“Can you not even keep it together at a time like this?”
“I’ll stay as far away as I can—to keep Komekko safe!” I grabbed Aqua as she made a bald attempt to escape. I set the rail gun at my feet and drew my katana.
These antics brought a faint smile to Megumin’s face. And then, calmly and quietly, she began the chants for Explosion.
As they caught the sound of her incantation, all the Crimson Magic Clan members, watching from afar, immediately fell silent. That was experts in magic for you. They seemed to know what was going on. Why Megumin had been avoiding drama.
With drawn faces, the Crimson Magic Clan wizards all began evacuating. Sylvia was looking from one of them to the next, unsure of what was going on. For almost a year now, I had heard Megumin’s chants every day—more times than I could count. I had a pretty good idea of when she would be finished.
Eventually, perhaps because of the magical power welling up in Megumin or maybe because of the way the other wizards were reacting, even Sylvia seemed to catch on that all that talk about a special technique was no joke. Constantly having her prey escape from her seemed to have left her drained. She almost looked frightened in the face of Megumin’s absolute seriousness.
“A secret technique? Pfah! Y-you can explode me, or blow me up, or use whatever high-level magic you like on me! Now that I am one with Mage-killer, I can take anything you throw at me! And when you see that you’ve failed, then you will all meet your end!”
Sylvia made this pronouncement with both arms crossed in front of her face.
Megumin opened her crimson eyes wide, pouring all her magic into a single spell.
“Explosion!!!!”
An overwhelming magical power surged through her staff, blasting out from the tip.
“Wha—?!”
When she realized what spell Megumin had used, Sylvia’s face contorted in terror as the light from Megumin’s staff lanced out…
…and was absorbed by the rail gun at my feet.
““““Huh?””””
We weren’t the only ones to exclaim—the other wizards and even Sylvia cried out at this completely, totally unexpected turn of events.
At the same moment, Megumin, her magic spent, collapsed onto the ground.
Sylvia, enraged by the fact that we had managed to actually threaten her, shouted, “Try to intimidate me, will you, you little brat?! When I get my hands on you, I’ll tear you limb from limb!”
I guess that was the male part of her talking. She was rushing at us, steam practically coming out of her ears. I guess Hell hath no fury like a Sylvia scorned. I liked her feminine side better!
“Dammit! This stupid piece of junk just doomed us all!”
“K-Kazuma!” Darkness said. “Sylvia’s coming! You take Megumin and get out of here. Then come back and rescue me—but maybe let me endure my fate at Sylvia’s hands for an hour or so first.”
“Dear Kazuma! As a goddess, I must protect this precious little life called Komekko—so I’m getting out of here! Bye!”
Some friends!
“Hey, something’s going bleep bloop.”
Komekko suddenly spoke up from where she was cradled in Aqua’s arms beside me.
I followed her gaze and noticed that the little display on the side of the rail gun read, FULL.
I thought back to the diary. This weapon compressed magic and then shot it out. It wasn’t broken at all; it just hadn’t had enough magical power stored up to fire a shot.
I grabbed it, aimed it at Sylvia’s onrushing form, and…
“Sylvia, general of the Demon King! When you arrive in the netherworld, say hello to the other generals for me! Remember my name—it’s BOOM!”
…I delivered the most dramatic line I could and made to pull the trigger. But Komekko, reaching over from where Aqua was holding her, got there first.
The rail gun gave a massive kick, and a bright light burst from the muzzle. Sylvia raised her silver tail as a shield, but the light punched right through it and then through her, leaving a gaping hole in her chest.
Even then, it showed no sign of stopping. The beam of light flew straight on to the sacred mountain behind Crimson Magic Village, colliding with it and knocking off a part of it…
…and with a blinding flash and a deafening roar, the light disintegrated the piece of mountain.
The heat of the shot had twisted the barrel of the weapon. I tossed it aside at the same moment that Sylvia’s huge body fell to the ground with a heavy thump.
Lying there on the verge of death, Sylvia spat blood and murmured distantly, “…Wh-what? Is… Is this how it ends for me?”
At the sight of her, everyone, even the Crimson Magic Clan wizards watching from a safe distance, stood dumbfounded.
Just then, Komekko jumped out of Aqua’s arms and struck a pose.
“My name is Komekko! First among the beguiling little sisters of the Crimson Magic Clan! And she who is stronger than the general of the Demon King!”
Aww, man! She stole my moment!
9
When Sylvia had breathed her last, the Crimson Magic Clan said they would take care of the body. Given that she had merged with Mage-killer, they thought they could put her remains to good use making items that would repel magic. Talk about finding the silver lining.
As for the village, which just that morning had been all but leveled by Sylvia’s attack…
“What’s going on here?” I said in amazement as I watched things being rebuilt with incredible speed. All the rubble had been cleaned up with magic. Golems had been temporarily made from bedrock, and they were helping with building projects. There was even a six-armed demon that had been called using summoning magic, a carpenter’s tool in each of its six hands…
“…Hey, Megumin. What’s the deal? How can you rebuild so fast?” The outrageousness of the entire Crimson Magic Clan came home to me again.
“Is this fast? I do not know how long it takes to rebuild other towns, so I cannot say.”
“Well, about how long do you think it’ll take before the village is completely back to normal?”
“Perhaps three days, I suppose.”
Three days?!
A general of the Demon King razes your village, and you put everything back in three days?
“But I saw this girl with a super-sad look on her face going, ‘Our village… It’s burning…’ And I felt really guilty, and—”
“That is most strange. Everyone in the village should know that a few burned-down buildings are easy enough to repair. What kind of person was this?”
What kind…? I’m pretty sure she was wearing a bandage a lot like Megumin’s…
“…That’s her,” I said, pointing at a girl with a covering over her eye who just happened to walk by at that moment.
“What’s her?” the girl said. “You want something with me, outlander? ’Sup, Megumin, I’ve been looking for you.”
“Oh, Arue. I have not seen you in a while.”
It looked like Megumin and the bandaged girl knew each other.
Wait—Arue?
“Megumin, take a look at this. I just finished it—it’s chapter two of the Chronicle of the Hero of the Crimson Magic Clan. I’m especially happy with the scene where Crimson Magic Village burns. It’s pretty much my masterpiece.”
The scene where the village burns…?
Arue…?
I knew that name…!
Wasn’t Arue’s stupid letter the reason…
“Oh-ho? Let me have a look—”
…we even came here in the first place?!
“It’s youuuu!”
“Ahhhhhh!”
I grabbed the paper she had given to Megumin and tore it clean in two.
“Ahhh! My… My masterpiece… The gem I pulled a week of all-nighters to craft…”
Megumin patted Arue on the shoulder as she scrambled to collect the scraps of paper I’d dropped to the ground.
“Arue, I thought nothing could
move you. I have never seen you like this before.”
“This is all your fault…!” I said. “Do you know how eager I was—how overjoyed—and then how devastated?! All because of you! How dare you play with a man’s heart like that!”
“M-Megumin, who is this brute?! Is this how you greet someone you’ve never met before? You’re going to give me a heart attack!”
“I’m the one who almost had a heart attack! You and your ‘Our village… It’s burning…’! As if it really meant something to you! Screw your ‘chronicle’! While we were all out there putting our lives on the line, you were shut up in your room writing this junk?! Do you have any idea what heartbreak I suffered because of that stupid story you sent Yunyun?!”
“Stupid story?!”
“Both of you, calm down. How can two complete strangers act so…familiar—? Hey! Both of you! If you insist on fighting, I shall let my newly increased level do the talking!”
10
It was our last night in the surprisingly rapidly rebuilt Crimson Magic Village.
“Kazuma,” Megumin said, “what’s wrong? You seemed in such a good mood when we were all having dinner together. Then you go out, and when you get back, you look ready to tear someone’s head off.”
It was true; my face had been stormy since earlier. “What’s wrong?! I’ll tell you what’s wrong! That ‘Mixed Bath’ down the street? False advertising! It’s not mixed bathing! It’s not even a bath!”
Megumin seemed to understand what I was saying.
“Ah,” she said, “you went there, did you? That building is for tourist use. Every traveler who visits the village goes at least once.”
“What is the problem with this village?! Even the bathhouse is like some sick joke! Man! This is the worst trip ever.”
Sylvia was defeated, and we had cleaned up the rest of the Demon King’s forces in the area. The village had been rebuilt, and everything seemed to have a nice little bow on it…
“Really? I quite enjoyed myself this time.”
Megumin rolled over next to me in bed as she spoke. I would really have liked to just sleep quietly on our last night here, at least, but I ended up stuck in Megumin’s room again. Yuiyui didn’t even have to manipulate everyone. Megumin volunteered—she said it was better than having another Sleep spell cast on her. If she had been that straightforward about it in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have had such a strong urge to sexually harass her.
Darkness voiced her usual objections, and she and Hyoizaburou soon found themselves in dreamland. And I found myself lying in bed next to Megumin.
“Well, good for you. As for me, I mean between the orcs and Sylvia, I seem to be attracting a lot of, y’know, unwanted attention recently.”
“It is just coincidence. I have had a similar experience the last few days.”
“S-sorry again…”
When I thought about how I had acted, I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at her.
Beside me, Megumin snickered.
“If you’re feeling guilty, you could… I know. Tell me an interesting story. I’d really like to hear something about your home country.” Then she turned toward me…
“…so I thought as fast as I could, and I said to the girl next door, ‘Take this money, buy some chocolate, and bring it to my house on the day. You can keep all the change.’ It went perfectly. My little brother only got the one chocolate, from our mom. And I got two: one from our mom and the one from that girl. And so the long battle between my brother and me came to an end, and I taught him not to mess with his big brother.”
Megumin, who had listened raptly to my entire story, said, “So in other words, you won by paying off a girl. I’m actually glad to know you’ve always been that way… But what an odd custom. Is it really such a bad thing not to get any chocolates on that day?” She seemed very interested in this, the darkest of days on my country’s calendar.
“A bad thing? Let me put it this way. If you told me I had one chance to go back in time, I would find the guy who started that tradition and wipe him off the face of the earth. That’s how bad it is for guys who don’t get any chocolates. And even if you survive, where I come from, you have to give a gift in return.”
“…A gift in return? How does that work?”
I explained to her the awful truth. “So, say you get chocolates from a girl. A month later, you have to give that girl a gift worth three times as much as what you got. How bad is that? And if you don’t, it’s pretty much social suicide with any girl you know. If you don’t give anything to her, she’ll point at you and laugh behind your back. But if you do, then you’ll end up broke! And that’s the story of the terrible event known as Valen-something-or-other.”
When I was finished, Megumin cocked her head as if in surprise.
“Why didn’t you get any chocolates, Kazuma? It is true you have a number of tremendous flaws as a human being, but even so, I do see good things about you when we’re together. For example, you’re very…very…kind? No, that’s not it. Sincere…? No, not that, either… Huh? Hmm… You’re rather skilled at getting along in the world. Wait, but then again, there was all that debt… Huuuh?”
Oh, “huuuh” yourself. Try a little harder. I’m sure you’ll think of something.
“…Well, you may be manipulative, but despite everything, you do look out for your friends. I don’t hate that about you.”
I look out for my friends, huh? Isn’t that just what girls say when they don’t really see you as a member of the opposite sex? Like “You’re a nice person”?
Then again, since I wasn’t looking for a love connection here, I guess I didn’t really mind. What with the trauma of the orcs and everything with Sylvia—well, anyone would be a bit suspicious when it came to being noticed by someone who looked like a member of the opposite sex. So I didn’t care, even if she couldn’t come up with a single heartfelt word of praise!
“If I ever go to your country, Kazuma, I’ll give you chocolates on that day. You can make sure your brother sees them.” She sounded relaxed and friendly, in her own way.
“You weren’t listening. I said that on Whatever-tine’s Day, girls give chocolates to boys they like. If you go around giving chocolates to every guy you’re sort of friends with, you better believe they’ll get the wrong idea, and then you’ll be in trouble. You’re kinda cute, so if you were too generous with the candy in my country, people might start thinking you were easy.”
In response, she said:
“But I do like you, Kazuma.”
She said it so easily, as though it was no big deal.
“Wait, let’s go over that again. Say that one more time.” I wasn’t going to let myself think I had heard something really important when I hadn’t.
Megumin, tucked in so just her head peeked out of the covers, gave a strange little giggle. “I don’t not like you, Kazuma.”
“Hey, that’s not what you said! My memory isn’t that bad!”
This just made Megumin laugh again.
“Kazuma. Hypothetically—”
“What is it? Hypothetically what? I’m ready; bring it on.”
Was she about to let the mood take her and confess her true feelings for me? Could it really be? Sylvia was gone; there was nothing that could disturb us tonight.
Megumin seemed to muster her resolution. “Kazuma, if you could have a…”
Yes? A what? Go on! Keep talking!
I all but trembled with anticipation. Megumin asked quietly:
“…a truly great wizard, would you want her?”
Final Chapter
“I Want the Strongest Wizard”
The next morning.
Megumin brought me out to walk around the village. As we went, we ran into Yunyun, so the three of us stuck together. I suspected Yunyun might want to stay in the village a little longer, but she said she was going back to Axel.
Looking around, I thought I could understand why Yunyun might want to get out of town. Since the batt
le with Sylvia, there was one thing in the village that had changed.
“Oh! Yunyun, She Who Brings Blue Lightning! Long time no see. I was just going to go eat. Wanna come with?”
Another girl, about Megumin and Yunyun’s age, called out as we walked along. Yunyun turned red and gave a rapid shake of her head. “Oh?” the girl said, not looking particularly offended. “Too bad.” And then she smiled, waving as she walked away.
“…Aren’t you popular, O She Who Brings Blue Lightning? Why not at least have something to eat with her?”
Yunyun, practically in tears, covered her blushing face with both hands. “Stop it! Don’t call me that! Why did I ever do something so stupid…?”
Ever since the battle, people had been treating Yunyun completely differently. She was no longer the weirdo with the strange tastes. Now they thought she was extremely charismatic.
A young guy called out to her as he passed.
“Ooh! Yunyun, Thunder Bearer! I was just going to go eat…”
“Well, I wasn’t! I’m not eating!”
The guy, who also didn’t seem bothered by Yunyun’s swift and almost tearful refusal, commented that that was too bad and moved on with a wave.
This didn’t appear to be some new form of bullying.
“…Aren’t you popular, O Thunder Bearer? Why not go along, let him treat you?”
“Stop! Please stop! Don’t call me by weird nicknames!” Yunyun yelled, covering her face and shaking her head vigorously.
Suddenly Megumin was grinding the end of her staff into Yunyun’s cheek. “Stop? I thought you were first among the spell-casters of the Crimson Magic Clan. You cannot usurp my title and then tell me you don’t like nicknames! Come on, strike that cool pose again!”
“S-stoppiiit! Megumin, are you still upset about that?! You couldn’t let me have it even once?”
In the midst of their argument, I muttered, “Nice to see such good friends…”
Crimson Magic Clan, Let’s & Go!! Page 15
