The townspeople weren’t thinking in their wildest dreams that Yukinari might have killed the erdgod. Indeed, had Fiona not received the initial report from the priests, even she would not have believed it—even if she had been told of the erdgod’s demise by Yukinari personally. So it was no wonder that the townspeople were convinced that Berta had simply run back home. And because there hadn’t been a sacrifice at the sanctuary, the citizens were wary that the erdgod might be angered by this violation of their contract and attack the town.
The fact that the erdgod had died—that Yukinari had killed it—was being kept very quiet. A gag order had been placed on the priests, and there were very few people who had all the accurate information. But eventually, someone would go to visit the sanctuary, and once that happened, it would not be long before it became known that the erdgod had been killed. No—before that, the next erdgod might be born, and might come to the town seeking a contract. Once that happened, they wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret anymore.
“This isn’t good...” Fiona said, sighing.
It was conceivable that the people of this town could attack Yukinari, his companion Dasa, or Berta. What would Yukinari do then? If he felt like fighting... it might not be a total massacre, but dozens, no, hundreds of people could end up dead. There needed to be some kind of compromise. For example—
“Now that the erdgod has been killed, in the not-so-distant future, demigods and xenobeasts will sense that it is missing, and they will come here. Can we not at least superficially position that man in the sanctuary as a new erdgod?”
This question came from the high priest and seemed to represent the thoughts of all the others. Essentially, even if it wasn’t possible for Yukinari to “settle” in this land like an erdgod—to form a spiritual bond with the land and protect the region—perhaps he could still carry out the other role of an erdgod: protecting the town from the threat of demigods and xenobeasts. Given that Yukinari had killed an erdgod, it was certainly true that he had the power to make that possible.
“It’s up to you, Deputy Mayor.” The priest pressed Fiona for an answer, a serious expression on his face.
“He is still not convinced, unfortunately...”
Yesterday evening, Fiona had again ordered Berta to win him over. The words she had actually used were simply, “Just service him somehow and get him to like you, any way you can.” However, it didn’t seem to be going very well. It was likely because of the girl he had with him—Dasa. The relationship between her and Yukinari was unclear, but there could be no mistaking that she was precious to him. Then...
“If we had to, we could take the girl hostage.”
“You actually mean that?” Fiona asked, honestly hoping for them to say no.
However, every one of the priests, the high priest included, nodded back. They were deadly serious.
●
Yukinari learned that the orphanage was, as a matter of fact, being run by the priests. The reason the building was so splendidly built was something to do with it being created as part of the sanctuary—not the ritual site, but the place the priests were stationed. That sanctuary was just beyond this orphanage.
In that case, Yukinari thought, he might bump into those priests soon—but he was told that they were all out. So, with no sign of any trouble on the horizon, Yukinari was taking it easy while the orphans showed him hospitality.
“I’m afraid it isn’t anything special...” Berta said. She and the other young girls had brought him some tea.
“Thanks,” Yukinari said, and took the wooden cup and saucer that Berta was offering him.
There was something on the saucer that looked kind of like a tree root. Was this a snack? Or were you meant to stir the tea with this to... add flavor to the tea or something? He turned back towards Dasa and gave her a questioning look. She didn’t seem to know either, and replied by shaking her head.
“Hmm...”
He didn’t want to repay Berta’s kindness by doing something really stupid. Unfortunately, she had stepped out of the room—presumably having something to do—and so he was unable to ask her what he was meant to do with it.
Yukinari sipped his tea to buy himself some time while he considered his options.
“Mister?”
Yukinari looked beside him to see that a young orphan, about five or six years old, had appeared from somewhere and was now watching him with a curious expression on her face.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?”
“Ah, so you do eat this thing.”
“Yeah. You bite it. And then, it tastes sweet.”
“Right...”
Apparently, it wasn’t a kind of fruit or flower, but a plant more like sugarcane that stored sugar directly in its stems, leaves, and roots. Yukinari took the root in his hand, and—
“Hm?” He glanced in the girl’s direction again. She was gazing straight at his hand with her mouth half-open.
“You want it?” Yukinari finally asked.
“Can I?!” Her face brightened immediately, and she stretched out her hand for the root. Yukinari handed it to her, and the girl used both hands to snap it in two, then snapped each of those halves again, splitting it into four.
Then, turning around, the girl said, “Hey, come see what he gave me!”
Two young girls of about the same age came running from the doorway. Evidently, they had been watching Yukinari from there for a while. It was rare for the orphanage to have visitors, so this was understandable behavior for children full of curiosity.
But—
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Berta had come back into the room. Her words indicated that she was admonishing them, but her tone of voice wasn’t very stern. Yukinari got the sense that she was in disbelief at how brazen these young girls were.
But in any case, this changed his impression of Berta slightly. Berta had always mostly given the impression of a mature but somehow timid adult, but the way she treated her “sisters” that shared the orphanage with her was definitely more reminiscent of an older sister.
The priests took minimal involvement in the management of the orphanage, so the older girls had no choice but to take command over the running of day-to-day life. The result was this system, where the older orphans looked after the young.
Berta crouched down in front of the girls and gently told them off. “That sweet is for our visitor, remember?”
“But he gave it to me...”
“When that happens, you say, ‘No, thank you.’”
“Aww,” the girls cried out in a chorus of disappointment.
“But there weren’t any sweets yesterday, or the day before...”
“Uhh, please don’t worry about me,” Yukinari said, putting on an amiable smile. “I, ehh... What can I say, uh... I don’t like sweet stuff, anyway.”
That wasn’t exactly true; he just wanted to let the girls eat it. From their obvious reactions and the way that they used the word “sweet” to refer to a tree root that had almost gone straight from the ground to the plate, he could tell it was a rare treat for them, as plain as it looked. And he thought that food should probably be given to the people who would get the most joy and pleasure from eating it.
“Me... too,” Dasa said, and offered her saucer to the girls as well. The girls brightly thanked Dasa in unison and took the sweet without hesitation before Berta could even begin to stop them. Obviously feeling like they’d made a new friend, one asked Dasa if they could call her “Big Sis.”
Yukinari himself felt a warm glow watching them. There was something pleasant about how they were so honest about what they wanted. Dasa, meanwhile, was blinking with a stunned look on her face.
“What’s up?” Yukinari asked.
“Big... Sis,” Dasa mumbled, seemingly confused. “They called me... Big Sis.”
“Well, from their point of view—”
Yukinari got that far, then realized. Dasa had never really interacted with children younger than
herself before. So she’d only ever experienced being treated like a younger sister.
Dasa was always the young one—obviously so from the perspective of her actual big sister Jirina, but also from Yukinari’s point of view as well—so it was impossible for him to avoid treating her like a little sister. He imagined he was treating her that way, at least. Yukinari had never actually had one, only his older sister Hatsune, so he had to rely on his imagination. But—enough with the technicalities.
“Huh. Dasa the grown-up, older sister. Hard to imagine.”
“...Yuki.” Dasa puffed up her cheeks a bit and glared at Yukinari. “What do you mean by... that?”
“Nothing really?”
“You know, I’m not just... someone for you to—” Dasa started to say something, then stopped. Her cheeks went red, and she looked the other way.
“For me to what?” Yukinari asked with a bemused chuckle.
This wasn’t the first time that Dasa had reacted peculiarly to the words “older sister.” She had acted unusually like this a number of times before—a sort of irritated, sort of yearning response. Yukinari didn’t know what this was, and Dasa wouldn’t answer even when asked...
“I am so very sorry...” Berta seemed to be feeling very embarrassed and apologetic. She looked exactly like an older sister apologizing for the misconduct of her younger siblings, and Yukinari found that feeling very nostalgic.
Hatsune and Jirina.
They had been so important to Yukinari—and he had lost them both.
“Seriously, you don’t need to worry about it,” Yukinari said, watching the young girls run out of the room giggling as Berta shooed them out.
“I got to see a lot of good things.”
“Good things?”
“Dasa being called ‘Big Sis.’ What you look like as a big sister. Stuff like that.”
A troubled expression fell upon Berta’s face. Yukinari wondered if he had said something bad.
“I don’t think I’m a good big sister...” Berta’s expression suddenly clouded over. “I’m a disgrace for coming back alive...” Yukinari frowned. Just as he’d thought, it was still playing on Berta’s mind that she had not done her “job” as a shrine maiden—as a sacrifice.
“What kind of big sister am I, when I’m not even able to do a simple job to protect my little sisters...”
She must have been talking about preventing the other girls from being offered as sacrifices by becoming a sacrifice herself. According to what he’d been told by Fiona and the others, if the shrine maiden could not do her sacrificial job, the erdgod would often go berserk, and two or three shrine maidens would be needed to quell its rage. It was certainly possible to say that despite Berta’s dedication, she had been unable to fully protect the other girls. However—
“Sure you are,” Yukinari said, and pointed to the tea that Berta had served to him. “You’re servicing me plenty well.”
“Lord...” Berta blinked a few times, seemingly unsure how to react. She lowered her gaze away from him a little before continuing. “Am I... um... really... giving you good service?”
“You are, yeah. You’re even showing me around town and stuff.”
“I just... wondered if it’s all right for it to feel... this easy...” Berta hesitantly strung words together.
What she was trying to say, in short, seemed to be that this was far easier and involved less suffering than being eaten alive by the erdgod, so she wasn’t really getting the sense that she was serving him. It seemed that “service” to Berta had to be some kind of hard work.
Maybe this feeling had arisen out of a sense of guilt for having been raised with the town’s tax money. The priests and even the townspeople themselves had probably hammered that way of thinking into her at every opportunity so that she would naturally accept her fate as a sacrifice.
“It’s fine. Seriously,” Yukinari said strongly. “I feel sorry that the one you’re serving isn’t actually an erdgod. But that’s not your fault. I was the one who chose to barge in on that ritual. If anything, you could be blaming me for this.”
“No, I could never—” Berta looked shocked at the thought, as if she’d never even considered it.
“Anyway, if I’m gonna have you nearby, I’d way rather you be thinking, ‘Serving him is so easy!’ than, ‘I’m suffering, it’s hard,’ and stuff. Personally.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t—” Berta hurriedly shook her head. Then, she said in a mumble, “Lord Yukinari, you’re... a strange person.”
“Yeah, I’m aware I stick out as suspicious.”
“No, I meant, um...” Berta tried for a while to search for a good way of wording it. “I’m terribly sorry, I can’t express it very well...”
She was looking meekly at the ground and her cheeks were reddening. It almost looked like she—
“Uh... that’s okay,” Yukinari said, scratching his cheek out of a strange sense of embarrassment. Dasa glared at him with scornful eyes.
“...Womanizer.”
“What did I do?!” Yukinari cried out in protest, feeling like he’d been utterly wronged.
●
After Yukinari and Dasa had finished their tea and spent a short while playing with Berta’s “little sisters,” who had started to grow attached to them, they left the orphanage to walk through town again.
There hadn’t been any particular meaning in stopping by the orphanage, but Yukinari felt a little glad that he had. Ever since arriving in the town of Friedland, he had been constantly hearing about sacrifices and other sickening things. Having the chance to play with innocent children had been very comforting. However...
“I just can’t shake that feeling...” Yukinari said to himself as they walked down the street.
The town was acting strangely. Whenever the residents laid their eyes on Yukinari’s group, they immediately started to crowd together into little groups and whisper among themselves. And those groups would throw occasional glances toward them. Their gazes could not be said to be friendly by any stretch of the imagination.
“I thought so...” Yukinari muttered, looking at Berta walking in front of them. The townspeople’s stares were focused not on Yukinari and Dasa, but rather on her.
Berta was walking normally at first, but as time went on, she started slouching and bending slightly forward. Her neck was shrinking into her shoulders as she walked, as if she was hoping she could just disappear inside herself.
“What the hell is their deal? Whispering like that. It’s creepy.” Yukinari deliberately pretended that he hadn’t realized the reason.
Berta stopped in her tracks, turned back to face him, and said with a forced smile on the verge of crying, “That’s... because I had the nerve to come back when I didn’t do my job...”
“You mean as a sacrifice?”
“Yes.” Berta nodded.
“Shrine maidens depart for the temple regularly. The townspeople’s taxes and donations are what’s used to raise the orphans chosen to be shrine maidens. That’s what keeps this town protected. We’ve had this tradition for a very long time...” She spoke clearly, but with her eyes to the ground. “Our daily lives are only possible because of their taxes and generosity...”
“Sounds kinda like the sacrificial rituals of the ancient Aztecs and Incas...” Yukinari recalled something he’d heard in his previous world: in ancient Aztec and Incan society, ritual sacrifices were conducted in which sacrifices were killed as a tribute to one of their gods. Up until the moment the sacrifice was killed, they would be treated as if they were the incarnation of that god. They would live without ever needing to work and never suffering any inconvenience. However, in the end they would have to pay the bill for it all with their death.
“What’s that? Ancient... as te...?” Berta asked Yukinari with a mystified expression.
“Ah, nothing,” Yukinari said, shaking his head. “Just talking to myself.”
If he started talking about his “past world” here, he would have an aw
ful lot of other things he’d have to explain as well, including why he and Dasa were even on this aimless journey in the first place. That would be bad. Probably.
“Only...”
Something occurred to Yukinari, and he turned to the orphanage behind him. It was solidly built out of stone, and looked considerably better than the other buildings. However, upon much closer inspection, the building had no external decoration of any kind. Its appearance could be summed up with a single word: plain. To Yukinari, it almost looked like a prison.
“With the rituals of the ancient Aztecs and Incas, I heard that the sacrifices were allowed to have their own way all the time, until the very day they were to be killed...”
It was faint knowledge at the back of his mind, so he didn’t know how reliable it was. But he thought he remembered hearing that the future sacrifices to a god were often equated with that god, and the people served them with the utmost reverence until the fateful day arrived. Yes, it was an honor to be a sacrifice. Yukinari felt uncomfortable with the idea—it went against his values—but the sacrifices of the ancient Aztecs and Incas might actually have been glad to give their lives for it. But here...
“It’s more like—” Yukinari swallowed his next word back down. He couldn’t bring himself to say “livestock” in front of Berta.
“Yuki...?” Dasa looked up at Yukinari questioningly.
“It’s nothing,” Yukinari said, and smiled at her. Just then—
“Yukinari.”
Fiona and a few of the priests were walking towards them from the other side of the street.
Fiona and the others suggested to them that they all visit the “sanctuary.”
“To see for ourselves, Yukinari, whether you really did fell the erdgod.”
That was the pretext, at least. Yukinari had his doubts whether it was the actual reason. If they only wanted to find out whether the death of the erdgod was true or not, there was no need to make the three of them come as well. And certainly there was no point in having ten or so priests tag along.
That being said, he was starting to get sick of walking through town anyway, due to the townspeople constantly staring icily at Berta, so he decided to go along with Fiona’s proposal.
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 1 Page 8