Love, Witches, & Other Delusions Read online

  One look at that outrageous character, and I didn’t need Aqua to fill me in. But I waited anyway.

  “Lord of the snow spirits, spoken of in tales of winter…”

  He was wearing a big white samurai-style helmet and an immensely intricate warrior’s surcoat.

  Freezing mist drifted from the blade in the white-masked swordsman’s grasp.

  Aqua’s face was sober as she murmured:

  “It’s General Winter. He has come.”

  “Idiots! This whole stinking world! People and food and monsters—all complete idiots!”

  The blade of the sword gleamed sharp as a razor. And then General Winter attacked.

  3

  Armor of purest white.

  That’s kind of a dumb color for armor, but it did nothing to diminish the splendor of the Warring States–era armor.

  The intricate design on his surcoat was covered in ice.

  You didn’t have to get close to the katana with its cloud of freezing mist to see it had a cruel cutting edge.

  General Winter boasted an intense presence and bloodlust as he took his stance, sword upright next to his head.

  The naked blade glinted in the sun—and then the general leaped at his nearest foe, Darkness!

  “Hrk?!”

  Darkness made to block the move with her great sword, but—

  With a clear ringing sound, her sword, which had withstood even Beldia’s most violent attacks, was cut clean in half.

  “Aaah! M-my sword—!”

  Aqua was trying to put some distance between herself and the battle between Darkness and General Winter.

  “General Winter,” she said. “A monster specifically targeted by the State for a huge bounty. He’s the spirit of winter itself… Spirits don’t have one ‘true’ body. They reach into the subconscious of the people they meet and draw on that for the form they take. A fire spirit might appear as a rampaging fire salamander, because we picture fire as an all-consuming inferno. A water spirit might pick up on the image of a pure, awesome, brilliant, gorgeous water goddess and appear as a beautiful woman… But the spirit of winter is sort of an exception. All the powerful monsters keep even adventurers inside in the winter, never mind the townspeople, so hardly anyone ever meets the spirit of winter…unless they came here from Japan with some kind of power-up.”

  Aqua filled me in on the winter spirit even as she clutched her bottle full of Snow Sprites.

  A white cloud of mist rushed from the mouth of the spirit’s mask, almost like fogging breath.

  I stood next to Darkness with her shattered sword, keeping my own blade raised toward the general.

  “You’re saying this guy is here because some Japanese jerk came to this world and had to be all, Oh, winter! Like General Winter?! What a pain; what are we supposed to do? How do you fight the spirit of winter?!”

  Frankly, I didn’t feel like we had the slightest chance of winning against the monster in front of us.

  It might look like the armor of a human warrior, but apparently it was a spirit in corporeal form. I doubted things would somehow just work themselves out with a swipe of my sword.

  Megumin, our last ray of hope, had already used her magic for the day.

  In fact, she was still on the ground, playing dead. When this battle was over, maybe I’d step on her.

  Aqua opened the lid of her bottle and freed the Snow Sprites she’d worked so hard to catch.

  “Kazuma, listen! The winter spirit is a generous one! If we apologize from the bottoms of our hearts, he’ll let us go!”

  No sooner had she spoken than Aqua flung herself to the snowy ground.

  “Kowtow, everybody!” she cried. “Come on, bow! Hurry, everyone, lay down your weapons! Apologize! Quick, Kazuma, apologize!!”

  The former whatever-whatever threw aside her pride and shoved her forehead into the snow. It was a pretty impressive kowtow.

  I felt somehow refreshed to see Aqua so readily humbling herself and Megumin doing a perfect impression of roadkill.

  It was true: General Winter stopped looking at the prostrate Aqua.

  Which meant he did even more looking at Darkness and me.

  It didn’t take much of a glance from him to convince me to throw myself to my knees—!

  …Darkness, however, was still standing next to me.

  “Hey, what’re you doing? Get down here!”

  Darkness had cast away the sundered pieces of her sword and was looking balefully at General Winter.

  “Hrr! Even I have my pride as a Crusader—a Paladin! For a Knight like me to bow my head to a monster, just because I’m a little frightened—! Even if no one saw me do it, still…!”

  Great. I reached up with my left hand and dragged her head down.

  “You’re always running straight after some monster, and now you get a sense of pride?”

  “S-stoppit! Hrr! What reward is there in being forced to bow the head I refuse to bow, in having my face forced to the earth?” She was panting. “Ahh, the snow chills…!”

  I kept my own head down as I pressed her pervy face to the ground. Her cheeks were red. She was only pretending to resist.

  I peeked up to see what General Winter was doing: He had already sheathed his sword.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and kept my head dow—

  Aqua shouted shrilly at me:

  “Kazuma, your weapon! Your weapon! Get rid of the sword you’re holding!”

  With my face pushed into the freezing grass, I suddenly remembered that I was still holding my sword in my right hand. I tossed it away in a panic.

  In the effort, I couldn’t help but raise my head…

  As my head came up, my eyes met the sight of General Winter, his left hand resting on his sheathed sword.

  I could see that his thumb had nudged out the hilt, exposing just a bit of the blade.

  He was preparing to draw and cut.

  His empty right hand seemed to go fuzzy for an instant.

  Then I heard a soft ching.

  It seemed to be the sound of the sword being returned to its scabbard.

  I was confused: With the sound still ringing in my ears, my eyes went from General Winter, where I’d accidentally put them, to the snow-covered ground, and then the white earth came closer and closer…

  4

  I remembered it perfectly.

  General Winter had killed me.

  “Er… Are you feeling better?”

  “Oh…sorry. I kind of lost it there. Guess you’re not seeing my best side.”

  I looked away, embarrassed to have burst into tears in front of a goddess in this pure white temple.

  But the goddess, who had called herself Eris, shook her head with a sorrowful look and said, “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You lost your precious life…”

  As she spoke, she closed her eyes sadly, as if she was concerned for me.

  “Um, can I ask you something? What happened to that monster after he killed me?”

  I was afraid the others might have thrown themselves at the creature to try to get revenge after he’d done me in.

  “Things are well. After he cut you down, General Winter vanished.”

  I sighed, feeling a burden lift.

  Eris looked mournfully at me then.

  “Mr. Kazuma Satou… For something like this to happen to you, after you so kindly came to this world from your peaceful home in Japan… Brave visitor from another world. At least, by my power, may your next life be in your serene home country, with a wealthy family, where you will want for nothing. I shall send you to a place where you can live a happy life.”

  Eris’s words reminded me.

  When you died, you could either go to Heaven or start over as a baby.

  It had been an exception to the rule that I’d gotten to take a mulligan in this bizarre world.

  I hadn’t lasted long, but I’d actually kind of enjoyed it, by the end.

  I would never see that obnoxious bunch again. And that made me a
little…

  Well, just a little, but…it made me sad.

  Maybe Eris could see it on my face, because she turned her sorrowful eyes to me again.

  Then she held her right hand over my head…

  All right, Kazuma, come back! What are you doing getting killed in a place like this?! You can’t die yet!

  Suddenly, I heard Aqua’s voice.

  It boomed in our chamber, followed by a sort of Doppler-shifted echo.

  I gave a confused shout of my own. “Wai—Wh-what’s that?!”

  It seemed I wasn’t the only one who was perplexed.

  “Wha…? That voice—is that my senior, Aqua?! I thought that priestess looked like her, but—don’t tell me it really was her?!” Eris exclaimed into empty space. Her eyes had gone wide, and she wore an expression of disbelief.

  Aqua’s voice came again.

  Hey, Kazuma, can you hear me? I cast a spell called Resurrection on your body, so you can come back now! You’re probably standing in front of a goddess, right? Have her produce a gate to us.

  Whoa! No way, Goddess—you can really do that?!

  Come to think of it, she’d brought back those adventurers the Dullahan had killed, hadn’t she!

  “Right, hang on, Aqua! I’m headed your way!”

  I didn’t know if she could hear my voice, but I shouted back into the empty space anyway and jumped for joy.

  “W-w-w-wait just a minute! That is not how it works! I’m very sorry, but you’ve already come back to life once, and under the Heavenly Rules, you can’t do it again! I’m afraid you, with your personal connection to my senior, are the only one who can speak to her on the other side, so could you please let her know for me?”

  Eris seemed a bit panicked.

  Aw, seriously? Guess I jumped for joy too soon.

  I faced the empty space and called out:

  “Hey, Aqua, can you hear me?! She says I’ve already come back to life once, so I can’t do it again! Divine rules or something!”

  There was an instant of silen—

  Huh? What goddess fed you that line? Tell me who you are! I’m an elite goddess, responsible for Japan! You think I’m going to take lip from some local deity like you?!

  Sheesh, Aqua, cut it out.

  The “local deity” in front of me wore a pinched expression.

  “Um, she says her name is Eris…,” I timidly replied to Aqua.

  Aqua screamed back hysterically:

  Eris?! You mean the Eris who let a little national worship go to her head and is so overrated they even name their currency after her? That Eris? Hey, Kazuma, if she tries to give you any more guff, you go ahead and pull the padding right out of her shir—

  “All right! I give! We’ll call this a special case! I’m opening a gate right now!”

  Eris, blushing furiously, cut off Aqua’s tirade with a snap of her fingers.

  As if at her signal, a plain white door appeared in front of me.

  I thought I could hear Eris muttering something about Aqua being as unbearable as ever.

  “This door leads to your current world… You know this is highly unusual, right? Normally no one gets to be magicked back to life more than once, prince or pauper. Geez. You said your name was Kazuma?”

  “Oh, uh, yes, ma’am!” I answered, my voice shrill.

  Next to our bumbling deity, this goddess seemed like the real thing.

  Not to mention she was gorgeous, which only made me more nervous.

  She had looked at me sadly throughout our conversation, but now she bit her lip, troubled.

  Finally she gave me an impish wink and whispered, somehow cheerfully:

  “This is our little secret, okay?”

  I gave her a thin smile and pushed open the door…

  5

  I could hear a voice from far away…

  “…zuma! Kazuma!! Please wake up! Kazuma!”

  It was Megumin, clutching me and crying.

  …?

  Huh? My right hand was warm.

  I glanced at it and found Darkness crouching to my right and clasping my hand in both of hers, eyes closed as if in prayer.

  I felt something looming over me and focused my gaze upward…

  …and met the eyes of Aqua, who was looking down at me.

  “Finally awake, huh? That girl was always so stubborn.”

  As I listened to her, I began to notice that the back of my head was warm.

  …Oh.

  I guess my head was resting on Aqua’s knees.

  Megumin and Darkness saw I had opened my eyes, and both of them hugged me wordlessly.

  It was great that they were so happy to have me back, but man, this was kind of awkward—!

  Aqua realized I was frozen with embarrassment, and she gave a smirk.

  Sheesh. I should’ve left them here and just gotten myself reborn as a rich kid in Japan.

  “Hey, Kazuma, don’t just lie there blushing. Say something! Don’t you have anything to say to us?” said Aqua, still smirking.

  I don’t suppose I could exchange this useless goddess for the cute one I was with just a moment ago?

  I looked up at Aqua and said three words.

  “I wanna trade.”

  “Have it your way, you damned NEET! You want to see her so badly? I’ll send you back there right now!”

  “S-stop! You can’t beat up someone who’s just come back from the dead! What are you, the goddess of violence?!”

  A vein bulged on Aqua’s forehead as she held me down with one hand and made to punch me with the other.

  Darkness held her back with a now, now, and I sat up, checking my body for any signs of its encounter with General Winter.

  “How are you doing?” Megumin asked. “No problems anywhere?”

  I patted myself down once more.

  “Looks like I’m fine. Hey, how did I die, anyway?”

  Aqua answered, “General Winter chopped off your head. It was a great cut. Which made it easy to reattach your head, by the way. I was able to get back some of your blood, too, but you’re still a little low, so take it easy for a while or you’ll get anemic, okay? Stay off our front line. If you lose any more blood, well, I can’t make any promises.”

  “Chopped off my—!”

  Hardly able to speak, I felt my neck.

  No matter how many times I checked, though, there didn’t seem to be any scar.

  Some of the snowy field had been dyed red with my blood, and more of it had spattered on Darkness beside me.

  Aqua had brought me back, sure, but dying still didn’t appeal to me.

  Winter here meant scarce food and a harsh environment. The only ones who should be out in it were the monsters who could win the battle for survival even under those conditions.

  In other words, there were no nice, easy quests for novices like us.

  Know what? Let’s go back to town for today.

  6

  As soon as we got to town, we headed to the Guild to collect our reward.

  “Boy, twelve Sprites in less than an hour: 1.2 million… That’s a pretty good take, but I guess no amount of profit makes it worth dying. You said General Winter has a special bounty on his head, right? I wonder how much he’d bring in. He cracked Darkness’s sword in one hit. He’s stronger than Beldia, and he was worth three hundred million.”

  “General Winter will leave you alone if you do not touch the Snow Sprites. Still, he must be worth around two hundred million eris. Beldia was worth more because, as a general of the Demon King, he was not only powerful but a clear and present danger to humanity. General Winter is not a very aggressive monster, so he is worth less. Even so, two hundred million implies he is no easy foe.”

  I fell silent at Megumin’s explanation.

  Two hundred million…

  That would be enough to pay off our debts, buy a house, and still have some money left over for fun.

  “Megumin, could you use Explos—”

  “Explosion won’t work on Gene
ral Winter. He appears in a human form, but he is a spirit. Spirits are fundamentally a sort of mass of magic with no corporeal form. And the leaders of these spirits have incredible Magic Defense. Explosion can certainly damage a creature of any type, but it would be difficult to stop a spirit with one blast…not that I would want to attempt an explosion against such a frightening opponent.”

  No go, huh? Seeing my dejected expression, a satisfied smile came over Aqua’s face.

  “Heh-heh! Kazuma, don’t look so down. I wasn’t just kowtowing to the general, you know. Look at this!”

  As she spoke, she pulled out a small jar.

  Inside was a Snow Sprite.

  Apparently she hadn’t let out all of them during the battle. There was one left.

  “Whoa! Way to go, Aqua! All right, give it here; let me finish it off!”

  I reached for the jar as I praised Aqua’s unusually clever turn.

  “Huh? N-no way! I’m taking this one home to use as a refrigerator! So we can have ice-cold Neroid even in the middle of summer… No! This one’s miiine! I’ve even given it a name! I won’t let you kill it! Stop! Stop it!”

  She hugged the jar tightly, crouching back and putting up far more of a fight than I’d expected.

  Man! We could have gotten a hundred thousand for that thing if we did it in…

  But I guess Aqua had brought me back to life today. Much as I hated to leave a bird in the bush, I’d let it go this time.

  We cashed out our reward, then divvied up what was left after it was garnished to pay our debt.

  It was a little early, but we’d gotten a pretty good payday, so I figured on getting a room at the inn and letting my body rest. I didn’t want to overdo it, having just come back from the dead and all.

  Although… Well, it was a good amount for a day’s work, but compared to our debt, it was a drop in the ocean.

  My calculations confronted me directly with our grim reality, and as a sort of escape, I began to think about Eris, the goddess I’d met earlier that day.

  She sure was a trim, beautiful woman. Not to mention pretty good-hearted.

  She had seemed genuinely grieved that I had died, and then there was that sweet smile as she’d told me to keep it secret that she’d let me come back again.