The Archwizard Aims To Be The Most Popular Side-Waifu Character! 7 (Konosuba, Arue SI)

It would be easy to say that I got used to life after Yunyun began commuting to work/her adventuring jobs in Rivia.

"AAAAAAH! OH ERIS!"

"Is the Demon King's General attacking already?!"

"Explosions! It's the end of Axel!

But that would be a lie.

The sound of Megumin's new daily explosion routine signalled the countdown to Beldia's visit.

Activating my scrying device connected to a magic item I installed in the previously abandoned castle before Beldia had moved in, I adjusted the view until I managed to capture the visage of humanity's foe.

"Just what was that…"

The dullahan seemed rattled, but he quickly regained his wits and started assessing the damage, working alongside his undead knights to repair what he could.

"Could that have been the work of the adventurers of Axel? Hmm, no matter, that town of newbies probably did this as a test of their courage. It would be unseemly to get angry over such a small matter. As the general of the Demon King's army, I shall be the bigger man and let them off this time."

I used one of my magic items for storing memories and then placed it in my basket. After finishing my morning shift, I went over to Wiz's shop and invited myself in.

"Ah, Arue! Pleasant afternoon isn't it? Ah, look, look what I just got-"

Wiz clapped her hands together in that indulgent older sister type of manner with a bright sunny smile that wouldn't be expected from a Lich. I immediately moved in front of her and stuffed a sandwich in her mouth.

"-Mmph! A-arwue!"

"What did I say about not eating properly again? Hmph! No business rival of mine has any right to do so badly as to lack money for sustenance."

If this was my home village I would have said something about how I was just taking care of my archwizard rival in a tsundere fashion, but unfortunately, this wasn't a village where magical battles weren't all that out of place. And there's also the fact that Wiz was too nice and… 'soft'... to be my rival, if it was the 'Ice Witch' from the past then… ah, no point in lamenting lost potential. What's done is done.

After feeding Wiz my homemade lunch I allowed her to continue regaling her story of how she got scammed (not that she thought she did…) out of her money by, you guessed it, the designated trash/recycled item collector from the Crimson Demon village disguised as a 'legitimate' merchant.

I feel kind of bad for finding Wiz's bad business skills to be a convenience for me. Thanks to her, I didn't need to visit home to grab some of the stuff made by Megumin's dad, which I often used to accelerate my own research and as inspiration for new magic items, mostly to workaround or resolve the deliberate drawbacks built into his items.

Of course, it goes without saying, the main reason why I didn't want to go home was because I wanted to avoid my dad. His lack of common (even by Crimson Demon standards) sense and rumor mongering has done nothing to make me feel inclined to visit him, much less forgive him.

Though I did love him I still wanted to punish him a little bit, mainly by letting him wallow in loneliness for a while longer. Also, I didn't feel like I was up to kicking my dad's ass just yet.

"Any more Level Reset potions?"

"Arue… you didn't actually use the one you bought already, did you? You're still too young to risk your life like that!"

"I haven't, but when I do I'll be careful, promise. I have my reasons for wanting to grind skill points, starting from young when my stats still have room to develop is one of them, though… fufufu, if I aim for immortality to grind my skill points then I would surely achieve my dream!"

Wiz looked extremely concerned at this point and responded to me in an understanding tone.

"Um, if your dream needs that kind of time to achieve, then maybe you should reconsider it? N-not that I'm discouraging you from it, goddess knows I ran full steam ahead when I was younger... but immortality isn't really something to aspire to and any form of unlife would be against the natural order."

Well of course she would have that kind of opinion when she had gone the Lich route as a last resort. Unsurprising. I wasn't dissuaded the slightest since I was planning to get immortality through healthier and less deadlier means.

"It'll be fine! I have this totally awesome 'perfectly within the Eris and Axis doctrine' roadmap to immortality. I also have a work-life balance and entertainment travel guide all planned out to avoid all the immortality pit-traps that I've read about in those storybooks."

"If you're sure…"

"Oh right, you know, I installed a magic item somewhere on a whim as part of a monster gathering research project buuuuut… take a look."

I took out my magic item and attached it to a different magic item that projected the memories stored within it.

Wiz's eye twitched and her smile was strained as she watched Beldia act in a magnanimous manner to Megumin's Explosion.

"A-ah… thank goodness the Demon King's General seems to be rather… chivalrous, or we would all be in deep trouble."

"Hoh? I didn't say that was one of the Demon King's Generals…"

"R-really!? I just… well! There aren't many Dullahan's in the army with such a high rank and um… I do believe a notice had been posted in the guild about Beldia's arrival."

"Of course."

I smiled and nodded knowingly, causing Wiz to sweat and fiddle about nervously.

"I'm going to test my powers against him."

"You can't!"

Wiz denied my declaration of war against Beldia in an instant!

"Oh ho? Who was the most youthful Archwizard adventurer that never backed down from chasing her goals again?"

"This and that is different. Arue… Beldia isn't a pushover."

I responded to Wiz's sincere concern with an equally serious look.

"I'm aware. And that is why I would be going at him at full power, but not to defeat him. I plan to just teleport away after fighting him for a bit."

"Eh!?"

"The best chance to beat Beldia lies within the town walls. There's no need to risk myself and die in a blaze of glory when I can guarantee a win by luring him here. I'm sure you know who I'm talking about right? Pretty sure she coated your door knobs with holy water recently."

Wiz took a few seconds to put two and two together.

"How long have you known?"

"Always."

"Hehehe, you and Kazuma are kind of similar. You don't really care so much about the fact that I'm a monster."

"Monsters have feelings too. I mean, if they didn't, they wouldn't have gotten so angry by some of my people's more asinine traditions… like peeping at the baths when the Demon King's Daughter is in…"

And goddess damn she's hawt! I want to capture her, take her as my spoils of war, keep her in my personal sex dungeon and-

"You all should really stop that! It's been awhile since I saw her but she has a lot more potential than her father! Right now, she's probably just as, no… even stronger than the Demon King himself."

-Well shit! Guess I can't pull that off without a proper magical slave tattoo.

In spite of having that one spoiler revealed to me I kept my cool and continued on.

"Things will work out somehow. Worse comes to worst I'll just make arrangements to teleport the entire village somewhere else."

"That's very farsighted and thoughtful of you Arue! Ah, but you're still a child, so you should just let the Chief know about your idea and let him organize the more experienced Crimson Demons to do all the work."

I stared at Wiz with a raised eyebrow.

"Really?"

"Ah, I see what you mean. It's the chief of the Crimson Demons we were speaking about."

"No! I wasn't thinking about that… though I can't say your worries are unwarranted, anyhow… I find myself appalled that you would think me a child."

"Arue, when were you born?"

"The 28th day of the first month of Spring."

A fancier way of saying 28th of March.

"You turn 14 in three months time, until then, you should still be enjoying your youth and all it entails." Since when did Wiz become my annoying older sister that likes to push the age button?

If I wasn't a lady myself then I would have said something about her own lack of youth. But as I was a proponent of the 'do unto others as you would like them to do to you' lifestyle (when it's convenient and hypocritical to do so) it is only natural that I withhold any comments about a woman's age lest someone starts calling me an 'old hag'.

"Haa… very well, you win. About your new stock…"

"Oooh! Arue, you're going to love this one-"

Wiz followed along my unsubtle request for a topic change. I will probably sleep with my eyes open as she goes through all the really dumb items-

"-this is a mirror that lets you view another world."

-real shit!

"What can it do!? What are the drawbacks?"

"U-um, I dunno, let me just check the instructions…"

Wiz took out a small piece of parchment among the small stack of instructions that came along with her bulk purchase. Unfortunately for us both, Megumin's dad wrote a freaking chuuni poem that was even beyond the syllabus of our academy's 'Literature' class.

"The only thing I can somewhat understand is the part that warns about 'staring at the abyss for one will return forever changed'. Could it mean that there is dangerous knowledge past the veil of worlds?"

"It's probably more literal. Knowing how his products are like it probably engraves whatever you see into your memories or something. I'll buy it from you and check it out in my spare time. I could probably hook it up to my memory storage items to workaround it…"

Score! It'll probably only lead back to Kazuma's Earth like that one world-crossing item that Kazuma and co. would be used in the future. Even so, another world is another world. This will still bring me one step closer to my dreams.

Who knows? I might get lucky and end up seeing the world of Interspecies Reviewers or some a standard Hentai fantasy world where I can steal their Slave Tattoo magic to take the Demon King's Daughter for myself.

By the end of our time together Wiz was still bothered about my desire to fight with Beldia by the time I left her store. Which made me feel… sad? It felt like a mix of guilt and disappointment in equal measures. I wasn't quite sure on what I could do about it.

"Hello, I'm looking for your best light armor? Preferably something that can enhance my speed while providing defense against cuts."

After visiting Wiz and depositing my purchase back home, I teleported to the capital in order to get some updates on the upcoming demon army invasion of the season and to buy some new armor at one of the most effective (yet stylish) armor stores.

"Of course! Would you like something pre-enchanted or one with strong base magical properties?"

"Base materials please. I plan to enchant them myself."

"Are you sure we can't interest you in our enchantment service? We are now having a sale at 50% off on your 2nd enchantment!"

Hello? Crimson colored eyes here? Did she think these were contacts or something?

I was about to point out that fact only to realize how much of a bitch I would sound like if the clerk turned out to be color-blind.

As such, I took the high road and simply declined in a gracious manner.

The clerk then showed me a selection of armor made out of speedy yet durable monsters.

There were two similar 'light armors' left at the side with a small sign displaying a large discount, possibly due to them being tailored made for women with more curvier proportions.

"I'll take both of them!"

I spent almost the entire week enchanting the two armors for my battle against Beldia. Yunyun hadn't returned much as she was taking a long quest with *gasp* a party she just joined and felt it would be rude to teleport back to my home just to sleep in comfort.

I kept on watching Beldia's suffering through my magic item as Megumin continued to explode his castle.

He had dropped a vase in shock on the second day. On the third day, he stood in front of a newly-repaired piece of wall, wiping the sweat off his helmet like he had just accomplished something substantial… at that exact moment, a loud explosion turned it into rubble yet again.

The day after showed him just about to sink into the sofa after a day of hard work, when the sky outside his window glowed red and the tremors started. He had leapt off his seat just in time to watch a large segment of wall be reduced to rubble.

"Just what kind of grudge do you have against me!?"

His anguished cries echoed throughout the castle as he threw his own head against the ground.

Despite what he did to Wiz, even she started to feel bad for him as I shared the events with her through my magic item. I never thought there would come a day where I would sympathize with a General of the Demon King's army, Wiz excluded.

"A-are you really going to fight Beldia when he's this irritated? He's mad at your friend Megumin right?! He'll take it out on you!"

"Well it's not like I expected him to go easy on me. While I had thought about disguising myself more thoroughly and letting events take its course, with Megumin getting the full blame for his misfortune, more than that… I, Arue, have a dream. I want to be the sorceress who will defeat the Demon King Generals, excluding you of course, and then become the most successful Crimson Demon! Hiding behind someone else's deeds would be beneath me!"

"I still think this is foolhardy to the extreme! At least bring some help or wait for the knights from the capital to arrive! Come to think of it, couldn't you just teleport them over to the town?!"

"Heh. It's not my fault that they left town after they missed my teleport schedule…"

"You took a vacation on that day!"

"Whoops. Well, if you're so worried, then you can come along with me!"

"Eh!? But my neutrality agreement-"

"-is in place when adventurers go to attack your comrades-in-name-only. Yes, yes. But I'm not asking you as an adventurer to a demon king general, what I'm asking is that you come with me to watch and not interfere so that you'll know I can hold my own."

"W-well, I guess that's okay… but I'm not sure Beldia will be convinced."

"Which is why we will be going there in this!"

"Hawaaah!?"

"Now put this on."

Wiz reluctantly followed me back home in order to change into my newly enchanted light armor.

I had been pleasantly surprised when the shop had outfits made out of high-quality magical material AND looked like a Kunoichi's outfit. Scratch that, it was the best kind of fetishized female ninja outfit that I could hope for!

Excluding the Taimanin bodysuits, but they weren't really Kunoichi, so they didn't count.

"A-Arue? A-are you sure we can't wear any underwear?"

"Introducing foreign material under the parts where the enchanted armor covers would decrease its power."

It was, funnily enough, absolutely true. The magic enchantments needed unobstructed contact (or slight distance) from the skin to work at max power. With how powerful Beldia was I couldn't afford to do anything else other than to maximize my speed enchantments to dodge every stab, while relying on the armor's innate durability to take care of glancing slashes.

Of course, I would still have all my other enchanted accessories with me, as most of those couldn't be hidden underneath such an outfit anyways.

"And here, to complete the look, here's some Kunai."

"I don't even know how to use these!"

"They're just like any other knives… or short swords. Just… I dunno, figure something out."

Wiz took five minutes to start throwing them like a pro ninja. Ah, now that's some good old veteran adventurer skills…

"Okay, ready Wiz! Let's go! If Beldia's going to come charging into town anyways then it's going to be thanks to me, Arue!"