The Most Ordinary (1)
The raucous tavern was pure pandemonium. Amid the chaos, Adam could do nothing but crawl helplessly across the floor. Just as the drunken revelry of madness and confusion reached its peak, something extraordinary happened.
Fwaaaash—
"S-Second Brother!!"
Fwaaaash—
"Third Brother too?!"
The bodies of Sedus Fallac and Trivius Palak, who had been merrily downing beer, blazed with a dazzling light. It was a sight of pure, sacred radiance.
Then their beards grew a little longer, their arms and legs thicker and sturdier!
Adam barely managed to lift his head and stare, eyes wide. He was witnessing a miracle—the Great One bestowing grace upon His workers right before his eyes.
"Second Brother has been recognized by the Great One and promoted!! Hahahaha!! Strike up the music!!"
"Third Brother as well!! Today is a joyous day!!! Pour it out, drink it down!!"
Having seen Sedus and Trivius's promotion with their own eyes, the dwarves' mood boiled over like a volcano about to erupt. The tavern grew even more violent and deafening. The air itself burned hot as an active crater.
"...O God..."
Adam, wriggling across the floor like a liquor-soaked earthworm as he sought the divine, lifted his head at the deep rumbling that rolled in from outside the inn. A heavy kugugugu— was sounding beyond the walls. Tables and chairs inside the inn trembled lightly, bouncing up and down.
"An e-earthquake? It's an earthquake!!"
The brief thought that an earthquake could even happen in the Holy Land flickered through Adam's mind, but he immediately covered his head and shouted.
The other dwarves who heard him scrambled about in panic.
"U-Uwaaagh!!"
"The ground is shaking!!"
Among the thoroughly drunk dwarves, some even tried to hide by climbing into beer barrels.
Opus Fallac and the veteran dwarves watched the spectacle with leisurely sips of beer. Those running around in a fluster were mostly the young ones—dwarves who had never seen the Great One work a miracle and raise buildings from the earth.
"Hahahaha!! Don't panic. This is the Great One performing a miracle upon the Holy Land!"
"...The Great One?"
"A miracle...?"
From the dwarf who had somehow jammed a wooden bowl onto his head like a helmet, to the one who had crawled under a chair, to the one dangling from the ceiling—dwarves emerged from every corner of the little tavern.
The eldest brothers among them—Opus Fallac, Sedus Fallac, and Trivius Palak—laughed heartily and headed outside.
"Come out and see! The Great One must be rejoicing that our youngest has arrived. It's been a long while since we've been treated to such a rare sight."
"A rare sight? What are you talking about?"
Looking bewildered, the dwarves hesitantly filed out of the inn. Adam joined the crowd and carefully stepped outside as well.
And what met their eyes was—
"T-This can't be..."
"Six Gods above, good heavens!"
Enormous buildings splitting the earth and surging skyward.
With a sharp zzzeok—, the ground cracked open into vast fissures, and from those gaps the buildings rose.
Throughout the process, a deep kugugugu— of earth-rumbling rolled across the entire Holy Land. Buildings sprouting from the soil like living things.
Faced with a landscape beyond all reason, Adam's mouth fell open, and he blurted out a ridiculous question without thinking.
"So... in the Holy Land, do buildings normally grow out of the ground like trees?"
The moment the words left his mouth, Adam regretted them. What kind of idiotic question was that? Sedus's expression as he looked at him said exactly the same thing—
"Oh, that's right! That's our youngest for you! Sharp as a tack, aren't you? Learns fast, too!"
"...Pardon?"
"In the Holy Land, buildings grow from the ground just like this. Every single one of them is created by the grace of the Great One."
Adam had to forcibly swallow the urge to ask how any of that could possibly be true.
Watching buildings rise from the earth was a true spectacle. As he stared at the structures climbing higher and higher, Adam thought:
I have to remember every last bit of this and tell them at the Pantheon.
The Great Priest Antonio was writing a book about his experiences in the Holy Land, so sharing his own story would make excellent reference material. With a bit of luck, Adam's name might even appear in a line or two.
I wonder how those blockheads of mine are doing...
Adam's thoughts drifted naturally to his disciples. They had their shortcomings, but they were apprentices he could present anywhere without shame.
"Youngest! Come over here!"
Lost in thought, Adam snapped back to attention at Sedus's call from afar. Sedus Fallac was waving him over in front of an old building that looked rather like a library.
"This place..."
When he carefully stepped inside the library, books thickly blanketed in dust greeted him.
The stacked volumes rose high enough to touch the ceiling, and the heavy dust made it clear that no hand had touched them in a very long time.
As Adam looked around with a dazed expression, Sedus Fallac held out a single book.
"Look at this, youngest. It seems the Great One has prepared new knowledge for you."
"The Great One... for me..."
With trembling hands, Adam accepted the dust-laden ancient tome. When he carefully brushed away the thick layer of dust, an elegant leather cover was revealed. Mysterious characters he could not read were engraved upon the title.
Sedus glanced at it and spoke.
"A book inscribed in runes."
From the very moment the library had been built, every dwarf had naturally awakened to knowledge of runes. It was less something taught and more something known by instinct.
"Runes... I've never heard of them."
"I imagine not. They are characters created by the Great One Himself."
Sedus spoke with a solemn expression.
"Rune characters are letters that themselves contain mysterious miracles, and depending on how the letters are combined, they can unleash endless wonders. It seems the Great One intends to bestow the rune script upon you, youngest."
"The Great One... upon me?"
Adam's eyes trembled violently. Such grace was far too great for a worthless old man like him.
"C-Can I... truly accept such an undeserved blessing..."
Sedus Fallac gave the shoulders of the nearly weeping Adam a few firm pats.
"Youngest, don't cry! The Great One saw potential in you! He saw something sleeping inside you! That's why He gave you this gift! So don't doubt yourself!"
"Brother...!"
Adam barely held back the surge of emotion that rose at Sedus's words. Then he looked down at the ancient tome in his hands. The leather cover engraved with runes was wrapped in a soft, luminous glow.
It almost seemed to be challenging him—asking whether he was worthy to handle it.
Sedus, who had already stepped back outside the library, urged him on.
"Come on, let's go! Youngest, there's no time! If you're going to learn the work and learn the runes, you'll have to move fast!!"
"Yes!!"
Adam gripped the rune-inscribed tome and strode forward with vigor. Just as Sedus had said, every minute and every second was precious to him. There was simply too much for Adam to learn.
"We'll start with the basics!! Let's try drawing thread from this metal!!"
"...Pardon?"
Of course, the process would not be entirely smooth.
Tap— tap—
The imperial palace of the Holy Romanian Empire.
Emperor Caesar tapped his fountain pen with a troubled expression. He tormented the innocent documents, brow deeply furrowed. But tapping papers alone never solved a problem.
Caesar let out a long sigh and spoke to his chancellor.
"Chancellor... huu— what do you make of this matter?"
"Should we not simply tell the Holy City the truth?"
"I know that. I know that much myself. The problem is that the Empire's dignity is in tatters."
Caesar seized the document and shook it with a flutter. Dense black lettering filled the page from top to bottom. And at the very top, written in large characters:
Caesar heaved another deep sigh.
"I boasted to the Apostles that the Empire would handle the plague rat extermination ourselves... and now that things have come to this, how am I supposed to hold my head up?"
"P-Please kill me, Your Majesty!!"
The knight-commander, flat on the floor, trembled as he cried out. Caesar gazed at him steadily, then sighed once more.
What crime did that knight-commander truly bear? If there was fault, it lay with Caesar himself for failing to act swiftly.
"Enough. What wrong have you done? It is because We spent far too long with Our mind elsewhere."
After the nightmare of the demon had been purged, and before the Tree of Light descended—
Caesar had been lost in the shock of losing his son and had neglected state affairs for quite some time. In that interval, the mother of the plague rats had escaped.
Plague rats multiplied with terrifying speed and carried a deadly epidemic. They needed to be exterminated as quickly as possible... but the problem lay in the direction the mother had fled.
"Of all places..."
Caesar looked at the map and sighed deeply again. At this rate it would not be strange if the palace floor itself caved in.
The map showed the mother's predicted escape route. Past the capital, over three mountains, across a broad plain, and at the end of it all...
"Of all places, toward the Holy City..."
There lay the Holy City—Civitas.
Caesar's expression darkened. He had confidently declared that the Empire could handle mere plague rats and sent the Apostles home... and now it was the Holy City of all places.
If a military operation took place near the Holy City, the Apostles' involvement would be all but forced.
With what face was he supposed to deliver this news to the Holy City, and with what face was he supposed to face the Apostles again?
Caesar's head already ached.
"Huu... The Empire's dignity is in ruins."
Caesar set his fountain pen to a sheet of fine paper. It was embarrassing... but what had to be done had to be done. Soon the emperor's pen danced with elegant strokes, composing a single letter.
Before long, a messenger bearing the imperial banner set off at a run toward the Holy City.
"Strange."
Hans tilted his head.
"It's strange, I tell you."
A farmer's son, and a former adventurer. Now the first Apostle to receive a weapon of the gods.
He had been frozen solid by a lich's attack and only recently thawed. He had even become acquainted with the Hero chosen by the gods.
All of this had happened to him in less than a single year. If he told the Hans of a year ago, the man would never have believed it.
Even now, he sometimes could not quite believe it himself.
Anyway, that was not the important part.
In Hans's own estimation, he was an extremely ordinary commoner. Born the son of a farmer in some rural nowhere, he had hated the farming life and come up to the city on pure impulse.
A story you could find anywhere. And in truth, Hans's combat ability had been thoroughly ordinary—farmer-level.
The kind of man who, with a single sword in hand, could just barely beat a goblin.
And yet... thoroughly unordinary things had begun happening to him.
"...Why on earth?"
Hans muttered as he stared at the shattered scarecrow. The dummy, made from red thornwood famous for its thickness and toughness, had been smashed to pieces.
This was not the kind of strength a man who had been recovering until recently should be able to produce.
"...Why?"
Faced with a phenomenon he could not understand, Hans kept tilting his head.
...Why on earth?