AN: Work has been crazy lately, this time I even had a call at 4:30 am, what is sleep even? I will get back to my other stories at some point, I'm mostly writing this story since its also therapeutic fluff and fun to write. Just watched Bofuri today too, things were more tense than usual, so there was less fluff to lower my stress levels this time around even if there was lots of loli cuteness.

The Archwizard Aims To Be The Most Popular Side-Waifu Character! 3 (Konosuba, Arue SI)

"You know… I actually have a teleportation marker near the mountain we're supposed to be hunting the Black Fang and those One-Hit Bears at..." I casually mentioned that fact to Yunyun once we walked about 5 minutes from Axel's entrance gate.

"Heh? Then why are we walking?" She asked, surprised at the fact that I would pass off the chance to use Teleport to trivialize the journey.

Typical Crimson Demon attitude dictates that we use magic to make as many facets of our lives as convenient and cool as possible. Typical friendless and pessimistic Yunyun thought processes suggested that it was possible for her to entirely miss the point of us walking to our destination together.

"Isn't that obvious my dear Yunyun? It's relaxing and we get the chance to catch up. You know how it's like when friends that haven't seen each other for awhile would just spend time talking together. A special setting or location isn't needed for that sort of thing, so why not catch up on the way to a quest?"

I educated Yunyun with what should really be common sense after beginning my answer with the word "Friends" in it, thereby ensuring that I had her full attention.

"Yes, Yes! Why not? Mhm! I understand now."

That shouldn't be something that needs to be understood!

The sight of Yunyun smiling brilliantly at such a thought fills me with great sadness.

"Also, there's no point in teleporting there if there's no one to witness our awe-inspiring entry." I tacked on a typical Crimson Demon excuse at the end, causing Yunyun to laugh a little. I smiled slightly, Yunyun seemed to be happy enough to not make a retort on the impracticality of it all.

"Hahaha, as expected of Arue."

"What exactly is expected of me here?"

"Well, eh, a Crimson Demon is supposed to know when's a good moment to debut."

"I'd rather think it's more of a people thing, to know when to introduce oneself and make the best impression possible. Us Crimson Demons just know how to do it better and have a certain image to maintain." I eyed Yunyun as we continued walking, "If you think about it that way, as something that isn't entirely unique to Crimson Demons, then you won't get so embarrassed in your introductions."

Yunyun nodded with a determined expression, "A-alright. I will give it a go."

"How about now?"

"E-EH!?"

"I wasn't being serious. You still have a lot of progress to make on not taking words too literally."

"It's kinda hard to tell with Arue's expression. Most of the time you look calm and serious, but when it comes to talking like how Crimson Demons would… it's as if you flipped a coin that lands on another side."

Yunyun has always been quite comfortable in talking about Crimson Demon traditions and cultural norms in a candid manner. This is mainly because I'm the only one of her two friends that has never said anything bad about her difficulty in conforming to the rest of the Crimson Demons (I myself did not like the ones where we would annoy or defame the demon king needlessly), and have always actively encouraged her in a constructive manner on however she wanted to improve herself.

"As fun as I find introducing myself dramatically and looking awesome, it's a rather tiresome act to keep up. Also, for your information, if my expression ever looks too impassive or "cool" then its because I'm in energy saving mode. My day-to-day lifestyle leaves me satisfied but exhausted, so I keep my impressions to a minimum."

"That explains a lot…"

Sensing the ground rumble a bit, I waited a moment before tackling Yunyun and throwing us both to the side.

"Wa-"

A giant earthworm burst forth from the ground where we stood just a second ago.

"Giant Earthworm. Conserve your mana, leave this to me."

Laying Yunyun down, I took two steps forward then pushed off the ground with all the strength currently available to me.

Before the Earthworm could dig its way back into the ground, I punched right through its hide, grabbed the inside of its much softer walls and squeezed.

Then I pulled and used an overhead swing, dragging all of its 5 meter long body out of the ground.

I focused a weakened version of Light of Saber and unleashed a short "laser"-like beam of plasma from my finger to slice the Earthworm's body in half.

"These things aren't very strong. Even a half-baked spell from someone like me can kill it easily. I've heard a lot of female adventurers get terrified of it somehow… can't really fathom why."

"... I think it's the teeth." Yunyun pointed at the many rows of sharp teeth from the bisected Earthworm's remaining jaw piece.

"Hmm… teeth, Earthworm, from the earth… ah, how fortunate. As expected of Eris-sama. Fresh materials delivered just for me." I kicked one half of the Giant Earthworm towards its other half, then casted Teleport to send it back to the marked "loot" chamber in my basement workshop.

"Huh? H-hey, Arue. The body just disappeared. W-Where did it go?!"

"Yunyun, calm down. I just teleported it back to my workshop. Can't let the body go to waste after all."

"That was teleportation!? Amazing Arue!"

I don't know what's so special about it. It's not as if near-instant teleportation hasn't been done before. That discount Yellow Flash of a Crimson Demon in the village could do something almost as quick as my modified spell, although he probably hadn't solved the issue of eliminating the visible magic circle yet, unlike me.

"I had to do something to make my teleport spell more effective. Unlike you and Megumin, I don't have as much magical power to deal with swathes of enemies without tricks like these."

"That's um… it's not like you have little magical power, you're a lot stronger than most of the top fighters in the village. And Megumin... is a genius and I'm her rival. Yet Arue is the most successful one of us even if you say you only have just over half our power."

"I had a lot of skill points and versatility to make up for it."

"And the highest physical status of everyone in the village. Your father was even scared that you would think of becoming a Magic Knight you know?"

"That two-faced ass. He acts like he has complete faith in me and the moment I leave he starts thinking I'm going to be the delinquent of the village."

To Yunyun's credit she wasn't phased at all by the way I dealt with the monster. Though it was more gruesome than required, it wasn't as if CQC was neglected by the Crimson Demons.

Yunyun herself used both a staff and a short sword as a backup weapon.

As for me? Well, if I needed a staff or any other weapon, I could just summon them to me. For now I'll stick with what magic I can cast with my own power. Most monsters around Axel are too weak to require any more fire power anyways.

Yunyun and I continued to catch up as we walked towards the mountain where the bears and more dangerous creatures that dwells within.

I told her all about how lucrative my actions were back in the Capital, about how you could make millions of Eris in a day just on teleportation once you've marked the appropriate spots and arranged the right clientele. Yunyun found the stories of the monsters I've slain (and occasionally taken a bite off after a bit of cooking) to be very interesting, though she clamored for more information on the magic I've used, which I have repeatedly replied with "you'll see eventually" or something along the lines of "that's a secret~".

"You've been on some interesting adventures too right?"

"Um… not really. I was thinking of leaving Axel for a training trip-"

"-typical Crimson Demon activity."

"-Isn't that just what normal adventurers would do sometimes?"

"You're learning."

"Yay! Anyways, I thought of heading to the capital, but I wanted to challenge my rival from the same starting point so I decided to stick around… and maybe find a party…"

Right, now that I think about it, since Yunyun had Advanced Magic at the start she didn't really need to go out of the way to earn some levels to "compete" with Megumin this time around.

"Come to think about it, how's your party search going?"

"Not going well… a, a lot of people don't like me. I think it's because I keep stealing their kills."

Rather than that, they think you don't like people and are staying away with you out of gratitude for saving their lives. And for those that did approach her… well, let's say I found them and "taught them a lesson". Damn pedo's…

"-so I tried a new tactic of offering free food and drinks to attract people. Ah, but then there was this adventurer and pretty arch-priestess that ate everything and left for their part-time job. I thought they would come back later but they never did..."

Damnit Kazuma! Damn it Aqua!

"Yunyun… if you offer to pay for people's food and drinks as part of your recruitment notice then you're obviously going to be taken advantage of! You will end up attracting the worst sorts with the offer of free food and drinks. From the parasites of society like Dust to scumbags that will pop by just for the free stuff and leave right after!"

"B-but, my mentor told me that I could make friends that way-"

"The moment I'm not with you for a couple of months and you've completely replaced me as a mentor already…"

"I'm so sorry Arue!"

"Don't worry. I'm not that surprised nor am I sad about it. Yunyun is the type that gets fooled by other fools that are a bit nice to her. Who is this person anyways?"

"Umm, I don't think I actually got his name. He's probably a noble since he has blonde hair-"

I knew who it was in an instant. There was no one else that would be scummy enough to trick a girl like Yunyun or jokingly suggest an idea that he didn't know would be taken seriously (and Yunyun takes people way too literally) other than the former Dragon Knight.

"Yunyun, Dust is a bad influence. He's a delinquent through and through, he's the type of lazy sleazy bastard that would purposely get himself thrown into jail many times simply because he can get a free meal out of it. The last time I checked there was an entire binder on him full of sexual harassment complaints and restraining orders from goddess knows how many women in the town."

"Aa-ah!"

Yunyun left her mouth completely wide open out of shock.

"I-I won't be fooled again."

Famous words taken 5 minutes before disaster.

I looked at Yunyun and placed a hand on her shoulder, shaking my head and continued towards our destination.

"H-hey, Arue, why are you crying? Hey, why are you looking at me with such pity? Arueeeeee!"

It took her a few minutes until she realized I was joking around.

At some point, she noticed all the magic rings on my fingers and asked about them. Like before, I said that most of their functions were a secret. Though I did reveal some of them like the ones that stored spells.

"You know how there are magic scrolls that can store spells for later use at the cost of being only used once? This ring is the next evolution of that. The spells stored within are permanent, can be reused, recharged and even casted by a magic user by directly providing mana to it."

"Wow! Arue, amazing!"

Her excitement and joy was adorable, I couldn't help but want to brag and show off a bit through exposition.

"The ring part is made out of the metallic version of Manatite, here we have combined a tiny high-quality crystal Manatite as the main jewel which is encased with another different crystal with properties associated with a specific element. In this case, this is a ring that uses Emerald, which has some association with health and healing."

"Healing? But Arch-Wizards can't use healing magic."

"Yunyun, since when did I ever say I could only store wizard and Arch-wizard spells?"

"You really managed to store a Priest's spell?"

I nodded in confirmation.

"Priests, much less Arch-Priests, are very rare. Healing is difficult to come by. I thought that if I can make something that can be used to save lives while making big money out of it and furthering my skills in magic item creation, then attempting to create something new and useful would be worth it. This is one of the hottest selling magic items in the capital, I have an arrangement with the Archbishops of both the Eris and Axis faith to help with its creation. Though… I don't want to be stuck with only creating one item, so I only make a few every month for sale."

That was just the first step in creating rings that could store other class skills. I can't say I had any particularly altruistic reasons for creating the Healing spell rings in the first place. It was all just a happy coincidence that everyone benefited from this. Me especially, since I quickly used what I've learned to improve my other spell rings, that I took back to the village to collect everyone's spells so that I wouldn't have to learn them myself.

Storing skills from other classes however, required a different material altogether. Most of the time some chipped off dragon parts would be sufficient for up-to Intermediate level skills, but the high-leveled ones required the most expensive of materials. One of my rings that had recorded a prolific Swordmaster's skills costed a significant amount of my wealth to create, but it was worth it to be able to do cool sword stuff myself like in my dreams!

Hmm… come to think of it, I would have to hunt a dragon soon to secure a Dragon's Eye. That would be needed to record and store a large amount of actual weapon skill and high-tiered skills. If I manage to convince "Dust" to wear it for the next couple of months I should be able to get some strong spear skills with it.

The main limitation of all these skill rings however is that its power and effects are static from the time when they are recorded, with the exception of the weapon skill ones that you could slowly assimilate (so long as they aren't active skills). The stronger the original user that the skill was recorded from, the stronger the skill could be used from the ring.

Take for example, if I somehow got Wolbach and Megumin record both their Explosion spells onto the ring, only Megumin's ring would allow me to cast Explosion instantly without the chant.

The rest of the trip passed by quickly with Yunyun asking me lots of questions. Hmm, if she's this interested then…

"Yunyun, won't you come live with me?"

"Fweh!? I-I mean, Arue, what do you mean by that?"

"You're living alone right? Like always."

"Even if it's true you don't need to remind me that I'm alone!"

"Sorry, sorry. In any case, what I'm saying is that I want you to come live with me in my shop, in my home. Together. That way, we can keep each other company. Even if we don't go adventuring together as a party all the time since we're both kind-of solo adventurers-"

"-not exactly by choice." Yunyun softly retorted on the solo adventurer bit.

"It will be more fun this way."

"Yeah, yeah… it will! Ah, but, won't I be intruding? I won't be a bother right?"

"Yunyun… you won't be a bother, and there's no one to intrude upon. After all, we're friends right? It's normal for friends to stick together, and even live together."

After hearing the magic words Yunyun immediately dropped the frantic and unsure expression, becoming so excited and cheerful that her eyes were glowing such a bright red that almost warranted me taking out my sunglasses.

Which would look ridiculous considering I'm wearing my power-sealing eye-patch too.

"Of course we're friends! This is perfectly normal and acceptable. I accept! Ah, I will have to get my stuff from the inn and cancel my reservation on the other inn. Oooh, I will also have to brag about this to Megumin who is probably living alone!"

"Uh, that's great Yunyun. By the way, we're here. Oh, that's the Black Fang right there. Okay, I'm already Level 52 so you need the experience more than me. You take the boss and I'll take the mob monsters there."

"LIGHT OF SABER!"

The boss monster died instantly.

As expected of the strongest Crimson Demon who wields Advanced Magic.

"Okay… good job! You can just relax, I'll deal with the rabble-"

Yunyun was so excited she ignored what I was saying and proceeded to cut down the rest of our enemies.

I didn't want to look like I did nothing so I started to fry enemies with Cursed Lightning and rip their hearts out using my Raikiri knockoff.

At the end of it, I piled up their corpses together and taught Yunyun on how the Guild pays out their bounty, and how we could get extra money by delivering the corpses ourselves since the materials would be a lot fresher and more can be salvaged this way than if the Guild where to send out a team to pick them up.

I told her that I often took a lot of dragon parts and blood for myself since a good amount of dragon body materials are written off as a loss since a lot of it isn't preserved in time. In my case, I tended to loot certain parts of the body where I inflicted damage on, then teleport the corpse to the Guild or teleport back to the guild and bring the team to the corpse instead if the monster is too large to teleport.

After getting our reward, Yunyun and I went our separate ways, she would go to collect her things and sort out of reservations whilst I would go do some shopping.

By the time I got back to my shop, Yunyun was already at my front door, almost jumping on the spot in an overly eager manner awaiting my return.

"Arue, you're here-ah! Aaaa… this is… nice…"

I had carefully dropped my items on the ground and hugged Yunyun tightly.

The poor girl. She needs lots of hugs to recover from her lonely life.

Sniff. And a bath too.

Looks like she got too much blood on her.

Something struck me at the moment.

A bath. Fanservice Location.

Girls, we're both girls. Age? What does that matter?

I can get Yunyun in the bath with me and it will be totally legal. Hell yeah!