By the time Jhin led Megumin to a stretch of barren wasteland carpeted in broken stones, it was nearly noon. Fortunately, this world had not yet tipped into summer, and the sun hanging overhead had no particular ambitions toward cruelty just yet.
"I... I'm saying..." Megumin was panting so hard she could barely get the words out, her small hand draped limply over Jhin's shoulder. "We've... we've walked this far already. Surely that's more than enough?"
Jhin unfolded the map he'd purchased from the Adventurers' Guild and confirmed this was indeed the so-called Rubble Wastes before finally nodding. "We're here. This should be the ideal zone for you to let loose with Explosion magic — sparse population, far from the royal capital, and wide open enough."
"Ah... no good, I'm completely out of energy. Let me rest for a bit." The moment she heard they'd arrived, Megumin immediately crouched down to recover, tossing her beloved [True Crimson Flame Staff] carelessly onto the ground. "It took nearly the whole morning just to walk here from Landosol. This place is absurdly far."
"I'm fairly certain the reason it took so long," Jhin said, producing a water skin from his Storage Space and passing it to her, "is because you kept asking me if you could blow up everything you laid eyes on along the way."
"Thank you." Megumin clutched the water skin and drank deeply from the cool spring water, her urge to cast Explosion magic temporarily washed away.
"Next time we come, it'll probably only take about two hours. Are you planning to cast Explosion magic before lunch, or after?"
Megumin didn't even think about it. "Before, obviously. Lying down after eating with a full stomach pressing on you is miserable."
"You do have your standards."
"Of course I do!"
Megumin raised her staff, and accompanied by her impassioned incantation — entirely different from the one she'd recited before — Explosion magic detonated across the Rubble Wastes in a spectacular, thunderous bloom, delivering a small but memorable magical shock to every living creature in the vicinity.
Having emptied every last drop of mana from her body and unleashed her explosion, Megumin's face wore the same expression of blissful satisfaction a teenage boy gets after a private moment of self-reward behind a closed bedroom door — though woven through that satisfaction was a faint thread of post-sage emptiness, hollow as the mana now drained clean from within her.
The [True Crimson Flame Staff] was once again casually discarded on the ground by its own owner. Jhin couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for it.
She never stopped declaring it was her most treasured magical staff — and yet she dropped it just as carelessly as a wad of chewed bubble gum after it had served its purpose.
Tch. What a deadbeat.
Jhin grabbed the back of Megumin's collar to keep her from face-planting into the rocky, pebble-strewn dirt. He had no idea how she usually managed to protect her cheeks through all those repeated performances of kissing the earth, but his curiosity wasn't quite burning enough to sit back and watch her actually slam into the gravel.
Megumin had not the slightest awareness that she was inconveniencing anyone. She simply let Jhin hold her up by the scruff and called out impatiently, "Hey, Jhin — hurry up and carry me out of the Rubble Wastes. It's about time for lunch."
"Just haul you along like this?"
"No thanks, something more comfortable."
"Carry in arms or piggyback — pick one."
"Piggyback!"
"You're awfully decisive for once." Jhin shook his head in resignation, pulling her around behind him and crouching down. "Wrap your arms around my neck yourself. If you fall off, don't blame me."
"Heave-ho!" Megumin draped her entire body across Jhin's back, her arms flopping limply around his neck. "You can stand up now."
Jhin hooked his hands under the girl's soft, springy thighs and rose to his feet. "You were worried this very morning about me making a move on Kokkoro. How is it you're perfectly fine letting me carry you like this now?"
"Then was then. Now is now."
Jhin laughed. "And what exactly caused this change of heart? Some embarrassing piece of history?"
"Don't you dare bring up the embarrassing history!" Megumin snapped a warning, then her voice drifted into something quieter. "You already know — I can only use Explosion magic. After I left home, I sought out quite a few guilds. At first they were decent enough to me, especially after they saw what Explosion magic could do. They'd be grinning from ear to ear."
Megumin remembered it vividly — how excited those guild members had been, every last one of them spinning grand visions of the wonderful commissions they'd complete with her help, their mouths overflowing with praise.
"Megumin, we have high hopes for you!"
"You're exactly the mage our guild has always been searching for — no, a grand mage!"
"You'll definitely become a legendary grand mage whose name is sung for generations."
Those sweet compliments landed like sugar-coated cannonballs, punching clean through her heart, which was not yet so hardened back then. It wasn't long before she told them the truth — that she could only cast Explosion magic.
Human emotions ride a roller coaster. The higher their fantasies had soared, the harder they crashed when they learned the truth. Warm smiles curdled into cold stares, and the sugar coating on all those cannonballs dissolved away in the heat of what had come before.
"Only one type of magic? That doesn't make a grand mage."
"And here we were believing in you so much. At least we hadn't officially let you join yet."
"Take these Eris coins as payment for helping us with that commission. We're sorry — you can't join the guild."
After making the rounds through guild after guild, word spread through the remaining adventurers' guilds in Landosol that there was a mage in town who could only cast Explosion magic. The moment they caught sight of her, they'd reject her application on the spot. Eventually Megumin abandoned any thought of joining an Adventurers' Guild at all.
Jhin said nothing. He kept walking at a steady pace, carrying Megumin forward. He understood that right now, all he needed to be was a listener.
"As a mage, even if I wasn't joining an Adventurers' Guild, I wasn't about to lower myself to those Lifestyle Guilds either. So that's how it was — I just kept taking whatever commissions I could handle on my own in Landosol and got by. Sometimes I'd wonder: if there really were a guild willing to take me, would my life look completely different from how it does now?"
"And then... I ended up near that cliff and ran into someone with an absolutely atrocious personality, dragging two girls around with him."
Megumin glossed over the life she'd lived before meeting Jhin and the others in a few light words, but Jhin understood clearly enough. As a frail mage with only one casting opportunity per day, scraping by without a guild and with her commission rewards cut thin, things had definitely not been easy for her.
"Funny thing is — that person was acting like a lunatic the moment we met, questioning my gender, and even recorded that embarrassing history of mine. But when I told him I could only use Explosion magic, there wasn't even a flicker of disappointment in his eyes."
Megumin was no fool. No mage who had ventured out of their hometown to adventure alone could be. Idiots had long since ended up in a monster's belly. On her status card, there had always sat one unspent skill point, held in reserve to learn Teleportation in a life-or-death emergency — a spell to send herself home.
But when she saw those calm, sky-blue eyes, and heard that voice announce she was joining the guild — that very same night, she spent that skill point on Explosion magic without a moment's hesitation.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Oshi No Ko: Co-starring with Kana Arima
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone