"There they are! That's them! The season has come. That once-a-year season!"
"Quick! Grab the bug nets! Grab the sacks! Those are flying year-end bonuses!"
Kōichi stared blankly at the frenzied adventurers. Before he could even process what was happening, Kazuma had already lunged to the window, shoved it open, and looked out toward the far horizon.
At the skyline, countless tiny green dots were rushing toward Axel at terrifying speed like a swarm of locusts, accompanied by sharp, piercing whistles through the air.
"Kōichi! Quit staring at that damn ledger of yours!" Kazuma turned back, his face lit with the feverish excitement of a gambler spotting a chance to win everything back. "It's cabbage! Once it matures, it flies to water sources to lay its eggs! A good cabbage can sell for ten thousand Eris at the buying station! And if you catch one of the extremely rare top-grade meat cabbages, it can go for over fifty thousand!"
Ten thousand Eris per cabbage?
The deficit Kōichi had just calculated flashed through his mind.
If he could catch a hundred... no, a thousand...
"Everyone, listen up!" Kōichi shot to his feet and slammed his staff hard against the floor, radiating all the authority of a party leader, along with his hunger for money. "Aqua, wipe those pathetic tears off your face! Darkness, put on that beat-up armor of yours, even if it still isn't fixed! Megumin, get your Explosion Magic ready... no, wait. Explosion will blast the money into ashes. Use physical attacks for now! We're going hunting... no, we're going to 'harvest' gold coins!"
"Ooooh! For sparkling wine!" Aqua wiped her nose, snatched up an enormous fishing net, and charged out.
"For... for the thrill of having my entire body struck by thousands of cabbages... ngh! I'm going too!" Darkness rushed after her without even drawing her greatsword.
By the time Kōichi led this gang of problem children to the city gate, the scene had already become spectacular.
Countless emerald-green cabbages streaked past the walls like cannonballs. Some smashed themselves to pieces against the stone, filling the air with the strong scent of fresh greens, while more curved through the sky in bizarre arcs, trying to break through the adventurers' line.
"Watch this! Snipe!" Kazuma stood on high ground, flicking out stones one after another and knocking flying cabbages out of the air with perfect accuracy.
"Create Water! You idiot cabbages, get into the Goddess's bowl already!" Aqua tried to intercept them with a stream of water, only to take a high-speed cabbage straight to the face and go screaming as she flew backward.
Kōichi looked up at the money flying all over the sky, took a deep breath, and raised his staff.
As the leader, he had to show them overwhelming harvesting efficiency.
"Wind Magic!" Kōichi cast a small-scale wind-control spell, trying to gather the cabbages into one place.
But those cabbages had an absurd will to survive, along with plenty of raw momentum. They fought violently against the wind pressure, and instead formed a huge green tornado that started sweeping toward the guard post by the city gate.
"Kōichi, you bastard! Are you harvesting or creating a disaster?!" Kazuma yelled while dodging flying cabbage leaves.
And at the center of the tornado, Darkness stood with both arms spread wide, her face blissful as she welcomed the barrage crashing down on her like rain. "Ah... being... ravaged... by cabbages from every direction... this fresh yet brutal feeling... Kōichi, harder! Make the storm even fiercer!"
What was happening at the gate could no longer be called a harvest. It was a full-scale war between humans and vegetables.
Shredded leaves flew everywhere, and the air was thick with a grassy smell strong enough to make anyone sneeze.
Kōichi watched Aqua trying to bite a passing cabbage out of the air, while Megumin was swinging her little fists in an attempt to punch them down. Faced with this level of efficiency, he realized with painful clarity that if he didn't step in now, they really would end up gnawing on the city walls tonight.
"Stop right there! You bunch of useless, inefficient idiots!" In a flash, Kōichi leaped onto a tall boulder, his staff carving a brilliant arc through the air. "Kazuma! Quit messing around with those little pebbles and get over here! We're switching to industrial-scale harvesting mode!"
Kazuma wiped cabbage juice off his face, his eyes gleaming with greed. "Oh? So the captain's finally getting serious? All right, talk. What's the plan? These nimble hands of mine, trained through years of stealing panties, are itching for action!"
Kōichi pointed at the dense swarm ahead and showed a deeply unhinged grin. "I'll use Wind Magic to create a sustained low-pressure vortex, slow all those flying cabbages down, and pull them onto a fixed path. You use Lurk and Bind, then rely on that cheat-level luck of yours to stuff every last cabbage that enters the route into the sacks. This is called the Conveyor Belt Recovery Method!"
"Nice! Just what I'd expect from a captain with a pitch-black heart!" Kazuma instantly shifted into battle mode, his movements turning slippery and elusive.
Then Kōichi turned to the other three problem children, who were still standing there in a daze. "As for you three... Aqua! Stop crying and get up front. Use your Water Creation to make a muddy zone, so the low-flying cabbages lose traction! Darkness, get right in the middle of that mud, spread your arms, and act as a human buffer! Any cabbage I fail to catch, let it slam into you and stop there!"
"A-a human buffer... getting hit head-on by thousands upon thousands of hard cabbages... over and over... uooohhh! This mission was made for me!" Darkness let out a dangerously excited gasp and charged forward.
"Megumin! Your job is to pick up every cabbage that bounces off Darkness and throw it to Aqua! Aqua, you handle the final washing and packing! Move it. If even one gets away, I'm docking your supper tonight!"
"It's a shame I can't use Explosion Magic, but if it's for tomorrow's Crimson Demon Clan dried fruits... I'm in!" Megumin's fighting spirit flared up too.
The battle officially began.
Kōichi pushed his magic to the limit, forming a massive wind funnel in front of the city gate. Countless flying cabbages were drawn into the vortex like iron filings to a magnet, helplessly swept along.
Kazuma moved like a ghost along the edge of the airflow, striking in a frenzy. Every cast of [Bind] snagged three or four cabbages with pinpoint accuracy, and he bagged them so fast his hands were almost a blur.
On the other side, the scene was even more "spectacular."
Just as Kōichi had intended, Darkness stood in the middle of the mud pit, welcoming the cabbage barrage like some kind of saint, or pervert.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!" The dull impacts rang out without pause. Darkness's armor was splattered all over with green juice, and her whole body rocked back and forth from the blows, yet an almost holy, dazed smile hung on her face. "Ah... so heavy... so hard... more... give me more... let the cabbages bury me!"
"You're disgusting! Get in the boxes already, you stupid cabbages!" Aqua cursed while casting spells, but as she watched the piles of cabbage stack up into little mountains beside her, her hands started moving faster and faster.
Just as Kōichi stood atop the mound-like stacks of cabbage crates, ready to let out three triumphant laughs like a true nouveau riche, several people in gleaming armor and flashy capes swaggered over.
At their head was a fairly handsome swordsman with a two-handed sword strapped to his back, though there was a clear streak of arrogance in his eyes. Behind him were a girl carrying a staff and a thief who looked sharp and capable.
"Hey, you lot over there. Our Silver Lion Party is taking this spot." The handsome swordsman kicked the wooden crate at Kōichi's feet, producing a heavy thump. "A patchwork team like yours ought to be satisfied with fifty crates. We elites will be taking over the rest of the top-grade cabbages. If you know what's good for you, grab your vegetables and get lost. Don't stand here getting in the way."
The air around them seemed to freeze on the spot.
Kazuma stopped bagging cabbages, his gaze turning colder and more calculating by the second. Aqua hugged a sack full of cabbages and bared her teeth at them like a hen guarding her feed. Megumin, meanwhile, had already placed a hand on her eyepatch, and something dangerous had started radiating from her whole body.
Kōichi lowered his head and looked at the handsome swordsman, the corner of his mouth curling into an utterly unhinged smile.
"Oh? Silver Lion? Never heard of you. What are you, some traveling circus troupe?" Kōichi slowly pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the cabbage juice off his staff. "You want this spot? Sure. But our Crusader here hasn't had her fun yet. If you can satisfy her, I might consider it."
Kōichi pointed toward Darkness, who was sprawled in the middle of the mud, buried under cabbages with only her head sticking out, her face flushed red as she panted heavily.
"Wh-what?" The handsome swordsman froze. Looking at that indecent, downright perverse scene, his face shifted between green and white. "You actually made a noble Crusader do something like this? You call yourself a captain? You're a disgrace to adventurers! I, Belmont, will uphold justice here and now..."
"Kazuma. Do it," Kōichi said coldly.