Evil Dragon Veldora Tempest

It all started that day.

"What? What do you mean, you don't know me?"

"Kwaaa ha ha hah! Your jokes are very amusing. Surely you are not ignorant of the great Storm Dragon, one of the most powerful beings in the entire world. On the other hand, I am currently nothing more than a prisoner. For centuries, I have been sealed away by this 'Unlimited Imprisonment' and am thus unable to escape. In fact, I recall a moment 300 years ago..."

The day when he met that unusual slime… No, it started even before that...

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Porcelain skin. Dainty lips of deep crimson. Black-and-silver hair tied into one tail. Not that tall, really. The petite stature and slender figure lead me to assume that the individual was female. Her eyes were hidden by a mask, but it could not hide their beauty.

A hero.

Her presence was so dazzling that my eyes could not help but follow her. Of course, it goes without saying that he was not charmed by this beauty. We fought one-on-one in fair contest, and he lost. It would be a lie to claim that he was not chagrined by his defeat. But strangely, he bore her no enmity. Was it because the girl was totally unafraid of him and challenged me without any sign of emotion?

If anything, the presence of this hero had provoked within him not hatred but an intense interest in "people," especially humans. How disappointing that she was indifferent to all but turning her blade upon him.

He wished that we could have spoken more. He fought as his spirit willed and lived as my spirit willed. There were some who offered their opinions to him, but he did not offer them my ears in return. He had been invincible and believed that he had the right to do as he pleased.

But then he lost. It was not his first defeat, but he could not recall ever losing as thoroughly as he had in that moment. His arrogance in assuming that he was utterly unstoppable had been shattered and came to a sudden, spectacular end at her hands. He was so impressed.

So he took the 300 years of imprisonment as a time for self-reflection. Within a few more centuries, or perhaps not even that long, he would have been unable to maintain his existence and would then reincarnate. When a dragon perishes, it always returns elsewhere. Had it happened, his identity would be lost, replaced with a different individual's... but he did not mourn this fact. On the contrary, he was looking forward to it. The unchanging boredom was so crushing that he welcomed his coming oblivion.

Such was his state until that clever little slime appeared before him.

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Veldora's accumulated boredom of 300 years made him take an interest in that slime and become friends.

It was not like he wanted to be its friend, but...

The slime looked like it was going to cry if he didn't agree to be friends with it. It was begging and pleading.

Naturally, with his generous and understanding nature, he granted its request. He didn't want it to start crying, of course. What a handful that little slime was.

And so, he gave the slime the name Rimuru, and it became his closest, inseparable friend. This was the meeting of Veldora Tempest and Rimuru Tempest, and the beginning of their journey together.

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Placing his full trust in the slime, Veldora let himself be devoured by it.

Veldora could watch anything Rimuru saw from its stomach. At first, Rimuru spent its time hunting the cave monsters. Although Rimuru was mostly afraid, Veldora wasn't worried. The harmless-looking slime was at least an A-rank by human standards.

And not surprisingly, Rimuru took down a Tempest Serpent. It was worthy of being called the guardian of this cave. The humans would classify it as A-rank, meaning that it was quite strong... and yet, it fell in just one blow.

Rimuru was very mighty indeed, though he knew it not. Still, he was no more than a pitiful worm to Veldora. "Kwaaaaah ha ha hah!"

And while he laughed, Rimuru continued his progress through the cave. Along the way, he preyed upon monsters, stealing their skills. He shut off his Magic Sense to close his eyes as he ate, thanking his lucky stars that he did not have a sense of taste.

Actually, he was not using his Predator skill properly. He didn't need to literally eat the target, just touch and corrode it... but this was no matter to Veldora.

And days passed, and Rimuru finally left the cave and took some goblins under his command.

For Veldora, this too was a surprising turn of events. As the ruler of Jura Forest, he never had experience dealing with monsters so inferior to him—they would just die in his mere presence. And he would never lower himself to their standards. Yet Rimuru chose to do so without hesitation. And unlike Veldora, he was no longer alone because of it.

"Could I have been wrong? I do not regret any of my choices in life, but perhaps I could have chosen a different way for myself," Veldora thought. Such was the sobering effect of Rimuru's actions on him.

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Well, Rimuru had taken on the duty of defending the village, and his first action was to heal the wounded. It seemed he crafted a high-purity healing elixir from the Hipokute herbs that grew in abundance thanks to Veldora's aura. But he had only just reincarnated into this world. How could he possess such acute knowledge already? Then again, he did seem to be conversing with someone else when Veldora first met him. Perhaps it was...

Even with his [Unique skill Investigator], Veldora could not scry into the depths of Rimuru's mind. Perhaps Predator was not the only Unique Skill he possessed. [Predator] was not a skill capable of performing an analysis on the Unlimited Imprisonment that held Veldora captive. He supposed he must assume that Rimuru held some other, more secret ability. But wait...

When they first met, Rimuru had been talking to his own skill then. And... what did he call it again? It certainly wasn't Predator. Rimuru knew what that skill was, at the very least, but Veldora couldn't hear it.

Was Veldora being obstructed from hearing it? That would make sense. It was unheard of for a skill to act independently in order to sabotage another's senses. That Rimuru was a crafty one indeed to fool a dragon! Yes, I see now. He had thought Rimuru was careless, but he was far more cautious than Veldora had ever dreamed. Endlessly fascinating, this Rimuru.

When Veldora tried to sense Rimuru's surface thoughts, it turned out the idea came from things he called "manga" and "novels." He merely combined traps he had seen before, and "**" helped him optimize them. But what was this "--"? It seemed that it sensed Veldora was listening in and prevented him from scrying. Just as he thought, Rimuru possessed some hidden skill he was not familiar with. He found it rather cruel of Rimuru to keep secrets from him, his closest confidant.

But setting that aside—manga and novels? These things were most curious. Veldora also sensed the related terms "movies" and "anime." His curiosity was piqued mightily. This would require some investigation.

To that end, he spared some of his [Investigator] resources that were busy trying to unlock his [Unlimited Imprisonment] and attempted to connect with Rimuru's surface memory. He found some resistance again, but he did his best in the service of his intellectual curiosity. To his delight, he succeeded in unlocking a portion of Rimuru's surface memory. As a side effect, this made it a smoother process for them to share information, which suited Veldora's purposes anyway. 

What Veldora found was a treasure trove of details—a wonderful mountain of information. The story was written in the language of another world, but studying and learning languages was child's play to him. He treated it like solving a puzzle.

"What's this? 'And thus, the boy would become king'?"

Simply fascinating. The protagonist enjoyed the guidance of a tactician so brilliant, it was as if he could read the minds of the enemy forces. This story featured a kind of sorcery, but not the vivid effects of magic spells. Therefore, there was no mass slaughter through magic, and the main form of conflict was tactical battle.

This was the ideal type of knowledge for their current situation. 

Getting his interest up, Veldora immersed himself in reading the secret texts he found in Rimuru's memory. Though there were some restrictions on Rimuru's memories, he was able to access the secret texts.

As he read through them, his boredom flew away. In fact, Veldora was so interested that he even used his skill [Thought Acceleration] to speed up his thoughts as he read through the secret texts.

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He almost forgot to keep watch on Rimuru while outside, as he was too immersed in absorbing the information from the sacred texts of manga and anime. But he was snapped back to his senses when he felt his magicules seeping away a little bit.

"What happened?" he wondered, focusing on Rimuru's senses, and found that he was speaking to the goblins and wolves, one by one.

"What does he think he's...?" Veldora nearly doubted his own eyes, but the unthinkable was coming true. To his utter shock, Rimuru was foolish enough to give each and every individual a name.

The naming of a monster was not at all like that of a human. The act was a kind of contract that bound the two parties closer than even a parent and child. This act was never undertaken without deep trust. Unless the relationship between the two was one of shared power—such as the bond between Rimuru and himself—the danger was too great to risk.

For one thing, the act of giving a name was the bestowing of one's power upon a trusted subordinate. It inevitably lowered one's own strength, so even the ultra-powerful such as Veldora only attempted the act in extremely rare circumstances.

And now this fool Rimuru had come along and decided to use up not just his own magical energy, but Veldora's stockpile as well, merely to give the monsters names. Even the Storm Dragon Veldora's benevolence had its limits.

He hastily attempted to block Rimuru's actions, but the smoothness of their information sharing made that quite difficult.

This continued until Rimuru eventually went into sleep mode.

Seeing that the world had gone dark, Veldora once again scrambled through Rimuru's memories. Over the past few days, with his thousand-times Thought Acceleration, he had managed to absorb almost all of the secret texts stored in Rimuru's mind—years' worth of information compressed into mere moments for him. Now, only a few fragments remained.

This time, Veldora decided to halt his [Unique Skill: Investigator] from working on [Unlimited Imprisonment] and instead focus entirely on searching through Rimuru's memory.

Veldora's [Unique Skill: Investigator] consisted of three sub-skills:

[Analytical Appraisal] – Veldora releases waves that enters the target of analysis, performing a full scan of their composition. The results were then sent back to him, allowing him to discern information such as the target's material composition, the amount of Magicules it possessed, and whether it was under the effects of any Skills or Magic.

[Thought Acceleration] – Allows him to accelerate his thoughts a thousand times over.

[Pursuit of Truth] – allows him access to the records of the world's events.

Though his Analytical Appraisal was powerful, it was mostly inaccessible due to the penalties of Unlimited Imprisonment. The other two were also restricted to some extent, but he could still make use of them.

The skill he used to see through Rimuru's memories was [Pursuit of Truth]—with it, he had access to a visual and auditory record of everything that had ever happened. He could rewind through history like a VCR and view the past of anything he desired.

Through this ability, he was able to witness Rimuru's history, experiencing what Rimuru had seen and felt. While he could access the manga and anime, there was a significant portion of Rimuru's memory that remained blocked—something was actively interfering with Veldora's attempts to access it.

But just as he activated [Pursuit of Truth] this time, the interference on Rimuru's memories was suddenly gone.

Though momentarily surprised, Veldora's excitement quickly overtook his curiosity. 'What was Rimuru so eager to hide?'

He had no idea when the interference would return, so he pushed his Thought Acceleration to full capacity and began playing through every memory of Rimuru at maximum speed.