...

The young woman spoke sternly, almost as if she were ordering them. Turning on her heel, she walked back the way she came. The elderly priest, and the other priests too, rushed to follow after her.

“What is the deputy mayor thinking?”

“That man murdered our erdgod... Surely she isn’t going to—”

The priests whispered to each other.

There was no sign that Yukinari’s group was going to be welcomed, but even if they did reach the market, judging by how the townspeople just now had acted, it was hard to imagine that their shopping trip would go smoothly. Doing as she said was probably the safest move for now.

Yukinari and Dasa looked at each other. They did what they could to encourage Berta, and the three of them followed the girl.

●

As she invited the three of them into the mansion—the young man who called himself Yukinari, his partner, and the shrine maiden girl—Fiona’s mind raced. What in the world was Yukinari? It seemed beyond doubt that he had defeated the erdgod... but just as the high priest had said, it was inconceivable that an ordinary human could defeat one.

Erdgods and demigods originated from animals, but by living so long and being provided with intelligence, they broke out of that zoological category. In terms of their powers, they surpassed even humans, and it was for that reason that they were called gods. An erdgod was simply a demigod that had put down roots in a particular area, but once it absorbed the land’s energy, it became much tougher than it had even been as a demigod. It would no longer die of old age, and whether cut by a sword or stabbed by a spear, it could scarcely be injured at all, let alone dealt a fatal wound.

If anything could defeat an erdgod in a one-on-one battle, it would have to be another demigod. And in fact, although it was a rare occurrence, such a “changing of the erdgod” was known to be possible. The Schillings family records showed that in the past three hundred and some years, there had been two—just two—recorded instances in which a demigod had attacked an erdgod, killed it, and become an erdgod itself. Which meant only one thing—

That Yukinari boy must be either a demigod or something of equal measure...

Not even Fiona, who had enriched her knowledge in the capital, had ever heard of a demigod taking the form of a person. However, humans and animals were both living creatures. Considering this, the idea that a human being could also, for some reason, live a very long time, and so become a demigod, was impossible to rule out entirely.

In any event, Yukinari was something equal to a god. Not only could he evidently speak human language, but his morals were close to a human’s and he could talk rationally, unlike other demigods. At the very least, he didn’t seem to have laid a single hand on Berta, who had been offered as a sacrifice. Did this mean that it would be possible to negotiate with Yukinari in a way other than by offering sacrifices?

After walking down the corridor for a while, Fiona opened the door to the drawing room. “Please, go on in. Sorry about the mess.”

“Thank you.”

“Like...wise.”

Yukinari and Dasa went in first, then Berta, then the high priest and the other priests. Once everyone had entered, Fiona closed the door and offered chairs to Yukinari and his two companions.

The reason that she offered chairs to them first, rather than the priests or the high priest, was because her highest priority for the time being was to not upset Yukinari. Yukinari likely had power comparable to an erdgod, and if so, it would be no trouble at all for him to kill every one of the people in this place if he felt like it. It was not without reason that the priests had been opposed to inviting them to the Schillings residence.

However, if she had left Yukinari’s group there, it would most definitely have developed into some kind of trouble. And the likely result would be citizens dying. As the deputy mayor, she could not allow that to happen, even if it meant inviting a monster into her very own house.

“First things first,” Fiona said, as she seated herself opposite Yukinari and the others. “I want to hear it from you directly. Yukinari, you killed the erdgod, correct?”

“Sure did,” he said, nodding honestly. Some of the priests who hadn’t been informed of the situation gave short groans, but now wasn’t the time to be paying attention to them.

“I see. Honestly speaking, I am quite relieved that the one who killed the previous erdgod is someone like you, who I can reason with. Because if an unpleasant successor were to come, it really would threaten the town’s survival.”

“It sounds like you’re another one who thinks of me as some erdgod or demigod or something.” Yukinari briefly sighed again. “I’m nothing like that. I’m human.”

“But you killed an erdgod,” Fiona said, looking directly into Yukinari’s eyes. “Killing an erdgod is beyond the ability of one person. It would be impossible for even the most skilled soldier to kill one of those things one-on-one. How did you do it?”

“This.”

Yukinari removed the piece of equipment—most likely a weapon—he’d been carrying on his back and showed it to Fiona. It had a bulky mounting, but otherwise, it looked like nothing other than an ordinary sword. Or maybe that mounting had something to it? It did sort of look like it had a complicated structure.

“This weapon’s a little bit special. You can think of it as a kind of magic, if that helps.”

“Magic, you say...”

Fiona had heard stories about people who had unraveled the knowledge hidden in all things, and used it to make inexplicable things happen. In the capital, the True Church of Harris conducted regular inquisitions; it seemed people were being burned at the stake as a result. But most of those who claimed to be able to use magic were just frauds. Even if a real magic-user did exist, it would probably be difficult to distinguish them from the fakes.

“It’s not like that thing was an indestructible monster or anything, right?”

“No, not theoretically,” Fiona answered.

“Theory or not, you guys know they can be killed, right? Why do you put out sacrifices?”

In a sense, this was an extremely legitimate question. However, it was also the kind of question asked by someone who had lived in a blessed land. This boy was unaware that there were people who wanted the protection of an erdgod even if it meant offering sacrifices—people who lived in a land where, without that protection, they were in constant danger of starving to death.

Sighing, Fiona explained. “There are all kinds of erdgods. Some are even mild-mannered, although that’s extremely rare. Conversely, some are desperately cruel. You’re right that they’re not immortal, but virtually no ordinary human being can defeat one. It’s impossible with any normal weapon. The only thing that just barely works is a fully armed group of warriors, or otherwise, the Missionary Order of the True Church of Harris.” And neither of those were here in Friedland.

Fiona didn’t miss the subtle twitch in Yukinari and Dasa’s expressions. They had probably reacted to “True Church of Harris.” Maybe they had some connection to it? It was said that there were many clever people—so-called wise men—in the Church. Perhaps Yukinari’s weapon had been made by the Church. That would at least make some sense...

Yukinari scratched his cheek. “Well... Look,” he said cheerfully, as if to dodge some kind of question that hadn’t been asked. “The point is, the erdgod’s dead. There’s no need to offer up any more sacrifices. That’s a great thing, right?”

The priests, who were standing against the wall, stirred. Fiona and the high priest glanced their way and sent them looks that held them in check.

“We’ve been sleeping rough for a while now,” Yukinari said, glancing at Dasa. “We were just hoping we could find somewhere around here to stay, but... yeah, some people are pretty mad with us. I get that. We’ll leave town right away.”

In contrast to Yukinari, his silver-haired partner did not look very tough. A journey like that, which forced her to sleep outside for nights on end, would be extremely exhausting.

“That won’t do,” Fiona said to Yukinari as he started to get up. “We need you to stay in this land for the foreseeable future.”

“What? Why—”

“We were receiving the erdgod’s guardianship in exchange for offering it sacrifices. But now that that arrangement has collapsed, other demigods will gather, vying for the position of erdgod.”

It was like an animal’s territory. If there was an erdgod here, other demigods would not dare to approach unless they were significantly stronger. The fact that erdgods warded off other demigods was another reason they were deified by humans.

“So... your town’s in danger and you want us to protect you or something?”

“No,” Fiona said, shaking her head. “You’re the one they’ll be after.”

“What? Why—”

“Nature dictates that the one who has the right to become the next erdgod is the demigod that killed the previous erdgod. But you haven’t settled in this land. You have left a ‘vacancy,’ and demigods will gather in the hope of claiming it. However, if they find the one who killed the predecessor there... I imagine they will try to kill you first.”

Yukinari frowned and fell silent. Of course, if he decided to take the coward’s way out and flee the area, the demigods would probably start fighting over the ‘vacancy’ among themselves and not pursue him. But...

“And of course, as I said earlier, if an unpleasant demigod becomes an erdgod, it will be a matter of life or death for us. The fate of our town hangs in the balance.”

It was usual for an erdgod to ask for a sacrifice once every two or three years, but if it was an unusually “gluttonous” one, it might request a yearly sacrifice. Some erdgods were said to request two, three, or even far more people at once.

“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?”