by CHIROLU
When she first came to the shop, Latina at least knew how to take care of herself. But even so, there were a great number of things that she couldn’t do. Kenneth had to carefully teach her how to do things like hold a knife and wring out a washcloth from scratch. He couldn’t imagine that the devils’ lifestyle was that different.
“Right...” was all Dale was able to say in response, realizing how true those words were.
Seeing the adults staring at her, Latina tilted her head, just as she always did.
“What is it?”
“So it was an environment where you weren’t taught anything, or one where you didn’t need to do anything, huh...?”
“Hmm? You mean Latina?”
“Yeah. Did anyone teach you anything like we’ve done back where you were born?”
“Hmm... Latina still wasn’t decided.”
At this somewhat indecipherable response from Latina, this time the adults tilted their heads.
“What ‘wasn’t decided’?”
“Latina doesn’t really know either, but Li... No, Latina doesn’t know anything.”
She almost said something, but covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head.
Both Kenneth and Dale realized at this point that Latina wouldn’t disclose anything else. Despite appearances, she was quite stubborn, after all.
6: The Little Girl and the “Incident”
If you asked him why he’d gone to check on her, Kenneth would find it hard to come up with an answer. Primarily, he’d become concerned when he saw how horribly pale she looked. That’s why he caught the small, strange noise, though he normally would’ve missed it.
Back then, Dale hadn’t brought up a certain fact that he’d realized. This was because he didn’t want to hurt Latina. But put another way, that meant that he realized full well that this knowledge would hurt her. As her guardian... as her parent, he shouldn’t have turned a blind eye.
Latina was an incredibly clever girl. However, she was also still very young. Her way of thinking and emotions still hadn’t grown enough to match that cleverness.
There was a sign.
The best thing would’ve been if he could’ve stopped this ahead of time.
It was just a little, but things were definitely starting to move... And even though it was only a tiny bit, this incident would definitely help shape her fate.
†
Autumn was fast approaching in Kreuz.
Latina and her friends had started attending school at the temple of Asfar in the center of town. Asfar was the god that presided over education; in a town of Kreuz’s size, there were temples all over, and they shouldered the task of providing children with the necessary amount of teaching.
In the case of Kreuz, children received two years of education, starting in the fall of the year that they turned eight. When the statistics only covered those who lived in towns, the literacy rate in Laband wasn’t half bad.
In towns, information flowed in the form of writing for not just merchants, but everyone. And so, reading was an important skill for blue-collar workers and adventurers as well.
“Does something have you feeling down, Latina?”
“No, Latina is fine. She’s alright.”
Seeing Latina look somehow depressed as she prepared to go to school, Dale grew concerned. However, Latina’s expression suddenly shifted, and she forced a smile.
When she first started going to school, she seemed like she was truly having fun each and every day. She appeared to enjoy learning new things, and she’d excitedly report those things back to Dale. But for the last few days, there had been a strange change.
As Dale hugged Latina tight, there was a mystified expression on her face.
“Did something change at school lately?”
Latina’s small body suddenly twitched a little in surprise.
“...We got a new lady teacher,” replied Latina in a quiet voice, with her face towards the ground.
“Did something happen with her?”
“No. Everyone says the old teacher made learning more fun, that’s all.”
Dale knitted his brows. Considering how Latina was acting, he didn’t believe that that was the extent of the situation at all. But with how stubborn she was, it wouldn’t be easy to get her to speak up.
“Latina, it’s not a bad thing to let someone help you out. You really are important to me, so how about relying on me a bit?”
“Dale... Latina is fine. She’s just... a little scared of the teacher.”
Dale would later come to regret that he hadn’t taken greater heed at the time. He should’ve thought more on what “scary” was to Latina, who didn’t stop smiling or even feel timid when she interacted with the ruffians known as adventurers as she lived at the Dancing Ocelot.
After a few more days, Latina looked even more depressed. She told Dale each day how much fun she had with her friends, and how she’d made new friends as well. But not once did Latina bring up her teacher.
The adults figured she may have been trying to avoid thinking about the matter.
One day, Latina returned looking ghastly pale, in a truly awful state. It was so bad that when Kenneth went to greet her like he always did, his voice caught in his throat. She looked so unwell that it wouldn’t have been a surprise if she collapsed at any moment; her clothes and hair were disheveled, and one of her ribbons was coming untied. But more than all of that, it was the expression on her face that pierced Kenneth’s heart.
Latina seemed to be in a daze, and looked like she had lost everything precious to her. Her expression was one of utter despair.
Ever since Kenneth had met the young girl, she’d shown him plenty of smiles.
Even though she’d lost her father, the only person she could rely on, in that forest, she’d survived on her own. Those were sad, painful, harsh memories that would be too much for even an adult to handle, much less a child. And yet, Latina still smiled.
In that moment, Kenneth felt that he was seeing the soft and gentle fragments Latina had hidden in the depths of her heart coming to the surface.
“Latina, did something happen...?”
Latina responded by trembling greatly in shock and looking like she was about to break out in tears.
But even so, she forced out a response of, “It’s... nothing,” before turning around and heading towards the stairs.
If it were Dale, he would have scooped her up in a hug without saying a word and completely pampered her until she felt completely at ease, mind and soul. He’d put off the reason for why she was hurt for later, and focus first on smothering her in affection. That’s definitely what would have happened, had Dale not been out for work. If he had been the one to greet Latina instead of Kenneth, things may have ended differently.
Not much time had passed before Kenneth heard a strange sound from overhead. It was a dull sound of the sort he’d never heard before. The air seemed to vibrate heavily. The sound was enough to give him a truly ominous feeling.
Acting on reflex alone, Kenneth ran up the stairs and climbed up into the attic.
There, he found Latina collapsed on the floor.
With only the light coming in through the window, the room was dim.
For a moment, he was unable to tell what had happened to her.
But when he took a step closer, Kenneth realized Latina’s head was resting in a pool of blood. Her platinum hair was dyed scarlet.
“Latina!”
The reason that Kenneth was so disturbed, despite having grown used to seeing such injuries in his previous occupation, was because Latina was the only one in the room. In other words, she had done this to herself.
Kenneth picked her up and hurried down the stairs, all the while pushing a clean cloth from Dale’s room up against her wound. In no time at all, the cloth turned red. Just applying pressure wasn’t enough to stop the flow of blood.
Kenneth could only think about getting healing magic cast on her as quickly as possible, or p
erhaps cauterizing the wound.
Latina had broken off her remaining horn.
Blood vessels and nerves both passed through devils’ horns, and though they looked quite tough at first glance, they were sensitive organs. If they were damaged, then it would result in intense pain and a heavy flow of blood.
The unconscious Latina remained limp, not moving an inch.
Kenneth ran into the Dancing Ocelot’s storefront, holding Latina in his arms. His grim expression shocked Rita, as well as the regulars engaged in idle chatter.
“Kenneth, what—”
“Is there anyone here who can use healing magic?!”
It was hard to say whether they realized what his cry meant or spotted the blood-soaked girl in his arms first.
“Latina?!”
“The little lady’s hurt?!”
Rita let out a scream, and unfitting to her usual, strong-willed personality, the color completely drained from her face.
The bearded regular stood up from his chair with a crash, and pushed one of the men who had come along with him forward. The middle-aged man rushed over to Kenneth and pointed the palm of his hand towards Latina’s head.
“My magic can’t do all that much.”
“I don’t care. Just stop the bleeding, please!”
As the healing spell was cast, the flow of blood didn’t stop, but it did at least slow.
In the meantime, Kenneth headed over to Rita.
“Just to be safe, I’m gonna take her to the clinic at the temple of Niili. Tell Dale what’s going on when he comes back. And we’ll shut down the shop for the day.”
“G-Got it. Kenneth... what happened to Latina?”
“I’m not sure of the details myself. For now, I’ve got to get her treated first. I’m off!”
Holding Latina in his arms once more, Kenneth sprinted to the temple of Niili as fast as he could.
This is something they’d come to know later:
Latina had the ability to vaguely sense when something would do her harm. That was why she had been able to survive all alone in the forest. It was why she was able to find only things that were okay to eat, when there were so many poisonous plants and animals all around. And it was why she knew to hide when beasts that would harm her were prowling nearby.
When she first met Dale, she sensed that he wouldn’t hurt her.
Able to sense all of this unconsciously, Latina could sense her “enemies” on instinct.
And that instinct had been functioning properly this time as well.
†
It was three days after the incident that Dale headed for the temple of Asfar.
Rather than his usual leather coat and tunic, it was a high-class black robe that he wore, which was another sort of “battle armor” for him. The sigil hanging from his neck was also not part of his usual attire.
The rather elaborate, complex design of the sigil displayed his status at the shrine. It wasn’t just to show that he had been granted divine protection. After all, there were strict regulations regarding what sort of materials you could use to make such a sigil, and those regulations were based on your position in the temple. Just from looking at him, it was obvious that Dale held a high position there. The elderly priestess who ran the temple of Asfar in Kreuz was also aware of him.
Dale was an adventurer with deep ties to the duke serving as the current prime minister. However, temples were recognized as extraterritorial organizations, entirely detached from a nation’s authority. Even though the temple was in the nation of Laband, it had no need to listen to orders from the royal family or the duke.
It was difficult to say how true that was in practice, but that was, at least, the official stance.
Dale knew all of that full well, which was precisely why he visited the temple of Asfar not as an adventurer serving under a ducal family, but as someone who held the rank of a high priest.
Normally, he wasn’t fond of letting people know that he possessed divine protection. After all, it’s not like he’d asked to be born that way.
The divine protection that Dale possessed was a miraculous power that was granted by the gods to fragile mortals. And so, no temples could treat one who possessed such power poorly, even if it came from a god other than the one they served. The gods all stood as equals, after all.
Furthermore, Dale’s divine protection happened to be especially strong. It’s not as though the strength of divine protection was directly tied to status, but as those who served the awe-inspiring gods, the people of the temple couldn’t help but stand in awe of individuals who possessed a power that served as proof of their favor with the gods themselves. Additionally, there was no such thing as a priest who couldn’t recognize the strength of someone’s divine protection, and aside from those of such low rank that they were hired just to take care of chores and the like, everyone who served at a temple possessed some amount of it.
Temples originally started out as institutions built to offer a sanctuary that would grant protection to those who possessed the unusual power known as divine protection. Therefore, only those who possessed divine power were permitted to take up the post of priest.
“I don’t think there’s any need for me to repeat my reason for coming here. I believe I have the right to inquire into just what happened.”
“Yes, that’s certainly true.”
As the top priestess of the temple, she had heard a report. The devil girl who had been adopted by the young man before her had started coming to the school managed by the temple this fall. The priestess also heard what the teacher had shamefully done to the child.
“Normally, no matter what principles or position someone may hold, I wouldn’t try to fight them on it. And it’s not like ‘mankind supremacists’ are all that rare. But I still think that at least when it comes to the citizens of Kreuz, that’d be considered quite a narrow-minded point of view.”
“...It’s just as you say.”
“In a town like this, built on the backs of travelers and trade, no matter what your occupation, you’re bound to have had plenty of interaction with other races. It’s hard to imagine that someone serving the god of education would fail to know something so obvious.”
On the surface, Dale didn’t show any anger. But this was a man who could make you feel a bottomless sense of dread, even when his face remained perfectly calm. Even though they were meeting for the first time, the priestess felt a cold sweat run down her back. Even as a high-ranking priestess, it wasn’t often that she encountered someone with the drive to slaughter massive monsters and magical beasts.
“I hear that she called her out in front of the children and mocked her for being part of another race while abusively spouting her own baseless opinions. Is that the opinion of Asfar nowadays?”
“She was born near the land of the devils, and... she lost her family in a quarrel with them, so...”
“So it’s alright to mock an innocent girl and treat her like a monster? Is that the temple’s excuse? How novel.”
“No, of course not...”
While wiping the sweat from her brow, the priestess searched for what to say. With what he had said, it was clear that the man before her eyes knew the whole story of what had happened.
Dale hadn’t spent the three days before he came here just idling about. Of course he was worried about Latina’s condition and didn’t want to leave her side. But at the same time, he also felt the need to look into just what had happened to her.
He didn’t stop at just asking Latina’s friends. He also asked for the help of Rita, who was an expert at gathering information, and even checked with people like Chloe’s mother to hear the rumors about town. By comparing and scrutinizing the information he gathered, he at last had the evidence he needed. From there, he rather precisely deduced the chain of events. Dale gave the impression of being overly emotional when it came to Latina, but it was precisely because he was so furious that he was able to remain focused. If he couldn’t do that, then he wo
uldn’t be worthy of being called “first-rate.”
Apparently, this was how the incident went:
It seemed that the priestess who had become Latina’s new teacher had just transferred from a town in a neighboring country.
The children described her as someone who always spoke in a shrill voice. That may not have been her intention, but children were sensitive to such things, and didn’t try to sugarcoat their words.
Apparently, Latina kept her distance from this priestess from the very start. She’d thought quite well of the previous teacher, and she had never acted towards someone else like she did the new priestess. Her friends were wary as well, it seemed.
And then that day came.
The priestess realized Latina had horns.
“A devil...” she muttered under her breath, and grabbed Latina’s hair. As the smooth horn hidden behind her ribbon was exposed, the priestess spat out hatefully, “What is such a detestable thing doing in a town for people?!” as if that was an obvious question.
As Latina was shocked and at a loss for words, the woman’s venomous words kept flowing. “There’s no way that such beasts that live for over a hundred years without their appearance changing in the least could be called ‘people,’ is there?”
The priestess loudly proclaimed all of this to the bewildered children, looking absolutely confident in what she had said.
With Latina’s hair still in her grasp and the young girl unable to move, the priestess thrust Latina forward, as if showing off prey she had caught.
“These subhumans who aren’t part of humankind aren’t ‘people.’ These grotesque monsters make a mockery of how people should live. Don’t be fooled, everyone!”
The population of humankind was far greater than that of the other races. As a result, there were many who held incredibly insular thoughts exceeding those of the so-called “insular races.” In that regard, the priestess was “just” spouting off her own principles.