ROYAL REWARD: Megumin’s Massacre (Giantess, Omnipotence, Destruction) (Patreon)

“Ex-puh-lo-shun!” 

With an earth-shattering kaboom, the hill exploded, shaking the ground and throwing clods of burning dirt everywhere. Her mana exhausted, Megumin collapsed with a grin. “Ahhhhh…” 

It took almost half-an-hour for her to regain the strength to stand. When she finally managed to climb back to her feet using her staff as a makeshift walking stick, she caught something glinting in the corner of her eye. 

She turned back to the hill and cocked her head. Was that a cave? 

Closer inspection revealed she was right: her explosion magic had unearthed the mouth of a cave with two big rows of glinting crystal for teeth. Creeping past them, she found herself descending. Is this a dungeon? Perhaps she should go back and fetch the others.

On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be any monsters. And this way, all the treasure she found would be hers. Rubbing her hands and grinning at the thought, she headed deeper.

The lower she went, the larger the cave became, the larger and the darker. Soon, she had to rummage in her pockets for a match to see anything. As she struggled to light it, however, another light appeared in the darkness ahead. And then a second. And a third. And– Soon, a whole starscape of little lights shone before her.

Frowning, Megumin hurried ahead, squinting in suspicion, and gasped as the cave expanded into a gigantic, starlit cavern. 

And ‘starlit’ wasn’t an exaggeration – it was the literal truth: hundreds of tiny stars, none bigger than the orb in her staff, floated between the stalactites and stalagmites. 

Her eyes wide and bright with reflected light, Megumin took a few uneasy steps forward. What kind of magic was this? Were they just magical lights, or…? 

She marched as close to the nearest star as she could get without impaling herself on a stalagmite. Something was flying about the little ball of light – at first, she just thought it was a fly, but on closer inspection it became clear it was something far more unusual: a planet, a miniature planet. 

And it wasn’t alone. Even as Megumin’s eyes widened in surprise, another of the things came swirling around the star. Soon she saw a third, and a fourth, and– 

Now that she knew to look there were hundreds of the things floating around. Every star in the cave must have ten or more of them. But what were they, exactly? Were they some kind of decoration? An astrological tool, like an astrolabe? Or…
 

Curious, she snatched at them. It took her several tries, but with much effort she managed to grab one. It felt soft in her hands, not like the smooth ball of glass she’d expected. When she touched it over, she saw fingerprints in its coarse brown surface. 

With a frown, she tightened her grip, and without fanfare the little planet burst into a shower of dirt, which rained all over her boots. She shook it away with a frown. 

What exactly was this place?

She grabbed another one of the little planets and squeezed it, but it shattered just like the first one, showering her in dirt. Interestingly, this one was a little hot under the surface, and at the very center was a tiny ball of metal, like a ball-bearing. She turned it around and around and discarded it with a frown. 

That little metal core had piqued her curiosity though. Were all of the little planets different? Eyebrow raised, she grabbed another and squished it, but it was as inert as the first. Another had water under the surface, and a third burst into a cloud of gas the instant she touched it. The fourth, however, had a hard iron core, and as she squeezed it, working the dirt of it, an idea occurred to her.

These weren’t just models of planets, they were real planets. Miniature planets, but real planets all the same. What if this wasn’t just a big fancy display, but a kind of elaborate portal, through which you could grab other worlds like they were candies in a store? 

It was a funny hypothesis, but how could she actually prove it? Seizing another little world, she pinched it as carefully as she could and squinted at its surface. If she looked closely enough, would she be able to see some sign they were real?

Another thought occurred to her: the planet she’d picked was blue and green, just like the one she happened to live on. She could even feel the oceans, wet against her fingers. 

…What if some of these worlds had life on them? What if, by destroying them, she was actually killing millions of people? 

She blushed, her chest rising and falling with sudden exertion. Her heart hammered in her chest; she felt a strange heat between her legs. Biting her lip, she squinted at the world in her hands closer than ever, but if there were any life on its surface, it was simply too small to see. Finally, with a scowl, she pinched it till it burst and tossed its tiny metal core away. There. If there had been life on its surface, there certainly wasn’t any there now. 

With a smug chuckle, she turned, still red-faced, back to the starscape, looking for another little planet that seemed likely to hold some life. She almost wished she had some mana left – another explosion would reduce almost all of these worlds to dust in a single blow. 

Well, nevermind. She had other ways of destroying stuff…

With a grin, she produced her unlit match. Striking it with a bout of evil laughter, she snatched another green-blue world from the orbit of a passing star, and with a malicious smile, raised the match to it. 

It went out the instant it struck the oceans. 

With a snarl, Megumin hurled the tiny planet at the floor, where it exploded with a satisfying crack. That would teach them to resist her attempts at immolation. Grabbing another world from the endless, floating supply, she lit a second match. This time, she was careful to aim for the dry part…

**

Carmichelle screamed as the object dropped, burning, through their atmosphere. 

One moment she’d been out on a normal walk, the next the sky was alight and everyone around her was screaming. Looking up, she squealed to see a second sun burning in their sky. As she stood there, frozen and shaking, it grew larger and larger with no sign of slowing. What is it?! Is it some kind of meteor?! It had a tail, but it looked like no depiction of a meteor she’d ever seen. If anything, it looked more like the handle of a–

The object struck the forest on the other side of the street, and with a great whoosh, it went up like a pile of tinder. A wave of fire, higher even than the skyscrapers behind her, swept towards her.

She had just enough time for one final scream before the flames reached her. 

**

Megumin fell back laughing as the little planet burned. It didn’t take long, not even a minute: first one of the continents again, then the nearest oceans boiled into steam, allowing the flames to spread to the next nearest landmass and start the whole process all over again. Soon enough, it was little more than a blackened ball of charcoal. She gave it a poke, and it crumbled into dust. 

Snickering, she grabbed another Earth-like world from the air and, placing it delicately on a knee-high rock, rummaged in her pocket for something else fun to do with it. 

She ended up holding a little string of firecrackers. Examining them, she chuckled. She wondered what it would do if one of these went off next to one of the little worlds. Giggling at the thought of it. She tore one of the firecrackers off the string and placed it next to the little planet.

The match made a satisfying snap as it lit.

**

Diglous and the rest of the news crew raised their cameras to the sky, trying to get a good shot of the strange object that had come to occupy their heavens. It had appeared out of nowhere, simply dropping into existence as if it had fallen out of a god’s pocket, and now it simply sat there, strange, gigantic, mysterious. 

The speculations regarding its true nature ran from the reason to the absurd. Some people thought it was a natural object, a stray celestial body that had wandered into their neighborhood by happenstance. Other people thought it was a spaceship, that any day now, little green men would descend to either conquer their whole world or invite them to join the Galactic Federation. One old coot even thought it was a big bomb, but that was just ridiculous.

As the present took the place in the center of the shot, Diglous twisted the lens dial to refocus it on her. He soon had to snap it back, however: around him, people were screaming, screaming and pointing at the sky. He almost dropped his camera in shock.

The object… Was it sparking?

As he and the rest of those gathered watched, the sparks crept steadily towards the strange object’s end.

“What does it mean?” said someone.

A bead of sweat dripped from Diglous’s head. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out. Actually, he wanted out of here. He wanted out fast.

He took one step back. Two–

That was as far as he got. A second later, the sparks reached the object, and it turned into a second sun in the sky.

He had just enough time to squeak before the shockwave tore his body into scraps and the fireball that followed reduced everything to ash.

*

With a pop, the firecracker exploded, leaving half of the tiny planet a fire-blackened crater. Megumin fell back, laughing wildly. It shouldn’t amuse her so much, but there was just something so funny about reducing these stupid little fake worlds to dust.

The only question now was how she could one-up herself. The matches had been fun, and the firecrackers had been amazing, but it was pretty hard to beat that, unless–

Her eyes lit up. She slammed her fist into her palm. “The Wand of Fireballs!” 

She rummaged in her pockets, pulled it out, and twirled it around her finger. The red gem at the end of the thing glinted.

Licking her lips, Megumin scanned the wave and picked out another Earth-like world floating nearby at eye-level. With a smug grin, she twisted the wand. “Fiyah-ball!” 

The recoil threw her back into the wall.

*

Labrielle swung her hips as she marched across the beach, peeking over her sunglasses at the cute boys lying nearby. 

Finding a spot between two particular hot stacks of manmeat, she unrolled her blanket and, wincing, set up her parasol to shield from the sun. God, it was hot today. She hoped she’d brought enough sunscreen. 

As she lay down, the sun glared at her, burning straight through the dark lenses of her glasses. Hissing, she adjusted her parasol, which solved the light problem but not the heat. She grabbed a drink, but that didn’t help much either.

Other people were reacting to it now, running for shade or pointing at the sun and shouting. Labrielle fanned herself, wanting to be somewhere else all of a sudden. 

She really didn’t like the way the sun looked anymore. It was almost like it was getting big–

With a roar like a thousand open furnaces, the sun washed over Labrielle and her world, instantly turning her and everyone else on the beach into a rising cloud of vapor. 

**

Megumin lay there and stared, her eyes wide, as the fireball crashed into the world she’d picked and exploded, instantly obliterating it, and a hundred more of the tiny worlds surrounding it. “Oops.”

As their shards tinkled to the cave floor all around her, however, she found herself chewing her lip and rubbing her thighs together, red-faced and sweating. Blowing up these little mini-worlds was fun, but blowing up lots of them once was even more fun. She wanted to destroy as many of them in one go as she could, only, how…?

Her eyes drifted to her staff. 

“Dammit, I’m gonna have to come all the way back here tomorrow…” 

***

Megumin practically skipped down the steps to the cave, holding her hat to her head and keeping a tight grip on her staff – the last thing she wanted was to lose it at this stage.

As the starscape of little worlds filled her sight, she froze, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. They were just so many of them. And she was going to get to destroy all of them at once. Just the thought of it made her giddy. 

Chewing her lip, she spun left and right, wondering which spot would be the best place to cast from. At last, she settled on a little outcrop overhead and, clambering up to it, stood there with her staff raised, sweating and giggling. “Here I go…” 

As she chanted, magical energy coursed out of the air and into her staff’s orb, making it sparkle with a thousand tiny stars itself. On cue, a magical circle appeared under the center of the starscape – right where the largest number of the little worlds was condensed. A pillar of flickering sparks danced between it and the ceiling as the mana of the spell grew stronger and stronger, a little closer to meltdown with every word out of her lips, until at last…

“Ex-puh-looooooooooosion!” 

A bang like a battery of cannon. Fire filled the cave; a shockwave sent her flying backward. “Aiiii…” 

Flipped head over heels, she landed on her front and lay there exhausted, watching as the cloud of her spell’s smoke filled the cavern. “Ooooo…” 

*

Qary, an amateur realtor from the planet Unipier, was watering the plants on his apartment’s balcony when the world ended. One second, he was admiring his petunias, the next there was a second sun in the sky, and the next he was dead, reduced to a fine cloud of vapor, just like the rest of his planet and everyone on it. 

On neighboring Glambor, the president of the prestigious Opraphor Company had just announced a toast to a record year of profits when a shockwave shredded him and his fellow board members into a cloud of expanding meat, which was promptly cooked by the following fireball. 

Hyuit, one of the worlds closest to the epicenter of the blast, barely even lasted for a moment. Its populace died without warning, reduced instantly to atoms during the first milliseconds of the blast.

Other worlds, like Winda, on the far edge of the explosion, lasted longer. Their citizens got to watch as the skies turned orange and wild winds whipped their cities, demolishing buildings. As the heat grew hotter and hotter and hotter, till at last wood and plants and people alike ignited, to burn screaming for those handful of painful seconds left before the blast proper struck and put them all out of their misery. 

On Eripo, Harl had just finished delivering a pizza when the end came. Throwing himself back onto his bike, he grabbed the handles, kicked the kickstand, and was just about to race off when a distant crack of thunder snatched his eyes to the sky, where a bright star had appeared in the dark. He squinted, pursing his lips in confusion. The new star grew taller, taller, more a column than a dot now, and as it filled the heavens there came a terrible, terrible heat. 

Harl fanned himself with his cap, wondering if he should take shelter, but even as he dismounted his bike again, an awful wind screamed up the street and threw him from his feet. Rolling across the sidewalk, he came to a stop looking up at the sky, where the new star had been a blinding line of light, like the jet of a plasma torch. 

His eyes sizzled like eggs in the pan and popped. A second later, the rest of his body ignited. He lay screaming for almost twenty seconds before the shockwave arrived to finish him.

And so on and so on and so on, on a thousand different worlds. With each passing nanosecond, the blastwave spread a little farther, more planets died – burned, smashed, obliterated – and the death toll raced with exponential speed into the high trillions and higher, counting every upward towards massacre:

43,852,345,453,345…

87,873,343,875,234…

104,175,432,736,373…

198,852,232,285,278…

350,776,223,962,298…

630,217,289,091,105…

911,235,673,219,200…

1,353,345,100,118,232…

***

At last, the dust settled, a few final shards of former planet clink’d to the ground, and with that, the spell came to an end. 

Megumin, lying there on the outcrop, could only look down on the massacre and grin. There wasn’t a single planet left! She’d destroyed all of them! She would have stood up and clapped if she’d had control of her arms and legs. 

As it was, she rested her head on the cave floor, closed her eyes, and lay there giggling. Ah, what a wonderful way to spend her magical energy. She almost wished she’d saved some of the little worlds so she could do it all over again tomorrow. 

A rumbling from above. Megumin opened her eyes to see the ceiling spilling dust. As she watched, a stalactite fell and struck the ground with a great crash, followed by a second, and then a third and–

Thinking about it, wasn’t there a reason she didn’t normally cast Explosion underground? 

“Uh oh,” said Megumin, as the cave collapsed around her.

***

“Meeeeeegumin! Meeeeeeeeeeegumin!”

She woke to the sound of a familiar, and very irritating voice, though in these circumstances it was practically divine. 

Opening her eyes, she looked around. To her relief, she’d survived the collapse unscathed – closer inspection revealed she hadn’t been in danger at all: the falling rocks hadn’t come anywhere near her. 

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and sighed in relief. For a moment, she’d really thought she was in trouble there. 

“Meeeeeeegumin!” That familiar voice came again and with another one accompanying it now: this one was a little deeper and a little bit less concerned, though for some reason Megumin felt a lot more confident in their competence. 

She tried to move, but her body was still as exhausted as ever. With a sigh, she rested her chin on the ground and waited for her teammates to find her. 

In the end, it wasn’t long before Kazuma and Aqua appeared in the entrance. “Megumin! Megumin!” cried the latter. “You’re okay!” 

“Of course she is,” said the former, clucking his tongue. “What are you doing on the floor though? …Don’t tell me you cast Explosion underground? Are you stupid?” 

“Thank you for your concern, Kazuma.” 

He mumbled something under his breath and slid down the rocky slope of the entrance to reach her. Soon enough, he had her on his back, about as comfortable as anyone could possibly be while being hauled about like a sack. 

“Wait!” she said, as Kazuma carried her back to the entrance. “I almost forgot!” 

“Almost forgot what?” 

“I wanted to take some of the, um…” It would be hard to explain the miniature worlds she’d found, so she decided not to. “...the special crystals I found down here.” 

“These?” said Aqua, picking up a shard – it glinted between her thumb and forefinger. 

“Yes!” Megumin’s eyes sparkled. If she could just salvage a few of the surviving planets or their fragments, she could have fun experimenting with and/or destroying them for hours! 

Kazuma shrugged. “We’ll grab as many as we can. But then we’re leaving! The sun’s already setting, and I’ve got things I’m planning to do tonight!”  

“More succubus dreams?” said Megumin, drolly. 

“N-no!” 

**

The inhabitants of Grifania watched on the screens of their bunkers as the Second Goddess approached what remained of their world. 

Among the victims of the calamity that had devastated their universe, the Grifianians had been fortunate: with their advanced science it had been possible for them to detect the threat and devise countermeasures. A hundred city-spanning forcefields had been deployed, and just in time: not a second after the last one had been raised, the fires of heaven had struck, obliterating every inch of their world left unprotected. Even the planet itself hadn’t survived, reduced to a hundred tiny shards of mantle, each bearing a single shielded city. 

Now, however, things were becoming desperate. While their shields had withstood the initial blast, it had stressed their generators to breaking point. Now, the fields could fall at any second – all it would take was a single hit for one to collapse and for the city it was protecting to be destroyed as well.

In the bunkers at the hearts of their settlements, the Grifanians huddled close and watched their screens and waited, expecting death at any second, as the Second Goddess stooped and picked them up. 

For a divine being, she was incredibly clumsy: as they watched in horror, she pinched the city of Irblung a little too hard, instantly popping its protective field and crushing the settlement inside and its million occupants to dust. 

Next, she picked up the city of Prewhart. This she managed with some dexterity, though as she raised it to her eyes, squinting at the shard of earth and its bubbled city suspiciously, she took an absent step back, instantly crushing the metropolis of Yughillro beneath her heel. 

The crunch of earth seemed to startle her. She lurched, and the city of Prewhart flew from her fingers. Six million inhabitants cried out in terror… and were silenced as their city was dashed against the floor. 

“Dammit,” boomed the Goddess, her deafening voice pushing their surviving fields to their limits. “I really liked that one…” 

With a sigh, she dropped to her divine knees and began to rummage around in the floor of the universe for them. 

The inhabitants of the Gashla and Nifhilt and Druglug and tens of other surviving settlements had an excellent view of the holy derriere as she searched. It filled their sky like a second moon, large and pale and entirely unconcealed by underwear. For the survivors of Grifania, it was perhaps the strangest sight any of them had seen in their lives, and a hundred embryonic religions instantly flourished in worship of its obvious fertility. After all, what else could a rear end of such size possibly symbolize?

Especially when it appeared to be growing larger with the second.

**

Crunch! “Ow!” 

Megumin turned to see Aqua leap to her feet, rubbing her butt like she’d sat on a pin.

“What’s the matter?” said Kazuma, with obvious apathy.

“Ugh, I sat on some of those stupid shards!” said Aqua, already tearing up. “And it hurt!” She raised her boot and stomped what remained of the shards in question to dust, not that her big butt had left much of them in the first place.

Megumin sighed wistfully. Oh, to be able to crush them herself again. 

“Whatever,” said Kazuma. “Look, have you got enough of them yet?” 

Aqua raised her hands, revealing two palmfuls of tiny, glittering jewels. “I think!” 

“Great, then let’s get out of here already!” 

They returned to the exit. As they neared it, however, Aqua squealed. “Ugh, I just dropped a bunch!”