“Megumin, I don’t care! Wipe these sons of bitches out! I’ll protect the rest of you like a human wall! We know for a fact that I can absorb one of your explosions!”
“Very well. If we die, we die together! And in the event you prove unable to defend us, after letting off so many explosions in a single day and then ultimately confronting the Demon King, I have no regrets for my life! And as long as all of us are together, I’m not even scared!”
“Stooop! Megumin, wait! Don’t take out Darkness!”
Hell of a conversation to come back to.
When I came around, I found myself looking straight into Aqua’s eyes. The soft, warm feeling at the back of my head must have been her lap, where she’d propped me up.
“Ah! You finally came back, Kazuma!” Aqua said, pleased to see me conscious again.
I scrambled to a sitting position and quickly took stock of the situation. What I saw was—
“Your Majesty, stay behind us!”
“Hey, you there, Crimson Magic wizard! Do you know what you’re doing?! If you use Explosion in a room like this, you’ll take yourself out along with us!”
What I saw was Megumin, threatening the Demon King and his minions with her staff, which glowed with an Explosion spell ready to go off, and Darkness, weaponless and covered in wounds but defending Megumin all the same.
Then there were the Demon King’s bodyguards—holding position in front of their liege—and Yunyun, all desperately trying to talk Megumin down.
Mitsurugi was on one knee—maybe he’d been hurt in the fighting—and his two girlfriends stood protectively in front of him. When I looked for the grim reaper who had taken me out in spite of my Ambush skill, I found a bloodstain on the floor where I’d been killed, along with Darkness’s sword, broken in half, and a big scythe lying on the ground. I guess the grim reaper had eaten a serious counterattack from Aqua.
I rose unsteadily to my feet and saw looks of relief on Megumin’s and Darkness’s faces as they glanced over and noticed me. It looked like we had a stalemate going on, but at the moment, the Demon King and his bodyguards weren’t paying any attention to Aqua or me. I guess I didn’t blame them, considering the dangerous light glinting from the end of Megumin’s staff.
While the king’s guards tried to convince Megumin to back down, Aqua said urgently to me, “Kazuma, you need to chant Teleport now. We’ll all get out of here. As soon as you and Yunyun are ready to transport us, Megumin can unleash her spell on that balcony over there, and we can escape!”
But I told her, “Aqua, I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. For once in your life, listen to me, okay? Lady Eris just told me that you can weaken the Demon King’s power.”
Aqua, however, only said, “Kazuma… What are you talking about? You think I can do something as goddess-like as that? Are you feeling all right? Come on—we need you to get it together.”
………
“You get it together! I think you’re forgetting what class you are! And you are a goddess!”
“Oh yeah! That’s right—now that you mention it, I am a goddess, aren’t I? And with my holy goddess powers, I can take aim at the Demon King and………… Hey, hold on… I can weaken the Demon King by putting a seal on him, but that’s it, all right? And it doesn’t look like the king has any intention of joining the battle anyway. I don’t think weakening him would do us much good.”
“No, you make him vulnerable, and I’ll do the rest… Whatever ‘the rest’ is. Looks like you took care of that grim reaper guy. That means I can make use of Ambush again.”
At that, a dark look came over Aqua’s face. “You still want to do this, Kazuma? Come on… Let’s go home, okay? We can get out of here, and let the government handle the Demon King, and we can all have a nice, happy life together. If money’s the problem, well, I wouldn’t normally do it, but I could earn some cash with my performances. But only until we’re back on our feet, okay? Not forever. So let’s—”
I held out my hand to stop her from saying any more. And then I gave her my most serious look. “Just watch me. We’ve come this far together. Surely you trust me at least a little bit to pull something out at a time like this.”
“It’s because I’ve known you so long that I don’t trust you one bit.”
Maybe I really should smack her. Here I was trying to sound cool for once, and she’d just dismissed me. I grabbed Aqua and said, “Screw! That! You just get ready to weaken the Demon King!”
“Ow! Owie! That hurts! Okay, fine. I just need to do that thing, right?”
I kept Aqua in a near-iron grip as I explained what was going to happen. “Listen up. Once you make the Demon King vulnerable, I’m going to use Ambush again to get close to him. Then I’m going to kidnap him using Teleport. I’ll take him to the bottom of the world’s deepest dungeon and finish him off.”
“No… Does that mean my poor, shrimpy Kazuma is going to take on the Demon King all by himself? My unclouded goddess’s intuition perceives nothing but a death flag at the end of that path!”
Was she never satisfied until she had completely torn down my motivation?
“There’s more than one way to skin a Demon King. And if things really look bad, I’ll just teleport myself to Axel. If the Demon King doesn’t come back here, then just assume I finished him off and go back to town with Yunyun’s Teleport. Even if I can’t beat him, I’ll try to buy you some time. You guys use it to take out the guards in this chamber. Without the king around, they’ll get weaker, too, and you should be able to handle them.”
If the Demon King did come back, his buddies would be gone, and my friends could just use him as a punching bag.
The further I got into my plan, though, the more unhappy Aqua looked. “What happens if you drop dead down in that dungeon? You always seem to get badly hurt in dungeons, and anyway, what if some hungry monster eats you?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Look… If things turn ugly, I’ll get the hell out of there. Even if I run out of MP, I’ve got that manatite with me, so I’ll be able to use Teleport.”
We needed to get moving or we would lose the element of surprise from my being resurrected.