The Archwizard Aims To Be The Most Popular Side-Waifu Character! 2 (Konosuba, Arue SI)

"That's right, you listen too, Megumin. Aqua and I want to take down the Demon King no matter what. That's our goal as adventurers. And so our adventures will only become more dangerous, especially for Darkness. As a female knight, you might experience 'that' if you get captured by the Demon King."

"That's right! Since ancient times, getting sexually harassed by the Demon King was the job of the female knights! That alone would be worth the trip!"

"Eh…!? What!?"

"Huh…? What is it? Did I say something weird?"

Kazuma couldn't believe how depraved this Crusader is! Turning to Megumin, he warned her and hoped she wanted to quit after showing how serious he was, "...Listen carefully too, Megumin. The opponent's the Demon King. Aqua and I are planning to fight the strongest being in this world, so don't force yourself by staying in this party…"

Before he could finish, Megumin knocked her chair away and stood up, flicking her cloak hard she said "I'm Megumin! The top mage of the Crimson Demons, the master of explosion magic! For the Demon King to overlook me and call himself the strongest, I'll decimate him with my strongest spell!"

With the entire guild's eyes on her, Megumin made a chunni declaration.

This is bad! These two girls are completely hopeless!

After coming back from this Thief "training" with Chris, stealing Megumin's panties, and a few other things, Kazuma tried to get them to join a different party by telling Megumin and Darkness about their (Aqua and his) goal to defeat the demon king.

Unfortunately, these two were completely hopeless.

"… Hey Kazuma, Kazuma…"

As he dropped his head dejectedly, Aqua pulled at his sleeve.

"I was a bit scared when Kazuma put it that way. Is there a simpler way to take on the Demon King?"

… You should be the one most fired up since this is your quest… he wanted to say that, but in an effort to keep the rest of the Guild from staring at Megumin's chuuni act any further Kazuma tried to change the topic and as he did so, he thought back to the strange encounter with the shopkeeper yesterday.

"We'll talk about this later… by the way Megumin? Do you know someone named Arue?"

Megumin stiffened and sat down immediately.

"A-Arue is here? When did you meet her?"

What happened between those two!?

"Uh, yesterday. She owns a magic shop here. Is she your friend or rival or something?"

Smiling lightly, Megumin answered, "Heh, she did it. Yeah. We were. If I was the genius of the Crimson Demon Village then Arue was known as the coolest and most unorthodox Arch-Wizard of our generation."

What could be more unorthodox than a useless girl that can only cast a spell once a day?!

"Arue, Yunyun and I studied all the time together! Well it was more like Arue was paying us with food and money to help her copy down anything that interested her in our school's library. There's a rule about not letting any of the books out of the village but since Arue wanted to open a magic item shop outside the village she had to compile all sorts of knowledge herself."

"Nevermind being friends it sounds more like you're just doing a part-time job."

"Hahaha! I never held a part-time job for more than a day!"

"That's not something to be proud of!"

"Speaking of which, Arue was known to have worked every part-time job at least once. She gained a lot of experience."

"Sounds like you really admire her."

Megumin had a complicated expression on her face, "As a Crimson Demon I can respect her style, but …" Megumin shivered on the spot, "... she enjoys "disciplining" her friends way too much."

"Kazuma, Kazuma!" Darkness called out to him.

"Yes, I'm Kazuma." "Can you show me the way to her shop!?" "No."

Ignoring Darkness, he had to ask Megumin a very important question, "Megumin… how old is Arue?"

Megumin only had a dead look in her eyes, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.

"Thirteen, same age as me. Yes, she's the exception."

Kazuma lowered his gaze a bit.

"Tch."

"Did you just 'tch' at me?!"

… At that moment.

"Emergency quest! Emergency quest! All adventurers in town, please gather at the adventurer's guild! I repeat, emergency quest! Emergency quest! All adventurers in town, please gather at the adventurer's guild!"

It was then that he found out that the vegetables of this world will not just simply go quietly into the night, but fight for their right to not be eaten!

"Oh no…" Megumin had a resigned expression on her face.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"It's Arue. She's here."

"So the two of you don't get along?"

"It's not that. The problem is that she's known as the village's greatest farmer! At this rate we won't get any cabbages when "She-who-slew-over-a-thousand-Potatoes in a single day" is out there! Ah, there's no choice, I can't lose to her no matter what! I will cast Explosion now! Arue will probably survive!"

"Are you insane!? Don't do that!"

In the end, Arue merely teleported above the wave before it swept through the town, used some sort of magic item that shot out a huge net, caught hundreds of cabbages then teleported back to the ground next to the cages.

Casually shoving her caught vegetables into the cage then collecting her glowing magical net back, she disappeared in a blink of an eye after sweeping her cloak dramatically to one side.

Okay, that was kinda cool.

"How noble of her! As expected of an experienced Adventurer, Arue knows not to take away too much income from lower leveled adventurers!" Experienced? So Darkness had at least heard of Arue before… she must have done some big jobs somewhere else.

As for Megumin's reaction, （°Д°）Megumin was more shocked than anyone else!

"What the-! She can perform teleportation instantly without magical circles now!? No way, is she planning to challenge Mibanatto for the title of the Black Flash!?"

Apparently that level of skill with magic is a big deal… wait, what the fuck hell was that name? There are Crimson Demons with even worse names than Megumin!?

Ah. The main wave of cabbages is here.

Kazuma looked at the hot-blooded guys who were inspired by the cabbages that did their best to live for the moment. As he watched the adventurers chase after the cabbages wholeheartedly, Kazuma prayed for understanding on what grave sins he had committed to deserve a fight to the death with cabbages like this.

… It's times like these that he really wanted to go back to Japan.

"That checks off the cabbage hunt." Ticking off another event from my book where I recorded the timeline of events (quite inaccurately since it's my memory wasn't all that great), I retired to my magic item shop / home and climbed up to the roof.

From here on it was a matter of using reduced amounts of mana to shoot out focused but tiny blasts of lightning, allowing me to pick off any Cabbages or Lettuces that made it past the adventurers defending the town.

More importantly, I wanted to protect my store from these plate-armor crushing vege-monstrosities. I wouldn't need to put in so much effort if my store had magical protections, but alas, it was not to be.

Unfortunately I haven't managed to learn how to create a magic barrier yet, I've been so busy with training, adventuring, creating items and running the store that I hadn't had the time to study up on our villages more advanced tomes.

Time. Ah, back then, it felt as if I had lots of it. Living my second life in the Crimson Demon Village was as idllyic as a life in this world could get, if it weren't for the constant demon army attacks (that were kinda our fault 50% of the time, stupid traditions…) on our home.

Until the whole situation involving Wolbach/Chomosuke, Hoost, Komekko, Yunyun and Megumin occured, that is.

Although everything worked out in the end, there were a number of changes in how events that I felt I needed to intervene in, which shook and convicted me to take a more direct role in making sure the demon king army would fall by the hands of Kazuma and co.

After all, my good intentions had already altered events to the point where I couldn't tell how things would turn up in the long run. The first case was the previously mentioned situation involving Wolbach's seal.

Having prevented Yunyun from not trying her best in a misguided attempt to graduate at the same time as Megumin, it allowed her to gather enough skill points to learn Advanced Magic and be perceived as a much greater threat to Wolbach's minions.

By the time Megumin learned Explosion the minions weren't as grouped up in canon, which necessitated me using the magic I learnt in secret a few days before the events occured to clean up the stragglers to prevent the adults from snooping around, and potentially catching Yunyun, Megumin and Komekko fleeing the scene.

In the end, I ensured that only their homeroom teacher would be told of what happened.

None of the villagers knew it was Komekko who broke the Wolbach's seal.

And they didn't know that Megumin learned Explosion magic (and when they do, it will be much later). If the adult villagers knew Megumin learned Explosion and about what Komekko did out of ignorance then they would be very disappointed. The homeroom teacher understood this, so it was kept a secret from the villagers.

This resulted in the broad strokes of the timeline being kept in place. That was important since a lot of the reasons why the Demon King Army was losing in the first place is because of their reaction to Aqua's descent to the mortal world and Kazuma's party being in the right (or wrong) place at just the time to turn events around.

Honestly, the demon king army could probably steamroll the rest of Belzerg and the world if their plots had succeeded. Say for example, if Hans destroyed Alcerentia then the Axis Cult would lose people, their funding and maybe some faith, which would also decrease the military power and provision of healing to the country. If Ragcraft took over Elroad properly then Belzerg would be cut from funding and a potential refuge from the demon king's army if they lost, and so and so forth.

Since I've already caused some changes by the way I interacted with Megumin and Yunyun, the best way I can keep certain results in the timeline despite certain event sequences being butterflied away, was to keep a close eye on them and force an outcome which would result in a loss for the demon king army.

And preferably, become a prominent side-character!

So far things seem to be going well. The short glimpses of Kazuma and the gang showed that everything is on-track and that they're talking about me in just enough small amounts that my presence doesn't feel too shoe-horned into their character dynamics.

I will let things settle between the group before I "introduce" myself to them again. Though I will have to make sure they visit the cemetary at the right time to encounter Wiz… and be on-standby in case Aqua takes things too far.

"Ah, the cabbages are gone." I'm not sure whether it's a good thing to know that I fought enough to have an "auto-combat" mode that lets me reflect on my life while I'm at it, but hey, I'll take whatever I can get.

Jumping off the roof, I started to collect the vegetables that I shot down. There were a couple of cabbages and lettuce being taken away by the opportunistic civilians, I didn't mind however, as everyone here is trying to survive in their own way and I had no real need any more Cabbage Hunt pocket change. Best to let the poor enjoy some blessings in their lives.

In any case, the hundreds of Cabbages and Lettuces that I caught at the start should be enough to cover a few months of expenses. The less I have to worry about money, the more I can worry about the demon king army's defeat, crafting better items and improving my combat ability.

After cashing everything in and purchasing a takeaway meal (cabbage, of course), I returned home and prepared a bath. Most households wouldn't have a magic item for heating water, but this was a common magic item for Crimson Demons, which is once again, another small thing in my life that makes me glad that I was born into such an amazing group of people.

Of course, you would have to stretch the word "Amazing" quite a bit if you have a lot of common sense, but thankfully, I have rejected my common sense! Except when it came to munchkining and combat, yeah, someone with my level of power can't afford to play around as much as the typical Crimson Demon does.

Hmm, the bath would be almost ready.

I started to remove my custom enchanted robes, carefully placing them down on the sturdiest area in my workshop, finally letting it slip from my fingers and letting it crash into the hard reinforced ground.

Having clothing enchanted with "Movement Resistance" and "Gravity" magic helped to advance my physical conditioning alongside the various home-made training boosters I was chugging down.

I wasn't too concerned about the possibility of becoming as muscular as a Jojo character since the Crimson Demon's modified genetics ensured that a female's body could gain strength without visible muscles, no matter how much I increased my physical stats, according to the clan's genealogy and status compilation book that is.

I finished undressing myself from head to toe, dropping the rest of the weighted enchanted clothing in the pile, then walked up to the magic washing golem that I made, activating it so that it would get started on the clothing sanitization process.

After that, I began to remove the ten magical rings on my hands, before moving onto the ten magical rings I hid on each of my toes.

The first lesson in becoming Magical Batman was that you can never be prepared enough.

Next up was my bat-wings headband and eye-patch that wasn't really an eye-patch. It was basically a screen of grinded leftover Manatite held between two pieces of enchanted fabric, imbued with several useful functions.

Namely, it seals a portion of my magic power, sucks up a small amount of mana constantly, uses it to power a "see-through" enchantments that lets me well… see right through the eye-patch as if I wasn't wearing it, and stores the leftover mana for later use upon removing the eye-patch. I would have given it even more functions, but this was one of my first magic items created (followed by the "training" clothes) and I wasn't very good at stuffing functions into items back then.

Feeling reinvigorated by the mana refill after performing three of my personally modified [Teleport] spells, I hummed happily as I set the golem towards sanitizing my rings and eye-patch next, then took a quick shower before settling in for my bath of the day.

"Uwah… this feels so good."

I looked at the mirror I embedded to the wall, taking a moment to admire my body's proportions.

Bringing my hands to the front of my chest, I covered them and acted out a bashful expression.

"D-don't stare so much. Baka…"

Oh goddess, I would fuck me if I could, but alas, I'm not good enough to make a complex golem capable fo fulfilling my wishes yet.

"Kyaa! Hentai!" "Ara ara, would you like to join onee-san in the bath?" "Let me wash your back." "Stare all you want, this is a mixed bath."

I continued to practice different expressions and lines as I relaxed in my bath.

Though I was satisfied with today's results I couldn't help but feel a bit morose.

It didn't take me long to find out why.

"Aren't I just as lonely as Yunyun ever since I left the village?"

After the whole incident that resulted in Yunyun and Megumin learning their magic, I had also decided to graduate, provided some farewell gifts and left to the capital city of the kingdom to be an adventurer.

I joined so many parties that I stopped counting, I fought alongside the people of this world and various "heroes" sent here by Aqua, even assisting Mitsurugi significantly when he just started out in the Capital and yet I can't say I met anyone that could really understand me.

I guess that was only natural, it was the same when I was back in the village too. Though I enjoyed acting out as any other Crimson Demon with some of my natural practical tendencies (common sense) played off as a personal quirk that improves my "coolness" overall it's tough to say that there was a single person who knew "me".

It could have been because I changed somewhat after realizing how my actions could change the outcome of the war if I wasn't careful, but in the end, I knew it was because there was no one I really confided in about my status as a reincarnate.

Slapping my cheeks lightly, I started to encourage myself, "Yosh! Enough of that. That's what I'm doing all this for. If I become a prominent side-character and friends to the main cast, they will eventually figure it out on their own especially with Kazuma and Aqua noting all the references, and when that happens then…"

I won't be so lonely anymore.

"Until then, however, I Arue, the owner of the magical shop called "The Abyss" shall continue to intrude on their daily lives! Ohohoho-*gack* Haa…! Ha! Okay, cross out Ojou-sama laugh from the list."

I still haven't found the laugh that suited me the most after all these years.

Drat, that's another thing to add to the list of things to do.

The next day…

Oh dear Eris, Yunyun is sitting there all along scaring away other adventurers with her red eyes, glowing with excitement.

Swiping the quest to subjugate the giant bear called the 'Black Fang' from the bulletin board, I walked up to Yunyun who was too engrossed in her attempt at "making friends" to notice me.

I focused on one of my spells, Cursed Crystal Prison, and controlled the circulation of my mana to power that spell at the absolute minimum level possible.

The result was a freezing effect down Yunyun's neck.

"Aiiieeee!"

"Ahahahaha! You let your guard down Yunyun!"

The adventurers who stared at the sudden commotion quickly turned their faces away after seeing me for some odd reason. They acted as if they didn't want to catch my attention, geez, I only beat up a handful of bad eggs that gave adventurers a bad name.

It's not like these good, "honest" and too often drunk adventurers needed to fear me… hmm, I should investigate this later.

"A-Arue! That was mean!"

Yunyun was going all adorably teary-eyed at my little prank, which made me feel kinda bad since it feels as if I kicked a cute puppy.

"Sorry, sorry. I just couldn't help it. It's been awhile since we met, why didn't you come visit my shop?"

"T-that's um… I thought that you didn't want to see me after you left so suddenly."

I smacked my forehead, oh boy, yet another misunderstanding.

Placing my hands on my hips, I scolded, "Yunyun, don't make me repeat myself. There's never a time when I'm not happy to see you, except that one time you spammed my doorbell early in the morning before I had my coffee, why would you think that?"

"You left us all in the village right after graduating without saying goodbye! All you left was a present and a letter."

I sat down and smacked my forehead into the table.

"Urgh… I wanted to leave the village coolly while walking to the sunset, but then I got carried away when I heard there was a dragon flying about the area between the capital and our village… so I quickly rushed out to kill it. Figured that going to the capital to sell the corpse and register as an adventurer at the same time would be a good idea."

What? Dragon materials are rare and useful!

All it took was teleporting up its body, hiding there quietly until it flew down to its nest, drug it with my sleeping potions then fire off my Cursed Lightning spell repeatedly from the inside of its mouth, frying its head to the point where I had a burnt dinner for the night.

Easiest levels of my life.

Aside from that one day I slew over a thousand potatoes and a giant potato boss created from the super fertilizer I tried out on the village farms. Let's just say that the farmers were interested in the new leveling and food production method I created.

"S-so… you really didn't leave because you didn't want to see our faces again?"

"Seriously, why does everyone get that impression? Didn't you ask my father or something? He knew my plans and was prepared for it."

"He said that you were running off to the capital to go on an adventure, d-do 'that' with your party member, get pregnant and become a single mother after he refuses to marry you. Then he started crying about how he felt like the biggest 'cuck' for seeing you grow so well over the years then uh… I didn't understand the rest of that."

"I'm going to teleport back to the village and kick his ass. No wonder he acted so weird when I went back to visit. Did he think I was going to be my mum or something? Geez, papa really doesn't know how to let that go."

I thought it was weird when I saw him cry and hug me so much when I came back for a visit. Other parents in the village don't do that and it seemed like he took the idea of me leaving the village quite well… guess he never got over my biological mother leaving him for a noble after they dated for a bit and had me.

"You visited?"

"Yeah, a few times. You and Megumin had left by then."

"Ah, so it was a misunderstanding. I knew that Arue was too smart to be fooled by a handsome man and to have a child so early."

"Of course. I won't have my body used so easily. You on the other hand, would be easily deceived by any gentle guy, so you should be worried more about yourself rather than me."

"Ehehe… Megumin said something really similar."

"If even the selfish Megumin who has taken advantage of you so many times says that then it makes it true… hey Yunyun, let's catch up over a Quest."

"C-can we really? I don't think I should, I will just hold you back. After all, Arue has earned many merits at the capital defending against the demon king's army and going on all sorts of adventurers, and I'm still a beginner-"

"Nonsense. You will join me on my quest and that will be the end of it."

The best way to deal with Yunyun was to be direct and remember that she wants to spend time with you more than you do.

Unless of course, you're a lolineet or trash like Dust. Even Yunyun has standards.