The source of the sharp, sour smell that stung the nose was residue the slimes had failed to digest, which had fermented because of the sugar.
Mona poured in purified water to dilute the sugar, then transferred the reddened slimes back into their glass tubes.
Before long, the slimes began returning to their original blue color.
The sour smell lingering in the air remained, however, so she opened the curtains and windows to ventilate the room.
Slimes lived in shaded places, but it was fine to let them photosynthesize about once a week to speed up the regeneration of their core substance, the “slime core.”
RATTLE.
Perhaps it disliked the sunlight streaming through the window, because the slime by the window quivered inside its glass jar.
“Just bear with it a little longer.”
When she lightly tapped its smooth head with her fingertips, the slime abruptly stopped moving.
Watching it respond to her touch, Mona let out a small laugh.
‘Cute, though.’
She would have liked to tease it a little more, but she would be the one in trouble if anyone caught her acting like this.
Monsters and humans were fundamentally hostile to each other.
And yet a brainless slime listened to a human?
She would be lucky if she was not accused of being a witch and burned at the stake.
‘If I’m really unlucky, I could end up on an experiment table and get taken apart down to the last strand of hair.’
The thought alone made her shudder.
If she were an actual witch, at least she would not feel wronged about being burned at the stake.
She had only developed this peculiar trait as a side effect of experiments she had attempted long ago, but who would believe that?
‘I wouldn’t believe it either.’
Some might call her caution a distrust of humanity.
But unlike monsters, whose nature was the same inside and out, humans could change with circumstances as easily as flipping a hand from palm to back.
That was why Mona had absolutely no intention of revealing this unusual trait to anyone.
‘Besides, honey tastes sweeter when you sneak a lick.’
As long as no one found out, there were advantages to having monsters naturally obey her.
For instance, it gave her more time to indulge in her monster fandom.
After glancing at the time, Mona rolled up her sleeves and took out microscope slides and a dropper.
Mona’s morning task was to collect slime-core samples by eight every morning and bring them to the laboratory.
When Mona brought the dropper close, the slime offered up its slime core like The Giving Tree.
Mona finished in an instant what took the other researchers a good hour or two. Deciding that the slimes had gotten enough photosynthesis for the day, she lowered the curtains.
“Phew.”
Finally, time to recharge.
With a serious expression, Mona carefully checked the condition of every slime in the room and adjusted the concentration of their culture solution.
She put moss, a special treat, into the jars of slimes that looked strangely listless, and replaced the food of slimes that had grown too large with low-calorie mold.
By the time she had carefully created a comfortable environment for the slimes, it was already eight o’clock.
Mona weakly slung the bag sprawled on the floor over her shoulder and headed for the laboratory.
‘……Time to go back to real life.’
Ah, I already want to go home.
***
Only five people, Mona included, had shown up for work at the Monster Studies Department laboratory, which was packed with aging equipment.
There were originally thirteen researchers in the master’s degree program, but fewer than half of them actually wrote proper papers and continued their research.
That was because most of them were the idiot children of wealthy nobles.
It was the maddening result of nobles wanting to put at least an Imperial degree into the hands of useless children with neither magical talent nor martial prowess, and an academy that favored noble offspring who came bearing hefty donations.
The irony was that every patch of grass paid for by those wealthy nobles had been laid only in front of the popular departments.
“Hey, Mona! Get in here, quick.”
As usual, when Mona entered the laboratory with thick horn-rimmed glasses on and her gray hair hanging in a disheveled mess, one of the researchers hurried her along.
“The senior researcher says he needs slime core right now.”
“Okay.”
Mona gave a short reply and walked over. The senior researcher, Jake, practically snatched the slide containing the slime core from her.
“Wow…….”
As he transferred the smooth, completely undamaged slime core with a dropper, Jake let out a brief murmur of admiration.
“Seriously, Mona, your hands are incredible. I can never extract a slime core this cleanly.”
Mona had never once interacted with a monster in front of anyone, so the people in the laboratory simply thought she had exceptionally skilled hands.
“If only you wrote papers that made money, there would be nothing to complain about.”
“…….”
“Monster origins, ecology, habits—you are always doing that rigid academic stuff. Who is going to care about your papers? You need to write something practical, like me. Huh? Something useful.”
“Haha…….”
Listening to her senior’s usual nagging, Mona merely laughed awkwardly.
By “papers that made money,” Jake meant research into making cosmetics or hair-loss treatments using slime byproducts.
‘But if you want to make a hair-loss treatment, shouldn’t you be in the Alchemy Department? Why are you doing that in Monster Studies……?’
Even alchemists said hair was harder to transmute than gold…….
Mona narrowed her eyes as she looked at Jake’s broad forehead, where an M-shaped receding hairline was already beginning to show.
She found it ridiculous, but Mona did not bother saying what she was thinking.
She decided she would rather talk to monsters than debate the proper scope of Monster Studies with money-grubbing Jake.
“Ugh, why do I even bother.”
Jake clicked his tongue at Mona, who only scratched her head with a sheepish grin, then jerked his chin irritably.
“What are you doing? Go write up the research log.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, and manually filter out the fine impurities. We probably need to adjust the solvent ratio too. Last month, the professor told us to test and record even the finely adjusted values, so don’t think about half-assing it.”
“……Yes.”
Saddled with nothing but tedious grunt-work assignments that offered neither satisfaction nor enjoyment, Mona trudged toward a corner of the laboratory in a gloomy mood.
“Phew.”
To think she had to waste her time on experiments like this.
Her chest felt stifled the entire time she filled out the research log.
‘This department was not always this shitty.’
Three years ago, when Mona had chosen the Monster Studies Department, it had been a place devoted to the academic study of monster ecology and characteristics.
But the year before last, Professor Emil was injured and a new professor was appointed. From that point on, Mona’s life in the laboratory started going to shit.
The assignments given by the newly appointed Professor Thomas were less like monster research and more like slapping monsters onto whatever experiments happened to be fashionable at the time.
Naturally, they did not suit her at all.
Her motivation sank lower and lower as she wrote the log, but Mona did her best to reassure herself.
‘Just focus on graduating early.’
But to graduate, she first had to get her first paper approved…….
‘Why is there still no feedback?’
It had been ages since she submitted her first paper, yet even with the end of the semester approaching, there was still no word.
Mona slowly began to grow anxious.
She wanted to ask how things were progressing, but that scumbag professor had not even been showing up at the laboratory lately.
At this rate, is my graduation going to get pushed back?
‘It cannot…….’
Mona anxiously nibbled at her dry lips.
***
“Hey, Mona!”
“Yes?”
“We’re going to the pub for a drink for the first time in a while. Want to come?”
“I have something I need to do at home…….”
When Mona shook her head, her lab mate snorted.
“Knew it. I only asked to be polite.”
Just then, Senior Jake shouted from behind them.
“See? I told you Mona wouldn’t go.”
“Yeah. Maybe she has a pot of honey hidden at home.”
“Seriously, what’s there to see in that dorm room the size of a fingernail that you crawl back there every day? Mona, stop holing up in your room all the time and go to a party once in a while.”
“…….”
“And what is with that look? Dress yourself up a little. Huh?”
Here we go again.
Feeling slightly fed up, Mona fiddled with the frame of her glasses for no reason.
“Your younger sister Olivia is famous as the goddess of high society. Don’t you think the comparison is a little too harsh?”
“Come on, if I dressed up, the comparison would only get worse. Let’s go already, Senior.”
“Bwahaha, is that so?”
Jake and the researcher who acted as his lackey disappeared while laughing mockingly. Mona watched them for a moment, then turned away with a tired expression.
“Ugh.”
She did not even have the energy to waste her emotions on people like that.
After spending the entire day doing nothing but “profitable research” that did not suit her at all, she had no strength left in her body.
‘It’s already nine.’
Only then noticing how hungry she was, Mona bought a cold, hardened baguette sandwich and walked back to the dormitory.
Then she spotted a familiar figure near the dormitory entrance, someone she felt she had seen somewhere before.
“Lady Mona.”
The stern-looking man was Parnell, the butler of the Bellose Family.
The instant she came face-to-face with the butler, Mona’s eyes went cold behind her glasses, and her lips tightened into a hard line.