The Deity Entertainment Network

Chapter 245 – A Little Woman With An Explosion! Personality

"Are you two feeling better now?" 

"Yes... we are much better, thank you."

It was late in the afternoon by the time the two girls cleaned up after their ordeal. The rest of his party had joined them in having a bath, leaving John to idle the time away with the Mildra, the village elder. She was a sweet old woman, and kept plying tea onto him while telling him about the local gossip in the village. He eventually had to turn her down, as if he had any more liquids, he would be running to the nearest tree every ten minutes for the next twelve hours.

Once the girls were all cleaned up, he commandeered the small living room, the two girls on one couch, the two goddesses on the other, while Darkness and he stood. Mildra was busy in the kitchen, preparing food for her family and the six extra mouths she needed to feed this evening.

"Now, I'm sure you met the rest of my party, but I didn't get a chance to ask you your names before they shuffled you off to get cleaned up. I'm John, an adventurer out of Axel. Who are you two?"

"I know of you in passing; we have seen you eating a few times at the guild. In fact, we usually both sleep a few stalls down from yours." She said, then stood up. Her red eye shone with power, and she slammed her staff on the floor of the living room. "That we should meet is a fate chosen by this world! At last, my search for companions to quest with has come to an end!"

Mana leaked from her staff in such torrents that it caused her cape and hat to billow like it was being buffeted by the wind. "My name is Megumin! I am an Arch Wizard who wields Explosion! The most powerful, most feared, most deadly spell in all the land!" Her cape stopped billowing then and returned to normal.

That was quite the introduction. She reminds me a little bit of Mei. 

"We aren't home anymore, Megumin. Do you really need to keep being like that?" The other girl said, looking embarrassed at Megumin's introduction. "Hi, I'm Yunyun. We are from the Crimson Demon Clan. Don't mind her, it's just our tradition to be a bit flamboyant. And before you ask, no, we are not sisters; she is just my archrival."

"How dare you interrupt me? You lost our duel, Yunyun. Do I need to prove to you again why I am the greatest Arch Wizard again?" Megumin said, spinning around on Yunyun. They bickered for a few minutes before John interrupted.

"Archrivals? Then why are you travelling together?"

"She couldn't get into any party except with some creep that wanted to bring her home to introduce her to their mother as his girlfriend, so I took pity on her," Megumin said, turning back to John.

"So? You keep getting kicked out of parties because you only know that one dumb spell!"

"Explosion! is the pinnacle of magic. With its awesome power, what other spell would you ever need!"

They started squabbling again.

"Were they like this earlier?" He asked Darkness.

"A bit. They were a bit less energetic about it, but they still squabbled a lot. We really didn't get much out of them." Darkness said, watching the show in front of her.

Everyone else in the room looked on in confusion, but John already had enough. He stepped over to the two girls, grabbed them by the backs of their dresses, and lifted them off the floor. They protested a bit, but he shook them both until they stopped squawking. "Enough! People are possibly in danger, and your petty bickering isn't helping. Now, tell us what happened!" He said, then tossed them both on the couch. 

Now that he had a better look at them, they could easily be sisters. They were both short, with the same crimson eyes, short brown hair, fair skin, and petite frames that gave them a doll-like appearance. The only real difference was that Yunyun had slightly larger breasts, but they were still no larger than a B-Cup, if that. 

They seem so young to be out being adventurers on their own. Heck, they are probably no more than 15. Powerful wizards or not, I don't know if I would want the extra headache of another teenager in this party, let alone two. Not when they act like this anyway.

"I'm sorry."

"I refuse to be treated like this! Don't make me cast Explosion! on you-" *BONK* "OWWIE! Why did you hit me?"

"I have no idea what this magic of yours is, or how powerful, but you just threatened to blow up this house in the middle of the village. You're supposed to be helping people, not causing more problems. Are you an adventurer or some pouty child?" He said, drawing his fist back from bonking her on top of the head, taking her staff from her in the process.

"I AM NOT A CHILD! I AM JUST A LATE BLOOMER!"

"Then act like it! Or if you can't, shut up and let your 'archrival' tell us what happened."

"Meanie!"

John knelt in front of her and grabbed her shoulders. "Get a hold of yourself. I assume you were the two girls that Luna asked me to check in on while I was here, so tell me what happened to you."

"That old crone asked you to check in on us? I thought she didn't like us."

"I don't know what she thinks of you, though if she didn't like you, I doubt she would have said she was worried about you two. Maybe you should be a bit nicer to her the next time you see her. If this was the attitude you showed, I can't imagine it would have gone well." He replied, toning his voice down to a more reasonable level. He could understand why Luna considered this girl as one of her problem children, but it wouldn't be productive to say that right now. "Now, can you explain to us what happened to you?"

Megumin, finally dropping this odd behaviour, began explaining what had happened to them, with Yunyun chipping in now and then. They were here in the village to cull some blue slimes, a fairly easy job that newer adventurers did, or more senior ones would do if they were hurting for coin. While they were gathering cores for the extra money, a dozen goblins riding atop black wolves attacked them.

"I did what I could to hold them back, but we were about to be overrun when Megumin cast an explosion on top of them and the corpses of the blue slimes. The aftermath blew most of them away, and the rest retreated. I dragged her towards the village until she recovered enough to walk the rest of the way."

That explains why they were roughed up and covered in slime.

"Did you say black wolves? Did you notice anything else that was strange?" Darkness asked. Both Aqua and Chris seemed to perk up upon hearing about the wolves. 

"The goblins looked a little odd; they were more greyish than the green ones we normally have around here. They still had their normal crude-looking equipment, so I didn't think much of it."

Aqua stood up then and moved over to the Arch Wizards. "Can you bring us there? I need to check on something."

"We can. It's not terribly far from here." Megumin said.

"What is it, Aqua?" John asked, curious what she was thinking.

"I'm not sure yet, but black wolves and grey goblins? Those sound like the undead. We might have a necromancer on our hands here." 

A stray thought went through his mind then, remembering back to when he Carded Wiz.

Wasn't one of her aliases Queen of the Undead?

They quickly gathered their things and departed the village, heading towards the scene of the battle. When Mildra found out they were not going to be staying for dinner, she quickly bagged up a bunch of food for them and pressed it into his arms. He had rations in his sack that he bought at the market that morning, but she insisted on feeding them all, including those two girls.

"Take it and make sure they eat it! They need to get some meat on their bones before they waste away." She said with a wide smile on her face.

At the site of the battle, John let out a low whistle. There was a giant crater almost fifty feet across and probably fifteen feet deep in the centre. He looked down at Megumin, who was smiling back up at him. "See! This is the power of Explosion! Gaze upon it and fear me!"

"It is rather impressive. Though I have seen bigger." He said, causing her to jerk a bit. He wasn't kidding, though something like this was in the realm of large bombs or small-yield nuclear weapons detonated on the ground. The fact that this tiny girl had caused this destruction with a spell was extremely impressive, but he didn't want to fuel her ego further.

I could use a spell like this, though... where? 

He laughed suddenly, thinking of dropping this destruction on top of a Zergling. He was pretty sure the damn little beast wouldn't even know what hit it. But it was a really indiscriminate power, something that could only be used in a very narrow set of circumstances. He might pick it up sometime, but there were plenty of other, less indiscriminate, abilities he wanted to gain from this world first.  

"You see it, don't you! The ultimate power at your fingertips!"

"You have a very active imagination, don't you?" He replied, then bullied her hat bit before turning towards Aqua and Chris. They were scouring around the edges of the crater, searching for any remaining bodies. He joined them, and after some time, they found a corpse of a goblin and a wolf several hundred feet away from the hole.  

Aqua pulled a white staff with several gemstones out of thin air and started casting magic he didn't understand over the corpses. He didn't interrupt her, and after a minute, she chanted another spell. "Purification!" Causing the corpses to dissolve into dust.

"What did you learn?"

"It's as I thought. These were raised by a necromancer. I sent their souls off to the afterlife and purified their remains." She said, then pressed a hand on his chest. "John, I know I haven't done anything to endear myself to you, but I need your help. We need to end this threat before they can build an army and pillage the local villages. Left unchecked, a necromancer can lay waste to a region before enough Adventurers can be assembled to deal with them. A lot of people could die."

He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "Don't worry, darling, you read my mind. Let's go find ourselves a necromancer."

With the help of Chris's tracking skills, the party moved from the grasslands into the wooded foothills, following the path that the mounted goblins had trampled on their way into the lowlands. They didn't get terribly far before it started to get too dark to see, so they made camp near a river. 

Aqua cast a barrier spell that would keep the Undead away, allowing them to relax somewhat, considering what they were possibly marching towards. John broke out the food Mildra had packed for them. Apparently, she tossed in a couple of bottles of wine that he missed, because Aqua got into it fairly quickly, and served them drinks from cups that he had no idea where she had found them. He had a glass with his food, but refrained from having more than that; barrier or not, he wasn't going to be drunk in case they came under attack from normal monsters out here.

He had a chuckle at Darkness not letting Megumin and Yunyun drink, the Crusader stating that they were too young for alcohol. They both exploded over that, saying they were old enough to drink. John knew the actual answer to that, but refrained from joining in on their argument; he felt like letting the two quarrelling women go without for now. Yunyun, while much more polite and less flamboyant than Megumin, caused as much of the duo's drama as the other one. 

After he ate, he excused himself to go wash up in the river. He should have taken the chance while they were in the village, but other things were pressing at the time. 

A short distance upriver was a small waterfall, so he walked as close as he could, undressed, and waded under it. His sword was only a few steps away, so he didn't have many concerns about standing naked in the water for a few minutes. While he was scrubbing himself, he let his thoughts roam.

Something seems odd in some of these worlds I've visited so far. There are very few men close to the characters I'm replacing or adjacent to. Other than Warcraft, where it is mainly men, there were way more women around. I miss hanging out with Bazan and the Lineage of the White Wolf. Other than Freddy, god rest his soul, they are pretty much my only male friends.

All Might... seemed to be okay, but I wouldn't really call him a friend. The guys at the construction site here are an interesting bunch, but they all seemed more interested in drinking their money away every night, saving just enough to hire some succubus to give them erotic dreams. I didn't really interact with the more active adventures yet, so maybe things will change soon.

He shook his head. He would see the Lineage of the White Wolf long before he had time to make friends with adventures here. 

Finishing up, he took a step towards his clothing before halting immediately. In front of him, on top of his clothing, was a giant grey and white form, staring at him with a pair of amber eyes. 

And a mouthful of long white teeth.