Demon's Virtue
chapter-668

668 Slimes

"Feathers, fur, and excrement..." Eiro summarized, looking at the list of complaints that he had laying on the table in front of him. He had asked for the reports from the monsters that had been put in charge of cleaning in the city, and those were the complaints that showed up the most.

Excrement was an obvious one, of course, but the shedded fur all over the place and the feathers raining down from above from the harpies every once in a while certainly didn't help either. Not to mention, the harpies did have some of the worst habits in regard to relieving themselves.

Eiro found these things nothing but annoying. Very early on in his life had he learned manners in regard to these things, but that was just because he spent basically his whole life alongside people. And he still didn't know to what extent his former life as the Sage affected his behaviour and personality these days.

"There's two ways to go about this..." the Demon said, looking at Gobo, who quickly nodded, "Right, I think I know what you mean. Either, we create a culture in the city in which the monsters are incentivised to clean up after themselves, or better even not make a mess at all, or on the other hand, we gather some monsters with fitting skills and give them the means to clean up after the rest of them."

Eiro smiled, and shook his head, "Close, but no," he pointed out, raising one of his fingers, "One, we make the monsters already living here clean up the city," Eiro said, putting up a second finger, "And two, we look for new monsters to clean up the city instead."

"..." Gobo looked at Eiro with a raised brow, "You want to look for monsters and specifically turn them into cleaners for the city? What species did you even think of?"

"Easy. Slimes," the Demon said bluntly, before a snake curled up in the corner of the room raised its head, "What now?"

Eiro looked at Bavet and smiled, "Well, just think about it. Most slimes are thoughtless beings, just passively living on instinct. You were a special case to begin with. Now, if we can tweak some regular slimes' instincts a little bit, we can turn them into amazing cleaners,” he explained, "Slimes can digest basically every organic matter, and in special cases, even non-organic, but we'll just focus on the former right now. Obviously we'll still have to change the culture of the city to have the monsters make less of a mess, and we'll still have dedicated cleaners amongst the other species, but having slimes to assist them will make the job much, much easier." Bavet slithered onto the table and stared at Eiro, "What you're saying makes sense, but it still gives me the ick..."

Gobo quickly interrupted before Bavet and Eiro could go off on a tangent, "So your plan is to... instead have a bunch of slimes all over the place?"

"Not all over the place," Eiro replied, "So, in a big city like the capital, the streets are kept generally clean for the most part. But then in some alleys that aren't as frequented, there's a lot of trash, because those aren't cleaned. Right now, the cleaners of this city are supposed to take care of every part of it, even those sorts of alleys, so they have a pretty big workload. Instead, we just have the cleaners move all the grime onto dedicated, less-frequented spots where trash would gather anyway, which will basically be the 'slime nests""

"And that way we can very effectively reduce the workload of the cleaners, and keep the city overall a lot nicer," Gobo smiled, taking notes that he could pass onto Boju, who was the one that usually kept all these sorts of documents in order. Eiro continued, "We'll also put slimes into the calanization that we'll build and some around the rooftops near the harpies' nests. That way, the general health of the city will increase by a lot too. And combined with the tools that I'll make for the cleaners, the whole city should be cleaner than the capital's noble district soon."

Bavet scoffed, the white scales on his snake body turning darker and an annoyed red tone. He had the tendency to show his mood in obvious ways like this lately, since his transformations have become much more natural and easier. It doesn't seem like something he can control, and he became annoyed whenever he noticed, so Eiro actually found it quite a cute habit.

"You're expecting me to just ignore that you'll have my kind literally eating shit?" the slimes asked with a frown, something that you didn't see often on snakes, and Eiro shrugged, "They eat anything they come across anyway. The last time I saw slimes in the wild they were eating an already half-rotten corpse from the inside out. Another time I saw slimes feeding on the poisoned viscera of a a tainted pond."

Bavet didn't have a great response, "That's different! But... a good point, anyway... Frankly, most slimes are literally incapable of actual thought. I mean, I wasn't able to think coherently until I was taken in by the monastery... As long as they're treated with respect like all the other monsters, I'll... allow it."

"Of course. We'll put up a law that the slimes can't be harmed, so they'll be under the city's protection. Obviously, if a slime runs rampant and causes trouble, things might be different," Eiro immediately suggested, smiling at Gobo right next to him who already had a wry expression on his face, "Hah... Boju is going to be quite happy about even more paperwork..." the Hobgoblin said sarcastically.

Eiro raised a brow, "Speaking of, why is he taking things so seriously? I know I told him to try and give some order to the city considering his personal skillset, but I didn't mean he had to invent beaurocracy."

Gobo smiled awkwardly, "I told him that too, but he insisted that it was necessary if we wanted to deal with people in the future. That we needed the basic structure to be integrated with them somehow."

The Demon let out a laugh, and got up from his seat, "I guess he thought further ahead than I expected."

"Where are you going?" Gobo asked with a sigh, already knowing the answer, "He's already stressed as is, you know?"

"I'm just trying to visit my little prodigy, what's wrong with that?" Eiro asked, snapping his finger. He created a duplicate in his stead that stayed behind, "That one will continue planning things out with you."

Gobo was a bit taken aback seeing the duplicate, since it was practically impossible to tell the real one and the duplicate apart, "Urgh... I don't think I'll ever get used to this, my Lord..."

The real body quickly walked down the building's hallway and climbed up the stairs, soon reaching the central office of the building. The Demon knocked, and a tired voice replied on the other side, "...come in."

Eiro pushed open the door, and spotted Boju, the young Highland Orc, sitting behind a desk covered in books and stacks of paper, while Boju was seemingly writing down anything he could. Though, Boju had changed a good bit since Eiro last saw him. He was a lot thinner than he used to be, but not in an unhealthy way. Most orcs tended to be naturally large-bodied, but it seemed like his latest evolution changed his stature a good bit. You could still tell he was a juvenile and yet had some growing to do, though.

His complexion had changed since his latest evolution too, the blue color of his skin was sort of fading around his hands, turning practically white at his fingertips, while it seemed to have become deeper especially around his face.

"What is it? I'm busy," Boju groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose without even taking a moment to look up from his work.

"Oh, sorry, I can come back later if that works better," Eiro pointed out, and the sound of Boju's pen scraping over paper suddenly stopped. The highland orc looked up and stared at Eiro standing in the doorway, "M-My Lord, you-"

"What, you didn't hear about me coming here yet?" the Demon asked, as he approached the desk, taking a seat on the chair on the other side. Boju nervously got up, "Pl-Please sit over here, that chair is not-"

"Calm down and take a breather, Boju. Everything's fine," Eiro said with a slightly concerned tone. He waved his hand and flooded the orc with a wave of holy magic specially tuned to help relieve some of his exhaustion. The deep dark blue rings under Boju's eyes seemed to recede a bit as the orc's back straightened, reinvigorated. It seemed like it helped Boju calm down quite a bit as well.

"I hadn't heard of your arrival..." Boju pointed out awkwardly, "I would have come to greet you had I known..."

"Relax, there's no need. You're clearly busy," Eiro shook his head, "What's drawing in your attention like that, though? It doesn't look like it's as simple as the others might think it is."

Boju slowly sat back down on his chair, and pushed over the paper that he had been writing on until now, "I'm... studying. There were a lot of books here, and I've been trying to read as many of them as I can. About things like commerce, history, politics... those kinds of things."

Eiro leaned forward and glanced at all the sheets of paper that were scattered on the desk, as well as the ground around it, and smiled proudly, "You're making an incredible effort here, huh?"

"I... I try to, at least..."

The Demon thought for a moment, and then smirked, "When... do you think the city would be ready to trade with outsiders?"