“I understand that, but you still can’t come in here.”
“Yeah, only the hot-springs manager is allowed.”
The guard didn’t even bother glancing at Aqua’s card, despite her attempts at persuasion. The two knights didn’t have to voice their suspicions; we could feel it.
Both of them were outfitted in full armor, on the off chance that anyone tried to muscle through. No way were they going to let a bunch of ragtag adventurers go up the mountain just because they’d shown up out of nowhere and asked.
“O my beloved Axis disciples… Listen well, for this thing is needful and right. Let us through, and this town will be—”
““Oh,”” they both replied, ““we’re Eris followers.””
“Whaaat?! How can you follow Eris when you live here?! Come on, pleeease? Let us through! The main springs are in danger! This is for everyone’s sake! I…I just want to save this town!”
She clung to one of the guards, weeping.
I had an idea, but I was kind of enjoying the show, so I thought I’d let it play out a little longer.
“Rules are rules! Now, go home!”
“Oh! Wait! You’re kind of— You know, you’re awfully handsome. Your profile reminds me of a…a Red Dragon!”
“Are you calling me lizard-faced?”
Since cajoling didn’t work, apparently flattery was now her tactic of choice.
“…Fine. If you really won’t let me through, I’ll go to that church back there all weepy and tell them the nasty old Eris followers up here said super-mean things to me!”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Geez, this is why no one likes Axis followers! What’s with that blue hair and those blue eyes, anyway? You look an awful lot like the person who went around turning all the hot springs to hot water yesterday…!”
“N-no! Th-that was… I was purifying them!”
“So it was you! One more reason not to let you through. Get out of here; go home!”
Now she was trying threats, but the guards simply shooed her away.
“I figured this would happen. Come on, Darkness, you may not get a lot of chances to help out, but this is one of them.”
“Not a lot of chances?! I help out all the time— Hey, don’t push me!”
Megumin, standing next to me, had already figured out what I was up to.
“Do you know whose presence you stand in?! This is Miss Lalatina Ford Dustiness of the great and famous Dustiness family! This is an emergency—the fate of the town hangs in the balance!”
““What?!””
“Yes! Consider this an order from the Dustiness family. After yesterday’s commotion about the poisoning of the hot springs, it was much more reasonable to think that someone poisoned the water source rather than every individual bath. We have come here to investigate on the Young Lady’s instructions.”
We shoved Darkness forward, where she held fast to the pendant around her neck.
“I agree it’s an emergency, but I still don’t know about using…”
Darkness was trying to say something, but we had her pinioned.
“Go on, Young Lady, prove it to them with that pendant you’re hiding. Please, there’s no need…to…resist… Young—! God, just do it already, Young Lady!”
“Kazuma, hold her tight! I’ll— Ouch! Darkness, that hurt! Wiz! Megumiiin! Quick, take it from her! Grab that pendant!”
“Wiz, hold her right arm! And, Aqua, you take the left! Young Lady, resistance is…futile…!”
“I’m sorry! Miss Darkness, I’m so sorry!”
“Stoppit, you—! The Dustiness family name shall not be used to— Huh?!”
Megumin finally succeeded in prying the pendant from her and showed it to the guards. “How about that?! Surely you will let us through now!”
“O-our apologies!”
“We’re very sorry. Please forgive our disrespect!”
Megumin seemed pleased by this change in tone as the two guards scrambled to make way for us. “…Could I borrow this for a bit?”
“Of course not. Give it back!”
Megumin deflated as Darkness grabbed the pendant from her.
—As this was happening, the guards came squirming back up to us.
“Ahem, L-Lady Dustiness, you said you are here to have a look at the water source, but truth be told, the person responsible for the main springs is already up there.”
“We were given strict orders not to let anyone through while he was doing his inspection…”
We all looked at one another.
Now, of all times?
Maybe the manager or whoever had also decided the source must have been poisoned.
…Just to be sure, I asked the knights, “Did the guy who went up there happen to be kind of tan, with short brown hair?”
“No, an elderly man with golden hair. He has taken care of these wellsprings for a very long time.”
My mistake… But then, where in the world did the brown-haired man go?
He wasn’t easy to miss, and we’d made sure every hotel in town had his description. Somebody ought to have seen something by now.
“And there are monsters in these mountains. Lady Dustiness, if you insist on going up there, please be careful.”
3
We carefully worked our way up the slope, which was overgrown with plant life and still had slippery snow in some places.
I’d pictured a mountain serving as a water source as a craggy, barren rock face, but here we were.
“Goodness, Miss Darkness! A member of the Dustiness family! Please pardon all the lapses of etiquette I’ve made!”
As we climbed, Wiz, who had been unaware of Darkness’s noble background, kept bowing her head and saying things like that.
“No, Wiz, you go on treating me like you always have. That would be best for all of us.”
“Are you sure? Well, if you say so, milady…”
She smiled. Darkness looked at her and sighed.
“That’s exactly what a normal person would say… It’s kind of comforting, somehow. It reminds me that the rest of my partners really are just disrespectful louts…”
Her face suggested some inner turmoil about all this as she went ahead of us, hacking a way through the bush.
“Well, you’re a pain. Do you want to be treated like a noblewoman or like one of the gang? Make up your mind. Anyway, if you want us to treat you like nobility, you’ll have to watch the way you talk when you get angry. And stop being so stubborn.”
“A pain?! And, Kazuma, you’re the one person in the world least qualified to criticize the way people talk! As I recall, you’re younger than me. But you just talk the same way to everyone, including me…”
“That just shows that I think of you as a friend. Not Lalatina, the older noblewoman, but Darkness, the reliable Crusader.”
“…I see… Well, in that case, I guess…”
She was blushing in embarrassment, her attitude much improved. As she began pushing forward again, I muttered, “Too easy.”
“Easy indeed,” Megumin agreed.
“Yep, easy!” Aqua echoed.
“Why— Why, all of you…!”
“…?”
Wiz looked back at us reprovingly, while Darkness walked ahead in high spirits.
“Seems like we’ve been walking a while,” I said. “Didn’t the guard say something about monsters around here? I hope the guy who came in before us is okay. Can an old man deal with whatever’s up here?” I asked nonchalantly. As if in answer, the sound of a faraway fight reached our ears.
“Kazuma!” Aqua yelled. “That’s what happens when you say stuff like that! It turns into a flag!”
“Idiot, I didn’t—! I just asked a question…!”
“No fighting, both of you—let’s just go!”
Wiz’s urging sent us scrambling in the direction of the sound.
A strange sight met our eyes.
“Wh-what is that?”
Megumin asked dumbly.
When we arrived, there was already no sign of the manager, but…
“Could this…be a Beginner’s Bane?”
Darkness crept up to the black form, inspecting it closely.
A battle had occurred here, no question.
But it didn’t look like any of the plant life had been cut with a sword or singed with magic. The only signs of the struggle were a dark pelt and a massive fang from a Beginner’s Bane.
There wasn’t much left of the body, almost as though it had been dissolved with acid or something…
“Wiz drove off that Beginner’s Bane yesterday without much trouble, but normally it would take some midlevel adventurers to take one down, right?”
Everyone seemed to understand what I meant. Could a single elderly man have done this?
In other words…
“That old man must be really strong! Let’s hurry up and find him and get him to protect us!” Aqua cried.
…Okay, so one person didn’t understand what I meant.
“No old man is strong enough to defeat a Beginner’s Bane by himself! This wasn’t done by any human.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Aqua asked. “That middle-aged butcher in Axel hunts frogs and Fire Drakes on his own! Why can’t there be an older guy who can fight a Beginner’s Bane?”
“Those are small-fry compared with this! And look at the corpse. This isn’t normal.”
The way it had apparently melted was extremely strange. Could magic have done this? And if it could…what a nasty spell.
“Whatever the story is, we’ll have to be careful. That isn’t just any old man.”
Everyone except Aqua nodded silently.
She, instead, muttered dejectedly, “There was a cook who once skewered a Brutal Alligator alive, they said…”
She just couldn’t let it go.
4
We’d covered a respectable distance, but luckily, there was no mistaking the path. Six huge pipes ran down the side of the mountain to carry water from the wellsprings to the town, so if you wanted to reach the source, you just had to follow the pipes.
It took a lot of endurance to climb the snowy mountain, though. I checked on the rest of the party, figuring everyone must be tired…
“Hey, Wiz. You’re a Lich, right? Don’t you have some convenient Lich magic? Maybe flight or something?”
“Lady Aqua, there is no such thing as ‘Lich magic.’ I do have a few spells I developed on my own, but they’re all for offensive use…”
“Oh-ho, developed on your own?” Megumin said. “I cannot let that comment pass. None of them happen to be more powerful than Explosion, do they?”
“Aww… I was pretty excited when he said there were monsters around here, but we haven’t been attacked even once. What’s with that…?” Darkness whined.
Everyone seemed perfectly perky.
“A-all right, everyone! L-let’s slow the pace a bit, okay? If we run into any enemies, how—can we—fight them—if we’re—out of breath?” I, for one, was already panting.
Aqua cocked her head at me. “…I knew your stats weren’t very good, Kazuma, my friend, but I didn’t think they were this bad.”
Now, that hurt!
“What is your Vitality stat, anyway? If it turns out to be as low as an Arch-wizard’s, I may not be able to look you in the eye again.” Megumin sounded annoyed.
I couldn’t speak as I showed Megumin my card, because I was still trying to catch my breath.
“……Well, you know. You’ve… You’ve got the lowest level here. Don’t lose heart over it. You just need a few more levels.”
Megumin pointedly averted her gaze from my card as she tried to comfort me.
“Hey, are you trying to say my stats really are as bad as yours?”
“Perhaps we should take a rest!” she called. “We have not caught up with the old man despite all our walking, and I think it would be better to be at full strength when we do find him.”
“H-hey, do you mean my stats are even worse than yours? There’s no way I have less Strength or HP than you do, right?!”
Megumin didn’t answer but only plopped down where she was.
I…I need to raise my level…
After our break, we had set off walking again when we suddenly reached the end of one of the pipes. Just beyond, water was pouring out of the main spring, but…
Wait a second…
“Hey, this water is black!”
“?! This is poison! This is definitely poison!” Aqua cried and then shoved her hand straight into the polluted water.
“That’s hot! Eeeeyow! It’s boiling! It’s burning me!”
“You idiot, why would you put your hand into the spring? Take your hand out!”
“B-b-but—! It’s sooo hoooot!”
Aqua kept raising a ruckus but left her hand in the murky water.
I hurried up to her and intoned a magic spell in the direction of her hand.
“Freeze!”
It was just beginner magic, but it would cause the wellspring to turn to…
…Actually, it didn’t turn to anything. My magic just wasn’t strong enough.
“Freeze!”
Wiz rushed up and used the same spell.
Maybe it was the difference in magical power, or maybe because she was a Lich, but Wiz’s spell immediately lowered the temperature of the water.
“Phew… Thanks, Wiz. And you, too, dear Kazuma. Thanks…kind of.”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
Wiz continued casting Freeze on the water around Aqua’s hand.
Slowly, the dark, cloudy water began to turn clear and clean.
“That will do it… But it’s harder to purify what’s already inside the pipe, so it’ll take quite a while before this wellspring can be used again… Heal!”
Done purifying, Aqua healed the burns on her own hand, then gave a melancholy sniff, even though it was her own overexcitement that had gotten her into trouble.
The sight of her was even getting to me…
But anyway, now we knew for sure that someone had poisoned the wellspring. I couldn’t say what the connection was between the manager and the man I had seen, but if we kept going, we would probably find out.
—Along the way, we saw that the wellsprings connected to each of the other pipes had been poisoned, too.
Aqua purified them one by one until she had taken care of four of the six sources.
But of course, it would take quite a while before they were fit for use again.
At length, we had probably come about 80 percent of the way up the mountain. I was just about ready to throw in the towel and go home when we caught sight of what seemed to be a human silhouette in the distance.
I looked closer with my Second Sight skill.
“…Huh? That’s him, all right.”
It wasn’t the golden-haired old man the knights had told us about, but the man I had seen at the bath.
“What’s up? Why’d you stop?”
Aqua was perplexed.
I pointed up ahead and told everyone our target was right there.
“Ah, I do see a human form,” Darkness said. “I wonder what he’s doing there. Does one of the main springs start there?”
“Perhaps,” Megumin said. “Look, the pipe ends there… Wait, that must mean he’s about to…!”
We had caught him in the act of polluting one of the springs!
We all rushed forward, and he finally noticed us. A strange expression came over his face as we approached.
“What are all of you doing? No one but the hot-springs manager is supposed to be allowed up the mountain. How did you get here?”
He sounded completely calm. Aqua leveled a finger at him.
“You’re one to talk! How dare you try to make this city’s baths unusable! Well, you’re finished!”
“Unusable? I’m the one who watches out for these springs. I’m afraid you’ll have to start talking sense…”
>
The man made a point of acting confused. Confounded, Aqua looked to me for help.
Well, don’t rush in like that if you don’t know what you’re doing.
“Playing dumb will not help you,” Megumin declared. “What are you doing here? Did you tire of poisoning individual hot springs and come to contaminate the source instead? Was the commotion yesterday to help you ascertain that the baths in town are connected to this water?”
“All the main springs on our way here were poisoned. As Megumin says—we will have an explanation from you of what you’re doing here. I am Lalatina Ford Dustiness. By right of nobility, I shall take you to the police.”
Megumin and Darkness closed in, but the man coolly cocked his head.
“I keep telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Feel free to search everything I have with me. You’ll find there’s no poison of…any…kind…?”
He had started so confidently before trailing off. I followed his gaze…
“Hmm…? Who are you? You look very familiar…” Wiz had her hand to her chin and was staring intently at the man.
As soon as he noticed this, the man spun around as quickly as he could.
“A-anyway, I’m just here to investigate what all the fuss was about. So…”
“Oh! Mr. Hans! It’s you, isn’t it, Mr. Hans?!” Wiz exclaimed.
“H-Hans? Who’s that? I’m…I’m the manager of the hot springs around here…”
“Mr. Hans! It’s been ages! It’s me, Wiz! The Lich?”
The man tried shakily to deny his identity under the barrage of Hanses, but Wiz was too caught up in seeing a familiar face.
Hans glanced at Wiz, who hadn’t taken her eyes off him.
“A Lich? You mean one of those terrible undead monsters? I’m sure I don’t understand a word you’re saying. A-anyhow, you’ll see I don’t have any poison on me, so there’s no proof of…”
“Oh, speaking of poison! I vaguely recall you were a mutant form of Deadly Poison Slime, Mr. Hans. You haven’t been poisoning the baths by any chance, have you?”
I don’t think she even realized she had just annihilated his alibis.
She marched right up to Hans.
“Aww, Mr. Hans, why are you ignoring me? It’s me, Wiz! You know, I remember you had a talent for imitation. Did you pretend to be the manager to get up here? Mr. Hans? Come on, Mr. Hans!”
You Good-for-Nothing Quartet Page 13
