Notes: This is probably the point in the story where a lot of people will pause and go, "Wait, WHAT?!" for a number of reasons... All I can say is the chapter title is extremely appropriate this time.

Goddess's Blessing On This Wonderful Minion!
A Konosuba Fanfic by
Nate Grey (xman0123at-aol-dot-com)
Chapter 3: Holy Crap

The following morning, Wiz was invited (or more accurately, dragged and pushed out of her shop by Megumin and Darkness) to breakfast. She took one look at Kazuma, with his blue lips, white-streaked hair, wearing several layers of clothing, and began blushing.

"Kazuma-san, if you had a little crush on me, you could have said something. It was completely unnecessary for you to become a lich yourself."

"I couldn't agree more... but only with the latter half of that statement," Kazuma muttered, scowling at Aqua. And that he wasn't taking the opportunity to encourage Wiz's mistaken assumption and flirt with her, spoke to what a truly bad mood he was in.

Aqua smiled. "Now, now, Kazuma-chan. There's no need to pretend around me. As your personal goddess, I am always happy to hear your honest confessions. If you should feel the need to spontaneously profess your undying-"

"You mean undead," Kazuma interrupted coldly. Not that he really had a choice. What with now being undead, producing warmth of any kind was far more challenging for him in every aspect. Just as challenging, was managing his newfound, overwhelming desire to gain warmth, as no matter how much he took in, it was never enough, and never lasted long before the chill crept in again.

"-undead devotion to me, then of course, I am willing to listen," Aqua continued. "I always have time for my beloved kids."

Wiz glanced between them uncertainly. "Wait, are you saying Kazuma-san became a lich because he had a crush on Aqua-sama?"

"No, I'm saying she turned me into a lich against my will with those fiendish lips of hers," Kazuma corrected.

Wiz shook her head. "That... sounds unlikely. Aqua-sama seems far too pleased for that to be true. And based on my own personal... experiences, I don't think she'd be too happy if you became a lich."

Kazuma rolled his eyes. "Well, that's the best part. Apparently, I'm not a normal lich. Since I got this way because of a blessing, I'm a blessed lich."

Aqua shook her head patiently. "No, no, Kazuma-chan. I keep telling you, you're getting the name wrong. You are now a NEET lich."

"And I keep telling you to stop calling me that!" Kazuma snapped at her. "Besides, if that were true, how do you explain these random urges I have to go out and tell everyone I see to join the Axis Cult?! If you actually make me do that, there's no way I could be considered a NEET anymore!"

Aqua smiled. "I'm not making you do anything, Kazuma-chan. Those impulses are perfectly natural for all of my beloved kids. Don't you think those urges are proof that this is totally natural?"

"What I think is that they're proof that I've lost my mind. Or that I've been corrupted by you!"

Aqua continued to smile, but it was clearly strained now. "I understand that this will be an adjustment for you, Kazuma-chan, so I will overlook that comment. And while, as your personal goddess, I will listen to all of your sins, I do hope that you will, in the future, strive to be an upstanding member of the Axis Cult. You are representing your beloved goddess now, after all."

Amazingly, Kazuma's only reaction to that was to glare at her, but with his blue lips tightly sealed, as if he were trying very hard not to respond. Something had definitely changed in him.

Aqua seemed pleased with that lack of response. "I'm going outside for some fresh air. Everyone, please enjoy the rest of your breakfast." She got up and quietly left the room.

The second she was gone, Kazuma growled and started banging his head against the table. Normally, his companions might have tried to stop him, except they were all morbidly fascinated by the sight of the resulting wound on his forehead rapidly healing and fading in-between thumps.

There is an old but accurate saying: never give anything unimportant to a Crimson Demon, unless you want it to become all-important, but mostly only to them.

Kazuma was far from the first visitor from another world to seek the defeat of the Devil King. One such visitor was perhaps best known for his fascination with American culture. Which would have been curious enough, but the specific focus of his fascination is what mattered most. This young man did not give much thought to coming to this world, or to what cheat he would be allowed to bring with him. Indeed, his main thought was little more than "give me a world on hard mode lolz" before he dove in headfirst.

To no one's amazement, he was killed, within a week, by Beldia, one of the Devil King's Generals. And not even in dramatic fashion. Beldia's headless horse simply trampled him to death in one pass. Beldia was honestly pretty startled, and slightly annoyed, that he did not get a chance to use any fancy attacks.

The young man's final thought was not of lost glory or who would save the world. Instead, he thought, "Crap, I wonder if anyone will ever find my time capsule?" As that was the only thing he'd exercised even a bit of foresight on, and it was his cheat: a time capsule filled with otherworldy souvenirs, which was allowed purely because none of his stash would prove in any way useful.

Someone did find it. A Crimson Demon did, to be precise. And, being unfamiliar with the concept of a time capsule and what they typically contained, the Crimson Demon used his imagination.

This is what he imagined:

The gods had hidden their treasures deep within the earth, and he had been genius enough to discover the treasures, and now, their divine loot was his divine loot.

If the Crimson Demon's imaginings had stopped there, all might have been fine. But they did not. And yet, it was probably a good thing that he didn't realize what a time capsule was, and what they should have contained. That way, he would never realize that he should have been greatly disappointed.

Despite everything in the time capsule being exceedingly exclusive, in that they could be found nowhere else in the world (as they originated from another world entirely), they were of virtually no monetary value. There was simply no audience for them. No one but a Crimson Demon would have understood them, and even then, only one that was largely bored would have found their interest captivated.

It is at this point that the unfortunate young man's fascination with American culture must be revealed. He, put quite simply, had an obsession with only two things: role-playing games, and, oddly, an American comedy trio known as The Three Stooges. And as he was going to a world so much like an RPG, he had not thought to bring any games with him. So instead, he filled his time capsule with Stooges memorabilia of all sorts: shirts, lunchboxes, masks, pens, books, posters, and even VHS tapes. He did not think to bring a VHS tape player... but a silly thing like that would not have stopped a Crimson Demon for long.

Within a day, this Crimson Demon became a walking encyclopedia of Stooges knowledge (if it could be called that). Which would have been bad enough. But, it must be remembered: he thought this was all divine loot. Which meant that he thought the Stooges were disgraced gods, and that they deserved to be remembered. And so he made it his personal quest to see that they were.

He told all two of his friends, and so they were converted. This worked out great, for about two days. Then one of them had the horrible idea to ask which one was the leader of their little trio. And, in true Stooge fashion, the answer was the last one standing over his freshly killed brethren. What else could he do, but pledge his sacrifice to the disgraced gods?

The thing is, you can't pledge a sacrifice to nothing. It doesn't work that way. The very act of the pledge, the sheer belief backed by immense magical power, demands a response. Or rather, creates one. In this world, anyway.

That was the beginning. From that day forward, the future members of the Disorderly Triad began to take form: as more than ideas, less than gods, but backed by far too much power. Which, ironically, elevated them to a threat level where gods took them very seriously, and thus, essentially made them dark gods. Although, even gods arguably considered to be dark were known to state, very firmly, "They are not with us. Seriously. We thought those idiots were Heaven's people!"

Kazuma would have preferred to stay shut in the house forever, both to avoid anyone seeing the changes in him, and to better suppress the urges he had to talk about the Axis Cult whenever he came across random people. Unfortunately, this was not possible: if he only spent money without earning it, between the usual cost of living and the debts Aqua was likely to amass simply by being Aqua, he would eventually go broke.

Anyway, as much as Kazuma didn't want to admit it, the transformation into a lich had both greatly altered and increased his battle power. To the degree where he basically had to re-register at the guild, since his new skill set was entirely unrecognizable, and it took several minutes to convince everyone that he was who he said he was. Rather unfairly, it was mostly due to the fact that Aqua vouched for him that settled things. But it was less that people believed in Aqua, and more that they believed no one but Kazuma was unfortunate enough to get caught up in one of her schemes to this degree.

The difficulties only increased when Kazuma tried to update his status with Luna at the guild desk.

"I'm sorry, but this is an unprecedented situation," Luna explained. "I no longer have any doubt that you are who you say you are, Kazuma-san. And while it would be... difficult to re-register someone who is technically now a monster in our guild, if it were only a matter of editing your adventurer card, it could be done. The bigger problem is that sounds like both your specific monster race and some resulting skills are exclusive to you alone. So even if you can display your skills before witnesses, the likelihood of our evaluation system being able to recognize and record your class and skills is extremely low. If that is the case, I'm not sure how we would proceed."

"Not to mention there's no guarantee that I can even still perform the skills I had before I transformed," Kazuma added dully.

"Yes, there's that, too," Luna said, startled that he was being so helpful on the matter. "Your adventurer card might have no accurate information on it at all right now, aside from your name."

"Could you at least watch me perform each skill? So even if the system doesn't acknowledge me, there's at least a visual, unofficial record of what I can do?" Kazuma asked.

Luna paused. "That does seem to be the safest way to proceed. But why don't we at least try to issue you a new card first?" She laughed uneasily and gestured to the evaluation crystal. "Maybe you have retained your unusually high luck stat!"

"Somehow, I really doubt that. I've never felt unluckier than I do right now," Kazuma muttered as he stretched out his hand over the crystal. He fully expected nothing to happen. And for a while, nothing did.

Until Aqua let out a loud, fake cough, and obviously bumped the crystal with her elbow.

At once, the crystal activated, and in seconds, had churned out a brand new adventurer card for Kazuma.

Luna stared at Aqua with some suspicion, but picked up the card. "Let's see... the name is correct, and for the stats... very high HP and defense! You could definitely be a Crusader if you wanted! Oh, but wait... that's interesting..."

"What is?" Kazuma asked with dread.

"It seems you already have a chosen class. I'm not sure what a 'NEET Lich' is, though."

"I'm sure it means 'neat' as in 'clean'," Kazuma said in a rush. "Probably a typo."

Luna glanced at him uncertainly, then at Aqua, who was glaring at the back of his head. "I suppose that's possible," Luna agreed hesitantly. "It seems to be a class focused on ice-based, close combat magic. You already have Ice Immunity, meaning you take no damage from ice-type attacks. You also have Ice Equip, which allows you to create and use basic ice weapons."

Kazuma frowned thoughtfully. In general, he preferred to attack from a distance, mostly because he liked to avoid situations where he could not escape that might result in his demise. But then, he hadn't had boosted HP and defense before. So maybe it wouldn't be horrible to switch up his combat style, with that in mind.

On the down side, if he would now be serving a similar role to Darkness in the party, that would only encourage her to be even more reckless with her body as a way of standing out, which didn't sound great at all. But, as Eris had pointed out, Darkness hadn't died yet. And likely wouldn't, with Kazuma sharing the burden now. Maybe Eris had planned for this all along? No, surely she would never have schemed that Aqua would turn him into an undead monster. Even Aqua had been surprised by that, at first. It was difficult to believe that Eris would have known the specifics, either.

On the other hand, Eris had always seemed more capable despite Aqua being her senior, so maybe it wasn't wise to underestimate the junior goddess. And, if Kazuma's suspicions were correct, his improved stats were going to mean it would be a long time before he saw Eris again, so the chances of conversing with her directly any time soon were slim.

The demon opened his eyes, stretched his wings, and groaned irritably at the sight of the little girl before him. "Look, kid, we've been over this. If you want to summon me, do it after you've grown a bit. In both mind and height. At least a decade from now, maybe two."

Komekko scowled up at him. "No. I need help right now."

"Not my problem."

"Isn't it? Whether you like it or not, I am your summoner for now. How else would you be here, at my command?"

That was a point in her favor, but he didn't like that she knew that. He groaned and shook his head slowly. "What do you want this time?"

Komekko held up her prayer book, and pointed to a specific passage on a specific page. "Explain this part."

The demon leaned down, scanned the indicated passage, and snorted. "I know you can read. Some, anyway. What don't you get about this?"

"You said you serve the Goddess of Sloth and Violence."

"Yeah, and?"

"But this is referring to the Goddess of Violence. No Sloth mentioned at all."

The demon shrugged. "Did you ever think that maybe the Goddess of Sloth has followers who are, you know, slothful? Maybe they don't write the most accurate descriptions because of that."

Komekko glared up at him. "You did it again! You keep talking like there are separate goddesses for Sloth and Violence, but before you said there was only one, and that's who I was praying to! So which is it?"

"Why do you care so much, kid?"

"I don't want to pray to a lousy goddess with only one duty! I want to pray to a super cool multi-duty goddess!"

The demon blinked. The kid was smarter than she looked. "Okay, chill out, kid. You, that is, we, are serving a multi-duty goddess. So you can relax."

"No, I can't! You gave me these scriptures, and there's no way they're wrong! So why are they saying there are multiple goddesses?"

"Kid, they're scriptures. You know, ancient? As in really not recent. Stuff tends to change after they're written. Like a lot of stuff."

"What sort of stuff?" Komekko demanded.

The demon sighed heavily. "Not really supposed to tell you this, but if I don't, you'll probably try to figure it out on your own, at this rate. So it's better if I give you the details you might guess wrong."

"Some goddess got demoted, and another one took over her duty?"

The demon glared at her. "See, what did I just say?! WRONG!" He plucked Komekko from the ground and placed her on his shoulder. "You might want to write this down so-" He trailed off, noticing Komekko had already flipped to a blank page, had some colored chalk in hand, and was staring at him intently. "Yeah, so, um... thing is, there were separate goddess for Violence, and Sloth. And Chaos."

Komekko's head snapped up. "Chaos? You never mentioned that one, either!"

"Yeah, well, now I am, and there's a reason for that, so shut up and listen! As you can guess, the Goddess of Chaos was a bit tricky to handle. Nobody could, in fact. So the other gods got rid of her. Not sure how, but it wasn't demotion. It was destruction. Wiped out of existence. Problem was, she and the Goddess of Violence were pals, and they had oaths to each other. So that triggered a blood war. Now, the Goddess of Sloth mostly stayed out of this, but she couldn't avoid it entirely."

"Why not?" Komekko interrupted.

The demon scowled at her. "None of your business, that's why not. Anyway, the Goddess of Violence knew her days were numbered, so she asked the Goddess of Sloth to take over her duty if things went south. They did, so she did. And that's why we serve the Goddess of Sloth and Violence, who was formerly only the Goddess of Sloth."

"Ooooh." Komekko looked fascinated, then confused. "Why not Sloth and Violence and Chaos?"

"Like I said, the Goddess of Chaos was destroyed. Probably wasn't possible to pass on her duty. And even if it was, whoever tried to take it up would have likely met the same fate. Only faster, since the gods were still in fight mode, and anyone too inexperienced to wield Chaos would be a sitting duck."

"You left all this out on purpose," Komekko said accusingly.

"So what if I did? What are you going to do about it?"

Not for the first time, Komekko was reminded that she was dealing with a powerful demon. Who absolutely did not know how to handle little girls as well as he thought. So she leaned in and kissed him, softly, on his cheek.

The reaction was slow but notable. A tiny spot of red surfaced on his skin where she had kissed him, and continued to spread until his entire head was glowing red. "Wha... WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!" he shouted.

Komekko stared at him defiantly, unbothered by his reaction.

The demon forced himself to calm down. Because he realized that he had greatly underestimated Komekko. He had assumed she might have guessed about there being a second goddess. But she had somehow convinced him to admit that there was once a third. And he had nearly slipped up and admitted that they were, in fact, a triad at one brief point. Which would have been a huge mistake.

Triads weren't merely professional partnerships. At least, this one hadn't been. The real reason why Chaos had not been taken up by someone else, was because only one of the other two goddesses could have, and the original had wanted to protect her sworn sisters from sharing her fate. It was the kind of rare loyalty that the demon had seen in very few beings. Like the kind that Komekko had to her own sister. Only, they weren't goddesses.

Although.

Any kid that could kiss a demon, with no fear, was probably itching to be named the new Goddess of Chaos. And the scariest part was, the demon could actually see it happening. It terrified him. But also, very strangely, excited him. Because he knew, with absolute certainty, that she wouldn't be satisfied with becoming a one duty goddess. This insane kid was going to go for the whole triad's worth. And, as his summoner, she could force him to help her do it. But she wouldn't need to apply much force at all. How could he, as a demon, ever resist such a nefarious plot?

For certain reasons best left unsaid, Chris never had any trouble locating Darkness. And if she ever claimed to? Well, it was probably better than saying she knew exactly where Darkness was at all times, because that would be awkward to explain.

The point was, Chris knew Darkness was at the guild. And for different but similar reasons, she also knew Aqua was there, as well. And, for even more different yet expected reasons, she now knew Kazuma was there, too.

Knowing the reasons and actually seeing the reasons in person, however, were two very different things.

There had been some very exaggerated reactions to Kazuma's new appearance. Blue lips simply weren't that common, even among the women with more unique cosmetic styles. Chris had a similar reaction, but for an entirely different reason.

Though was it was not listed at all under any of Chris's known skills, certain people had visible auras from her perspective. Darkness had been a sunny orange from the moment Chris first met her, Megumin had been a blazing pink for some time now, and Aqua (once she had come to inhabit this world, anyway) had been a shimmering blue.

Kazuma now had a shimmering blue aura, too, and it was this that Chris reacted to more than the blue lips. This was important, because while Chris had never bothered to check, she was certain that, if she had ever seen her own aura, it would be orange. And she was even more certain that no member of the Axis Cult had that shimmering blue aura, because she had checked. That distinction meant a great deal, and while it was perfectly within her expectations, actually seeing it, and knowing what it implied, was pretty amusing.

At least, until her eyes met Aqua's, and then it immediately became less funny. Because before, where Aqua would look at Chris as Darkness's friend, that look had changed, and was now bordering on suspicion. And Chris realized, with a start, why that was.

Aqua could now see the auras, too. She hadn't been able to before. The addition of a single follower should never have made that much of a difference in Aqua's powers. But, if that follower was very special to Aqua, and she had poured much of her care and hopes into him... maybe.

In any case, running away would only make Aqua more suspicious, so Chris didn't do that. But Aqua's look didn't change as Chris approached the group with her usual smile. "Hey, guys!" she greeted with a wave. "What's new?"

Kazuma turned to face her, and Chris reacted in the expected way. "Go ahead and get it out of your system," he sighed.

Chris forced her face to go blank. "I have no idea what you mean," she said calmly.

Kazuma stared at her. "I appreciate that. I think."

"This is perfect timing, Chris!" Aqua suddenly said far too happily. She grabbed both of Chris's hands. "We were about to go into the alley behind the guild and test some of Kazuma's new skills! And a live, moving target would work best!"

Kazuma frowned at Aqua. "Hey, now. We don't know what I'm capable of anymore. We can't ask Chris to-"

"No, I'm sure she really, really wants to," Aqua insisted, grinning at Chris with an overwhelmingly wicked gleam in her eyes. "Right, Chris?"

Chris smiled hesitantly. "Ah... yes! I'd be happy to help! That's what comrades are for! I won't even make you buy me a drink this time, haha!"

"Are you sure?" Kazuma asked doubtfully. "We don't really know if-"

"It'll be fine," Aqua interrupted firmly. "I can heal her if she gets hurt." She squeezed Chris's hands hard enough to draw a wince. "Right, Chris?"

"Right," Chris agreed weakly. "Don't worry so much, Kazuma! I can look after myself. You must have a really low opinion of my skills, to think you could hurt me! Who was it that had to teach you when you first got here, huh?"

Kazuma still seemed unsure. "Well, if you're volunteering, I can't pass up the chance. I do need to find out what I can do now, since someone," and he paused to glare at Aqua, "changed that recently. Without my permission."

"That must be an interesting story," Chris said. "You'll have to tell me all about it later."

"Yes, but first, the target practice," Aqua noted, grinning widely.

Continued in Chapter 4: Divine Punishment

Chris finds out the hard way that Holy Sword Excalibur is no longer an inside joke, and that Aqua doesn't take kindly to anyone targeting her kids. Or, you know, maybe it's the usual not liking anyone associated with Eris thing...