One morning, Mia, who was checking the floors of Amamiya Tower with Kousuke, suddenly looked as if she had noticed something.
She operated the control panel for a short while, then looked at Kousuke, tilting her head slightly.
“Father, was this floor created with a specific purpose?”
Mia asked this in a subtle way, knowing that Kousuke sometimes fiddled with the floors on a whim without much thought.
Something similar had happened before, and Kousuke himself couldn’t remember, so she had started asking questions like this since then.
Fortunately, this time Kousuke seemed to have something in mind, and after checking the floor Mia indicated, his face lit up with comprehension.
The screen displayed on the control panel showed a floor where over ninety percent was surrounded by sea, with a single island in the center.
Even for Amamiya Tower, which had a hundred floors, there was only one floor with such a distinctive environment.
This floor was created by Kousuke with a certain purpose in mind, taking advantage of his surplus divine power.
A proud Kousuke addressed Mia, who looked puzzled.
“This island is for slimes, by slimes, and for slimes!”
“No, I can see that, but?”
Mia replied so easily to Kousuke’s confident statement.
The only land was an island where the only monsters were slimes.
This could be confirmed immediately, so that wasn’t what Mia wanted to know.
However, for some reason, Kousuke’s expression drooped upon hearing Mia’s reply.
“No, it’s fine. It was a mistake to think you’d understand.”
He muttered something to himself, but Mia didn’t understand the meaning.
Of course, Kousuke had created this island based on a certain game, but it would be unreasonable to expect Mia, who had no information, to understand that.
Mia tilted her head, watching Kousuke’s inexplicable dejection, but soon he perked up and began to explain.
“As you can see, the monsters on this island are all slimes, right?”
“Yes.”
“Monsters are supposed to appear naturally on the floors of the Tower. How do you think only slimes can survive here?”
At Kousuke’s words, Mia’s expression changed to one of realization.
Slimes are arguably the weakest monsters in this world.
While stronger individuals can appear through evolution, it’s not easy to create them.
Not just in Amamiya Tower, but there are also floors in other towers where a large number of slimes are summoned, but there isn’t a single floor where only slimes exist.
The more she thought about it, the more bewildered Mia became, murmuring, “Huh? …How did you create it?”
The slime island was inhabited not only by the types that could be summoned at the very beginning but also by various other types of slimes.
Despite this, as Kousuke said, no other monsters were present at all.
According to the common sense of Tower floors, such a thing was impossible.
Mia pondered this with a troubled expression, but Kousuke made no attempt to offer advice.
He had casually given advice in a similar situation before and had been rebuked by Mia.
Since then, Kousuke had made it a rule not to say anything unless Mia surrendered.
Mia was lost in thought with a troubled expression for a while, when someone approached her with a puzzled look.
“What’s wrong? Mia, did something happen?”
It was Floria, Mia’s mother.
Floria bypassed Mia, who was troubled, and asked Kousuke, who was working at the adjacent control panel.
“Ah, yes. I’m troubled by the slime island you know.”
“…Ah, I see.”
Floria nodded as if understanding Kousuke’s words.
Floria had also asked Kousuke the same thing Mia had before.
In fact, it was more surprising that Mia hadn’t noticed the slime island until now.
If she had noticed, she would undoubtedly have been troubled like this, so Floria felt it was about time.
“You hadn’t noticed until now, had you?”
“Well, Mia probably had many other things that caught her attention.”
“That’s true, but is there any other floor as peculiar as the slime island?”
“Amamiya Tower has a total of one hundred floors. If you looked at each one evenly, it would take time to notice.”
This was proof that Mia was examining each floor in great detail.
At first glance, the slime island appears to be just a floor with a single island, so it’s not impossible that it was overlooked until now.
Floria, with a subtly convinced expression at Kousuke’s explanation, murmured a small, “Is that so?”
Mia, aware that Floria had joined them partway through, ignored it and continued to ponder the slime island.
Based on past experiences, Kousuke’s previous words must hide some sort of hint.
Thinking this, Mia’s gaze, which had been focused on the island in the center of the screen, shifted to the surrounding sea.
“…There are no monsters on the slime island?”
Kousuke and Floria reacted to her muttering, but Mia, who was focused on the screen, didn’t notice.
Mia, thinking she might have a clue, operated the control panel and displayed the detailed contents of this floor.
“I knew it!”
“Did you figure it out?”
As Mia exclaimed, Kousuke smiled broadly.
“Yes. The naturally appearing monsters are probably made to appear in the sea, aren’t they?”
“Yes, that’s correct. In a nutshell, that’s it.”
Satisfied with Mia’s answer, Kousuke nodded deeply.
On the floors of the Tower, it is impossible to stop monsters from appearing naturally.
If that’s the case, this floor was created to investigate whether it’s possible to prevent them from appearing in only a small part of the floor.
Specifically, by making most of the floor into sea, natural monsters were concentrated there, making it difficult for them to appear on the island.
Furthermore, to create the environment of this floor, all land had been erased once.
This is because if even a small amount of land remained, the environment where monsters could naturally appear would persist.
By leaving it for a while with all land erased, and then causing an island to appear, an environment where terrestrial monsters did not naturally appear was successfully created.
It’s a floor that incidentally uses a lot of time, effort, and most importantly, divine power.
By the way, Kousuke has also confirmed whether other familiars, besides slimes, could do the same.
However, he only confirmed that floor and then changed it to a different environment.
The slime island remains purely for Kousuke’s personal preference.
Putting aside the matter of Kousuke’s preferences, Mia let out a deep sigh after hearing how this environment was created.
“To put in so much effort and time. In Little Amamiya, where we only have enough divine power to get by, who knows when we’ll be able to do something like that.”
“Oh! You want to make a slime island too…?”
“No, it’s for a different familiar.”
Kousuke, who was immediately denied, slumped his shoulders in disappointment.
Casually glancing at Kousuke, Floria then spoke to Mia.
“Having only one type of familiar inhabit an area is something only done in the realm of hobbies. Unless you have a great deal of leeway, I don’t think it’s possible.”
“That’s right.”
Amamiya Tower already generates an abundance of divine power.
There’s no issue with Kousuke creating something for his own enjoyment.
It’s completely different from Little Amamiya Tower, which operates on the verge of collapse.
Of course, this is also a difference stemming from the achievements Amamiya Tower has accumulated over time.
However, Amamiya Tower, which can now use abundant divine power, could be considered abnormal even compared to other towers.
Mia resolved to develop Little Amamiya Tower so that it could somehow achieve such a feat.
I started writing this intending it to be a gag chapter, but somewhere along the way, it turned into a serious one.
Since I’ve gone this far, should I introduce a sea familiar sometime?
I haven’t thought about it much yet.
