“Goodness me. So these panties…”
“I’ve been asking and asking myself who I should vote for in the church election. It must be fate that brought us together here. Might I ask your name?”
“My name? Oops, I have something to write with here but not something to write on… Ah, perfect, I’ll put my name on these panties, and you can keep them in lieu of my business card.”
“Well, necessity is the mother of invention! All right, go ahead… Perfect, I’ll keep you in mind! I’ve been waiting for a man like you to grace the Axis Church with his presence…!”
The young man and the farmer grinned at each other, then laughed out loud.
““Aqua’s blessings upon you!”” they chorused, whereupon Cecily and I charged them from behind. We had sneaked closer in order to overhear what they were saying, and now they both went tumbling to the ground under our surprise attack.
No sooner had they gotten to their feet again than the complaining started.
“Wh-what are you doing?!”
“What’s this, an attack by some dastardly Eris followers?! Wait, Cecily?! What do you think you’re doing?! I’m finally getting some votes!”
“Don’t you ask what she is doing! What are you doing with Zesta in prison?”
“Megumin is right! This Zesta person…isn’t he a fellow believer?! And you’re spending this time buying people off with panties?! I’ve never seen anything so pathetic! Cecily, say something…”
“Those are my panties! ‘A gorgeous Eris priestess,’ my patootie! Get it right: I’m a gorgeous Axis priestess! And then give them back! Or if you want those panties, then vote for me!!”
I was starting to think we should have left Cecily at the church.
Our “big sister” was busy choking the men. And me, I was getting a bad feeling I couldn’t shake.
3
“Tristan! Tristan, accountant of the Axis Church, is your woman! Cast your vote for Tristan, long-standing member of the Axis Church!”
My bad feeling had been fully warranted. Before our eyes, yelling at passersby at the top of her lungs, was the secretary I had once seen standing beside Zesta.
“When I’m pontifex of the Axis Church, I promise you the following! One! To make polygamy legal! Two! To lower the legal age for marriage even further!” Here she had looked like the person who would be most loyal to Zesta. “Three!! As long as they love each other, even blood siblings will be allowed to—!”
“That’s enough! I won’t let you say anything stupider than what you’ve already said!”
“How can you say such things right out in public?”
Yunyun and I launched ourselves at her in an attempt to restrain her.
“What are you doing? How dare you interfere with my campaigning… No! Don’t tell me…you’re Eris—”
“No, we aren’t—just let it go! We’re begging you: Please don’t cause any more problems!”
Zesta’s former secretary was actually number ten.
Specifically, number ten on the list of people we had stopped from being a public nuisance under the guise of campaigning for votes.
“You could at least wait until Mr. Zesta has been declared guilty before you start making such bizarre promises. Everyone else has gone back to the church like we asked them. Call it quits for today, please.”
“…I’m convinced Lord Zesta is guilty. He has to be. In fact, I’m ready to bet ten thousand eris that he is.”
“And enough betting, too! Come on—let’s get you back to the church! …Argh, we can’t look into the case when we’re busy dealing with these people!”
Various Axis followers had dispersed around the city, using every means available to get votes. Arcanletia’s public order was at a low ebb. Some people were trying bribes; others were using threats. There was seduction and swindling. There were even people rounding up dogs and cats, though I didn’t know how they planned to get them to convert.
Yunyun and I sat on a park bench, totally spent.
“I don’t understand how those Axis devotees can have so much energy…”
“I’m just about ready to go home to Crimson Magic Village…”
While we sat there with our heads drooping, whispering weakly to each other…
“Thanks for waiting! I’ve got nice, cold gelatinous slime! Try some! Once you feel that viscous, oozy slime on your tongue, you’ll never go back! It’s my treat! And when you convert to the Axis Church, well, I don’t think I need to spell it out!”
Cecily was the only member of our group still perky and excited as she brought us some drinks. I wondered what gelatinous slime was. Though I had to admit, I was hesitant to try it.
Yunyun and I took the drinks reluctantly. We must have been thinking the same thing, because neither of us rushed to be the first to take a sip.
“…Now. Unexpected diversions have taken us far afield from our initial plan, but I think it’s time we got down to the business of asking around at the hotels. I want to find out what exactly is going on here.”
4
We found one of the hotels, but we never expected the answer we got there.
“…Gelatinous slime?”
“Exactly, gelatinous slime. You know, that slippery, slimy, delicious-when-frozen treat. For some reason, when we turn on the faucets here at the baths, gelatinous slime comes out.”
That was her story. Turn on the faucet, and a delicious drink came out.
…This was the Demon King’s idea of how to destroy a city?
At this, Cecily, who hadn’t seemed very interested until now, suddenly got a gleam in her eye. “We will definitely have to observe the problem firsthand. As a member of the Axis Church, I have heard your complaint and I swear I will investigate thoroughly!”
“Er, right… This way, please…”
“By the way, what flavor is it?! The gelatinous slime, I mean!”
“I… I think it’s grape…”
“That’s wonderful!! Grape is the best gelatinous-slime flavor, no question!” Now even more excited, Cecily grabbed the woman who was supposed to be guiding us and all but dragged her toward the baths.
…I have a sneaking suspicion she’s lost sight of our goal.
“This is terrible, Megumin! And Yunyun!! A faucet that dispenses gelatinous slime? Any citizen of Arcanletia would give their right arm for that! But they won’t even let me taste it!”
“Now, now, you mustn’t drink mystery fluids that come out of a bathtub faucet. For all you know, it could be poisoned… Just for my reference, what is gelatinous slime anyway? Is it a wandering monster that happens to be delicious to drink?”
We had put the hotel behind us, dragging along the still very indignant Cecily. The hotelier had been telling the truth: Gelatinous slime did indeed come out of the faucets. It had been all we could do to wrench Cecily away from them…
“Gelatinous slime is made by collecting edible slimes and turning them into a dry powder; then you can use it as a flavoring. Putting it in hot water gives it an indescribable slickness, and chilling it makes a refreshing drink.”
Yunyun and I looked at each other. There was no way this was just an accident. Someone had spiked the main spring with gelatinous-slime powder. Maybe so they could drink it straight out of the faucet at any time…!
…Again, though, terrible idea for urban destruction.
“I’m sorry, but this is all just getting too stupid for me. Can I go home?”
“No, wait! I know how you feel, but if this really is the strange happening with the baths that Soketto talked about…”
Yes, it was all awfully stupid, but Soketto’s fortunes were so rarely wrong. Even though that would seem to point to Zesta as the perpetrator indeed…
“I can see that I have no choice. Let us go visit the spring that feeds the baths, then.”
Behind the city of Arcanletia was a mountain main spring. Pipes carried the hot water down the mountain and into the town…
“And this
is where the water drawn from the main spring gets circulated to the town’s hotels! The fact that the Axis Church has complete control of it is why we’re allowed to do whatever we want in this town!”
“I find myself having ever more doubts about this religion… Though I suppose this situation could itself be a kind of karmic payback.”
Cecily had brought us to the massive facility that supplied hot water to the city. Normally, members of the Axis Church took it in shifts to handle purifying the water and maintaining the facility. But for some reason, starting yesterday, Zesta had insisted on doing the cleaning. That was one of the reasons suspicions had fallen on him.
When we arrived, we found somebody else had gotten there first.
“…Mm, Axis followers. Well, you’re too late—we’ve already collected the evidence.”
Several officers were standing there. They were all carrying big bags.
“Would those bags happen to be filled with gelatinous-slime powder? Does that mean Zesta really pulled this ridiculous stunt…?”
“Looks like it. We have a witness who saw Mr. Zesta bringing these bags into the facility last night. We’ve got a mountain of evidence. He’s not getting out of this.”
…They even had a witness? I guess he really was finished. But…
“I wonder why Zesta would do something so ridiculous. To be quite frank, changing the bathwater to gelatinous slime seems like a stupid way to destroy a city.”
“Yeah, damned if we understand it, either. If he wanted to make the baths unusable, a little poison would’ve gone a lot further. But when we heard it was an Axis Church member who had done this, well, it wasn’t all that hard to believe.”
I had nothing to say to that. With people who flirted with insanity the way these church members did, asking why they would do such a silly thing was likely to get you an answer like, Because it sounded like fun.
“I can’t believe it…,” Yunyun said. She had been so eager to dispel any doubt, but even she looked a bit torn about this. “I knew he was strange, but I never took him for a villain…”
And Cecily?
“If this facility is where the slime was entering the system, then this faucet ought to be nice and clean. Hey, does anyone have a glass? And can anyone here use Freeze?”
…And this is why no one believes Axis devotees.
5
“In the end, we couldn’t help. I never imagined Zesta would do such a thing…”
We were on our way home from the facility. None of us was feeling very upbeat; we went along at a plod.
“Yeah… Do you really think that guy has something to do with Devils? I wouldn’t have said he was the type…” Even Yunyun, though she hadn’t known Zesta for very long, found herself caught in his orbit.
It was indeed a shock to discover he had been an agent of the Demon King’s army. Cecily, the most devastated of us all, murmured sadly, “They said it was evidence…so I couldn’t drink it… There was so much of it, right there in front of me, and they wouldn’t let me…”
Okay, so she was devastated for a different reason than Yunyun and I were.
“Come on—it is no use crying over spilled gelatinous slime,” I said. “Even if Zesta was working for the Demon King, I really don’t think he’s a bad guy deep down. I’m sure he’ll repay his debt to society and come bouncing back.”
“I’m pretty sure the punishment for treasonable conspiracy is death…,” Yunyun said. What a killjoy. Cecily and I both started to sweat.
But at that moment…
“It’s exactly as I told you! I am a respectable member of the Axis Church! Nothing less! Yes indeed, I myself, you understand?! To suggest that I, the pontifex of the Axis Church, would consort with demons is laughable!”
“We’re very sorry about this, Mr. Zesta! Please, if we could put this behind us…”
We heard a very familiar voice just ahead. There, not far away, was…
“Lord Zesta?!”
“If apologies could solve this, you’d all be out of a job! Though if you ever are out of a job, feel free to come by our church any t— Oh, if it isn’t Cecily. What brings you here? Ah, you must have been waiting for my release!”
There, indeed, was Zesta, looking radiant as he faced down the very dispirited female knight.
“Zesta?” I said. “Why are you here? Wait, ‘release’?”
Zesta pointed to the building he had just come out of. “I’m here, my dear Megumin, because this is the police station. And as for why they’re letting me go, it is of course because I’ve been proven innocent.”
“““Whaaaaat?!”””
“Why so shocked? Did you really think I was behind such an idiotic crime? Go ahead,” he said, gesturing to the knight. “Tell them.”
“…On this occasion, our negligence resulted in the mistaken arrest of Mr. Zesta, a perfectly upstanding member of the Axis Church. We sincerely apologize to him and to his fellow devotees…”
I wondered what in the world had happened during that interrogation.
“Fall in, all of you!” the female knight snapped at the group of police officers with her. “Mr. Zesta is going home!”
They jumped to attention. “Y-yes, ma’am! You have our sincere apologies, Lord Zesta!”
“We’re incredibly sorry for roughhousing you…!”
Among the people in line, I could see the man who had crowed about having a mountain of evidence. He had sounded so certain: What could have changed things so completely?
“Don’t forget that prosecutor, the one who was so proud of herself when she produced that lie-detecting device! Pass my thanks on to her! It cleared my name completely! Not to mention, watching that cool confidence crack as she started crying was awfully satisfying!”
“Grrr…! Th-that woman is scheduled to be transferred to Axel Town shortly. Please allow me to add my heartfelt apologies to…”
As I watched the knight stand there with her head bowed, agonized, it began to make sense. The police stations in many big cities had a magical item that could see through lies. Apparently, that was what had put Zesta in such a good mood.
“Oh my… Transferred? What a shame for her! Tell her I hope she won’t keep pinning crimes on poor, innocent people when she gets to Axel.”
“I-I’ll pass along your message…”
Zesta walked over to join us. “Well, toodle-oo. You’ve taken up a great deal of my precious time. Just imagine what I could do to you in return. Normally, I might expect you to grovel at my feet, licking each of my toes individually. But, gracious as I am, I’ll let you off today.”
“Th-thank you for this show of m-m-magnanimity…”
The knight was still bowing to Zesta, who was getting more and more carried away. Now he took the fanlike thing in his hand and tapped it against her head.
“I heartily approve of your bountiful bust. But you have to make sure this grows a little, as well!” he said with a giant grin.
He turned to go. The knight was grinding her teeth audibly and staring daggers at Zesta’s back, but there was nothing she could do.
6
On the way to the church.
“I see I must have worried you all terribly. Cecily, I never imagined you would come to meet me.”
Our party, now increased to four, walked through the darkened city streets cheerfully, completely the opposite of how we had been feeling before.
“Of course I did! For I, Cecily, believed in your innocence from the very beginning, Lord Zesta! I was waiting at that police station from first light this morning!” Cecily, who had in fact spent the previous night drinking in celebration of Zesta’s arrest, delivered this whopper of a lie with a huge smile on her face.
G-geez…!
Maybe she noticed Yunyun and me staring at her, because Cecily, still grinning, took my hand and pressed something into it, nodding at me.
E-erm… Something to keep us quiet, I guess.
I was a member of the proud Crimson Magic Clan
. I had our upstanding reputation to think of. I could not be bought off so easily…but maybe I could at least find out how much she thought it was worth…
“U-um, Miss Cecily? Could you stop trying to force gelatinous-slime powder into my hand? I don’t know why you’re doing it…”
At Yunyun’s hesitant question, I looked down into my own palm…and threw away the powder I found there.
“Come now, all of you—let’s stop playing and get home quickly. I’m sure the rest of the fellowship is equally worried about me. I heard a great deal at that police station, you know! Upon my arrest, it seems the followers of our church made such trouble in town that it impacted public security… Let me guess: Everyone was agitating for my release, weren’t they? Well, my goodness, I’m truly touched, but you mustn’t cause such trouble, you understand?”
Zesta said all this with a wide smile and complete sincerity. Neither Yunyun nor I could quite look at him.
“True, sir, but I have to admit I sympathize with them! After all, the night you were taken away, I drank myself into oblivion!” Cecily volunteered eagerly…
You know what? She could do what she wanted. I got the distinct impression that if I said anything she didn’t like, I would pay for it later. But still…
“This solves our immediate problem,” I said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that someone put gelatinous slime in the bathwater…”
Zesta nodded curiously. “It’s true—they don’t seem to have found the culprit. How did that prediction go again? It would be someone associated with the Demon King or something…”
Yunyun, looking conflicted, said, “The Demon King’s followers may be obnoxious, but do you really think they would do this? Slime in the water? The Demon King’s followers are demons and stuff, right? Why would they resort to a childish prank…?”
Cecily: “Do you think maybe this is actually a reward from Lady Aqua? I mean, we’re talking about gelatinous slime from the faucets. That was my dream when I was a girl.”
“…Are you saying you’re the criminal?”
Yunyun's Turn Page 11