Well Cleanup

When I accepted the quest, "Urgent. Complete Removal of Well Poison" was added to the "Currently Active Quests" section of the menu. The clear reward was listed as 3 SP.

It was labeled as urgent, but there was no indication of a deadline.

There was a "Start Quest" button, though, so I went ahead and pressed it.

A gate opened up, just like the one from when I cleared Miitei-chan's scenario, and swallowed me whole.

When I came to, I was standing in front of an unfamiliar village.

A sinister purple haze hung in the air. This had to be the village from the quest with the poisoned wells.

… Hm. So this was one of those special quests that warped you to the location when you started it. SP quests really were different from regular ones.

A time limit was displayed on screen. One hour remaining.

"I see, so that's what 'urgent' means."

"Spirit-sama, let's do our best!"

Miitei-chan was raring to go.

Now then, where was the well in question?

I tried talking to a man napping in front of the village gate.

"Uh, excuse me. I'm here from the Adventurers' Guild about a quest."

"W… water…"

Hmm. Did I have to find the well on my own?

"Where's the well? I'm here to clean it."

"… Poison… don't drink…"

"Yeah, that's why I'm here to clean the poison, see?"

"…"

"Hello?"

Was he done talking? Could he at least point me toward the well? With that thought, I headed into the village.

Several soldiers lay scattered on the ground… Wait, they weren't napping. They'd collapsed.

"Spirit-sama, the well's that way! There are more collapsed people over there!"

"Yeah."

The well was in a pretty obvious spot. Made sense; you wouldn't build one somewhere inconvenient. If anything, they'd have built the rest of the village around the well for easy access. Found it in no time.

The well had a roof, a pulley, and a bucket on a rope.

Straight out of some ancient era… Well, wells themselves were relics of the past. You didn't see them in the modern day. Maybe in a history museum, if anywhere.

"Okay okay, let's go ahead and get this cleanup started."

I moved aside the soldiers sprawled nearby and peered into the well.

Yep. Pitch black. Guess I'd just go in.

Wells were the kind of thing you climbed down using the bucket rope, and sometimes people were hiding inside them, right? I'd seen that in games before.

"Come to think of it, I never learned any light magic."

"Make a torch? We've got materials in the inventory, so we can craft one!"

"Yeah, let's do that."

Apparently you could make one from charcoal and wood without even needing a workbench, so I whipped one up in no time.

… I didn't have a fire starter, but somehow the torch was already lit the moment I held it.

I reverted part of myself back to Slime form and stuck the torch on top of my head.

"That's better, but… ugh, there are drowned rats floating in here."

"Meat?"

"Well, might as well eat them. Miitei-chan has Poison Absorption, after all."

"Eating! … Tastes awful!"

Hoping I wouldn't catch some weird disease, I released Miitei-chan's Miniaturization and expanded to fill the inside of the well with a squelch.

… It felt all cool and chilly around my lower belly.

Fortunately, Miitei-chan was transparent, so the torchlight passed right through my body and illuminated the well.

… This water had dead rats in it, sure, but it was also poisoned. Might as well absorb it all. Oh, there were more carcasses at the bottom too. Let me clean those up.

Glug, glug, glug… No matter how much I drank, it wouldn't run out…

… My HP was ticking up thanks to Poison Absorption, though.

"Oh right, the water keeps replenishing because it's a well. Of course… glug glug. Guess I don't need to drink it all dry."

"Digest the rotten meat, and lick the walls clean too! … Blech, bitter!"

I kept at it until the HP recovery stopped.

… All right! Cleanup complete! Time: five minutes. Still had fifty minutes left on the clock.

"And up we go… Back to Mimicry mode."

I slithered out of the well and switched back to human Mimicry mode.

I called out to the soldier I'd moved earlier. Popped off his helmet and patted his cheeks to wake him up. Wait, cat ears? The old dude was a beastkin.

"Hey, I'm done cleaning the well."

"…"

"No response. It's just a corpse."

"W… wa… ter…"

Hm? Watermelon? He wanted watermelon? … No, just water. He wanted water. Right, right.

I filtered the poison out of some water I'd absorbed earlier and squirted it from my fingertip for him to drink.

"…!!"

"Whoa, don't latch on!"

"S-sorry! I'm grateful…!?"

The soldier's eyes went wide when he got a good look at me.

"An… Angel-sama…? Am I… dead…?"

"Huh? I mean, couldn't you just use magic to get water?"

"Ah, yeah… Magic…?"

What, could beastkin not use magic?

… No, that couldn't be right. Gin-chan had picked up magic without any trouble.

"Well then, the well's all cleaned up. Quest complete, so I'll be heading back."

"W-wait. There are four more… besides this one…"

Ugh, four more? As for time… well, I had plenty to spare.

What a pain, but a quest was a quest. Since this was a game, each one only took about five minutes, so it was manageable. In real life, who knows how long well cleaning would actually take.

Still, four wells at five minutes each meant twenty minutes. What a drag… Well cleaning was basically idle content anyway. Should I switch off VR mode and grab some food?

"Should we split up?"

"Oh right, I can just use Fission."

If all it took was munching on some poison, even a mindless decoy Slime could handle that.

With Miitei-chan and me splitting the work, it'd be done in no time.

"Hey, tell me where the other wells are."

"… Over there, two that way… and one over there."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll go clean them up then."

That said, there were soldiers here but no villagers.

No corpses lying around either. Had these soldiers invaded the village and walked right into a poisoned well trap?

A quest was a quest, so I'd clean them regardless. Find a well, split off a Slime, toss it in. On to the next one.