"Um...! Uh... so... should I call you Lord Adelio...? Or maybe Mr. Adelio...?"
"Just Adelio is fine. I'll speak casually too."
"O-okay!"
As Rimuru fumbled over how to address him, Adelio told her to relax, then turned his gaze to the lively presence of Veldora surging from within her.
'...Looks like he noticed me.'
Even with Rimuru and [Great Sage] controlling the magicules, that presence was still leaking out so strongly. That could only mean Veldora, inside the subspace, was watching Adelio in real time.
As long as [Great Sage], which could manage all of Rimuru's [Skills], did not forcibly block [Predator], even someone inside the subspace could still see the outside world.
'If [Great Sage] allowed it, I could probably see Veldora too through [Odin]... but it's still far too early to meet that guy again.'
The fact that Adelio could meet Veldora inside the subspace also meant he could undo [Unlimited Imprisonment], the prison confining Veldora, through an [Ultimate Skill].
But releasing Veldora at this point carried far too much risk.
Not only was there a chance the laws of the [World] would move in a direction unfavorable to them, there was also the possibility that the flow Adelio knew would veer wildly off course.
In fact, things had already gone off track enough in the East that the [Phantoms] had started rampaging more fiercely than they were supposed to, forcing Adelio and Chronoa to personally move as far as the vicinity of the [Eastern Empire].
'If I carelessly alter the course of a monster with a rank of existence as high as Veldora's, and the [Insect King] or the [King of the Cryptids] in the otherworld starts moving... then we'll be at an overwhelming disadvantage.'
In the East, all that had changed was the release of [Arch Demon]s and [Greater Demon]s, yet even that had created enough of an opening for the [Seven Angels of Origin] to interfere.
So if Veldora, a [True Dragon], were released now, there was no telling whether a calamity on his level—or even worse—might appear.
'When I saved Shizu, the flow didn't twist in any strange direction, so it does seem like the [World] has its own standards for judgment... but releasing Veldora just to test that is far too dangerous.'
To begin with, the difference in rank of existence between one human and one [True Dragon] was simply too vast.
When Adelio saved Shizu, she had still been an ordinary human, so there was a fair chance the [World] had not considered it worth intervening.
After all, not even Adelio, her teacher, had expected that little girl who wasn't even ten yet would one day grow into one of humanity's highest-ranking powerhouses.
'In the end... until Rimuru acquires an [Ultimate Skill] by her own power, there's no choice but to leave things as they are.'
Thinking it best to avoid anything irreversible, he carefully folded the matter of Veldora away into the corner of his mind.
In any case, if it was the slime before him now, she would surely obtain an [Ultimate Skill] even without Adelio's direct help.
......
By the time Adelio looked away from Veldora's presence, Rimuru too seemed to have been thinking something over, and slowly opened her mouth.
"Hey, Adelio. There's something I want to ask you... Do you think monsters can become like [Dwarf]s or [Elf]s?"
Someone else might have thought it was a rather sudden question, but Adelio, who knew what she wished for, asked back to confirm what she meant.
"You mean not in terms of race, but in terms of their relationship with humanity, right?"
"Yeah...! Actually... I'm a [reincarnator]! So I want to find some way for humans and monsters to live in harmony somehow."
Rimuru did not hide the fact that she was a [reincarnator].
She still had not told her companions, the [Goblin]s and the wolf riders, because she did not know how they would react if they learned she had been human in her previous life. But Adelio, a [Hero], was different.
From her point of view, unaware that Adelio was a demon, revealing that she was a [reincarnator] was the best way to persuade him to help her.
"......"
And Adelio, who had been trying to determine whether Rimuru would choose a path of cooperation rather than hostility toward humans like in the novel, was finally able to feel certain.
'...It really was worth waiting three hundred years.'
Helping that slime—helping Rimuru Tempest—would be the best choice he could possibly make.
"Haha... Maybe it's because you're a [reincarnator], but you really think like I do."
"...Huh?"
When Rimuru looked at him with a puzzled expression, Adelio began by saying that he was the same.
In fluent Japanese—the same language he had only ever used with Shizu and his students—he said, "I'm a [reincarnator] just like you. I was originally a human born on Earth."
"W-whaaaat?!"
Hearing her native language for the first time in months, Rimuru let out a shriek of utter disbelief.
When she had first seen him through the orb, she had thought he looked vaguely East Asian, but she had never imagined he was actually a [reincarnator] from the exact same world as her. The reaction was only natural.
"Th-then... are you really Japanese?!"
"Well... half, anyway."
"...H-half...?"
As Rimuru's body went all soft, like she might melt into a puddle, and she asked in a trembling voice, Adelio shrugged.
"I was mixed-race."
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