Chapter 10. Stubbornness and Arrogance (8)
Chapter 10. Stubbornness and Arrogance (8)
"Boo!"
"Money-grubbing bastards! You think gold fixes everything!"
"What are those priest bastards doing all the way out here?!"
Nearly everything I could hear was that kind of shouting.
Dwarven Sanctuaries are mostly mobile, they say. The reason this one sits at the edge of the mine is simple. That's where the most people get hurt.
The Dwarves had built their kingdom underground and lived there from the start, so the act of digging out that ore must have been fairly sacred in itself.
But practices like that changed over time.
Even if the work of those who dig the earth is considered sacred at first, once people to command them appear, power inevitably gathers around the commanders.
The scale keeps growing, and above the commanders more commanders appear, and at some point, the pioneers who were originally treated best get pushed to the fringes of power, while the most important positions are taken by the head of those commanders.
In Dwarven society, the ones at the very bottom were the miners, farthest from that central power.
At least while they could still properly extract ore, they were treated decently enough, but the moment they couldn't—they were simply discarded.
"......."
I clenched my fist slightly.
The light stored in my ring seeped out faintly and lit up the surroundings.
The expressions of the people who saw it shifted a little. The ones at the very front who had looked ready to harm us backed away a step, and even the Dwarven infantryman among them retreated in some confusion.
I reached my hand forward slightly, toward the person at the very front.
Did it look like I was about to cast Magic? The man seemed ready to bolt at any second.
His hair and beard were patchy, and unlike the other Dwarves, he was gaunt. Anyone could see that he was badly malnourished, and he had wounds all over his body besides.
As I slowly extended the light toward him—
"......What?!"
The man flinched and stared down at his own hands.
Had he been digging through rock without proper equipment? The wounds on both hands, each missing several fingers, slowly disappeared.
The blackened areas around the wounds also slowly lost their color.
......As I thought.
Dwarves can store Mana in their bodies, and royal Dwarves usually hold far more of it. A princess exceptional even among them could create a Mana Orb through her own power alone.
But if that's the case, the opposite must exist too. If there are people who can eat enormous amounts of food without any problem, then there are also light eaters who feel full from very little.
I turned to look at the priests.
The priests were openly wearing expressions of displeasure.
To Dwarves, Mana is an object of worship.
And to such Dwarves, how would those who can't properly withstand Mana look? It's obvious. On Earth, if someone couldn't withstand Holy Power, they'd be treated as a Magical Creature.
"I'd like to treat the wounded."
Since they worship Mana, many Dwarves would absolutely loathe receiving Holy Power. That's only natural. It would burn away all the Mana in their bodies.
But for people who couldn't properly receive Mana in the first place, there's nothing to lose.
"Let's treat the people who were badly injured by Mana first."
I said it with a bright smile.
"Could you form a bit of a line?"
*
"Anna."
"Yes?"
By the time I'd healed more than a hundred Dwarves, Ria called my name.
I turned my head and jumped when I found Ria's face far too close to mine.
"What is it?"
"With this, do you think you can persuade those guys?"
"Persuade? Who?"
"No, those guys. Didn't you come to persuade them?"
Where Ria glanced, the priests were gathered, watching us with strange looks.
It must look like I'm healing with Blessings. Well, from their perspective, this kind of behavior would be hard to understand. By Earth standards, it would look like I'm splashing Mana around everywhere.
But that comparison isn't entirely accurate.
A Dwarven woman sat down in front of me.
Just as the men had said earlier, she wore an unkempt beard hanging down. It was simply cut short, and I'd only guessed she was a woman from the shape of her body visible below the neck.
The woman silently held out a child toward me.
"May I take a look......?"
When I spoke with both hands open, the woman, still silent, placed the child in my arms. Her arms looked weak. She hadn't been able to wash properly, and a smell wafted from her body, but I could endure it. I'd been smelling it this whole time, after all.
I took the child into my arms.
"......."
Ria stopped talking.
The child in my arms was hard to distinguish from a human child. In fact, there was almost no visible difference.
Except, it was a little different from what we usually picture when we think of a "child."
When I pulled back the tattered cloth wrapped around the child, Ria caught her breath.
The child's body was stained with Mana all over. It wasn't simply wounds with staining around them—the contamination spread from beneath that thin, pale skin like an infection.
Holding the child in my arms, I silently closed my eyes.
There was no need to even bother with prayer. Holy Power poured down over my head as if it had been startled by something.
When I opened my eyes again, the child's skin color had returned to normal.
The child, who had been limp with closed eyes, slowly opened them.
The child was still gaunt, probably from not having eaten properly, and looked weak. But at least the child was alive.
"......Could you tell me what kind of water this child drank?"
At my question, the woman raised her head and looked at me.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but the sound that came out never formed into words.
The inside of her mouth, glimpsed briefly, was empty.
"......."
I silently placed the child back into the woman's arms.
"Let's go. Together."
When I stood up, Ria also rose silently from her seat.
So did the Knight Order, whose members had been arriving steadily over the few hours since we got here.
"It would be nice if one of the priests could guide us."
I asked, looking toward the priests.
"......They said the inner part of this slum is where the original Sanctuary used to be."
I asked, recalling the conversation the Dwarves had been having on our way here.
The priests still looked deeply dissatisfied, but once they saw the arriving Knight Order, they eventually nodded.
There was the princess's command, and the fact that I'm an important guest—
Well, I really did well to bring along those broad-shouldered inquisitors.
......Even if the Church forced them on me. Anyway.
*
To continue what I was saying earlier, Dwarves don't live on Mana alone.
They eat things, just like us. Mana is merely an auxiliary means needed for survival; it isn't responsible for a Dwarf's life itself.
If it were, I couldn't have been treated as a guest like this.
And I couldn't have healed Dwarves with Holy Power.
"......."
I looked at the pool in front of me.
Just standing here, I could feel Mana so intense it made my skin prickle. It wasn't as large as the Gnomes' lake, but the sheer force of the Mana radiating from it gave me a sense of its concentration.
So this is the "Mana-tainted water."
The only reason anyone could drink this and survive was simply because they were Dwarves. No matter how poor their Mana capacity, they'd still withstand it far better than humans.
"......Now I see why the slum formed."
Ria said.
Right.
It isn't simply a place where the wounded gathered.
They must have gathered for all sorts of reasons. It isn't a space fit for people to live in, after all. I think I understand now why they called this place "dangerous."
And why the princess mentioned this place first.
There are probably places like this all over the Dwarven Kingdom.
Far off in the distance, the abandoned Sanctuary was visible. A mass depicting some formless god the Dwarves believe in was being consumed by Mana.
"Wait!"
As if realizing what I was about to do, a priest shouted.
"You can't!"
The fat priest, who had come running hard, blocked my path and yelled.
"This Mana is—"
"Sacred to the Dwarves, I know. But at this rate, people will just keep dying. Mana Stones can be utilized, but even you can't do anything about Mana mixed into drinking water, can you?"
I raised my hand.
"And I'm saying this as something of an expert, so listen carefully. If you leave this alone, it will eventually cause great harm to the Dwarven Kingdom."
"But......!"
"I don't know what kind of religious belief is involved here, but if you keep standing around here, the Mana you've accumulated in your body will definitely all burn away."
Only after I said that did the priest's face go pale and he fled.
Come on, even this should be done in moderation.
.......
Well, it's precisely because they don't know that "moderation" that this happened.
I let out a deep sigh and closed my eyes.
Feeling a premonition that things were about to get a little complicated.