Morning came to Axel, and sunlight poured through the slightly greasy windows of the Adventurers Guild, falling across Kōichi as he elegantly cut into a premium marbled Red Dragon steak.
He took a small sip of the aged fruit juice in his glass, a bottle worth 30,000 Eris, and let out a heartfelt sigh.
"Ah... no matter what world you're in, as long as you've got money, the air smells sweet. Even this guild, usually full of sweat stink, smells like gold coins now."
At the table across from him, Aqua was stuffing all kinds of expensive desserts into her mouth with both hands like some nouveau riche upstart, with three empty bottles already piled up beside her.
"Hah! Kōichi, you finally said something smart! This kind of life, where you don't have to scrub toilets just to pay for tomorrow's meals, is what a Goddess deserves! Hey, one more bottle of your most expensive wine! Put it on the captain's tab!"
"Hey, what happened to your own 1.26 million?" Kōichi shot her a sidelong glance, one hand unconsciously brushing the new underwear beneath his robe. It was a custom-made pair of silk underwear for Arch Wizards that he had paid a fortune for yesterday. Breathable, comfortable, and even enchanted with a weak cleaning spell.
"Huh? I spent half of that buying drinks for the cult followers last night, and I'm planning to use the rest to buy that crystal ball made of pure gold..."
Aqua answered as if that were the most natural thing in the world, and Kōichi's mouth twitched again.
Just then, the guild doors swung open, and Kazuma staggered in looking like death, his legs trembling.
Clinging to his back was a tiny girl completely lost in post-Explosion bliss, a happy little smile hanging at the corner of her lips.
"I'm back... Kōichi, you bastard captain... why does this kind of miserable job always end up on me..." Kazuma trembled as he lowered Megumin onto a bench, then collapsed onto the floor and gasped for breath. "We agreed on one shot a day... but this brat not only picked the farthest place possible, she made me carry her while shouting stuff like 'My crimson lotus' and 'Burn this sinful world' the whole way... my social life is completely dead..."
Megumin could not move, but she still managed to force one eye open and speak weakly, yet proudly.
"Today's... Explosion... was a perfect ninety as well. That abandoned castle in the distance... let out a most delightful cry... in my flames. Kazuma... your recitation was still too timid. Tomorrow, you need more force behind it..."
"There's a tomorrow too?!"
Kazuma let out a cry of pure despair.
Kōichi watched the whole scene without the slightest ripple in his heart. If anything, it made him want to order another dessert.
These past few days, he really had been living well. Since he had split the reward evenly, the resentment within the party had faded quite a bit.
Kazuma had to carry out that promise of being Megumin's Explosion nanny every single day, but every time he looked at the long string of zeroes still left in his wallet, he gritted his teeth and endured it.
And Darkness had been even stranger these past few days.
Wearing her newly repaired, gleaming armor, she spent all day idling around behind Kōichi.
"Captain... are there really no missions today either? Nothing where I can charge into a horde of monsters and be ravaged? Or... even a simple scolding would do. It's been three whole days since you last looked at me with that gaze of utter contempt. I feel like my body is starting to rust..."
Kōichi calmly flipped through the Axel Fine Dining Guide in his hands and answered without even looking up.
"Darkness, you're doing a great job. Keep maintaining this quiet state. That's an order from your captain."
"Ugh! That gentle indifference again! This hollow feeling of being deprived of my right to be abused... ah... Captain really is a master at toying with people's hearts!"
Darkness covered her face, and her body began trembling uncontrollably all over again.
That drunken, extravagant life of reckless spending went on for a full week.
The people of Axel were astonished to discover that the problem party which used to worry every day about making ends meet had now become regulars in the shopping district.
Kōichi bought the finest staff. Kazuma bought a pile of useless game items. Aqua became the tavern's patron saint of profit. And every single day, Megumin's Explosion could be heard going off in the distance right on schedule.
Then came yet another bright, sunny morning in Axel, but the sweet scent of money in the air seemed to have vanished overnight without a trace, replaced by the bitter chill of something called poverty.
Kōichi sat in that slightly wobbly wooden chair at the guild.
In front of him was no longer a premium dragon steak, but a bowl of plain noodles in clear broth that gave off a distinctly suspicious smell, and cost only fifty Eris.
Kōichi held a quill in his hand and furiously ran numbers across several crumpled receipts, his brows knotted so tightly they looked ready to stay that way forever.
"Kazuma, bring me your side of the accounts... I swear the numbers haven't looked right these past few days. Did the guild owner secretly drink our stored liquor or something?" Kōichi asked without even looking up, though there was a faint tremor in his voice.
Across from him, Kazuma was slumped over the table without a shred of dignity, absently fiddling with a pendant that looked like it had been carved from the bone of some bizarre creature. It was the so-called ancient relic he had bought for 300,000 Eris two days ago, supposedly to boost his luck. At this point, it looked more like a pig's trotter a dog had chewed on.
"Don't bother, Kōichi." Kazuma rolled his eyes, his tone as calm and lifeless as cold ashes. "I already ran the numbers three times, and the result was the same every time. We're broke. To be precise, after you bought the entire guild a round of expensive fruit juice yesterday to keep up your image as captain, the money left in your pocket isn't even enough to buy the second button on those silk underwear you're wearing under your robe."
Kōichi's hand froze in the middle of writing.
"Waaahhh! Why?! Why did the money suddenly disappear?! Just yesterday we still had a huge thick stack of it!" Aqua let out an earth-shaking wail from the side, frantically shaking her little pink purse, now completely empty. "All I did was buy a solid-gold Axis Order emblem, treat the followers to a few meals, and then... and then buy a dozen of the finest sparkling wines! So why is there no money left?! Kōichi! You're the captain, right?! Hurry up and think of something! I haven't even had breakfast yet!"
"That solid-gold emblem alone cost you 800,000, didn't it, you idiot Goddess?" Kōichi gave a cold snort, then turned to Megumin, who was elegantly drinking plain water. "Megumin, what about you? You can't have spent all 1.26 million already, right?"
Megumin set down her cup, her eyes carrying the lofty solemnity of someone offering herself up for art.
"I bought one hundred bottles of high-purity magic recovery potion, to ensure that daily Explosion can reach its maximum possible power. On top of that, I also ordered a batch of limited-edition Crimson Demon Clan specialty rations with self-destruct effects built in. So now... my pockets are flatter than my chest."
"As for me..." Darkness said from the side, blushing and squirming. "I donated all my remaining money to an orphanage... because I thought that if I became utterly penniless, so poor I couldn't even afford to repair my armor, then in the next battle I'd have no choice but to face monsters wearing this ruined armor, shabby and on the verge of falling apart at any moment... ngh! Just imagining that shame and helplessness..."
"Enough. Shut up."
Kōichi and Kazuma cut off her fantasy in perfect unison.
Kōichi slumped back against his chair and stared at the bowl of noodles on the table, already gone cold.
In just one week, 6.3 million Eris had vanished under this group's reckless spending as though it had never existed in the first place.
"It's easy to go from frugal to extravagant, but hard to go from extravagant back to frugal..." Kōichi sighed with deep feeling as he touched the smooth silk beneath his robe. It was the last shred of his dignity.
The lifeless mood in the guild hall was suddenly ripped apart by a shrill, piercing alarm.
The adventurers who had just been sighing over their bowls of noodles a moment ago now looked as though someone had pumped them full of adrenaline. They flipped tables over and charged for the doors with bloodshot eyes.