Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem

Although not every day was the same, the Underworld Research and Extermination Club and the rest of the second-year students of the Academy had settled into a flexible routine of studying during the day and killing every monster affected by underworld energy during the afternoons and evenings.

Some of the club members occasionally visited the city and checked for missing people or traces of underworlders. But it was still silent as the grave, even after several weeks. There were no traces, and it seemed like people had stopped disappearing.

It was almost even more ominous than when people disappeared multiple times every day. But there was nothing they could do about it other than keep their eyes open and ears tuned.

That was why they focused more and more on the forest. Overall, they weren't making much more progress there, either. They killed monsters and cut down sprouting trees and plants that carried underworld energy from birth.

But they couldn't even tell if they were affecting the spread of underworld energy. The contamination was still slowly but steadily spreading and darkening the unaffected parts of the forest.

It had reached the point where residents of Basilia regularly came to the Academy to make requests of the students to do something about it. The Academy directed all those requests at the second-year students. Any requests with missing pets, children, or threatening monsters too close to the roads also got sent straight to the second-years under the assumption that it was related to the Underworld.

Smaller requests gave the students who completed them extra credits. And bigger, repeated ones about the forest in its entirety were already the class' final exam, so they were just accepted by the Academy but nothing much happened with them after that.

The students who were already busy enough as it was with studying general knowledge and theoretical subjects started feeling a little overwhelmed. Fortunately, they had the experience from the first year at the Academy. 'A little overwhelming' meant they could handle it as long as they remembered to breathe.

However, there were a few students who ignored the requests entirely. The few extra credits they gave weren't worth the trouble, especially when they would get more than enough to reach the top of the grade by clearing the final exam with the most contribution.

Those students were naturally the second-year members of the Underworld Research and Extermination Club. Of them, Zach, Dukiel, and Nessa were in the middle of the forest, hunting monsters and watching Nessa's Millipede eat what they killed.

Nessa stood with her arms crossed and leaning on one leg.

"Are you sure about this?" Nessa didn't turn her head, but Zach could tell she was talking to him.

"You mean about your familiar evolving by eating a lot?" Zach also stood with his arms crossed as he looked at the fat Millipede. He didn't even know millipedes or familiars could get fat like this.

"Yeah."

"Nope."

"If you fattened my familiar—"

"No take-backs. You owe me that Labyrinth Ticket."

"That's not what I was talking about. Don't worry. You'll get your ticket."

"Good. So, what were you about to say?"

"...Do I need to worry about her eating so much food with underworld energy?"

"...No."

"You sound unsure."

"Well, the underworld energy starts slipping out of the monsters as soon as they die. She shouldn't be getting that much, right?"

"What if it's affecting the evolution process, and that's why she's getting fatter and fatter instead of evolving?"

"It's possible." Zach shrugged. "But there could be something else. I…" Zach trailed off.

Nessa slowly turned to look at him.

"'You'…What?"

Zach hesitated. He looked at the fat millipede, the contaminated corpses it was shuffling in its mouth, and he then turned to the sky, which looked slightly grey from within the forest due to the underworld energy in the air. He already regretted saying something, even if it was only a syllable.

But at this point, he might as well spill some of the beans. If he couldn't trust Nessa, he couldn't trust many people. She might still be the spy. He had to keep the possibility open, given they didn't have a single clue, after all.

But there was no way Nessa was the spy.

"I had some kind of a breakthrough with the materials we gathered."

Nessa raised an eyebrow at that. Was he not sleeping again? What was he up to this time?

"To cut a long story short, I made a little something that should be effective against underworld energy."

"...?!" Nessa turned her entire body and looked at Zach, flabbergasted.

"Wha—?!" She didn't even know what to ask first. What had he been doing? Why? When? What? How?

Why hadn't he said anything?

"Zach?" Dukiel also joined the conversation, his face a pile of question marks.
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Zach held up a hand to ask them to wait a minute.

"I don't know how effective it might be or if it will work at all. If anything, I got a little ahead of myself with this. I shouldn't have said anything." Zach shook his head like he rejected any further questions or urgings from the other two.

"What the fuck, Zach?" Nessa asked.

"Are you serious?" Although his tone was gentler, Dukiel also very much wanted to know what the fuck, Zach.

"Of course, I'm serious. Would I lie about something like this?"

"..."

"..."

"I wouldn't!" Zach claimed.

"Then why bring it up like this? And in this context." Nessa wanted clarification.

"...I thought maybe we could try put your theory to the test by cleansing your Millipede of underworld energy."

"Let's do it!" Any questions Nessa had flew out the window. She wanted to see her Millipede evolve.

"...No." At Zach's rejection, the questions came flying back inside.

"Why not?" Nessa asked with a chilly voice. Why was he teasing them so much?

"This thing isn't even out of the first trial stage. It's like throwing a pile of words onto a piece of paper and submitting it as your final answer during a test."

"Ah…"

"Let's test it, then?" Dukiel gently suggested.