Side Chapter: Sunlight.

(Poor Lina always gets forgotten. So a full side chap for her.

… When I was coming up with names for the kids even I forgot about her…D:

After this chap, she is finally a proper character. lol)

Also, a bit of a recap since we are about to finish. I went back to the earlier chaps and boy were they rushed. A true speedrun of volume 1 to 4)

As Theo, Lina's father, opened his eyes he was met with someone he thought he would never see again.

"L-Lina? Is that you?" He asked as the memories of the sudden invitation began to flood back into his head.

"Yes… Are you ok? You suddenly passed out when you got here." She asked with concern.

Clarie, Lina's mother, was sitting next to her. She was holding Lina's hand tightly and had slightly puffy eyes.

"I, Lina…. I am so sorry…" Theo said before suddenly sitting up and bringing Lina into a hug. Squeezing as thigh as he could.

"No… I should have reached out to both of you before… Mom explained to me what happened. I thought both of you would hate me after I left. But I was wrong. I am sorry." Lina said as she returned the hug.

Not really knowing how to get rid of the awkward atmosphere Lina spoke.

"I am sure we both have missed out on a lot of important things… should we catch up? I can guide you both around Tempest."

Hearing the words Tempest, Lina's father's eyes opened wide as he exclaimed.

"Wait! You aren't being taken advantage of, are you? Are you sure that this is the real Rimuru and not some scammer? How long have you known him?" Theo began to shout out one question after the other earning some angry looks from the guards nearby.

Lina began to laugh out loud as she patted her father's back.

"Yes, yes. He is the real Rimuru. I have known him ever since Tempest was just a little village of Goblins. Well, hobgoblins. Do you really think I am that easy to trick?" Lina asked with a soft smile that quickly disappeared as she noticed her parents' silence.

"You can't really think that I am that gullible are you?" Lina asked as she narrowed her eyes.

"... Well… you never know…" Theo answered ignoring his wife's hand signals telling him to change the topic.

Before Lina could get annoyed with her father whom she hadn't seen in years Clarie came to the rescue.

"Sweetie, I like your suggestion. How about we leave now so you can show us around? I want to know everything that has happened since you left. I am sure your father is dying to know too. Aren't you honey?"

"Uhm- Yes. Lina, you have no clue how worried we were." Theo said as he took the help his wife gave him.

"Alright! Let's go!" Lina said as her smile returned.

— — —

As they began to walk all around Tempest she started to tell an abridged version of her story.

"I left home with Arryn to Dwargon and found a home in a small elf bar. And during one particular day, a little slime walked in along with some dwarves. And during his visit, he changed into a cute little elf!" Lina said with a nostalgic expression.

"But then Vester walked in and made a mess. Which ended in Rimuru being exiled from dwargon. And since, I…." Lina said before freezing for a moment and thinking.

"Since I… believed in his ideas for building a better country in which people and monsters could live in harmony I decided to join him." She said shamelessly lying with a smile on her face.

Her parents, however, had a concerned smile on their faces.

"You said that back then it was only a hobgoblin village. Don't you know how reckless that is? What if the goblins had-" Theo had begun to speak before he got smacked in the back of the head and got thrown forward until he hit the ground.

"Don't talk bad about- Ah! Sorry, I forgot!."Lina was about to reprimand her father before rushing to him and pulling a small vial with a healing potion before dumping it on him.

Due to her "Sparring" sessions with Rimuru. She had been getting unreasonably strong. Something about it being a side effect of one of his skills. She had done a great job so far of controlling her newfound strength. But even then she had been spending most of her time with named monsters. So her "Weak" smack had been stronger than she had expected it to be.[1]

"How- What did you do to get so strong?" Her father asked in confusion as he stood up from the ground and rubbed the back of his head. Even though there was no longer any pain.

"I… uh… Exercised… and ate properly…" Lina said with a bit of an awkward tone, trying to push down her embarrassment.

"Exercised and ate properly?" Clarie asked in disbelief. "Just what are they feeding you?"

"...Milk. Dragon Milk! Yep, dragon milk. We have a small farm in the labyrinth. Full of magicules, and quite healthy for a balanced diet." Lina said with a bit of a nervous tone.

"Erm… anyways. Where was I? Ah, that's right. I left Dwargon." Lina said as she tried to change the topic.

Both parents looked at each other with a slightly confused look but decided to just ignore it for now.

"After coming to the hobgoblin village a lot of things happened. With the dwarves that came along from Dwargon, we began to build better infrastructure. And before you knew it the Ogres joined us. And, well, that's also when you can say I started dating Rimuru." Lina told them as her smile appeared once again.

She had been here since the very beginning. So she took pride in what Tempest had become.

"I remember when we dismantled the small goblin village and began to rebuild it. It was while helping out where I could that I began to learn to use magic…" Lina said remembering all the struggle she went through to cast her first spell.

"You can use magic!" Her parents both exclaimed with surprise.

To use magic one needed to both have a good pool of magicules and a good amount of mental power and mental stamina. While with proper resources you would be able to train enough to cast some spells without meeting these requirements, you would never be able to advance much.

Whether one would be able to properly use magic or not depended largely on if they were born capable. And they knew that their child was not one of the lucky ones.

"I am actually quite good at magic now!" Lina said with pride before remembering how she got enough magicules to do so.

"How?"

"State secret." Lina said with a complete poker face. She didn't want to overuse the dragon milk excuse and have them catch on.

"Oh… ok." They answered not wanting to get her in trouble.

"Where was I? Ah right. So after the ogres came here, it wasn't long until the orcs and lizardmen joined our little village. It all started moving extremely quickly afterward. I mean, Tempest suddenly grew by over 200,000 monsters. Including dryads!

Everything was progressing so fast that it was almost as if every time you blinked you had suddenly skipped an hour into the future. You went to sleep and by the time morning came entire fields were cleared out and buildings were being made." Lina said remembering the rush and exhaustion from every day of work.

"I can tell you that I admire the orcs. They had it extremely rough and didn't even have food to feed each other. Most, if not all, were starving. But they always did the best they could. And once Rimuru rescued them and promised that they would always have enough food they began to work like crazy.

They never complained, they never even looked annoyed at the work. They did it all with a smile. And when the work was finished, they would rest and then look for more work to do. All of us may have put a lot of work into building Tempest. But the orcs were the ones who did the most. So make sure to give them as much respect as they deserve. Ok?

Actually, respect everyone in Tempest. Especially the monsters. They are all part of my family now, and they are all doing their best." Lina told them with a serious expression.

Her parents could only nod in surprise at their daughter's determination. They had never seen her acting so maturely. And taking a look around they saw everyone interacting with a smile and working hard to prepare for the wedding.

"We will treat them as if they were family." Clarie said while nodding her head repeatedly.

"We will" Theo agreed before asking. "About the rumors of the orc lord… were they true?"

"Oh, those? Yeah. They were true. But they were being taken advantage of by someone else. So please don't think anything bad of them."

Her father nodded in understanding before asking her to continue.

"Honestly, so much happened afterward. Did you hear about Charybdis? That was scary. I thought we were going to have to leave what we had built. But the problem was solved before we even knew it. And then we had enough Megalodon meat to feed an entire kingdom, which we kind of did.

You both should give it a try! It tastes a bit weird at first but then it is surprisingly good once you get used to the texture. I can ask Rimuru if he can summon one later. Oh, and if Shuna cooks it is going to be delicious!"

Noticing her parents' concerned looks she decided to continue.

"Sorry, I got off track.

Let me skip through some of it really fast.

Tempest made an alliance with Dwargon. Falmuth… decides to join Tempest because… we were nice…." She said as she remembered that the attack had been kept hidden, and ignoring her parents questioning looks she continued.

"Veldora joins Tempest, Rimuru becomes a demon lord and joins/renames Octagram. Then we went to Jistav and took over. I was actually sort of the boss over at Jistav for a while. I had to take a lot of classes with Rigurd to learn about managing but I was able to do pretty well.

Actually, I owe most of what I know to Adalman helping me by introducing most of my teachers to me. You'll meet him soon, he's lovely… He does look like a skeleton so don't be too surprised." Lina told them as she recalled the helpful skeleton who seemed a bit too obsessed with Rimuru.

"Wait, you were the leader of Jistav?" Claire asked as she remembered the depressing past of the previous nation of the elves. But she also remembered the news of how Jistav had returned to its former glory.

"Sort of. I eventually passed on the work to people who were more capable than me until Kagali came along. I was able to learn a lot during my time there, but leading really isn't for me. I prefer the work that I do here now."

"What… Do you do?" Theo asked not knowing what to expect anymore.

"Well, I couldn't just let all the training and knowledge I gained go to waste could I? It would be not only disrespectful to myself but to my teachers. So I began to look at what was missing or not quite fully developed. And so I approached Rimuru and asked him if I could form a department fully dedicated to educating.

The school already existed, but there was so much room for improvement. Like how people would have to travel all the way to Tempest city to attend it. We could begin to create new schools all over the Tempest Empire. Among many other things." Lina said as she took out a small notepad she always carried in her bag and showed them some of her ideas that had been implemented and some that had been scrapped. Even showing some of the ideas her friends/coworkers had given that they had implemented

She also began to talk about some of the people who worked with her as she praised their knowledge in terms of education.

"Marie is such a great teacher that she even has the skill [Chiron]. If it wasn't for her we would be 10 steps behind where we are now. And Haruki is so great at dealing with children that he awakened [Anumati]. They are so good at their job that if their bodies could handle it I am sure they would have awakened an ultimate in their respective jobs."

"An ultimate?" they asked.

"Ah, that's right, I forget that everything here in Tempest is extremely out of the norm. Ultimate skills are, well, the ultimate form of a skill. So they are the evolution of unique skills. They are supposed to be extremely rare, but well… Not THAT rare here in Tempest.

I mean, if they are pretty strong and pretty high up in the ladder there is a good chance they will have either a skill or an ultimate gift. Which is sort of like a downgrade of an ultimate skill." Lina said as if it was nothing, leaving her parents speechless.

"So… what skills do you have?" They asked at which Lina grimaced slightly.

"That… well… I have some… but it doesn't really feel like I earned them. I mean I did have to do some work so that I would be compatible with them. But they were just sort of given to me. And well… I feel like I don't deserve them. Also, I don't have an ultimate." Lina said while looking down in frustration before sighing.

"But well, they are in case of emergencies. So it is better to be safe than sorry. They are mainly healing and protection skills."

This all felt like a dream to Theo and Clarie. Talking of skills as if it were something that could just be given like candy. But in the end, they just nodded along to show they were listening to her.

"But I have made myself a goal. That I will awaken my own skill and turn it into an ultimate with my own efforts. I know I am not as good as so many of the people around me at what I do. But I am willing to put in the effort to make up for the lack of talent. If I can't do this little with all that I was given I would truly be a failure." Lina said as determination burned in her eyes.

Their parents could only look at her with pride seeing how much she had grown since she had run away. She had gone from someone who couldn't really take care of herself into the one leading in the current revolution in education.

"Where was I in my story? Ah right! Do you remember the hero Granbell? Yeah, turns out he sucks. So he tried to kill everyone in Tempest." Lina continued with her story making her parents feel another surge of worry.

— — —

Somehow Lina had managed to close the gap between her and her parents in the span of a few hours. She had talked to them as if there had never been a divide between them. And by the end of the day it felt as if there never had been.

Lina told them about her life the same way she told them about her day back when she was just a kid. To her, ridiculous things such as meeting a true dragon were just a regular tuesday. Kingdom destroying enemy attacks were just a regular September. And people with enough strength to level a city were just friends and coworkers.

Her life felt so fantastical that her parents couldn't help but feel as if Lina had been blessed by the goddess Luminous. Not realizing that Lina knew Luminous herself.

Hours passed without them realizing it. And when the outside had turned dark they entered a room inside the capitol that had a huge house inside of it.

"Space magic." Lina said as she led them inside until she spotted a blue-haired man in the distance.

"Honey!" She yelled with excitement before doing a running start and jumping for a hug. Only to be caught and spun around for a few seconds before they stopped.

"You have to meet my parents! It all went so much better than I expected!" She said as they finally realized who the one in front of them was.

The emperor of Tempest. Or well, the emperor of practically the entire world. Rimuru Tempest.

However, their image of an intimidating leader was broken as he turned to look at them and said with a smile and a friendly tone.

"Hey there, it's good to meet you. My name is Rimuru Tempest."

Looking at their daughter smiling brightly at them, it felt as if she had a shining aura around her that brought them comfort. And it reminded them why they had given her the name Lina. A name that meant sunlight. Because after all, what was she if not their little ray of sunlight.

"What do you all feel like eating? We can make pretty much anything." He asked them before Lina jumped up and said with excitement.

"Megalodon!"

"Doesn't that taste a bit too-" Rimuru was about to ask before Lina said once again with excitement.

"Megalodon!"

~A/N~

[1] The skill invigorate makes its first appearance after 101 chapters. Lol

Also, I already have a bunch of names ready for the kids. But if you have any suggestions let me know. I might change them if I get a better one.

You can write them down like:

Ciel's daughter - Blank. (Not gonna spoil the name yet. but feel free to guess it. This one is set in stone.)

Shion's daughter/son - Blank.

etc etc