“J-just you stop that! Who are you, anyway? I don’t know you, and I’ve never— S-stop that. Let go of me! Please!”
Wiz had finally taken Hans by the shoulders and was giving him a good shake.
“Could you really have forgotten about me? You must remember me—you know, from the Demon King’s castle?”
“Ahhhhhh—oh yes! I just remembered I have some urgent business to attend to! You know what? Upon careful inspection, I’ve figured out what was polluting the water source. I better hurry back to town, so…Could you… Could you let me through?”
“Just where do you think you’re going, Hans?”
“As if we’d let you through, Hans!”
“Do you think your excuses will stand with us, Hans?”
Three girls stood blocking his way.
A frown came over Hans’s face, and he took an involuntary step back.
“Enough games, Hans. Show us what you really are,” I said.
“Hans this, Hans that! Don’t you know better than to take someone’s name so lightly? What the hell are you doing here anyway, Wiz? I thought you left the castle to set up a shop in some town. How are you gonna keep your store if you spend all your time at hot-springs resorts?”
Hans, finally showing his true colors, started berating Wiz.
“Th-that hurts! I am working, really! The more I work, the poorer I get, so I’m doing the best I can every day…!”
I wasn’t sure Wiz’s response made a whole lot of sense, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that.
Hans gave a deep sigh and shook his head slowly.
“Haah… Now what? I’ve been studying this town and making preparations for ages, and I’m finally doing it… Wiz, as I recall, the only support you lend to the Demon King is in keeping up the barrier around his castle. And in return, the rest of us don’t give you any trouble. So why are you bothering me?!”
“Whaaat?! Was—was I bothering you, Mr. Hans?! All I did was try to say hello to someone I hadn’t seen in a long time…”
“That’s bother enough! Look! Thanks to you, now they all know what I am!”
I still wasn’t sure whether or not it had been intentional on Wiz’s part. But Hans, his identity revealed, lowered his center of gravity in preparation for a fight.
“How about it, Wiz? Feel like having it out with me? Or will you just pretend you didn’t see anything?”
Apparently, Hans was only really on guard against Wiz.
I guess that made sense. According to Wiz, this guy was a Deadly Poison Slime or something. That was a bit of a mouthful, but I guess it basically meant he was a variety of Slime. As a monster, probably not on the same level as a Lich.
And to think, when I’d first seen him in the bath, I had wondered if he might be some kind of boss character. But he was just a Slime.
“M-M-Mr. Hans, these people are my friends. And if this town loses its hot springs, it will have all kinds of trouble. Can’t we…talk or something?”
She sounded almost apologetic. Hans laughed.
“Ha-ha! I knew becoming a Lich had made you soft, Wiz! When you were an Arch-wizard hunting us like dogs, you wouldn’t have spared one minute for ‘talk’!”
“Erk… B-back then, I didn’t see as clearly…”
Wiz began to fidget from what appeared to be embarrassment.
It was hard to picture the sweet, friendly Wiz as a battle-hardened fighter.
When we got back, we would have to get Vanir to join us and share some stories about the old days.
And to that end…
“Hey, I hate to interrupt your little reunion, but are you about set? …Hans, right? My name is Kazuma Satou. I helped take down Beldia, then led the operation that put an end to Mobile Fortress Destroyer, and just the other day I went toe to toe with the all-seeing demon Vanir.”
It was time to mop this guy up and put all this trouble behind us.
“Wh-what?! A shrimp like you—?! I’ve seen children with better equipment than you, and you say you helped defeat Beldia and Vanir?”
All right, enough was enough.
“‘Shrimp’? What a way to greet somebody. Whatever I look like to you, I’ve stared death in the face over and over.”
“In fact, he’s literally died over and over.”
That was Aqua, tossing in an unnecessary comment from behind me.
“I knew you were an agent of the Demon King from the moment I saw you. And do you remember where that was? We’ve already met—in the mixed bath at a certain hotel!”
“…? Whaaat?! You’re the man with that animal stare!”
A-animal? That was uncalled for.
“I heard what you two were saying that day. How you were planning to destroy the Axis Church! I knew you were both uneasy about me. That’s why I kept staring at that huge-breasted woman you were with—to trick you!”
“Hey, where do you get off claiming that? You said you never mentioned this exactly because you wanted to avoid getting involved in any trouble,” Darkness said behind me.
You know what? The peanut gallery has been awfully chatty today.
I noticed Hans starting to back up as I spoke.
He had been looking solely at Wiz until a moment ago, but now he seemed most concerned about me.
“I see you don’t flinch, even knowing who you’re confronted with. Maybe you aren’t as fragile as you appear,” Hans said, glaring at me.
Who I was confronted with? He was just a Slime, for crying out loud. Sure, he had transformed into a tough-looking human, but the fact of the matter was, he was a Slime.
Aka, the weakest monster in most kinds of games.
The name Deadly Poison suggested what his main attack probably was, but we had Aqua on our side, and she could get rid of poison.
Frankly, I didn’t see how we could lose.
“Just be smart and give up. Wiz! You used to work with this guy, right? I know it might be hard for you to fight him, so just stay back.”
“M-Mr. Kazuma, you’re right that I’m not eager to fight him, but…Are you sure about this? Mr. Hans is…”
She fell back as I instructed, but she seemed to be trying to tell me something.
I drew my sword easily, the polished blade glinting in the light of the sun.
To think the first enemy I would test this fine new weapon on was a measly Slime.
Behind me, Aqua and the others took up stances, ready to join the fight at any time. Darkness stood next to me, holding her great sword directly in front of her.
“…I guess you’re serious. Fine! It’s been a while since a party of adventurers tried to take me down. All of them fled or begged for their lives when they saw my true form. Maybe you’ll have a little more spine!”
Hans made a broad gesture. Why was he spouting off like he was a major boss or something?
“My name is Hans! General of the Demon King’s army, mutant Deadly Poison Slime!”
He was acting like that wasn’t a name you would hear just about…anywhere…
“…What did you just say?”
What had this Slime just said?
I could’ve sworn he said “general of the Demon King’s army.”
Wiz shouted from behind me. “Mr. Kazuma! Mr. Hans has an especially big bounty on his head, even for a general of the Demon King! Be careful! He’s extremely strong!”
Great. Now she tells me.
I backed up, keeping my sword at the ready. I turned to Darkness.
“Hey, Darkness. Aren’t Slimes supposed to be weak? They’re just low-level monsters, right?”
Without letting her guard down for an instant, Darkness said, “Slimes? Weak? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Some very small Slimes, maybe, but once they get big enough, they’re serious enemies. For starters, physical attacks don’t have much effect on them. They’re strong against magic, and they’ll eat anything and everything. If one gets ahold of you, it’s essentially over. They’ll reach your body through chinks in
your armor and melt you with digestive juices or otherwise just block your mouth so you suffocate.”
Man, that sounds scary. I mean…Wait, what?
Had I just unwittingly picked a fight with a major enemy?
“Kazuma, you must not touch a Deadly Poison Slime! And this one must have an especially lethal toxin if he is able to pollute every hot spring in town! Deadly enough to harm those who so much as get in the baths! If you were to come into direct contact with it, you would be killed instantly!”
“Killed…instantly…?”
Megumin’s warning set my heart pounding.
“Not to worry, Kazuma! I can just bring you right back! As long as you don’t get eaten, anyway. If he grabs you and dissolves you, even I won’t be able to help!”
As did Aqua’s.
“Now, brave adventurers, have at me! I think I’m going to enjoy…this…?”
I turned my back on Hans and started running as fast as I could.
5
I slid down the mountain, shoving through grass and bushes. Little branches beat at my face, leaving small wounds.
“Yaaaaah! Dear Kazumaaaa! Wait! Waiiit!”
“You idiot, hurry! Keep up, or I’ll leave you behind!”
Oh man, oh man, oh man.
That guy was the most dangerous thing we’d run into yet!
If you touched him, you’d die. If he touched you, you would dissolve, and all the goddesses in the world couldn’t bring you back.
“Aww… A Slime, huh…?”
Darkness almost sounded a little regretful, but Megumin held her hand and pulled her behind us.
Darkness, who had something of a fixation on monsters that could cover her in goop, had wanted to stay and fight Hans on her own, but of course we stopped her.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think she could handle his attacks, but when it came to hitting back, she would have been in a lot of trouble.
“M-Mr. Kazuma, you got out of breath so easily coming up this mountain, but you’re quite quick at going down it…!” Wiz, at the tail of our formation, was doing her best to keep up.
And behind her…
“Are you taunting me, humans?! All that big talk, and now you’re just going to run away? Aren’t you adventurers? Aren’t you ashamed?”
Hans, his face bright red, was hot on our trail.
“I’m an Adventurer, all right! The weakest class! So pardon me if I don’t stick around to do battle with a general of the Demon King!”
“Weak, indeed! And yet you…! …What?”
Hans suddenly stopped dead.
Surprised, we slowed down a bit, too.
“You’re an Adventurer? You mean capital A, supposed to be the lowest class—that kind of Adventurer? Not the common noun but the class like Arch-wizard or Priest?”
“Y-yeah, so what?”
Hans’s eyes went wide for a moment, and then he closed them and let out a breath.
He acted awfully human for a Slime.
“I’ll let you go, then. Now get lost, small fry!”
He spat out the words and turned up the road, heading back toward the water source.
“Phew. Well, I’m glad that’s over.”
“It’s not over! Look, he’s going back to the main spring!” Aqua was extremely unhappy, but frankly, that guy was just too dangerous.
“And what are we supposed to do about him? Even Wiz would have trouble handling him, and we don’t know whether Darkness could even withstand his poison. Do you think a long-distance Ambush with Megumin’s Explosion would do the trick?”
“Um…I think if you exploded Mr. Hans, the bits of his body would pollute this entire area. Slimes are strong against magic, so I think burning him up completely would be very difficult…”
It sounded like we were out of options.
“I’m not trying to sound self-important here, but even I can’t think of anything this time. If he were susceptible to physical attacks, maybe I could have used my new sword…”
“Chunchunmaru’s time will come. But it’s true that that Slime will soon be able to do as he wishes with the wellspring.”
“I told you not to call my beloved sword that. I sure as heck won’t…I admit, though, we’re pretty much through this time. Hey, Aqua, how about you just give up on this city’s hot springs? Let them find a new industry to support themselves. Who really needs the Axis Church, anyway?”
I thought I was just being honest, but Aqua tried to strangle me regardless.
Even as I struggled with her, Hans was growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
Aqua looked up at him and made her opinion clear.
“Fine, then… Well! I’m going to purify that Slime if it kills me!”
And it was incredibly ill-advised.
6
When we caught up to Hans, he had his hand in the wellspring he’d been trying to poison before, one of the two he hadn’t already contaminated.
Apparently, he had dispensed a lot of poison already; even from a distance, the water was dark and cloudy. Of course, that presumably included the water rushing through the pipe to town.
“Did it not occur to him to just destroy these pipes?”
I didn’t understand why he would go to all the trouble of coming up here and poisoning the main springs.
I guess pipes could be repaired. But a poisoned wellspring might never be usable again. He was, in his own way, just playing it safe.
Maybe there weren’t very many priests who could purify his deadly poison the way Aqua could.
“This pipe seems to be made of a magical metal. I don’t think it would break so easily. It’s the lifeline of this town, so I’m sure they did everything they could for it.”
I nodded at Megumin, but Aqua, who had worked to purify the polluted springs, glared at us with impatience.
“Come on, could you act just a little more worried? This looks like serious trouble to me! I mean, if he poisons the last spring, all of this town’s hot baths will become unusable! And then the whole Axis Church will fall apart!”
“““And what’s (what is) wrong with that?”””
“Waaaaah!”
At our collective response, Aqua clung to Wiz in tears.
“C-come on, everyone, stop teasing Lady Aqua! The point is, at this rate…”
I didn’t think we were teasing, but whatever. Would it really be such a bad thing if that obnoxious sect went extinct?
“Oh, you’re back. Well, we’re down to one main spring, anyway. Once I poison it, I’ll be finished with this town. Finally! Finally, I can say good-bye to this disgusting little city!”
I assume even generals of the Demon King aren’t safe from the overtures of Axis followers when they’re undercover in this town.
“Just how long have you been here?” I asked. “Hey… Come to think of it, you got up here by impersonating the manager, didn’t you? What about the real manager? The old man with golden hair…”
“I ate him,” Hans said, almost disinterestedly.
…Ate him?
“Wh-what did you say?”
“I said, I ate him. I’m a Slime. Eating is what we do. I had to eat him—”
Hans was about to say in order to turn into him, but…
“Cursed Crystal Prison.”
A cold, quiet voice sounded around the snow-specked mountain.
“?!?!?!?! Yaaaaaaagh!!”
The spring that Hans was touching made a creaking sound and then instantly froze over.
Hans bellowed, his extremity trapped inside the spring.
I looked around to see who had cast the spell.
It was Wiz. At that moment she gave no hint of her usual warmth and instead looked every inch a Lich, the most powerful of the undead.
She gazed expressionlessly at Hans.
“As I recall, my neutrality toward His Majesty’s army was contingent upon your doing no harm to those who did not specifically seek to fight you, as adventurers or knights might.”
> “Wiz! Stop this! Release me! Wiiiiz!”
She barely seemed to hear Hans’s shouts.
“That adventurers may die in battle cannot be helped. As they support themselves by taking the lives of monsters, they should understand that one day their own lives may be forfeit. Knights are much the same. They collect taxes and protect the citizens in exchange. They receive compensation to risk their lives, and this, too, cannot be helped. However…”
“Wiz! Do you really want to fight me? If we use our full powers here, this entire area will pay the price…!”
Hans tried to get a word in edgewise, but Wiz was not having it.
“However, the manager of these hot springs did you no wrong.”
Her accusation was quiet, and she wore a mournful look on her face.
I felt a tug on my sleeve.
I started and turned around to find Aqua and Megumin standing behind me.
…They must have been frightened by this unfamiliar, deadly serious Wiz.
I mean, I was, too.
Next to me, Darkness was in a low stance, perhaps getting ready to jump in and support Wiz at any time.
Dammit, if our sweet little Wiz could rise to the occasion like this, then so could I!
“Sorry, Wiz, but I’m not interested in fighting you. I’m just going to do what I came here to do and then go home,” Hans said, and then as we watched, he tore off his own right arm.
The arm, still stuck in the ice, popped off easily, and in its place a new, translucent limb grew instead.
Leaving his old arm where it was, Hans set off for the last wellspring.
7
We ran after him.
You know what? I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but running all day. What happened to my nice, relaxing hot-springs vacation? I came here to heal up, not to do physical training!
“Oh, Kazuma! That Slime is really fast! Aren’t Slimes supposed to be, you know, blobby and cute or kind of blubbery and slow?”
It sounded like Aqua had exactly the same image of Slimes as I did.
Come to think of it, how could a Slime even be sentient? Where was its brain?
You Good-for-Nothing Quartet Page 14
