Chapter 19

A flash lanced from my hand through the flock of monsters. Then it vanished, almost as if it had been absorbed into one of their bodies. A beat later, there was a radiant flash, and then great flowers bloomed in the night sky—! “Aaaahhhhhhhh! Eeeeeeek!!” “—!!” “Waaah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is it; this is what I so longed to see! What a blast! What destructive power! What a glorious feeling of release!” While Yunyun screamed and hugged Komekko, I myself was in the highest of spirits, quite oblivious to the blowback and the roar that surrounded us. The force of the explosion tore up the trees directly beneath it by the roots; I was of course tossed helplessly to the ground. The storm of wind produced by the immense magical energy, along with an overwhelming force and tremendous pressure no creature could stand against, wiped out the monsters in the sky. I gazed up from where I had been tossed onto my back. My body was limp from using up my MP, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky until the smoke cleared. When I was finally able to see what was up there, the answer was…nothing. Not a single monster. The huge crowd of enemies was gone without a trace. “…Wh-wh-what in the world…? Is this explosion magic…? Amazing… Strong… Those words can’t even describe it… To wreak this sort of destruction without even a staff to focus and multiply its power… No wonder it’s known as the strongest magic. I think… I think I have just the smallest inkling of why you were so taken by it, Megumin.” Yunyun sounded astonished by the sheer destructive power of Explosion. I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to reply, though; I just rolled over. Apparently, all my MP hadn’t quite been enough even for just that one blast, and it had consumed a considerable amount of my stamina as well. After casting my spell, I was completely and totally vulnerable. In other words, if I meant to become an adventurer, I would need to find friends who would protect me after I had used up all my MP and strength. I had always been known as the genius, and I had been convinced that I could handle everything by myself, but now Yunyun had rescued me once, and I could see that I was going to need faithful friends going forward. I had been so sure that I would be all right by myself. But I guess there are some things you can’t do on your own. I would have to be sure not to forget what had happened today. I would have to be sure always to treasure my friends and companions. I could hear the village adults in the distance, clearly frantic. I thought of my future companions, the ones whose faces I couldn’t even see yet… And then, yielding to the fatigue, I closed my eyes. “Awww!! Sis, you vaporized all the chickens!” 7 Several days later. I gather that after the adults saw my explosion and came running, it was chaos. After all, they arrived to find the chief’s daughter and me collapsed on the ground, Komekko standing there with Ink in her hands as if to protect us. I, still asleep, was carried back to my house; the next day, our teacher interrogated Yunyun and me about what had happened and gave us a severe scolding. I explained only about having come home to find the door smashed in and Komekko missing and that Yunyun and I had gone to find her. And that brought us to the present. A new problem had come up in the village. “…Hey, Megumin. What are we going to do?” Yunyun asked expressionlessly. “…………” I answered with silence. Our teacher informed us that, since we had learned magic, a graduation ceremony would be held for the two of us on the weekend and that we were not to come to school other than to attend it. That left us several days without much to do, and we passed the hours in the park next to my house. “……Hey, Megumin.” This time I turned pointedly away. Yunyun walked around me until I was facing her again, then she leaned in very, very close, as if to say that I wouldn’t get away this time. “………Hey, Megumin. What are we going to dooooo?!” I closed my eyes, blocked my ears to Yunyun’s question, and crouched down on the ground. “This is no time to pretend you can’t hear me! Answer me! Bukkororii said… What did he call her? The goddess of manipulation and revenge, whose very name has been forgotten?! He said that’s the seal that’s been broken! And that the place that was sealed is the one where you fired off your magic! And that nobody knows where the goddess went now that she’s free! So what are we going to do?! Come on—tell meeee!” She pounded on my shoulders as I resolutely continued to pretend I couldn’t hear her. Though I would have liked to go on simply ignoring reality, there was one thing I had to correct. “Yunyun, wait just a moment, please. When you put it like that, someone could be misled into thinking that it was I who unsealed that seal.” “Misled? That’s what happened! Bukkororii warned us that there were all kinds of dangerous things sleeping in this area! And you went and used Explosion right on top of it! And the overflow from all that magic broke the seal!” Yunyun was insistent, but I retorted, “The adults seem to have taken a different view of things, have they not? They believe that the unsealed Dark God summoned the nameless goddess and challenged her to battle. The goddess emerged victorious and wiped out the Dark God’s servants with that explosion, then disappeared who knows where… That’s what they say…” “Well, they’re completely wrong! It was because of your magic spell, and you know it!” No one in the village would have imagined that Komekko had broken the seal. Nor did they know I had learned Explosion. Our teacher was the only person who knew exactly what spells we had learned. If the adults found out that I had taken Explosion and that Yunyun had learned the inferior Intermediate Magic instead of Advanced Magic, they would have been so disappointed. Our teacher must have realized that, because he kindly said nothing about our magic to anyone. I had never given him much credit as an instructor, but maybe he really did have the interests of his students at heart. But right now, there were more important things. “Yunyun. I don’t suppose today…” “No! Of course not! Things are finally quieting down, and you want to go cause another problem?! Anyway, you went your entire life without being able to use Explosion, so surely you can put up with a few more days! …D-don’t give me that sad look. There’s no way, okay? This is for your own good, Megumin!” She didn’t sound entirely convinced herself. It had been days since I had experienced the emotional moment of casting Explosion. Yunyun had put a moratorium on my casting the spell. After our teacher had been willing to keep my new magic secret, it would have caused quite the stir for an explosion to go off near the village, or at least, so Yunyun said. It was logical enough, I admit. But there’s logic, and then there’s… “Yunyun, you know now how much I love and cherish Explosion, don’t you?” “W-well, yes. You love it so much that even people who just see your explosions sort of get it, don’t you?” If she understood that, then this conversation would be a quick one. “Listen to me, Yunyun. My love of Explosion is such that if I had to choose between eating just one meal a day and being able to set off an explosion each day or having three square meals plus snacks but no explosions, I would gladly live with the single meal. And then after I had lived with it long enough to set off my explosion, I would be sure to eat the other two meals plus my snacks. That is how much I adore this spell.” “Huh… And I know how much you love to eat, Megumin…! …? W-wait, what?! Say that again?! I think there was something funny there!” Despite how flustered Yunyun was, I did understand how fraught it would be to go try out an explosion just now. I scratched the head of the little fur ball at my feet. “Eh, I suppose I can endure for a while. When at last I can no longer wait, I will immediately leave on my journey to encompass the whole world outside the village with my conflagrations.” “S-stop that! Don’t even joke about that!” I stood up and, hoping to change the subject, said, “In any case, there were no casualties this time, so it is all good. The truth may end up a bit twisted, but so long as the people of the village can accept it, what’s the harm?” I picked up the fur ball. Yunyun looked at Ink, then cocked her head, her face full of conflicting emotions. “…Hey. What is the story with Ink anyway? Why did those creatures keep coming after her? Could she have something to do with the Dark God? I wonder why the Dark God’s seal broke anyway. Do you really think some passing traveler did it as a prank, like the villagers say…?” It seemed Yunyun had not quite grasped the true heart of the matter. I suppose it would be a rare person who simply guessed the truth: A child’s curiosity had broken the seal. I myself would never have suspected Komekko if I hadn’t done the same thing when I was her age. I’d asked her about it at home, and it seemed I was right. I thought I should scold her for it, but my little sister had shown me the pieces with such an innocent smile, saying, “You wanna play, too?” that I found I couldn’t say anything at all. As for our house, the damage extended no farther than the front door, so we could live with it. This little thing is the problem. “She seems rather assertive. I might wish for a kitten to be a bit sweeter.” The servants of the Dark God had been looking for Ink, and when they had found her, they had held her almost delicately. Was it possible she was actually…? “Megumin, are you planning to keep that cat at your house? I—I mean… The way Komekko was looking at her…” Yunyun didn’t finish her thought aloud. I understood, though, exactly what she meant. “An excellent question. True, leaving her at our house might put her at risk of becoming Komekko’s next meal. But I don’t think I could ask someone else to take her at this point, let alone release her into the wild…” I held Ink up to look at her. She made no effort to resist or struggle. Yunyun, looking on, clapped her hands. “That’s it! Maybe you really should contract with her as your familiar. If she was your precious magical companion, even Komekko wouldn’t…” She trailed off as she spoke. But again, I understood what she was saying: Logic would probably not stop my sister, who lived primarily by her instincts. A familiar, though. Hmm… “…A wizard who has the Dark God for a familiar. That has a nice ring to it.” “? Megumin, did you say something?” Yunyun hadn’t caught my little whisper. “Yes, I said it might be nice to have her for my familiar,” I fudged. Then I smiled at the fur ball who might be much more than a fur ball. Yunyun let out a relieved breath. But something occurred to me. “That’s right. If you are to be my familiar, then it will hardly do for you to go through life with a placeholder for a name.” “Huh?! You mean Ink can’t be her real name?!” “Certainly not. I would feel awful for her, being stuck with such a bizarre, tasteless name for her entire existence.” “Bizarre? Tasteless?!” Yunyun appeared practically traumatized, but I ignored her; I focused on coming up with a name. Ink, though, suddenly twisted around, almost as if to say she was happy the way she was. “See?” Yunyun said. “I think even Ink likes her name just fine. Anyway, she’s still a kitten. Don’t you think it’ll confuse her if we keep changing her name?” But as Yunyun tried to defend her choice of name, I had a brilliant idea. “I’ve decided!” The confidence in my tone provoked a look of anxiety from Yunyun. “Uh, Megumin. Ink’s a girl, remember? So make sure you pick a nice, cute—” But I interrupted her, addressing the familiar I held up in front of my face. “Your name shall be Chomusuke. Yes, Chomusuke!” My familiar, who had always done her own thing and might well be of far greater consequence than in our wildest dreams, shivered even harder than she ever had before.