You Good-for-Nothing Quartet

by Natsume Akatsuki

  “Mr. Hans! I won’t let you go any farther! Cursed Crystal Prison!”

  “?! Dammit! I never did get along with you!”

  Wiz’s spell had encased Hans’s lower body in ice just ten yards or so from the last spring.

  Slimes were supposed to be strong against magic, and this one was a mutant Slime that had become a general of the Demon King’s army. For a spell to work so readily—Well, that was a Lich for you.

  But…!

  “You’re too soft, Wiz! Let me show you something else I’ve got up my sleeve!”

  He tore off his own right hand and flung it toward the main spring.

  ““““Oh no!””””

  Everyone except Hans and me raised a cry as the appendage traced a beautiful arc through the air directly toward the spring.

  And what was I doing?

  “Deadeye!”

  I pulled out my bow and sniped Hans’s hand out of the air.

  “Whaaa—?!” His eyes widened with surprise as he looked first at me, then at the spring.

  He ground his teeth and started tearing pieces off his frozen lower body and flinging them one after another toward the water.

  Your ability to hit things with Deadeye depends on your Dexterity and Luck. But high as my Luck was, there were simply too many bits and pieces to shoot them all down.

  “Aqua! What was that magic you used to make your Luck better when we were playing rock, paper, scissors? Use it on me now!”

  “Huh?! R-right!”

  If she could use that spell from when we were arguing over the seat in the carriage, it would temporarily drive up my Luck stat—call it magical doping!

  “Blessing!”

  “Deadeye!”

  The moment I had the buff from Aqua, I let loose with an arrow of enhanced distance and accuracy.

  One after another I fired them, my aim always true, shooting down more than a few of the bits of Hans in the air.

  As they watched, everyone except Hans and me let out a sigh of relief.

  “Wh-what the hell’s going on?! Who can shoot like that?!”

  Megumin’s response to Hans’s outburst was calm.

  “Do not underestimate this man’s Luck! Though his stats are lower than a mage’s, we have seen him defeat more than one powerful enemy in contests of luck alone.”

  “Hey, if you’re gonna praise me, do it right!”

  With our foe partially trapped in ice, Megumin and I were so confident that we could stand to have that argument.

  And maybe our confidence caused us to let our guard down just a little bit.

  Hans, in absolute frustration, pulled yet another piece from his body and flung it…

  “Kazuma, go ahead and shoot that down, please!”

  Aqua, her hands on her hips, didn’t sound the least bit concerned.

  “Just leave it to…! …Oh.”

  As I was about to fire my arrow, I noticed something.

  “Huh? Kazuma, what’s wrong?” Aqua asked, surprised.

  With a sploosh, the bit of Hans’s body fell into the water.

  “““““Huh?”””””

  My companions and Hans let out a cry, and I replied.

  “…I’m out of arrows.”

  “N-noooooo!”

  Aqua dashed toward the last spring and reached for the water.

  “Lady Aqua, you mustn’t! Part of Mr. Hans’s body is in there! This is on a different level from the poison you dealt with in the other springs!”

  Aqua ignored Wiz, shoving her hand into the water.

  “Ahhhhit’shot, it’s hot! Heal! Heal! Wiz, do something! This is the last spring and the last pipe, and they’re gonna be poisoned!”

  “L-Lady Aqua—! …Light of Saber!!”

  Aqua shouted to Wiz despite her burns, using Heal to keep the pain at bay.

  In response, Wiz threw a knife hand, using light magic to cut away a part of the polluted pipe. She cut away only the part carrying the poisoned water, a section that would take only a matter of days to repair.

  But just as we were all feeling a flush of relief…

  …the sound of something cracking apart came from Hans’s direction.

  “Kazuma! K-K-Kazuma…!”

  Megumin sounded genuinely terrified. I looked over.

  There was Hans—or rather, the Slime who had taken on the form we knew as Hans.

  “Why…! What an amazing specimen of Slime! Damn! If only you weren’t poisonous, I would take you home and make you my pet!”

  This from Darkness. The Slime hadn’t even touched her, and yet her brain had already dissolved.

  The creature was bigger than our house.

  “That thing is huge!”

  8

  The Slime had become vast and round, no longer any hint of a human shape about it. It swallowed up the trees nearby, absorbing them into its body.

  “Oh crap, I guess Hans is done playing around! Wiz, do something about this guy! Freeze him again or something! Just do him in!” I gave a shout and started running to keep from being absorbed by the ever-expanding Hans.

  “I don’t have enough MP to freeze something that big all at once! I need to get more MP from someone…!”

  She was looking to me for help, but who around here had MP to spare for her?

  “Megumin! You’re going to have to be our sacrificial lamb! I don’t have nearly enough magic, and Aqua’s power would destroy Wiz!”

  “Me?! A-a-absolutely not! I’ll use my Explosion to blow him into tiny little pieces!”

  “No, don’t!” Aqua shouted. “The whole mountain will get poisoned!”

  There was a clanking sound as Darkness began removing her armor.

  Huh?

  “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you taking your…?”

  “Armor won’t make any difference against a Slime. They just slide in through the cracks. So I might as well get rid of it.”

  Now I was sure her brain was mush. Darkness kept stripping off armor until she stood there in her civilian clothes.

  “And anyway, I like this armor. I just got it cleaned. No way I’m going to let it get melted.” Then she threw aside her great sword, too.

  Physical attacks were meaningless against a Slime. If a weapon wasn’t going to be any use, why bother with the weight?

  “Hey, what do you think you can do with no armor and no weapon? Run!”

  I grabbed Darkness’s hand and began pulling her away, but she pointed wordlessly in the direction of the wellspring.

  There…

  “Waaaaah! Kazumaaa! Pleeease, dear Kazumaaaaa!!”

  There was Aqua, her hand still in the spring, weeping and shouting but making no attempt to flee in the face of the oncoming Slime.

  “You moron, what are you doing?! Forget about that and get the hell out of there!”

  “But—! But—! If I don’t protect this water, my followers will—!”

  Darkness stepped up as if to protect Aqua, who continued her purification even though the water was scalding her.

  Wiz approached Aqua, too, pale-faced but resolute.

  “Kazuma, what do we do?! We need one of your dirty little tricks, and we need it now!”

  “H-hey, what do you mean, ‘dirty little tricks’?! Dammit… Fine! I’ll think of something. In the meantime, do whatever you can!”

  “Wh-whatever I can?”

  Megumin, gripping her staff with both hands, sounded uncertain.

  “Yeah, and for you that means just one thing! Your job is to finish off the boss! Wait with the others once you’re ready to use your magic!”

  Megumin gave her staff an extra squeeze, and I left her there, making for Hans.

  The splorching mound of black jelly wasn’t content with eating up all the trees around us; it was starting to take in nearby hills as well.

  Now that Hans had abandoned any pretense of a human form, maybe he was exercising his true powers. He made no attempt to attack us but headed lazily for the springs, co
nsuming everything he encountered on the way.

  With my weapons and skills, there wasn’t anything I could do to the massive Slime.

  So…what was I supposed to do?

  I could try Freeze, but Hans probably wouldn’t get so much as a coat of frost.

  And because he was so close to the spring where Aqua and the others stood, we couldn’t use Explosion even if we wanted to.

  If Aqua would just give up and run away, that would help. The scaredy-cat had chosen a really inconvenient time to grow a backbone.

  I was out of arrows, so I couldn’t even try to draw Hans’s attention.

  …Hang on.

  I figured Hans was essentially in his true form at this point. So if I used a certain something I had with me…

  “Lady Aqua, even if I used every last drop of magic I had, I wouldn’t be able to freeze something that size! I know you’re doing this for the Axis Church, but think how much worse it would be for them if anything happened to you!”

  “Noooooo! What will I do if I can’t protect my followers? If I can’t save their home, what good am I? Keep on Freezing, please!”

  No matter how desperate Wiz’s pleas as she cooled Aqua’s hand, the goddess wouldn’t be moved.

  Beside them was Megumin, ready with her spell and waiting for my signal, and Darkness was cricking her neck in preparation for the fight.

  At Darkness’s feet were her beloved armor, her sword, and…

  …all the souvenirs she and I had bought together.

  “Darkness, grab that stuff on the ground and come over here!”

  “Stuff? You mean these souvenirs?”

  She obligingly ran over to me with the load of gifts. I took out of my bag the ones I’d been carrying: the Arcan buns and meat buns we had gotten from the round-eared elf and the beardless dwarf.

  I began flinging them toward Hans.

  “Aww! What are you doing?! Don’t waste my buns! You’ll pay for this, Kazu…ma…”

  Darkness was incensed, but she trailed off when she saw what Hans did next.

  He was eating the buns happily.

  It made sense: Wouldn’t a carb-rich, high-caloric snack be more appealing to a Slime than trees and dirt?

  I took the mountain of gifts Darkness was holding.

  “K-Kazuma, you can’t! Those were for Father and the servants…”

  I ignored Darkness, who seemed deliberately oblivious to what was going on, and began hurling the treats in the opposite direction from the main spring.

  “You can always get more souvenirs! I’ll even go get them with you! Don’t look at me like that—just run!”

  Darkness stopped looking pitiful just long enough to run back and join the others.

  Hans seemed to have taken an interest in Darkness’s snacks and was heading after them with a splorch, splorch.

  “Wiz. If there was a little less of Hans—if he was everywhere at once—could you freeze him then?”

  “I might be able to just manage it if he was half the size he is now…”

  Only just, huh? …All right.

  “Aqua. Would you be able to purify the pieces of Hans as Wiz froze them?”

  “Y-yes, I could! In fact, if this weren’t such an emergency, I would show you what I can really do!”

  I think this might actually work.

  “And I protect everyone from any flying pieces, right?” Darkness said.

  “You got it. We’re counting on you.”

  For this, there was nothing we could do but trust Darkness’s über-tough body.

  Aqua had a holy item equipped that would protect her from status effects like poison. And Darkness was so sturdy that she might as well have been wearing a holy item. She could withstand even the poison of a general of the Demon King.

  …Or so I hoped.

  I was pretty sure she had said something about taking a bunch of skills that upped her resistance to status effects. Why have a defensive specialist along if not for situations like this? We would just have to trust her.

  In front of us, Hans was still gleefully devouring the buns.

  Magical attacks had barely any effect on him, and physical attacks, none.

  If we touched him we would die of poison, and if we beat him, the entire area would be contaminated.

  How do I keep getting into fights with these life-threatening boss monsters?

  All I wanted was a nice hot-springs vacation.

  I was starting to suspect I wasn’t really so lucky after all.

  “Kazuma, I am ready at any time! I have cooked up my best stuff!” Megumin had removed the patch from her eye, which was shining a bright crimson.

  Hans had finished all the buns and was now looking for something new to eat. Or maybe obeying the last remaining bit of his rational mind.

  Either way, he turned toward us.

  I held my hand out to Wiz.

  “When I give the signal, Wiz, take my magic. Just leave me enough to survive.”

  “What?!”

  But even as she spoke, I was saying:

  “…Okay, Megumin. Take it away. Do it!”

  “Take it away, I shall! Here I go! Explosion!!”

  Her magical blast tore into Hans, rending him into countless tiny pieces.

  As Darkness moved to cover me, Wiz drained my magic as fast as she could, and I felt my consciousness growing dim.

  I normally wasn’t much for leaving my fate in the hands of these people. But this time, I would just have to trust my friends…

  9

  Several days later.

  We, the heroes who had saved the town…

  “Sniff… But I tried so hard… I really tried this time!”

  …were headed back to Axel with a blubbering Aqua in tow.

  “It is strange, but…in this case, I rather sympathize with you, Aqua…” Megumin tried to comfort her as the carriage bounced along.

  But Aqua only gazed out the window and sniffled.

  After we’d destroyed Hans…

  Darkness had used her body to shield us from the rain of Slime bits while Wiz, brimming with the MP from me, had frozen all the pieces.

  “…I wonder if Father and the servants will like these…,” Darkness muttered, holding the new souvenirs she had bought.

  I was getting some serious “daddy complex” vibes here.

  But never mind her. I turned to Aqua.

  “…You know, you don’t have to go all out all the time.”

  “What was I supposed to do?! I thought if I didn’t use all my strength, everything would be poisoned! Waaaaaaahh! I tried sooooo hard, and this is the thanks I get!”

  I ignored Aqua as she kept sniveling and shifted my attention to Wiz, who still seemed a little drained. She was always pale, but now she was practically going to disa— Hey, wait a minute!

  “Hey, she’s disappearing! She’s gonna vanish!”

  “Darkness, she needs HP! Quick, give her some of your life!”

  “O-okay! Kazuma, go!”

  We flew into a panic inside the carriage trying to take care of Wiz.

  I used Drain Touch to take some HP from Darkness, our toughest party member, and give it to the fading Lich. She started to return to normal, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  And somewhere in the middle of it all, Aqua, who was still looking out the window, shouted:

  “I was just trying to purify everything! Why was everyone so upset?!”

  We had gone to the Adventurers Guild to report the defeat of Hans, general of the Demon King’s army, where we were greeted with more than a little gratitude for handling the troubles with the polluted water.

  …Until the hot springs started running with nothing but regular old water.

  After I had gone unconscious from loss of magic, Aqua had apparently started filtering in earnest.

  As a result, the mountain spring, normally rich in minerals and other curatives, became nothing more than a gigantic pot of boiling water.

  Not to mentio
n, our long-suffering Lich nearly found herself in the next life thanks to the powerful purification.

  Practically speaking, I guess you could say that Aqua was the one who finally fulfilled the Demon King’s plan to cut off the source of the Axis Church’s prosperity.

  We had, in essence, destroyed the town’s most important industry.

  Normally, that would have meant a demand for a massive payment of damages.

  But in this case, the Axis Arch-priest decided that since we did it to save the church, and since we had, in fact, prevented the town’s actual destruction, much could be forgiven. We handed back the reward for Hans by way of compensation and got out of Dodge.

  We had expected to simply go home by Teleport, but with Wiz still all but transparent, we wound up back in the carriage.

  “Please, you have to listen to me! Both of you, why won’t you listen?!”

  “What is it you want? Let go—this carriage rocks quite enough without you shaking me, too.”

  “What is it? We’ll listen. Go ahead.”

  Aqua regarded Megumin and Darkness with a somber expression.

  “I think you understand that things turned out the way they did here because my power is too strong. I know you’re dense, Darkness, and you’re crazy, Megumin, but even you— Ow! Ow! H-hey, listen to me! What I’m trying to say is, even a couple of lugs like you must see the truth by now!”

  Aqua tried to make her case with both Megumin and Darkness strangling her.

  “I think it’s about time you both believed I’m a real goddess!”

  The other two fell silent for a moment at that.

  “…Kazuma, we must find a place with more effective hot springs next time,” Megumin suggested.

  “Yeah. Specifically, effective on delusions,” Darkness added.

  “Please believe me!”

  It was noisy inside the carriage.

  But Aqua’s renewed weeping was loudest of all.

  Epilogue

  Epilogue 1 —In the High Priest’s Chamber—

  “—That concludes my report on the recent events.”

  I scanned the written account I’d received and then let out a breath, trying to calm my pounding heart.

  The priest who had brought me the report affected nonchalance, but I suspected that in his heart he, like me, was nearly mad with happiness. Earlier, he had periodically squeezed his eyes shut and whispered a word of thanks.