Chapter 15

I woke on cold, hard, damp ground with my stomach still painfully empty from what little there was to eat for dinner last night. After a stretch and an aborted attempt to sit up that was ruined by back pain, I smiled.

This was miserable. I hated every second of it.

Every day of the last week sucked. At this rate I'd soon genuinely wish to go back to my warm comfortable bed and dead end job. The plan was really coming together.

I rolled over to find the gacha ball, eager to discover Nyarin's latest attempt to fix the Isekai experience that I was brilliantly ruining.

The blue transparent plastic ball contained a few coins, but the best part was the magic wand glued to the ball with mostly-dried tree sap. I heard Nyarin reaching for it last night. Inventive of her, really.

“Oh, my, the gacha ball has sprouted a stick! Who knew it could do that?”

Nyarin sat up from her own uncomfortable sleeping pad. She had disguised herself as a farm maid named Mimi. At first she had tried being inexplicably grateful, but I told her I was obsessed with my important mission of gacha-ing the demon lord right in his little lordlings.

Instead of her goddess body, she now inhabited a more scrawny kind of catgirl costume. Deep inside was the real her just using a different shell and a different name, but it was still Nyarin. She had called herself a Bakeneko, whatever that was.

Her hair was a messed up nest that only six days of hard, unsuccessful road travel could manage. She looked as hungry as I was.

I held up the gacha, showing her where the magic wand had been mysteriously attached. She acted surprised and pointed to the magic wand. “I wonder what it can do!”

Nyarin had been attempting to use her special Isekai control powers to make the Isekai a success, but she ran into a problem familiar to all tech support. She had worked hard to make sure that any idiot could enjoy this Isekai. But I’m not just any idiot. I’m a special idiot.

Without saying a word I broke the wand off and tossed it into the remaining embers of the little fire we had made before shivering to sleep last night. Before Nyarin could react I added a few dried leaves and the wand was quickly burning a bizarre purple colored flame.

“This is great!” I said. “The gacha ball made some firewood!”

She watched the wand burn, eyes wide. “Did you maybe think that could have been a magic wand that would have made your adventures much more easy and comfortable?”

“Nah Mimi,” I answered, making sure to use her current fake name, “and besides, an adventure against a demon lord is meaningless if things are convenient, or warm, or hygienic. Suffering makes my mission even more noble.”

Nyarin had been trying to make things work. She had used her control of the Isekai world to make sure I stumbled upon buried treasure complete with gold and magic artifact. In my exuberance I had thought myself lucky and gambled all that wealth away in a day.

Nyarin had found me trustworthy and useful companions, but after a couple of unfortunate hijinx they ended up arrested by the authorities. Oopsie.

After that she led me to the Glorious Cathedral of the Chosen Warrior where I was clearly meant to fulfill a prophecy as ancient as the five hundred year old wooden chapel. The five hundred year old flammable chapel filled with candles. We had to run fast after I lit that place up.

She had resorted to putting coins or other hints about my mission into the gacha ball at night.

It had been six days of this already. Nyarin looked miserable enough to break the Isekai spell, but it had to be me. I needed to want to go home. Apparently, some part of me didn’t want to go back.

Nyarin held her head as if poor meals, sleeping on hard ground, and hours of walking the day before had somehow caused a headache. She mumbled to herself: “This guy is more sadistic than that jobless customer who got resurrected and had a thing for his third cousin.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Just wondering what we should do about breakfast, hero,” Nyarin answered, her stomach growling audibly.

“Breakfast sounds good.” Truck-kun climbed from under a nearby bush. He looked with confusion at our odd purple fire.

Of all of the stupid things I had done to sabotage this Isekai, my favorite was Truck-kun. We had visited the Hero’s Shrine where I was allowed to select the form of my familiar. Would I chose a tiger, dragonling, or griffon?

“No, none of those animal familiars represent the warrior spirit inside me,” I had answered Nyarin and the Hero Shrine she had been puppeting.

“Ah,” Nyarin had answered, afraid to ask what I wanted after days of unmitigated disasters.

I had proudly announced to her the form of my brave, legendary familiar that would accompany me to the demon lord’s hazardous lands on my adventure to defeat evil.

Truck-kun tilted his head at the purple fire, looking about as confused as a platypus could manage to look. “Why is the fire purple?”

Nyarin sighed. “At least it feels kinda warm.” She held her hands up to the fire for a little heat just as the wand exploded. I had only been in this world for less than a week, so I didn’t realize that wands could be hazardous if burnt.

Thankfully we all survived, but I can’t say the same for our clothes and Nyarin’s hair. Apparently exploding wands in this reality produced nasty billowing smoke, covered everything nearby in slime, and imbued random magical effects.

I started glowing brightly enough that it made it hard for me to see things. Nyarin was slowed, so she had a hard time following our conversations since time was slowed down for her, and Truck-kun turned into a zombie. A zombie platypus.

“So,” Nyarin said so slowly that Truck-kun and I looked at each other, uncertain what to do, “what next?”

I pulled out a map that Nyarin had given me on the first day in this world. It detailed dozens of wondrous places through which I could travel to become a seasoned adventurer ready to defeat the demon lord. At the end of the long trail were the demon lord’s lands and castle.

So of course I pointed right at the stronghold of the most powerful and evil being in this reality. “How about we go here next?”

Nyarin looked surprised. She did it in slow motion, but it was definitely surprise.

Truck-kun clacked in bill irritably. “Straight to the stronghold? Are you insane?”

“I’m confident in my abilities by this point.”

By now Nyarin’s mouth had opened in shock.

Truck-kun flailed about with his flippers. “You can’t just go straight there. Depending on how you travel, there’s mountains inhabited by ice giants, badlands inhabited by endlessly warring nomadic factions, or a swamp with poisonous hallucinogenic gas inhabited by the ghosts of a dead civilization.”

Nyarin began making a noise that might have been the beginning of a scream.

“I was going to go through the badlands with endlessly warring nomadic factions. It sounds like less work than climbing mountains or trekking through a swamp.”

Truck-kun looked at Nyarin nervously, but she had only just begun to emit a high-pitched worried sound.

“Anyone against going straight to the source of evil itself through dangerous lawless lands, please raise your hand.”

Truck-kun struggled to raise a hand, but he was now a platypus.

Nyarin’s hand had barely left the ground on its way upward when I nodded my head. “Okay, we’re all in agreement. Oh boy, vicious warring nomads. This will be great.”

“Don’t we need to prepare more?” Truck-kun protested.

I held up the gacha ball. “I’ve got everything I need.”