Bonus Story: From the Notes of a Certain Priest

Bonus Story:
From the Notes of a Certain Priest

 

LAPIS HERE. The other day, I coincidently ran into a friend in town and told them, “I’m a perfectly normal demon, aren’t I?” Then guess what they did. They looked at me with pity and snorted.

It was mildly irritating, but that look must have come from their failing eyesight. Yes, of course. I sent them some incredibly effective eye drops, along with a letter that placed a serious curse on whoever opened it. We’re all demons here, so no one’s going to die. Probably.

There’s a surprising number of us mixed into human society, going completely unnoticed. We’re so good-looking and friendly, so why are we so hated? I posed this question to the open air, and Mr. Loren, who just so happened to be passing by, answered, “It’s probably your personality.”

That was a bit discouraging.

 

Incidentally, about my partner, Mr. Loren. His success rate as an adventurer seems to be on a downward spiral, so I was thinking I needed to do something for him. It’s not like there weren’t any adequate quests, but rather than having him complete one of those, I thought I ought to teach him the joys of being an adventurer. This was, without a doubt, out of the kindness of my heart.

The idea that came to me was to put him to work without taking a formal job. That way, there would be no risk of failure—indeed, success was the only option. What’s more, since it wasn’t a quest, there wouldn’t be any interlopers mixed in, and we’d be all alone together.

That’s certainly what you call killing two birds with one stone.

At least, that’s what I thought, but someone attacked the rest town we were supposed to stop at. Is that bad luck? Were we born under the wrong star? It was a small town, but everything had been taken and everyone had been slaughtered—that must have required quite a few people to accomplish.

According to Mr. Loren, it would have taken at least two hundred, and he guessed that they were mercenaries who had turned bandit. That made them incredibly dangerous.

I thought we should get rid of them wholesale before they caused any more trouble, and while I was anxious about our own manpower, Mr. Loren came forth with a certain confession. The daughter of a city chancellor we’d failed to save on another quest, who had been turned into an undead by a certain someone, had borrowed some space in Mr. Loren’s astral body, and she could still make use of her powers.

We had practically won at that point. It didn’t matter how many hundreds of bandits there were. If we could use the powers of the Lifeless King without a care about who was watching, then as long as we could cut down the first few, the rest could be left to the low- to mid-ranking undead.

The scary thing about the undead is how death begets death, and those new deaths will bring about more like a contagion. May those bandits feel the weight of stealing our beds and dinner in hell.

Incidentally, the undead could also be counted on to kill every living thing they came across—which meant no witnesses. After that, we just had to feign ignorance on the matter. The only downside to the undead is that we can’t always rely on them. What a problem.

 

We managed to devastate the bandits, but our joyous looting led us to a bit of trouble—an elf child. I had Mr. Loren check properly, and it was a boy.

(You can’t expect me to check the sex of someone I’ve just met. I’m a maiden, after all.)

His name was Feuille, apparently, and a few misunderstandings led to me stepping on him. From what I heard during Loren’s patient questioning session, he was a victim of one of those hackneyed kidnapping plots.

Feuille hailed from the same Black Forest we were headed to anyway, so it only made sense to return him there. Still, I was well aware that elves are hardheaded, despite being so frail. I hoped he didn’t misunderstand and attack us. Oh, I need to keep this a secret from Nym.

Something good happened at the inn, by the way. When we led Mr. Feuille around, the owner mistook us for a family. He seemed to be quite the discerning man, so I secretly prayed for his business to flourish. I’m sure that the god of knowledge has some good finance tips in his needlessly expansive pool of information.

Of course, Mr. Loren immediately denied the family thing. He sure is stubborn, good grief.

 

We took Mr. Feuille back to his settlement, but there was something clearly off about the Black Forest. Strangest of all was a pack of Forest Wolves we came across. They don’t usually form packs so big, and they aren’t usually so tenacious.

Perhaps Mr. Feuille and I looked especially delicious, but those wolves didn’t back down when burned or cut, and they had a strange air about them.

The oddities didn’t end there. While we walked through the forest the next day, we were met with scene upon scene that made me question if we had wandered into hell. They were sights that made me believe the elves residing in such a place had to be absolute degenerates to enjoy living there, but according to Mr. Feuille, that was not how the forest as he remembered it being.

I’m actually a little impressed. It seems trouble follows Mr. Loren wherever he goes.

The most valuable player here had to be Ms. Scena—the Lifeless King. That energy drain ability she deployed was able to kill any bugs and small animals almost instantly, and she could even suck the bigger animals dry without much difficulty.

The perfect bug repellent. Truly, what a profit we could turn if we could arrange for one Lifeless King in every household. As expected of the highest form of undead.

We proceeded with Ms. Scena’s assistance, but once we arrived at Mr. Feuille’s settlement, there was something odd there as well. The settlement was an empty shell, and the lone survivor was being attacked by fairies for some reason.

They attacked us too, and we still had no idea what was happening. Ms. Scena’s power proved useful yet again. They really are amazing, those Lifeless Kings. They’re usually walking calamities, but you really couldn’t find yourself a more reliable ally.

Nevertheless, the only mental image I had of fairies was of them fluttering around flowery meadows like they do in fairy tales. The bloodstained variety will probably come up in my nightmares. I pray I don’t see such horrid dreams, but if I do, I’ll have Mr. Loren comfort me.

 

Mr. Feuille’s settlement seemed utterly devastated, but according to him, they had an emergency evacuation point. We encountered another fairy attack as we were searching for a way to find it.

It was quite the horrific spectacle to see fairies burst out of elf corpses, but it was even more terrifying to be chased down by them. Though I could have, I didn’t burn them down with the forest. I’m certainly a demon, which makes me better at magic than humans, but I gravitate toward fire and lightning spells, and I haven’t really learned any plain ones.

As for how you run away from countless fairies, common sense would dictate jumping into the water. It’s a simple method that works on bees as well. Of course, it only works when there’s a deep enough body of water nearby, and as luck would have it for us, there was: a beautiful lake with lovely clear water.

I’ve heard that fish can’t live in water when it’s too clean, which meant there was little risk of us being attacked underwater. We all happily took the dive.

Incidentally, I am a capable demon, so I properly deployed a spell to breathe underwater, but Mr. Loren didn’t notice at first. He was probably desperately holding his breath until Ms. Scena told him. How cute.

 

In the water, we met a fairy who had maintained her sanity. Her name was Ms. Cornet. As we listened to her story, I had to strip off my wet clothing, and Mr. Loren saw this and that, but it didn’t really bother me. In fact, I thought he would get more of an eyeful, but he turned bright red and looked away and said he wasn’t fond of shameless women, so I couldn’t even tease him about it.

According to Ms. Cornet, the chieftain of the fairies went crazy after picking up a certain item, then went around killing and eating elves. We asked what that item was, and the description bore a close resemblance to something we had seen before.

That item was the most likely cause of the madness.

I wanted to cure him if I could, but unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any effective means to so, and the chieftain couldn’t be left to his own devices. We had no choice but to kill him.

 

We left Mr. Feuille with Ms. Cornet and used Ms. Cornet’s help to reach the chieftain, but by then, the chieftain wasn’t even recognizable as a fairy.

How should I put this? He looked like no more than a lump of flesh. Perhaps because Mr. Loren recognized that killing the chieftain would be for his own good, he got right to attacking. But the chieftain could still use magic, as it turned out, and fairies were born from any parts cut off of him. He was a troublesome foe.

What’s more, according to Loren, the chief’s life force tasted too terrible for Scena to use her energy drain.

I tried using a priestly blessing, but before the chieftain’s giant mass, even the powers of a devout believer were far from enough to deal a decisive blow. This was no laughing matter.

We cycled through our options until finally, the chieftain recognized us as food. As a means of recovering from what seemed like a standstill, I initiated Mr. Loren into the traditional demon art of self-reinforcement.

This way, he would be able to raise his combat abilities without having to collapse every time he did so, and all that remained was to carve the chief to pieces.

It was at that point that something strange emerged from a hole Mr. Loren had cut open: a woman’s arm.

None of us knew what was going on as Mr. Loren took the hand and pulled out a naked woman. She was, drumroll please, the dark god with authority over gluttony, a Ms. Gula Gluttonia. Don’t get me wrong, I knew from the moment Ms. Cornet mentioned the item that drove the chieftain mad that a dark god was probably involved. I just hadn’t expected her to be fused with him.

The dark god said all sorts of things with a strange accent and ran away before I fully understood the situation. With their link severed, the chief was unfortunately left behind to die.

How should I say this? What an incredible bother.

 

Still, with all that went on, we managed to do what Ms. Cornet asked of us, and as a reward, I received a clear gemstone the fairies had coincidentally happened to pick up—one that was a part of myself, so to speak.

The precise reward was to pick one thing out of their storehouse, and taking this thing would mean that Mr. Loren would receive no reward, so I thought to give up on it. But he insisted.

The proof of our monster hunt had been completely ruined when we jumped in the water, so we had absolutely no alternative source of income, but he said he didn’t care.

This is troublesome. He’s raising my affection points again.

But he really is a good person, Mr. Loren. Truly.

 

Now then, I think I’m going to end things here for now. I’ll only note that this time, even after he fought quite a bit, Mr. Loren didn’t end up in the hospital.

This is supposed to be a good thing, but for some reason, there’s this feeling in my chest. I feel as if we’re lacking something—I don’t exactly know how to describe it. No, it’s not like I want him to get injured, but it’s kinda sorta becoming a habit of mine to watch him lay in bed after a job well done.

I should really do something about that.

For now, I’ll put aside this feeling that I cannot describe and lower my pen until our next adventure.