In the end, I tricked him into agreeing to be my friend. The gullible dragon. Honestly, he and I were a match made in heaven, I was made to exploit, he was made to be exploited.
After that, Veldora decided that we needed names. In exchange, I'd think of a family name for all three of us. It'd give the slime beside me and I all the status of a named monster, as well as a sort of divine blessing.
'Umm… How about Tempest?' Yeah, it was kinda on the nose, but it sounded cool to me. Veldora and the slime liked it, apparently, though, so it stayed.
Veldora ended up naming me Rimuru, and the slime beside me became Risa. Not that the name did anything to me, but Risa immediately started jumping around, saying something about how it made her skill slightly evolve.
…
Before I left, I wanted to ask Veldora about this seal that the Hero had put on him. I felt bad leaving him there to die in a hundred or so years.
Apparently, it was called Unlimited Imprisonment. It held the target captive in a nearly infinite number of imaginary spaces for all of time. It didn't allow interference with the real world. In fact, Veldora could barely manage Telepathy. I suppose that was more a testament to Veldora's strength than the weakness of the barrier, though.
I tried to use Predator on the seal, but that naturally failed. I'd expected as much. If Veldora couldn't get rid of it with all of his powers, my Predator wouldn't be nearly enough to do the job.
But Great Sage did come up with an idea.
Apparently, the only chance of escaping the seal was by spirit. Physical escape was impossible. Long story short, if I ate Veldora and then prepared a body for him on the outside once I'd finished analysis on the barrier, the Sage believed that there was a three percent chance of Veldora being able to escape.
After talking it through with Veldora, we agreed to try it. After all, he'd die in less than a hundred years if left alone, the thought of which made Risa cry again. Veldora agreed with the Sage. the only chance of him escaping would be by transmigrating himself into a new body. The thing that made it easier was the fact that Veldora, as a true dragon, didn't particularly need a body. He could survive in consciousness form alone for a short time. Unfortunately, were he to attempt to escape his seal as is, in consciousness form, his essence would scatter to the winds, being reborn somewhere, as something else. It wouldn't matter to him.
So, I slurped Veldora up in my slime stomach along with his seal. I'd analyze it from the outside with Great Sage, while Veldora worked to analyze or destroy it from the inside. His seal took up a whole quarter of my stomach.
…
Unbeknownst to us, the disappearance of Veldora, the Storm Dragon, shook the world that day. Less than one month later, a team of adventurers would be sent to investigate the interference.
…
(Risa POV)
In the end, Mr. Magic Man… Veldora… was taken into Mr. Rimuru's stomach. That made me sad. Without Veldora, there wasn't any point in staying in the depths of the cave. In fact, I had to leave, because I needed to protect Rimuru, at least until Mr. Magic Man was released once more.
It wasn't all bad news, though. Mr. Rimuru was incredibly smart, and talking was fun, even if I didn't always understand what he was talking about. Plus, I'd gotten my name!
With my name, my Unique Skill, Processor, had slightly improved. My stomach had expanded five-fold. Now, it was big enough to hold any of the monsters in this cave. Maybe five or so average-sized humans. The rest of the skill had also evolved slightly. Now, I could sense and manipulate magic better, both inside and outside of my body. It'd even gained another ability called Combine, which allowed me to combine magicules with materials inside of my stomach, upgrading and mutating them in a sealed space. Then, I'd be able to use my Breakdown to fix it once more, if I felt like doing so. It took a fair bit of magicules, but I could use my skill to process grass into something that Rimuru called hipokute herbs, or rocks into something that Rimuru called magisteel. I could also use Breakdown to turn hipokute herbs into a healing potion, or magisteel into magic powder. Naturally, I didn't actually bother to do so, but Rimuru, hearing about it, made sure to stock up on lots of grass in his stomach.
After a while of gathering rocks, Mr. Rimuru decided to go down to the lake. He wanted to learn how to defend himself, so he soaked up a bunch of water into his stomach and began shooting it out experimentally.
'You're… wetting stone?' I asked.
'Nah, I'm trying to figure out how to increase the pressure, but it's not going well…' Rimuru responded.
'I wanna play, too!' I decided to pick up a long tendril of water and slap it against the rock as hard as I could. The loud smack echoed throughout the caves, giving Rimuru an idea.
On his next try, he ejected a thin blade of water that sliced straight through the boulder that he was aiming at.
Eventually, he learned the same Control Water skill that I did. I, on the other hand, filled one-fifth of my stomach with magic-saturated water, just in case.