by Funa
“There it iiis!”
I shouted, but I had no idea what it was.
It didn’t seem like it could be cut with a sword, and I felt like something terrible would happen if I touched it.
Yeah, we definitely shouldn’t touch that thing.
Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say.
“Kaoru, what is that warped thing...?”
Ah.
I realized what it was when Francette asked me the question.
This wasn’t a job for humans.
It wasn’t something any human could handle.
So what should I do?
That’s right, I’d just call someone who could handle it.
“Potion inside that crystal ball shaped container, come out!”
And so, a crystal ball appeared between my palms as I put them together.
“Activate, emergency calling device!”
The next moment, the crystal ball emitted a brilliant light, and a sphere of light appeared in the air immediately after.
That sphere of light began to take shape, eventually turning into the form of a beautiful girl.
Yes, the Goddess Celestine had descended.
“Where is the distortion?!”
Celes said the same exact line as she did four years ago.
“Kaoru? Oh, this isn’t about a distortion? What is it?”
“There.”
“Huh?”
Celes had a blank look on her face.
She seemed to think I had called her for some other reason using that sketchy crystal for emergency use.
But...
“There. I thought that might be the ‘distortion’ you’ve been looking for...”
“Huh? What? Whaaat?! Ah, you’re right! It’s a distortion!!!”
Celes let out a shout of surprise.
Meanwhile, everyone else stood in an even more shocked state, their mouths agape.
Even Francette and Roland, who had already seen her four years ago...
“Get back! Everyone, please stand further away!”
No one even reacted to Celes’s panicked voice.
“We need to run! Follow me if you don’t want your body to get ripped apart!”
Getting torn into pieces while getting rid of a distortion once was enough!
I ran with Layette in my arms, and everyone seemed to finally come to as they followed after me.
They must have realized how serious this was after seeing how even the Goddess and her Angel were panicking.
But Celes...
Did you really need to do this in such a hurry?
It’d been a long time since that thing was created, so couldn’t she just wait a few minutes longer? At least until we got to a safe distance?
No, there was no point in saying this.
This was Celes we’re talking about.
Yes, because it’s Celes.
Damn it!
Roland took Layette from my arms as he ran past me.
As expected of royalty, he knew what to do even when flustered. I had to give it to him.
...Though he kept running on, leaving me completely behind.
I mean, that was totally fine! I’d rather Layette be saved than all of us die together.
Emile was leading Belle by her hand... staying directly behind me.
They were probably thinking to use their own bodies as shields to protect me.
Even though they could easily outrun me...
Sheesh, those two knuckleheads...
And Francette was protecting them from behind as well.
Argh, why was everyone so dumb!
The lieutenant colonel and hunter? They’re waaay in the front! I guess they didn’t want to get involved in heavenly conflicts.
But they’re the normal ones!
This was bad, I was reaching my limit because of my lack of athleticism...
M-My leg cramped up!
Baaam! I fell flat on the ground.
And...
Oof, oof!
I felt something hit my back twice.
Belle and Emile went down with me?
No, they were using their bodies as shields to protect me! Y-You dummies!
“Here it comes!”
Urgh!
Francette called out, and I felt another impact.
Yeah, that was Francette stacking on top of us.
...I knew it.
Then a heavy impact came over us.
＊ ＊
““I thought we were done for...””
Belle and Emile said as they rose to their feet.
Uh, I thought they were going to crush me to death!
As for Francette and Celes... Oh, there they were.
“Please explain, why didn’t you wait until Kaoru got somewhere safe?!”
Gyaaa! Why was Fran scolding Celes?!
Celes may seem mild-mannered, but she’s pretty short-tempered and humans are like ants to her. It was just that sometimes she felt like helping when a lot of humans were in danger of dying at once.
So unless she has some interest in you like she does with me, she’d just squish...
“I-I’m sorry...”
...H-Huh?
“Kaoru is in a mortal’s body right now, so her body could be destroyed if you do something so reckless!”
“Y-You’re right...”
Whoa, their conversation was miraculously meshing together...
“She’s your friend, so you should be more considerate...”
“Yes...”
Huh, she must have been acting docile because it was concerning me.
“As a fellow goddess, you must learn to be more like Kaoru...”
Gyaaaaaa!
“Let’s just leave it at that, okay, Fran?!”
“Mmg...”
I swiftly ran toward Francette and covered her mouth.
We were treading on thin ice.
Celes could lose it any moment now.
“So, Celes, I wanted to ask about this distortion...”
I really did want to know more about it, of course.
But for now, my main objective was to distract Celes.
“Oh, yes! Thank you, Kaoru! You really helped me this time!”
With that, Celes explained the following to me.
The distortion starts off very small, but suddenly expands once it reaches a certain size.
I suppose it was like a small hole in a levee bored by ants.
Finding the distortion before they could rapidly expand was the key to keeping the damages to a minimum.
But apparently, it was pretty hard to find them while they were still small. Celes had divided up her discarnate entities and used them to search all over, as well as gave those crystals for reporting to her to various people.
...It may not have been much, but it was better than nothing.
Once the distortion grew bigger, it could spread from ten to several hundred kilometers at once, ripping open the walls separating our world from the adjacent dimensions, causing them to adhere to one another. If the atmospheric pressure between the two worlds was different, the atmospheric air would come rushing in as violent storms, and most of the organisms in both worlds would die from the sudden extreme changes in weather.
There was a chance the atmospheric air that was created could be toxic for creatures in the other world too.
And not only did the worlds adhere to each other, but dimensional tremors and wide-scale destruction involving other neighboring dimensions could occur as well.
It was Celes’s job to prevent such disasters. Stopping the course of destruction at one dimension would be a passing mark, while dragging the surrounding worlds into it would be a failure on her part.
She still gets a passing mark even if this world gets destroyed?!
That’s a scary friggin’ thought!
“So I’ve been trying to find them while they’re still small so I can prevent the damage from spreading. If I happen to miss one and it gets big enough t
o take out all living creatures in a several hundred kilometer radius, that’s considered a great success.”
“Huh? So even with the incident at Rueda?”
“Yes, the damages were contained to a very narrow region in that case, so I was able to thoroughly restore it afterward. Even though the distortion had grown bigger, that was one of my better handled cases if I do say so myself. Though, of course, it’s better to deal with it before it can expand, like we did this time. There weren’t any damages this time either...”
Celes seemed very happy.
Well, there weren’t any differences in atmospheric pressure, and it wasn’t like there were toxins in the air... now wait just a minute!
“Celes, there have been damages already! And there’s way more to come!”
“Whaaat!”
Yes, it was that epidemic disease.
If anyone thought that was an illness that just happened to occur here by chance instead of something from another world, I’d question their sanity.
“This is a source of the disease that’s been going around. I stopped it from spreading at the royal capital and the village near here, but I’m sure it’s going around in other places too. Since this distortion is the cause of it, this falls under your jurisdiction, right?”
“What? Um... If the disease is caused by the distortion, I suppose...”
Huh, she didn’t seem too on board with it.
“That’s right! Because of the distortion, pathogens and small animals that are infected hosts are leaking into this world. This is your responsibility to fix! There wasn’t much physical damage this time around, so you should focus on restoring things.”
“Hmm, that sounds like a lot of work...”
She left me no choice.
I was going to use the ace up my sleeve!
“I wonder what the god of Earth would have done. When I talk about what happened here, I’ll explain how you...”
“Of course I’ll protect the humans from getting harmed by the distortion! That’s my duty!”
...Too easy.
“I suppose you... can’t send the hosts of the disease back to their original world. Since you already got rid of the distortion. Then I’ll need you to completely get rid of all the pests and pathogens that came into this world. Those creatures may only be guilty of being the host of dangerous pathogens, but it’s not impossible for them to be irregular organisms that totally throw this world’s ecosystem out of whack. They could have spread out far and wide, so be sure you don’t miss any.”
“O-Okay...”
Why was she being so reluctant about this when she was capable of granting me such ridiculous powers?
It had to be a simple task for someone as powerful as Celes...
“Elaborate work like this is very troublesome! Do you realize how much effort is needed to get rid of such small animals or pathogens throughout an entire country?! It’d be so much easier to just blow this planet to smithereens instead!”
Ah, she must have figured out what I was thinking from the look on my face.
I doubted she actually read my mind or anything like that.
“Well, good luck. Besides, you just might get praised by the god of Earth if you work real hard. He might even say, ‘good work,’ and pat you on the head...”
“There’s no time to lose! Okay, I’m going to go work hard to clean this place up! See you later, Kaoru. Thank you so much for today. I’m so glad I have a great friend like you!”
With that, Celes vanished.
“...”
The lieutenant colonel stood there, dumbfounded.
It seemed he had returned some time during all of this.
The hunter who had guided us there... oh, he was cautiously watching us from a distance.
The others?
They were either present the last time Celes had appeared, or they were already used to thinking of me as a goddess, so they didn’t seem all that surprised.
...Damn.
“Th-Th-That was...”
“Yup, Celes. Oh, right, she’s known as the Goddess Celestine here.”
“...”
The lieutenant colonel seemed to be out of service...
“Well, we’ll be going now. Thank you for everything, lieutenant colonel.”
“Wait! Hold on just a minute!!!”
As I tried to leave and say goodbye, the lieutenant colonel raised his voice in a fluster.
“I need you to return to the royal capital! And what about your shop?!”
I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t want me to go, considering I was on casual speaking terms with the Goddess herself.
And I probably seemed far from just “an ordinary girl.”
But I already had an idea of what it would be like if I returned to the royal capital.
So...
“I already canceled the contract for my shop. I cleared out my wares too, so I have no reason to return to the royal capital. Though I have plenty of reasons not to go back...”
The lieutenant colonel averted his eyes.
Yeah, he already knew exactly what would happen if I went back.
First, I’d get an invitation from the royal palace, then the Temple of the Goddess, influential aristocrats, big-time merchants, and if I went, there’d probably be a bunch of handsome men of marriageable age waiting for me.
...That didn’t sound too bad!
I mean, never mind!
“No thanks to being a caged bird, swarmed by ants, or being bred by some top breeder! I mean, I do want kids, but only with someone who likes me as a normal girl, and not for my abilities!”
“...Can I ask you one thing?” The lieutenant colonel said with a serious expression.
“Where is this ‘normal girl’ you’re talking about?”
“““...”””
And why exactly were you desperately trying to hold in laughter, Fran, Roland, Emile, and Belle?!
You four...
“In any case, you have no right or authority to restrict me from doing what I like. I’m just a traveler who’s not from this country, and I’m not a criminal or some foreign spy. Besides, those two over there are nobles from another country. If you tried capturing us by force...”
“Forget nobles from another country, what kind of idiot would try something on someone who has connections with the Goddess Celestine?!”
Well, he had a point.
“But if that’s the case, what about the soldier’s disease medicine? There are those who haven’t been fully cured yet.”
“Huh? But even if they did get cured, it’d just come back again, right?”
“...”
I was sure the lieutenant colonel already knew this full well.
He was desperately trying to guilt trip me somehow so I would return to the royal capital.
Although I did feel bad about the royal sentries who seemed happy to be freed from the soldier’s disease.
A lot of their work was pretty ritualistic and they couldn’t even scratch themselves, so I would have liked to at least help them.
Like if I made sure they don’t catch it aga... Wait a minute!
“Lieutenant colonel...”
“Hm? What is it?”
“I don’t think you’ll need to worry about soldier’s disease anymore...”
“Huh?”
Yes, I just realized something.
What were my thoughts when I created those mini goddess statues?
[Potion that cures and creates antibodies for any epidemic disease going around in the royal capital right now with just a low dose and loses its effectiveness if it’s not drunk in twenty-four hours after being scooped, go inside a small container shaped like a goddess statue with an endless generation/circulation system and come out!]
“any epidemic disease going around in the royal capital right now”
“any epidemic disease going around in the royal capital right now”...
Wouldn’t soldier’s disease fulfill those condit
ions?
And wouldn’t that also mean anyone in the royal capital who drank that medicine would never be afflicted with soldier’s disease again?
I explained as such to the lieutenant colonel, and...
“What...?”
He was probably disappointed about losing his advantage over other battalions, but he had to be happy that the soldiers would never have to deal with that hated condition ever again.
His face told me he was feeling a mixture of emotions.
“Oh, it’s not for certain yet, so please confirm once you get back. And if it’s just as I suspect, you can feel free to take all the credit. Just tell them the angel told you to choose your reward, and you wished, not for yourself, but for the sake of everyone else, that the soldier’s disease would be eradicated. I’m sure that will increase your prestige among the other soldiers.”
There was a forced smile on his face.
“Well, I’ll be going now. Oh, and it’ll be no use sending anyone after me. No one could catch up to my horses when they’ve taken my healing potion, and even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to keep me from leaving. If anyone tried to use force, Celes would just give ‘em a little so-called divine punishment...”
“Don’t worry, I’ll personally report to His Majesty to make sure that wouldn’t happen. Our people are well aware of the story of the Goddess Celestine destroying an entire country.”
All right, it seemed like I could depart peacefully this time.
“Well then, farewell!”
“...”
Huh? Why was the lieutenant colonel looking at me quizzically?
“What is it?”
“Where do you plan on going now? There’s only one guide, and I need him to take me back to the village. Besides, your horses are back at the village. Do you plan on leaving them here and going through the mountains and out onto the road without a guide?”
“Ah...”
The lieutenant colonel looked at me with exasperation.
Roland and the others too...
Come on, everyone makes mistakes once in a while!
＊ ＊
After we retrieved Ed at the village, we started heading east in the opposite direction of the royal capital just as the sun was going down.
The plan was to change course to the northeast after moving forward for some time, then heading inland.