Dasa had immediately fallen asleep in her own room. The exhaustion of the journey had probably caught up with her. By now, she was probably sleeping so soundly that even pinching her cheek and pulling on it wouldn’t wake her up. She may not have complained, but Yukinari could tell that she was overdoing it.
“...But still.”
If chased, you had to run. The only people Yukinari and Dasa had to rely on in this world were each other. If someone wanted them dead, they had no choice but to run and never stop. No matter how strong he was in battle, if he had to constantly be on the alert for assailants, his mental stability would wear down within a month.
“This part of me is just the same as ever,” Yukinari muttered, looking up at the starry sky.
“Yukinari.”
A voice called to him from behind. “So this is where you were.”
He could tell who it was without turning around. To tell the truth, he had basically known that someone was approaching him. He could sense her presence. Although he couldn’t say that he had fully mastered this body yet, he had to admit that its senses were abnormally sharp. Not just that, he had strong arms and legs, and stamina as well. His body was highly capable in all aspects.
That was why he found it frustrating that his mental fortitude was still locked at the same level. Of course, that was what made Yukinari who he was, and proof of his identity.
“Was Berta not to your liking?” Fiona asked as she stood beside Yukinari.
“It’s not about whether she’s ‘to my liking.’ And I just knew you put her up to it.”
“Or is it a matter of numbers? You have a girl traveling with you, so I thought one would be sufficient, but we do have other shrine maidens. If you’d like more, it’s quite possible for us to supply them. If you would do us the favor of letting us know your type, I am sure the priests would find someone suitable.” Fiona had no qualms about discussing this. Perhaps this showed they had a working system for "producing" new sacrifices.
Yukinari didn’t appreciate her attitude of speaking of others like objects. So he decided to mess with her a little.
“Type. How about... blonde hair, green eyes?”
Fiona’s face tensed.
“I like a woman who’s had a good upbringing and behaves like a princess. And I want to pin her down and make her squeal. Yeah, that sounds like my type. Think you could get me one of those?”
Despite looking overwhelmed, after a pause, Fiona gathered together a response.
“Yukinari.”
“Yes, Princess?”
“I’m not certain whether or not I can squeal for you, but would you like to come to my room? Right now?”
“It doesn’t have to be squealing, panting’s fine too—wait, what?” Yukinari looked at Fiona with wide eyes. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“I should like to think I do,” said Fiona, forcing a smile.
Her profile, which in appearance still held its youth, now looked terribly grown up—no, even aged. She had probably been through a lot more than Yukinari had thought, and understood the world that much more as a result. At the very least, a person who had gone through life without ever making a difficult decision, without ever being inconvenienced, could never wear a face like this.
“I am the mayor’s daughter, don’t you forget. The daughter of the person who governs this town. If I can protect the entire town at the cost of my own purity, I would call that a very small price to pay.”
“...Wow.”
“My father wanted me to become a good ruler, and so he sent me to the school in the capital in order to broaden my perception. I think he spent a not-insignificant sum of money on it. Someone who’s probably starving to death somewhere out there today and whom we were forced to abandon could probably have been saved with that money.”
“That’s—”
“So, I can’t afford to become a substitute for the shrine maidens. If I were to be eaten by an erdgod, that money would be wasted, money that could have been used to save five or ten people. If I’m going to sacrifice this body, it will only be when I’m certain that by doing so I can save the lives of at least ten people living in this town.” Fiona spoke just the facts, without emotion.
“Yuki, if there’s one thing I can say for certain about you, it’s that you aren’t eating and killing shrine maidens like an erdgod does. So when Berta and I offer ourselves to you, you know that we wouldn’t be ‘one use only,’ don’t you?”
“...Well... I guess,” Yukinari said with a vague smile.
“You could protect this town for five years, ten years, or perhaps even longer. That would be more than adequate compensation for us.”
“Sorry, but... making it rain, stopping floods, and making the land fertile... all that is impossible for me, you know.”
“Nevertheless, you felled the erdgod, didn’t you? That is none other than a proof that you have the same level of power as the gods.”
“Not this again...” Yukinari sighed and slapped a palm against Durandall on his hip. “Like I said earlier, I just used a slightly special weapon.”
He had fiddled with Durandall’s appearance a little, but practically speaking, it was just a cut-down lever-action rifle, a Winchester M92 Randall Custom, with a blade attached to it. It took some getting used to because of the weight balance and so on, but ordinary people could obviously use it, too.
“I seriously wouldn’t mind just giving you this thing to pay for one night’s accommodation.”
“I don’t know what kind of thing that weapon is—but it won’t do us any good just to be given a sword. Any sword is no more than a stick without a swordsman.”
“Fair point.” Yukinari shrugged his shoulders. Even if the inhabitants of this town obtained Durandall, it would take some time to learn to use it effectively. There were also other things to consider: the supply of .44 Magnum bullets and the replacement of worn or damaged parts. Certainly, it was not as simple as handing over Durandall and everything would be solved. In that sense, working with guns was difficult in a lot of ways.
“By the way...” Fiona suddenly changed the topic. “You seem to be traveling somewhere... Do you have some goal you’re in a hurry to reach?”
Yukinari hesitated for a moment. This had nothing to do with Fiona. He had no obligation to talk to her about it. But after having made Fiona talk about her “resolve,” it felt unfair to not speak a single word about himself.
“I made a promise to someone,” he said, looking back in the direction of the mansion. “That I’d protect the girl you saw me with. Dasa.”
“Protect her from what?”
That one, Yukinari couldn’t answer. He couldn’t decide how Fiona’s attitude would change if she found out the truth. Even more so if she had once been in the capital. This girl was astonishingly rational—but even so, humans were incapable of making all their decisions based purely on rationality, like a machine.
“Is that something you can’t do here?” Fiona asked, tilting her head. It was unclear how she had interpreted Yukinari’s silence.
“I don’t know...” He had promised Jirina that he would protect Dasa. To Yukinari, the alchemist Jirina Urban was a mother, a sister, a savior, and someone sorely missed after her death. He could never see her again. Therefore, the promise he made her was unbreakable.
However, how to keep that promise was not necessarily set in stone. It was unclear to Yukinari whether even continuing to run was truly the best option. The fact was that Dasa seemed to be very tired, and if they kept up this burdensome journey, a fatal problem could develop someday. But still...
“I really... don’t know.”
The night wore on. With the night air cooling their bodies, Yukinari and Fiona stood awhile in silence, under a canopy of stars.
Chapter Three: A Curious Beast
This place was called the sanctuary. It was a place to worship the erdgod. In fact, however, this was a sacrificial altar, and not the kind of thing that should be
called a building. Although there were pillars and ceilings, there were no walls to partition the inside from the outside. It was simply a feeding ground for the monster called an erdgod—no, it was simply a dinner plate.
The sanctuary was empty now. Just the other day, a fierce battle had unfolded here, and the carcasses of those killed had been left here to rot. Yet now, they were gone without a trace, as if the whole place had been wiped clean. There weren’t even any bloodstains. The bodies of the erdgod and its familiars had suddenly disappeared.
“VUOOOOOoooOORRR...!”
A voice carried to the sanctuary from somewhere deep inside the nearby forest. It sounded like the howling of a beast, and yet it had something to it that was clearly different from any animal. It was the ring of intelligence. Compared to the voice of an ordinary human, it was terribly primitive, and alien... but that made it feel all the more raw.
Neither human nor animal, it was too uncanny for a single word to describe. That voice was the proof that animals that had discarded their animality had descended upon this land now that an erdgod “vacancy” had formed—just as Fiona predicted.
●
Dawn broke.
Yukinari and Dasa decided to take a walk around the town. In truth, the option of leaving the town as soon as possible remained very attractive, and Yukinari himself might have been prepared to do so. However, Dasa’s tiredness was more serious than he’d thought, and so they had decided to postpone their departure for the time being.
After checking the condition of Dasa’s eyes, Yukinari glanced toward her case. “Okay, let’s go check this place out. Make sure you bring Red Chili, Dasa. Just in case.”
“...Already have... it. Spare bullets... too.”
Yukinari slung Durandall over his shoulder, and the two of them started walking down the second floor corridor of the Schillings residence.
“Lord Yukinari—”
Berta was standing at the top of the staircase. Today, instead of that excessively seductive shrine maiden outfit, she had on the same kind of clothes any completely ordinary woman in this town would wear. Because of that, she looked somewhat more composed and brighter than when they had first met. She really did look like any ordinary girl now. However—
Don’t tell me she’s been standing there all this time?
That suspicion suddenly crept into Yukinari’s mind.
Unless you did something crazy like jumping out of a window, you had to go down these stairs to leave the Schillings residence. In other words, the position where Berta was standing was a key point to monitor so that Yukinari and Dasa couldn’t leave without telling anyone.
Of course, even if that were the case, it was probably not Berta who had wanted to do this. It was much more likely that Fiona or the priests had given her instructions.
“Are you going out?” Berta asked, tilting her head slightly.
“Yeah. Thought we’d wander about the town for a bit.”
Hearing this, a small and gentle smile rose to Berta’s face. “In that case, allow me to show you around. I was born and grew up here. I know every corner of it.”
“But you have things you want to do too, right?” Yukinari said carefully. “We’re just gonna stroll about for a bit, you don’t really need to guide us...”
“No, I am a shrine maiden,” Berta said, shaking her head. “Serving the erdgod is my role.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to—”
“My body and heart exist for the erdgod, too.”
She must have meant that her desire was to do something for Yukinari. She was probably still laboring over the fact that she couldn’t complete her “job” as a shrine maiden. She hadn’t been eaten by that monster, nor had she succeeded in using her body to service Yukinari the night before. She was probably feeling uneasy, as if everything had been left unfinished.
Of course, Yukinari did not regret helping Berta. However, it was undoubtedly the result of him having done so that her very position in society was now in danger. In that sense, Yukinari felt responsible for her.
“Okay. I think I’ll take you up on that, then.”
“Yuki...?” Dasa looked at Yukinari’s face from beside him. She seemed a little surprised. Berta’s expression also filled with surprise—and joy.
“Are you sure?!”
“Don’t ask me that when you won’t take no for an answer... Anyway, this town is pretty big. The last thing we want to do is get lost, so on second thought, we probably would be better with a guide.” The explanation was more for Dasa’s sake than Berta’s.
Berta nodded enthusiastically, her expression brightening. “Yes, Lord Yukinari! I will do my very best to show you around!”
“Okay, you don’t have to go too nuts...”
And so, Yukinari and Dasa decided to have Berta guide them around town. Perhaps Berta had indeed been tasked with watching them, because despite meeting the gaze of several Schillings family servants downstairs and at the mansion’s entrance, none of them said a word. They each merely gave a single, reverential bow. It was likely that Fiona had impressed upon them not to be rude. It wasn’t a bad feeling to be treated politely, but when Yukinari thought about the reason—that they expected him to be an erdgod—it weighed upon him quite heavily.
“This way.”
Berta walked a few steps ahead of Yukinari and Dasa, frequently turning back to talk to them. Soon they reached the center of the town and the main street that ran through it like an artery.
It was a small town, but still very busy, and there were street vendors everywhere selling their wares. However, most of them only had food and daily necessities; there were only a few shops dealing in luxuries and sundries. The town as a whole was probably poor. It looked like it had all the elements of a reasonably respectable town—there were no issues with the buildings, and the districts looked well organized—but Yukinari supposed that luxuries were something they couldn’t afford to think about.
“I see...” muttered Yukinari.
This was a remote town in the countryside, where the quality of the harvest had a direct effect on the population. It was perhaps no surprise that they would want to pray to the gods for help. But—
“They aren’t completely disconnected from the capital, right?”
“I don’t... think so...” Dasa answered.
Last night, they had eaten dinner at the Schillings residence. There, they had been provided with a whole assortment of tableware that appeared to have been industrially mass-produced. In particular, the sets of knives, forks, and spoons that had been set out had all been made the same way, and with such precision that it was impossible to imagine that they could have been handmade.
In other words, there were industrial products flowing here from the capital, even if they were extremely limited. And apart from that, there were also metalworkers in this town. In which case—
“This is the orphanage where I grew up.” Berta’s voice interrupted Yukinari’s thoughts, and he looked in the direction she was pointing. There towered a surprisingly impressive-looking stone building.
“Orphanage, huh.”
“Would you like to see?” Berta asked with a tilt of her head.
“...Yeah. Please.”
“Okay. In that case—”
Berta went through the gate and into the building. Yukinari and Dasa followed behind.
Inside the building, a number of girls were in the middle of cleaning. One of them noticed Berta, and a look of shock spread across her face.
“Berta...!”
Once they heard that name, the other girls immediately stopped what they were doing and came running up to them, still holding their cleaning supplies.
“Didn’t you go to the ritual...?”
“Berta!” a younger girl said. “But how?!”
The girls’ expressions were filled with disconcertment. It wasn’t that they were pleased. Rather, they looked as if they had seen the dead walking among them—
“Some thing
s happened and... I’m back.” Berta said, managing an ambiguous smile.
There was a certain awkwardness in her tone of voice, too. To her, it might have seemed like these girls were criticizing her for coming back without doing her job, just like the townspeople from yesterday. But—
“Then, Sis, Sis, can you live with us again now?”
A few of the girls who were especially young were clinging to Berta with their faces lit up. Maybe they didn’t yet understand the meaning behind “shrine maidens” and the “ritual.”
“I’m... not sure.” Berta looked a little troubled and at a loss for an answer. But at the same time, she looked somehow happy.
“...Yuki...”
“Yeah?”
Dasa called Yukinari’s name from beside him, as if she had suddenly thought of something.
“I’m glad we... saved... her.”
“Yeah.” Yukinari nodded.
Dasa was probably seeing Jirina and herself in Berta and the young girls.
Jirina had been Dasa’s only family. She had no parents that she could remember. For all intents and purposes, Jirina had been the one who had raised her. That was why being robbed of her had left such a big hole in Dasa’s heart.
There was nothing more Yukinari could do for her in that regard, but—
“I’m glad, too.” He nodded and plunked his palm on top of Dasa’s head, then started to run his fingers through her silver hair.
“...mn.”
Behind her glasses, Dasa’s sky-blue eyes crinkled into a happy smile.
●
While Yukinari’s group was visiting the orphanage, Fiona was talking with the priests in her office at the Schillings residence.
Specifically, the priests had been around investigating the state of the town and the sentiments of its residents, and were now giving her their reports.
“...So,” one of the priests said with a clouded expression, “the people are growing suspicious of that man, the woman with him, and Berta as well.”
“In particular,” another priest added, “because Berta came home alive without doing her job, many are fearful of incurring the erdgod’s anger. There are even calls for the ritual to be conducted anew, with his female partner as a second offering.”
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 1 Page 7