This Fucking Life (2)
Honestly, the first time I opened my eyes, I had no idea what the hell was going on.
I'd been dying — cursing the world after an orc tore me apart — and then I woke up surrounded by a bunch of nuns I'd never seen in my life.
At first I figured they'd snatched me for something nasty, so I picked a fight with the whole lot of them. Those nuns beat me into the dirt.
That was when I remembered something I'd forgotten about this world. The nuns here were basically the equivalent of soldiers back in South Korea: self-defense was the bare minimum, and their physical abilities put ordinary humans to shame. They hauled around heavy gear weighing dozens of kilos, and some of them even sprayed miniguns they'd gotten from god knows where. For a kid like me, getting wrecked was a given.
Even though, as a child, I could already put down most grown men without breaking a sweat, and I could beat E-Rank hunters like it was nothing.
Of course it had to be the Holy Order's elite members that day.
Well...
These days, I suppose I count as one of those Holy Order elites myself.
Just look at me in the full-length mirror. A red stigma carved into my back, a right arm chopped off years ago, and blue stigmas covering every other inch of my body. That's proof I've put in enough years to rank among the elites — even by their standards.
...Ugly as hell.
And I hated this body. These weren't even tattoos you could pass off as stylish. They looked like a walking advertisement that I'd offered myself up as God's personal slave. I wasn't a fan, to put it mildly.
This world's so-called God had some truly bizarre tastes. Apparently if you didn't let Him leave these marks on your skin, He wouldn't lend you a drop of His overflowing, magnificent power. The Order called it a proof of faith and carved the things into the nuns' bodies whether they wanted it or not. Having been through that pain myself, I just called it torture.
"Hah. Pray to God, my ass."
Nothing I could do about it. This was my own fault for not being able to use an Awakener's power properly. Before I blamed the Order, I had to blame my own incompetence as a human being.
There were members of the Holy Order who operated just fine without these stigmas. Hell, some people were born with holy marks from the start — no carving required.
Right. For example...
"Ruina! Hurry up and get ready! The Saintess will be here soon!"
"I already know, so piss— I mean, you go on ahead."
"Okay, but just in case — don't go swearing in front of the Saintess, alright? She's a gentle soul. If she hears that filthy mouth of yours, she might faint!"
"...Faint, my ass."
Ah yes. That oh-so-wonderful Saintess.
Same background as me — a parentless orphan from Dawnfall. Then one day holy stigmas just appeared on her body, and the Order itself came to fetch her. And she'd faint from a few swear words? Not a chance. From what I knew, that Saintess had a stronger will than even the protagonist himself. When everyone else had given up, she was always the one out in front, leading the hero's party. The main heroine.
Like hell someone like that would faint over a couple of curses.
Click.
Joints are getting stiff. Gonna need a replacement soon.
I reattached the prosthetic arm I'd taken off to change clothes. This one was made from pretty decent metal, but it still wouldn't last more than three years. If I only used it for daily life, it wouldn't be a problem. But between crawling through sewers like yesterday, going out in the rain, going out in the snow, and hunting monsters — unless it was made by a true craftsman, these things barely lasted a few months.
Anyway. Today was the day that oh-so-wonderful Saintess was paying us a visit. Our church doubled as an orphanage, so she was making a special weekend trip to comfort the parentless kids and the sisters who looked after them. Or so they said.
"...What a load of shit."
I wasn't even laughing. I'd gotten used to it, but did those high-ranking officers really not understand that the greatest comfort they could offer was just staying the hell away?
Receiving the Saintess was a massive pain in the ass. At least in my case I had kids to look after, so I wasn't dragged into the prep work. Still, I had to warn the children in advance and sweep the entire dormitory for anything dangerous.
And most important of all: making sure every last kid was accounted for...
"What the— one's miss— I mean. Where's Revil?"
"We don't know! That scaredy-cat ran outside a while ago and never came back! He said he heard some weird noise!"
This was bad. One of the kids was gone. And of all people, it was the one named Revil — the kid whose parents had been hunters.
Ah, that idiot...
Thanks to his hunter parents, his physical abilities far outstripped the other kids. But he was so timid he couldn't use any of it, and he was terrible at sports besides. Still, he never caused trouble. So why the hell did he have to vanish now, of all times?
"Goddammit... How long until the Saintess gets here?"
"The goddamn Saintess is coming in an hour!"
"Thanks. But don't you dare talk like that in front of her."
"I can't? But Sister Ruina, you do it every day."
"...I'm allowed. You're not."
The descendants of hunters and Awakeners were two different categories.
An Awakener was an ordinary person — born completely normal — who awakened a hunter's abilities and gained superhuman power. Hunter descendants, on the other hand, were born with a hunter's power from the start, incomplete as it was. Weaker than Awakeners of the same caliber, but stronger than ordinary people. And usually, not long after they were born, they awakened fully — just like any other Awakener.
The cause of awakening was still unknown. All anyone knew was that those chosen by the Tower awakened as hunters, and that the Tower periodically sent them messages telling them to climb.
But there was another possibility. Some inherited their parents' hunter power but never underwent a subsequent awakening — leaving them as neither ordinary humans nor Awakeners. Something in between.
And hunters mostly dismissed Imports as "kids who just got lucky with their parents." On top of that, their abilities flickered on and off at random, making them too unstable to rely on in a fight.
Society didn't treat them well, either.
...Beings who were neither ordinary humans nor Awakeners. Too strong to fit into human society, too unstable to join hunter society. They were despised wherever they went.
So most of them ended up joining mega-guilds that functioned like armies — the Holy Order, the Hunter Administration — and made a living there. In a world where monsters tore open Gates day in and day out, you had to band together to survive. And even then, if you couldn't prove your strength, you got dumped in Dawnfall.
Meow.
"A cat?"
About ten minutes earlier, eight-year-old Revil had been quietly reading a book in the dormitory when he heard a cat crying.
Meow.
Where was it coming from? He looked around, but of course there was no cat inside the building. He asked the other kids, too — none of them had seen a cat, and none of them had heard that pitiful crying either.
It's asking for help.
The cat was crying desperately. Calling out to anyone who might come, begging to be saved.
Perhaps because he was still a pure-hearted child, Revil couldn't ignore that sound. He went looking for Sister Ruina, who always took care of them, to tell her — but for some reason, she was nowhere to be found.
Meooow.
"...What do I do?"
The cat cried even more pitifully. He had no choice. Sister Ruina had told them they were never, ever to go outside alone — but hearing that sorrowful crying, his resolve crumbled.
It's coming from out here...
He left the dormitory. Strange, though — the nuns who usually walked the halls were nowhere in sight. In the end, Revil followed the crying by himself, all the way to the flower bed, and at last he found the source.
"Meoooow!"
"Kitty, how did you even get up there?"
There was an old tree on the church grounds. A truly ancient tree, they said — one that had been growing here before the church was even built, before hunters had liberated this floor. And at the very top of that old tree, a tiny kitten was clinging for dear life.
It's going to fall.
The kitten in the branches looked like it could drop at any second. How a baby cat had climbed that high, he had no idea — but it was hanging from a thin branch, and it wouldn't have been strange if it fell right then and there. The tree was over twenty meters tall. If a kitten fell from that height, there was no telling what would happen to it. Revil looked around for another nun to ask for help, but strangely enough, none of them were in sight today — not even Sister Ruina.
Ugh, what do I do?
Revil swallowed hard.
A gust of wind roared through the branches.
"Meoooow!"
The kitten startled as the wind hit. The branch kept swaying, and at this rate it wouldn't be the cat that fell — the branch itself would snap.
There was no one around to ask for help. He had no choice. Revil made up his mind to save the kitten himself.
Sister Ruina had always told him, "You're a strong kid. You're going to be as brave as your parents." His parents had been hunters. He'd never seen their faces, but the people who had brought him into this world had been incredibly strong, incredibly cool people. That's what she'd said.
"I'll do it!"
And so Revil started climbing the tree. Just like the hunters he'd seen on television, he focused his mind into his hands and feet and began scaling a tree dozens of times his own height.
Climbing turned out to be smoother than he'd expected. Revil didn't realize it, but he was instinctively using mana to keep himself from slipping off. The wind blew and he didn't fall. His hands trembled, but after a long, long climb, he made it to where the kitten was.
"Meow!"
"K-kitty...? Don't move, okay? I'll get you down soon, so you have to stay still."
Looking down, the ground was dizzyingly far away — but it was fine. He'd made it up the tree, and his hands and feet were still stuck fast. He wasn't going to fall.
"Okay... good kitty."
Revil carefully inched toward the branch where the kitten sat. The cat stayed still, and though his palms were sweating, they weren't slippery. At this rate, he could grab the kitten and climb down safely.
"Meow!"
"Got you! We're going down now, okay? Hold on tight so you don't fall."
But they do say life never goes according to plan.
"Huh...?"
The instant the kitten settled onto Revil's shoulder, the branch gave a grotesque crack and snapped under the weight.
"Ah?"
He was falling. Plummeting toward the ground twenty meters below. Hunters had tough bodies, but if you hit the dirt headfirst from that height, even a hunter would die.
It lasted only a fraction of a second, but Revil understood that much, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Maybe that was for the best. If he died right then and there, at least he could drift off without any extra pain.
"...You little shit!"
But what touched Revil's face wasn't hard-packed earth. It was the soft fabric of a nun's habit.
"Huh?"
He opened the eyes he'd squeezed shut. In front of him was a familiar head of purple hair. Sister Ruina — who had leapt that entire height in a single bound and caught him as he fell.
Ruina landed with her habit billowing around her. She didn't look hurt at all, and Revil, wrapped in her arms, didn't have a scratch on him either.
"S-Sister Ruina..."
She set him down on the ground and, without a word, stared quietly at the dirt. She must have been furious. Even among the children, Sister Ruina had a reputation for being scary and fierce. She was usually fine — but if you broke her rules or the church's, she exploded.
Revil had not only gone outside alone against her orders, he'd climbed a dangerous tree on top of it. He was going to get in so much trouble. The thought made his stomach twist.
"I'm sorry! I-I won't ever go outside by myself again. I'm really sorry..."
Better to apologize fast. If you admitted what you'd done wrong, she didn't come down on you quite so hard. Revil knew exactly what he'd done, so he bowed at the waist and said it straight.
But this time, no answer came from Ruina at all.
"...Hah. Fine. That's enough."
After a brief silence, her voice finally came.
"Don't do that again. Now run back to the dorm."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
Ruina ruffled Revil's hair once, then quietly brushed the dirt from her clothes and stood. She wasn't angry that he'd gone out on his own. She was just relieved the kid wasn't hurt.
And that she hadn't let him see the blood.
"Kh..."
The white handkerchief in Ruina's hand was slowly turning red.
"Ha. I'm gonna get an earful for this one."