Charm Stat 180
Hans turned his head. There stood the usual pack of brats who followed him everywhere, staring at him with eyes as wide as dinner plates.
Hans’s mind went completely blank. From those children’s gaping mouths came a barrage of questions that were really just attacks in disguise.
“...What’s wrong with you? Did you catch something?”
In the children’s world, any contact with that insane beggar woman they called “MlemMlem” was the ultimate taboo. The alley boss of yesterday was already ancient history. The kids shrieked with glee at discovering a brand-new toy.
“Whoa! He caught MlemMlem’s disease!”
“N-no, that’s not—”
“Hans caught the plague! Hans is sick!”
“I told you it’s not like that!”
Hans’s desperate shouts rang hollow. Because now he was just the pathetic brat who had confessed to the crazy beggar woman after catching her disease.
Thirin turned away, cackling under her breath. Yep. This was exactly what a charm stat of 180 looked like.
She no longer had any reason to be swept up in infantile urges and spew curses. This was the way of a dignified, civilized person, wasn’t it? Thirin felt rather proud of herself.
Having so brutally crushed a child’s first pure love, Thirin hummed a cheerful little tune and strolled into the village.
The village was far busier than usual, buzzing with festival preparations. Makeshift stalls crowded the square, while colorful scraps of cloth and dried flower branches did their best to create a festive mood. Children dashed around playing tag, adults exchanged greetings or haggled over prices. In the distance came the faint sound of instruments, and the air carried a mixture of savory cooking smells and the sour tang of cheap fruit wine fermenting.
Yet even amid the cheerful atmosphere, an undercurrent of unease lingered. The village had grown tense for a very good reason: the mercenary company hired by the empire to subjugate nearby monsters had decided to stick around and were throwing their weight around.
The otherworld Thirin had fallen into was a chaotic mishmash where ancient, medieval, and early-modern elements collided without rhyme or reason. There were Roman-inspired empires, city alliances, active gods—the whole thing was a glorious mess. Thirin simply wrote it all off as “filthy medieval fantasy garbage,” but some cities were actually clean and orderly, bordering on early-modern standards. It was just her rotten luck that she’d landed in a nameless frontier village on the very edge of the empire.
The frontier was constantly plagued by monsters, and the ever soldier-starved empire frequently hired mercenary bands. The problem was that most of these companies were little more than gatherings of trash who only knew how to bully people with their strength.
The current group was no exception. Even after finishing the monster subjugation, they refused to leave. Instead they picked fights with the locals, stole goods, and generally acted like scum.
Thirin spotted a commotion at a fruit stall on one side of the square. A vicious-looking mercenary was bellowing at the old woman running it.
“Hey, grandma! What the hell is this taste? You selling rotten stuff or what?”
“N-no, my lord! These are fresh, picked just this morning—!”
“What? I’m telling you it tastes like crap. You think it’s okay to charge money for rotten apples? I already ate one! What if I get sick? How are you planning to compensate me, huh?”
“Oh dear, my lord, please—!”
“Yo, Heres! The fruit here sucks! This old bat gave me fresh garbage!”
At the name, Thirin’s gaze shifted. The muscular man called Heres kicked over the fruit basket with a nasty laugh. Ripe apples and unfamiliar fruits tumbled across the dirt in a pathetic display—things Thirin could never have touched even in the depths of her starvation.
“Tsk tsk, grandma. You gotta have some sense if you want to run a business.”
Heres ground the dirt-covered fruit under his boot without a second thought. A sour-sweet smell rose from the crushed pulp. Thirin’s sensitive senses made her stomach churn.
“You know who we are, right? Heroes risking our lives for the empire. But we’re broke. We killed the monsters, but they won’t pay the subjugation fee. So somebody’s gotta lend us some coin, yeah?”
Heres grinned openly at the old woman’s money pouch. The surrounding mercenaries joined in with vulgar laughter.
“Today’s a joyous festival day. How can heroes not even afford apples? What do you think, grandma? Hm?”
This was how the mercenaries usually operated. The imperial peacekeepers who were supposedly stationed here simply watched and did nothing.
Thirin stared expressionlessly at the fruit being pulverized into the dirt. Then, in the corner of her vision, she caught something moving hurriedly. It was Merye from Wilson’s tavern. From the quick glimpse she got, faint bruises seemed to mark the young woman’s face.
Thirin watched her retreating back for a moment before looking away.
Because of the festival, more mercenaries than usual roamed the village. Unlike Heres’s noisy crew, another group had settled in a shaded spot near the tavern. They paid no attention to the commotion, quietly sipping drinks and talking in low voices among themselves.
That was exactly what “birds of a feather” looked like. Thirin observed them briefly, then continued on her way.
She headed for the church where Peter was. After all, the first person she needed to tell that her speech had finally returned was that old geezer.
“Old man!”
Thirin shouted in genuine delight the moment she saw Peter. The old priest, busy polishing something in the corner, looked up.
“...You’ve learned a new word. But of all things, it had to be ‘old man.’”
Peter nodded with mock solemnity.
“It’s good that your vocabulary is expanding, but it’ll take quite some time before anyone understands what you mean. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just keep cursing like before? I’m only saying this because I am not, in fact, an old man.”
“This crazy old bastard…”
Peter’s wrinkled eyes flew wide open.
“...What did you just say?”
“Old man, I figured your hearing was going, but now you’ve gone full deaf. Can’t even understand words spoken right in front of your face. Tragic. Got anyone looking after you?”
At Thirin’s venomous tirade, Peter’s jaw dropped. The perpetually stoic old man’s eyes rounded like saucers.
He stared at her for a long moment, then suddenly burst into roaring laughter.
“Hah! I knew it! I just knew it!”
“Urk!”
Peter slapped her back with enough force to make her stagger forward. For an old man, his strength was no joke.
Partially fulfilled the activation conditions for the basic Physical Realization system!
Even the system was spouting nonsense.
Thirin coughed and hacked. ‘Damn it, this crazy old fart’s gonna kill me!’
“This is so good, the whip of love!”
She’d used the wrong verbal wiring again. Peter’s heavy physical blow had short-circuited the connection between her brain and tongue. Thirin exploded.
“You insane old coot, cut it out!”
Only then did Peter stop pounding her back. His face, however, was still split ear to ear with a delighted grin.
When Thirin saw that expression, her own irritation melted away. She smiled back from beneath her mask.
“Is it true? Can you really speak now? How is this even possible?”
Peter looked her up and down, still half in disbelief. In Thirin’s mind, the last six months flashed by like lightning—the warped face reflected in the stream, the tongue and lips that refused to obey, the thousands upon thousands of twisted curses she’d repeated endlessly...
She nearly got sentimental, but summed it up in the simplest way possible.
“Effort and perseverance.”
“...Truly a miracle. Did you perhaps believe in a god?”
Thirin gave a dry smile. “Nothing like that, old man. I did it all myself through sheer stubbornness.”
“I suppose that’s possible too.”
Peter returned her smile.
“In any case, this is truly worth celebrating. We can’t let a day like this pass quietly. A person gaining the power of speech is no different from being reborn.”
He stood up.
“What are you planning?”
“I have some wine saved exactly for occasions like this.”
“Old man, you keep alcohol here? Isn’t this a church? Are priests even allowed to drink?”
“Is there anyone who doesn’t drink? If you ever meet someone who claims they don’t, be careful. They’re either not human or a swindler.”
As she’d felt before, Peter was remarkably loose for a priest. He’d even once suggested she sell her body.
Peter stood, then paused and looked around with a sigh.
“I’d like to bring it out right now, but I still have work to do. Go enjoy the village festival and come back this evening. We’ll talk properly then.”
“You’re not going to the festival, old man?”
“I have my own beliefs, so I don’t participate in the Festival of Myriad Gods. You go and enjoy it. Ah, wait a moment.”
Peter looked Thirin over.
“If you’re attending the festival, you should at least make yourself somewhat presentable. Even for a beggar, that outfit is a bit much.”
His gaze rested on her rags. To be fair, the clothes she currently wore had originally been given by Peter. They’d simply become tattered from all her rolling around in the dirt.
“I thought you shared the same tastes as wild dogs since you kept bathing in mud pits, so I left you alone. But seeing you’ve washed, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Wait here.”
He returned with a set of worn but clean, sturdy clothes and a small leather pouch.
“Wear this, at least. And take this… buy yourself some snacks at the festival.”
A few coins jingled inside the pouch. Peter grinned at Thirin’s complicated expression.
“Congratulations on your rebirth. Go enjoy yourself.”
Thirin really hadn’t wanted to feel moved, but her throat tightened anyway.
“...Damn it. I can’t live with debts. I’ll repay you with gold later.”
“By the time you earn any gold, I’ll already be dead and buried.”
Overcome with emotion, Thirin declared, “Then I’ll make sure to gild your tombstone with pure gold.”
“Hearing you spout such nonsense, it seems you’re not fully recovered yet.”
Peter laughed heartily and slapped her back again.
Partially fulfilled the activation conditions for the basic Physical Realization system!
“Ack! Damn old fart! Stop hitting me!”
Thirin screamed and bolted out of the church.
“Stupid old man.”
She grumbled, but her mood wasn’t bad at all. The liberating feeling of being able to speak properly at last. She’d change clothes quickly and go greet Martha. She wouldn’t be too harsh on Martha, of course, but she had prepared some choice words for that annoying little brat Vera.
Thirin giggled and continued on her way.
“.....”
As she drew near the village, the sound of someone causing trouble reached her ears. It looked like Thirin’s chance to “return the favor” would come sooner than expected.