At the lowest layer in the deepest dungeon in the world, I braced myself for my ultimate sacrifice.

"Explosion!"

As the ball of explosive power expanded in my hands and quickly consumed both myself and the demon king, at the edge of my consciousness I heard-

-"Teleport"

All of the demon king's minions have been dealt with, and no one was dead or injured thanks to the great me.

How long is that tsundere NEET going to take to defeat the demon king?

I tried not to worry, usually I'm good at that, but not this time in particular. I couldn't get that thought out of my mind: What if he lost?

No, that's not really what I was worried about, it wouldn't be surprising at all if a weakling like him couldn't defeat the demon king.

Rather, what I'm truly worried about is-

-What if he died?

No, he would definitely escape with teleport if he couldn't win.

He's just that kind of person.

He even promised me.

So why do I have such a bad feeling?

Actually, for all the qualities that NEETs share with devils, the one difference is that NEETs don't honor their promises.

...Doesn't that mean NEETs are worse than devils?

So if he was a devil instead of a NEET, would I not only tolerate him but actually be more fond of him, even though devils are the natural enemies of gods?

I decided not to pursue that line of thought any further.

Just then, a pillar of white light appeared in the room, and the demon king limped out, bleeding in multiple places with a missing leg and scorch marks all over his body.

Seeing that adventurer cast explosion, I abandoned my pride and silently chanted teleportation magic.

I barely finished before the explosion could completely destroy me, but in my panic I instinctively teleported to what usually would be the safest place in the world.

My castle, surrounded by my underlings and protected in a nearly unbreakable barrier.

Except, when I arrived, I found all my underlings dead, and I was surrounded by adventurers.

Worse yet, I was in no condition to fight, and didn't have enough mana to cast teleport again.

"Where is Kazuma?"

The blue haired priest said in a deadly tone.

Well, I don't think I can escape my fate at this point, so I might as well do some last minute damage to this Axis cultist.

I did my best cruel laugh. "I killed him."

I relished the feeling of satisfaction seeing the Axis priest's shocked expression and the tears in her eyes-

"GOD BLOW"

-Before I could react, the blue haired priest dashed at me with superhuman speed, I felt a sharp pain on my stomach, before flying back and hitting to wall behind me.

"GOD REQUIEM! GOD BLOW! GOD REQUIEM!"

As I watched lady Aqua's brutal beatdown of the demon king, I lowered Gram, the sacred sword that I once thought to be the sign of lady Aqua's favor.

I have been fooling myself.

It should have been clear to me long ago, from her wanting to stick by his side instead of coming to me even though I offered a more comfortable and safer life and the fact that she couldn't even remember my name, that I couldn't hope to win her heart.

But seeing her fly into a rage with tears running down her face at the mention of his death, the truth was finally apparent to me.

By the time I regained control of myself, the demon king was already reduced to a bleeding mass engrained into the wall, barely breathing and certainly unconscious.

I could feel gazes coming from behind me, probably wondering how I was able to do that.

Well, as a goddess, my attacks would of course be especially effective against someone like the devil king.

But more importantly-

-[God blow] and [God requiem] are fueled by my rage and sorrow.

Suddenly, a bright white light engulfed me, and I was in Eris's room, standing before Eris as well as a transparent Kazuma.

I suddenly realized that I had tears all over my face, and before I knew it I was crying into my junior's chest, hugging her for warmth and comfort while she hugged back.

Then I heard Eris say:

"Kazuma-san, thank you for your hard work, although you failed to finish off the demon king, you created a scenario that lead to his demise shortly afterwards. Besides, the demon king was ultimately defeated by lady Aqua, who is considered your cheat item. As such, you are still recognized as a hero by heaven."

Well, being called a cheat item certainly isn't great, but I guess I will tolerate it if he gets a little more credit in heaven because of that.

"Now, Satou Kazuma-san, as you are the hero who died defeating the demon king, I've been allowed to give you one more option on top of the ones I already gave you while senpai was fighting the demon king."

Wait, what?

I stopped crying and looked up at Eris, listening intently.

"Wah! Too close, senpai, your face is too close!"

This girl is so timid at the worst times!

Maybe I should have taught her to grow a spine, even if it makes her more troublesome.

I impatiently squeezed her to urge her to continue.

Eris cleared her throat and said:

"You may choose to get your body back, and go back to that world with all your memories intact."

I turned my head to Kazuma to observe his reaction, he had a big, stupid grin on his face.

At that moment, I felt elation the likes of which I've never felt before, and I was sure that I had that same grin plastered across my face.

-THE END-

A/N: My first completed fanfic! I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing it even if it's a very short story. Feel free to rate it and give some feedback.

Konosuba is probably my favorite anime and also the only LN series I've read, so if I ever publish more fanfic then chances are it's going to be more Konosuba.

Aqua is a very interesting character IMO. She is extremely dumb but can be very sharp at times, not to mention her immensely artistic talent. She is by far the most bitchy character in Konosuba but I don't hate her for it at all. She argues with Kazuma more than every other character in the series combined but is also the most in-tune with him... etc.

Aqua can display such a wide variety of behavior without feeling out of character yet her character is so difficult to replicate that I rarely see long fanfics that writes Aqua fully in-character, precisely because she displays such a wide range of behavior while every fanfic I can think of only shows a fraction of all her character traits and quirks. (Hence why I emphasized long, since short stories naturally don't have enough pages to show off her many traits, so just showing off a few is enough to make feel in-character, but her only having some of her original personality traits is very obvious in longer fanfics. That said, most short stories screws up Aqua anyways, most commonly having her be way more bitchy than she is in the LN)

Anyways, that's my little rant about Aqua, I felt it was appropriate since this was an Aqua focused short story, if you've read till this point, congratulations! Your attention span isn't terrible and probably better than Aqua's!