Chapter 13: The Destruction Of This Wonderful Town!
Imagine, if you will, an indestructible, kaiju-sized giant robot spider that seeks out and obliterates everything that crosses its path, which has been on a rampage since ancient times and was responsible for the destruction of the most powerful and technologically advanced civilization in history. Now, imagine that indestructible giant spider robot was walking right towards you, leveling a forest in its way. That's what the current situation was.
"You are the only hope this town has," Luna said to the crowd of assembled adventurers. "Thank you for being willing to put your lives on the line."
Kazuma and the rest of his party were situated in the Adventure Guild main hall, with a gathering of any and every adventurer in town who was willing to take on this suicide mission. It wasn't much but considering that this was the starting town and they were currently going up against the equivalent of a post-game superboss, that wasn't surprising. Most of the adventurers were either evacuating with the citizens or guarding the evacuation routes.
Hell, they weren't even really here to defeat the Destroyer, just to stall it long enough for everyone else to escape before the Mobile Fortress Destroyer turned all of Axel into a smoking crater. Kazuma was really starting to second-guess his decision to stick around for this.
"Our intel shows that the Mobile Fortress Destroyer is approaching from the northlands," another guild worker held up a crystal ball which showed the spider-like fortress walking through the forest. "We've confirmed that its path will take it straight to Axel and will be here in one hour."
"How are we supposed to fight that thing?" one witch asked. "Isn't it supposed to be protected by an impenetrable magic barrier?"
"Can't we just ask its creators how to turn it off?"
"We should just leave with the others!"
Kazuma started to tune out the chatter around him. What was that about a magic barrier?
He was pulled out of his thoughts as someone tugged on his sleeve and turned to see Chris standing at his side.
"Do you have any bright ideas?" she asked him.
"Well, I was just thinking…" Kazuma turned to his resident goddess, who was standing nearby with her beloved pet chicken resting on her head. "Hey, Aqua? Do you think that you could dispel the barrier?"
"What was that?" Luna suddenly turned to him, along with everyone else in the room. "Are you saying that you can get rid of the barrier?"
"Well, I…" Kazuma felt nervous to have so many eyes focused on him. Like he'd done something wrong and was about to get called out on it, like usual. "It was just an idea."
Aqua considered Kazuma's question for a moment. "I guess I have no way to know unless I try."
"Please, help us! You're our only hope!" Luna bowed before her, then stood up again. "But then we'd still need the firepower to destroy it…"
"Ah ha!" Megumin jumped onto a table and waved her staff over her head. She was, of course, wearing her eyepatch as she did so and rubbed the brim of her hat with her other hand. "Then it is a good thing that you have me, Megumin, the Mistress of Explosions, on your side! Not to mention my apprentice, Keima Cat's Eye!"
The boy in question groaned loudly but relented and climbed onto the table beside her, striking a sentai-esque pose of his own that reminded Kazuma of that one red-headed guy from Dragon Ball. Racoon? Riku? He'd apparently been living in Belzerg long enough that his otaku knowledge was starting to slip. "Fine, if it's to save the town, I guess I can use Explosion this one time."
"I can also use Explosion magic," Wiz volunteered as well from the other end of the hall.
The morale in the room quickly made a turnaround as people started to get on board with the plan. Kazuma could hear people talking about the destruction they'd witnessed Megumin cause with her stupid spell and theorized over how much damage three powerful casters using it at once could do. It seemed that most of the adventurers were now starting to think they stood a chance.
"Alright, everyone!" Luna announced with a twirl and dramatic wave of her arm. Kazuma's focus was immediately drawn to her, ahem, assets as they jiggled like crazy. Both above and below. "The emergency quest will now begin!"
Ko! * No! * Su! * Ba!
Darkness stood valiantly in the middle of the rocky field north of Axel's gate. She was alone there, as the rest of the city's adventurers continued prepping their attack. That was fine with her, though. She would be their first line of defense. The one to shield them from harm with her own body.
It also meant that no one could see her blush indecently at the idea of taking the Destroyer head-on. She wiped a bit of drool off her chin before returning her hand to where it rested on the pommel of her sword in front of her.
"Hey, Darkness, you can't stand out here waiting," Kazuma said, walking up behind her. "I know you like the pain and all, but-"
"I understand why you would think that of me, given my usual behavior," Darkness cut him off, though specifically didn't turn to face him. "But I am a knight, remember? Do you really think I would put my own desires before my duty to these people?"
…
"Yeah, that pretty much sums it up."
Darkness choked for a second before clearing her throat, deciding to change the subject. "Darkness is not my real name."
"Never thought it was."
She turned to him, starting to get annoyed (and a little turned on) by his dismissive attitude. "My real name is Lalatina Dustiness Ford. My family governs this land, which means that I have a duty and a responsibility to defend this town and its people."
"Wait, you're a rich girl?" Kazuma took a step back as if she had just slapped him.
Ooh, that frustrating bastard. By Eris, she wanted to make out with him so bad. And also maybe with Eris. Darkness had a lot that she was in the middle of trying to process but this wasn't the time for that. She took a deep breath and did her best to shove her libido to the side.
"Please keep this secret," Darkness said.
"Oh, yeah, sure," Kazuma said unconvincingly.
"I am a knight and as such, I must protect my people," Darkness reiterated. "It is my duty and honor to, even if I can be selfish and stubborn."
"Aren't we all?" Kazuma shrugged. "Hey, at least you've got an actual good reason to do what you do, I guess. The rest of us are just a bunch of failures and screwups... Wait, no, I think I accidentally included myself in that."
"Very well, then." Darkness smiled and turned back towards where the Destroyer would be coming from, resuming her position as a sentinel guarding the city with the tip of her broadsword resting on the ground. She didn't hear Kazuma walk away, though.
"What kind of a name is Lalatina, anyway?"
Darkness rounded on him and had to stop herself from striking down her party leader on the spot. "Never call me by that name again!"
Kazuma fell flat on his behind, which he rubbed as he got back up. "Alright, alright, geez. I was just messing with you. Honestly, that's not nearly as weird as a lot of the names here."
Darkness just groaned and turned away again but before Kazuma could head back, a rumble shook the area.
"Attention, everyone!" Luna's voice sounded over a megaphone. "The Destroyer will be here any moment! Prepare for battle!"
The tremors that accompanied the Mobile Fortress' steps as it came into view reminded Darkness of those left by the Island Tortoise. It was far from the same, however. Whenever the great tortoise had taken a step, the quake it caused felt natural, like a part of the living world. This, however, was anything but. It was as if the Destroyer's lust for violence and destruction emanated through the very ground it walked on. Despite herself, Darkness found her usual lusts replaced with genuine fear for her own safety and, more pressingly, the safety of those under her protection.
The giant arachnoid golem stopped at the top of the hill and seemed, at least to Darkness, to be eyeing the town and the adventurers preparing to fight it off. She wondered if it was sizing them up or simply determining where everyone was.
"Go!" Darkness ordered Kazuma, who had already turned tail and was running back to the city. She couldn't blame him. A part of her wanted to do the same. Was this what it was like when other people faced danger? "I shall hold my ground for as long as I draw breath!"
Ko! * No! * Su! * Ba!
"It's gonna be okay, I can totally do this." Megumin trembled, sweat running down her face as she stood atop one of the ramparts above the gate. On the other, Aqua was openly panicking while Wiz was talking as if their loss was already guaranteed.
It was starting to make Kazuma wonder why he'd run back here. At least if he'd stayed with Darkness, he would have been put of his misery faster. And he could die next to a pair of massive honkers. Damn it, he should have climbed the other side of the gate so that he could be beside Wiz's mega milkers. Even Aqua's were pretty nice if he actually let himself think about them that way. Hey, at least Keima looked like he was still pretty confident about their odds as he stood beside Megumin.
"For my next life, I think I'm going to ask to just be reborn on Earth." Never mind. "This wasn't worth it."
Kazuma couldn't believe that he had to be the voice of reason, here. All he wanted was to hightail it out of there and join the soon-to-be refugees fleeing the city.
"Hey, stop stressing yourself out," he told the others. "We're all going to be just fine."
"Right, I just need to use my Explosion magic and-"
Megumin raised her staff but Keima immediately grabbed it and pointed it back down.
"Not yet!" he snapped at her.
"It's here!" Luna announced from below and Kazuma turned to see Aqua jump into action.
The goddess twirled her flower-tipped staff over her head and the pink blossom opened up into full bloom despite not being a real plant. A surge of magical energy radiated from her body like she was a goddamn Dragon Ball Z character.
"Sacred!" she yelled, as Emperor Zell squawked triumphantly from where he was standing between her spread-apart legs. Five giant magic circles formed in the air in front of her, which in turn formed and even larger one. This was quite possibly the biggest display of magic that Kazuma had ever seen. "Dispel!"
With a thrust of her staff, each of the magic circles fired a massive laser of pure holy energy, which twisted around each other into one giant laser that struck the Destroyer head-on, halting its steady march towards the wall and revealing the magic dome that protected it from harm. Gritting her teeth, Aqua somehow managed to put even more power into her spell, which surged and grew until at last, the barrier shattered completely.
"Now!" Kazuma yelled, signaling the three Wizards to begin their magic chants.
"I'm all set!" Wiz announced. "Ready, Megumin and Keima?"
"Ready," Keima replied, though Megumin remained uncharacteristically quiet as she shook nervously. To Kazuma's surprise, Keima placed his hand on her shoulder and Megumin looked up at the older boy. "You do this literally every day, you'll be fine. Just think of this as your big chance to show everybody the power of Explosion! Let this be your magnum opus!"
"R-right." Megumin closed her eyes (or at least the one that was visible) and when she opened them again, there was a newfound determination there. "Let's do this! Let the world witness the Explosion that will destroy the Destroyer itself!"
"Darkness, blacker than black, darker than dark!" the three chanted in unison, further surprising Kazuma who had assumed that Megumin had made up her incantation. "Merge with my deep Crimson, I beseech thee! The time of awakening has come! From the boundaries of the precipice, come forth, oh, justice! Intangible distortion! Explosion!"
Kazuma could have sworn that it had been midday a moment ago as he looked up at the night sky above, lit by a veritable rainbow of twinkling stars. A magic circle appeared in the air above the Destroyer, wider than the robot itself was, and another formed over that one. Then a third and a fourth. The magic circles continued to stack themselves higher and higher until Kazuma could no longer see the top of the tower.
Then the spell went off. The light and noise were so intense that Kazuma momentarily worried that he'd gone both blind and deaf. By the time his blurry vision came back into focus, he could see the giant crater that had once been the hill that the Destroyer had been standing on. It was like looking at what he assumed a meteor impact must be like. Unfortunately, the black metal of the so-called mobile fortress was still plainly visible. As the smoke dissipated, however, it seemed clear that they had left more than just a dent. The Mobile Fortress Destroyer was now more like the Immobile Fortress Destroyed. He could also see Darkness, still standing resolute between Mecha Kumonga and the town.
"You did it!" Kazuma turned just in time to see Megumin and Keima both collapse to the floor in a heap.
"Get off of me, perv," Megumin mumbled.
"I would if I could, brat," Keima replied.
Kazuma just let out a sigh of relief and looked down at the assembled adventurers at ground level, who were all cheering their success. They had done it! They had saved the city from the OP raid boss!
"Now that it's done, let's all hit the bar!" Aqua cheered from the other side of the gate. "I can't wait to collect the reward!"
Wait…
"I can't believe we did it!"
"We totally owned that thing!"
"Yeah! Now that this is over, I can finally retire!"
"I'm going to propose to my girlfriend!"
"I can't wait to get back to my wife and son!"
Those idiots! Did they have any idea how many flags they were setting off? At this rate, the Destroyer was nearly guaranteed to get up again.
"Shut up, you idiots!" he yelled down at them. "Your big fat mouths are going to get us all killed!"
But it was too late, the 'eyes' on the Destroyer's head turned back on and started flashing red.
"There you go, happy now!"
"Critical damage detected!" an automated woman's voice sounded from the Destroyer. "All crew members, evacuate immediately! Self-destruct sequence, engaged! Self-destruct sequence, engaged!"
Noooooo! Nonononono!
Ko! * No! * Su! * Ba!
Darkness trembled and not for the usual reasons. The Mobile Fortress Destroyer was practically right in front of her, about to self-destruct. She couldn't back away from it now. Though she would surely die, she had to do whatever she could to defend those at the city gate, who were running for their lives.
"Come on, Darkness! We've gotta get out of here!" Kazuma had run back up to her again.
"I cannot withdraw until the battle has ended," she insisted, internally screaming at herself to follow his lead. "No matter how mighty the enemy, a knight must hold their ground."
"Darkness, this is stupid," Kazuma said plainly. "You being here isn't going to change anything."
Darkness' grip on her sword tightened as her muscles tensed. A part of her was excited at the prospect of exposing herself to a bomb powerful enough to destroy an entire city. The rest of her, though, flashed back to her recent death caused by her own recklessness. Meeting her goddess in person had been an… enlightening experience in more ways than one, but… death itself was not something that she enjoyed. For as much pleasure as she gained from experiencing sensations of pain, that had been… something else entirely, which she was in no rush to experience again. But still, she had a duty to her people.
"When a ship at sea gets into an accident and begins to sink, is the captain the first to escape?" she asked. "No, it is the captain's duty to ensure that every member of their crew is safe before they can even consider leaving the ship themselves, and if that means that they go down with it, then that is simply how it is. My duty is the same. I cannot flee from this danger unless I know for certain that every one of my people is safe, and so I must stay here to do what I can."
Her speech was meant only for Kazuma's ears but to her surprise it was met with a roar of cheers. Darkness whipped around to see that Kazuma was not the only one there. Every adventurer in Axel was gathered, raising their arms and yelling in triumph.
"We need to save the town!"
"Let's destroy it before it can explode!"
"I owe my life to my town and its people!"
"We built this town, and by Eris we will protect it!"
Oh, goddess, what had she done?
The crowd charged around her, weapons drawn. Someone had brought ropes that they used to scale the fortress in their attack. This was all wrong! It was far too dangerous but there was nothing that she could do to stop them.
"No, stop! You need to get out of here!"
This was not the sort of humiliation that she enjoyed.
Ko! * No! * Su! * Ba!
Kazuma had carried Megumin over to Darkness with him, intent on running as soon as he could convince the Crusader to flee with them. With that plan having somehow completely backfired, he now had to set her limp body down, leaning her against the edge of the crater. Elsie did the same with Keima while the rest of their party walked over.
"Kazuma, I have an idea," Wiz walked up to them as well. She hadn't been completely mana drained like their party's Wizards, presumably as a perk of being a lich. "The self-destruct must have a power source. If we can find it then we might have a chance of shutting it down."
"I'm in." Oh, and Chris was there, too.
A sound of an explosion could be heard, much smaller than the one from before, and Kazuma looked up to see that the other adventurers had managed to breach through into the fortress.
"Well, it looks to me like they've got this under control," Aqua said as she slowly walked away. Kazuma grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back.
"Oh, no you don't! You're coming with us!"
Wiz bent over the two downed mages and gently touched their foreheads, using some sort of reverse Drain Touch to feed some of her mana into them. Keima and Megumin both slowly rose to their feet.
"Thanks," Keima said as he dusted off his robes. "You're a lifesaver."
"I didn't need your help," Megumin pouted and turned her head to the side.
Wiz blushed before turning back to the Destroyer. "Come on, we have to stop this thing before it destroys the town!"
With that, the party and guests rushed up to where the others had already entered the Destroyer. Despite the outside looking like a giant robot spider, the inside looked like what Kazuma would imagine something called a fortress should look like, a series of mazelike hallways made of stone bricks.
"I really don't want to be here," Aqua whined as they made their way into a deeper chamber.
The room they had just entered was centered around an ornate chair hooked up to a bunch of wires and pipes that all fed into a central pillar of some kind. More pressing than that, however, was the withered skeleton in tattered robes that looked like it had been there for centuries.
"This must be the pilot," someone said.
"He's quite dead," Wiz pointed out the obvious as she, Aqua and Kazuma approached.
"At least he's not undead." Aqua shrugged. "It seems that he died peacefully, without a single regret."
"What are you talking about?" Kazuma snapped at her. "He died in here, alone! Can you even imagine what that was like for him?"
"T-there's a b-book over here," Yunyun stammered from beside a podium nearby, picking up a dusty old tome. "I-it l-looks like a j-journal."
"Give that here!" Megumin snatched the book out of her hands and began flipping through it. "Let's see… 'I can't believe what those bigshots want me to do. I have to make a mobile fortress for next to nothing. Cheepskates'."
As Megumin read the journal aloud, Kazuma looked back at the old skeleton, feeling pity for the stranger. He couldn't even imagine how tragic his life must have been.
'They asked what I would use to power it. Hell if I know. To get them off my back, I asked them for something rare; Coronatite.
'Damn it, they brought some. NOW WHAT!? If this doesn't work, they'll execute me! It has to work. Please work. PLEASE!'
A~nd his sympathy was gone. This asshole was clearly just an idiot and a coward.
'Well, it's done, and… it's out of control. The city is on fire and everyone's dead. Hey, at least this thing works as ordered, though, so I guess nice job, me. But since I can't stop this thing and can't get out, I guess I'll just stay here for the rest of my life. What kind of idiot forgets to make an off-switch? Oh, right… me…
'Well, at least I still have that creator ability that goddess gave me when I was brought to this world. I guess I'll go back to making those lady robots I used to experiment with before all this. Imagine, a whole army of dominatrix fembots just for me! Wait, no, I don't have any materials to work with in here. Damn.'
That!
ASSHOLE!
Suddenly, Kazuma wanted to learn the dark arts of necromancy and revive this asshole just so that he could strangle him to death with his own two hands. Maybe he'd try to get Wiz to teach him that later. He'd probably have to blackmail her into it but that was fine.
"What was that about dominatrix fembots?" Darkness asked, because of course that's what she latched onto. Did she even know what either of those words meant? "Hm, I think I'll hold on to this journal. You know, for historical preservation… yeah."
After that, they headed even further into the Destroyer's inner workings, eventually finding the reactor core, or whatever you call it. A big glowing ball that looked almost like some kind of miniature sun was suspended above some complex machinery, pulsing and writhing chaotically.
"Alright, this must be it," Kazuma said, then turned to Chris. "Okay, this is probably going to be dangerous, so you should grab everyone else and evacuate the area. We'll try to figure out how to disarm this thing."
"Got it." Chris rushed out of the room and Kazuma turned back to the reactor core.
Now it was just the seven members of his party and also Wiz, all staring up at the glowing red ball.
"So, now what do we do?"
"The coronatite could explode at any minute!" Wiz said, which was not doing anything for Kazuma's morale. Why, exactly, was he here again?
"You're a goddess." Kazuma turned to Aqua. "Can't you do something?"
"What would I do?"
"I don't know! Isn't taking care of old evil crap a pretty basic goddess thing to do?"
"What evil?" Aqua asked. "This is just a highly concentrated magic mineral. It's neutral at worst and rocks aren't my domain, anyway. But I'm sure that someone like Wiz could do something about this, right?"
"What?" Wiz turned to her nervously. "Well, I suppose that I could use my teleportation magic to send it away, but-"
"Yeah! Just to that!" Aqua pointed at her and the chick on her head flapped its wings out.
"But I don't have enough mana left!" Wiz countered. "And even if I did, the core is so unstable right now that I'd only have time for a random teleport, which could end up doing more harm than good."
"So, you're saying that if we could somehow stabilize the core, then we'd have more time," Kazuma scratched his chin, trying to think over all of their options.
"Well, maybe," Wiz replied. "But in order to do that, we'd need another power source that could match the coronatite's near-infinite energy output."
"So, we need a substitute power source." Kazuma glanced to the side. "An infinite battery."
"Wait, why are you looking at me?" Keima stepped away defensively, then his eyes widened as he grasped at something in his pocket. "No! Don't you dare!"
"Steal!" Kazuma held his hand out and a certain portable gaming device appeared in it. Keima tried to charge him to get his prized possession back but thankfully Darkness understood the situation and tackled him to the ground. "This should work!"
"Don't even think about it!"
Kazuma didn't even bother taking the battery out of the console, simply chucking the whole thing into the reactor core. The ball of coronatite settled down almost instantaneously, turning a calmer yellow color as it stopped pulsing wildly. The red emergency lights that lit up the fortress shut off, signaling that the self-destruct had been canceled.
"Does this mean that we won?" Elsie asked.
"Not quite." Kazuma turned back to Wiz. "So, what was that about using Teleport? Because I think I have an idea."
Ko! * No! * Su! * Ba!
When Kyoichi Yasaka took the title of Devil King from his father by force, he had expected his reign to be filled with conquest and excitement as he took over the world one country at a time. Instead, he'd been locked in an eternal stalemate with the human kingdoms for over a century. He didn't even get to fight on the front lines, anymore. Instead, he was mostly left to fill out paperwork and try to keep his generals under control.
Honestly, life was just one constant headache after another. And now with Beldia defeated, he had to look into a replacement general. It was all just so annoying. It certainly didn't help that all of the candidates that his remaining generals had brought forward were just as screwed up as they were. Why couldn't he have normal followers?
With a sigh, the Devil King set the stack of evaluation forms back on his desk and got up from his chair, popping his back. Ah, if only he could be young again. Perhaps it was time to consider passing the crown down to his daughter. But, no, she wasn't quite ready for that responsibility yet. His retirement would have to wait.
Walking over to the window, he could see the starry night sky outside. And what a wonderful night it was. The stars were shining overhead in a variety of different colors, a flock of bats flew by outside his window, the wrecked remains of the Mobile Fortress Destroyer were sitting collapsed just inside the border of the castle's barrier, a tower of magical rings forming above it, a few clouds floating in the distance…
Wait…
Wasn't the sun out just a second ago? He could have sworn that it was still midday.
…
…
…
The Mobile Fortress Destroyer!
The Devil King barely had time to process what was wrong when the Destroyer exploded and since it was inside the barrier, not only did it impact the castle but the entire force of the explosion was contained within the dome. As the magic dissipated and the smoke cleared, all that was left of the Devil King's castle was a rocky crater, a few piles of rubble and a large red truck that fell out of the sky where the Destroyer had just been.
Ko! * No! * Su! * Ba!
In the next exciting chapter of God's Blessing, God Knows: Success For This Hopeless Party!
Before Darkness could dwell on that, though, Megumin started screaming from inside the truck. Darkness tensed up, a thousand sickening scenarios passing through her mind of what that absolute scumbag Kazuma could be doing to her in there. She had to get in on that action- er, rescue her friend! She rushed to the firetruck and yanked the door open.
Aqua was wandering through the ruins of the Devil King's castle, absently watching her adopted son peck at a specific pile of rubble. Something seemed to have peeked the dragon hatchling's attention and with his no-doubt impressive magical senses, she wondered what it could possibly be.
Unlike Kazuma or even Elsie, Keima hadn't taken to drinking even though he was allowed to in this world and hadn't touched a drop of alcohol yet. But, if this was just his life now then there was no way in hell, old or new, that he was getting through this sober.
Author's Notes: Well, what do you know? Through hard work, ingenuity and creative use of cheat items, our heroes have defeated the Devil King and his army, saving Belzerg and the rest of the world! This was certainly a fun story to write but I guess we've pretty much wrapped things up now, and…
Wait, what do you mean we haven't even finished the first story arc yet? They won, right? The Devil King has been defeated, right? Right? RIGHT?
On another note, I've made the joke before that I came up with this crossover idea just for the ridiculous story name but that was a lie. While that was how I came up with the crossover idea, the ending of this chapter and its effects on the rest of the plot moving forward are why I decided to actually write the story instead of just leaving it as a dumb joke. While I will be loosely adapting the next few arcs of Konosuba, things will be playing out very differently after this.