That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Volume 13

“…I’m sorry, are…? Aren’t we dead?”
That gingerly asked question must have helped the rest
of the group clear their minds of any cobwebs. The light
returned to their eyes as they sensed just how abnormal
this situation was. They had all been murdered by a demon
who called himself Diablo, that much was certain. The
demon had no reason at all to keep them alive, either.
That’s why Caligulio was wondering why he was breathing
right now.





“Oh, you remember now? Can you tell me what your
name is?”

“Y-yes. It’s Caligulio.”
Then a possibility flashed through his mind. Perhaps this
girl might have saved Caligulio and his staff from that life-
or-death situation. But was that even possible? Rescue from
that hellhole was all but inconceivable. That demon was
beyond powerful, ripping Caligulio up like a paper doll
after he acquired that ultimate force—to say nothing of the
Single Digits over there.
Nobody could beat a demon like that… Nobody except
for the Heroes he had heard rumors about.
“Um, did—did you save all of us, perhaps? What—what
happened to that evil demon?”
He finally dared to ask it. Then:
“You’d best watch your tone around Sir Rimuru.”
The booming voice was familiar. It was exactly like the
one that belonged to that bloodcurdling demon. But an
even more pressing issue was how he just mentioned
Rimuru, the name of the demon lord Caligulio had set as
their primary objective.
Now Diablo revealed himself to them all. A paroxysm of
fear made Caligulio tremble, but the girl stopped the
demon.
“Um, I think some of you might have the wrong idea
about everything, so let me explain. Yes, you are all dead.
All the troops you led are dead, too, and I sincerely doubt
there are any survivors. So it’s not like I saved you guys or
whatever. I did bring you back to life, though.”
“Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh… Truly an impressive, unheard-of
spell. I won’t ask you to thank him for it, but you should at
least be awed by Sir Rimuru’s sheer greatness.”
“…Huh?”
Caligulio could do little more than grunt at this
incomprehensible explanation. But nobody was laughing at
him.

“Can you quit with that act, Diablo?”
“My apologies. I simply want to spread the word about
your magnificence to these poor, ignorant masses—”
“Yeah, and I’m telling you I don’t need you to!”
Nobody in the room had the energy to interrupt this little
act. But after a while, the girl smiled at Caligulio.
“Anyway, looks like your memory is fine. Glad that whole
ritual ended up working out.”
“U-um…”
“Okay, let’s start from the top. I’m Rimuru. The demon
lord Rimuru. I’m kind of the king around here. Nice to meet
you!”
Caligulio froze. So did all the other recently resurrected.
As his brain parsed the words, and their meaning slowly
dawned on him, his eyes opened fully, staring straight at
the girl in front of him. This little girl was Rimuru? The
enemy Caligulio and his fellows saw as an obstacle who
must be eliminated? Part of the Octagram? That Rimuru?
And judging by the context, Rimuru appeared to be the one
who brought everyone back to life. This was Rimuru
himself, smiling adorably, looking nothing like the sketches
that were circulating.
But there was one other problem.
“Um, if I could ask you something…?”
“Hmm? What is it?”
Caligulio, despite his trepidation, soldiered on. “So you
brought us all back to life?”
“Yep. That’s right.”
“How…how could you?”
“Well, the procedure’s kinda hard to explain, but like,
your souls are—”
“No, no, I don’t mean that! I mean how could you revive
us when we’re your sworn enemy?”
“Oh, is that what you meant?”
The girl—the demon lord Rimuru—looked a tad relieved.
“It’s simple,” she blurted out. “The war’s still on, but you’ve

all fallen into my hands. You’re my pawns now!”
And that’s why she brought them back to life? Caligulio

stared blankly at her, unable to grasp her meaning. The
demon lord Rimuru revived them? Who? Us?!

Astonishment, confusion, and fear filled his mind. The
same was true for all the others who were recently revived
in the chamber. And it would take quite a while before the
dust settled.

I left the confused Caligulio and his gang in their room, full
of all the real important folks from his army—the supreme
officers who led the imperial invasion. Like I told him, I
brought them back to life so I could use them as pawns—
and yes, it was Raphael that offered up the idea.

………
……
…
Raising the dead…
Ever since Shion’s death, Raphael had been busying
itself analyzing the structure of souls. Now it seemed like it
was well on its way to figuring out almost all the principles.
Whether it belongs to a human being or a monster, all
souls have a set quality and quantity. It is composed of
matter known as data particles, and through managing and
applying certain forces to them, it’s possible to control life
and death to some extent.
The souls of plants and animals house only a very tiny
amount of energy. Human souls, meanwhile, have tons and
tons. We’ve already confirmed that a certain amount is
given to everyone equally, and the ability to fully hardness
that soul energy leads to the manifestation of soul powers—
or what we call special skills. This data, engraved in your
soul since birth, is the source of those powers.

So is the data written directly onto this energy? Not
exactly. First, there’s the ego, a set of amorphous
wavelengths within the soul, and the group of data
particles that surrounds it. This is known as the heart, and
that’s where all the data is stored. The crystallized energy
that covers this heart is what we call the soul.

Our pseudo-souls were developed as a receptacle for the
project of this very heart. Hearts housed within pseudo-
souls like this have no energy of their own, but they do
have egos. Without the power in one’s soul, the owner of
the soul cannot use any skills, but they can take action with
their egos.

So the way I revived Caligulio and his friends was by
using pseudo-souls to substitute for their real ones.
Basically, I took their souls, plucked the “hearts” out of
them, and transplanted them into the pseudo-souls, along
with the bare minimum amount of energy necessary to
keep them going.

………
……
…
There was some concern about the success rate for this
operation, but it looked like everything worked, which I
was glad about. But it wasn’t without its problems.
First off, it weakens you a lot. Which, yeah, of course it
does—I took all their soul energy out. I’ve taken their souls,
and there’s no real reason for me to give them back, and I
don’t see how they have any right to complain about it.
So thanks to that, they’re no longer able to invoke any
skills. Even if skill data was written into their hearts, they
can’t use it at all without enough soul energy. From now
until the natural end of their lives, they’ve got no hope of
learning or using a single skill.
It’ll also affect their magic-casting abilities, but that at

least is something they oughtta be able to improve with
practice. Once they get the hang of it to some extent,
they’ll be able to tap into magic without using any soul
power. Magic is a skill, but it’s also an art, and that means
it’s possible to invoke it with the magicules in the air
instead of those in your body. So arts are still available to
them, as long as they train themselves enough to earn
them. Unless they rely on their skills for everything in their
lives, I think they’ll bounce back just fine.

So yeah, they can get superstrong again if they want to,
but the quality of the energy involved isn’t what it once
was, so they’re gonna hit limits sooner or later. Bear in
mind, I only developed the pseudo-soul as a toy to help us
play around in the labyrinth a little. I don’t want anyone to
start expecting miracles from it.

Still, it worked well enough this time. I didn’t revive
them for their own sakes but rather to prevent any hateful
rumors about us from circulating. Whether you’d call them
rumors is debatable, I suppose, but regardless.

I mean, if they attack us for their own selfish reasons
and die as a result, that’s their fault and nobody else’s. I
don’t have any obligation at all to resurrect them… But
again, I don’t want to give myself a bad rep around the
world. It’ll also save me from being hated by the average
imperial citizen any more than necessary.

Good thing Raphael’s experiment worked, though. And
since they’re all back to life and everything, I’m gonna have
all these fancy higher-ups take responsibility for everything
they did. They’re under Soei’s supervision right now, in
fact. Also, I should note that despite being alive again, it’s
still on a temporary basis at best. I’m willing to grant them
a certain degree of freedom, but if anything comes up, we
can trace ’em—no sweat. They’ll never be able to escape
us.

So enough about them for now. I’m trying to get my work
done as quickly as I can. Caligulio and the others were the

test subjects to see if this procedure worked, and it did.
Now it’s time to scale it up.

Before me lay the corpses of approximately seven
hundred thousand imperial soldiers. We were inside the
labyrinth, in Adalmann’s Floor 70 domain, just in case
something funny happened.

I had collected as many bodies from the battle as I could,
going out on the field and teleporting them all down here.
Gobta, Geld, Gabil, and the assorted floor guardians joined
me in the effort.

The corpses laid out here were all the ones who could
still be revived. The imperial forces who deployed in front
of Dwargon’s East gate were still there; that standoff
remained ongoing. The nine hundred forty thousand who
invaded the Forest of Jura were all killed in battle except
for Misha, Lucius, and Raymond. Of these, over two
hundred forty thousand were sadly unsalvageable. One
reason why resurrection magic is said to be impossible is
because you can’t re-create souls from thin air, but thanks
to Testarossa and the other demons, we had these souls in
safekeeping. As long as we had their bodies handy, we
could resurrect them, but…

…well, not all of them had bodies left. Ultima’s Nuclear
Flame kinda vaporized a lot of them, Testarossa’s Death
Streak scrambled the DNA of a bunch of others, and
Carrera’s Gravity Collapse turned a whole slew of people
into piles of ash.

And even if we had a body, sometimes it still wasn’t
possible. For one, if someone died because of sheer terror,
the ego—the most important part of the body—was trashed
and long gone, so we couldn’t do anything for them. Kanzis,
killed by Kumara, was one example. I guess the fear
literally broke his heart at the edge of death, so there were
no data particles left in his soul. Not even Raphael could

restore those, sadly, so there was nothing I could do for the
guy. But that was fine. I wasn’t planning on reviving the
likes of Kanzis anyway.

So as I said, two hundred forty thousand soldiers of the
Empire were permanently dead… But hey, it was gonna be
all of them originally, so they really oughtta count their
blessings. I felt sorry for those who wouldn’t make it back,
but sometimes that was just the way the cookie crumbled. I
wasn’t an omnipotent god, you know. I couldn’t create
something out nothing.

And…really, I don’t regret a thing about this. I do think
the three demonesses went way too far, for sure, but this is
war. If we let up too much and got burned because of it, it’d
be so incredibly stupid. My people are the only thing that
really matter to me, and if I have to weigh them against
strangers I know nothing about, then I won’t hesitate to
protect my people first. I’m not gonna go around like some
saint, saying we should show compassion to invading
enemies. If I was that much of a namby-pamby dolt, I’d be
in no position to step up when we really did take damage.

That’s why I shouldn’t be concerned about the ones we
can’t bring back to life. We shouldn’t… But still, I’ve got
this indescribable sense of sorrow for them. I guess I’ve
still retained my values from living in a nation as war-free
as Japan all that time. It’s not regret, for sure, and I don’t
think what I did was wrong…but it’s still not something I’m
used to. I just can’t help but think it’d be nicer if we could
all just live happily and peacefully without anyone having to
die.

But still, I’m never going to show mercy to anyone who
invades my domain. In fact, I’ll make it a point to terrorize
them to the hilt. I suppose it’d be hypocritical of me to pray
for those souls… So instead of the dead, let me say a silent
prayer for those we’re able to bring back to life instead.

Sacred Birthday—deploy.
Caligulio and his staff, fresh out of their recuperation
room, looked shocked at the scene before them. At this
rate, I wasn’t sure they were gonna get any sleep. Not my
problem, but…
Anyway, let’s get this over with. All the bodies have
copied pseudo-souls installed in them. This is kind of an
emergency, so I might as well make the most of my copies.
It’s the only quick way to secure enough pseudo-souls for
them all.
Their bodies were now restored and in clean, decent
condition, thanks to Adalmann and his squad of advanced
holy-magic-casters. They worked tirelessly for the sake of
these enemy soldiers, and I was incredibly grateful to them.
Of course, Adalmann doesn’t need to sleep anyway, so I
think he put in the biggest effort of all. Honestly, I think it
tired him out more than fighting in the battle. He really
deserved some credit for that.
So all these clean bodies had pseudo-souls installed in
them. I’m making it sound like a snap, but it goes without
saying that it was only possible thanks to Raphael’s
staggering computational power.
Next, I performed the Secret Art of Implantation, a sort
of cousin to the Secret Art of Revival. I wasn’t regenerating
a soul here, so I didn’t require nearly as much energy—but
identifying every single individual body took a tremendous
amount of computation. Raphael, once again, handled this
—I was doing essentially nothing. Just standing here, really,
meditating and leaving everything to that guy. The way he
checked genetic information on the bodies against our soul
records to instantly identify people was so amazing, I really
should start calling it Professor Raphael. It was just so
bizarrely complex, something I could never possibly
imitate.
But to Caligulio and the others watching from the
sidelines, it must’ve looked like I was doing everything

myself. At some point, they started kowtowing to me—like
they were worshipping me or something. You know that
makes me feel super uncomfortable, right? I wish they’d
stop doing it. You’ve so got the wrong idea about me… But
until this Sacred Birthday was over, I couldn’t stop to
complain.

So over the course of a single day and night, the Secret
Art did its stuff while I awkwardly squirmed under all the
attention. The result was the successful resurrection of
around seven hundred thousand soldiers.

Floor 70 was lined with rows and rows of simple tents full
of food for the revived soldiers. Even the most confused
ones after their resurrections were now calm, and everyone
was quietly concentrating on their meals, as if they were
digesting their very lives.

They were enjoying a stew-like entrée—basically a bunch
of veggies and meat cooked in a large pot—and it was hot
and hearty. As the chaos subsided, and the soldiers came to
accept their new reality, the soup left an impression on
them that was difficult to put into words.

Caligulio was among the defeated soldiers, now feeling
much less tense. He hadn’t even noticed his hunger until
then—but as he basked in the feeling of the moment, he
slowly realized, over and over again, that the demon lord
Rimuru killed him and everybody he knew in the army.

Now, however, they were alive…although Rimuru called
it a temporary life.

“Don’t worry; you’ll all be able to live out a perfectly
average life span. You can fall in love, form a family, have
children; whatever. But just remember: We’ve put some

restrictions on all of you to keep you from doing anything
bad to us! The curse on your souls will ensure that you’re
never able to act against us again. I hope we’re all clear on
that.”

That was part of the speech he gave once everyone
calmed down. But Caligulio was sure that curse wasn’t
necessary at all. Who would ever dare to repeat such
foolish behavior a second time?

The disaster with Veldora several centuries ago left a
deeply instilled sense of fear in all who witnessed it. But
even if the dragon leveled a city and killed everyone in it,
such a disaster could easily be replicated by human hands,
too. Maybe that was why, despite this palpable fear, nobody
thought that it could ever be conquered by some other,
greater fear. Or maybe, if there were more initial survivors,
that fundamental sense of fear could have been spread
more, turning it into more of an inviolable thing… But
that’d be the end of it.

This time, though, there was no mistaking matters.

I was once dead, but now I’ve been brought back to life.

…By the hands of an ungodly demon lord.
Bearing witness to such a ridiculous miracle, not a single
person among them would ever dare to defy him.
We…no, I…was far too foolish.
It was a reminder that we all had gotten too big for our
own good.
Or was that really even a demon lord in the first place?
Caligulio’s doubts went that far. Krishna, meanwhile, was
already worshipping Rimuru like a god only one night post-
revival. Even now, he was watching him go around, eyes
rapt; it was sheer idolatry. Of course, Caligulio was the first
to worship him, so he wasn’t one to talk…

This “temporary life” the demon lord spoke of turned out
not to be a problem, either. Yes, they had lost nearly all
ability to fight, but not enough so to make life too difficult.
They could still defeat monsters, at least up to a certain
level. Maybe their powers were now insignificant to
someone like the demon lord Rimuru, but to Caligulio and
his companions, a few of them still had strength that’d rank
close to an A.

They couldn’t use skills, and magic was proving to be
tricky for them, but they still had their well-honed bodies.
Plus, they’d be allowed to live out their natural life span
until they became old and decrepit. That, Caligulio thought,
was good enough—and that thought was shared by all
seven hundred thousand of his comrades present.

With all the gratitude and awe going around, there was
no way anyone would dare rebel against the demon lord
Rimuru. It was a complete, utter, heartfelt defeat. Everyone
wanted the fighting to just stop already. The Empire’s
invasion was now over, and it ended in a complete failure.

AFTERWORD

Great to see you for the first time in a bit. This is Fuse.
Volume 12 had no afterword to it, so it really has been a

long time, hasn’t it? I’m not active on Twitter or anything,
which makes it feel that way all the more. I do try to keep
my author page on the web novel site syosetu.com updated,
advertising the stuff I’m up to and so on, but I’m not sure
that a lot of people know about that page. If you’re
interested, please check it out—I usually try to post some
new info around the release dates for new volumes!

Now, let me talk about the story for a moment.
As I’m writing this afterword, the synopsis for Volume 13
has already been released and posted around. It says stuff
like “a devastating bloodbath at the hands of Tempest’s
mighty forces,” but what’s up with that? Aren’t these
blurbs meant to, you know, advertise the crisis the
protagonists are facing and stuff? And then the heroes
overcome it, and it’s way cool, et cetera, et cetera. But here
we have a “bloodbath.” There are no stakes, no drama, just
the hero kicking tons of ass…
…Wait a minute. Maybe this is all reverse psychology,
and our heroes are facing serious trouble up ahead! I don’t
think it’ll work out like that, but boy, who knows where the
truth lies, huh? You’ll just have to see for yourself in the
next volume!

Now for an announcement! This was advertised in Volume
12 so you may already be aware of it, but That Time I Got
Reincarnated as a Slime is going to receive a televised
anime adaptation!

Having this thing I wrote as a hobby get turned into

print books, then a manga, and then an anime… As the

original author, I’m simply overwhelmed with emotion. I

only made it this far because of the support everyone’s

given me—it’s thanks to all of you that this work’s able to

exist! If you’ve become a fan and think it’s a fun and

exciting series, I couldn’t be happier.
Thanks for continuing to support Slime!!













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