"No, I can't make your boobs bigger." Alex responded in annoyance, looking at the menu in front of her eyes, the parchment felt rough under her fingers. This was the third time in five minutes that either Chris or Megumin had asked her that question.

"But why?" Chris was whining as she lay on the table, tears in the corners of her eyes. Megumin was next to her new friend and was on the verge of tears herself. "Is that how you treat your friends? How can you live with yourself, knowing that you left two young women as flat as planks?! Tha-that's just cruel!" Chris sobbed.

Slowly lowering the menu onto the table, Alex looked closely at her friends. She had no idea how they could be so emotional just because of the size of their breasts – of course, she knew perfectly well that the reasons could be very important, but just couldn't feel the same for one reason. Boobs were just mostly useless fat lumps after all.

And no, her opinion was not based on the fact that she herself was flat and decided to stay that way. Shut up.

"I'm not saying I don't want to, I'm saying I can't–" 

"Have you ever tried?" Chris cut off her explanation. 

Alex stopped, seeing that Megumin and Chris were suddenly exited and thought about exactly how she could answer. In fact, she didn't know if she could change other people's bodies without infecting them with the virus, especially considering that she had never seen other people forcibly change someone's else appearance before, only the main character and other Infected could. 

"... Well, no." She confessed.

"Then what are we waiting for?!" Megumin slammed her palms on the table and tried to get to her feet, but fell back onto the bench. "Curses… My power is still locked behind the seal until tomorrow."

Alex frowned. The amount of mana Megumin spent almost every day was a huge problem, especially if in the future they would have to complete more than one quest per day. Although it would be more accurate to say that her problem was a combination of knowledge of just one spell and not enough mana. 

Chris looked at Megumin with interest and decided something for herself. "Great! So now we'll have a feast, and tomorrow we will test your ability to change the bodies of living beings! Elise, bring me and my new friends ale and food!" Elize was startled by the sudden request, but complied. Chris stopped abruptly, suddenly thinking very hard about something. "Are you even old enough to drink?"

"Yes!" Megumin replied sharply, excited about the opportunity to try alcohol for the first time in her life.

Alex, on the other hand, just shrugged, she couldn't get drunk anyway, so drinking alcohol was pointless. 

Chris just shrugged. "Meh, what's the worst that could happen?" 

---

"Chris, where did you get this money?" Alex asked apprehensively, looking at the weighty bag of gold coins. She didn't even notice when her new friend managed to put this bag on the table, not that she noticed the moment when she stole it. 

"Wha? Oh! I took it from... That guy," she waved her hand towards the wall, where there was definitely no guy. "And if he doesn't keep track of his money, then he doesn't really need it."

Megumin nodded and sipped her drink, wiping the foam from her mouth afterwards. "I don't like irresponsible people. Don't they know how difficult it is to make money?"

Alex just sighed heavily, nodding in silent agreement. Food still hadn't been brought to their table, even when they had finished their third mugs of ale. 

"Speaking of making money, do you know what annoys me the most?" Chris asked sharply, almost throwing her mug on the table. "Paperwork that everyone constantly throws off to the lower workers. I mean, come on! If you're such a big shot, then why can't you figure out this super important document yourself, which no one but you should even see?!"

"Hear, hear!" someone at the next table responded by raising their drink in agreement. Wait, wasn't it one of the guild workers–

"And after that, they still demand high results! How can I work on my own thing if I am being pelted with paper from all sides?! That's why people need secretaries!"

Chris has been vividly expressing her point of view for a long time about "purely evil bosses who just want her to be demoted," and "ungrateful bastards who take everything for granted," for a long time, and Alex wasn't sure what Chris's problem was. Because judging by her sober intreduction, she was born in this world and had been Rogue all her life. What could she know about the pain of paperwork? Not that Alex had any experience with bureaucratic hell, her parents usually did it on their own.

After a while – and a couple more glasses of ale later – Chris finally calmed down. But that ment that Megumin started talking.

She enthusiastically told everyone around something about her clan and how she would take the place of the Demon King after "blowing up his face" and becoming the most famous Arch Wizard on the planet. How all men will prostrate before her feet, and women will envy her incredible figure. How she will bathe in money and wealth.

And then, after taking the last sip of ale, she sat back down at the table and burst into tears on Alex's shoulder. The girl, feeling uncomfortable, also shared something personal – because they all did. She spoke about her parents and brother who remained, about her poor health until recently, and about a mad Priestess with long hair who teleported her to unknown lands – to here, baisicly.

It was a heavily censored version of her life story, but it was all true. So by the middle of her story, Chris was also crying into her shoulder. Even Eliza came to their table and expressed her condolences.

In the end, Eliza, Luna, and the rest of the Guild's staff watched this whole performance with interest. It was rare to see a female-only group of Adventurers getting drunk. They were especially interested in how exactly they would pay for all the alcohol.

Kris lost her freshly stolen money, Alex lost her rewards from past quests, and Megumin simply had no money to begin with – except that measly number of coins that she got for the quest she done with Alex. That's why now the three girls were lying together on a bed in Chris's rented house right now.

Renting a house was much cheaper than renting a room in a hotel or in a Guild, at least for a long time. Chris, according to her, has been living in the city for quite a long time, so she rented a house from some priest from the Eris Church and made it her permanent residence.

Alex made a mental note to read more about the religions of this world. Surely all gods can't be as terrible as Aqua, right? 

... Right? 

Sighing heavily, Alex patted the sleeping Megumin on the head, thinking that it was useless to hope for a miracle. Most likely, the gods who set Aqua to send reincarnators to the new world were even worse than the blue-haired goddess herself. That was just Mercer's luck, so to speak.

She was lying between the two girls and was not going to move until they wake up. Megumin snored on her chest – which she enlarged by one size after being annoyed enough – and Chris held on to her right leg like a lifeline, grumbling something under her breath.

"Squishy…" Megumin muttered as she buried her face deeper into Alex's cleavage.

Right now, Megumin looked more like a cat who had found a comfortable place to sleep, especially when you looked at the pair of tufts of hair that had become tangled on the top of her head and now looked like cat ears. Alex wasn't sure how it happened; she only knew that Megumin came back with that hairstyle from the toilet.

"Mmm… Is that the firmness of a new pillow?" Megumin muttered. "When I become the next Demon King, I will have this placed in my chambers."

"That could be a problem." Alex said, making Megumin stop trying to bury her face in her breasts. "I refuse to serve as the Demon King's personal pillow without proper payment." 

The tips of Megumin's ears turned red, but she refused to lift her face from Alex's breasts.

"Just being in my mere presence should be enough. And you'll be rewarded handsomly!" 

Her cry woke Chris, who muttered some curse and got up on the bed. She blinked, looking at Megumin and Alex in confusion. "... I have a guest room, why are we all in the same bed?" The thief wheezed, coughing as soon as she finished speaking.

Alex gently pushed Megumin off her chest and stood up from the bed. "I'll get you something to drink. Do you have running water in your house?" She thought it was a good question. Looking at the world around her, Alex doubted that every house had an easily accessible source of water.

Chris nodded and mimiked with her hands where to go – Alex didn't understand anything, but she did not think that the house was so huge that she could get lost in it. When everyone was rehydrated, the girls started a brainstorm on a very important topic: which monster should they take for experiments?

"Beast-like monsters are an immediate no, too much difference from humans." Kris said while receiving a wise nod in response from Megumin.

"Elemental monsters that take the form of humans are also unsuitable, the ritual requires a creature of blood and flesh," the petite Arch Wizard tapped her chin with her pale fingers. "Maybe we should catch a couple of goblins?"

"Goblins are a bad option, their race doesn't have any women, so Alex can't give them breasts." Chris argued. "Yes, there are many of them and no one will miss them, but they are still lacking. We need a race with a minimum of differences from the basic human biology!"

"And what do you suggest?" Megumin asked back. "Find some bandits and experiment on them?"

Both girls stopped abruptly and looked at each other with shining eyes. "This is genius!" They screamed together and grabbed each other's arms like best friends on the battlefield.

But Alex was quick to try to kill their enthusiasm. "This is a war crime."

Megumin and Chris looked at her in confusion. "Umu... What's a war crime?"

"... Never mind." Alex sighed.

After an hour of getting ready and checking everything twise, all three went outside and confidently walked to the guild to ask for an elimination quest. Oddly enough, none of the three were against the idea of killing a person. Oh, Alex didn't want to kill people and especially consume them, but under these circumstances? And when these people are confirmed kidnappers, murderers and/or rapists? Well, Alex didn't mind taking out the trash once in a while. 

Unfortunately, their enthusiasm was stopped by the metaphorical wall that their dear Eliza provided – from the Guild with love.

"There have been no bandits in the around the city for several months, the "city of newcomers" is usually left alone. After all, even some bandits started from here." She said, somewhat sadly. 

And they went back to where they started: to the table in the corner of the Guild hall. The three girls sat tensely, storming the wood of the table with their eyes. Megumin and Chris were upset for obvious reasons, but Alex was thinking about something completely different. She was so eager to find out the limits of her power that she was ready to torture people! Damn, even now, after thinking about it, she still wanted to do it! For scientific purposes, of course, but that doesn't change the fact! 

How much she can break a person's body so that she can still get their memories? Death shouldn't stop Blacklight's ability to absorb the victim's mind, especially when Mercer casually used the knowledge of zombies and other infected people in the game. But could Alex get the memories of a person who doesn't have a brain? What about half of the brain? Was it enough to absorb the part of the brain responsible for memory, or could the virus get everything it needed with enough DNA?

Granted, she would've made sure they were pieces of shit to begin with, but they were still people... Bad people. Evil, even. 

And there was still the question of animal memory. The brains of the beast work on a different level than the brains of humans, after all. Whether the virus will be able to adapt and understand memories– 'That's a silly question, of course it will. Blacklight was created for adaptation.'

"Well, that was dissapointing." Chris told me. "So... Goblins? Or we find some poor sap to be our test subject?" 

Megumin was suspiciously quiet for a couple of seconds, but suddenly she began to laugh softly and ominously. Many turned to look at the reason for the laughter, but Megumin didn't care, she absorbed the attention of the crowd like a sponge. 

"Ha-ha-ha! Ladies, I believe your future Demon King has a plan!" Her one open red eye shone with anticipation. 

Chris leaned forward. "We're listening."

For some reason, Alex felt that Megumin's plan would be shit.