After dinner, Ackster started making the final preparations. He went over the final parts of his plan, even though they were the least complicated, to make sure there weren't any obvious flaws that would inevitably lead to his premature passing.
But if he hadn't noticed anything significantly off with his plan so far, Ackster wouldn't notice anything when he only had a couple of hours left to execute the last steps. So, he was a little more productive instead and inspected the bathroom to make sure there weren't any traces left of the bloodletting.
Although he had told the Doppelganger Slime to clean up afterward, that one had been in the forest up till last night. What could it possibly know about cleaning blood off of a bathroom floor and a bathtub?
Ackster did find a few specks of blood that the Doppelganger Slime had missed. He celebrated his overly cautious attitude by scrubbing them away. As he did so, he worried that a spotty, spotlessly clean bathroom would raise any suspicions. But then he remembered that while the Phileam House was a first-generation noble household, they still had enough money to hire servants that knew how to clean.
And the bathroom was already as clean as it could be. It would require superhuman eyes to notice the difference or any remaining blood spots, which would have had to be too small and unnoticeable for Ackster to see.
After cleaning the bathroom, he ruffled his bed so that it would look like he had just slept in it. It was mostly an unnecessary precautionary measure in case someone would think that Ackster making his own bed before fighting The Hero would be suspicious.
With that done, Ackster once again stripped and handed his clothes to the Doppelganger Slime.
The Doppelganger Slime had mimicked Ackster's clothes when it copied him, and it had done it perfectly. The clothes looked and felt like real clothes. But there was a clear flaw with them.
They couldn't be removed from the Doppelganger Slime's body.
If things went as Ackster hoped, and his parents followed the instructions in his letter to the letter, no one would notice anything. But in case that didn't happen, and his parents wanted to bury him in formal attire, despite the informal state the body would be in after death, the Doppelganger Slime would have to be dressed in real, non-slime clothes.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do with these? What kind of sick bastard are you to force your clothes on someone else while naked? Is it some twisted fetish of yours? If it is, I want no part in it. Take your clothes and your wrinkled old ass far away from here, pervert."
Ackster didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed at the Doppelganger Slime's harsh words. He briefly wondered if he had maybe gone a little overboard while acting like the original Ackster. But then he remembered what the original Ackster had been like and wondered if he maybe should have added a few insults to the lines the Doppelganger Slime would recite on the stage tomorrow.
Well, it was too late for that now. And since the Doppelganger Slime was obedient to him, Ackster decided not to mind the harsh words that had come from his mouth in the first place.
After accepting Ackster's command, the Doppelganger Slime's slime clothes melted into its skin and disappeared.
'It looks bigger from the front….'
Ackster was a little unsettled at seeing his naked self in front of him. But after learning from Ackster's behavior and words the past day, the Doppelganger Slime was like another him. So, it was like looking at a life-like mirror. There was also the helping factor that it wasn't his body originally.
And after realizing he had been blessed in more ways than one after transmigrating, Ackster and the Doppelganger Slime both got dressed again.
Ackster wore the clothes of homelessness he had brought back after the last adventure outside. And the Doppelganger Slime wore the clothes it had just received from Ackster.
Ackster glanced out the window, which he had made sure the Doppelganger Slime never appeared in front of and confirmed that dusk was quickly approaching. It was soon time to get things going.
The last thing Ackster did was to check on the other thing he had brought back from where he found the Doppelganger Slime. It was still in the bag he had used to collect the herbs, and it wasn't very lively, despite appearing to have eaten the remnant herbs.
Ackster was a little curious about what it was. He also realized it hadn't been the smartest thing to do to bring it along on a whim like that. But that was in the past, and it didn't look like it would bring any trouble to him on his escape since he still had to remove any traces of him leaving the estate the last few days.
That meant making sure he hadn't tracked dirt along the window, windowsill, or walls. He also couldn't leave behind anything he had picked up outside. So, his disguise, the bag, and its contents had to come with him. He couldn't even leave any fragments of the Sun-kissed Grass behind in case it revealed his adventures.
And on the other side of that was the fact that he also couldn't bring anything with him. Everything he owned had to remain within his room.
Even the few coins he had used to buy the clothes from the homeless people on the street had been risky. But it was a risk he had to take. Besides, Ackster didn't think even the original Ackster knew exactly how much money he had at all times. No one would notice one or two coins going missing here and there.
But taking any more wouldn't do. It also wouldn't match what he was going to do next, so he didn't need them.
After checking himself and the room several times over and making sure that everything was as it was supposed to be, Ackster looked at his doppelganger and smiled.
"Time for a distraction, you bastard."