That's Just My Taste

Spirits were said to be rare and hard to find in Deoen, but the world I'd been thrown into was nothing like that.

Spirits wandered everywhere.

Forests, lakes, mountains, highlands, volcanoes… anywhere the feet of mortals could not reach.

They roamed the world freely, and in the twenty years I spent traveling it after stepping down as a saint, I met so very many of them.

"Miss Angel, Miss Angel! Where are you going?"

"Miss Angel! Play with me!"

"Are you busy? Hmmm… I have something I want to show you, Miss Angel…"

Spirits revered the celestials.

They called them angels, and stood in awe of their brilliant, dazzling divinity and their overwhelming strength.

Of course, it was only the long-lived spirits who feared that strength. The young ones, who made up the vast majority, simply loved anything that glittered.

Because radiant white divinity sparkled just to look at.

"This angel is a kind one."

The celestials, however, couldn't have cared less about spirits.

To be precise, they treated every race except the demons as insects.

The only race that could stand against the celestials was the demons; everything else was beneath their notice.

Now and then, a spirit would approach a celestial with too much cheek and be wiped out to the last one — it happened often enough that no one would have blinked. But because they were wiped out, the young spirits never learned of it.

All they knew was that the sparkling divinity pleased them, and that anyone who carried it was an angel.

"Yes, hello there."

And so I, a Heaven-Scented Human, became an object of their reverence too.

Compared to a true celestial, I was nothing much — but to the spirits, that was actually a good thing.

After all, a kind angel is far better than a cruel one.

I got the Sylphid Bracelet back.

I asked Sylphy for Nerindia's 'compensation', and at the same time told her that she was free to leave whenever she wished.

The spirits had been tremendously helpful to me during those twenty years of wandering the world, after all.

Of course, the spirits here and the spirits there were different.

Unlike that world, where spirits filled every corner of it, spirits here were hard to come by.

But that 'mischievous child' I remembered was still the same.

"I don't want to. I'm with Lily. Stay with you."

But Sylphy refused.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It was a thing both obvious and not obvious at all.

Because they had revered divinity, the spirits had always clung to me — but I no longer carried that divinity.

And yet she follows me even without it.

Why, I wonder.

Could she know that I'm a Heaven-Scented Human?

'Either way.'

I fastened the Sylphid Bracelet back onto my wrist.

In exchange for sparing Nerindia's life, Yena and I — and the audience, too — walked away with more than enough compensation to nod at.

I do like spirits, it's true. But if it came to a point where I'd have to harm the people around me over them, I was more than ready to cut them loose without hesitation.

Thankfully, Nerindia listened to what I had to say, and I didn't have to kill her.

"I'm sorry — did you say a hundred thousand?"

I was staring at the dizzying flood of chat when I jolted and checked my viewer count.

My viewers: 72,010.

Yena's viewers: 34,097.

The count that had been seesawing between seventy and eighty thousand had leapt past the hundred-thousand mark in a single bound.

How much was a hundred thousand people, again?

You'd need one of the kingdom's great cities to reach that number.

And not just any kingdom — the largest kingdom among all the realms of humankind.

The thought that all those people were watching Yena and me, and no one else, made me a little dizzy.

It's dizzying.

Truly dizzying.

"Whew… let's take stock, shall we?"

Once the brief chaos settled, Yena flopped down onto the deck — cracked here, splintered there.

The spirits had run riot and a battle had broken out on top of it, so the space looked less like a ship and more like a ruin.

If this had been a small vessel instead of a large one, it would have been well within ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reason for it to have already sunk.

"Lily."

"Yes, Yena?"

"How did you pull that off?"

Yena was gazing up at the tattered sails.

Shedding a few tears at the feeling of watching her freshly-drawn gacha come home half-destroyed after a mere three hours, Yena looked back at me.

Even if you release a spirit, even if you spare it and send it on its way, no one pays out a reward of this caliber.

Sure, spirits were hard to come by — but spirit shamans already existed, and people possessed a small stockpile of spirit gear. What did that tell you?

It meant that players met spirits often enough, and communicated with them well enough, that the stories circulated.

No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠doubt some of them had walked this exact kind of 'route' in the process.

But they had never gained much compared to what they gave up.

At best, most walked away with a fleeting spirit's blessing or a piece of useless equipment.

Yet Lily hadExtracted not one but twoLegendary Tier blessings — the kind even spirit shamans could barely obtain — along with the Semi-Legendary bracelet on top.

I, too, stole a glance at the battered ship and shrugged.

"I simply received fair compensation."

"…Compensation?"

"…Since when did compensation work like that?"

Yena let out a hollow laugh.

Lately, whenever she wandered around with me, one absurd thing after another kept springing out of the woodwork.

Watching it happen, she felt half delighted and half at a loss for what to do.

"It's not really that difficult. There are about three reasons. The first is that Yena had already subdued her."

Yena had crushed Nerindia with an overwhelming gap in power.

Nerindia's life had already been in Yena's hands, and she was prepared to accept almost any condition.

"…But high spirits aren't so easily pushed around. Even with their own life on the line, they won't hand a spirit's power over to an enemy."

"It isn't just their own life on the line, though, is it?"

"Why, right… ah."

Right — she cherished them.

If you accounted for the lives of the children as well as her own, it made sense that she'd be willing to give up a great deal more.

Yena nodded, looking partly convinced.

"And the second reason?"

"The second is the Sylphid Bracelet. I was the one carrying it, not you, and I never took a hostile action. If you don't antagonize the spirit and can simply convey Sylphy's heart, extracting fair compensation isn't especially hard."

Granted, every one of those premises hinged on whether you could communicate with the spirit at all…

Well, anyone with the spirit shaman class, or with a high enough aptitude for language, could manage it.

Without her divinity, Sylphy wouldn't see me as a celestial anymore — so a plain, ordinary human could manage it too, probably.

In fact, back in that world, there were always spirits here and there who followed ordinary people around, celestials or not.

That's how people became spirit shamans in the first place.

"And the third reason?"

"…That one's just a matter of taste."

"I'm sorry?"

As far as I'd planned, the blessings were the ceiling.

Never in my wildest imagination did I think a spirit could actually like Yena — the woman who'd been spraying poison gas and mowing spirits down left and right.

"It only worked because there happened to be a spirit with… unusual tastes."

"……"

Thinking it over again, it really is strange.