"Waaah!!"
"Scumbag Kazuma! You pervert! NEET! Creep! Waaah!"
Aqua wailed for quite a while.
It wasn't that she couldn't bear to part with Kazuma, but the fact that he'd just handed her off to someone else.
It made her feel like trash, leaving Lady Aqua utterly humiliated and furious!!
"Only you!"
"Only you, Kazuma, have no right to ditch me!"
"You're just a useless shut-in who got scared witless by a tractor..."
Hearing Aqua spill his embarrassing past one incident at a time, Kazuma couldn't sit still any longer.
This was her way of ruining his reputation even after they parted ways.
'Aqua, you venomous woman!'
"Alright, alright."
Seeing this, Damien couldn't just stand by and do nothing. He stepped forward to calm Aqua down.
In the end, Aqua chose Damien.
No surprise there... compared to Kazuma, Damien clearly had a better shot at defeating the Demon King.
"Well then, let's have Aqua stay with me for a while."
That said, Damien knew full well that once Aqua was handed over, Kazuma would never bother with her again.
"Mm, mm, mm!"
"It's a deal! No take-backs, aniki!"
Kazuma bid farewell to Damien and, with astonishing speed, latched onto another adventurer party.
Damien was stunned.
Good grief!
No wonder Kazuma agreed so readily... he'd already found his next team!
Damien wasn't too surprised, though. Kazuma was a man with his own mind.
It's hard to say whether the path in the original story was good or bad for him.
Damien wasn't one to take advantage of others.
If Aqua truly chose to stay, he'd offer Kazuma some compensation as proof of their clean break.
As for what kind of compensation...
Didn't Kazuma want a real cheat ability?
This will be Aqua's compensation to you.
With that thought, Damien bestowed a Gift upon Kazuma.
[Copy
[A cheat ability that allows the user to copy the job skills of any profession seen in this world.]
Yes, this was the very cheat Damien had originally received from Aqua.
With Damien's current power, analyzing the abilities bestowed upon reincarnators by the Heavens and casually creating a new one was child's play.
This way...
Damien shifted his gaze from Kazuma. We're even now.
"But still, first Darkness, and now Aqua..."
"Why do I keep ending up with the two problem children from the protagonist's party?"
Fortunately, Darkness had grown and was no longer that masochistic female knight.
"Hello, I'm Darkness."
"Aqua, the Goddess of Water!"
"???"
Darkness blinked, tilting her head, unable to grasp Aqua's meaning.
"Aqua is indeed a goddess."
Damien vouched for her. "I came to this world thanks to Aqua's help with my reincarnation."
"In a way, she's the reason we could meet here."
"Is that so!"
Though she now followed Damien and her strength surpassed the gods of this world, Darkness still held her own convictions.
With the Goddess of Water right in front of her, Darkness naturally felt obliged to show proper respect. "My apologies, Lady Aqua."
"Ma~ ma~"
"Keep it low-key, low-key. Let's just talk about this in private, pfft hee hee~~"
Aqua said she wanted to be humble, but her keep praising me, keep praising me expression was hard to take seriously.
"Um..."
"I used to be a follower of the Eris Church."
Darkness said, "Do you know Lady Eris?"
"..."
At that moment, Damien could clearly sense the malice radiating from Aqua.
"Tch!"
"That flat-chested padding-stuffer!"
Aqua scoffed. "She's just some backwater goddess, yet she shamelessly turned herself into the state religion and even got the currency named after her."
"Uh..."
Having her revered goddess belittled like that, the old Darkness would've surely had something to say.
But now, Darkness had shifted her faith to Damien.
Lady Eris...
Darkness would respect and cherish her, but she no longer worshipped her as before.
However, Aqua's presence shattered Darkness's perception of goddesses.
To put it bluntly, Darkness was disillusioned!
Is Aqua really a goddess?
Even Darkness couldn't help but doubt at this point.
The female knight glanced at Damien, who shook his head helplessly. "She's just like that. You'll get used to it."
The goddesses of this world, every single one of them, were somewhat unreliable.
The Goddess of Water Aqua... her name was practically synonymous with idiocy.
The Goddess of Fortune Eris, though kind and gentle, was deeply troubled by her modest figure.
Zenarith, the Goddess of Undeath and Disaster, managed other planets.
In Sentouin world, one of the heroines, Grimm, served as her high priestess, possessing the ability to revive no matter how she died.
Then there was the goddess of love and fate, who looked almost like an angel and had the instant-kill ability to return all souls to their origin.
Yet she was sent crying back to the Heavens by the robot Alice Kisaragi.
No wonder...
Damien mused to himself. As expected of goddesses from a comedy anime... aside from Eris, none of them seem reliable.
"Whatever."
Damien dismissed these pointless thoughts and called out to the two. "Come on, I'll treat you both to dinner."
"Can I order high-grade sparkling wine?"
"Sure."
"Awesome, Damien! As expected of the man I chose!"
As for Kazuma, that useless NEET? Aqua had long tossed him out of her mind.
"..."
Recalling yesterday's scene, Darkness suddenly felt a bit worried.
She had a feeling Aqua was going to be spoiled rotten by Damien.
"Um..."
While she was lost in thought, a petite figure appeared at the edge of the long table.
She looked about thirteen or fourteen, a black-haired girl holding a magic staff, wearing a pointed wizard hat. Beneath her red cloak was a bandaged arm and a notably flat figure.
What caught the most attention, though, was the eyepatch on her face.
To clarify, the girl had no eye condition; she wore the eyepatch purely because it looked cool.
***
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