WE DRAINED THE POND
Ten days later, Nintan appeared in my dream with subtitles that read Come.
I did, and Beelzebub apparently had arrived at the temple ahead of time to coordinate the work. That wasn’t the whole story, though, because there were about twenty other demons there.
I recognized the sisters Fatla and Vania among them, but the rest were unfamiliar faces.
“Um… Why are there so many demons here…?” I asked Fatla.
“Under Lady Beelzebub’s orders, the Ministry of Agriculture is conducting a survey on the water quality and ecosystem in this pond. If we research the ponds in human lands, we may be able to make use of the data for demons as well,” Fatla explained in her typical clerical manner.
“Most of the people here are national civil-service personnel~ But more than half are researchers~”
Vania was acting as casual as she always did.
I see… Beelzebub really did put in some serious effort to tie this together…
Beelzebub flew over to us, her arms folded.
“Well? When it is time to work, I do everything I can. And we are carrying out legitimate research on the water quality in human lands while we are here.”
“You’re a testament to the work ethic of a minister. Um, by the way, why are you hovering around like that?”
Beelzebub was darting this way and that in the air as she was talking to us. Were her fly instincts taking over?
“The mosquitoes will bite me if I do not keep moving…”
It didn’t seem like they’d taken any measures against the mosquitoes themselves. Maybe in the future, I should learn a spell that’s effective only against mosquitoes. It sounds stupid, I know, but I think it’s just plain important.
“I’m not going to make the same mistakes twice, though! I brought help!” I said.
Coming up behind me, pulling a cart, was the Witch of the Grotto, Eno. “Hello, everyone~! When the mosquitoes get you, use this cream, Itch-B-Gone! The most bothersome itches vanish in an instant! There are no harmful ingredients in the cream, so you can safely use this on even a child’s sensitive skin! Bug bites? Itch-B-Gone! One tube is eight hundred gold!”
I had Eno make medicine for us.
But still, I was surprised to see her selling medicine that was effective against bugs. She had her fingers in all sorts of pies.
“I want itch cream, but I do not wish to be bitten in the first place…”
I know how you feel, Beelzebub, but you could stand to cover up a little more. Coming here in what she usually wore was suicide.
“It’s all right. I’ve prepared something for people just like you.” This time, Eno produced a bottle filled with liquid. “Insec-Away works on even the most persistent bugs. I’ve very carefully collected the liquid from plants with natural, bug-repelling components! After all, there are plenty of plants that have ways to protect their leaves from insects!”
Eno’s voice loudly rang through the area.
There were a surprising number of creatures that had evolved to fight against insects in the natural world. Plants especially, since they couldn’t photosynthesize if their leaves got eaten up.
“Rub some on yourself, and the bugs will stay away! Children can also have some peace of mind when they play outside! A bottle of Insec-Away is fifteen hundred gold!”
That wasn’t cheap. But sometimes, sacrifices must be made.
“I’ll have one, Eno.”
“Oh, thank you very much as always, Miss Azusa!”
I could keep the mosquitoes away with this, so I guess it was time to start draining the pond.
And so we carried out our plan to remove all the water in the temple garden. I did wonder where it would go, but a little water channel had been dug down to a nearby river.
That was a lot of construction to take care of, but Nintan’s believers had already built it for us. She sure had a lot of followers at her disposal. I guess that’s what happens when you’re worshipped for a long time.
There were also a few screens attached in the space between the garden and the water channel.
It was built to catch everything—both trash and critters.
Some believers were keeping their distance because of all the demons, but it didn’t seem like there would be any trouble; maybe Nintan had already told them in an oracle that demons would be coming.
“By the way, who’s taking charge here?”
A project this big needed a leader. It wasn’t like Nintan could show up in a corporeal form or anything.
“You do it.” Beelzebub pointed at me at point-blank range.
Urgh… I guess whoever brings it up has to do it…
“But, like, the demon’s Ministry of Agriculture has really come out in force for this. Shouldn’t the minister be directing this?”
“I am little more than the ministry’s leader. You were asked to take on this project by the goddess herself, no? You do it. If something happens, you take responsibility.”
I had a feeling that last sentence was her real point. Well, everything did technically start when Nintan asked me to do this.
I lightly slapped my thighs. “Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll be the leader.”
I floated straight up into the air so I, the project representative, could see everyone.
“Hello! I’m Azusa, Witch of the Highlands. The goddess Nintan gave me a revelation, so I am now working to do something about these mosquitoes. This time, I received an oracle, so I’m cooperating together with the demons. I know we have a mix here of demons and humans, but let’s make sure to get along.”
From both the humans and demons, I heard comments like “Hey, that’s the Witch of the Highlands!” “Incredible, the goddess herself commanded her to deal with the mosquitoes!” “That’s amazing!”
I was getting even more famous when I wasn’t looking…
Everyone was actually listening to me—so I was going to leave it at that.
I’d just get Nintan or Beelzebub to yell at whoever wasn’t cooperating.
“I don’t want to talk forever, so we should get started. The mosquitoes will bite us if we stay still for too long… All right, let’s begin draining the water!”
The demons pulled a thick wooden board that had been built between the lake and the channel up and away.
Now with the path open, all the pond’s water flooded into the water channel with a thunderous noise.
Fwooooosh!
“Ooh, this is the best part.”
Still floating in the air, I watched everything going on below.
The simple waterway was transforming into a river. It was interesting observing it from the sky.
“Quite a sight to see, no?” Beelzebub came up to float beside me.
“I’d say it’s more of a sight to river, if you get what I mean.”
“…Was that supposed to be a joke? Either way, I only have to look at this water to tell how old it is. ’Twas difficult to notice beneath all the green algae, but the water itself is quite cloudy. ’Tis not a surprise that there was such a great outbreak of mosquitoes.”
Right, I guess the environment itself wasn’t in total working order…
“Then it wasn’t so much the mosquitoes’ fault, but the fault of whoever failed to manage the pond. In a way, this was a man-made disaster.”
As the water level in the pond went down, the scenery quickly changed.
Meanwhile, fish and bugs got caught in the different-sized nets in the waterway. In the lake bed, there were still a lot left flopping around in the mud.
“All right, Azusa, give the order to everyone to finish checking the types of fish and bugs and transfer the appropriate ones to the readied water tanks. Any species that seem invasive should be placed in their own specific tank.”
“Shouldn’t you be saying that?” I felt like a puppet sovereign being controlled by my adviser.
“Some humans may be too prideful to follow my instructions. I, too, find it strange for me to be ordering humans around. I do not worship the goddess here, you know.”
“We’re on the same project, so it’s fine, right? But maybe I’m not as mindful of this as I should be…”
It was my job to give commands and take responsibility, and so I would.
I gave the order to start sorting out the different species of plants and animals.
Strictly speaking, checking them wasn’t directly related to dealing with the mosquitoes, but if we were going through with this anyway, we may as well do it thoroughly. For the demons, that was the point of this job. And it was probably easy for mosquitoes to breed somewhere in the pond.
People who looked like demon researchers started leaping into the drained pond. I was impressed with their decisiveness.
But then most of them got stuck in the mud and started to panic.
“Oh no, it’s way deeper than I thought!”
“His face is stuck!”
“My legs are so heavy, I can barely move!”
I was not expecting a bunch of amateurs!
“They are the lab workers, you see. Some of them do not have much physical strength. Those who specialize in fieldwork are putting up quite a good fight, however.”
“I guess some demons are more athletic than others, huh?”
There were humans who were also jumping in and facing a similar predicament. The mud, which had accumulated over the years, was rather deep, so it was hard enough just to pull your leg free. Most of the people involved had sunk into the mud.
But getting all muddy did seem kind of fun.
I was joining in, too. Time to let my hair down a little.
“Laika, come here.”
Back at the temple, Laika and I changed into old, shabby clothes.
“Um, Lady Azusa, what are we going to do dressed in these work clothes?”
Apparently, Laika hadn’t figured it out yet.
“We’re getting our hands dirty, Laika!”
“Dirty…?”
Laika had been watching hesitantly, probably because she was such a prim and proper young lady—which made me really want to take her into the muddy pond. It was time to throw off the standards of ladylike behavior.
“Yeah. See, I think getting all messy is a good way to relieve stress. You can at least relieve the irritation from all those mosquito bites last time.”
Laika didn’t seem all that interested, but—
“Understood. If you insist, Lady Azusa…”
Well, I ended up having to force her to join me—she definitely wouldn’t come on her own. It was a master’s job to broaden her apprentice’s horizons.
I took Laika’s hand, and we leaped into the mud together.
“Whoa, I’m stuck in so deep…”
“I cannot even lift my leg…”
A weird, chilly sensation wrapped around my calves.
It was insanely hard to move around in the mud. Just taking a few steps splashed it all over my clothes.
I had no intention of flailing or struggling, so where was it all coming from?
“Oh, Lady Azusa, I’ve lost my balance!” Laika cried and slowly, slowly, slooowly fell backward.
It was like watching a slow-motion movie as she plopped into the sludge.
“Oh no, what have I done…?”
“You don’t do so well in unfamiliar environments like this, do you? Adapting isn’t really your forte.”
It was typical of Goody Two-shoes types like her. They can execute a form perfectly, but they can’t work at full potential when you throw them into an unexpected situation.
“I don’t intend to be this way, but… I’m sure I’ll find myself in a miry battle one day, and being unused to the environment will be no excuse.”
She was so stiff. Miry? She could just say muddy.
But it seemed like Laika understood now. Keeping yourself even relatively clean in a situation like this would only lead to despair. I guess I could call that her real starting point.
The moment you decide you don’t mind getting dirty, you can’t lose anymore. You’re invincible.
“All right, Laika, then let’s get to work. Amateurs like us can’t tell fish apart, so why don’t we look for garbage?”
The demon researchers would be classifying the fish, so it would probably be more effective if we specialized in picking up the garbage. There was nothing for us to worry about with that.
“Garbage, yes, but this is a sanctuary, so I doubt—” Laika stopped, pulling up the remains of a ladder.
“You’ll be surprised at how much we’ll find. That’s humans for you.”
“I suppose so…”
Even if no one meant to litter in the lake, sometimes things just fell into the water, and people let them be. The mud was so deep, it was super hard to pull anything out anyway.
The garbage had sunk to the bottom of the mud. It must have obstructed the water flow, which caused that huge outbreak of mosquitoes.
I searched around my feet.
“Oh. I got something again. Whatever this is, it’s not alive.” I pulled out something that looked like a doll with a missing head. “Oh god, this is terrifying! Why would you throw this away here?!”
“Perhaps the owner was not sure how to dispose of it and chose the temple pond. I wonder if they believed the goddess’s power would prevent it from becoming a cursed object.”
“I can see that line of thought. But I’d think they’d be more afraid of her wrath before throwing it away…so don’t toss it here.”
I doubted Nintan had so much time on her hands that she’d punish people for the tiniest wrongdoings.
We found all sorts of trash after that, and a lot of it had us wondering how they even got in here in the first place. Collecting garbage was a truly fascinating activity.
“A carriage! There’s a carriage in here!”
Who put this here, and when? Someone would have definitely found out and raised a fuss, surely.
Some of the other participants started laughing at the sight.
“Lady Azusa, I found a treasure chest!” Laika was cradling a rusted box.
“Seriously?! Is there treasure inside?!”
Laika immediately pried it open. “It’s empty, unfortunately.”
“I guess we’re not that lucky, huh…?”
Before I realized it, the population density within the pond—well, the mud where the pond had once been—had increased.
The people who were hesitant at first must have decided to join the fun.
Their decision was correct. Because it was fun.
And there was one more very important thing.
The mosquitoes were keeping their distance thanks to the mud coating our skin. Plus, Eno had started burning the plants that mosquitoes hated. With all our efforts combined, the mosquitoes didn’t even try to interrupt us and make it hard to work.
Beelzebub did not come into the mud and instead flew around in the sky. Not surprising that a minister wouldn’t want to get all dirty.
“Azusa, how is this supposed to work when the supervisor is in the mud, too…?” she asked.
“Lighten up. I don’t need to give out orders that are that detailed, right? The more people, the better.”
“Very well. So be it. I shall direct the Ministry of Agriculture employees, then.”
Yep, that was where she belonged, and she’d take care of that end how she saw fit.
“By the way, how’s the fish sorting going?”
“Take a look at the tanks there.” There were two massive glass tanks sitting side by side. “The left one is for invasive species, and the right one is for the fish that were here originally.”
The invasive-species tank was full of fish.
“So many outsiders!”
“There are quite a number of species that do not belong in this region. Similarly, turtles that do not live in this land have propagated. The ecosystem is a mess.”
It was like the rivers in Japan with the growing number of black bass, bluegill, snakeheads, pond sliders, and other critters…
“The mosquito problem aside, it was good that we drained the water. The pond was in chaos. A pilgrim would have gotten bitten by a turtle sooner or later.”
“Yeah, a turtle bite would hurt a lot more than a mosquito…”
—Then I saw something big moving around in the mud. And it was getting closer and closer to me.
“What’s that? A big turtle? Sorry, fella, but you can’t live here anymore.”
“No, turtles that big do not exist. It must be something else.”
The massive creature came before me and slowly rose from the muck. The first thing I noticed was the long mouth, then the tough skin. It’d probably make for good armor material.
“Wait, is this…a crocodile?”
“Ooh! A crocodile! They are valuable creatures that only live in the south! How lucky I am to have seen one!”
“Hey, wait! Don’t act like you’re excited to see it in a zoo! It’s right in front of me!”
The crocodile opened its mouth wide and came right at me. I guess that was its way of saying it was going to eat me.
“Aaargh! Go away!”
I dealt it a punch, and the crocodile drew a beautiful arc in the air and out of the pond.
And right into the invasive species tank. It floated motionlessly, so it must have lost consciousness.
“Whoa! There was a crocodile, too?! Incredible!”
Vania was getting excited over the crocodile. Kind of a childish reaction—but if I heard there were crocodiles in the local pond, I would probably get worked up, too, so I couldn’t talk.
“I’ve always wanted to prepare a dish of crocodile~ Such a rare ingredient.”
She was going to eat that…? I wonder what crocodile tasted like. I’d heard that snakes and frogs taste like chicken, so maybe it was similar?
“But if there’s one around, then that probably means there’s more—”
A crocodile popped up right in front of Laika this time!
“What is this creature?! Its face looks somewhat dragon-like…”
Oh right, by itself, the face was kind of similar…
Laika would never lose to a crocodile, and she quickly squared it away, but they soon started popping up in other spots, bringing trouble.
“This thing just appeared!”
“Somebody, do something!”
“There’s another big turtle over there, too!”
The mud was full of dangers…
Wait, who threw away the crocodiles in the first place?! They probably got rid of them because they couldn’t keep them anymore!
“Lady Azusa, I found this…” What Laika had picked up was a ruined wooden sign.
“‘These crocodiles are named Crocomax, Crocodina, Crocolate, and Crocodilla. Free to a good home.’”
Don’t throw ’em out like abandoned kittens! And don’t abandon kittens, either!
After a day of draining the water in the pond, cleaning out all the mud and garbage that had built up, and sorting out the plants and critters—
—the pond was so much cleaner, it looked like a completely different place.
Well, the absence of the water helped with that, too, but…
By sundown, all the manpower we had on our side managed to get most of the mud and garbage squared away, and we got to a point where if we put the water and fish back in, we’d get a revitalized, holy-temple pond.
But our goal this time around wasn’t to clean the pond.
It was to do something about the mosquitoes.
We’d managed to lessen the number of mosquitoes for now, but I wanted to have a plan in place to prevent more of them in the future.
I guess it was time to talk.
In the evening, we gathered in the temple meeting hall to discuss the pond work.
Laika and I were still covered in mud, but we participated anyway. You think about it, you lose. So I wasn’t going to think about it!
“Um… Our representative is covered in mud, but please do not mind her.”
“Beelzebub, maybe they weren’t going to until you mentioned it! If you don’t need to say it, don’t!”
I felt like I’d been betrayed by an ally. Not a full backstab, though, just a little poke.
I sat at the head of the long table, as if it were my birthday. I was formally the leader here, after all.
“Um, ahem… I am Azusa, Witch of the Highlands. I would like to hear what you all have learned from draining the water here. If you have anything to share, please raise your hand.”
One of the demon researchers quickly did so.
“We discovered roughly fifteen spots where the mud contributed to unwanted growth. By removing the mud, I believe we have greatly reduced the chance of another mosquito outbreak.”
I had no idea when they put it together, but someone was handing out some documents.
They really had it together here. Good thing we had all these researchers.
“Thank you. Anybody else with similar information?”
Well, wouldn’t this solve the problem for the most part?
It was practically confirmed that the mosquitoes appeared because of the pond anyway.
This time, a temple priest raised his hand.
“We have not done any work to clear the water in quite some time now. I believe we should strive to continue improving the water quality by regularly replacing it in the future. I was also thinking we could prepare a channel that connects to the pond to create a consistent flow.”
“Yes. I think keeping the pond clean is very important.”
Everyone was saying the most obvious things, but the tricks to solving this problem kind of were the obvious things. There was no shortcut to improving the water quality. We had to take the smallest actions one step at a time.
Just when I didn’t think there were any other suggestions, Fatla raised her hand.
“Yes, Fatla. What is it?”
“We must find whoever abandoned the crocodiles and make them pay a fine.”
Did we?! Well, I guess they were way bigger than a stray fish!
“Those crocodiles were big, and they are not native to this area. Which means not many people could have been keeping them as pets here. I can only imagine it must be someone like a noble or a rich merchant. By investigating them, we should happen upon the culprit in due course.”
I guess ordinary people wouldn’t try to keep them as pets, huh?
One of the priests chimed in. “Now that you mention it, I feel like I saw someone walking a crocodile…”
“Then the next time you see them, please fine them. The same goes for the turtles—if you find the owner, I believe a monetary penalty should suffice.”
Right, and that should be it for suggestions.
But there was still another raised hand. Beelzebub.
“Yes, go ahead, demon minister of agriculture. Talk as much as you like.”
“I found this item among the garbage that came from the pond.” Beelzebub was holding a bright-red stone that was about the size of two fists.
I didn’t know what it was, but Laika looked astonished.
“Oh! If it isn’t a flame-spirit shard!”
That sounded quite special.
“Aye. Exactly. As you all know, a flame-spirit shard generates its own heat, and it is generally said they can exude this heat for two hundred and fifty years postexcavation.”
It wasn’t like I knew that. I had no idea.
“The royalty and nobility have long valued these. By wrapping one up in a towel and placing it on your back, it can warm you up quite nicely, especially in wintertime.”
It was just a pocket hand warmer!
“’Tis hot, so I am putting it down now.”
Beelzebub placed the hand-warmer rock on the table. Yeah, I’m just going to call it that.
“And we discovered this stone within the pond.”
Fatla stood up this time. She wasn’t even going to raise her hand anymore. My role was gone now. I’m still the chair here, by the way.
“It seems that since someone disposed of this flame-spirit shard in the lake, the water temperature rose much higher than before, which kept it the same in winter as it was in summer. And so the environment morphed into something more hospitable for mosquitoes.”
“Wh-what?!” I exclaimed.
Sure, if the water temperature went down in the winter, then mosquitoes couldn’t breed.
And yet the recent and dramatic increase of mosquitoes meant there had been a climate-level change in the pond.
“The hand-warmer rock is the culprit here, then! That’s the reason why there were so many mosquitoes!”
“Hand-warmer rock? Do you mean the flame-spirit shard?”
Whoops. I got swept up in the conversation and forgot to use the real name. “But I guess this settles this whole thing, then. The culprit is the flame-spirit shard.”
“No, Miss Azusa, that is a rash conclusion,” Fatla immediately countered. “Since we are talking about a culprit here, it must be a person. Whoever discarded the flame-spirit shard in the pond is the culprit.”
Now she was just nitpicking.
“You’re probably right, but how are we going to find whoever threw the rock in?”
Things would be different if there were security cameras around, but nothing like that existed.
“Flame-spirit shards are extremely valuable. I doubt anyone would throw one away except in extreme circumstances, and only those of considerable standing own them. That naturally narrows down who it might be.”
Fatla slowly started walking along the long meeting table. Essentially, she was playing detective.
“Not only that, but there had been creatures living in the pond that would not have been able to otherwise without this stone.”
“Like what? A fish that lives in warm water?”
“No, Miss Azusa, an animal that tried to attack you.”
“Oh, the crocodiles…”
The dots were starting to connect for all of us.
“A precious stone had been tossed into the pond at the same time the crocodiles had been abandoned. It is much too well put together to be a coincidence. In essence…the culprit threw the flame-spirit shard into the pond so that the crocodiles they abandoned could live there!” Fatla’s voice rose a little at the very end of her sentence.
We were all surprised and getting a little excited.
“Incredible, Fatla… I’m impressed you figured this out… You’re just like a detective…”
“I am not a detective. I am merely a leviathan assistant to a minister.”
But it was still amazing.
And though her expression still seemed impassive, I bet she felt good about this, too.
“This may be redundant, but if we reason a little further, we know that whoever came to abandon such large animals as a crocodile would indeed draw attention. It would be rather difficult to stay out of sight, unless one is rather knowledgeable of the temple. For example, a guard on night du—”
“Enough!” One of the priests stood. “Yes, it was me! I could no longer care for the crocodiles at home, so I abandoned them in the pond!”
Fatla was dead-on!
The culprit-priest slammed both hands on the table. “But I still love my crocs… I believed Crocomax, Crocodina, Crocolate, and Crocodilla could live a happy life in the big pond…”
If you really loved them, would you have given them those names?
“I will pay for my sins… I believe many people have suffered because of the mosquitoes… I will buy five hundred units of Itch-B-Gone from the Witch of the Grotto.”
Are you paying for your sins or paying for itch cream?!
“Five hundred units of Itch-B-Gone! Thank you very much for your purchase!”
Eno was super happy. Five hundred was a pretty big order.
The other priests took the culprit away, probably to make him confess to the statue of Nintan.
On the other hand, Fatla stood there and sighed. “And so love sometimes brings unhappiness. Things never turn out the way we want them to, do they?”
This felt exactly like the ending to a crime drama.
“Though I believe I could own all the crocodiles I want if I kept them on my leviathan form.”
Yes, but not all of us have a leviathan form. You haven’t even been using your leviathan form during all this.
That aside, it seemed like the massive mosquito outbreak was over. I guess my position meant it was time for me to wrap things up.
“Well done, everyone! Now the temple won’t have to worry about mosquitoes anymore, and we should be receiving visitors again! You are all dismi—”
“Please hold on a second!” This time, it was Fatla’s little sister, Vania, who stood up.
Was there a mystery that was yet unsolved? Were the sisters a detective duo?
No, Vania couldn’t pull it off. Nope, she definitely couldn’t. She didn’t seem suited for it at all.
“Miss Azusa, you look as though you’re thinking rude thoughts…”
Oh no, Vania found me out. But Fatla was unusually brilliant, so anyone would panic at the idea of being compared. Wouldn’t you?
“We still have one big problem remaining. We cannot be dismissed yet.”
“What problem?”
“I will cook something up to show you!”
And that’s exactly what she did.
Rows of spoons and knives were laid out in the temple meeting hall, and plates of food were placed before us.
The first dish we got was a thick sauce over fried fish. Starting off with a bang, huh?
“Here we go! These are special, Vania-made invasive-fish dishes! We cannot allow them to be set free into the river, so we will enjoy them right here!”
Vania the chef was showing off her true ability.
“The extra animals sure are a big problem, aren’t they?”
I didn’t think it was just because that’s where the crocodiles were kept, but at some point, fish, turtles, and other critters that didn’t originally live in the temple pond had settled there. If they escaped to another pond or river, they would certainly cause ecological damage.
In Japan, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t okay for anyone to catch and take an invasive fish home alive, but if you wanted to kill it there then cook it later, you were safe. You could release it, too.
There were no laws on invasive fish in this world, but it was probably still better to eat them here.
All right, let’s get this party started! We completed a job well done, and now it’s time to celebrate!
“I prefer red meat over fish, but this is rather tasty. ” Laika was enjoying her meal with perfect table manners. She was clearly devouring it much quicker than anyone around her without losing any of her prim and perfect charm.
“Yeah, the fish doesn’t taste like mud at all, even after being in that pond.”
“She has seasoned it with herbs, ’tis why. She has hidden the flavor well,” Beelzebub explained as one familiar with Vania’s cooking.
“I see. I guess cooks know how to make things taste good.”
I did wonder if we should really be eating the critters from the temple pond, but they were technically trespassing. The priests looked like they were eating without much objection, too.
“We have so much food, you see. It would be best to finish it all while we have plenty of people to dine with.”
“You look like you’re having fun, Vania.”
Her expression was so animated.
“It’s because I’m using so many ingredients I don’t often get to use! The next dish I am bringing out is fried fish mince. It has such an excellent texture!”
I imagined a fish cake patty of some sort, and the servers brought in something that more or less matched the description. And they were thick, too—easily in the five-hundred-grams range.
“It’s good, but there’s a lot of food in each dish…”
“This is the perfect serving size for me.”
“’Tis also a regular size for me.”
Dragons and demons sure ate a lot…
This was only the second dish, but it seemed the human priests were already having a hard time eating.
Please save any leftovers for dinner.
But the main course hadn’t even arrived yet. I knew it was going to be massive.
After somehow fitting the entire fish cake into my stomach, they brought out several huge pots.
“Here we go! Turtle hot pot! Eat it and feel the power!” head chef Vania called out enthusiastically.
“Hot pot after all this…? I can’t eat any more…”
“Shall I have yours, then, Lady Azusa?”
I was so glad Laika was with me. “Yeah, go ahead. I’ll just have a little bit of turtle…”
I took a piece and put it on a small plate.
I thought it might stink of mud, but it didn’t at all. It was probably similar to firm duck meat. It was tough, but biting it set free all the nice flavors.
“Still, I made the right decision calling you, Beelzebub.”
I had been grasping at straws, wondering if she could do something about the mosquitoes because she was a fly, but then she suggested draining the water. Fatla even found the culprit who had accidentally invited the huge outbreak of mosquitoes.
“What I mean is, calling on you means I didn’t make a mistake!”
“Do not twist logic to be more favorable to you!” Beelzebub complained to me.
She could stand to be a little more honest with herself, considering she had still helped me all she could.
“Honestly, building that survey-project team wore me out. I must have the girls massage my shoulders after this.” Beelzebub dramatically rolled her shoulders.
I think Falfa and Shalsha would massage her shoulders at any time, though.
“Why don’t I do it for them?”
“You are much too powerful! And I would really rather Falfa, Shalsha, or Sandra instead!”
“At least you’re being honest now…”
I took a spoonful of the collagen-loaded (probably) turtle hot pot and put it in another, smaller bowl, then sipped it directly from there. For a Japanese person, this really did feel like hot-pot time.
After the feast was finished, Laika, Beelzebub, and I went to Nintan.
We had to report officially to the client, after all.
“We solved it splendidly! I felt like the demons did most of the work, though…”
“Yes, We saw everything. We never suspected the culprit would be here in Our temple…”
Nintan seemed embarrassed. But of course she would—there was a scandal right in her own organization.
“Indeed, why did a goddess not know of what your own priest had done? It seems a major flaw in your divine power, no?” Beelzebub made a rather sharp indictment. I thought the same.
“Silence! One goddess cannot know everything! If a goddess were able to manage all her priests, then no priest on earth would ever sin. Would that not be too eerie for you?”
Now that she mentioned it, she was right. It would be weird to live in a world where everything the priests said was absolutely correct.
“I am glad we solved this without incident,” said Laika. “Mosquitoes have caused plagues in the past, and I believe everyone is glad that we took countermeasures quickly.” She put a nice bow on it all.
“Indeed. Though it was the demons who reached a breakthrough, it was Azusa who made a request to the demons, and it was Us who sent an oracle to Azusa. Thus, Our strategy was correct! A worthy god We are!”
“You are twisting logic even more than Azusa did!”
Nintan’s train of thought sure was a lot like mine…
The goddess then looked away hesitantly. “We must show Our appreciation to the demons for their contributions in solving the mosquito problem… We will let Our priests know there are indeed some outstanding demons…”
I hoped this could provide the first spark for reconciliation between demons and humans. I had a feeling that reconciliation was already happening little by little, though.
“Yes, thank us demons more. Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“But how you do irk Us… We shall turn you into a frog.”
“Do not take vengeance on someone who has helped you! What do you take me for?!”
I stepped between the two. “Okaaay. That’s enough now. Let’s be nice with each other.”
Despite the pout on her face, Beelzebub extended her hand to Nintan. “This might be a chance for some of the demons to worship you.”
“Perhaps We will accept the demons, if it means more believers for Us…” Nintan grasped Beelzebub’s hand in turn.
Good, there was now a bridge between god and demon. What a relief.
“Um, there has been something on my mind.” Laika seemed to have made a realization. “What should we do with the crocodiles? We could take them back to the south. They were not served as a meal.”
You can’t just eat someone’s old pet… But keeping them in the pond would bring the water temperature back up.
And that would defeat the purpose of everything if that led to more mosquitoes again.
“Oh, We have already dealt with that.”
On our way home, we saw a small hut had been built in the corner of the garden.
“Acolytes? She definitely made that up!”
But I didn’t think it was a terrible idea for a crocodile to also be a goddess’s servant.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login