Dragging three Giant Toads back to the guild turned into a full-blown parade of smells.
Kōichi was in charge of pulling along the one frozen into an ice sculpture with magic, since it was the heaviest but also the cleanest. Kazuma had the miserable job of dragging the half-roasted one. As for Aqua... she looked like a resentful spirit that had just crawled out of a sewer, slime dripping off her all the way at the back of the group, muttering things like "my divine robe," "unclean," and "purification" under her breath.
The moment the three of them pushed open the guild doors.
The noisy tavern fell completely silent.
Then, right after that, a wave of air swept through the whole hall, carrying a mixture of grilled meat, burnt flesh, and an overpowering fishy stench.
"Ugh! What is that smell?! Who the hell is that?"
"Is that... a Giant Toad? Newbies actually managed to hunt one of those?"
"Hey, what happened to that blue-haired woman? Did she fall into a swamp?"
Under a barrage of shocked and disgusted stares from the adventurers, the three of them marched straight to the counter.
"Luna-san! We're turning in the quest!"
Kōichi dropped the frozen toad onto the floor with a heavy thud.
Luna covered her nose. Professionalism kept her smile in place, but her eyebrows were visibly twitching. "Ah... Hayashi-san and Satou-san. I had heard the new adventurers went out to challenge Giant Toads, but I never expected you to really bring some back... and in states like these."
She pointed at the three toads, each in its own unique condition.
Frozen Toad. Perfectly preserved, delicious-looking meat, skin intact. Rating. S-rank.
Burned Toad. Large areas of skin damaged, part of the meat overcooked. Rating. C-rank.
Lightning Toad, the one you roasted on the spot. Crispy outside, tender inside, giving off an appetizing aroma, but ruined as a crafting material. Rating. Food ingredient.
"Ahem..." Luna finished tallying them up. "The frozen one can be bought for 5,000 Eris. The burned one is only worth 2,000 Eris. As for the cooked one... the guild kitchen can buy it as food ingredient for around 1,000 Eris. That makes 8,000 Eris total."
"8,000?!" Kazuma's eyes instantly turned into currency symbols. "That's nearly 2,700 each! This is way better than hauling bricks!"
"Wait!" Aqua suddenly sprang back to life. She slammed a hand on the counter, splattering a few drops of slime and making Luna recoil a little. "I want to eat the cooked frog! That's compensation for my emotional suffering! I can already smell how good it is!"
Luna looked like she was about to say something, but after seeing the idiotic gleam in Aqua's eyes, she just nodded.
"Huh? Weren't you the one saying it was disgusting a minute ago?" Kazuma shot back.
"Shut up! Not only am I eating it, I'm drinking too! I want the fancy bubbly alcohol!" Aqua shouted with perfect confidence.
In the end, the three of them decided to keep the cooked frog and eat it themselves, while splitting the remaining 7,000 Eris. Aqua had not really contributed much, but considering she had at least served as bait, they still gave her a share.
...
Half an hour later, in one corner of the guild.
Aqua had already gone and washed herself off in the guild bathhouse, though she still carried a faint frog smell, and was now gnawing wildly on deep-fried frog legs that the guild chef had reworked for them, with a giant mug of beer in her hand.
"Hah! I'm alive again! This is what life's all about!" Her mouth was shining with grease, and she had completely forgotten the miserable state she had been in half an hour earlier, bawling her eyes out. "These frogs may look disgusting, but they actually taste amazing! Kōichi, that lightning spell of yours was practically made for cooking!"
"Seriously..." Kazuma was chewing on a piece of frog meat too, looking blissed out. "The meat's firm, kind of like chicken but chewier. Never thought these things would taste this good."
Kōichi elegantly cut off a piece and popped it into his mouth, enjoying the unique texture, while thinking to himself: in this world, strength really did put food on the table.
Just as the three of them were enjoying the feast celebrating their first victory, a childish yet excessively dramatic voice suddenly rang out from beside them.
"You adventurers over there... I saw it."
All three of them turned at once.
Standing by the table was a little girl in a red robe, wearing an eyepatch and holding a staff.
She looked about twelve or thirteen. She was striking an absurdly exaggerated pose, and the single red eye not covered by the eyepatch was gleaming with an eerie light.
"That magic of extreme cold which froze all things in an instant... that lightning strike that called down heavenly thunder to judge sin... I am Megumin, the Crimson Demon Clan's greatest genius Wizard! Since you possess such powerful magic, surely you too yearn for the ultimate power of destruction?"
She stared fixedly at Kōichi with her uncovered eye.
"Would you like... to step with me into the abyss of Explosion magic?"
Kazuma looked at the strange little girl and leaned in to whisper in Kōichi's ear, "Hey, Kōichi, is there something wrong with this kid's head too? Why is this town full of weirdos?"
Faced with this overwhelmingly dramatic, aggressively chunni speech from the girl claiming to be the Crimson Demon Clan's number one genius, the reaction from all three of them was astonishingly unified.
"Chomp chomp chomp..."
The only reply she got was the synchronized chewing of all three of them, along with Aqua noisily gulping down beer.
"..."
Megumin kept holding that cool pose with half her face covered, but a trace of awkwardness flashed through her red eye. "Um... are you listening? I am Megumin! The wielder of Explosion magic..."
"Yeah, yeah, we heard you." Kōichi waved the half-eaten frog leg in his hand absentmindedly, as if shooing away a fly. "Little girl, did you get lost? This is the Adventurers' Guild, not a playground. If you're looking for your mom, go ask at the counter over there."
"L-little girl?!" Megumin's expression instantly shattered, and all her cool, aloof aura vanished without a trace. "I am not a little girl! I am an Arch Wizard! An elite capable of using the highest-level magic!"
"An Arch Wizard?" Kazuma looked her up and down with the expression of someone watching a pitiful child. "At your height? And what's with the eyepatch? Did you hurt yourself? Or do you just have some kind of eye infection?"
"T-this is a restraint device used to seal away my overwhelmingly powerful magic!" Megumin's face turned bright red as she pointed at her eyepatch and loudly defended herself. "If it were removed, the entire world would be plunged into the crisis of destruction..."
"Yeah, yeah, a seal, a seal." Aqua let out a beer burp and cut in with a look of disdain. "Looks like an ordinary accessory to me. And what kind of weird name is 'Megumin' anyway? It sounds like the sort of name country people give their pets. Pfft."
"Y-you dare mock the great name of the Crimson Demon Clan?!" Megumin was trembling with rage, to the point where she could barely hold her staff steady.
Kōichi sighed, picked up a golden, crispy piece of fried frog meat from the plate, and held it out to the underfed-looking little girl.
"All right, all right, calm down. You're skinny as a bean sprout. Did you come over here spouting nonsense because you were hungry?" Kōichi said in the tone of a kindly father. "Here, eat this. Then hurry home and do your homework. We're a dangerous adventurer party over here. We don't have time to play house with kids."
Megumin stared at the piece of frog meat, fragrant and irresistible, and her stomach let out a loud, humiliating growl.
"Urgh..."
Shame and hunger fought a fierce battle across her face.
In the end, she snatched the meat away and bit into it with enough force to make it look like she wanted to grind all three of them to pieces along with it.
"Hmph! Since you have offered tribute with such sincerity, I shall reluctantly accept it!" Megumin said through a mouthful as she wolfed it down. "But remember my name! One day, you will all kneel beneath the power of Explosion Magic and beg me to join you! Hmph!"
With that, she turned and ran off clutching the frog meat like a cat that had successfully stolen a fish. Her red cloak flapped dramatically behind her, and she nearly tripped over her own staff.
Watching her flee in embarrassment, Kazuma shook his head helplessly. "Kids these days really have been poisoned by manga. Coming to a place full of drunks and thugs like this just to play make-believe."
"Forget about her." Kōichi wiped the grease from his mouth and pulled out the heavy money pouch from inside his clothes. "More importantly than that chuuni, it's time to divide the spoils. No, wait, I mean distribute the loot!"
The moment Aqua heard the word money, she immediately put down her beer mug, her eyes lighting up like twin searchlights.
"Exactly! Now that we have money, we can finally say goodbye to that stable that reeks of horse manure!" Aqua slapped the table excitedly. "I want to stay at an inn! One with soft beds and hot baths!"
"Agreed." Kazuma finally let out a sigh of relief. "It's not a huge amount, but it's enough for us to stay at the cheapest inn for a week, and maybe buy some basic equipment too."
Kōichi counted out his share, around 2,300 Eris, and felt the weight of the coins in his hand as he started planning his next move.
He had made quite a splash today with Beginner Magic, but that nearly broken wooden staff obviously would not last much longer.
And as his level rose, he would need better equipment if he wanted to bring out his full strength.
"Then it's settled." Kōichi stood up and stretched. "First, let's go book a room at an inn and wash this frog smell off us."
And so, ignoring the strange Crimson Demon girl from earlier, the three of them set off toward Axel's commercial district with their first pot of gold in hand.
...
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