Extra Story: Gangi Mari’s State of Mind

Extra Story:
Gangi Mari’s State of Mind

 

THE FIRST THING I learned when I arrived in this world was how to use potions.

You load a potion capsule into an applicator and press it against someone. When you do it right, it activates a magic circle carved inside the injector and releases the contents of the capsule. An applicator is one of the simpler magical artifacts. One of the selling points is that even people who aren’t skilled at magic can use it pretty easily.

But when I use one, it has a special effect: If someone gets hurt by a curse, I can make the injury fully heal.

Funny, that—in my old world, I was an ordinary schoolgirl, and in this world, I could do something like that out of nowhere. It was a shock, but it made me feel…special.

“What else would you expect from a holy maiden?” they’d say.

Or: “So the Goddess really did perform those miracles!”

Praise and praise and praise, until I started getting caught up in the hype myself.

The next thing I learned was how to fight. Healing cursed wounds is fine, I suppose, but this new world was not a kind one.

Monsters could appear anywhere, even inside the cathedral at Bulka. If you set one foot outside the town, you run straight into bandits and outlaws. If you don’t know how to protect yourself, you might just be biding your time before they kill you.

I decided to undergo the military training of holy warriors. I wanted to become an apprentice Templar of the Order, but I didn’t expect the training to be so hellish. It was worse than I could’ve imagined. To think, the only point of comparison I could draw on at the time was P.E. in junior high and high school. It was ten times more grueling and dangerous. No one actually died, but we were animals to the instructors. Several of my fellow initiates just ran off.

“The lot of you are a pack of apemen! You’re no better than the infidels, undeserving of the Goddess’s favor!”

The captain was a Templar. I’d thought she was a kind woman, but when training started, the mask dropped. She showed us no mercy. She didn’t care if the initiates were children of the nobility or related to great merchant households. How egalitarian.

Even I, recognized by the Order of Templars as a holy maiden, was another piece of meat to hammer into steel. She drove me just as hard as the rest, until I felt like I was going to puke up my own guts.

“What kind of divine protector are you, girl?! Or are you just a naked harlot someone dumped in the cathedral?!”

I thought I remembered watching a movie where a new army recruit got hazed like this, drilling day in and day out. “This is my rifle, there are many like it…”

But this was real life, and a harder world. They forced me to use my divine healing magic on the other initiates and then pushed us even harder.

It took a while, but this regular high school student shed that label. She acquired the physique and skills to fight as a Templar.

Next, I learned the art of magic.

Templars in the Order drill to train in divine healing magic. Once that was out of the way, I had the opportunity to study beginner-level magic.

I didn’t have the first clue about magic when I started. As far as I know, we don’t have anything like that in our world. I lagged behind the others in my class. But in the end, when Yoi came to the Order to study magic, she was kind enough to give me special education in the magical arts. Somehow, I managed to learn a small set of spells.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone learn magic and do it right the very first time!” Yoi said.

This world was pretty inconvenient—no electricity, no plumbing—but now magic would make things like boiling water and drying the laundry easier. Between that and my divine healing magic, I ended up better than anyone else in my class. I could heal any injury, any disease.

 

I learned a lot more than that, but the most troublesome subjects were probably reading and writing. After all, it’s impossible to really study if you can’t read. But I was determined to escape this cruel world, so I avidly studied all of it. Maybe then I’d learn something, anything useful from old texts. A way out.

Later on, when I came to terms with spending the rest of my life here, I had to learn the customs of this world. The behavior of a gentleman. The particular flavor of “Proper Lady” imposed in this culture. These people were even more stratified than mine—in addition to average citizens, we had royalty, nobility, and slaves, and each social class cultivated their own subclasses and particular etiquette. I sought out every one of those rules. The holy maiden could not embarrass herself.

A Tired Nobody to the Holy Maiden: “You saved my son’s life, your holiness! Truly, I cannot thank you enough!”

The Glorious Maiden to her Overworked Follower: “You should save your thanks for the Goddess, not me. The Goddess does not abandon those with faith in their hearts.”

“Thank you,” he et cetera et cetera’d. “You are the Goddess reborn in the flesh!”

If I acted pompous when people thanked me, it would only disillusion the Goddess’s followers. Every time I used my healing magic, I told people that they had been saved by the Goddess’s compassion.

That was the idea, anyway…

 

“What you’re doing, Mari, is what they call ‘sending mixed signals.’”

“Wh-what do you mean? I’m not trying to be that way,” I would insist.

Or I might say something like: “Nothing’s forcing them to thank me! I’m just doing my duty as a saint of the Goddess!”

Today, it was: “Are you making fun of me?”

“Huh? Far from it! We’re comrades, aren’t we? United against violence!” A naked man with a sly grin stood before me, dust cloth in hand. He had a teasing manner.

“Shut up. A slave teasing someone like me is a crime!”

I threw the bundle of papers in my hand and was gratified to see them hit the naked man square in the face. I suppose I had learned how to use thrown weapons in my military training. Seeing the look on his punchable little face made it allll worth it.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I simpered. “Do you want me to call an ambulance for those deadly sheets of paper?”

“It was a papercut to the heart. My own comrade, betraying me…!”

“Why are you like this?!”

We were in the mansion I shared with Yoi within the walled town of Bulka. We had a large drawing room, bedroom, library, and workshop. There was also a spacious dining room and a parlor, both of which I kept ready for any high-ranking guests I needed to schmooze. But it was probably a little big for just me and Yoi.

“Is it my lot to suffer in life, now that I’m your slave?” he moped.

I answered the question he was actually asking. “When I bought this mansion, we were still adventurers going out on jobs. We managed to afford this place by pooling our money, but never had enough to hire a servant.”

“So how did you keep the place clean before I got here?”

“At first, Yoi and I took care of it. Later on, some friends helped out.”

“Friends? Do you mean people from the Order of Templars?” he asked as he handed my papers back to me.

This was Shooter, the Buck-Naked Dweeb. My partner, Yoi, bought him for eighteen gold pieces. He asked me all kinds of questions as he polished the floor of the workshop Yoi and I shared. He was like me: some stranger from another world. I guess that’s why he was so interested in learning what I went through when I first came to this one.

“That’s right,” I said. “After I came to this world, I shared a room at the Order with them for a while. I’ve known them a long time.”

“I’m jealous. I shared a room with chickens.”

“You got spit out in the forest. That’s just bad luck, nothing more,” I said, offering words of sympathy.

He let out a long sigh, clearly agreeing with my assessment, and returned to polishing the floor. “But now you have enough money to hire a servant, right? So why haven’t you?”

“We had a goblin manservant come two or three times a month. But we’re always out on adventures and the mansion is empty a lot, so it doesn’t really get all that dirty.”

“Oh?”

“We started cleaning it ourselves recently, because we were going to buy a slave that would be useful in attacking a dungeon.”

“I wouldn’t call having a slave do your cleaning ‘doing it yourselves’…”

“I’m cleaning, too, aren’t I?!” I shot back at the slave. Yoi had bought such a complainer.

“Oh really? You haven’t lifted a finger this whole time we’ve been talking, have you?” he pointed out.

“Hmph.” I realized he was right. I’d been so focused on stories of my past that I completely stopped cleaning up the equipment for my experiments.

 

This world had people called patron saints of the Goddess. Thirteen people had been recognized as saints in the past, and now I was the illustrious fourteenth. They called us patron saints, apostles, and all kinds of other titles. And if the scriptures and texts were true…every single one of us was transported from another world. Buck. Naked.

Depending on their powers, the saints protected believers from violent threats or enriched the land with their discoveries. They were fonts of knowledge—sages, you might say. Following in their footsteps, I was the greatest known practitioner of divine healing magic. Even if a person lost a limb, I could restore it perfectly. It took a high level of skill in healing to do that, so they said, and I didn’t know of anyone else on the frontier who could manage it.

As long as a person still had the will to live, I could restore them to health, even from critical condition. It’s a bit interesting to live a life where you can cut through cancer with a thought.

The trade-off was that the rest of my abilities were completely average. Compared to Yoi, I was nothing special at all with elemental magic, and combat? Shooter was way, way better than me in that department. No doubt if he had been taken in by the Order of Templars, he would have been recognized as a patron saint, too.

I wonder what his holy power would have been.

But he had left a wife back in a village on the outskirts of Apegut and now he was enslaved. With this world’s prejudices, I wondered if he would ever be recognized as a saint now. Shooter was planning to go back to his village with his partner Nishka soon, and…come now, obviously running into this man was a complete coincidence, not the will of the Goddess, right?

Then again, what if Yoi hadn’t bought him from the slave traders? I probably would have never met Shooter, another stranger from another world. A person from Japan. From home.

I don’t know if the Goddess really exists. The ancient texts say that people really have received divine revelations, but I’ve never experienced that. The Goddess’s followers believe that my divine healing magic is proof of her existence. If afflictions that are normally incurable are healed by my hands, against all the rules of nature, then…

Well. I once asked the archbishop of Bulka’s cathedral: “Have you ever personally felt the presence of the Goddess?”

“Ha. An interesting question.” He folded his hands contemplatively. “Perhaps my faith or practice is lacking, because I might claim to have felt it or claim to have never felt it and both statements would be true.”

The archbishop was in the third tier of ranks within the Order of Templars. I was in the second tier, but that was only because I was a holy maiden. He was much hungrier for trials and meritorious deeds than me.

“What does that mean? Is that some kind of koan?”

“A…cone? A…round pyramid? No, it’s…I’m sorry, I’m a little confused.”

I knew from the holy texts that pretty much none of the thirteen previous apostles had actually experienced the presence of the Goddess. Oh, but she was “present in the hearts of her followers.” It’s always that, isn’t it?

I suppose the one concrete difference from the world we came from was that here, people definitely witnessed “miracles from the Goddess” in person. But, well, the miracles only occurred to priests of the various holy orders who worshipped her, so maybe it was linked to how strongly a person believed.

 

I was cooking in the kitchen while Shooter stood behind me, once again pestering me with questions.

“But if someone loses their entire arm, there’s no way you can fix that, right?” he asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous. If someone gets hurt and loses their arm, it might take several years, but it’s easy enough to grow it back.”

“‘Grow it back’? What a way to phrase it…”

Yoi had bought him to be a slave, but I insisted on doing the cooking. The girl was a genius—by the time she was five years old, she had acquired knowledge and developed magic to rival any adult—but she had no idea how to cook. Being raised in a noble family, servants had always cooked for her.

When I’d been a carefree high school student, I was able to use a rice cooker and make some simple meals, but that was it. Shooter, meanwhile, had lived on his own, floating from one job to another. I wondered if that meant he actually might be good at cooking.

“Would you like me to chop your head off and see whether my magic can bring you back to life?” I asked.

Shooter winced and took a couple steps back. “Hey, that’s not as funny as you think when you’re holding a knife.”

“I’m not even pointing it at you. Don’t freak out.” I paused. “But I’ve never actually tried doing that, come to think of it…”

“W-well, of course not! Just, please, keep your experiments limited to animals, if you don’t mind.”

I once read a medical text about divine healing magic that included a method for resurrecting the dead. No records remained of anyone actually doing it, and apparently experiments on dead animals had never been very successful. Even with access to the Goddess’s miracles, I probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off.

This fantasy world was not kind. You had to value your own life.

“My healing magic isn’t all-powerful, you know,” I blurted out. Ugh, why.

“I guess not. If all-powerful magic existed, anyone who used it would basically be a god.” Shooter gave me a long look. No trace of the sardonic. It was…gentle. “Have you ever not been able to save someone?”

“Once. Twice. Maybe a few more.”

Shooter nodded silently.

Even if those people had lived, my magic wouldn’t have been able to heal the wounds in their hearts. Magic could’ve helped. It still wouldn’t have been enough.

Shooter laid a hand on my shoulder as I cooked, moving robotically. You can shake off memories with movement. I say that to myself sometimes. He looked at me silently.

“Wh-what?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking, you must have been through so much, Mari.”

That knowing, punchable look on his face…

“Could I be alone for a little while?” I muttered.

“Yep. Just call me when the food is ready. I’ll go fold laundry in the meantime.”

“All right.”

He smiled at me as if nothing unusual had happened and went out to the living room.

 

***

 

At first, I didn’t trust this slave named “Yoshida Shuta” that Yoi had bought. His smile was flippant and his manner was that of a slacker, a cheat, a trickster. And sure, I could tell right away that he was Japanese. But knowing that just made things worse.

By the standards of the Order of Templars, he would have been one of the patron saints. Doctrine teaches that someone transported from the realm of the Goddess is able to embody miraculous powers.

Yes, he knew karate and yes, he was an accomplished martial artist, but that’s hardly a miraculous power from the Goddess. I wondered if maybe just being from a different world wasn’t enough. Perhaps you had to get dropped somewhere with a religious affiliation to be granted the powers of a patron saint. Which would mean Shooter was just a regular person.

But if that were true…I’d learned a lot since being flung into this cruel fantasy world, and yet it still enraged me to hear him talking about how he had just gotten married, how he’d performed feat after feat of incredible combat.

I don’t know when I changed my mind about him.

When he challenged me in the middle of our camp in the dungeon, I still expected him to get violent with me, like a giant apeman.

“Let’s make a bet: if I lose, I’ll do anything you say from now on, and I won’t ask to be treated as your equal. I’ll be your slave along with Miss Yoi’s.”

I took the bait because I was overconfident. I had the miraculous power of the Goddess behind me. I had undergone the training of a holy warrior and become a Templar. After all the work I had done, I didn’t believe I could lose. I didn’t bother to picture what might happen if Shooter won.

But then, I lost.

I waited, heart pounding, to hear what he would demand of me.

“We’re equals from now on,” he said. “Two members of the same party. Sound good?”

He never demanded anything else.

At the time, I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind to make him ask such a thing. So when I asked him what he was planning to do, I didn’t expect his answer.

“The last-ditch option human beings have is communication. The more we learn about each other, the stronger the bonds between us become.”

“You’re not making any sense.” Why did he always wear that dopey smile of his, even as Yoi ordered him around as her slave? Even then?

His attitude never failed to irk me, and yet there was no one more dependable when battle erupted.

Back in that crumbling dungeon, when we faced off against the basilisk that appeared out of nowhere, he leapt into battle so calmly, without even a thought of surrender. He said he had fought a wyvern, so maybe Shooter had been through more than I thought. Bit by bit, I started to look at him differently.

In that moment, there was barely enough time for him to toss me a spare weapon. But he did, and it saved my life.

“You’re amazing! I really got lucky when I bought you!” Yoi gushed. She was a short distance away, but she was so overjoyed. That didn’t sit well with me, either.

And yet, through the anger and distrust, I suppose deep down I was actually grateful. Alone, Yoi and I probably wouldn’t have been able to take down the basilisk. And yet the words “thank you” were so difficult to say.

“Huh? What’s wrong, Mari? Is there something on my face?”

“I-It’s nothing,” I snarled. “I just can’t stand that stupid look on your face!”

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say. I was born this way!”

I had insulted him for no reason, but Shooter just replied with a laugh.

Even at that moment, I had trouble trusting him. He patted Yoi on the head and moved deeper into the dungeon. As I watched him walk away, I took a deep breath and thought of one thing I could thank him for.

“I-It was pretty useful having a warrior for a slave back there,” I muttered. “I j-just wanted to say thanks.”

“Well, of course. We’re all one party, after all!”

There was nothing endearing in what I said, but Shooter played it off jokingly. Like it was all in good fun, like he was on everybody’s side. So irritating. Why did it make me smile?

Ah. That was probably when it happened, when I revised my opinion of Shooter and started to trust him.

I hadn’t understood what he meant by “the last-ditch option human beings have available to them is communication.” But I did know what “the more we learn about each other, the stronger the bonds between us become” meant.

When I went through the holy warrior training, the other initiates and I fought with each other constantly. We were completely out of sync. But as we went through training exercises again and again and again, we began to consider one another as allies. Even the infuriating ones, and there were many. I could tell stories.

Once we decided to stop insisting on getting our own way, things became easier.

I considered that idea, remembered that moment, and understood a little. Shooter’s flippant little smile was his unique way of building bridges.

So fine. I’ll admit it. I dropped my guard a little.

 

Once we finished hunting the first basilisk, I asked my partner, in passing, what she thought of this man. This was when we were getting ready for the rematch and inspecting our adventuring equipment.

“I think Mr. Slave was a real bargain!”

“Hm. Is that so?”

“He’s so big and strong, and I know he’s kind of gross because all he does is stare at your big ol’ bottom, but he sure does come in handy.”

That was how Yoi saw him. I knew that he was always ogling me, but I hadn’t realized he was checking out my butt. Ugh, just as I was starting to relax my guard, I had to deal with that.

“You make me sick!” I snapped once. “You can’t use magic, you can’t even read, and now you choose to show off that gross—guh, that thing in front of us! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me. It’s a natural biological function. I can’t do anything about it. Unless you’re, uh, offering to help me let off some steam? Heh.”

“How about you die?! Hell always needs some steam!” Ugh, if Shooter liked butts so much, how about he grope his own?

I kicked him—hard—and Shooter yelped like a confused little puppy.

I glared at him, looked for a familiar anger, and…didn’t feel it as much as I used to, even though I’d let my guard down and he’d responded by being a huge, dumb ass. I ended up feeling even more fed up with his shit.

Unfortunately, Yoi saw the whole thing. Then she asked me about it. “Did something happen, Ganjamary?”

“N-no, nothing happened! Don’t worry about it!”

“That’s the truth?”

“Nothing happened, really…” I muttered. “But see, that’s the problem. I was ready for him to do something to me, but nothing happened.” He wasn’t who I thought he was. I didn’t know what to do with that.

And he’d wagered that if we dueled and he lost, he would obey us without question. I couldn’t tell Yoi that he had made that promise and then we’d fought each other while she was asleep. That was why my hasty explanation confused her. She cocked her head to one side curiously.

“I thought he was the just the worst kind of guy, and I was going to treat him that way… but then he has the nerve to be nice! Ugh, now I don’t know what to think!”

Yoi looked confused, but she kept coming after me with shrewd questions. “Tell me—do you like him or hate him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a slave! You can’t like a slave and you can’t hate a slave, so…neither! I’ll admit he’s a bit more of a gentleman than I thought, but he put the bar so low already. I mean, he’s buck naked!”

Even I didn’t really understand what I was trying to say.

Wouldn’t a naked gentleman just be a degenerate? His parts stuck straight out in the morning and he was always checking out girls’ butts…but …

A wry smile crept over my lips as I explained the problem to my tiny partner, choosing my words carefully.

But then all of a sudden, Yoi beamed brightly as if she’d just had a realization. “I’m so glad you and Mr. Slave learned to get along! I didn’t even notice. I hope the three of us can keep on adventuring together! I’m smart, so I know that if you two get married, we can stay together forever!”

Argh. Okay, she was a kid, and kids say all kinds of stuff, but did she really need to say something like that?

She was pointing at her slave’s butt, grinning as if she’d had the most wonderful idea ever.

I quickly covered Yoi’s mouth with one hand and quietly hissed, “He’s got a wife back home in the sticks. That is never going to happen…got it?”

“Mmph—but, Ganjamary! I thought the law says he can have as many wives as he wants.”

“That’s not the issue here! The more wives someone has, the more tax they have to pay too! How is a slave like him going to pay taxes?”

“You could pay the taxes for him.”

In the midst of this ridiculous discussion, Shooter turned around with a curious look on his face.

Oh no, how much had he heard?

At least Nishka the Scalesplitter wasn’t there with us. She was from a tribe of long-eared steppe barbarians and a hunter to boot, so her ears would have been keen enough to catch everything.

But looking at Shooter, I was pretty sure he hadn’t heard us. He had the same goofy expression as ever and an empty-headed grin, so maybe everything was fine.

He’d only been in this new world a few months and had already landed himself a wife, so who knew—if he overheard us, he might get overconfident and try to propose to me.

I figured I should give him a good, angry kick just in case. “What’re you lookin’ at?! You want another one?!”

“Yeowch! No, one was enough! Please, save me, Miss Yoi!”

 

***

 

That was the man who returned with Nishka to their village in Apegut Forest, leading a caravan of settlers. Yoi was sad to see them go, but she still agreed to Shooter’s suggestion to work as adventurers in his village.

Once we took care of our prior obligation in town, we could sell the mansion and head out to the settlement in Apegut. But first we had to deal with the issue before us.

“So that group of ogres came from the north?” I asked. I sat in my workshop, brightly lit by sunlight coming through the window.

A Templar woman sat in a guest chair beside the window, watching me as she replied. “That was the conclusion reached by the joint investigation between the Order of Templars and the adventurer’s guild, anyway. Here’s the report.”

“Thanks, Pyne.”

Her name was Robart-Pynelyne. She was the woman who’d been my roommate in all the stories I told Shooter. Her cheerful smile never left her face, but she was the most formidable lance wielder in the Order of Templars. Those of us who worked with her fondly referred to her as “Pyne.”

I accepted the papers from her and Pyne continued. “As of right now, we have about two thousand decapitated ogre heads total. This is without question the greatest onslaught in recent memory. The experts suspect this is more than a few small tribes filtering down from the north. They believe that something has caused a mass migration.”

“Something causing a mass migration…” I echoed, rifling through the stack of papers.

When we encountered the ogres on our way to hunt the basilisks, we thought they were related to the appearance of those basilisks. But as far as I could tell from scanning the report, something else was driving the ogres to start moving in such large numbers.

“Colonel Cleef,” I said. “What are his thoughts?”

“He wants us to keep working with the adventurer’s guild to find out exactly what’s causing this. If there’s something in the northlands scaring the ogres away, they might start moving in even greater numbers. And if that happens, the Order will have to send out an expeditionary force.”

I raised my eyes from the report to give Pyne a long, careful look. If the Order did form an expeditionary force, the Templars scattered throughout the lands would gather in Bulka and be sent forth. Considering what was at stake, the expression on her face was oddly placid.

Pyne spread out the map she’d brought with her. She pointed at the villages along the northern border, her finger jumping like a skipping stone from one to the next. “The Bulka adventurer’s guild has dispatched search parties to villages here, here, and over here. But as of now, we haven’t received any follow-up reports of new ogre incursions.”

“There are no immediate plans to send a large expedition north, then.”

“That’s right. You’re looking pretty calm, though. No plans any time soon, Ganjamary?”

“I have something in the works. But if they do end up sending an expedition, maybe I should let him know…” I mumbled, lost in thought.

Pyne was a keen listener, though. She perked up and craned her neck toward me. “Ah, is that the matter you reported to Colonel Cleef? You and little Yoi planning to move to the Apegut settlement in the next few days?”

“S-so what if we are? Scrape that look off your face, would you?”

She snorted. “I look the way I always look.”

“Then look: he’s from the same world as me. As a member of the Order of Templars, I should keep him under watch. It’s part of my duty as holy maiden. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Oh no, no problem at all.”

The more I tried to justify it, the more it felt like Pyne was misunderstanding me. Her smile kept getting bigger and goofier, and since I already felt incredibly awkward, I just drooped my head in embarrassment. Nothing I said could convince her. Come on, hardly anyone in the Order got involved in love affairs. Any other Templar would have reacted the same way!

Pyne looked down at the map and once she located the Apegut settlement, I saw understanding dawn on her face.

“Ah, I see. So that’s where Apegut village is. If this gentleman was led to this world by the Goddess’s intervention like you were, he would also be a patron saint. We shouldn’t lose track of him.”

She had seen Shooter when we exposed the nefarious slave trader Lutbayasky Nupchsay Nupchakan, so she was at least somewhat familiar with him.

“Are you recommending that he be brought to the Order of Templars?” Pyne asked.

“Not yet.”

“Ha! Too bad! Once Colonel Cleef hears about this, I’ve no doubt he’ll want us to bring the gentleman in and put him under our protection!”

“No, Shooter has a family in Apegut. The colonel wouldn’t get very far trying to convince him to leave.” Still, hearing someone else say that the slave Yoi had bought completely randomly was actually a patron saint struck me as funnier than I’d expected. I broke into a huge smile.

“Heh.”

“What’s up, Ganjamary?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Ahem!” I regained my composure and looked back at Pyne. She straightened up. “I’ll send a report to Colonel Cleef in the next few days. The man is a newlywed. He’s finally been released from Yoi’s service and gone back to his village. I don’t feel right calling him back here so soon.”

“In that case, there’s no need to discuss the matter any further.” And just like that, Pyne backed off. Not that she wasn’t still smiling. “You’re going to Apegut to become his second wife, aren’t you? You don’t want me to concern myself with it because you’re going to, uh, ‘teach’ him about patron saints and ‘take him into the fold’ yourself. I see!” She was very, very good at winking. Maybe it was the dimples.

“Why would I do that? Of course that’s not my plan!”

“I’ll drop the hint to Colonel Cleef. I tooooootally get it!”

“You don’t get it at all, actually! Hold on!” First Yoi saying this kinda stuff, and now her. Yoi had an excuse, at least—she was just a kid!

Pyne left my workshop, giving me one last meaningful look. I watched her go. The only sound in the room was the potion reagent I was studying, bubbling away in its flask.

I was totally deflated, at a loss for words at the sudden turn our conversation had taken.

Shooter must’ve been just getting back to his village about now, joyfully reuniting with his wife. I had thoughts on the situation. A lot of them hinged on how there were only a scant few of us who’d been transported here from the same world.

I…would pray to the Goddess for him, that he could spend at least a few more days in peace in this cruel world.

“I pray that he be granted happiness…”

Murmuring this prayer in a low voice, I leaned on my worktable, propping my chin in my hands, and watched my potion brew.