Golden Sea Dream: a beach so beautiful that anyone seeing it for the first time would swear it had been cast from solid gold. The sea breeze carried the fresh scent of coconut, and sand fine as gold dust slept quietly along the shore.
All manner of seafood barbecue and fine liquor at night were the enduring themes of this place. Such shops crowded the shoreline shoulder to shoulder under canvas roofs of every color, and from the air they looked like a cluster of mushrooms sprouting along the edge of all that gold.
Since the girls' swimsuits and Jhin's own trunks had all been dissolved back in Maple Syrup Valley, the very first order of business upon arriving at Golden Sea Dream was to go shopping for new swimwear together.
Picking them out didn't take long at all. Each of the girls spotted the exact style she'd bought before and settled on it without much deliberation.
After all, the old swimsuits had only been worn once, and Jhin himself had said they looked wonderful on them. Rather than gamble on some new set with no idea how it would turn out, the safe choice was to buy what they already knew worked.
Drinking in the sight of the girls in their swimsuits, Jhin snapped away at them with all the enthusiasm of a man determined to fill up every last byte of his personal terminal.
Look at those slender, milk-pale legs. And the way the edge of that black lace thigh band bit softly into the flesh!
Who understands me this well?
His gaze traveled upward, and he found four pairs of eyes fixed on him with a very meaningful weight behind them. The grin froze on his face. "H-hey," he said guiltily, "why's everybody looking at me?"
Megumin stamped down sharply on the top of his foot. "You were absolutely sneaking photos of us with your personal terminal just now, weren't you?"
He knew perfectly well she hadn't put any strength into it, but Jhin still bared his teeth and grimaced as though it hurt. "Slander! I was only… uh… observing you."
He'd originally meant to say "admiring," but he thought of how things with Pecorine had only just gone back to normal, and if he said the wrong thing now and undid all that progress, he'd have no one to cry to. So he went with the stranger word instead.
"Hmph. Always weaseling out of it." Kyaru stepped up and planted her foot on his other one, her tail flicking lazily against his stomach every few seconds. Her lips were pouted, but those emerald eyes were full of embarrassment.
She knew exactly where his gaze had been lingering — on her thighs — and a girl's instinctive bashfulness had driven her over to stomp on him. The secret delight underneath it was why she pressed down with the pressure of a massage instead.
Being lightly trampled by two beautiful girls with feet soft as jade, Jhin got the distinct feeling the pair of them were trying to awaken something strange in him. His whole aura tightened at once, and he intoned three solemn words to himself.
More, please.
Having finished their theatrical "punishment," the two of them promptly latched onto his arms, one on each side. The softness of their chests pressed against him, and the corners of his mouth refused to stay down.
Where Kyaru clung out of pure feline instinct, Megumin was driven by something subtler — a competitive streak. As the first girl to make things official with Jhin, she felt obligated to maintain the dignity befitting a senior, even if that dignity looked, to everyone else, like nothing more than a contest over who could stick to him harder.
Kokkoro and Pecorine seemed long since used to this sort of thing. They were poring over the flyers they'd been handed, working out where to go first.
"Jhin, it says here there's an Overlord Squid Fishing Grounds. Let's go hook some squid and grill them!"
"Master, shall we go take a look at the Sand Fortress?"
The two of them put the question to him at almost exactly the same moment, then both froze and turned to look at each other. In perfect unison they said, "Or, well, we could go to yours first?"
"…"
The moment stretched into something awkward, so Jhin walked over and plucked the flyers out of their hands. "No need to choose. Obviously, I want them all!"
A passerby nearby, in the middle of desperately consoling his girlfriend, watched him walk off unharmed with four beautiful girls in tow and was struck with awe. Inspired, he turned to his girlfriend and her younger sister and declared, "I want them all!"
Two ringing slaps later, he collapsed onto the sand, too devastated even to cry, muttering over and over, "Why? Why?"
Jhin had no idea someone had just been slapped into the ground for imitating him. On the way to the Sand Fortress, he and the girls came across a man with a pompadour who was being hounded by a crowd.
Three people, all wearing bizarre cloaks despite the blazing heat and the beach, were dogging his every step, chanting things like "Pay up," "You broke our property," and "Or else join the church."
Megumin, who had been in high spirits ever since they reached the shore, wilted the instant she laid eyes on those three.
The pompadoured man dodged and weaved through their encirclement, sprinting toward the most crowded stretch of shoreline while swearing at the top of his lungs. "You're the ones who came tearing around the corner and slammed into me, and then you shoved that paper into my hands — the kind that crumbles the second you touch it! You lunatics, even if you're recruiting converts, there's got to be a better way than this!"
So they've refined their recruitment methods… these people.
Megumin's mouth twitched as she listened. All she'd done was pass by once and give those strange cultists a few pointers on how to strong-arm people into the church, and somehow it had evolved into staging accidents right in front of their victims.
I hope that guy makes it out okay.
She offered up a silent one-second prayer for him, then shoved the whole matter out of her mind. Eyes shining, she bounced on her toes and pointed at the enormous castle piled up in the distance. "Jhin, look at that! What a cool castle!"
"It really is. Wonder how long a castle like that can last."
"According to this, the longest-lasting sand castle stood for a whole year." Kyaru flipped through the flyer, doing her advance research on where they were headed next.
"That long, huh? I figured the sea wind would knock one over in a single night. Let's go in and see whose castle turns out best."
"Heh heh. So you dare challenge me, the Archmage Megumin. You're quite confident, Jhin."
"I never said it was a competition."
Just then a staff member raised a megaphone and bellowed, "Today's Sand Fortress champion receives one limited-edition portion of Blue-Striped Tuna!"
Snap. Flames named Appetite kindled in Pecorine's eyes. She seized Megumin's outstretched right hand, radiating pure fighting spirit. "This challenge — I accept!"
"…What?"
But I only wanted to sabotage Jhin's castle while he was building it…
Pecorine went charging into the Sand Fortress grounds, grabbed a shovel, and started heaping up sand. Megumin never even got the chance to refuse; all she could do was trudge in after her, head hanging, and join the contest.
The result surprised no one. Megumin stood zero chance against the Appetite Monster that was Pecorine, and within the time limit she managed only a triangular mound bearing a striking resemblance to a pyramid — a monument to the poverty of her imagination.
Pecorine didn't take the championship either. She'd put too much muscle into it and snapped her shovel just as she was nearing completion, leaving her nearly finished castle missing one corner. Third place was all she got.
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