“If we get caught up in a battle between demigods, we will suffer casualties. Erdgods are not the only ones that gain power from eating people—demigods are said to as well. Naturally, they will attack this town before the fight in order to eat their fill.”
Even as she spoke, Fiona was aware that she was taking a risky gamble. She was trying to appeal to Yukinari’s “benevolence” and “common decency,” despite knowing that he was not an ordinary human being. Even human beings found it hard to hold onto those when their backs were against a wall, so it was probably far too optimistic to expect that something comparable to a demigod would even possess them in the first place.
But on the other hand, Fiona had seen Yukinari get angry at the priests. He had displayed clear displeasure when the priests had criticized the girl called Berta for returning alive. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change this town, bound by its cruel and antiquated system of erdgods and shrine maidens.
“We’re going to need you to stay in this land in place of the erdgod you killed,” Fiona said as forcefully as she could.
●
“Please stay here in my mansion overnight,” said Fiona Schillings, the girl who was apparently standing in as the town’s mayor. “I won’t charge you for lodging, of course.”
To be honest, Yukinari wanted to leave this town behind right away, but he was hesitant to make Dasa sleep outside again. She never breathed a word of complaint, but that just meant that when she did collapse, it happened without warning. He wanted to let her rest under a roof whenever possible.
Yukinari, Dasa, and Berta had each been provided with their own room. This was because when Fiona had asked Yukinari and Dasa if they were married or lovers or something along those lines, they had both immediately denied it. However, despite that, Dasa was currently sitting on Yukinari’s bed.
“Let’s get these glasses out of the way.”
“...mn...”
Dasa gazed at Yukinari with her vaguely unfocused eyes. Yukinari got the impression that her cheeks were red, but he couldn’t afford to think deeply about it. This was delicate work. If he didn’t concentrate, he could mess it up badly.
“Close your eyes.”
“...mn...”
Dasa closed her sky-blue eyes as Yukinari asked. He brought his face close enough to hers that they could feel each other’s body heat, and then he touched her eyelid with his hand.
“Mn... mmn...”
Slowly, he stroked her eyelid with the pad of his finger—gently, as if caressing it. First the left, then the right. He touched gingerly, constantly monitoring her reaction.
Dasa was moving a little, so he softly cupped her face in both hands and held it still. He slid the pad of his thumb up her cheek and onto her eyelid.
Another little moan escaped Dasa’s throat.
They had done this a number of times before, but she always blushed and shivered like it was the first. Her reactions, a mix of anxiousness, expectancy, and shyness, were in a way terribly erotic, and Yukinari was conscious of something inside him swelling up. Repeating to himself that he was only touching her face, he focused on the job at hand.
“...Yuki...” Dasa breathed his name as though imploring him for something.
“Opening them.”
“...mn...”
Touching her trembling eyelashes, Yukinari lifted Dasa’s eyelid upward with his fingers. A beautiful, glistening eye filled with the color of the sky reflected his face. Yukinari squinted, but he could see no clouding there at all. In both eyes, everything seemed to be okay.
Finally, Yukinari softly blew on her eyeball, as if kissing it.
A visible shiver ran through Dasa’s body.
Yukinari removed his hand from her face. “How does it feel? It doesn’t hurt at all? It doesn’t sting or smart? You’re not having any problems with the way you’re seeing?”
“Probably... okay,” Dasa said, her voice somewhat unsteady.
“Okay. Well, good.” Yukinari lowered his hand and let out a breath. “I’m not a specialist... To be honest, all I know is the little I heard when my sister had to have her operation. I don’t know what kind of inconveniences the artificial lenses I made could give you. Cataract surgery itself seems to have been around a really long time. But that doesn’t mean the one I did was necessarily perfect.”
Dasa was born with cataracts.
For that reason, she could neither read nor write until she was fourteen years old. However, her memories of helping her older sister Jirina, who had been an alchemist, went back as far as she could remember. Because of this, she had a wealth of knowledge about alchemy and its related fields, but on the other hand, she occasionally revealed an equally large gap in her general knowledge.
Dasa’s eyes now had artificial lenses made by Yukinari.
Surgeries to treat cataracts had been taking place since the ancient Greeks. The precision of the work aside, the principle itself was relatively simple. It essentially involved removing the cloudy lens and inserting an artificial lens in its place.
Yukinari’s hands had brought light to Dasa’s eyes, but as he himself had said, he was not a medical professional. He was concerned that the cataracts might recur, and there was also the possibility of other complications. It was for that reason that he regularly examined Dasa’s eyes. Dasa’s glasses, too, were there not just to correct her vision, but to protect her eyes as much as possible.
“Yuki...?” Dasa said, putting her glasses back on. “What... next...?”
“What, huh... Hmm. What.”
Yukinari sat down beside Dasa and sighed. Felling the god of this land before finding out anything about it had been a big mistake. Fiona’s words had certainly given him pause. It would leave a very bad taste in his mouth if he left town now, knowing that its people, including Berta, would be attacked by demigods. He thought that Fiona’s argument for wanting him to stay here and protect the town as an erdgod made a lot of sense. But Yukinari had a reason for traveling—no, a reason for not staying in one place. He had to protect Dasa, even if it meant being a wanderer until the day he died.
“I’ve got my promise with Jirina to think about...”
“...Yeah.” Dasa’s expression turned a little complicated at Yukinari’s mention of her big sister. It was a very subtle change that no one but Yukinari, who was by her side constantly, could have noticed.
“And you and I both know nothing of the world.”
“...Yuki...”
As if to distract her mind from her anxiety, Dasa wrapped both her arms around Yukinari’s left arm and clung to him. Maybe because she had spent the majority of her life almost completely unable to see, Dasa often touched Yukinari like this, to make sure that he was definitely there. She also had a habit of putting her cheek against his chest and trying to smell his body odor, perhaps for the same reason that the first thing a dog wants to do with an object is sniff it. In Dasa’s case, she had spent too long relying on sound and touch rather than sight. Despite her trust in the treatment Yukinari gave her, she was probably unable to let go and rely fully on her eyes.
In many ways, she was a girl with a very unique background. And that was why only Yukinari could protect her.
“Taking revenge and running away was all well and good, but we never had anywhere to go.”
“...Yeah.” The corners of Dasa’s lips trembled. And once again, Yukinari was possibly the only person who could recognize this for what it was: the brightest smile Dasa could force onto her face.
●
Cultural customs vary from land to land and mostly take shape out of some kind of necessity. If the climate differs, it’s only natural for the culture, customs, and especially the lifestyles to be different as well. Clothing, food, shelter, and all the other basic needs change to accommodate the land.
Baths, for instance, differ depending on how easy it is to procure water and fuel, as well as other factors like the atmospheric temperature and humidity. In some places, people wash
their bodies with buckets of rainwater; in others, steam baths are the norm. In fact, the style of bath used in countries like Japan, in which a bathtub is filled with gallons of steaming hot water, was apparently classified as a rather rare type in this world.
So when Yukinari heard from Fiona that this particular region had this rare type of bath, his delight was on another level. Apparently there was a hot spring nearby from which hot water could be drawn. The Schillings residence, too, was furnished with such a bath. And it was quite spacious. It was about the same size as a bath in a Japanese hot spring inn; about ten people could probably bathe together if they felt like it. The bathtub itself was made of stone, and the way it felt somewhat like an outdoor bath while being inside suited Yukinari’s tastes.
“Ohhhhh...” Yukinari couldn’t stop a sound of appreciation from slipping out as he sank into the bathtub and stretched out his legs. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. “I guess even this body gets tired...” As he relaxed in the hot water, he looked up to the ceiling. A drop fell and splashed directly on his nose. “Geez, that’s cold! ......Ha. Hahaha, yeahhh, this is what a bath should be like!”
He kicked his legs about in the water for no reason. He felt like he’d returned to his childhood. Come to think of it, he’d visited public baths several times with his big sister Hatsune when he was young. The bath in their house had broken, but as children, there was nothing the two of them could do about it themselves, and their father and mother rarely came home. So the two of them headed out together, pocket money clenched in their hands. He still vividly remembered the two of them holding hands and walking through the town in winter, with a single scarf wound around both their necks. One time, another customer had taken pity on those two children enduring the biting winds to come out to a public bath, and bought them some fruit-flavored milk. That act of kindness from a nameless stranger stood out as a happy memory.
As Yukinari thought back over his “previous life,” the sound of a door opening came from the direction of the changing room.
“Hm?” He turned his head quickly to see the door opening and a single figure stepping through into the bathroom. It was obviously a girl.
“Seriously...?” Yukinari said in a low groan, narrowing his eyes. And through the veil of steam came Berta, naked as the day she was born.
Yukinari had already seen the shape of her body back when she was wearing that sheer cloth, so he was already mostly familiar with it, but there was no denying that it created a different impression here in the bathroom. She had a gorgeous, well-proportioned body that curved in all the right places. The smooth roundness of her breasts was greatly arousing to the senses, and her skin too, wet from the steam, was undeniably seductive.
Berta walked directly toward Yukinari.
“What are you doing?” Yukinari voiced the obvious question.
It was difficult to tell whether it was because of the bathroom’s temperature or whether she was embarrassed, but Berta’s cheeks reddened. “I exist to be offered to the erdgod, so...”
“That’s really not a reason...”
Maybe she thought of herself as having died once already, and so she didn’t care what happened to her? But the way she was willingly exposing her naked body to him now was almost as if she was asking to be assaulted—
“Hold on, so this is what you meant when you said you didn’t mind being eaten?”
“I don’t know if you are an erdgod, or something different.” Berta came right up to Yukinari and kneeled. “But you aren’t trying to eat me... And if this continues... I won’t be able to do my job...”
Yukinari wondered if being accused of “coming back without doing her job” had caused her to feel strangely pressured.
“Since you assume the form of a gentleman, I thought that in order to please you, I should... um...”
“Okay, look. I’m very happy and all. I mean, what more can a guy ask for, right?” Yukinari tilted his head toward the ceiling yet again and sighed. “But you know how it is. There’s someone here who’ll be mad at me.” Yukinari pointed.
“Huh...?” Berta looked behind her. There was the door that she had just now come through. It was made of wood, made loud sounds merely by being opened and closed, and seemed to be slightly distorted. And it looked like it wasn’t completely shut. There was a slight gap.
And on the other side of that gap—who knows how long she’d been there—Dasa could be seen polishing Red Chili with a blank expression on her face. Yukinari felt like asking why she had chosen that place specifically to polish her gun, but Dasa would probably not have answered anyway.
“...Dirty.” A solitary word spilled quietly from Dasa’s lips as she stopped polishing Red Chili. For some reason, she also half-cocked it and made a show of spinning the cylinder.
“You see the nightmare I have to deal with?”
Berta seemed confused.
“More to the point,” Yukinari said to the ceiling. He felt uncomfortable looking at her directly. “Did that Fiona Schillings tell you to do this?”
Berta said nothing, but looking at the way her body was subtly trembling, he seemed to have hit the bullseye. Supply a woman for the sake of the town—not an idea one would expect from a young woman like Fiona, but not one that was unheard of, either. Or perhaps it was the priests who had instructed Berta to use her body to manipulate Yukinari. If Yukinari felt even a little grateful for it, that would already be a success, and if he got passionate about her and succumbed to her body, so much the better. That was probably their thinking.
“All that stuff about your ‘job’ or whatever... let’s put that on hold for now. How about you just come on in?” Yukinari pointed to the bath, which was full to the brim with hot water. “There’s no point in you getting cold.”
●
While Yukinari was in the bath, Fiona had arranged a meeting with the priests in her office.
“Demigod or whatever else he may be,” said one of the priests, “he must be made to take responsibility for killing the erdgod that was protecting this land.”
Once they accepted the reality of the situation, they were quick to change their thinking. Of course, being a priest in this area demanded that of you. After all, the shrine maiden candidates and the priests lived under the same roof and ate food from the same pot, and yet the priests had to send them away to be sacrificed—and they had to do this on a regular basis. Granted, the shrine maidens were being raised for this purpose, but even so, no one who formed a strong attachment to things could possibly fill such a position.
The priests were attempting to come to an agreement about installing Yukinari as the new erdgod.
“However, I doubt it is within our power to keep him bound in any way.”
“After all, he has enough power to fell an erdgod.”
“In which case, I would suggest the wisest move is to win him over by presenting him with a shrine maiden.”
In short, they seemed to reason that since he looked like a man, they might be able to win him over by sending him a woman. It was an indecent idea, but there was no other way.
“I have already spoken to Berta about this. Please, rest at ease.” Fiona closed her eyes and breathed out deeply. “How long must this go on?”
“Well... These are the laws by which our world is governed, I’m afraid. It is not in our power to do anything about them.” The high priest spoke as if lecturing her. “Animals eat the grass, people eat the animals, and gods eat the people. That is the way of the world. There is no use fighting it. You just need to accept it.”
“Do I?” Fiona narrowed her eyes and glared at the high priest. “But in the capital—”
“You’re referring to the True Church of Harris?” The high priest shot back the question as if to stop Fiona in her tracks. “We, too, have heard the rumors. They say the Missionary Order can fell even erdgods. The word is that they are gaining more and more followers.”
“Yes.”
The C
hurch had a lot of influence in the capital. In fact, the majority of people who lived there were believers in the Church. Royalty, nobles, and commoners alike followed the True Church of Harris. Historically speaking, their school of thought was relatively new, but despite this, the Church’s easily understandable doctrine and the “power” it had displayed on numerous occasions had led to a rapid increase in followers.
“But Deputy Mayor—no, Milady,” the high priest said in a gentle tone, “think of what your ancestors would say if you abandoned the time-honored traditions and replaced them with such emerging teachings. Think of the sorrow it would bring to your father, who lies bedridden.”
“Yes, I can imagine.”
Fiona had attended the school in the capital for about four years. Besides reading and writing, it was a place to acquire a broader knowledge and develop critical thinking. There were others there just like her, from all kinds of regions, who had come there to learn. Through associating with them, Fiona had learned that the kinds of unreasonable customs and traditions that took root in rural areas truly did come in all shapes and sizes, and most of them were irrational. In Fiona’s mind, the sacrifices to the erdgod were the epitome of this.
However, no one would even attempt to change their way of thinking—not the high priest, not the lesser priests, nor even most of the townspeople. Fiona thought that they were probably scared. To change your way of thinking was to admit that you had been wrong before. If they admitted that offering regular sacrifices was itself a mistake, they would have nowhere left to turn. It was because they believed that they were doing the right thing that they had been able to keep such cruelty going as a tradition for so long.
“We have our own way of life here. I urge you—”
“I understand.”
As the high priest admonished her in a calm tone as if he knew everything, Fiona hid her irritation and simply nodded.
●
The night air felt good on his heated body.
Yukinari had gone out alone into the mansion’s courtyard and was cooling himself down.
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 1 Page 6