Chapter 17: Disposable minions

"Hey, Ara! Take a look at this!"

"Take a look at what?"

"I've been practicing my smile these past few days, look, is it better now?"

It seems like people tend to think that my smile is a little creepy, so now that I have free time while traveling I've been doing my best to make it seem a bit more natural.

"Mmmm I'd say that it was a big success"

"Really!? Are you telling the truth?"

"Yeah! Your practice to make your smile even more terrifying seems to be working quite well!"

"..."

This is bad... smiling once in a while is necessary to maintain a healthy mindset, if I have to keep forcing myself to never smile I'll end up getting depressed...

"Come on! Cheer up! Since we've finally crossed the border, how about we set up camp and take a break for today?"

A couple of days ago we left the kingdom where I've been living until now... I think Arana told me what the kingdom was called just the other day but I don't remember... anyway, now we're in... the kingdom next to the one we were in before.

"Alright, there's actually something that I wanted to try, so it would be convenient to take a break from traveling"

I've heard that there are people who enjoy camping in the forest, and this seems like a good place with the nearby river and only having weak monsters around, I, however, don't like to be surrounded by trees, and the smell of nature is rather unpleasant, I wonder when I'll be able to live in a big city again...

Arana took out that war scythe she bought before and is fighting a bunch of blue slimes, well, fighting is not exactly the most accurate word to describe this, blue slimes are notoriously weak monsters so she doesn't really need to put any effort into it, even children could beat them with their bare hands.

That said, the way she uses her weapon is a bit strange, she's spinning several times before every swing, is she trying to make it look cool to make me want to use it as well? If so, it's not working.

"Ara, I don't know much about fighting with weapons, but I don't think that's how you're supposed to do it"

"Well, it seems to be working, no?"

"Those are slimes... you could kill them by stepping on them"

I'll just let her do whatever she wants, I have a spell that I've been wanting to try for some time now, the 'spawn minion' spell, the idea of having monsters fight for me seems a lot cooler than any weapon Arana could try to force on me.

Creating a monster artificially is very easy, you just have to gather a lot of mana in one place without giving it a purpose and the phenomenon will happen on its own, but those monsters will just do whatever they want, and if they are the aggressive type, you will be the first one they go after.

What is more useful yet more difficult is creating monsters that can be controlled, that requires the use of a specific spell to make the monster be made exclusively from the caster's mana while keeping that mana linked to them, which causes the monster to essentially become an extension of the caster's body, allowing complete control over it.

However, even if I learned the spell a long time ago, using it requires a skill or title related to controlling monsters, and I didn't have one until now, it seems like something good ended up coming from me getting the 'demon lord' title after all, since demons are still a type of monster, it will allow me to use this spell.

'Spawn minion'

A small blob of dark mana emerges from my body and starts taking shape in front of me, I read that this spell is supposed to use a large quantity of mana, but I feel like only an insignificant amount came out, maybe it just feels that way because I have more mana than most people?

The monster that materializes is of a dark shade of purple and has a very small body compared to the size of its head, said head is a sphere of about 20cm in diameter, its mouth seems to be about half of its face, there are two round white eyes above it and two small horns on top, the body is only about 10cm and the hands and feet seem disproportionally large, how can this thing even stand without falling over?

I think this is some type of imp, with the pattern until now, I was expecting something scary to appear, but this thing is small and actually rather cute, I wonder how strong it is.

"Alright, try attacking one of those slimes over there"

Blue slimes are too weak to serve as a proper test, but there's nothing else to fight around here, at least I want to see what my creation can do.

The imp approaches the slime and tries to bite it with its huge mouth, but before it can, the slime launches itself against it with a light tap causing the imp to fall over before the mana that formed its body dissipates.

...

"Uh, what? It lost?"

Knowing that the imp was a part of me, I feel a bit bothered by the fact that it got killed so easily... let's try this again.

This time I make two imps, they're so easy to create that I can do both at the same time, now that there's two of them one manages to take a bite off the slime while it was busy tackling the other, however that's not enough to kill it and it quickly retaliates, killing the second imp in one hit just like the others.

I'm just left watching the slime go back to wandering around with my mouth open.

"What's going on!? How are they so weak!?"

After experimenting a bit more, I found out that it takes six imps ganging up on a single slime for them to be able to win, and even then, two or three of them will get killed in the process.

I also checked the levels of the slimes just in case and found out that they're all level 2 or 3, so there's no mistaking it, the imps are the ones who are absurdly weak.

"I don't understand Ara, since I'm strong, shouldn't the monsters made from my mana be strong as well?"

"'Spawn minions' creates a different monster for each caster, but since the weaker ones require less mana it balances out and the spell is equally useful for everybody, at least I've never heard of anyone having a problem because their monsters were too weak"

It's true that with the insignificant amount of mana it takes, I could probably make a million of them and still have mana to spare, but what's the point when any enemy would be able to kill them faster than I can make them?

"But don't you have any idea of why mine are so weak?"

"If I have to take a guess... I'd say that the monster that appears probably depends on the caster's personality"

"What do you mean by that? Is there something wrong with my personality?"

"Well, yeah, you do have a very weak personality, no?"

"No I don't! It has to be something else"

Arana can be very rude sometimes.

"Whatever you say... by the way, could you go gather some wood for the fire?"

"Eh? Didn't we agree that today it would be your turn to gather firewood?"

"Well yeah, but I'm too tired right now"

Oh, I guess all the jumping and spinning that she was doing while fighting the slimes must have made her exhausted, I suppose I can do her a favor just this once.

"Fine then, I'll go"

"See what I meant?"

...

"That's not being weak! That's called being nice!"

"Isn't that just a different way to say the same thing?"

Damnit, why does she have to be this way?

"If that's what you think, then go look for the firewood yourse... on second thought, how about we make the imps do it?"

If they can't fight, I can just give them a different job, I'll just have to make them useful somehow.

"Huh... no that's not it"

Half of the imps are bringing back grass instead of wood, others are carrying flowers and mushrooms and one of them has a rock...

"How come not a single one of them is actually carrying wood? I made 40 of them so you'd think at least one would have gotten it right, even if it was just coincidence"

"Well, it's not all useless, I think we can eat some of these mushrooms"

Useless... the imps are supposed to be an extension of myself, so if they are useless, what would that say about me?

No! There has to be something they are good for, I just need to keep trying.

They were able to find some edible mushrooms, how about I send them to gather some more?

...

They all got lost in the forest... and apparently, they disappear if they go too far away from me.

What if I give them some buckets and tell them to bring water from the river? That should be easy enough.

...

It seems like they cannot walk the 30 meters of distance on the way back without spilling all the water they're carrying.

How about starting a fire? Maybe they can do that?

...

As expected, they just set themselves on fire.

"Just give it up already, it's time to go to sleep"

I cannot give up so easily, this is my pride on the line.

Maybe I could make them keep watch during the night? No, there's no way I could trust them with that, and we already have Longleg anyway.

I can't find any use for the minions created by my mana, but that doesn't mean that I'm useless myself... right?

forli

I also just discovered that I can add horizontal lines, maybe I should replace all the '-------' from the previous chapters.