, I would have mistaken it for a forest.

'There it is!'

Spotting my target, I leaped and rolled as fast as I could.

'This is it! Ahhh!'

As the nectar of the flower entered my mouth, I felt strength surging through my body.

Humans must be really stupid. They don't even know that slimes eat fruit and nectar!

"I guess slimes do eat nectar?"

Irin squatted down beside me.

Busy drinking the nectar, I gave a vague nod and moved on to the next flower.

Irin chattered on about how that couldn't possibly fill me up, then plucked a large flower and held it out to me.

"Goo!"

'Good heavens, just picking flowers like that!'

I was shocked and indignant at her barbaric act, and she tilted her head.

"You don't like picked ones? As expected of someone with Ruseman blood. You prefer things with life still in them, right? I also prefer them alive and kicking. At the very least, freshly dead."

'What... what did I just hear?'

My eyes blinked rapidly at Irin's astonishing words.

But Irin, unaware of my gaze, proceeded to explain in detail the difference in taste between living and freshly dead things.

"You have quite similar tastes to me, Perfect Form."

No, I don't think we're alike at all...

More than that, Irin seemed to have a talent for storytelling.

Just by listening to her, the nectar—to borrow Irin's expression—seemed like vibrant, glossy blood more vivid than roses.

"You're already done? For being the size of a booger, you eat very little."

'Wha-what? A booger?'

I was hurt by Irin's words, but I couldn't argue.

Still, I didn't think I was this small in my previous life, but since I'd only been born recently, I was truly only the size of Irin's palm.

And being pink made me look even weaker and smaller. Or wait—should I be grateful I wasn't yellow?

'I need to look around a bit more.'

First, I needed information about this place I'd been reborn into.

This strange place where people spoke to a slime with honorifics.

"Perfect Form, let's go together."

Contrary to her words, she caught up to me in a single step, and I resented her.

I was crawling along with even more effort, when suddenly my field of view shot up.

Startled, I twisted my body.

Irin, meeting my eyes, smiled brightly.

"This way is faster and better, isn't it?"

"...Goo."

Since she was right, I reluctantly answered.

Irin, whose size was at least twenty times mine, walked a few steps, and we soon entered deep into the garden.

Sunlight poured down through the gaps in the leaves, and it was so bright that I involuntarily squeezed my eyes shut.

"Here we are, the garden."

What I saw as soon as I opened my eyes was a large stone statue.

"Gooooah...!"

"Impressive, right? The one in the center is the former Duke of Ruseman. And the one next to him is the current Duke of Ruseman."

I wondered why the statue shone so brightly, and it wasn't simply made of stone.

'Could it be... diamonds?'

They looked like the diamonds I'd only ever seen in books.

'How much is all that worth? If I could just take one finger—no, one toenail—I could buy nectar for life?!'

My mind was so captivated by the diamonds sparkling with brilliant light that I ended up missing Irin's words.

"...And the former Duke of Ruseman was a Perfect Form. I think he was a dragon or something. I don't remember clearly."

'Wait a moment.'

I noticed a word that had been mentioned repeatedly throughout Irin's speech.

Ruseman.

There was one book among those I'd read that I remembered most vividly.

<Understanding Imperial History in One Volume!>

Despite the title, it was a book twice the size of my body.

It was so thick that I thought they might as well have split it into multiple volumes, but the real problem was the content.

'It was really boring, honestly.'

I hadn't been fluent in human language for long, and since many difficult words appeared, I only read about a hundred pages before tossing it into a corner.

The first part I'd read explained how the empire was founded. And there was a family that was always mentioned alongside the imperial family.

That family was Ruseman.

Since the book focused mainly on the Heorn Empire, it only gave a brief explanation of Ruseman and moved on, but I still remembered it.

In the Ruseman family, occasional 'Chosen Ones' appeared, and they were born with the physical characteristics of monsters. And in an even rarer case, there were 'Perfect Forms.'

Literally, they were born as monsters themselves.

'Am I that Perfect Form?'

...Me?

Me, a slime?

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