Chapter 5
May There Be a Goddess for This Impure Town!
1
It was the morning after we’d learned that every hot spring in town had been poisoned. After breakfast, we gathered in the girls’ room.
“I’m concerned about the main springs,” said Aqua, who had spent the previous day going around purifying the baths.
Apparently, the poisoned water had appeared only briefly and then stopped flowing—almost like someone was doing an experiment.
No sooner had Aqua heard the Guild employee’s report than she made a beeline for town and started decontaminating everything she could get her hands on.
“The main springs? Those are in those mountains behind the Axis Church, aren’t they?”
Aqua nodded.
Behind the huge church, home to the Axis sect, were the water sources widely regarded as the town’s lifeline. Naturally, they were very carefully guarded, and I couldn’t imagine they would be easy to sneak into.
“True, I doubt someone could go from bath to bath in such a short time. Our spreading that information around must have made him anxious, and he decided to attack the source directly, no matter the consequences. That seems the most obvious theory.”
It would certainly be quicker to poison the wellsprings than every individual bath.
“But the question would be how he got in to such a carefully guarded location,” Wiz said, knitting her brow.
“Kazuma,” Darkness broke in, “what is that you’ve been eating? Let me try some.” She grabbed my snack—something that looked a bit like pizza and passed for junk food in this world.
…………
“You know you’ve been looking even dumber than Aqua these days?”
“?!”
Darkness dropped the pizza gracelessly before it even got to her mouth. Her face was stiff with shock.
“Excuse me,” Aqua interjected, “but that makes it sound like you think I set the standard for dumbness around here.”
“Well, you do… Hey, stoppit! I take it back—I apologize. You’ve worked really hard on this trip and even used your head a little! I’m sorry, so give me back my pizza!”
As I had it out with Aqua over my food, Darkness stood up suddenly.
“…The source, right? Well, Kazuma, don’t just sit there; let’s go! We’re going to head to those mountains and find out what’s going on!”
She seemed awfully invested in this. Maybe she was frustrated feeling like all she could do to help was tout her family’s name.
“Okay, sure. Let’s see what the deal is with this water source.”
2
Just to the left of the massive church that was the Axis headquarters, there was an enormous lake that served as the source for all the town’s water.
And behind the church were the mountains the water flowed from.
A division of knights from the town was strictly guarding the path leading to the spring.
“Come on, I’m an Arch-priest of the Axis Church! Here, look at this! Hey, you’re not looking!”
Aqua was trying to foist her Adventurer’s Card on one of the guards.
We had been stopped at the entrance to the mountains.
“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!”
“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?
“Mr. Hans! I won’t let you go any farther! Cursed Crystal Prison!”
“?! Dammit! I never did get along with you!”
Wiz’s spell had encased Hans’s lower body in ice just ten yards or so from the last spring.
Slimes were supposed to be strong against magic, and this one was a mutant Slime that had become a general of the Demon King’s army. For a spell to work so readily—Well, that was a Lich for you.
But…!
“You’re too soft, Wiz! Let me show you something else I’ve got up my sleeve!”
He tore off his own right hand and flung it toward the main spring.
““““Oh no!””””
Everyone except Hans and me raised a cry as the appendage traced a beautiful arc through the air directly toward the spring.
And what was I doing?
“Deadeye!”
I pulled out my bow and sniped Hans’s hand out of the air.
“Whaaa—?!” His eyes widened with surprise as he looked first at me, then at the spring.
He ground his teeth and started tearing pieces off his frozen lower body and flinging them one after another toward the water.
Your ability to hit things with Deadeye depends on your Dexterity and Luck. But high as my Luck was, there were simply too many bits and pieces to shoot them all down.
“Aqua! What was that magic you used to make your Luck better when we were playing rock, paper, scissors? Use it on me now!”
“Huh?! R-right!”
If she could use that spell from when we were arguing over the seat in the carriage, it would temporarily drive up my Luck stat—call it magical doping!
“Blessing!”
“Deadeye!”
The moment I had the buff from Aqua, I let loose with an arrow of enhanced distance and accuracy.
One after another I fired them, my aim always true, shooting down more than a few of the bits of Hans in the air.
As they watched, everyone except Hans and me let out a sigh of relief.
“Wh-what the hell’s going on?! Who can shoot like that?!”
Megumin’s response to Hans’s outburst was calm.
“Do not underestimate this man’s Luck! Though his stats are lower than a mage’s, we have seen him defeat more than one powerful enemy in contests of luck alone.”
“Hey, if you’re gonna praise me, do it right!”
With our foe partially trapped in ice, Megumin and I were so confident that we could stand to have that argument.
And maybe our confidence caused us to let our guard down just a little bit.
Hans, in absolute frustration, pulled yet another piece from his body and flung it…
“Kazuma, go ahead and shoot that down, please!”
Aqua, her hands on her hips, didn’t sound the least bit concerned.
“Just leave it to…! …Oh.”
As I was about to fire my arrow, I noticed something.
“Huh? Kazuma, what’s wrong?” Aqua asked, surprised.
With a sploosh, the bit of Hans’s body fell into the water.
“““““Huh?”””””
My companions and Hans let out a cry, and I replied.
“…I’m out of arrows.”
“N-noooooo!”
Aqua dashed toward the last spring and reached for the water.
“Lady Aqua, you mustn’t! Part of Mr. Hans’s body is in there! This is on a different level from the poison you dealt with in the other springs!”
Aqua ignored Wiz, shoving her hand into the water.
“Ahhhhit’shot, it’s hot! Heal! Heal! Wiz, do something! This is the last spring and the last pipe, and they’re gonna be poisoned!”
“L-Lady Aqua—! …Light of Saber!!”
Aqua shouted to Wiz despite her burns, using Heal to keep the pain at bay.
In response, Wiz threw a knife hand, using light magic to cut away a part of the polluted pipe. She cut away only the part carrying the poisoned water, a section that would take only a matter of days to repair.
But just as we were all feeling a flush of relief…
…the sound of something cracking apart came from Hans’s direction.
“Kazuma! K-K-Kazuma…!”
Megumin sounded genuinely terrified. I looked over.
There was Hans—or rather, the Slime who had taken on the form we knew as Hans.
“Why…! What an amazing specimen of Slime! Damn! If only you weren’t poisonous, I would take you home and make you my pet!”
This from Darkness. The Slime hadn’t even touched her, and yet her brain had already dissolved.
The creature was bigger than our house.
“That thing is huge!”
8
The Slime had become vast and round, no longer any hint of a human shape about it. It swallowed up the trees nearby, absorbing them into its body.
“Oh crap, I guess Hans is done playing around! Wiz, do something about this guy! Freeze him again or something! Just do him in!” I gave a shout and started running to keep from being absorbed by the ever-expanding Hans.
“I don’t have enough MP to freeze something that big all at once! I need to get more MP from someone…!”
She was looking to me for help, but who around here had MP to spare for her?
“Megumin! You’re going to have to be our sacrificial lamb! I don’t have nearly enough magic, and Aqua’s power would destroy Wiz!”
“Me?! A-a-absolutely not! I’ll use my Explosion to blow him into tiny little pieces!”
“No, don’t!” Aqua shouted. “The whole mountain will get poisoned!”
There was a clanking sound as Darkness began removing her armor.
Huh?
“What do you think you’re doing? Why are you taking your…?”
“Armor won’t make any difference against a Slime. They just slide in through the cracks. So I might as well get rid of it.”
Now I was sure her brain was mush. Darkness kept stripping off armor until she stood there in her civilian clothes.
“And anyway, I like this armor. I just got it cleaned. No way I’m going to let it get melted.” Then she threw aside her great sword, too.
Physical attacks were meaningless against a Slime. If a weapon wasn’t going to be any use, why bother with the weight?
“Hey, what do you think you can do with no armor and no weapon? Run!”
I grabbed Darkness’s hand and began pulling her away, but she pointed wordlessly in the direction of the wellspring.
There…
“Waaaaah! Kazumaaa! Pleeease, dear Kazumaaaaa!!”
There was Aqua, her hand still in the spring, weeping and shouting but making no attempt to flee in the face of the oncoming Slime.
“You moron, what are you doing?! Forget about that and get the hell out of there!”
“But—! But—! If I don’t protect this water, my followers will—!”
Darkness stepped up as if to protect Aqua, who continued her purification even though the water was scalding her.
Wiz approached Aqua, too, pale-faced but resolute.
“Kazuma, what do we do?! We need one of your dirty little tricks, and we need it now!”
“H-hey, what do you mean, ‘dirty little tricks’?! Dammit… Fine! I’ll think of something. In the meantime, do whatever you can!”
“Wh-whatever I can?”
Megumin, gripping her staff with both hands, sounded uncertain.
“Yeah, and for you that means just one thing! Your job is to finish off the boss! Wait with the others once you’re ready to use your magic!”
Megumin gave her staff an extra squeeze, and I left her there, making for Hans.
The splorching mound of black jelly wasn’t content with eating up all the trees around us; it was starting to take in nearby hills as well.
Now that Hans had abandoned any pretense of a human form, maybe he was exercising his true powers. He made no attempt to attack us but headed lazily for the springs, consuming everything he encountered on the way.
With my weapons and skills, there wasn’t anything I could do to the massive Slime.
So…what was I supposed to do?
I could try Freeze, but Hans probably wouldn’t get so much as a coat of frost.
And because he was so close to the spring where Aqua and the others stood, we couldn’t use Explosion even if we wanted to.
If Aqua would just give up and run away, that would help. The scaredy-cat had chosen a really inconvenient time to grow a backbone.
I was out of arrows, so I couldn’t even try to draw Hans’s attention.
…Hang on.
I figured Hans was essentially in his true form at this point. So if I used a certain something I had with me…
“Lady Aqua, even if I used every last drop of magic I had, I wouldn’t be able to freeze something that size! I know you’re doing this for the Axis Church, but think how much worse it would be for them if anything happened to you!”
“Noooooo! What will I do if I can’t protect my followers? If I can’t save their home, what good am I? Keep on Freezing, please!”
No matter how desperate Wiz’s pleas as she cooled Aqua’s hand, the goddess wouldn’t be moved.
Beside them was Megumin, ready with her spell and waiting for my signal, and Darkness was cricking her neck in preparation for the fight.
At Darkness’s feet were her beloved armor, her sword, and…
…all the souvenirs she and I had bought together.
“Darkness, grab that stuff on the ground and come over here!”
“Stuff? You mean these souvenirs?”
She obligingly ran over to me with the load of gifts. I took out of my bag the ones I’d been carrying: the Arcan buns and meat buns we had gotten from the round-eared elf and the beardless dwarf.
I began flinging them toward Hans.
“Aww! What are you doing?! Don’t waste my buns! You’ll pay for this, Kazu…ma…”
Darkness was incensed, but she trailed off when she saw what Hans did next.
He was eating the buns happily.
It made sense: Wouldn’t a carb-rich, high-caloric snack be more appealing to a Slime than trees and dirt?
I took the mountain of gifts Darkness was holding.
“K-Kazuma, you can’t! Those were for Father and the servants…”
I ignored Darkness, who seemed deliberately oblivious to what was going on, and began hurling the treats in the opposite direction from the main spring.
“You can always get more souvenirs! I’ll even go get them with you! Don’t look at me like that—just run!”
Darkness stopped looking pitiful just long enough to run back and join the others.
Hans seemed to have taken an interest in Darkness’s snacks and was heading after them with a splorch, splorch.
“Wiz. If there was a little less of Hans—if he was everywhere at once—could you freeze him then?”
“I might be able to just manage it if he was half the size he is now…”
Only just, huh? …All right.
“Aqua. Would you be able to purify the pieces of Hans as Wiz froze them?”
“Y-yes, I could! In fact, if this weren’t such an emergency, I would show you what I can really do!”
I think this might actually work.
“And I protect everyone from any flying pieces, right?” Darkness said.
“You got it. We’re counting on you.”
For this, there was nothing we could do but trust Darkness’s über-tough body.
Aqua had a holy item equipped that would protect her from status effects like poison. And Darkness was so sturdy that she might as well have been wearing a holy item. She could withstand even the poison of a general of the Demon King.
…Or so I hoped.
I was pretty sure she had said something about taking a bunch of skills that upped her resistance to status effects. Why have a defensive specialist along if not for situations like this? We would just have to trust her.
In front of us, Hans was still gleefully devouring the buns.
Magical attacks had barely any effect on him, and physical attacks, none.
If we touched him we would die of poison, and if we beat him, the entire area would be contaminated.
How do I keep getting into fights with these life-threatening boss monsters?
All I wanted was a nice hot-springs vacation.
I was starting to suspect I wasn’t really so lucky after all.
“Kazuma, I am ready at any time! I have cooked up my best stuff!” Megumin had removed the patch from her eye, which was shining a bright crimson.
Hans had finished all the buns and was now looking for something new to eat. Or maybe obeying the last remaining bit of his rational mind.
Either way, he turned toward us.
I held my hand out to Wiz.
“When I give the signal, Wiz, take my magic. Just leave me enough to survive.”
“What?!”
But even as she spoke, I was saying:
“…Okay, Megumin. Take it away. Do it!”
“Take it away, I shall! Here I go! Explosion!!”
Her magical blast tore into Hans, rending him into countless tiny pieces.
As Darkness moved to cover me, Wiz drained my magic as fast as she could, and I felt my consciousness growing dim.
I normally wasn’t much for leaving my fate in the hands of these people. But this time, I would just have to trust my friends…
9
Several days later.
We, the heroes who had saved the town…
“Sniff… But I tried so hard… I really tried this time!”
…were headed back to Axel with a blubbering Aqua in tow.
“It is strange, but…in this case, I rather sympathize with you, Aqua…” Megumin tried to comfort her as the carriage bounced along.
But Aqua only gazed out the window and sniffled.
After we’d destroyed Hans…
Darkness had used her body to shield us from the rain of Slime bits while Wiz, brimming with the MP from me, had frozen all the pieces.
“…I wonder if Father and the servants will like these…,” Darkness muttered, holding the new souvenirs she had bought.
I was getting some serious “daddy complex” vibes here.
But never mind her. I turned to Aqua.
“…You know, you don’t have to go all out all the time.”
“What was I supposed to do?! I thought if I didn’t use all my strength, everything would be poisoned! Waaaaaaahh! I tried sooooo hard, and this is the thanks I get!”
I ignored Aqua as she kept sniveling and shifted my attention to Wiz, who still seemed a little drained. She was always pale, but now she was practically going to disa— Hey, wait a minute!
“Hey, she’s disappearing! She’s gonna vanish!”
“Darkness, she needs HP! Quick, give her some of your life!”
“O-okay! Kazuma, go!”
We flew into a panic inside the carriage trying to take care of Wiz.
I used Drain Touch to take some HP from Darkness, our toughest party member, and give it to the fading Lich. She started to return to normal, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Aqua, who was still looking out the window, shouted:
“I was just trying to purify everything! Why was everyone so upset?!”
We had gone to the Adventurers Guild to report the defeat of Hans, general of the Demon King’s army, where we were greeted with more than a little gratitude for handling the troubles with the polluted water.
…Until the hot springs started running with nothing but regular old water.
After I had gone unconscious from loss of magic, Aqua had apparently started filtering in earnest.
As a result, the mountain spring, normally rich in minerals and other curatives, became nothing more than a gigantic pot of boiling water.
Not to mention, our long-suffering Lich nearly found herself in the next life thanks to the powerful purification.
Practically speaking, I guess you could say that Aqua was the one who finally fulfilled the Demon King’s plan to cut off the source of the Axis Church’s prosperity.
We had, in essence, destroyed the town’s most important industry.
Normally, that would have meant a demand for a massive payment of damages.
But in this case, the Axis Arch-priest decided that since we did it to save the church, and since we had, in fact, prevented the town’s actual destruction, much could be forgiven. We handed back the reward for Hans by way of compensation and got out of Dodge.
We had expected to simply go home by Teleport, but with Wiz still all but transparent, we wound up back in the carriage.
“Please, you have to listen to me! Both of you, why won’t you listen?!”
“What is it you want? Let go—this carriage rocks quite enough without you shaking me, too.”
“What is it? We’ll listen. Go ahead.”
Aqua regarded Megumin and Darkness with a somber expression.
“I think you understand that things turned out the way they did here because my power is too strong. I know you’re dense, Darkness, and you’re crazy, Megumin, but even you— Ow! Ow! H-hey, listen to me! What I’m trying to say is, even a couple of lugs like you must see the truth by now!”
Aqua tried to make her case with both Megumin and Darkness strangling her.
“I think it’s about time you both believed I’m a real goddess!”
The other two fell silent for a moment at that.
“…Kazuma, we must find a place with more effective hot springs next time,” Megumin suggested.
“Yeah. Specifically, effective on delusions,” Darkness added.
“Please believe me!”
It was noisy inside the carriage.
But Aqua’s renewed weeping was loudest of all.
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