The Land of Rot and the Priest of Abundance (1)
As soon as Sam returned to the village, he ducked into a building that might have passed for a saloon from the American frontier.
"Hey! I'm back!"
At first glance it looked like a tavern, but every person inside wore gear identical to the armor Sam had on.
This seemed to be the vigilante corps building.
The moment they saw him, the restless men inside widened their eyes.
"Sam?"
"Father-in-law?!"
"Sam's back!"
"Are you all right?"
Burly men packed with beards and muscle hurried over and crowded around him.
He had seemed like the easygoing type from the start, so Raul had expected as much. Sam was apparently a popular man.
When someone that well liked suddenly vanished, the place was bound to be in an uproar.
Soon, after the greetings were exchanged, their gazes shifted to Raul, who stood behind him.
"And who might this be?"
"Ha! What’s there to explain? He’s my lifesaver! A wandering shaman... ahem! A mage. I guarantee his skill."
"Ohhh. Greetings to you."
"It’s been a while since we’ve seen a mage. A pleasure."
"Does this fellow spit water from his hands too?"
At Sam’s joking introduction, the vigilantes quickly turned their questions on Raul as well.
Too tired to answer any of them, Raul dodged every question, and the quick-witted Sam came over to lead him to the next place.
"The inn next, right?"
"Unfortunately, no. I can’t hand you a room without introducing you to the village chief first."
"Haa..."
Raul let out a small sigh, but followed Sam without complaint.
Soon, a modest wooden house came into view, far too plain to call a chief’s residence.
Sam moved to go inside, but a young man stopped him.
"He stepped out for a while?"
"Yes."
"Not off scrubbing a gravestone again, I hope? The old man’s body’s hardly holding together as it is."
"Haha. That’s Grandmother for you."
The man’s name was Egil.
He was the village chief’s grandson.
Sam told him honestly that Raul was a shaman, but Egil unexpectedly granted him permission to stay with little fuss.
How long had they walked after that?
Sam asked with an odd look, "Why do you keep staring at the chief’s house?"
"Hm."
Raul narrowed his brow as he let out a low hum for a moment.
"No, it’s just... the way you people speak here. Is everyone in this village part of the Abundance Church?"
"Hah, Mother Earth Christ. Of course farmers believe in our benevolent and noble Earth Mother. What other god would they worship?"
There it was. That way of speaking.
Raul had assumed Sam was unusual because he kept saying Earth Mother this, Earth Mother that, but apparently that was not the case.
Earth Mother.
Also known as the Goddess of Abundance, Mimir.
She was the deity who held the last of the three thrones after Ella and Motala in the Three Churches.
Just as Ella had flame and Motala had the hammer of judgment, Mimir had her own symbol: abundance, embodied by ears of grain and wine.
"Well, it’s not exactly strange, but..."
Raul fell silent, looking at Sam as if he had just said the most obvious thing in the world.
It was only natural for farmers to believe in Mimir.
But if he considered that this was the western continent, where the Three Churches’ influence was comparatively weak, and also took into account this age, overflowing with devil contractors, then it became a very strange matter indeed.
"In an age like this, with devil contractors everywhere, it’s usually hard to show your faith openly."
"Ah, that. It’s fine. We do believe and follow her, but it’s only in name. The actual priests of the Goddess of Abundance all ran off in my grandfather’s generation."
"Ran off..."
Raul felt a bitter twinge at the scene he could already imagine.
When devil contractors were multiplying explosively, most priests had fled east, where the church’s main headquarters stood.
"That’s right. Hell, I even crack jokes by calling her Mother Earth Christ. If a proper priest heard me, do you think they’d just let me be?"
"No, I guess not."
Raul nodded at Sam’s rather self-deprecating words.
Even so, there was a reason the chief’s wooden house still lingered at the edge of his vision.
The thing at the chief’s house... that was definitely divine power from abundance, wasn’t it?
A small question stirred in Raul’s chest.
A place without an abundance priest should not have abundance divinity.
If it did, then there had to be something going on in this village.
***
After Sam’s introduction, Latina Village turned out to be a rare sort of place in this age: clean in both body and spirit, and full of warm, decent people.
Raul sensed that the village’s peace was being influenced by the source of that unexplained abundance divinity, but he did not say so out loud.
In this world, there were times when simply not knowing anything was the best kind of protection.
"Here. My place."
Sam, who had been leading him around the village while insisting there was still a long way to go, finally stopped.
But the place he had brought Raul to was the village entrance.
A fairly large inn, standing right by the gate.
Raul’s brow furrowed.
"...Hey."
"Don’t be too angry, shaman. In our village, it’s tradition to show first-time visitors the whole village."
"This is insane..."
"Now, now! Come inside quickly. I asked my wife to prepare the tastiest meal she could, so the food should be nearly ready!"
Raul was about to curse from sheer exhaustion, but Sam just laughed it off and disappeared into the inn.
The moment they went in, however, a pretty girl with orange hair rushed up and threw herself at Sam.
"Dad!"
"There, there, my girl! You been good?"
Her eyes were brimming with tears that seemed ready to spill at any second.
But unlike the touching reunion one might expect, the words that came out of her mouth were sharp enough to cut.
"Dad, are you crazy?! Do you know how worried I was?! Why are you the last one home! Mom said she was going to pour boiling oil on you, and I had to stop her for no reason!"
"What could I do? I brought a guest to the village. It’s tradition."
"What does stupid tradition matter? At this rate your daughter’s going to wither away and die!"
"Hey now! What do you mean, stupid tradition? The great Mimir herself..."
"Shut up! You lousy priest! Get inside and let Mom hit you already!"
"Honestly, I nearly died and came back to life, and this is how I get treated."
Sam walked toward the inner kitchen, wearing a sulky expression while his daughter slapped his back.
The girl who remained behind approached Raul.
"You’re the mage who saved my father, right?"
Unlike when she had spoken to Sam, her voice was very calm.
"Something like that."
"Thank you. Truly, thank you. If my father had never come back, I really..."
She had looked composed at a glance, but the moment she began speaking, she clenched her skirt tightly, and only then did the tears that had been pooling in her eyes begin to fall.
However rough her words had been, she had been sincerely worried about her father.
"Oh, look at me, making a fool of myself..." She quickly wiped her tears and brightened at once. "You must be hungry, right? Sit over there! The rabbit meat the woodsman caught yesterday is really good!"
"Now that’s welcome news."
The girl hurriedly wiped her eyes and then guided Raul to a seat with a lovely smile.
Once he sat in the dining area on the inn’s first floor, an absolute beauty came over and thanked him in much the same way as the girl had.
She was probably Sam’s wife.
After another burst of commotion, Sam dropped into the chair across from Raul.
"My wife’s looks are no joke, right? Honestly, if not for her, I don’t think I’d have settled down in this village at all."
For the record, one side of his face was swollen, and until a moment ago he had been hearing quite a few remarks from the kitchen about how he should just quit being a vigilante already, but...
Raul decided, with special generosity, to pretend he hadn’t heard any of it.
"So that’s where that pretty daughter of yours came from. Good to know the good genes went straight to her."
"Gen... what?"
"Oh, I mean she takes after her mother a lot."
"Ah. Right. Still, don’t you dare fall for our Yuna. No matter how much of a lifesaver you are, I won’t stand by if you go after my daughter."
As he said it, Sam’s face grew genuinely fearsome.
He was the kind of man who bragged and got angry in equal measure. A very busy sort of person.
"Don’t worry. I like women who are a bit more mature."
Raul snorted as he recalled Yuna, who looked to be about thirteen or fourteen at most.
The legal age of adulthood in this world might have been fifteen, but to someone who had lived in modern times, the girl was clearly far too young.
Still, she had the kind of face that would probably break a lot of men’s hearts in the years to come.
Her mother ran the inn, and her father was a fairly popular vigilante.
She would no doubt eat well, live well, and stay in this blessed village until the day she died.
She would live a pretty life.
That was, assuming Raul did his job properly...
When had he last felt the purity of such a clean peace on his skin?
Looking at this picture-perfect village after so long, he found the pressure weighing on his shoulders growing all the more vivid.
Honestly...
He was just a person from another world, and yet somehow he had ended up like this.
Raul tasted bitterness in his mouth.
Rarely, to the point that he almost wanted a drink.
"Come to think of it, do you have beer?"
"Beer? Ah. Well..."
"I’m sorry, but we don’t have any alcohol. There’s been a poor harvest for years now, so there hasn’t been much to turn into liquor."
Instead of the hesitant Sam, his clever daughter Yuna answered for him.
"Sorry, but if you want alcohol around here, you’ll have to go to a city."
"You’d probably need to go to Zern or Revraim."
"I see."
It was a pity, but Raul accepted it.
And then, almost immediately, he sensed something off.
A poor harvest in a village that was supposed to be blessed by abundance divinity?
That made no sense.
If such a thing was possible, there had to be a devil contractor involved.
A band of bandits that appeared even along the main roads packed with travelers... those special zombies they used. And devil contractors who had infiltrated the cities themselves.
Everything was linked together, one after another.
It looked as though there was a black mage in this area, tampering with the dense life force that belonged to blessed land.
"Could you tell me more about that rotten land?"
At Raul’s question, curiosity colored Yuna’s eyes.
***
"He went? To the abandoned land in the south?"
Yuna nodded at her father’s question.
"Wait, why would he suddenly..."
"No idea. He said he got curious about something."
"Shamans are never easy to figure out, I swear."
"Shaman?"
"Nothing."
While Yuna was having that short exchange with Sam, a vigilante appeared at the inn entrance.
"Yuna! Father-in-law! There you are?"
"Hey, Jack."
"You little punk, don’t call me father-in-law! I don’t know some country bumpkin like you."
Jack, the youngest of the vigilantes, laughed it off and came into the inn despite Sam’s cold reception.
After a brief greeting, Yuna asked whether he wanted something to eat, but Jack shook his head.
"After father-in-law went missing, the village asked Zern for reinforcements."
"Reinforcements? But I’m back now."
"Even so, we still need to investigate that forest where the black magic was found properly. They said they were leaving at dusk, so they should arrive soon. The village chief asked us to take good care of one knight and several mercenaries."
"I see."
Sam did not seem especially eager, but he nodded.
Since it was the chief’s request, he would of course do his best to honor it, but he had seen mercenaries from the city enough times during his adventuring days to know exactly what kind of lot they could be.
Please, let nothing happen.
Sam offered a brief prayer to the Earth Mother in his heart.
How much time passed after that?
The inn door slammed open with a bang.
Into the room came a group of rough-looking men.
They were clearly the mercenaries Jack had mentioned.
"Oi, innkeeper! Bring us food and drink!"
"Man, I’m starving!"
There were about twenty of them, give or take.
With Sam missing, it seemed the lord of Zern had also grasped the gravity of the situation. They were clearly planning to search the forest properly this time.
"Welcome!"
Yuna guided them in with practiced ease.
The mercenaries widened their eyes at the girl, but hunger came first, and they started shoveling down the soup and meat that had been set out for them.
"Burp. Ha! To think there’d be food this good in a dirt-hole like this."
"Hey! Got any booze? I know the stuff’s expensive these days, but the lord said he was footing the bill! Bring everything you’ve got!"
Thud!
They planted mud-caked boots on the table and beckoned with their fingers.
"I’m sorry, but our village doesn’t have any alcohol. We do have apple juice, though!"
Even in the face of that infuriating sight, Yuna kept smiling and asked for patience like the innkeeper’s daughter she was.
But unlike the kindly villagers, the city mercenaries reacted in a way she had never expected.
Bang!
"No booze? What the hell! We took the job because the lord was going to buy us drinks too! And now there’s no alcohol? Huh?!"
"Uh... th-there’s..."
When Yuna froze at the unfamiliar hostility, one of the mercenaries who had been staring at her with openly lecherous eyes stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder.
"If there’s no booze, then you’ll need a woman instead. How about helping us out, pretty girl?"
"Yeah! That works."
"With a face like that, you’d turn heads even in Zern. What do you say, want to leave this mountain backwater and come to the city with big brother?"
"Puhaha! With that face? No way! Someone like me should do."
"What kind of pig says that?"
The mercenaries naturally poured out vulgar filth.
Terrified by a situation she was experiencing for the first time in her life, the man gripping her shoulder tried to wrap his other arm around the girl’s waist as well.
"That’s enough."
Then a heavy hand came flying in with the speed of lightning and caught the lecherous man’s wrist.
"What the hell?"
"I know full well that city scum can be shameless, but I didn’t expect you to go this far in the open."
"D-Dad..."
"Yuna. Go inside."
Yuna, her face drained white, quickly moved away at Sam’s order.
"Hey, hey, where do you think you’re going!"
"Damn it, it was getting good." "Oi, old man. We’re a mercenary company on Lord's orders. You see this? Food, drink, inn. There’s even an official order saying to put it on the lord’s tab."
When the mercenaries pushed back, Sam glared at them with veins standing out on his face.
"You bastards. Does that paper say anywhere that you can put your hands on the village women? Do you want to be executed for abusing a noble’s authority?"
"What? Execution? This crazy bastard!"
"Look here! It says booze! If there isn’t any, then you give us something else!"
"Who the hell do you think you are, to use your head in some backwater village? You want to die?"
The mercenaries quickly closed around Sam.
As the inn’s people, realizing the severity of the situation, began slipping away one by one to fetch the village vigilantes, a huge man who seemed to be the mercenary captain stepped in front of Sam.
"Country bumpkin, you’re making a mistake."
"Mistake, my ass. Hand over the bastard who touched my daughter and I’ll overlook everything else."
"Puhah?! Who do you think you’re overlooking? We can act like this because we’ve got the lord’s permission, you hear? But can you act like this? No, maybe you can. But can this inn?"
...
At the mercenary captain’s mention of the inn, Sam froze for a moment, looking rattled.
But the bigger problem came right after.
"Honestly, country fools are so damn innocent!"
Without warning, the hulking captain hooked Sam’s leg and knocked him flat.
"Boys! Stomp him! And bring the pretty wife from earlier in the kitchen too!"
"Aaaah!"
"Y-Yuna!"
"Get her too! You come here!"
The inn descended into chaos in an instant.
The men who had rushed into the kitchen roughly grabbed Sam’s wife and Yuna by the wrists and dragged them out,
while Sam could do nothing but curl up under the mercenaries’ kicks.
"How dare some country bumpkins look down on our Red Talon Mercenary Company! Boys, our fine lord’s pardon is right here! Teach them some manners!"
And just as lust, arrogance, and rage began to tangle together in a foul knot...
The inn door burst open.
In walked Raul, black-haired and with a face that was almost too handsome for its own good.
At the sight before him, his brow furrowed.
"What the hell are these idiots."
It did not take long for the question in his eyes to turn into a quiet, simmering fury.