Priestess and the Church Basement (1)
Priest and the Church Basement (1)
#
I'd tormented Reni so much that she needed time to rest.
I’d gotten far too carried away. She would need to change her clothes too. Her priest robes were thick enough to hide it, but underneath...
‘Ngh! Stop!’
Seeing her lying on the bed and whimpering made me think I'd gone too far. But... what was I supposed to do when she was so damn cute...
"Sorry...."
Reni managed a faint smile at that.
"No. Helping you is also part of my duty..."
Face flushed, Reni continued in a barely audible voice.
"M-my body actually f-feels l-loosened up too..."
'...!'
That was way too lewd!
No. I had to hold back!
"I'll head downstairs first, then."
"Okay..."
If I kept watching her, I would use the buff as an excuse to do something lewd again, so I fled downstairs. Thank goodness I was forced to get off every night; otherwise...
...No. Think about something else.
…
Come to think of it...
Reni was always talking about her duty as a priest.
…
But that was only an excuse, just as I used the buff as an excuse to do more lewd things than necessary.
The way she asked whether a permanent buff—an actual permanent increase to her stats—was possible, and how eager she was to develop my buff, made it obvious. What Reni truly wanted was not the buff itself, but a permanent increase in Divine Power.
I wasn't so clueless I hadn't picked up on that.
But why? Why did Reni want the buff?
...I was asking the wrong question. Why was her Divine Power this weak to begin with?
In the original story, Reni would not appear until a year later. By then, she already possessed exceptional Divine Power. But now? It was so weak that she wanted power badly enough to offer me her body.
Then what was going to happen to her during that year?
Now that I thought about it, the Reni I knew from the story never had a bizarre trait like 「Delusion (B)」 either. What the hell was going to...
...There was no point worrying when I had no answer. I needed more clues. I decided to postpone the question and think about what came next.
...
I was sitting in the dining room waiting for Reni when the Burly-Armed Innkeeper approached.
"Heading out now?"
"Yes."
"I see."
He nodded and left it at that. I'd told him he could speak casually, and he really did it every single time. What an amusing bastard.
"..."
What? What was he looking at? If he had something to say, he should say it.
"Is there something I need to know?"
The innkeeper started talking, as if he'd been waiting for me to ask.
"Heard there was a lot of lightning last night. Burned a few trees around the village too. Wasn't much trouble, seeing as it started raining right after. Still, if you spot any smoke, come right back and let me know. Forest fire'd be dangerous."
"...Sure."
What a petty Goddess. She must have thrown a fit because I had cursed her a little.
While I cursed her internally, the innkeeper held out something wrapped in paper.
"Eat on the road."
"Ah. Thanks."
He gave exactly one nod and headed off to the kitchen.
So you were a good guy after all!
# # #
We were on the road to the Church, still early in the morning. Perhaps because it had rained overnight, patches of fog lingered and reduced visibility. Reni was noticeably tense.
"You okay?"
“Y-Yoo-jin, doesn't this bother you at all?”
"Me? Nah. Don't worry about it. I can see everything. I'll let you know right away if there's anything."
"O-okay..."
I had the minimap, so I wasn't worried. It'd warn me immediately if monsters or dangerous wild animals approached.
“Y-Yoo-jin...”
"Yeah?"
“D-do you think I'll be able to do well?”
"At what?"
"In the dungeon...."
"It's fine. You got buffed, remember?"
So that was what worried her. The dungeon. She didn't need to worry.
Reni didn't really have much to do in a dungeon anyway. I'd brought her along to find the Holy Sword in the first place.
That didn't mean I intended to leave her outside the dungeon. Danger could create a suspension-bridge effect that lowered people's guard, and...
"I-if I mess up... ugh...."
"I told you, it'll be fine. I've barely got anything for you to do."
This priest’s delusions were acting up again. She really was strange. Why had she developed this trait in the first place?
[Name: Reni Liberit]
[Traits: ▼]
[Delusion (B): Perceives the world in a distorted manner due to ??? and other factors. Emotions change rapidly.]
Rapid emotional changes. It probably referred to her sudden outbursts. Looking back, she had already shown plenty of them: yesterday’s talk about being the Goddess’s Apostle, and the way she had gotten carried away while drinking corn silk tea at night.
The Reni I'd originally known never showed this side. She'd always been a calm and collected presence. No wonder people called her Mama.
It wasn't really a problem, since it was cute. And thanks to it, she kept clinging to me all the time too... Still, I couldn't help but be a little curious.
...
"Aren't you afraid of the dungeon, Yoo-jin? Didn't you say it was your first time?"
Reni was slowly starting to return to her usual self. Maybe because the fog had lifted? She was still trembling a little, though.
"Huh? Well, I... I've just got this feeling it'll work out, for some reason."
That was what I said, but I wasn't actually relying on gut feelings or luck.
I was practically defenseless, but there was still a reason I could enter a dungeon.
The reason was that the dungeons scattered around the mountain range, aside from the West Keep Great Labyrinth, were weak. If you really wanted to gain experience, you'd be better off heading straight for the Great Labyrinth a day sooner rather than wasting time here. The Burly-Armed Innkeeper hadn't been talking out of his ass when he said clearing dungeons in a place like this wouldn't help me.
If the dungeons around here were only weak, I'd have ignored them and gone on my way. But there was something to be gained from these pathetically weak dungeons. Well, I wouldn't know the details until I got right up to the dungeon entrance.
And last, the most important reason of all.
The Holy Sword was one thing, but I'd specifically been looking for an undead dungeon with the intention of testing my trait.
[Name: Do Yoo-jin]
[Traits: ▼]
[Sex Warrior (SS): Grants a Holy (聖) attribute to the Sex Warrior.]
[Creepy Dog Persona (B): Earn additional points during furtive play.]
[...]
...The first time I read this description, I thought it was a joke.
What a stale, painfully unfunny joke. It was exactly the kind of thing a hopeless loser would write. And a loser like that had obviously never dated anyone. Which meant he had to be a virgin.
Wait. Was it possible...
'!!!!!!'
A bolt of revelation struck my mind.
‘Of course! The bastard author wrote a sleazy smut fantasy but couldn't write the sex scenes because he had no experience! He was a boomer, a loser, a shut-in, and a virgin who'd never even dated! If he weren't a boomer virgin loser shut-in, there was no way he couldn't write a sex sc—’
“Y-Yoo-jin, look over there. I've never seen trees knocked down like that. Is that what divine punishment looks like?”
"..."
...My swearing was merely an expression of familiarity and affection toward the author.
And it was also half out of habit. Honestly, this habit came about because of the author too.
The habit remained from the months the author had vanished, when I had checked the bookmarked page thousands—tens of thousands—of times just to curse him.
I was sure I wasn't the only one.
When a story went on hiatus, the comments begged the author to return in perfectly polite language. But inwardly, everyone was hurling abuse and insulting the author’s mother. I was sure of it, because that was what I did.
...Thinking about it again pissed me off. Who told him to vanish without a word and put the story on hiatus? And then what? An all-ages remake with the harem removed? What a scam. Every insult that bastard received was his own fault...
"Yoo-jin... look over there... the wild boar got struck by lightning... poor thing...."
"..."
...I said all that, but to be honest, I was pretty damn grateful. After all, thanks to the Goddess, I had met Reni. In truth, she was practically my mother-in-la—
[System: Call me that one more time and I will not hold back.]
—and on top of that, she had given me a Holy attribute with this joke class so that I wouldn't just die. I mean, that was what was keeping me alive, wasn't it?
But if she was going that far, couldn't she have given me some Holy Knight combat skills too? She was making a show of granting me one measly attribute.
Anyway, I'd come to find an undead dungeon specifically to test out this Holy (聖) attribute. I wanted to try and see whether even a punch from me would become some kind of holy punch. If that worked, things would get a lot more convenient from here on out.
Speaking of which, the scent of roasted meat from that wild boar was mouthwatering.
"Yoo-jin? What are you doing?"
"Nothing, really. Just got curious."
The burnt wild boar was enormous. Based on the scorched ground around it, the lightning had concentrated squarely on the beast. And that thing on its forehead...
“...It has a horn?”
"...?"
"Reni. Do wild boars around here have horns on their foreheads?"
"I don't think I've ever heard of that..."
Was it possible the lightning had gone crazy all night not because I'd been cursing the author, but to try and kill this boar?
I did want to test whether swearing at the author would get you struck by lightning, but seeing the scorched surroundings, that impulse vanished. Terrifying.
...Or perhaps every thunderbolt that struck while I was swearing had been a coincidence. Maybe I was simply getting too full of myself.
"Let's go."
"Okay."
# # #
We reached the Church shortly after noon. The half-collapsed building had a peculiar shape: its steeple was disproportionately tall compared with the chapel and adjoining structures...
‘A lighthouse? A watchtower?’
"It looks peculiar. Different from the ones I saw in the city."
Hearing my observation, Reni tilted her head, then clapped her hands as if she'd just remembered something.
"I think I read that churches used to be built like this in the old days. Especially the ones around the mountain range..."
Was that so...? Was there lore like that? It was all hazy.
It wasn't my fault I couldn't remember. Who read web novels and memorized every single detail?
If the author wanted to explain the setting, he should've made it interesting and memorable. The fact that I couldn't remember it proved the bastard couldn't write for shit.
"What do we do now?"
After we'd circled around the ruined chapel and buildings once, Reni tilted her head. Naturally, the Holy Sword wasn't just lying on the ground conveniently waiting to be picked up. That was expected.
"Hmm. Now it's time for Reni to shine."
"What?! Me?!"
Reni practically jumped out of her skin, all color draining from her face. Why was she like that?
"Detect Divine Power. You can use it, can't you?"
"Ah. Y-yes...."
[Skill: Detect Divine Power]
[Type: Active]
[Effect: Senses Divine Power around the caster. The detection range is proportional to the caster's Divine Power.]
No matter how weak Reni's Divine Power was, she could at least use a skill like this. If the detection range was narrow? Then we just had to walk around while she used it.
But why was she trembling like that? We'd already covered what Reni could do and which skills she could use when we all sat down together with Kate.
I could see it on the Status Window, of course, but seeing a skill listed there was different from hearing the person confirm that she could use it.
The Status Window displayed even skills that someone only knew in theory and had never actually used. I could use the information, but I couldn't trust it blindly; I still needed to confirm it with the person herself.
Which was why I'd definitely checked with Reni in advance... so why was she so uneasy?
Reni kept her eyes squeezed shut, concentrating on the skill. But her expression was shifting closer and closer to tears...
"Not working?"
“It works! I can do it!”
"No, I mean..."
At my question, Reni practically screamed her reply.
No, I wasn't interrogating her...
I was just going to say... if it wasn't working, maybe we could nudge the buff level up just a little...
…
...Should I at least bring it up? Outdoor play?