| rushed to the main square.

Megumin, Aqua, and | were all lightly armored and were able to get there quickly; Darkness, with her heavy equipment, brought up the rear.

“| knew it. Him again.” A number of adventurers had already gathered by the time we arrived.

A crowd of novices carefully kept their distance from the gate proper, where he stood.

That’s right—the Demon King’s general. The Dullahan.

| noticed how pale the other adventurers looked, but it wasn’t until | glanced behind the Dullahan that | understood.

This time, he wasn’t alone.

A horde of monsters—Knights in decaying armor—backed him up. Look too hard at what was inside their armor, and you’d probably lose your lunch or be permanently traumatized... In between the battered plates and behind the creaking visors, you could catch glimpses of rotting corpses.

It didn’t take an adventurer to tell that these were the undead.

When the Dullahan spied Megumin and me, he burst out: “Why haven’t you come to my castle, you miscreants?!”

| stepped out in front of Megumin, covering her with my body, and said: “Umm... Why should we? And who’s a miscreant? We haven’t set off one explosion since you asked us to stop. Why’re you so upset?”

At that, the Dullahan raised the object in his left hand and almost flung it to the ground, before he remembered that it was his own head. He hurriedly pulled it back next to him.

“You haven’t set off a single explosion, have you? Not one magical blast? Ridiculous! Your insane Crimson friend has come by every single day!”

“Huh?”

| looked at Megumin.

She looked away.

“You went to his castle? | told you not to go, and you still went?!”

“O-0-0-0-0-owww! That hurts! D-do not misunderstand, Kazuma—let me explain! | used to be able to get by just setting off an explosion in an empty field. B-but now that | have tasted the joy of exploding a castle, | need to cast my spell on something huge and hard...!”

“| know what it means when you get all fidgety! And anyway, you can’t move after you cast Explosion. Which means...you must have had an accomplice. Now, who was it... ?”

Aqua saw me tugging on Megumin’s cheek and suddenly averted her eyes. | took a deep breath. “Was it youuuu?!”

“Yaaaah! We just wanted to get him back for keeping us from finding any good quests! He’s the reason | spend every day being screamed at by the shopkeeper!”

Excuse me, but | think that’s because you do terrible work.

As | caught a fleeing Aqua by the back of her collar, the Dullahan continued speaking: “What angers me most is not that you insist on your puny pyrotechnics—but that you have no desire to help your friend! Before | was unjustly put to death and transformed by my anger into the monster you see before you, | was a Knight. And as a Knight, | tell you—to abandon that Crusader, who selflessly shielded you from my curse with her own body, trading her life for yours, the very image of Knighthood...”

At that moment, Darkness finally ran up to my side, her heavy armor clattering as she moved.

Her face was red from the Dullahan’s praises. Their eyes met. “H...hey.”

Darkness waved, almost apologetically, at the Dullahan. “..Wh...whaaaaa...?!”

The Dullahan screeched.

His expression was hidden behind his helmet, but | assumed his face showed plain shock.

“Aww, what is it? Are you surprised to see Darkness alive and well? Even though it’s been more than a week? Were you waiting for us in your little castle this whole time? Never knowing that | broke the curse on Darkness, like, five minutes after you left? Pffft! That’s rich! That’s too much!”

Aqua pointed at the Dullahan, gripped by gales of laughter.

| didn’t need to see the Dullahan’s face—his shoulders were trembling. He was hopping mad.

But Aqua had broken the curse, after all, and why should we wander right into his trap for no reason?

“Do you understand who you’re dealing with, you impudent knave? If | wanted to, | could wipe out every adventurer in this town, put all its inhabitants to the sword! Don’t think I’ll look the other way forever! My immortal body knows no fatigue. You would be as chicks before the wolf—you could not so much as touch me!”

Aqua’s taunting had obviously pushed the Dullahan to the breaking point; the anger veritably rolled off him.

Before he could make a move, though, Aqua thrust out her right hand and shouted: “You won’t look the other way?! What about me? You’ve got some nerve, causing all this trouble! Now, go back where you came from, monster —Turn Undead!!”

A white light flew from Aqua’s hand.

The Dullahan, though, made no move to escape—just watched Aqua as though her magic meant nothing to him.

| guess that’s the kind of confidence you have when you’re one of the Demon King’s generals.

The white light emanating from Aqua began to surround the Dullahan...

“Did you suppose the servants of the Demon King went into battle without taking measures against Priests? You fool! Not only | but every Undead Knight with me is resistant to holy magic by the grace of His Majesty, the Devil Kiiii— aaaggh!”

Wherever the light touched him, black smoke began to rise.

But even though he was smoking and shaking, his confidence shattered, the Dullahan held his ground.

“| don’t understand, Kazuma!” Aqua cried. “It’s not working!”

| don’t know. | would’ve said it seemed to be working pretty well, what with the tortured scream and all.

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh! This is why you shouldn’t interrupt, girl. | am Beldia— Dullahan and general of the Demon King! His Majesty specially blessed my armor, and when combined with my own power, it makes me impervious to your silly Turn Undead! ...Impervious, all right? Say, Priest, what level are you, anyway? Are you really a beginner? This /s the starter town, isn’t it?”

He tilted the hand holding his head just a bit. | guess it was supposed to look inquisitive.

“..Well, never mind. | came here to investigate when our soothsayer babbled something about a great light that fell near this town... But it’s too much trouble. We’d do better just to wipe this place off the map.”

Seriously? I’d heard childhood bullies say less awful things. Still clutching his head in his left hand, Beldia raised his right hand high.

“Hmph! | need not even bother myself with you lot. Minions! Rain hell upon these disrespectful dogs!”

“Hey! He’s running scared because Aqua’s magic actually worked on him! He’s gonna get to safety and leave his underlings to fight us!”

“Th-th-that’s not true at all! This was my plan from the start! H-how dare you insinuate that a general of the Demon King would act out of cowardice?! You don’t get to go straight to the boss battle. First you fight the minions, then you fight the boss! That’s how things have worked since time immemori—”

“Sacred Turn Undead!!” “Eyyyyaaarrrghh!” Beldia’s rant turned into a scream as Aqua’s magic hit him. A circle formed at his feet, and a white light lanced up from it into the sky.

Smoke began to billow from Beldia; he threw himself to the ground and began to roll around as though his armor were on fire.

“Wh-what do we do, Kazuma?! | knew something was weird! My magic doesn’t work at all on him!”

[7

! really think “eyargh!” means it’s working.

Then again, Turn Undead usually worked in one go.

It might mean...

“Wh-why, you—! Let me finish for once! Very well—minions!” Still smoking here and there, Beldia raised his right hand. “Destroy this town. And everyone in it!”

He brought down his hand.