Kazuma spoke as though he still did not understand.
"No matter how I look at it, I just can’t understand an entire kingdom being destroyed over breasts growing one cup size."
"Ah! You’re a man, Kazuma, so I guess it’s hard for you to understand."
With the girls present, I leaned close and whispered quietly into Kazuma’s ear.
"Instead of one cup size for breasts, imagine gaining one centimeter down there."
"Ahem... I-I get it now."
Kazuma nodded, seeming to finally understand. No man could let an extra centimeter down there slide.
Chris approached me and spoke in a tone that still sounded doubtful.
"Fine, I understand that the Bust Enhancement Pill exists. But Tae-jin! How do you know all this? And when you say you’ll get one for me, that means you don’t have it yet, so how exactly are you going to get it?"
"The Bust Enhancement Pill is too dangerous an item for its details to become known, so I can’t tell you much. But it is true that one will definitely end up in my hands."
"How can I trust you?"
"I have nothing to lose! It might take time to learn the skills, but I can always pay another thief to teach me. And I could sell the Bust Enhancement Pill to some rich person for a high price, too."
"Ugh... Fine! Fine, I get it! If you do get one, you have to give it to me!"
I had been planning to give her one as a gift later, but even if it was for saving the world, trying to make things troublesome for me was a mistake. She had picked the wrong person.
Kazuma, Darkness, Chris, and I moved to a quiet clearing behind the building to learn skills.
"Thief skills include things like [Enemy Detection] and [Stealth], but this is the one I recommend most!"
Chris held out one hand toward Kazuma.
"[Steal]~~~~!"
Light shone from Chris’s outstretched hand, and a small pouch appeared in her palm.
At that moment, Kazuma cried out in surprise.
"Huh? My wallet!"
"This is the theft skill, [Steal]. If it succeeds, you can take one of your opponent’s possessions."
Chris started to return the wallet to Kazuma, then hesitated.
"Hey, Tae-jin, Kazuma, how about a match with me? Learn thief skills yourselves and try to take this wallet back! You’re adventurers, aren’t you? Then you should be willing to take on dangerous challenges!"
I knew what Chris was up to.
"I’ll leave it to lucky Kazuma. I believe in him."
Kazuma thought for a moment, then looked at Chris and spoke.
"All right! Let’s give it a try!"
Kazuma and I learned [Enemy Detection], [Stealth], and [Steal].
"Chris, there are still more skills I want to learn. Teach me [Skill Bind], [Treasure Detection], and [Lockpicking] too."
"Are you planning to take every last trick I have? And how do you know thief skills so well?"
"The Bust Enhancement Pill! I’ll bring it to you within half a year!"
"Tch! Fine!"
I was able to learn [Skill Bind], [Treasure Detection], and [Lockpicking] as well.
"All right! Then let’s begin. Kazuma! Use it whenever you’re ready!"
"Fine! No crying no matter what gets taken, all right?"
Then Chris gave a sly smile, pointed to the dagger at her waist, and spoke to Kazuma.
"Heh~! The jackpot is this magical dagger, which is worth over 400,000 Eris. And the dud is this stone!"
Chris slowly opened both fists and showed us the small stones in each hand.
The skill [Steal] took an item from the target at random, so the more miscellaneous junk someone carried, as Chris did, the lower the odds of taking the item you wanted.
"Ah! That’s cheating!"
"The odds of pulling the dagger just dropped drastically, didn’t they?"
"Damn it!"
Because I trusted Kazuma’s insane luck, I encouraged him.
"Kazuma! Don’t worry too much if you can’t get the wallet back! I’ll pay you that money, so relax!"
"Hey! Isn’t that a little much? You’re killing all the tension!"
"And who was it that tried to cruelly mess with novice adventurers first?"
When I hit her with the facts, Chris could not say much and only glared at me with a resentful expression.
"Grr... Ugh... I hate you!"
Chris’s reaction was amusing, so it was oddly satisfying to keep poking at her.
‘I feel like this might become a habit.’
Then Kazuma, as if he had made up his mind, shouted.
"All right! I’ll do it! [Steal]~~~~!!"
Apparently feeling something in his fist, Kazuma spoke with a bright expression.
"Tae-jin! At least it worked."
"Oh~ Nice! Just what I expected from you, Kazuma!"
"Hm? What is this?"
Kazuma slowly raised the item he had successfully stolen into the air to inspect it, and we saw that he was holding a pair of white women’s panties.
"Wooooah~ This isn’t just a jackpot—it’s the grand prize!!!"
Chris’s face turned red and she began squirming, then spoke in a flustered, shocked voice.
"Eek~~!! G-Give me back my panties!!!"
"Wahahahahahaha~~~!"
Kazuma grabbed Chris’s panties and began whirling them around over his head. Darkness watched the scene, her face flushing as though excited, and delivered her assessment.
"W-What a fiendish act... Just as I thought, my eyes were not mistaken!"
And so, in exchange for the panties, Kazuma extracted not only his wallet but all of Chris’s money as well before returning to the guild.
When we entered the guild, Aqua, Megumin, and, though I had no idea when she arrived, Yunyun were all there.
"Yo~ Aqua, Megumin, Yunyun."
"Hello, Tae-jin."
"Yunyun, did you get plenty of rest today? Starting tomorrow, let’s work hard on quests together. You need to learn advanced magic soon too."
"Yes, all right. I look forward to working with you tomorrow too."
Then Aqua asked.
"Where were you and Kazuma? And why is that person crying?"
Darkness explained what had happened.
"Ah, actually, she is merely despondent because, while teaching Kazuma thief skills, not only did she have her panties taken off, but all her money was taken as well."
Hearing that, Kazuma hurriedly spoke in alarm.
"Hey, you! What are you saying?!"
Chris began speaking through loud, sorrowful sobs for everyone to hear.
"He said returning the wallet alone wasn’t enough, so I begged him to give back my panties and told him I would pay him any amount, but he said I should set the price of my own panties myself... Sob..."
"Hey, wait a minute! It’s not a lie, but wait a minute!"
"He said otherwise, he’d pass these panties down through his family as an heirloom for generations! Sob..."
The female adventurers around us stared at Kazuma as if he were trash.
Since I knew the original story, I knew Chris was deliberately speaking loudly to get revenge and paint Kazuma as a pervert.
So I looked closely at Chris’s face. She had covered it with both hands as if crying, but I could clearly see the corners of her mouth turned up.
‘She’s hiding her face and laughing while pretending to cry. Just because she lost the match, she’s trying to brand someone a pervert... What a nasty personality.’
Kazuma had done nothing wrong. He had simply won an unfair match spectacularly. So unlike in the original story, I decided to save him.
"Wait! Isn’t this too much? What did Kazuma do wrong that he should be treated like a pervert? Chris, stop pretending to cry! If you’re trying to get revenge on Kazuma through public opinion, then we can do the same thing!"
I stood up and clapped loudly twice.
Clap clap!
"Excuse me, may I have everyone’s attention for a moment!"
Everyone in the guild looked at me.
"Oh~ The future hero!"
"Eek~ He’s handsome."
"Marry me~"
Huh? Marry me? Well, anyway, I had everyone’s attention.
"An adventurer named Kazuma is currently being unfairly accused of being a pervert."
I pointed at Kazuma, then continued.
"A thief named Chris told the story while cutting out everything that happened beforehand, and as a result, Mr. Kazuma, a novice adventurer, is being unfairly persecuted right now."
The people began murmuring among themselves.
"Mr. Kazuma is a novice adventurer who came to Axel from far away with dreams of becoming an adventurer. He had no money, so he worked manual labor at construction sites to barely buy himself a sword. Then, at level one and without even having any skills, he worked incredibly hard to level up while being swallowed by Giant Toads."
"That’s right! His party member was always covered in some weird liquid. So that was toad saliva."
"Heh~ That brings back memories!"
"Ah, poor thing..."
"I’ll buy you a drink next time. Keep your chin up!"
Aqua shed tears in streams as she patted Kazuma’s back to comfort him. Kazuma stared at Aqua with a dumbfounded expression.
"Mr. Kazuma agonized over where to spend the points he had gathered through such blood-and-tear hardship, because he was a novice adventurer who did not know what skills to choose. That was when an adventurer named Chris appeared."
I pointed Chris out. Chris looked flustered.
"Miss Chris began sweet-talking Mr. Kazuma, saying she would teach him skills in exchange for one Shuwa Shuwa. Sadly, Mr. Kazuma fell for it, bought her Shuwa Shuwa, and agreed to learn the skills."
People began focusing more and more on my story.
"Saying she would teach him skills, she took the novice adventurer Mr. Kazuma to an empty clearing where nobody ever went. Then she used the thief skill [Steal] to rob Mr. Kazuma of his wallet. And she said, ‘This is the skill called [Steal]. If you’re an adventurer, you should experience things like this too! Learn [Steal] and try taking your wallet back.’"
"That’s rookie hunting."
"I can’t believe people like that still exist."
"What has the world come to?"
"Mr. Kazuma thought, ‘I’ve been had!’ But there was nothing he could do. Left with no choice, he spent those hard-earned points on [Steal] to recover his wallet. Then Miss Chris cruelly picked up small stones and began mocking Mr. Kazuma, saying, ‘These are the duds.’"
"What a terrible person!"
"Wow~ How devilish!"
"She’s not even human!"
"But Mr. Kazuma did not give in. Praying to the goddess of luck, Lady Eris, he attempted [Steal] on Miss Chris. Thankfully, he could not steal back his wallet, but he did manage to steal Miss Chris’s panties. And thus, the novice adventurer Mr. Kazuma taught Miss Chris a proper lesson. As you heard earlier, he told her to set the price of her own panties. In the end, Miss Chris had no choice but to give Mr. Kazuma her wallet and entire fortune in tears.
"Wooow~ Kazuma is amazing!"
"She got turned around on her."
"People like that need to get a taste of their own medicine!"
"And now, perhaps because she resents that, Miss Chris is using the fact that she is a woman and making an issue of the panties that were taken from her, turning Mr. Kazuma into a pervert again and driving him into a corner."
At that, Chris snapped and spoke.
"That’s a lie!!! You’re twisting the facts!"
I smiled and asked Chris.
"Which part is twisted or false?"
"That’s..."
As Chris hesitated, I did not give her time.
"You can’t say, can you? Because it’s all true! And there is a witness as well. Miss Darkness!"
When I pointed at Darkness, she answered in surprise.
"Huh? Me?"
"Miss Darkness, you’re a knight, correct? And a follower of the Eris faith?"
"Huh? Y-Yes, I am."
"As a witness who saw it all, on your honor as a knight, was anything I said a lie?"
"Ahem... No. But..."
I quickly cut Darkness off.
"So who is the bad one now? Is it Mr. Kazuma, the novice adventurer who, thankfully, was lucky but got branded a pervert? Or is it Miss Chris, who was turned around on while rookie hunting?"
People began criticizing Chris.
"It’s women like that who make decent female adventurers like us get a bad name."
"Wow~ It’s that easy to turn a man into a pervert? How scary."
"Live kindly! Lady Eris is watching!"
"Sorry for misunderstanding you, Kazuma~!"
"She’d make even a devil cry."
Unable to bear it, Chris burst into genuine tears and ran out.
"A devil?! Waaaaah~~~~"
"Wait, Chris~!"
Darkness hurried after Chris.
‘Huh? Wait! Darkness can’t leave now. What is Kazuma’s party supposed to do?’
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