This was my chance!
✦ ✦ ✦
He wasn’t even wearing any armor. If I could just get around behind him, one good stab would do the trick. I started sneaking forward again…
✦ ✦ ✦
“You, there! Whaddaya think you’re doing?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Before I knew what was happening, the grim reaper was standing in front of me. Shit! Ambush skill, where did you go?!
The specter of death raised his scythe.
Aqua shouted, “Kazumaaaa!”
Ah. So that’s it. Hadn’t she told me, back when we’d delved that dungeon?
I pulled my hood back, striking out with my sword. The grim reaper’s arm moved so fast, it was practically a blur. And then suddenly, the floor was coming closer…
✦ ✦ ✦
Down in the dungeon, Aqua had told me that Ambush didn’t work on the undead.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Power Up!”
Suddenly, someone was casting magic at me.
I was in the usual white room. I guess I’d gotten my head chopped off or something. I was dead. Yet again. I stood stock-still and said, “Uh, Lady Eris, what are you doing?”
I was wondering about the sudden magic, but she responded only by exclaiming, “Protection!”
What was going on here? I could actually feel additional effects from the spells. Aqua was supposed to have buffed me already, but maybe different sects had slightly different spells or something. But that still left a question.
“Lady Eris, um, why are you casting magic on me?”
“Resistance! Why, so you can get back into the fight as soon as my senior goddess resurrects you, of course,” she said.
Uhhhh…no.
“Cut me some slack, Lady Eris. We’re already screwed on this one. I’ll be honest with you—I didn’t even think about the fact that there might be undead there.” I sat down and kicked out my feet. “I really thought things were gonna go fine this time.”
It had worked so well on that guy Mammon, I figured, why shouldn’t it work again? But I guess as good as my Luck was, I couldn’t expect everything to go my way. Dammit! Aqua had raised the death flag with all that talk about bad feelings, and I was the one who’d bought it. When we got home, I was going to give her a piece of my mind.
“I don’t know what you mean. This isn’t over. Your friends are still fighting the Demon King,” Eris said. “I admit the situation doesn’t look great for you, but— Oh! Oh! Darkness’s Decoy skill finally gave out, and now Mitsu…Mitsurugi, was it? He’s surrounded by enemies…! …Oh, phew! Yunyun blew them away with a magical blast.”
Eris was looking into thin air, emotions wrenching her expression one way and then another. I wished she would stop feeding my freshly retired body all these shocking twists.
“No, look, we’ve got a plan. If anyone dies, we abandon the fight, collect the body, and teleport right out of there. I’m sure they’ll start trying to get away any minute.”
I was sitting on the floor, practically limp, but Eris cocked her head. “No, no one’s given up yet. In fact, Megumin is positively over the edge, and even Yunyun looks fired up. Megumin is waving her staff around and saying something about ‘my lifelong friend and rival, let us take revenge for Kazuma!’ She looks like she might drop an explosion right there in the middle of that little room. And Darkness is shouting about killing them all…”
N-no, Megumin, stop… Don’t egg them all on… And Darkness! She was supposed to be a well-bred noblewoman. Why did she have to be so impatient? I was mentally demanding why they didn’t get the hell out of there, but to be fair, the one who had died was, well, me. If it had been Mitsurugi or Darkness or Yunyun, the tide of battle would have turned on the spot—but it wasn’t, and I guess they didn’t want to give up this chance to take out the Demon King.
Okay, so it wasn’t quite what we’d planned, but I was sure that if things got too ugly, they’d get out of there. I only wondered whether, if it came to that, they’d forget the plan completely and leave my corpse lying there in the Demon King’s chamber.
N-no. They wouldn’t do that. They’d make sure to grab my body on the way out. Wouldn’t they?
I was starting to fret a little, but Eris smiled at me. “Call me cruel, but I’m going to have you move on. This is the first time I’ve broken the rules on my own initiative and not because my senior goddess was being pushy, so I’m a bit nervous, but…”
Nervous, right. Eris was grinning excitedly.
“No, hey, I can’t do it, Lady Eris. Even Mitsurugi seemed to be struggling with those guys. What do you think I’m going to contribute to a battle like that? I’m the weakest class, and I don’t even have any cheats, remember? Let me ask you something. Does stuff like poison or Backstabbing even work on the Demon King? I mean, it happens all the time in games, right? Boss characters are immune to poison and insta-kill attacks and stuff.”
“Hmm. You’re right—I don’t think poison would affect the Demon King. One-hit-kill attacks probably wouldn’t work, either…” Eris smiled, with just a touch of pain.
Huh, so my sneak-attack plan wouldn’t have worked anyway.
“That’s even more reason I can’t do anything, then. My stats suck compared to other adventurers’. All I’ve got going for me is my good Luck. Look, I don’t mean to complain too much, but I think it’s kind of amazing that I’ve even made it this far with abilities like these, isn’t it? Not to toot my own horn, but…” Eris was just listening to my pathetic moaning with a little smile. “Well, I got sent to another world with nothing but the tracksuit on my back. I spent my whole life as a pampered shut-in, and then suddenly I was sleeping in a stable and doing hard physical labor. Then I had to make my own fortune at the same time as I was trying to keep my friends out of trouble, and before I knew it, I was mired in debt. And no sooner do I think I’ve paid my way out than I’m caught up with a bunch of big-trouble types, dragged into one dangerous thing and then another.”
Geez, a moment like this, and it seemed like I couldn’t stop whining. The worst of my experiences just kept rolling through my mind.
“Would it have killed someone to let me have at least a few good memories? Hell, even I think I’ve gotten pretty twisted since arriving here. Who wouldn’t? I was always a shut-in, but now I feel like an awful human being, too…”
Eris didn’t say anything about my litany, just listened silently…
And then she giggled.