"Seriously?" Megumin's eyes went wide as copper bells. With Jhin, she had long since decided that no matter how strange things got, nothing was truly impossible.
"Not your world's hell — mine."
"Your world has a hell too?"
"Hell and Heaven both."
"Heaven?" Megumin had never once heard that word before. Hell, on the other hand, came up constantly — plenty of magic out there for summoning demons, after all. "What kind of place is that?"
"Think of it as where the race opposing demons lives." Jhin had been about to ask Megumin why this world apparently had no Heaven, but on reflection he let it go — the gods worshipped by this world's people numbered in the hundreds. There was Eris, goddess of luck; Aqua, goddess of water; Lilith, goddess of witches; and so on. No single deity could ever dominate the scene, so the question hardly mattered.
"I see," said Megumin.
"Enough small talk. That ancient magic of yours can wait until I have money. We've still got five extermination commissions left — let's not waste time."
"Fine." Megumin wasn't worried about failing to sell the ancient magic that was worth nothing in her own hands. Jhin would buy it eventually, of his own accord. The moment she pictured the windfall that awaited her, she felt her motivation for the quests surge up from somewhere deep inside. "What if I handle the Sharp-Fanged Blue Wolf pack with Explosion Magic? Quick and painless."
"Are you an idiot?" Jhin shot her a sideways look. "You blow your load on the second commission and spend the rest of the day as a useless lump of a mage — then what? Even I can't guarantee your safety a hundred percent of the time."
"Fine, fine. But you have to let me use Explosion Magic on the last commission. That's non-negotiable!"
Jhin paused mid-flip through the commission slips and studied Megumin with a thoughtful look. "You're not scheming to fire off your Explosion Magic and then wriggle out of that annoying search-and-retrieval commission afterward, are you?"
Megumin's heart lurched. She hadn't expected Jhin to see straight through her little scheme like that. Admitting it was out of the question. Forcing a smile, she plucked one of the slips from his hand and did her best to steer the conversation somewhere — anywhere — else. "You're reading way too much into things. Let's just get moving. I found one here that looks great. Yep. Great."
"Lightning Rabbits? I don't mind taking them on first."
"Perfect, perfect, let's get going!" Megumin shoved the commission slip back into Jhin's hand, and without checking whether she was even walking in the right direction, grabbed him by the arm and started marching.
Good. Just keep redirecting his attention, bit by bit. As long as he forgets about this, I can dodge the search-and-retrieval commission entirely.
Megumin had done plenty of search-and-retrieval commissions back when she adventured alone. They weren't exactly difficult, but they were time-consuming, exhausting, and thoroughly annoying. Once, in search of someone's pet dog, she had ended up tracking the thing all the way into a monster den — where the dog was having a grand old time playing with its distant cousins, the Sharp-Fanged Blue Wolves.
She had joined the Gourmet Temple hoping never to suffer through that kind of commission again. And then Pecorine had gone and accepted a search-and-retrieval commission. Just hearing the name of the quest category made every single hair on Megumin's head stand up in protest.
Jhin let Megumin drag him along and pulled out his monster compendium to look up the entry on Lightning Rabbits.
The creature had earned its name from its lightning-fast speed, but the real source of that speed was its tail — which functioned like a rocket thruster. The rabbit itself was the same size as an ordinary hare. Because high-speed movement burned through enormous amounts of energy, it spent virtually every waking hour — outside of sleep — foraging and eating.
A Lightning Rabbit warren had appeared in the outskirts not far from the royal city, and the rabbits streaming out of it had been making a nuisance of themselves, raiding crops in several small villages. The Adventurers' Guild had put out an extermination commission accordingly.
"Meat is firm, consistent with common wild rabbit, but carries a sharp, pungent odour. When heated over a flame, dense black oil drips from the flesh. Under no circumstances attack with fire-element magic — doing so will cause the Lightning Rabbit to explode."
"Dense black oil... pungent smell..." Jhin read through the entry and snapped the compendium shut, tucking it away in his Storage Space. Another World creatures never ceased to amaze. He scooped Megumin up onto his back amid her startled yelp and kept walking. "Not edible, so let's just knock them out and move on."
They crested a small hill rising from the plains, and some twenty-odd rabbits came into view — each one trailing a plume of tail-flame as it moved, carrying fruits and vegetables of various kinds back toward the warren. By the look of things, they had already made a very successful haul from the nearby villages.
Megumin and Jhin lay flat at the top of the hill, watching the rabbit hole below. She frowned. "Jhin, why aren't you just charging straight in like you did before?"
"Lightning Rabbits are too fast. Even I can't kill them all before they scatter. We need a different approach."
"You're actually using your brain? Pecorine told me that when you hunted those Forest Boars, you just put your head down and charged without a second thought."
"I genuinely have no idea what impression you two have of me after hearing Pecorine's version of events." Jhin had never once thought of himself as a reckless brute. "Forest Boars are huge, and they move in herds. For a party without a conventional mage like we were back then, picking them off one by one was never going to work — and I was confident I could handle them, so why not go with the most direct method?"
"Same logic applies right now. Lightning Rabbits are fast — killing them one at a time would be painfully slow, and there's no guarantee we'd get them all. Your magic makes too much noise and draws too much attention; by the time you fire it off, they'd be long gone. So obviously we need another way."
"So what's your brilliant plan?"
"Wait."
"Wait?"
Jhin pointed at the Lightning Rabbits — they slowed to a cautious creep right at the mouth of the warren as they ferried their food back and forth. "Wait until they've hauled everything inside. That's when I move."
"It won't take too long, will it? We've still got the other commissions."
"When you're hungry and need to eat, do you spend hours at the market?"
"Fair point." Megumin had to admit Jhin was right. She set down her staff, rolled onto her back, and stretched out a long, luxurious yawn. "You keep watch, then. I'm taking a nap."
"Sure."
The wait wasn't long at all. Once the Lightning Rabbits had ferried the last of their food into the warren and the final rabbit was just about to slip inside, Jhin launched himself down the hillside like a cheetah, wind elements coiling around him so thickly he seemed to be skimming just above the ground.
At roughly ten meters from the warren, Jhin activated Time Stop. In the stillness of frozen space, he walked up to the mouth of the burrow, fire crackling in his palm. A pillar of flame, twisting like a fire-serpent, surged down into the hole. He sent several more after it, then gathered earth elements and sealed the warren entrance shut.
His plan was simple: exploit the Lightning Rabbits' own weakness — the fact that fire-element attacks made them explode — and catch them all in one go.
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Danmachi: Summoning Ruri Gokou, And other Chuunibyou Brats
Let's achieve our community goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 extra chapter for everybody