The ground beneath our feet exploded.

It was as if the earth itself was trying its hardest to reach the heavens. As we went thrown into the air, I could see the same thing happen to the rest of Axel Town. Buildings collapsed as their foundations fractured into pieces and flew up. The flagstones paving the streets broke apart, morphing into a cloud of shrapnel. A figure cloaked in shadow floated above the destruction contentedly.

I cast my will against the World, and a lens of wind appeared under us, turning our fall into a controlled descent. The Jeweled Sword burst into light once more, drawing mana from a hundred other worlds and growing impossibly bright. So much power that my body felt as though it would shatter just from being near it...

As I fell, I raised the blade and released enough power to crack the firmament directly up at the Fourth Magician.

She didn't even bother to dodge. Instead, she simply swiped one arm, deflecting the beam into the sky, blasting away any cloud cover in the vicinity. It was as if an attack of such caliber was nothing to her; that it was as harmful as a gust of wind.

I landed on the ground and stared as the form of Sorceress stretched taller and taller, thinner and thinner until she slipped into a gap between the fibers of space itself and vanished.

''...''

I turn around to see a pulse of prana expand from the other end of the town, and the earth ceased to move, rendered inert.

Wiz.

The lich must have cast a counter-spell of some sort.

''WWWW-What the hell was that?!''

Megumin was covered in dirt from our fall and looked wide-eyed at the devastation left behind.

''A single attack levelled the town... '' Darkness, unliked her usual masochistic self, seemed worried.

"..." Chris seemed to be speechless. Funnily, she was the only person who wasn't covered in dirt. How high is her luck stat?

''That-that bitch! I'm going to- uuggghhh. To dare defile my body with dirt!'' And Aqua's reaction was as I expected.

Is this the power of a Magician who has fully mastered their Sorcery?

Then again, the old bastard did boast that he managed to push the falling moon back into orbit...


''Just leave such things to me, Kazuma! At my level, I can easily resurrect people who have recently died!''

''Wait, as in actual, full restoration? Complete restoration of the soul?''

''Yep.''

I felt an incoming migraine. Aqua is not the bloody Third Magician! How is this even possible?

Oblivious to the mental pain she was causing me, Aqua proceeded to resurrect the people who were killed in the aftermath of the attack on Axel Town.

In most cases, the victims were crushed by rubble or torn to shreds by shrapnel, so it was somewhat surreal to see flesh and bone rearrange themselves with sickening slurps and cracks while blood flowed back into bodies.

Megumin was emptying the contents of her stomach while Darkness's was visibly holding back her gag reflex.

I was effectively immunized to such sights after that time when Zelretch dumped me in-

No, I mustn't think about that, least I remember it. Those suppositories...


Somehow, a small portion of the town was spared from destruction thanks to the timely actions of a certain lich. That portion happened to contain the Adventurer's Guild.

As Aqua finished resurrecting the dead, something nagged at me. Beldia's broken armour and his sword were nowhere to be found. They could simply be lost in the wake of the Fourth Magician's attack, but there was also the possibility that they were retrieved by the Fourth. Could Dullahans be resurrected?

Normally, such a question would be ludicrous, but since a Divine Spirit could freely perform resurrections, even such absurdities needed to be considered.

There was also the issue of the motives behind the Fourth's assault. She could have crushed the entire town in an instant, yet she settled with an attack that didn't even kill everyone. Was it simply a distraction? An attempt to intimidate me? To provoke me? For what? And why was she seemingly affiliated with the Demon Lord?

I opened the guild doors.

The passion of the crowd and the strong scent of alcohol greeted me. The adventurers held a party in broad daylight to commemorate the defeat of a General of the Demon Lord's army.

"Ah! You are too slow Kazuma! Everyone is starting to get smashed!" Aqua told me as I entered the guild.

"Nah, hurry and collect the bounty Kazuma! Almost all the adventurers had claimed their rewards for defeating the demon king boss! I did too! But as you can see, I drank a lot of it away!"

Aqua was really happy, opening her money pouch for me to see. She then scratched her head and laughed cheerfully.

At least she was a happy drunk.

On a closer look, many of the adventurers inside the guild were so drunk they couldn't even walk steadily.

I headed for the counter, where Darkness and Megumin were.

"You are finally here, Kazuma. Quick, collect your reward."

"I waited really long for you Kazuma. Drakness is being really petty, saying it was too early for me to drink…"

"Wait, it has nothing to do with being petty, that's not what I meant…!"

The two of them started bickering, so I approached the counter lady, whose name I had learned was Luna.

For some reason, she had a really awkward expression.

"Eh, well… Satou Kazuma-san correct? We had been expecting you."

"Well… first would be the rewards for these two ladies."

The counter lady then gave two small bags to Darkness and Megumin.

Strange, what about me?

As I was getting suspicious, the counter lady spoke: "Actually, the guild had decided to present a special reward for Kazuma's party."

"Huh, why just us?"

When I asked, someone answered me.

"Hey, if it weren't for you guys, there's no way we could have beaten that dullahan!"

In response to that, the drunkards agreed rowdily.

"Ahem– To honor Satou Kazuma and his party's victory over the demon king's army boss Beldia… The guild awards them 300 million Eris."

The other members of my party were speechless.

Knowing something was up, I wasn't as euthanistic and waited for the punchline.

The other adventurers turned silent when they heard the amount.

"Hey, 300 million, it's your treat Kazuma–!"

"Woah–! Kazuma-sama, treat us treat us–!"

Adventurers started asking me to buy the bill.

Under these circumstances, the counter lady showed an apologetic face and handed me a paper.

Zero. A whole line of nothing but zeroes.

Aqua came over to me and peeked at the paper in my hand.

"Eh, things are like this. Because Kazuma-san's attacks on the Demon Lord's castle caused the dullahan to come here in the first place, the damage to the town was indirectly caused by you... But taking into consideration the merit of defeating a boss of the demon king, the town won't ask for any compensation..."

After making this announcement, the counter lady slowly averted her gaze and left the counter in a hurry.

"Such misfortune..."

Perhaps I actually have E-Rank Luck?