The Summoned One’s Adaptation and the Priest (3)
The Summoned One’s Adaptation and the Priest (3)
#
Reni Liberit.
A blonde, green-eyed cleric with slightly downturned eyes. She was beautiful enough to warrant paragraphs of ornate description.
In the original story, Reni joined the hero's party at a different location after the midpoint.
The novel never explained her past in detail. Her village suffered enormous damage when a dungeon ran wild, and the protagonist's party came to handle the aftermath after hearing the news. Reni's abilities distinguished themselves in the process, earning her a place in the Hero's party. A textbook story.
Once she joined, Reni took on a support role handling Holy Magic like Heal and Cure. She already possessed considerable stats when she joined, and later she ended up rising all the way to the position of Saintess.
Well, I wasn't planning to recruit her purely for those external reasons anyway.
Calm, gentle, benevolent, mature, deeply considerate and understanding. Reni had what you might call a stereotypical priestly disposition—she found her joy in service.
With that personality, Reni mediated friction among party members and soothed their conflicts. Even though there were plenty of incidents that could have shattered the party, the reason it never fell apart was Reni.
Her devoted image even led "certain" readers to call her 「Mama」...
But what did any of that matter in a novel that never delivered the damn sex?
Anyway, the point was that Reni's personality was perfect for recruiting as my first companion. And once the relationship deepened, she'd become a heroine and harem member, and...
"Heh heh..."
I couldn’t help laughing. Yoo-jin quickened his steps toward the Church.
# # #
The city's church was enormous.
Reni had told me to come find her, but how was I supposed to locate her in a place like this? It was hopelessly daunting. Should I grab a passing priest and ask?
When I looked around, there was fortunately a counter.
"Excuse me. I'm looking for someone."
The moment I said Reni's name, the priest looked oddly wary. Why was that?
"May I ask your business?"
"Hmm. Wasn’t Re—the priest working at the castle until yesterday? It is... about the hero."
"The hero..."
The priest at the desk mulled it over for a moment before speaking.
"If you go that way, you'll find the training center for apprentice priests. Try inquiring there."
"Thank you."
In the direction the priest indicated stood a small building that contrasted with the main church building. Its fairly old and humble appearance stirred a sense of déjà vu. This was exactly...
'Doesn't this look like a training center?'
Yoo-jin shook his head. Was it because I’d only recently been discharged? I still connected everything I saw to the military. The army mindset hadn’t worn off yet.
A young-looking priest was sweeping the ground in front of the building.
When Yoo-jin approached and subtly caught the young priest’s attention, the priest greeted him first. Much appreciated.
"What business brings you here?"
The priest had a very young face—elementary-school age, perhaps. Come to think of it, all the clergy scattered around the training center were young.
"I’m looking for a priest named Reni."
"Reni..."
The priest's face flickered with a pitying look for a split second. Every time I mentioned Reni's name, the reaction was weird. The counter priest had been wary, and the kids all wore strange, sympathetic expressions.
"But what is your business with her?"
"It's a personal matter..."
"Come to think of it... black hair and black eyes! Are you the hero?"
People around here were awfully casual with someone they called a Hero. Compared with the title's supposed stature, it felt more like they were simply looking at a foreigner.
Fair enough, since this place periodically summoned heroes and put them to odd jobs. It'd be different from seeing the sort of hero summoned once every few hundred years to bear a grand mission and defeat a demon king.
"Um... I'm something like that."
"But I heard their departure was yesterday... Ah! You're the one who didn't awaken!"
...Damn it. Looked like someone had spread the gossip all over town. Just who was it, anyway? Fortunately, the kid stopped there and didn't pry further.
"Ahem. Hm."
"Ah, please come this way."
The brat guided me to the back of the building, then scurried off somewhere. The way they darted off at a fast walk—did they have some other business?
Behind the building, Reni was doing laundry. Her robe was hitched up and tied, and she was diligently stomping away inside a huge tub with her legs stretched straight.
'Wow.'
I couldn't help admiring the sight.
Her smooth, flawless white calves stretched beneath the hitched-up robe, with an occasional glimpse of thigh above them. Soap bubbles clung to her legs and glittered in the sunlight. Her ankle bones bobbing in and out of the milky wash water were unbearably cute.
Even the soft splashing teased my ears. Beautiful and lewd.
I didn't have an ankle fetish or anything, but it felt like developing one might not be so bad.
Come to think of it, there had been several incidents in the erotic dungeons where Reni's clothes got torn off.
‘There was an unbelievably voluptuous body beneath that plain priest robe... Heh...’
Yoo-jin watched her stomp the laundry in a daze for a while.
'But what a primitive way to do it. If I remembered the novel correctly, washing machines powered by magic stones were fairly widespread.'
It was a world where magitech had advanced enough to replace science. A washing machine running on a magic stone wasn't that much of a luxury item. I was pretty sure I'd seen one at the inn I stayed at last night, too.
Lost in thought, Yoo-jin stared blankly at Reni until someone called to him from behind in a slightly cold tone.
"Who are you?"
When Yoo-jin turned, he found a sharp-featured priest staring at him. She was quite beautiful, but her upturned eyes made her look stern and exacting.
The priest looked Yoo-jin up and down as though examining a suspicious man.
The blatant scrutiny annoyed Yoo-jin at first, but he soon reconsidered. If I caught someone secretly watching a woman do laundry, I’d think he was a creep too.
"Uh... uhm..."
While Yoo-jin floundered, Reni turned around.
"Ah, Yoo-jin!"
When I awkwardly raised a hand in greeting, Reni dipped her head in a bow. I mean, being polite was nice and all, but bowing while standing in a laundry tub?
"Reni, do you know this person?"
"Y-yes! He's my guest!"
Reni looked at me again and began to panic.
"Huh? Huh? Your face...?"
Reni, who had been stepping out of the laundry tub, stared at my face as if something were strange. Was it okay to let her attention wander like that while she was soaking wet?
And sure enough,
"Hwaht!"
Reni stepped on a bar of soap, slipped, and fell into the tub with almost picture-perfect timing.
"Ma-Mama..."
"Pardon? Did you say Mama?"
"Ahem. It's nothing."
The strict-looking priest turned back with a dubious look, and Yoo-jin hurriedly clamped his mouth shut.
Whew. I had almost let an old habit slip out. The Reni in the novel had always been calm and mature, but the woman before me was quite different from the one I remembered.
"Huaah... auuh..."
Reni crawled out of the tub with her face flushed bright red. At the sight, the strict priest sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She looked awfully used to it.
"S-sorry, I'm sorry..."
Reni staggered upright and bowed repeatedly. She had nothing to apologize to me for.
But maybe because her whole body was soaked, her robe clung to her, leaving Reni's figure clearly...
Yoo-jin burned the sight into his memory and nodded.
'How lucky.'
# # #
After that whole commotion, it wasn't until Reni had changed her clothes that the three of us finally sat facing each other in a reception room. Reni was still hunched up in a ball with a bright red face, and the strict priest was looking at her with eyes that mixed pity and exasperation.
"..."
After a long silence, the strict priest spoke first.
"Sorry you had to see that. Reni is a good girl, but she can be a little scatterbrained..."
"It's fine. I'm just relieved she didn't hurt herself. Besides..."
"Besides?"
"Ahem. Hm."
I got a nice view out of it. Yoo-jin swallowed the rest of the sentence. The stern-looking woman stared at him as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. Was I really that bad at controlling my expression?
Just as her stare began to make Yoo-jin uncomfortable, the woman introduced herself.
"I should have introduced myself sooner. My name is Kate, and I am in charge of this training center."
"I'm Yoo-jin."
"Yoo-jin... I see. You were said to be one of the Summoned People..."
After saying that, Kate examined Yoo-jin’s face from several angles without the slightest concern for how uncomfortable she was making him. He turned away from her gaze, only to find Reni watching him with the same puzzled expression.
Why were they staring at me like that? Was there something on my face?
"You're a little different from what I'd heard."
What was different? Just what had they been told about me for both the sweeping kid and this woman to know who I was?
"Now, may I ask what business brings you here?"
"..."
Yoo-jin gave them a rough explanation: the castle had thrown him out, he intended to become an adventurer to make a living, and he had come to ask whether Reni—the person who had treated him kindly at the castle—would join his party, even if only for a while.
If I were still in the exact state I'd been in when I was thrown out, I'd have had no choice but to do manual labor. But now that I'd awakened, things were different. Awakening a Status Window didn't end with just getting job skills. I could now use systems depicted in the novel: an inventory, a minimap, a point shop, and the rest.
If so, I would be able to use my novel knowledge to snag various advantages. Preempt rare items, or pick up hidden opportunities.
For that, the identity of an adventurer was the most convenient. It wouldn't seem odd at all to wander from place to place, and I could hide if things got bad.
Reni looked alarmed, while Kate frowned.
"I heard you had not awakened."
"..."
Well, I did. It was just that it was an ability that was hard to talk about with other people.
"And I also understand that the summoned people were kept together at the castle partly to help with adaptation. A new world is naturally very different from where you once lived—if you were simply sent out, you could face danger."
In short, she meant: You were neither Awakened nor a local, so what ability did you have to take our girl away?
What Kate said was right in every detail. To be fair, if I swapped places with her, and some foreigner I’d never seen or heard of showed up demanding a beautiful priest be handed over, I’d tell them to stop spouting nonsense and get lost.
'What I said next would matter.'
Yoo-jin swallowed once and opened his mouth.
"I've awakened."
"Pardon?"
"Could you give me your hand for a moment?"
Yoo-jin activated 「Holy Buff」.