Darkness glanced at me. “This blood splattered on me after I rescued you. I had to cut my way out of the hydra. Much longer in there, and I would have suffocated and perished as well. But I’m okay now. I’m not injured.”
She still looked pretty bleak.
“I appreciate your going in to get my body,” I said. “Thanks. Hey, come on, let’s hurry home and take a bath. Sound good?” I smiled as if to say, No worries, right?
“Hey, Kazuma, I’m glad you’re trying to cheer up Darkness, but I don’t think you should be offering her a bath in that state.”
Oh, that’s right. Naked. Oops.
3
“I finally understand why the royal knights haven’t offed that hydra yet. It’s not that they won’t; it’s that they can’t.”
We were on the road back to Axel, reflecting on the battle with the monster. We practically had to drag Darkness, who still seemed depressed about something.
“Apparently, a Kowloon Hydra uses all that magic to regenerate lost heads,” Megumin said. “To defeat it, one would need to hit it with such immense firepower that it would be unable to regenerate, or otherwise to wound it over and over, forcing it to use up all its magic regenerating, and then finally deal it a mortal blow when it was out of MP. Neither seems very practical…”
She was right about that. And hydras weren’t stupid. You could keep on hurting it, but that was why it fled to the bottom of the lake to regenerate its MP. As for firepower, what could we use that would be more powerful than one of Megumin’s explosions?
I looked back at Darkness, who was trudging along at the tail of our formation. “Megumin’s right,” I said. “This one’s too much for us. Let’s just let the knights deal with the hydra. They can work down its magic until it goes to sleep. You okay with that, Darkness?”
After a long pause, “Yeah” was the only answer we got.
Had she really been that interested in taking out a big bounty?
Then Aqua spoke up, looking inordinately pleased with herself for some reason. “Well, it’s not all bad news. Thanks to me, that hydra won’t be coming out of that lake anytime soon! It’ll consider the water I purified to be an infringement on its territory, and it’ll be busy polluting the lake again. That should buy enough time for the knights to arrive and take care of things.”
“Hold on a second,” I said. “What’s this? Did you actually do something worthwhile? Something almost…clever?”
The two of us were ecstatic, but Megumin, riding on Aqua’s back, offered, “When Aqua is this confident, there’s usually a catch.”
Why did she have to go and jinx us?
I was normally the one to give Megumin a piggyback ride after she had used up her MP, but today she asked Aqua to do it, claiming I smelled funny.
“No, no, I don’t think there’ll be any trouble this time,” I said. “Heck, even if there is, it won’t be our fault. We were the ones who bought some time for the knights to get there!”
“That’s right!” Aqua added. “Do you have some problem with the way I work? I can’t believe you, Megumin! You’d better be nice, or I’ll make you ride with Kazuma or Darkness.”
“Please, anything but that! I apologize!”
We got back to town without any special trouble.
“Megumin and I will go report to the Guild. You two stink bombs should go home and take a bath. The way you look right now, Kazuma, you’d probably just get arrested anyway.”
At the moment, I was covered in nothing but a cape I had borrowed from Megumin, and between that and the smell, I was eager not to attract too much attention.
“Let’s go, Megumin! Be sure to exaggerate what we did as much as possible. We can’t get a reward for killing the monster, but maybe we can score some cash!”
“Just leave it to me! I shall spare them no detail of the impressiveness of my Explosion!”
Somewhat against my better judgment, I let the two of them go, and Darkness and I headed back to the house.
4
Once we were home, I let the still-gloomy Darkness take the first bath, then I went in and soaked until the smell was finally gone.
“It’s kind of scary what a person can get used to,” I muttered to myself as I sank into the tub. “I just died, but it doesn’t especially bother me.” I looked down at my body, about a third of which had been destroyed. Aqua had joked about calling me Kid-zuma, but I had been healed back to my, uh, original size, right?
There in the bath, I did a thorough inspection of the parts of me that had gone missing.
I heard Darkness’s worried voice from the changing room. “Kazuma, you’re taking even longer than usual in there today. Do you hurt? Or are you still trying to recover your physical strength after coming back to life?”
“I-I’m just fine! No problem! That smell was awful, right? I’m just making sure it’s all washed off.”
Darkness was kind enough to be concerned about me despite her own depression. I could hardly tell her that I was making sure I hadn’t “shrunk” after having my body restored.
In spite of my assurances, Darkness didn’t go anywhere. She was just standing there. Was there something she wanted to say?
After a moment, she managed to come out with, “Hey, Kazuma. I’m… I’m sorry I forced us into that hunt. Everything’s gone so well for us in the past, I guess I just got overconfident. I really wanted to take down that hydra.”
“Well, I think we’ve seen the last of it anyway,” I said. “All’s well that ends well. What’s taking Aqua and Megumin so long? I bet they stopped at the Guild for a nice meal. Let’s hurry over and catch up with them there.”
“Y-yeah… Sounds good…” Darkness still didn’t seem very happy.
…Was there some kind of connection between that hydra and her? Or did it have something to do with that butler from the other day?
“I left you a change of clothes in here, okay? I’ll be waiting in the living room.”
She was about to leave the changing room.
“Is there some reason you feel like you have to defeat that hydra?” I asked.
“?! W-well, I…!”
Bingo.
She didn’t say anything else, though, and for a second I wondered what to do. I wouldn’t normally be too keen on going a second round with an opponent who had just killed me. But it seemed like the despondent Darkness couldn’t bring herself to ask to go back and fight the hydra again.
“…Things didn’t work out today,” I said after a second, “but the next time we fight that hydra, we’ll make sure we have a plan. All right?”
“Wha—?!”
I couldn’t help but tease her a little. “What, all that talk about keeping the citizens safe and stuff, and you were just gonna give up on that monster?”
“I was not, you idiot! Who do you think I am?! Protecting the populace is the very mission of the Dustiness family! The next time we meet that hydra, it’s done for!”
Ah, the familiar bluster. I felt like I had gotten a little bit of the old Darkness back.
Having both taken our baths and gotten rid of the delightful smell, we arrived at the Adventurers Guild. I assumed Aqua and Megumin were already finished making the report. I opened the door, and…
“Why?! Why must you always do these outrageous things to us?!”
“It’s true! Aqua, you remember the other day when you turned the fishmonger’s tank to pure water and killed all the fish he got from the ocean?”
“B-but I thought I was doing them a favor! That fish tank was so small. I thought the least I could do was give them some nice clean water.”
“What do we do?! We can’t deal with a Kowloon Hydra on our own!”
“M-Mommy! I wanna go home!”
“Pass around those wanted posters! More posters! One for every adventurer in town!”
The Guild was in an absolute uproar. Adventurers and staff were shouting, and right there in the middle of it all, Aqua was standing and weeping.
> “Oh! Kazuma, Darkness, thank goodness you’re here!” Megumin said when she spotted us. “You have to do something about this!” She worked her way through the commotion to reach us.
“And what is ‘this’?” I asked. “What’s got everyone so upset? It looks like they’re all angry at Aqua, but I thought we did pretty well this time.”
“W-we did! And the hydra would have woken up eventually with or without us, so there’s no reason everyone should be this upset…” Megumin, never keen on confrontation, shrank into herself. Darkness grabbed a passing guild girl.
“Hey, what’s going on here? I know we failed to defeat the monster, but there’s no call to make this much fuss about it. We didn’t manage to kill the thing, but at least we bought some time until the royal knights arrive.”
“Th-that’s just it. Your timing couldn’t be worse. It seems there was some kind of problem in the capital, and the knights don’t have time to trouble themselves with the likes of us…”
Some kind of problem?!
“Spill it! What’s going on?! Is the capital in trouble?! Is my adorable little sister in danger?!”
“L-little sister? No, it sounds like the trouble occurred a short while ago and is mostly over now. It seems nothing serious came of it. Right now, the knights are on a manhunt for this person who turned the capital upside down…”
I felt my heart start beating again. I had been on the verge of running off to the capital myself.
“Apparently, a group calling itself the Silver-Haired Thief Brigade actually managed to infiltrate the royal castle…”
Darkness and I both just about choked. The employee didn’t seem to notice us, though. She held out a sheet of paper. “Just two people managed to overcome the royal knights and a group of highly capable adventurers to boldly rob the castle of several important treasures.”
I took the paper and looked at it. It was a wanted poster. Across the top it read, SILVER-HAIRED THIEF BRIGADE. It depicted a villainous-looking guy in a mask, along with a silver-haired boy. The reward was two hundred million eris.
Man oh man. They were offering almost as much for me as for a general of the Demon King…
“Two hundred million… Two hundred million…”
“D-Darkness? Don’t look at me like that.”
Darkness normally showed no particular interest in money, but she was holding a wanted poster and giving me the crazy eye.
The Guild employee gave us a somewhat puzzled look but said, “The upshot is that we don’t know when or if a unit of knights will actually come here.”
Crap! That makes pretty much everything our fault.
The employee, totally oblivious to my mounting anxiety, continued, “But there is some hope. A few of the knights went all the way to Crimson Magic Village to see a famous fortune-teller who would tell them where the criminal was. Apparently, the fiend is right here in Axel! And the knights are on his trail like a pack of hounds!”
I broke out in a sweat.
“So we need your help, Mr. Kazuma Satou. You and your party have such good luck with big bounties like this one—if you can catch the thief, I’m sure the knights will be able to spare some men to help us!”
“Uhhh… I’m sure you’re…right,” I said. I was trying to act calm, but Darkness jabbed me with her elbow.
“It’s only a matter of time until they catch the thief,” she said. “After all, our own town is home to a fortune-teller even more powerful than the one in Crimson Magic Village!”
I knew who she meant. Someone wearing a mask very much like the one shown on this wanted poster.
This was bad. That demon loved his money, and for a bounty like mine, I was sure he would turn in his own business partner without so much as a second thought.
Suddenly, Darkness was frowning and trembling. The Guild employee clenched her fist as if to emphasize how high her expectations were.
“I just know you’ll do everything you can to help us, Mr. Satou!”
She smiled widely.
I, of course, decided to go full shut-in.
5
“One day in the woods, there a mighty dragon stood…”
Aqua sat with her feet up on the sofa, looking out the window at the pouring rain as she hummed a song. As ever, she was holding her egg, projecting a beam of warm light onto it from her palm. She claimed that singing to the egg was a way of helping the animal inside learn before he was born.
Megumin jumped up and said, loudly enough to drown out Aqua’s singing, “Kazuma, revenge! We must take revenge on that hydra!”
I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, brushing Chomusuke.
It had been three days since we’d fled the Adventurers Guild. Now that I knew people were on the hunt for me personally, I stuck close to Aqua to avoid Vanir’s future vision and never left the house.
The miserly demon seemed to have trouble seeing people who were around Aqua; it was my good luck that Aqua, still obsessed with hatching her egg, never left the house, either.
Megumin, apparently impatient with the shut-in lifestyle, urged us on a daily basis to seek revenge.
“I heard you before,” I said, “but how exactly are we supposed to defeat that monster? I’ve been thinking about it, but I haven’t been able to come up with a good plan.”
Megumin clutched her staff and clenched her teeth. “Firepower is the answer! We need to hit it with even more! If one Explosion isn’t enough, we must drop them on the foe until it is wiped out of existence! If you could use Drain Touch to transfer Aqua’s MP to me like you did during the battle with Mobile Fortress Destroyer, I believe it would be possible!”
Megumin’s impassioned argument caused Aqua to leave off singing. “No way. Why should I have to be subject to some corrupt Lich skill like Drain Touch? I’m tired of having to put up with that. Kazuma can try to threaten me and Darkness can try to bribe me and you can go as crazy as you like, Megumin, but I say no way. My holy MP isn’t something I dole out to just anyone!”
I gently ran the brush along Chomusuke’s tail. “And what have you been doing with your oh-so-important MP lately? You don’t have to look after that egg every waking minute. Just leave it in front of the fire. If you leave it too long, you can just have it for lunch.”
“You’re gonna get a taste of my holy fist the next time you mention snacking on this egg. I’ll have you know that I’m pouring MP into this dragon egg. Dragons can practically be described as balls of magic, so the more MP they have, the stronger they are. And this dragon is going to stand above all his kinfolk! As his mother, I want to do everything I can for him.”
…She was bent on insisting she had a dragon egg. Fine. Forget about her.
“Anyway, Megumin, why do you want revenge so badly? I know Darkness has some weird fixation on this hydra, but what have you got against it?”
“Well, you know, this and that. For starters, it did kill you. Should I not want to avenge you with my own hands?”
“O-oh. Gosh. Well, that’s…”
I had to admit, hearing that had a certain appeal.
“Recently, Darkness and I have been going to the hydra’s lake every day, using Darkness’s Decoy skill to draw it out, and then hitting it with Explosion before fleeing home. But despite our persistent harassment, we can’t figure out any other good way of dealing with it.”
“I thought I hadn’t heard the daily boom outside recently. So that’s what you’ve been up to! Right now the monster doesn’t seem too interested in attacking the town or anything, so don’t antagonize it. And you, Darkness! You’ve been encouraging her? I thought it was your job to stop her from doing stuff like that!”
“Er, hmm,” Darkness muttered from where she was seated on the carpet, polishing her armor. She couldn’t bring herself to look at me. “But I so desperately want to defeat that hydra. And this is a way of whittling down its MP…”
It was obvious by now that she really did want to bring down the hydra herself. Not that I had any way
of knowing why…
“Whatever. We can’t do anything until this rain lets up anyway. We’re talking about a water monster; trying to fight it in a downpour would only give it the advantage. When the rain stops, then we’ll see what we can do.”
Honestly, what I really wanted was to wait until the whole bounty-poster thing blew over.
“But it’s the rainy season,” Megumin said. “According to the weather fortune-teller, the rain won’t stop for a while.”
“When the rain lets up, we’ll see what we can do.”
“Why, you! What you’re really saying is that you can’t be bothered!”
“Hey, what’re you doing? Stop it! Don’t take it out on Chomusuke!”
Megumin had grabbed the brush and was trying to keep me from grooming Chomusuke’s tail.
Out of all of us, only Darkness looked really serious as she sat there relentlessly polishing her armor.
6
Several days passed, but the rain didn’t stop. Aqua and I stayed shut up in the house, while Darkness and Megumin kept going out to face the hydra.
Today was no different…
“We’re home! I am sorry, but please prepare a bath. You know how Darkness is!”
In they came, Darkness carrying Megumin on her back and smelling sour.
“Did you get eaten again? I thought you were just going to smack it with an Explosion and run away. This is dangerous. You guys have to stop.”
Darkness sloughed the immobile Megumin off onto the carpet, then started to remove her own armor, breathing heavily. She had just polished the stuff the other day, and now it was covered in scratches and spatters of hydra blood.
“That accursed beast!” she said. “Maybe it’s not just chance that it’s survived so many days of Explosions. Before I could use my Decoy skill, it ambushed us. Megumin didn’t have time to chant her magic. That was a real tight spot… But we got out of it somehow, then I had Megumin hit it with Explosion, and while it was busy regenerating its heads, we got away. I guess beating this thing really isn’t as simple as it seems.”
110-Million Bride Page 5
