Apprentice Saintess
The world of Silia was a land brimming with adventure and romance.
You set out with a sword on your hip and fought mighty monsters with dazzling magic cast from a staff.
There were elves who lived in harmony with nature, and dwarves who forged iron while basking in the heat of the furnace.
It was, quite literally, an otherworld pulled straight from a picture book.
And yet.
The world called Silia was not, as the players imagined, filled only with romance.
Races that were ready to fight at the slightest eye contact.
The threat of monsters that could appear anywhere, at any time.
The mischief and cruelty of drifters wandering the world with swords at their hips.
The history of the Ardeena Continent had always been soaked in blood and screams.
But if one asked what had taken the most lives of all, the people of Silia would answer in unison.
The two race wars that had broken out there.
The First Race War had been short compared to the second, but because every race had turned on one another, the damage had been catastrophic.
The Second Race War had been the opposite.
Only the demon race and humanity had fought.
The other races had sided with humanity and lent their aid, but the number that had actually joined the fighting could be counted on one hand.
And yet, because it had dragged on for more than fifty years, it had claimed even more lives than the First Race War, in which every race had been involved.
No one had ever counted the victims precisely, so there was no way to know the true number, but one thing was certain: it had been far from small.
And the cause of both wars had been the same.
The demon race.
Both tragedies had begun when they crossed from Laxia to the Ardeena Continent.
And so, after decades of war, the conflict had finally come to an end only after the intervention of the Sedes Holy Kingdom, where a compromise had been painfully reached.
At the conference convened to end the war, someone from the human race asked the demons, “Why did you have to cross over to Ardeena and stir up all this chaos?”
The demon’s answer was simple.
“To survive.”
The demons had crossed from Laxia to Ardeena in order to live, and the people of the Ardeena Continent had desperately tried to stop them in order to live.
The beginning of that horrific war, which had taken countless lives and ruined countless others, was nothing more than that.
* * *
The next destination after the Holy Kingdom was Laxia, the demons’ home continent.
When I thought about it that way, the feeling was strangely surreal.
“…What, are you going to cut off the Demon King’s head or something? So you were secretly a hero all along, Kana…?”
Daeun seemed to feel something similar, because she muttered such nonsense under her breath.
“As if.”
There were people in Silia who were called heroes.
But judging from the way she’d jumped straight to me going to behead the Demon King, Daeun’s image of a hero was wildly different from mine. No matter how you looked at it, though, it was a title that didn’t suit me in the slightest.
“Why would I cut off the head of someone who’s living perfectly fine?”
“…Huh? Aren’t demons bad guys?”
“…Why?”
“Why, she says… They started wars, killed people… and I heard they even command scary monsters, too?”
Daeun counted things off on her fingers as she answered.
Setting everything else aside for a moment, I said, “I’ve killed people too.”
“Ah… Well, Kana had no choice during the war, so, right.”
“I kept killing them after that, though.”
“…I’m sorry.”
After my repeated rebuttals, Daeun raised the white flag.
It was just me teasing her, so I wasn’t hurt by it anyway, and I accepted her surrender without complaint.
…Well, to be honest, the image Daeun had of demons wasn’t exactly unusual.
If you actually asked people in Silia about demons, nine out of ten would probably say something very similar to what she had said.
Fifty years having passed since the end of the Second Race War meant, in another sense, that only fifty years had passed.
There were still people alive who had lived through the war themselves, so of course fear and hatred wouldn’t simply vanish.
That was how it worked.
Those who had lived through the war did not think well of demons, and those who had never even seen one judged them based on stories alone.
And even the information that had once been closest to the truth was passed from mouth to mouth, swelling and warping little by little until it turned into baseless rumor.
That kind of thing—saying demons enjoyed eating people, or were trying to conquer the world.
And then more people came to believe those rumors….
It was all just repeated over and over again.
“…It wasn’t?”
“…Haaah.”
Just like the person standing beside me now.
Garid… my father… was one of those who disliked demons.
But unlike ordinary people, he hadn’t been swayed by rumors and prejudice.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
He disliked demons simply because he had been born in an age when he couldn’t afford not to.
In any case, thanks to my father, I’d been able to acquire proper knowledge.
And also learn exactly why such rumors had come into being in the first place.
“That’s complicated….”
All the things she’d thought she knew had been shattered, and Daeun wore an expression of confused uncertainty.
“Then demons were actually good people?”
“No. From the perspective of the people of the Ardeena Continent, they were definitely the bad guys. Whatever their reasons, it was still true that they invaded the continent.”
“Reasons?”
She tilted her head.
“What reasons?”
“To survive.”
I didn’t know the full reason why the demons had crossed the sea and invaded the continent in the first place.
Not until I met Edel and spoke with her, anyway.
Once she told me why they had had no choice but to do it, I could at least understand why they’d made that decision.
The beings of the Ardeena Continent used a mysterious force called Magi.
By contrast, the demons used a mysterious force called Magi.
Because of that, the land they lived in was always overflowing with Magi, and if you had no resistance to it, simply approaching them could pose a threat to your life.
Magi was no different from poison to anyone who wasn’t a demon.
That was why the people of Ardeena had resisted their migration with such desperation.
If merely staying there caused that much trouble, then it went without saying how saturated with Magi their homeland of Laxia must have been.
Ironically, the reason the demons crossed to the Ardeena Continent was the Magi that had consumed Laxia.
“Huh? If there’s a lot of Magi, isn’t that a good thing? I thought demons used Magi.”
“Mana….”
I was about to say that even mana became unlivable when there was too much of it, but I swallowed the words back down.
There was no way an Earthling like Daeun would understand if I explained it that way.
“…People need water to live.”
“Yeah.”
“But if there’s too much water, you can’t live.”
“…Ah?”
The demons, unable to withstand the thickening Magi any longer, had left Laxia and settled on the Ardeena Continent.
It wasn’t a perfect explanation, but it was enough for her to roughly grasp the context.
After hearing my explanation, Daeun made a face that said she thought she understood.
Then she seemed to chew on the idea for a moment before speaking again.
“But… if the demons couldn’t handle it and ran away, then maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle it either, even if Kana could?”
“…Probably.”
“Then I guess I’ll have no choice but to wait until Kana comes back! Be careful and come back safe, Kana. …No, I-I’m joking!”
“…Joking?”
“Y-yeah! It was a joke, so don’t make that face at me. I feel like I’ve become trash…!”
“…That kind of joke isn’t funny at all.”
“I’m sorryyyy….”
When I loosened my grip on the hem of her clothes, Daeun muttered in the bleakest voice imaginable.
“I’m trash… unrecyclable trash….”
“You’re not going to make jokes like that anymore?”
“I won’t! I swear I won’t ever again…!”
“Good.”
“Kanaaa…! What on earth did I do to such a good little kid…!”
Gah!
“…Ugh.”
Daeun pulled me into a tight hug.
I tried to shake my head, but her body blocked the motion, and all I could do was let out a sigh.
“I’ve already prepared a countermeasure, so don’t worry.”
It was true that Apostles had sturdy bodies for their level, but Daeun’s current level still wouldn’t be enough to withstand the Magi of the demon continent.
According to Edel, even I would have a hard time enduring the Magi at the very heart of the demon continent, so there was no doubt about it.
As Daeun tilted her head at my words, she asked, “A countermeasure?”
Knock, knock.
“May I come in?”
“Oh? Celine?”
There was the sound of someone knocking on the door.
Then Celine’s voice came from beyond it, and though Daeun looked puzzled, she opened the door.
“Ah, good morning. Did both of you sleep well?”
“Thanks to you. Did you sleep well too, Celine?”
“Hehe, yes.”
“But what brings you here? It doesn’t seem to be breakfast time yet.”
“Oh dear, you haven’t heard yet?”
“…Pardon? Haven’t heard what…?”
Daeun cocked her head again.
“Lady Edel said I should accompany the two of you. Of course, if Lady Journey doesn’t want me to, then I have no choice, but….”
Do you dislike it?
When Celine asked in a somewhat dejected voice, Daeun hurriedly waved her hands.
“N-no! No, of course not! I was just surprised, that’s all….”
“Hehe, I’m relieved. I was worried you might dislike me, Lady Journey, and I almost got hurt.”
“There’s no way I’d dislike Celine.”
While speaking with Celine, Daeun bowed at the waist.
“Kana. So this countermeasure you mentioned….”
“Yeah. It’s Celine.”
“I see…. No, wait a second!”
Daeun grabbed my shoulder with a thud.
She seemed to put some force into it, yet not enough to hurt, and while holding my shoulder she asked me a question.
“Celine said Lady Edel told her to travel with us, so did Kana also….”
Then she swallowed hard.
“…speak with Lady Edel?”
“Yeah.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah.”
“In the prayer room? Just the two of you?”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t as if there was anything to hide, so I answered honestly.
The important thing was the content of the conversation.
When I’d asked just in case, Edel had said there was no need to keep it secret.
In fact, she’d even informed the high-ranking members of the church that I had spoken with her and told them to make allowances for me, which had, against my will, catapulted me into fame.
A divine revelation that had descended after decades, and its message was to make allowances for me. How could there not be an uproar?
If she was going to say something like that, she should have done it when I first arrived at the Holy Kingdom.
Then I wouldn’t have had to pretend to be a nun and all that.
Surely she didn’t do it on purpose.
Even as I told myself that, the things I’d seen Edel do kept making me suspicious.
“Is it me? Is speaking alone with a god supposed to be something you can talk about this calmly?”
Daeun muttered, half gone somewhere far away in her own head.
I tried waving a hand in front of her face, but her eyes remained hazy and unfocused.
It was surprising, sure, but was it really something that deserved this much shock?
I could understand why the people of Silia would be flustered.
For them, Edel wasn’t some vague idol whose existence or nonexistence was unclear; she was a real god, the mother of all things.
But Daeun, who had come from another world, couldn’t possibly feel her presence as strongly as they did.
Even so, I said nothing and simply watched her in silence.
Honestly, watching her panic was pretty entertaining.
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