The Continental Public Enemy Lives Like This (2)
A tiny spark flicked past with a soft tick.
The wavering heat haze pushed back the darkest pre-dawn hour and settled on the man staring into the campfire. Raul reached into his inner pocket, pulled out a strip of dried jerky, and chewed.
I have no idea whether this is meat or a rock.
Raul frowned for a moment, then tucked the beef-flavored pebble back against his chest.
Unlike his easygoing posture, the sounds around him were a racket of hammer blows and hurried labor.
Broken wagons. Mercenaries who had been bitten by zombies.
There was no shortage of things that needed fixing.
Even so, no one in the middle of that chaos bothered to complain about Raul sitting alone by the fire.
They had all seen the “miracle” he had shown them with their own eyes.
Ha.
Raul let out a long sigh.
Nothing ever went smoothly.
This time, he had tried to cross the border by pretending to be a traveling undertaker with time on his hands, but an unexpected encounter with “contractors” had blown the plan to pieces.
Word will get around, won't it?
In this age, when demon contractors were as common as roaches in some fantasy world’s so-called Great Pirate Era, the value of “divine power” was beyond imagination.
The thought made his mouth taste even drier.
It would have been easier if Raul had actually been a holy knight of Motala.
Unfortunately for him, he was the one and only continental public enemy in Exeria: a Saint.
Ding-
At that moment, the smell of strong liquor wafted over beside the brooding Raul as he stared into the fire.
He turned his head and saw the mercenary captain approaching with a rough clay cup brimming with hard spirits.
“How about a drink?”
“I’m afraid I can’t touch alcohol while I’m on a penitential pilgrimage. But I appreciate the thought.”
Raul lied smoothly, as casually as breathing.
He had been doing this for over a year now.
At this point, it would have been stranger if it showed on his face.
“Ah, a penitential pilgrimage... Right. You said you were traveling to receive your formal baptism, yes? Ha. Please forgive me. My education is poor, and I wasn’t familiar with the taboos of the Motala order.”
“It’s fine.”
It was fine.
The truth was, there were no such taboos against drinking in the Motala order.
On the contrary, those muscle-brained zealots were all lushes.
“Still, if there’s anything you want, say the word anytime. If not for you, James and Bortold would both be dead. You saved my men. I want to repay that debt.”
As he said it, the mercenary captain bowed deeply once more.
Really...
They had already had this conversation several times, but the man was stubborn to an almost ridiculous degree.
“Like I said, just keep your mouth shut.”
“Of course. In these dangerous times, we can’t let word of your whereabouts reach the ears of demon contractors. Not the travelers, not the merchants, and not my men. No one will let a single piece of information about you leave this camp.”
The captain thumped his chest and made his grand promise, but Raul knew better.
Rumors did not stop because someone said, let's not spread them.
“So please, give me another chance to repay your kindness, holy knight.”
A chance to repay him.
Truth be told, his travel money was running a little thin these days...
But if he asked for cash, it might only invite suspicion.
Unlike other sects, Motala especially treated greed and lust as grave taboos.
So Raul was in the irritating position of wanting to ask for something, while not being able to.
Ha, haha.
He was still forcing out an awkward laugh when a savory smell brushed the tip of his nose.
Turning, he saw a cauldron he had not noticed before, broth gently bubbling inside.
It seemed to be a meal the passengers of this stalled stagecoach had thrown together by sharing what they had.
“If you don’t mind, could I have a little of that soup? My jaw hurts.”
“Your jaw? Ah! Of course! If you want it, holy knight, we can give you the whole pot!”
That was a bit much.
“One bowl will do.”
Still, the captain looked delighted that he could finally do something for him and hurried off toward the pot.
At first Raul had wondered if there was some hidden angle to it, but it seemed the man was simply honest to a fault.
Or maybe he believed the local superstition that if you did a good deed for a cleric, fortune would follow.
Either way, Raul was glad at the thought of eating something soft for a change.
“Here.”
Then a familiar voice came closer.
The woman who appeared carrying two wooden bowls was the adventurer who had been riding in the same wagon as Raul.
“I insisted on bringing it over, so here I am. Careful. It’s hot.”
“Ah, thanks.”
As she had in the wagon, the woman simply sat down right beside Raul.
He wanted to wonder about that, but hunger came first, so he took a generous spoonful of the thick soup and put it in his mouth.
For something improvised by the roadside, it was surprisingly good.
“The next village with a relay station. Turns out the innkeeper was riding all the way in the back of the wagon.”
“Lucky us.”
He spoke while putting the spoon back in his mouth, and the woman let out an amused snort.
“We’re the lucky ones, not the soup. Thanks to you, we all got to keep our lives. Oh, and that innkeeper asked me to pass on his thanks. He said if you come to the Dawn Sparrow, he’ll give you a room for free.”
“That’s kind of him.”
“It would’ve been nicer if he’d just said it to your face. Don’t you think everyone’s a little too scared of you?”
The platinum-haired woman puffed out her cheeks in obvious frustration as she said it.
But, to be blunt, the strange one here was her.
“People don’t usually walk right up to a Motala holy knight.”
“Why not?”
“Because the more great they are, the more dangerous they can be.”
That was especially true of Motala’s holy knights.
People had a certain image whenever they heard the word inquisitor, didn’t they?
Always searching for heresy.
Terrifying bastards with a mace and scales as their symbols.
Motala’s holy knights filled that role in this world.
One wrong word, and you never knew when a golden hammer might come down on your head.
In that sense, the woman in front of him was truly strange.
Even with a mask between them, she had treated Raul, a mere “candidate holy knight,” like a fairly close friend.
For reference, aside from the mercenary captain and her, no one had spoken to Raul for the last several hours.
That was how holy knights were.
Even after Raul explained all this patiently, the woman’s reaction remained odd.
“Is that so? I don’t know. I felt the opposite. When I look at you, it doesn’t feel like you’re far away. It feels like I want to get closer. Oh, not in some weird way. Not like man and woman or anything. More like... you feel like a father?”
“I guess I do look a little old for my age.”
“No, no! I mean the feeling, not your face! You’re clearly my age, what are you talking about?”
The woman waved both hands in the air and turned her cheeks red for no good reason.
Well, exceptions always existed.
Raul was about to tease her a little more before getting up to return the empty bowl when a hologram-like line of text floated into view before his eyes.
Extra Scenario - A Talent That Cannot Bloom
The adventurer Elena’s extraordinary physical ability stems from the sun god Ella’s blessing.
But there is neither an encounter that might awaken her talent, nor a seeker who could recognize it.
If she keeps walking this road, Elena’s talent will wither before it ever blooms.
Will you change her fate?
The choice is yours alone.
▶ Reward: Map
It was the kind of scenario quest window Raul had seen often in the game, Devil Hunter of Exeria.
The difference was that the quest target was sitting right in front of him.
And this time, a map?
The reward was written in a spectacularly bland and abstract way.
Still, he couldn’t dismiss it as meaningless.
Every quest that had appeared like this before had always given him a clue leading to something he needed.
“W-why...?”
The woman, Elena, tilted her head at Raul, who had suddenly gone still.
“It’s nothing.”
Raul gave her an offhand answer while his thoughts turned quickly.
Seeing the quest text did make the earlier conversation feel a little different.
Divinity.
More specifically, the woman claiming she felt a kind of closeness, a fatherly familiarity, toward the Saint who handled Halo, the source of all divine power.
He had thought she was just unusually sensitive. In truth, it was far more than that.
The blessing of Ella?
Hadn't one of the pieces of the so-called “strongest in the continent” that had been mentioned endlessly in the wagon been the Motala holy knight and Ella’s priest?
To be born under Ella’s blessing meant, in other words, that she had been born with the talent to become Ella’s priestess.
Changing someone else’s fate... Normally, I’d be wary of this kind of quest.
But the fact that this quest would lead to a positive result for the woman in front of him, and the fact that the reward was a map, changed the matter entirely.
If it was a map, it would probably show a proper location and destination.
A few months ago,
the last time he’d received a quest after a long stretch of nothing, all it had given him was some useless-looking parchment labeled as a “prophecy.”
So this quest was more than enough to interest him.
“Elena.”
Raul stopped the woman as she rose with her bowl.
“Yes?”
“Without asking anything, and without saying anything. Would you take this for me?”
What Raul had pulled from his pocket was an ancient book so old that one wrong touch might reduce it to dust.
“Huh? Oh, yes! If it’s a request from the savior of my life, I’ll do anything!”
Apparently mistaking it for some errand he wanted her to run, she nodded with a trusting expression.
“So I just need to hand it to the branch guild master in the next city without anyone noticing, right?”
Just from that, it was obvious she was quick-witted and intelligent.
That only made Raul more confident that he could trust her with it.
Only after laying enough groundwork to keep her from being too shocked did he say quietly, “That grimoire is the scripture of flame, written two hundred years ago by a priest of Ella.”
“...What?”
Elena’s eyes widened at once.
Well, I did tell you not to be surprised.
“Elena. From today on, read this scripture every day. Dawn, sunset, it doesn’t matter. Whenever the sun is in the sky, make sure you read it once a day.”
“...Huh? No, Raul. I don’t understand what you’re saying...”
“You can think of it as a favor from the person who saved your life.”
“Ah. Well...”
“I’m a rather troublesome person, the kind who can’t just walk past someone with talent.”
“...Ta, talent?”
Was it really that sudden?
Elena had seemed pretty quick on the uptake, but now she was reacting in short, broken bursts like an avatar with a lag spike.
She’d understand soon enough.
Talent and the scripture of flame.
Those two words alone were enough for her to infer what Raul was trying to say.
“Act as naturally as you can. Don’t show the scripture to anyone. If you keep at it, there will come a day when you reach enlightenment. Please, become a new lamp in this cold world.”
“M-me? Really, me...?”
“Yes. In this world overrun by demonic corruption, I’m praying that you become a priestess of warmth who doesn’t turn away from the weak.”
Raul gave a faint smile as he looked back and forth between Elena and the scripture in her hands.
She still looked confused, but he could at least be certain that something had changed.
Extra Scenario cleared.
The quest window had already changed like that.
Raul got up without a shred of lingering attachment and headed for the pot where the soup was still simmering.
“Sorry, but could I get one more bowl?”
“Huh?!”
“W-what, holy knight!”
“Of course! P-please hand me the bowl! I’ll serve it myself!”
The people around him startled.
The drivers who had stood the wagon upright again and tended the horses, and the mercenaries who had built a grave for a comrade even in the dark before dawn, all stared at Raul in surprise, as if they found his easy approach strange.
And yet, even as they were surprised and a little intimidated, they slowly gathered around him, and every small word and gesture carried clear goodwill.
By then, the sky beyond the horizon had begun to glow yellow.
The sun at last rising had something faintly reminiscent of the warmth in their hearts.
And somewhere else, it almost seemed as though the rustle of turning paper could be heard.
***
Four days later.
Raul sat in a chair by the second-floor window of the Dawn Sparrow inn and pressed the button to complete the quest.
Flap-!
At once, the hologram visible only to Raul burst out a barrage of obnoxiously celebratory messages and spat out an old sheet of paper.
“Hah.”
For a second, that ridiculous cheerfulness irritated him, but he steadied himself and unfolded the map.
“Oh.”
The admiration came out before he could stop it.
As expected, unlike the exasperatingly vague and abstract “prophecy,” the “map” showed clear landmarks and even the entrance to a hidden passage.
“Thank God.”
For once, it looked like he wouldn’t end up licking his fingers after earning a reward.
“Judging by the shape, it looks like ruins. Lost technology, maybe.”
It seemed to be a reward connected to the Saint’s passive skill, Ancient Understanding.
The problem was that he had no idea where on earth the ruins marked on the map actually were.
Still, that would solve itself naturally if he bought maps in every village he passed through.
“The real problem is...”
...the present.
So many people in this city knew the “holy knight’s whereabouts” after his long journey to get here.
The mercenary captain had boasted that his men would keep their mouths shut, but words without feet were still born in the world.
The only difference was whether they were being spread by some arrogant noble trying to exploit divinity,
or by some demon worshiper trying to erase it.
Clink.
As if to prove the point, there it was.
In this silent dawn, when not a single person had their eyes open.
The doorknob to Raul’s room turned with a faint rattle.
There was no knock, no warning.
A killer, then.
Creeeak-
The door opened with a groan, and someone stepped in wearing a black cloak.
“How many are there?”
But Raul asked in a carefree voice without hesitation.
Under the hood pulled low over his face, a red glint flashed.
“O fallen scale...”
“O unfinished mace...”
“The spinal fluid you scatter here...”
“Will bring a smile to the abyssal duke.”
The sound was like fingernails scraping a blackboard, shrill and unpleasant, ringing straight inside his skull rather than through his ears.
Still, Raul only smiled lazily the moment he confirmed that every assassin who had appeared was a demon contractor.
“You’ve really lost your damn mind.”
Raul tightened his grip on the crescent blade he had received as a “gift” on the way here.