In that run-down little room at Axel's cheap inn, the air was thick with a despair even heavier and more suffocating than the ruins of the mansion.
The dim oil lamp flickered on and off, throwing its weak light over five utterly dejected figures.
"Waaahhh!! Over thirty million! That's more than thirty million! I'm the Goddess of Water! I came to this world to enjoy offerings from my followers and drink top-shelf wine, so how did I end up a debt-ridden wage slave instead?! Kōichi! This is all your fault! You absolutely aimed that lightning spell at the main beam on purpose! You pervert who doesn't wear underwear. You're trying to get revenge on society, aren't you?!"
Aqua rolled all over the floor with absolutely no trace of divine dignity, smearing tears and snot everywhere. Her once-holy blue eyes were now full of outrage at the cruelty of reality, and one slender finger remained stubbornly pointed at Kōichi.
"Huh?! You've got some nerve blaming Kōichi, Aqua!" Kazuma jerked his head up, his eyes bloodshot, looking like a finely tuned machine on the verge of falling apart. "If you hadn't gotten so drunk you were completely wasted and smashed that damned bottle, would it have triggered something as insane as that tsunami-level Purification Rage? With power like that, forget one mansion. It could probably wash away the Demon King's castle too! And you, Kōichi, if you were going to cast a spell, then just cast it! Why were you wriggling around and striking poses like that? What the hell kind of magical theory is this 'Wind of Freedom' anyway? Magic flows better if you're not wearing underwear? Not even the Slime next door would believe that!"
Kōichi calmly hitched up his waistband, enjoying the cool breeze between his thighs, and replied in a tone full of detached philosophy:
"Kazuma, your thinking is too narrow. The essence of magic is the extension of will, and underwear is nothing more than a shackle civilization has forced onto humanity. I merely cast off those shackles and returned to the most primal state of spellcasting. As for the house collapsing... that only proves the mansion's structure was flawed from the start. It was shoddy construction. We were simply helping the client identify a serious safety hazard."
"A safety hazard bad enough to leave the foundation exposed?! That's not an inspection. That's demolition, violent demolition!"
Kazuma clawed at his hair in despair, letting out the cry of a thoroughly defeated man.
"If something is going to be destroyed anyway, then it should at least be destroyed more completely, and with greater splendor."
Megumin, who had been leaning in the corner with her magic still not fully restored, finally spoke in a faint, eerie voice. Her crimson eyes glimmered dangerously in the darkness.
"If I had been the one to use Explosion back then, at least the rubble would have had a more even particle distribution, and there would have been glorious flames to go with it. Instead, all we have now is the stench of fermented alcohol and burnt debris everywhere. This is an insult to the art of destruction."
"You people... you're seriously beyond saving."
Kazuma collapsed backward onto the bed in despair.
Just then, Darkness, who had been silent the whole time and was even trembling slightly, suddenly spoke.
She clutched at the hem of her clothes, breathing as hard as if she had just run a marathon. The unhealthy flush on her face looked especially glaring in the lamplight.
"Thirty-three... thirty-three million seven hundred thousand... If we earn one hundred Eris a day doing labor to repay it, it'll take us more than nine hundred years... During that time, we'll be thrown out because we can't afford rent, and we'll have no choice but to sleep in a cold, damp stable... We might even be dragged off by our creditors to some dark basement, forced into humiliating outfits, and made to do all sorts of things in front of a crowd..."
"Hey! What the hell are you fantasizing about?! You're drooling on the floor!"
Kazuma shrank back in disgust.
Kōichi looked around at this room full of problem children. The astronomical number made his own stomach clench, but at the same time, he felt this was exactly the moment to display some leadership, or more accurately, his ability to bluff with confidence.
"Alright, enough arguing. The debt is already there, and pushing the blame around won't help. The most important thing right now is this. We need to take a job that pays big."
Kōichi suddenly smacked the shaky wooden table. The loud bang startled Aqua, who had just been about to begin her second "sacred roll" on the floor, and made her hiccup on the spot.
Kōichi stood tall, but there was a desperate, all-or-nothing resolve in his eyes.
"Listen up, all of you! Instead of tearing each other apart in here, put that energy into making money! I just found a legendary high-paying quest tucked away in the corner of the guild notice board, one everyone else ignored!"
With that, Kōichi pulled a crumpled quest sheet from his clothes. He had dug it out from the bottom crack of the quest board on the way back while Luna-san was busy doing the accounts.
"Take a good look! [Subjugate the King of Axel's Sewers. The Golden Sewer Crocodile]! Reward: 40 million Eris!"
The room fell silent in an instant. Forty million. That number was enough to wipe out their cursed debt and still leave a few million left over for Aqua to blow on the kind of top-shelf booze that would leave her blackout drunk.
"Forty million?!" Kazuma's eyes instantly turned into Eris coins. He snatched the quest sheet away, but his face immediately went pale. "Hey, Kōichi, are you blind? It says 'Extremely Dangerous,' 'Foul Odor Warning,' and 'Multiple veteran adventurers have already retired because of psychological trauma'! It's the sewer! The place where all of Axel's waste ends up! If we have to fight in there and somebody slips..."
"That kind of thing doesn't matter at all!" Aqua lunged at him and wrapped herself tightly around Kōichi's leg. The resentment from a moment ago vanished without a trace, replaced by an ingratiating grin. "Kōichi! You're amazing! You're a genius! You're a god, even though I'm the Goddess! So what if it's a sewer? I'm the Goddess of Water. The moment any of that filth comes near me, I'll purify it into pure mineral water! If we fight in there, I'll be invincible!"
"The sewer... dark, damp, full of indescribable sticky fluids... and we'd have to wrestle a giant crocodile right on the edge of a cesspit..."
Darkness's breathing instantly grew heavy. She hugged her shoulders with both arms, trembling like a leaf, her unfocused eyes staring blankly into space.
"If the crocodile bites me and drags me into the depths by accident, my whole body will be covered in that foul-smelling filth, and then I'll have to return to the guild in that state and collect the reward under everyone's scornful gaze... nnngh! Th-this is... too wonderful! I request to serve as the vanguard!"
"As long as I get to use Explosion, I'll blow up even a cesspit for you."
Megumin was still leaning coolly against the wall, but the slight tremor in her staff gave away how badly she wanted to vent her pent-up frustration through destruction.
Looking at these teammates, each plotting their own thing, and their own perversions, Kōichi showed a downright fiendish smile.
"Very good, unanimous approval! Kazuma, stop obsessing over the smell and think about that thirty-million debt! Besides, my current condition is ideal for sewer combat. Without the restraint of underwear, my movements will be even more agile, and even if I accidentally get something on me, that's one less piece of clothing to wash. That's called strategic load reduction!"
"You just want an excuse to act like a creep! That's obviously what this is!" Kazuma roared, but in the end his shoulders slumped helplessly. "Fine. Better the sewer than getting dragged off and sold by creditors... but let me make this clear first. If Aqua's purification can't keep up, I'm absolutely ditching all of you and making a run for it."
And so, deep in the night in Axel, a deodorization assault squad burdened with crushing debt, made up of an underwear-free mage, a useless Goddess, a severely masochistic knight, a chuuni Explosion loli, and one unbelievably unlucky shut-in, officially set out for the darkest corner of the city.
By the time Kōichi stood at the sewer entrance, where a complicated stench poured out nonstop, the moonlight was shining on the staff in his hand, making it gleam with the radiance of freedom.
Kōichi took a deep breath of that strangely fragrant air and shouted into the bottomless darkness:
"Golden Crocodile! Wash your neck and wait for me! My lower half can already feel your call, reeking of money!"