We stayed one night at the Axis church so Megumin could recover her MP; then we set out by carriage to go after Aqua. Maybe the Axis monster-extermination campaign was working, because even though the roadway looked long abandoned, travel was perfectly smooth.
Well, “smooth”…
“Hey, Darkness, it’s terrific that we’re making great time at all, but don’t you think we’re going a little fast? We can afford to slow down just a tad. The Axis followers obviously did good work, but there’s no way they uprooted all the monsters. What if an enemy comes jumping out and spooks the horses?”
Darkness, sitting in the driver’s seat with the reins in her hands, didn’t respond.
When you were traveling with only a few people, it was best to go with the smallest carriage available. And two people could ride in a two-horse vehicle. So Darkness was in the driver’s seat, while Megumin and I sat behind her.
“Um, Darkness…? I agree that we seem to be truly flying. I sympathize with your concern for Aqua, but if you go too fast, won’t you tire out the horses?” Megumin sounded just as worried as I was about our pace.
“………” Darkness, though, didn’t respond, and she didn’t slow down.
Starting to feel uneasy, I tried again. “Hey, are you listening? We said you’re going too fast. We need to slow down a little…”
Finally, Darkness turned to me, and I could see tears in her eyes. “The horses… They won’t do what I tell them…”
““…………………”” Now it was Megumin’s and my turn to fall silent.
“I’ve heard about this,” Darkness went on. “They say that in Arcanletia, even the horses are brainwashed by the Axis Church. They won’t listen to anyone but an Axis follower…”
“You’ve got to stop them!”
“Oh! Kazuma, look! There’s a profession of faith in the Axis Church tucked in the corner of the carriage! We’ve been had! That believer trapped us!”
Sitting there in the runaway carriage, I was reminded just how crazy Axis Church followers could be.
“Arrrrgh, damn it all! We should have destroyed the Axis Church before we bothered about the Demon King’s army!”
“K-Kazuma! I think you, as our representative, ought to sign the paper so that…”
“H-hey, listen to me! How about this? If you do what we ask, I’ll give you some nice fresh vegetables later! So fresh they jump right off the plate!” Darkness was trying to reason with the horses; I could only hold my head in my hands and scream.
Megumin had picked up the profession of faith but lost her balance in the careering carriage. And then Darkness shouted: “Oh no, there’s someone up ahead! Kazuma, what do we do? We’re going to run those people over!”
Despite the rattling carriage, I somehow managed to get my balance well enough to look down the road, and there was indeed a crowd of people ahead of us. And not just a couple of them, either! At this rate…!
Then Megumin said, “Let us run them over.”
………
“I do not care. Darkness, simply drive straight through them.”
“M-Megumin?!” Darkness said, looking at Megumin with a pained expression, and that was when, belatedly, I realized who the silhouettes were.
“I do not care,” Megumin insisted. “In fact, I hope you will run over as many of them as possible! Standing at the head of that group is—!”
The crowd seemed to have noticed the oncoming carriage, because the figures scattered. But one man continued standing smack in the middle of the road. He saw Megumin in the carriage and shouted something.
It was a white-haired old guy dressed in cleric’s robes and a metal breastplate. He was clearly waving at us.
“Well, well, Miss Megumin! It’s been so long—do you remember me? It’s me, the most important person in the Axis Church—”
The carriage went plowing right over the most important person in the Axis Church.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Heal! Heal! How’s that? Any better?”
Granted, our carriage had been rampaging because of an Axis follower, but even so, I felt compelled to use my newly acquired Heal skill on the person we had just run over.
“Yes, that’s much better. Goodness, I could have done it myself. But a youngster’s Heal is quite nice! Not only my flesh, but my soul has been rejuvenated!”
“That’s Lord ‘Anything Goes’ Zesta for you! He’s a diehard!”
“You know what he always says: ‘I’ll try anything once, even an orc!’ You go! Lord Zesta, you go and go and go!”
Zesta: the entire time I had been casting Heal on him, he’d said only the most awful things. So this guy was the Church’s head honcho, huh?
“It’s been such a long time, Miss Megumin. I never imagined our reunion would be prefaced with such a brutal greeting, though. I’m afraid the only ways you could apologize for this would be to join the Axis Church or to go steady with me.”
“For the record, it was the rampaging horses we borrowed from your church that caused us to run you over, sir. Please don’t do anything…strange to them.” Megumin glowered at the old fart with his bizarre pronouncements, then heaved a sigh.
The old guy turned to me. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Master Kazuma! You’re welcome to call me Zesta—no need for a title—but you can also feel free to call me Papa, Darling, or Daddy. Whatever you like.”
“Megumin, a word of advice. You should be more careful about the company you keep.”
“It was not my choice to become acquainted with these people! Speaking of advice, Kazuma, I think you should heed your own. You wouldn’t want to be corrupted by this lot, would you?”
At that, I looked around again. The crowd was full of men and women, up to and including the elderly; everybody was dressed in different outfits so that at first glance, it wasn’t obvious what sort of a group it was. But they all had one thing in common. Namely…
“Hey, Big Bro, you look like a really cool guy! I can call you ‘Big Bro,’ can’t I?”
“Stop that! True, he’s quite handsome and seems like an outstanding person, but I don’t know about calling someone who’s not an Axis follower ‘Bro’… I know you want a big brother to be friends with you, but pick one from the Church, okay? What a shame; he is so handsome…”
“Awww, okay… Hey, Big Bro, don’t you like the Axis Church?” The little girl looked at me anxiously.
I don’t not like it.
I managed to swallow the words before they got out.
Growing impatient with my lack of an answer, the little girl and the woman I assumed was her mother reached out and touched hands with another believer. The person they switched off with was a cutie-pie wearing a frilly gothic-Lolita dress, who looked up at me pleadingly. “Um… May I…call you Elder Brother?”
“Like hell you can! I hear that bass in your voice! You’re a man, aren’t you?! First Zesta, now you! Will the Axis Church take anyone?!”
“I’m not anyone! I’m like Lord Zesta! Any and all are welcome, both in the Church and in—”
“Stop, shut up, just go away! I’ve got all the fashionable archetypes I need with my hard-masochist Crusader!”
“Huh?!” Darkness pointed to herself, apparently disagreeing with my characterization; meanwhile, I chased Goth-Loli Boy away.
I couldn’t believe this. It was exhausting talking to these people. But there was someone here who looked even more exhausted than we were.
✦ ✦ ✦
Namely…