"What's wrong with asking? You find a strange mage passed out in the middle of nowhere — shouldn't you ask what she does for a living?"
"That... is actually a fair point." The girl was persuaded by Jhin's shameless logic and had no choice but to come clean. "My name is Megumin. Red Demon Clan, fourteen years old, definitely female! From the Crimson Demon Village, occupation: mage."
"Heh heh~ She said it herself — a female mage~" Pecorine teased Jhin, barely suppressing her laughter.
Jhin put his model gun away into his Storage Space, kept his face completely straight, and spoke with grave authority. "Just because she says so doesn't make it true. What if she's a spy sent by the Demon King?"
"Excuse me, do you have actual brain damage? Can't you tell I'm a girl just by looking, or are you saying I don't look like a mage either?!" Megumin's voice had tremendous presence — unfortunately, she was still lying face-down in the dirt without having moved a single inch.
"Then how about you explain why you're just lying there without mov— wait. Pecorine, Kokkoro, step back, step back! This could be a bomb trap disguised as a human being!" Jhin grabbed both of them and retreated several paces in alarm.
"Have you ever seen a decoy that looks this lifelike and this beautiful?! You absolute idiot!"
Faced with Megumin's furious cursing, Jhin let out a scornful snort. He knew she couldn't see him, but he wagged his index finger at her anyway. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. I actually have, so don't go making sweeping conclusions just because your own experience is limited."
Life-sized figures were all over the market these days. If you were willing to spend the money, getting one indistinguishable from the real thing was entirely doable.
"Huh? Seriously?" The very gullible Megumin was, once again, convinced by what Jhin said, and began to waver. "Has alchemy really advanced to the point where it can produce something that terrifying?"
With both companions standing right there, Jhin kept to himself the suggestion of letting him pat her down to verify she was real.
"Jhin, why don't you just touch her to confirm her gender?" Pecorine said this with a face of complete and total innocence. The atmosphere on the cliff's edge went rigid.
Jhin swallowed hard and looked to Pecorine for confirmation. "R-Really... that's okay?"
"Master, it is indeed the most effective and expedient method." Even Kokkoro was on board.
Am I dreaming right now?
"HEY!!!!!" Megumin screamed until her throat nearly gave out. "What kind of depraved nonsense are you spouting?! Doing something like that to a girl you just met — you lot are the ones who are Demon King spies!"
"Hmm?" Pecorine genuinely couldn't understand why Megumin was reacting so strongly. "Is it not okay for Jhin to touch her?"
"Does that even need to be said?! Of course it's not okay! Why don't you let your own companion touch you instead?!"
Megumin was furious at herself for carelessly dashing up here to fire off Explosion magic without setting up her usual warning signs at the cliff entrance to keep people away. Now, thanks to one moment of carelessness, she'd stumbled into a pack of perverts.
Is my purity really going to be lost on this dirt-covered clifftop?
Facing what seemed like doom, Megumin still refused to give up. She strained every last bit of effort into trying to wriggle her body away from this dangerous situation.
"I can let Jhin touch me." Without a moment's hesitation, Pecorine straightened up, tilted her snow-white neck toward him, and offered herself forward. "Jhin, start with me."
"That — that doesn't feel right?" Jhin stared at that pair of trembling white... and fought down the urge to raise his hand several times.
"Why not? It's just touching the neck to check for an Adam's apple."
"An Adam's apple?!" Megumin shrieked from the ground.
"Right — girls don't have Adam's apples, so all you have to do is feel for one to tell the difference, isn't that so?"
"..." Megumin, acutely aware of where her own mind had just gone, turned a vivid shade of crimson. Her face was burning hot.
Thank goodness I'm lying on the ground right now. They can't see my expression.
Jhin, whose mind had equally gone to the wrong place, cleared his throat and looked away with zero shame. "No need to check Pecorine — nobody's going to question whether she's a girl, given her... figure."
"Ah... th-thank you for the compliment..." Pecorine clearly recalled their very first meeting and ducked her head in embarrassment, fixing her gaze on the tips of her shoes.
"Master, perhaps we should verify this mage's gender first." Kokkoro was entirely unbothered by the topic of body figures — if anything, elven women had long since made peace with such things.
An eternal loli is an eternal loli. Everyone back in the Fairy Forest was the same level anyway.
"Fair enough."
To break the awkward atmosphere, Jhin walked briskly over to Megumin, slipped his hand under the brim of her oversized witch's hat, felt briefly at her neck, and withdrew immediately.
Huh... he's actually being a gentleman about it...
Megumin had been bracing herself to hit him with a Red Demon Clan Savage Bite the moment he dared grope anywhere he shouldn't — she hadn't expected him to be so thoroughly proper.
"No Adam's apple, confirmed. Though some men's Adam's apples are similarly inconspicuous," Jhin said, absolutely refusing to admit his jinxing powers, still grasping at excuses. "And besides, with her lying flat on the ground, there's no way to tell her front from her back — so statistically, she's more likely to be male."
That comment hit every single one of Megumin's landmines at once.
Megumin, who had been completely immobilized from mana exhaustion until this very second, felt something stir to life inside her — a deep, festering resentment toward big-chested women — and it blasted her clean off the ground. She shot to her feet, seized Jhin by the collar, and ground her teeth loud enough to hear.
"You rotten piece of trash! On what grounds are you saying my figure is flat?! What's so great about having a huge chest?! What's SO GREAT about it, huh?!"
"They're just two useless lumps of fat! What is there to look at?! Every single person just stares at that thing with disgusting, lecherous eyes — don't any of you understand that a modest chest is a rare and precious resource?!"
Megumin grabbed Jhin and shook him hysterically. Too furious to stop herself, she snatched up his hand and pressed it firmly against her chest — which did, in fact, have at least a subtle hint of a curve. "Go ahead and touch it! I refuse to believe that after this you'll still dare call me a man!"
Jhin let out a quiet sigh inwardly as he took in the sight of her.
She's a total beauty. I'm never doing that gesture again.
Jhin twisted his wrist, turned the grip around, and caught Megumin's arm instead. He looked at the girl whose face was streaked with dirt but whose scarlet eyes still sparkled brilliantly, and extended a sincere invitation:
"My beautiful young lady, would you be willing to—"
"Even if you're pretty handsome and technically my type, don't you dare think for one second that I'd ever marry you!"
"—join us and form a guild."
Silence descended once more.
Megumin looked like she'd lost the will to live. She tried to pull her hand out of Jhin's grip. "Just let me die..."
"Don't be so hasty — everything's negotiable." Jhin gave her his most disarming smile, pulled up his personal terminal, and played back the audio clip it had captured.
"Even if you're pretty handsome and technically my type, don't you dare think for one second that I'd ever marry you!"
Jhin had been planning to use the recording as leverage in their negotiations — but as it turned out, playing it back was enough by itself. Megumin, still running on empty with her mana completely depleted, was so overcome with humiliation that she passed out on the spot.
"Right then." Jhin hoisted Megumin onto his shoulder like a hunter returning from a successful expedition, and smiled with complete satisfaction. "Out of the goodness of my heart, I carried this poor mage back to safety — and in gratitude for my kindness, she agreed to help us found a guild. Perfectly reasonable."
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