Darkness’s dad had been sent here, apparently, to find that evidence and to keep an eye on Alderp.
Megumin’s grip on her staff tightened. “Then that’s all the more reason we can’t let this go on, isn’t it? Kazuma, surely you have some dirty trick in mind? Surely this will be just as it’s always been—Aqua and I have tried and failed, but now you’ll step up and succeed. Won’t you?”
Dirty trick? Who did she think I was?
“This time, Megumin… This time, I can’t do anything. For starters, Darkness wouldn’t tell me how much the debt was. Next, even if I could come up with the money, I wouldn’t be able to convince Darkness to accept it. She’s too stubborn; she’d never take it. And finally…”
Megumin cocked her head. “Yes? Finally what?”
“This is a marriage between noble houses. Security’s going to be tight. I don’t think we could get close if we wanted to. Honestly, that’s part of why I’ve been waiting for Darkness to come to us. I’m sure they upped the guard at the Dustiness mansion after I broke in. I don’t think I could get in there a second time.”
I had never paid much attention to the social difference between us, but then, it had never hurt this much before. Megumin stood silently, watching me. I turned my back to her, unable to meet her gaze any longer. I probably looked like some guy who was sulking about having his girl stolen from him…
“Darkness’s dad is really sick. I don’t think they would let us see him if we asked. And I don’t have any noble connections I could use to score an invitation to the wedding… I’m just a commoner, after all.”
I had thought of the friends I made in the capital, and maybe I could have leaned on Iris—but if Darkness and Alderp both wanted this marriage to go ahead, then there really wasn’t anything to be done.
A difference in social position. That’s all this was. The simple fact that we had been able to go adventuring with Darkness for so long, despite inhabiting such different worlds, was a miracle in itself.
I informed Megumin of all this as offhandedly as I could.
“I understand,” she said. “Knowing that you investigated the other party, that you did try to do something, is enough for me.” As hard as I was trying not to look at her, she managed to gaze into my eyes. She smiled; she seemed somehow at peace. “I will think of something myself and travel a path that will leave me without regret. Kazuma… I hope you’ll do the same.”
What had she had in her breakfast that morning? She sounded so serious. And…wise. Almost like an honest-to-goodness mage.
I sat, slightly openmouthed, as Megumin pattered out of the mansion.
Should I stop her?
It doesn’t matter… I could stop her, but we can’t stop this wedding.
I watched Megumin leave, and then I was all alone in the living room. It suddenly felt huge.
Aqua, oddly enough, had a visitor. Right then they were talking in her room on the second floor. It sounded like some kind of urgent business, but today of all days, I just couldn’t work myself up to help Aqua with whatever it was.
This was the room where we all got together and lazed around when we didn’t have anything better to do. Being there by myself made me realize how big this house was, and how lonely.
There’s nothing I can do…
Going adventuring with the daughter of a noble family? Back in Japan, I could never have imagined it.
Reality was never so convenient.
I sank into the sofa and heaved a sigh.
A violent slam from the front door popped the bubble of my melancholy. And who should be standing there but—?
“Good day to you all! The all-seeing demon has come to your collective aid, excepting your miserable excuse for a goddess. You would do well to weep and dance with joy at my arrival. Now then, show me the many fruits of your knowledge!”
4
“Go away! Bring me that beautiful shopkeeper instead! I wanna trade! Why do I have to talk business with you when I’m so stressed? I wish I could change you into that beautiful shopkeeper! Wiz! I want Wiz!”
Vanir simply sat down at the living room table across from me. “Your pretty little friend is presently working the floor, although she is weeping all the while that she wanted to sleep in a little more. It’s had a surprising effect. People find a tearful shopkeeper adorable, or they think she’s shedding tears of joy from the sheer pleasure of salesmanship and buy more to indulge her. Anyway, do you honestly think that debt machine could hold a decent business meeting? Yesterday, when I relaxed enough to give her some time off—well, I took my eyes off her for one second, and when I looked back, she had ordered this pendant. ‘Adventuring couples will love it!’ she says!”
He showed me a piece of jewelry.
“And what does the pendant do?” I asked.
“When the person wearing it is on the edge of death, the pendant utilizes their last breath of life to explode. ‘Protect your loved ones to the bitter end,’ that’s the idea. Very romantic, isn’t it? That’s what she thinks anyway. But the power of the explosion would blow away your loved ones along with your enemies. It makes me doubt whether she has any sense for business at all. Want to buy one?”
“I-I’ll pass, thanks. So what’s this about you coming here to help us?”
Vanir, however, said, “We will come to that later. First, bring out your prospective wares. My all-seeing eye shall quickly discern which are viable. Although—ahem—I’ve taken the liberty of bringing with me a sum of money that I don’t think you’ll refuse.”
He placed a small black bag on the table with a heavy thump. Being all-seeing certainly did make one more efficient.
“Hey now, you can’t be sure I’ll accept,” I said. “This stuff represents all the ideas I had left after last time. I’m not going to let them go for cheap, you know.”
And if it couldn’t help me to help Darkness, then there was no point in selling anyway.
Vanir, as if to emphasize his omniscience, said, “O young man who so wishes to go help the armored girl but fears being rejected by her if he does so. I, the all-seeing demon Vanir, hereby declare: You will desire to take the contents of this bag in exchange for your intellectual property rights to all these items.”
Man…having an all-seeing demon around was no joke.
Vanir hardly looked at my blueprints and prototypes, let alone the intellectual property contracts, as he stuffed them all into a giant bag. I guess he probably didn’t need to look at them.
Hang on. I didn’t say I would sell yet…
Oh yeah… All-seeing demon.
“Hey, Vanir… You know a lot of stuff, right?” I tried to sound nonchalant, as if we were going to discuss the weather.
Vanir didn’t look at me but continued stuffing paperwork into his bag. “Mm, indeed. Not precisely all things, but a great many. For example, I know of course what you intend to ask next. Why, you want to know, is the armored girl’s family in such crushing debt to that lord? Is there no way to help her? Why has there never been any proof despite all the crimes that lord has committed?”
I swallowed hard.
“Tell me… Why are you—?”
“Helping you despite being a demon? You wonder if I’m planning something and so on and so forth. Of course I am. I am a demon, after all. But in this particular case, my interests align with yours. Hence why I’m so helpful. Perhaps, for example, I will ask you to sell to me your seemingly quite valuable intellectual property rights at a deep discount.” He closed his bag and smirked at me.
Grr. What a jerk…
“But if I say I won’t sell, then it’s game over, isn’t it? If the answers to my questions are so obvious to you, then why don’t you just come out and tell me?”
“Good! Very well. I shall inform you, then, of what you wish to know! The color and pattern of the underwear the shopkeeper is wearing today are— Hmm? What’s this? I sense none of your usual delicious negativity.”
“Because I do want to know th
at, but later.”
“I—I see. In that case, I shall inform you of what you truly wish to know! The reason that girl is in debt is—”
“Sacred Exorcism!”
Aqua’s spell interrupted Vanir before he could finish, surrounding him in a pillar of light. When it finally faded, there was a clatter as Vanir’s mask fell to the ground.
“No! Vanir! You’re a big-deal demon, right?! Speak to me! You can’t be finished just because the goddess of toilets attacked you! Come on, man, come on!”
“Ahhh! Kazuma! I take my eyes off you for one second, and you go and get brainwashed by a demon? Why are you acting like he’s your friend?! And I’m the goddess of water!”
Aqua had spotted Vanir as she was coming down from the second floor and had let fly with her magic. She was still poised to cast as she shouted at me. She really had just the worst possible timing!
Behind her stood a man in early old age—a man I recognized. It was Darkness’s butler, who had shown up here to complain on an almost daily basis. I didn’t know what he had been asking Aqua for, but now the man—Hagen was his name—stood blinking in surprise.
As we watched, Vanir’s mask rose up into the air, supported by a body that grew out of nothing.
Awfully convenient how it came with clothes and everything… Or maybe the clothes were actually part of his body? That would explain why they were destroyed by Aqua’s magic.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha. A surprise attack? Nice try—are you a goddess or a street goon? I think there’s more demon in you than you would like to admit! Behold: A crack has appeared in my awesome mask!”
“Ewww! I have nothing to do with demons! Don’t you pretend I have anything to do with demons! If you expect me to ask for permission every time I crush a bug or exorcise a demon, you’re going to be disappointed. How stupid can you be? Pfft, hee-hee-hee!”
The staring contest between the two supernaturals was looking more and more dangerous, so I hurriedly jumped in. “Okay, all right, save it! Aqua, I really want to hear what Vanir is saying right now, so butt out!”
She backed down a little at that. Hagen seemed to sense the dangerous mood and said, “I-it appears you’re in the middle of something. I’ll show myself out. Lady Arch-priest, we’re scheduled to begin at noon, remember. I’ll see you shortly…”
He slipped between Aqua and Vanir, making himself as small as possible, and darted out the door. I was curious what exactly he had wanted from Aqua, but right now, Vanir was more important.
The demon looked at Aqua, and the corners of his mouth turned up triumphantly. “Bwa-ha-ha-ha! O impotent goddess who is unable to be of any help in this instance! See now how useful and worthy of gratitude I am and tear up a handkerchief or something in frustration!”
Then he stuck out his tongue at her. I guess being a demon didn’t necessarily make you a grown-up.
Aqua’s eyebrows shot up, but we were in danger of this conversation never getting anywhere. Aqua came over and sat in between where I was on the sofa and where Vanir was on the other side of the table, clutching her egg protectively. Maybe she just wanted to listen in on our conversation, but in fact she was sitting practically nose to nose with Vanir, staring him down.
“I’m finding this highly difficult,” Vanir said. “But all the same. Young man who fails to petition the gods in prayer even though a goddess is living in his own house. It’s the story of that armored girl’s debt that you’re interested in, isn’t it? It began back when you adventurers vanquished Mobile Fortress Destroyer.” He sounded as relaxed as if he were discussing his plans for the afternoon.
……………………
What did he just say?
“Hey. Details.”
Vanir smiled at that. He didn’t bother to act self-important but went on easily. “Details? You know Destroyer trampled over all the other towns it encountered. Those lords lost their domains. The populace was out of house and home, and without any land to their names, those lords were relieved of their governing responsibilities—as well as their noble titles. Each and every one of them wound up wandering the streets. For you no-account adventurers, it might even have been the better outcome. But regardless, in your case, it was not to be.”
But that’s…good, isn’t it?
Vanir smiled as if he could read this thought, too. “Yes, your town was saved. Those who work here suffered nothing, nor did most of those who live here. And the Mobile Fortress itself collapsed just outside the city. That led to a good deal of destruction, including of the grain-producing areas immediately nearby and the flood works within them.”
…Well, sure. But we had kept the damage to a minimum, hadn’t we?
“Those who relied on farming for their livelihood, in effect, lost their business and all their assets. A devastated field doesn’t grow back overnight. So they went to the local lord for help.”
…I didn’t like where this was going. I frowned.
“Precisely—it is exactly as you imagine! The lord said to them, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Isn’t it enough to have escaped with your lives? If you want to complain, complain to the adventurers who couldn’t protect your fields. They’re swimming in cash from their reward right now. Go claim a bit of it for yourselves…’”
…Yikes. How much more of a stereotypical villain could you be?
“Indeed. It may be that there is no blame in this case besides that of the greedy governor who abandoned his responsibilities. You adventurers performed above and beyond the call of duty; there’s no question of that. But that didn’t change anything for the handful of victims. They still had nowhere to go. Can you blame them for being upset? What would you tell them? That this was akin to an act of God, and they should forget about it? Hardly.”
Vanir gave a truly demonic smirk.
Then he said something I couldn’t ignore—and he said it as casually as if it was nothing at all.
“The aggrieved citizens went crying to… Yes, you guessed it. Your dear Dustinesses! ‘Oh, Dustiness family!’ they said. ‘When some pitiful adventurers destroyed the town with a flood, you paid for the vast majority of the reconstruction. Now we ask you to find it in your hearts to have mercy on us as well…’”
……
“Wait just a second. What did you say? What was that about destroying the town with a flood?”
Now Vanir seemed to be getting proper demonic enjoyment out of this conversation.
“Did you really think a few hundred million eris would cover destruction of that magnitude? Perhaps you recall that when the Guild asked you for restitution, they requested you pay ‘at least a part’ of the full amount.”
That woman!
“The Dustinesses put the vast majority of their assets, with the exception of their mansion, into paying for the damaged buildings. And when Destroyer happened, the heavily armored daughter of the family saw that her house was now without any resources yet still wished to help the needy townspeople. And so she went to that very lord, the one who had shirked his duty, and begged him to let her borrow money.”
That woman, doing all that without even asking anyone!
“He was disinclined to help but agreed to lend the funds on the condition that if anything should happen to the head of the Dustiness family and his repayment be imperiled, guarantee would be made in the form of ‘her body’—”
Vanir was interrupted by the sound of my fist hitting the table. Aqua flinched. I stuck my hand out at her.
“Hey… Hey, Kazuma, that must have hurt when you hit the table all angry like that. It hurt, didn’t it?”
Now it all made sense. That jerk butler who had come to the house must have been a messenger from Alderp. He knew that Darkness’s dad was in ill health, and he was demanding repayment of the debt. Darkness had come up with the ridiculous idea of defeating the hydra in order to earn the money. But then she saw all the adventurers I had gotten together to help her and decided she couldn’t worry us with this problem anymore…
“
And how much is Darkness’s debt?” I asked Vanir quietly.
I guess Vanir had expected even that question, because he simply took the bag he had brought and slid it toward me. “Exactly as much as your own holdings plus what’s in this bag. Now, shall we talk business?”
Dammit! He’s a demon, all right!
5
“Beautiful! You’re so beautiful, milady! After the ceremony, you must go to your honored father’s room so he can see you!”
The new maid smiled with pleasure to see me in my dress.
A pained grin was the only reply I could manage. This girl was new to our house; she didn’t know our family history, and she didn’t know the story of this wedding. If I were to let Father see me like this, it could only bring him sadness.
I knew full well that this wedding would make no one happy. This was about my own self-satisfaction.
There was a commotion from the hallway. I could hear someone shouting on the other side of the door.
“What do you mean, I can’t see the bride?! Out of my way! I can’t wait! I can’t wait any longer! Lalatina will be mine in just a matter of hours! Now or later, who cares? Move, I told you! Lalatina! Lalatinaaaa!”
…Heh. So he was done pretending to be a decent human being.
A member of my family’s staff replied as gently as he could, “Sir, you mustn’t. This is the waiting room of House Dustiness. And until the ceremony is over, only members of the Dustiness family may enter. Please, sir, step back.”
“You damnable fools! Know this: When this ceremony is over, I will be your master. Let that sink in for a moment, and then decide whether or not you want to let me through that door.”
The man didn’t sound flustered by this outrageous statement. “I cannot let you through, sir. You are not my master.”
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