“Well, if it’s that important, I think you’d better get in touch with an actual hero, then! Hey, I’ve got a thought. There’s a guy name Mitsurugi in town. If you tell him a missing Sacred Treasure is going to fall into the wrong hands and be used for evil, you’ll have him at hello!”

  “You coward! I want you to do it! Fine! I’ll go wake up Darkness and ask her!”

  “Hey, stop! Darkness is a noble, too. If the other nobles find out you’re the thief, she could be in real trouble!”

  “But I—”

  “Just get out of here already! Go home, or I’ll use that Bind skill I learned from you last night, and then you’ll find out what sexual harassment really means! Incidentally, that little ruse turned into a real pain in the neck!”

  “Wait! O-okay, I’ll leave for today. But I’ll be back to talk again tomorrow!”

  “No! Don’t come back at all! Bin—”

  “Th-that’s all for today! See ya!”

  Chris opened the window and leaped out, nearly in tears. She disappeared into town. Dawn was just breaking.

  Arrrgh. Seriously, no more dangerous stuff! Tell me again what happened to my supposed good luck.

  O goddess of good fortune, Honored Eris—I’ll even convert to the Eris Church when we get back to Axel. Just please let me live in peace!

  With that prayer, I settled back into bed…

  …until I was woken up again by a blaring announcement that might as well have been aimed directly at me.

  Chapter 4

  May There Be Bad Influences for This Sheltered Princess!

  1

  “Demon King army attack warning! Demon King army attack warning! A group presumed to be from the Demon King’s army has been sighted in the field near the capital! Knights, prepare to sortie. The enemy group appears to be quite large this time, so we ask that all adventurers in the capital participate in the battle! All high-level adventurers, please assemble in front of the castle immediately!”

  The announcement rang through the streets of the capital as dawn broke. At the same moment, our once-quiet inn was filled with a ruckus.

  Darkness pounded on my door in a panic. “Kazuma, are you awake?! Did you hear that?! Get your stuff ready!”

  “I’m asleep.”

  “Moron, this is no time to joke around! The Demon King’s army is here—we have to get out there and help!”

  I let only my head emerge from my blankets as the pounding continued. “You’re the one who’s joking! Did you hear that announcement? They want ‘high-level’ adventurers. I’m only Level 17—barely mid-level! They’ve got Mitsurugi and lots of other perfectly good adventurers, I’m sure. They’ll be fine without us.”

  “Y-you impossible man! Fine! Aqua and Megumin and I are going! Low-level adventurers can just stay in bed and hide!” The knocking on my door turned to footsteps retreating quickly down the hall.

  Finally, some peace and quiet…

  “Noooo! Why do I have to go to something that dangerous?! I came to the capital to have fun! And now you want me to fight the Demon King’s army? No thank you!”

  “Aqua, now is no time to be thinking of yourself! You can never have too many healers in a battle with the Demon King! And look at Megumin! Look how excited she is to get out there…”

  “Darkness, I will not go to the castle but shall go directly to where the Demon King’s army awaits! For once the battle starts and our forces get close to those of the Demon King, I can’t use my magic! I was made for the vanguard! In fact, my powered-up magic might just finish them all in one fell swoop!”

  “Wait, Megumin, don’t do anything reckless! And Aqua, will you let go of your bed already?! Arrrgh! Kazuma, I’m begging you, do something!”

  Aren’t they ever going to shut up?!

  Anyway, when I got back to Axel, my money worries would be over. Why should I stick my neck out and take part in a battle where I have nothing to—?

  “?!”

  I kicked off my covers and jumped up.

  The reward I might get for participating in this battle held no attraction for me. But if I could look good, make people see that I’d accomplished something… Yes! It would cancel out my failure to catch the “righteous thief”!

  Not to mention, it seemed like there were plenty of “cheaters” here in the capital, not the least Mitsurugi. It didn’t seem possible for us to lose, and meanwhile, I would have an opportunity to strut my stuff, protect the castle, and then maybe get my chance to hang out there again.

  I didn’t have to personally defeat the whole army or anything. I just had to get noticed.

  “Stop it, Darkness—I’ve got a bad feeling about this! Goddess’s intuition! Just like that time I dropped my ice cream right after I bought it or when I checked all those lottery tickets outside that store and they were all losers! Something’s going to happen—I just know it! So please, let’s not do this today! I’ll even give you one of my sausage links at breakfast!”

  “Darkness, let go of me! I am carving my legend! ‘When the king’s forces arrived at the battlefield, all they saw were the smoldering remains of the Demon King’s army and a single wizard calmly leaving the scene of the carnage…’ This is my chance! You have to let me go!”

  “Kazuma! I can’t do it alone—help me out with these two!”

  I opened the door, completely dressed for battle, to find the three of them fighting.

  “What are you doing? The kingdom is in crisis. Now come on, let’s go! They need us!”

  “““……”””

  When we showed up in front of the castle, we found the place crowded with knights clad in full sets of pristine armor, as well as tons of adventurers.

  Someone I assumed was an employee of the local guild was speaking through a megaphone-like magical item. “All adventurers, gather over here, please! We have no special instructions for you. You haven’t been trained to work as a group, so we won’t try to have you coordinate with the knight units. Please fight on your own initiative! We’ll check your Adventurer’s Cards before the battle. Afterward, based on the number of monsters you defeat, you will receive a reward—so give it your all!”

  We assembled where she had indicated, and another employee asked us to give her our Adventurer’s Cards. When she saw my card, her brow furrowed, and she said apologetically, “Mr. Kazuma Satou, is that right? I’m sorry, but anyone below Level 30 who isn’t an advanced class is going to be in danger, and we cannot allow them to participate in the battle. If I could ask you to stay here and help fortify the town…”

  “It’s all right. That man is a very capable adventurer with quite a history.”

  It was Claire. When had she gotten there? In fact, quite a few nobles had shown up in front of the castle, maybe to help encourage us adventurers or the knights.

  As the nobles looked at me, I couldn’t help feeling they all had great expectations. I may have failed at catching the thief, but they knew I had defeated several generals of the Demon King and wanted to see me in action.

  Then a figure appeared on the castle balcony, watching us from above. When I looked closely, I realized she was focused on me, her eyes shining with hope. It was Iris.

  Well, now the tension was ratcheting up.

  Leave it to me! Just watch your big bro work!

  At that moment, I felt a tugging on my sleeve.

  “Kazuma, Kazuma! I’m smart! I can learn! And I definitely think I’m going to get in trouble if we participate in this battle. Like, some crazy kid will blow me up in her explosion or some muscle-headed noblewoman is going to bring a bunch of monsters my way. It’s not too late—we can still go home to Axel. Let’s go home, okay?”

  “Aqua is not the only one who is capable of learning from the past. I will not make the same mistake twice—no one is getting caught up in any of my explosions!”

  “H-hey, Aqua, you think you could stop calling me muscle-headed? People are going to start thinking I’m the least intelligent of the four of us…”

  I met Aqua’s anxiety with an uncharacteristic smile. “Aw, what? We’re just facing a bunch of small fry who have nothing but their numbers to rely on. Just wait—you’re finally gonna see me get really serious!”

  ““““Ooooh!””””

  My declaration made the nobles even more excited.

  Then Claire shouted an order to the assembled knights and adventurers:

  “All forces gathered to repel the Demon King’s army—move out!”

  2

  “…Oh, hi. I haven’t seen you in a while, Lady Eris.”

  “……………………………”

  Quicker than you could blink, I was standing in that familiar sanctuary.

  How many times had I died now? There was the time General Winter offed me and that time I fell out of a tree. And now…

  “I’m sorry. At my level, I didn’t think there was any way some kobolds could do me in…”

  A pack of kobolds had made me their punching bag.

  Kobolds! Yes, those kobolds. Nice, easy prey—practically shrimps even in this world. And they’d killed me.

  I turned to Eris, who still hadn’t said a word.

  “It’s not what you think, milady! It was going great at first. I had Aqua’s buffs, and I was sticking close to Darkness. Since the other adventurers had already dealt with the really nasty monsters, I thought I could at least beat them on numbers.”

  “……………………………”

  Yeah… It had all been going great for a while.

  I kept practically in Darkness’s shadow, firing arrows from relative safety, racking up one victory after another. The battle got to where the two armies were really clashing. A kobold had bitten Aqua, and she was crying up a storm, so I went and saved her…

  “That kobold was no match for me. I started thinking, Hey, even I’ve improved a little, so I started chasing him…”

  He’d looked really weak. So I was hot on his heels, but then all of a sudden, I realized I was surrounded by kobolds, and they promptly took their revenge.

  Now what was I going to do? It would be really embarrassing to be brought back to life at that moment. Before the battle, I had made such a big deal of what a great job I was going to do—and then I’d been clobbered by Baby’s First Monster. It was so pathetic, it wasn’t even funny.

  It was also starting to bother me that Eris hadn’t said a word since I’d gotten there.

  “Uh…um, Lady Eris? I know I died a really stupid death because I got a little full of myself, and I’m very sorry about it. Do you think you could…spare me a smile about now?” I asked hesitantly.

  Eris began to blush as she said, “…Sexual harassment is wrong.” She fixed me with a glare.

  I felt sweat dribble down my back. Come to think of it, Eris could see what was happening on the mortal plane, couldn’t she? She had to be angry that I had turned one of her precious followers into my plaything.

  “No, milady, hear me out! I didn’t have any choice! When I first grabbed her, her chest was so flat, I thought she was a man, and… No! I’m sorry; forgive me! I won’t make any more excuses!”

  I threw myself at her feet in complete submission. I could sense her mood worsening by the moment.

  “…Gracious. You really do resort to sexual harassment way too much. I’ll forgive you, but just this once.” She sighed and scratched her cheek as if she was embarrassed.

  “Thank you, Lady Eris! Ah, I don’t know what I’d do if a righteous heroine–type like you started to hate me!”

  “I think you might be getting carried away again… Aren’t you satisfied with the little sister you’ve gained recently?”

  Just how much have you seen from up here, Lady Eris?

  I didn’t quite know what to say, but Eris giggled.

  “I guess that’s enough teasing you for today. Anyway, there’s something I’d like to ask you to do.”

  “…Something you want me to do?”

  She nodded. “I think my follower whom you were groping last night gave you most of the details. Some of the Sacred Treasures my senior, Aqua, handed out are no longer with their original owners.”

  “Oh yeah, I guess she did mention something like that. But I thought Sacred Treasures chose their owners. I got an enchanted sword as a ‘cheat item’ once, but it turned out that if anyone but its owner used it, it was just a normal sword.”

  That’s right: When I’d taken Mitsurugi’s magical sword from him, I had thought about using it myself, but I had quickly been informed that it didn’t work that way.

  “That’s true to an extent, but… Well, it’s accurate to say that the full powers of most magical items only activate for those to whom they were originally given. An enchanted sword that can cut through anything becomes a regular sword. A special staff that allows unlimited MP turns into a normal staff. In those cases, even if someone tried to use the item for evil, it wouldn’t be that big a deal.”

  Eris went on to explain, however, that the two Sacred Treasures that had gone missing were capable of causing an awful lot of trouble even without their full powers.

  First there was the Treasure that allowed the user to summon a monster and control it with no price or penalty. In someone else’s hands, it could still summon a random monster; it was just that a price would be required.

  As for the Treasure that let the user change bodies with someone else, it too could still be used, but the switch would be for only a limited time; it couldn’t be maintained forever.

  Apparently, both these items required you to say a special phrase to activate them, so even if someone else got hold of them, it wouldn’t necessarily be easy to use them.

  But there was such a thing as sheer dumb chance. If someone just happened to say the correct phrase, a whole town might suddenly be full of monsters, and then there’d be trouble. Or say someone was out walking their dog and got body-switched by bad luck; we could be dealing with a whole new type of kobold.

  “If we can get the items back and give them to Aqua, she’ll seal them up,” Eris said. “There’s no reward for doing this job, and you won’t gain honor or glory. Nor can you tell anyone except those you trust most about the Sacred Treasures. Even if their power is greatly reduced outside their owners’ hands, someone besides one of our transplants might think of something nasty to do with them.”

  She took my hands, a serious expression on her face.

  “Please, will you get the Sacred Treasures back?”

  3

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Aqua giving me a wide smile.

  “Welcome back, Kazuma! Those kobolds sure did a number on you!”

  I really wanna smack her!

  “Is that the first thing you think to say to someone who just came back to life?! You could learn a thing or two about proper goddess etiquette from Lady Eris!”

  I looked around and realized that the battle was already over. “…Hey, I’m glad you brought me back and all, but couldn’t you have done it a little sooner? Like, soon enough for me to get in on the glory?”

  “You were killed by kobolds. Why would I bring you back in the middle of a battle? You’d just die again, and it’d be a big pain.”

  Having just been killed, I couldn’t find a response.

  “…Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. Don’t you kind of smell like alcohol? You didn’t skip out on the battle so you could go drink, did you?”

  “No way! It’s because people bought me all kinds of drinks as offerings for being so much help in our victory. Everyone did an amazing job while you were lying there dead. My Turn Undead and healing magic were crucial—I wish you could have seen it!”

  …That made sense. It explained why the looks Aqua was getting seemed unusually full of respect and reverence.

  “Okay, one last thing… Why is there some kind of weight tied to me?”

  “Oh, that. See, Darkness didn’t want your body to accidentally get damaged during the battle, so she said to put it in a corner where it would be safe. And I did put you in a corner, but monsters kept trying to drag you away…”

  “Stop right there! I don’t want to hear any more! I get it; you stuck this weight to me so they wouldn’t carry me off! Thank you very much! But I can’t help thinking—maybe you guys could take a little more care when you handle the dead!”

  Now that I had a sense of what had happened, I took another look around. This time, the Demon King’s attack had been on a pretty major scale. I was too inexperienced to guess the number at a glance, but I estimated there were well over a thousand monster corpses there. And yet, on our side, I didn’t see anyone who even looked wounded, let alone dead.

  That was when several knights came up to us, full of thanks.

  “Miss Aqua, you’ve done an amazing job reviving the dead! Now, please, this way!”

  “Whoo! That’s some Arch-priest! What talent! To think she can even use Resurrection!”

  “It’s all thanks to her that there are no wounded left around here! Thank you so much, Miss Aqua!”

  Ah, so she had healed everyone who was injured. I never would have expected it—she was usually such a ditz.

  “Kazuma, you’re alive! Are you all right? Everything feeling okay?”

  Darkness, her face and armor covered in soot, came up with several knights in tow. To judge by all the gouges in her armor, she had worked hard.

  The knights looked at her with admiring gazes, and they had nothing but good things to say.

  “Lady Dustiness, your performance today was exemplary!”

  “Yes, indeed! The sight of you diving into the enemy ranks, completely calm despite the magic that was being unleashed upon you—my heart trembled to see it!”

  “Did you notice the look on the Demon King’s commander’s face when he saw her? I shan’t soon forget that!”

  “Lady Dustiness, your willingness to take the enemy’s attacks upon yourself helped prevent many casualties. You’ve saved us all!”

  I see. In a battle of this magnitude, Darkness’s Decoy skill probably would have been a lot of help. Even if she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, Darkness was the best defender in Axel.

 

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