1. The Healer Who's a Bit Off in the Head
This godforsaken world doesn't even have curtains.
Not that she could blame anyone—if the common folk had cloth to spare, they'd sooner make clothes out of it or sell it. Fine. Then at least give them a door they could shut. A gaping hole of a window with no shutter, and nothing but an overlong eave to keep the rain out—that's the best they could manage.
Yona opened her eyes to the sunlight beating straight down onto her closed lids.
Her eyes had been deep in the grip of sleep, but somewhere along the way they must have adjusted to the light, because it didn't sting at all.
"Damn it all…"
Cursing out of pure habit, Yona climbed out of bed. She stretched with a long, drawn-out groan, and cracks and pops rang out from every joint—but by now that was just business as usual.
She grabbed the kettle by her pillow and chugged the water down, then shuffled into the washroom to splash her face. Picking up the comb sitting beside the basin, she dragged it through her hair without much care. Her milky-white hair, utterly devoid of shine, loved to snag on the comb's teeth, knot by tangled knot.
"Ow! …Ugh, hell."
She scowled as a few strands came out by the root. Prick, sting, prick, sting. Yona snatched up a scrap of cloth, wiped her face roughly, and headed back into her room.
A bed stuffed with straw. A table knocked together from roughly hewn planks, creaking pitifully every time anything was set on it. And lying tossed carelessly on top of it, one long, long strip of cloth.
"All right. Here's hoping I earn my bread in one piece today, too…"
She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. Somewhere around her lower abdomen, a warm energy stirred, then bloomed outward through her whole body in a rush.
Thank the gods—her holy power hadn't run dry today either. If she lost that, she'd starve.
Relieved, Yona took the nun's habit hanging on the wall and pulled it on over her head, more or less.
"Pleeease let me eat and live to see another day~"
She hummed to herself—until the habit caught squarely on her breasts and refused to budge another inch.
"Damn it, these things are big for absolutely no reason…"
Three years she'd been doing this now, and every single time she got dressed, it grated on her all the same. Grumbling under her breath, Yona wrestled the habit into place and counted her blessings: at least this one covered everything. None of that nonsense you always saw in web novels and webtoons—the kind of "holy maiden" outfit that made you wonder whether she was a saint or a prostitute. This was a proper habit, wrapped head to toe in black fabric with a single exception: her right arm.
A mercy, truly. Yona's habit left the right arm bare from the shoulder down.
"Now… let's see."
She picked up the cloth lying on the wooden table. Calling it cloth was generous—the strip was narrow, closer to a bandage really. At one end, a small hole had been punched through it, made for hooking onto something.
Yona fit that hole over the clip on her habit near her right shoulder, then began winding the cloth around her arm, round and round. Before long, her right arm was bound tight in pale grey fabric, not a sliver of skin showing through.
She pulled the veil she kept hanging with her habit down over her head, and she was ready to go.
"All right then. Off we go."
*
Evian was, if you insisted on measuring by size, a mid-tier city. The smaller towns around it orbited it like satellites, and Evian sat at the center of them all—which meant heavy foot traffic, and thanks to that, one of the busiest Adventurer's Guild branches around.
Thud.
The guild's wooden door swung open without ceremony, and someone's shadow stretched long across the floor. Long hair falling to the waist, a veil draped over it. From the shadow alone, everyone inside the guild knew exactly who had walked in.
"I'm here, you bastards."
Cursing, no hesitation whatsoever. Yona drank in the stares that snapped toward her the moment she stepped through the door, savoring every one.
"Yona! Milk jugs still healthy today, I see?"
"You insane bastard. Even so, I'd let you hit it."
"Cold, man. Cold."
Yona smacked the back of the bald adventurer's head with a satisfying crack—Alec, purveyor of mischievous jokes.
"Cold my ass—I used to be a man, you know? You really want to bang a guy? Because that's what you'd be doing."
"I'd hit it gratefully."
"Then no, you can't."
At her flat, unwavering refusal, the whole room burst out laughing.
The healer with the screw loose who insisted she used to be a man—Yona. And not only that: the healer who was quite a few bricks shy of a load and claimed she'd come from some distant other world—also Yona. That was her official title at this Adventurer's Guild.
"Morning, Miss Yona!"
"How many times do I have to tell you—drop the 'miss.'"
Mary greeted her with a beaming smile. Yona scowled on cue, same as always—stop calling me that—but Mary didn't care one bit.
"Those chest apples of yours argue awfully hard that you're a woman, though?"
"No—ugh, it's not that I am a man right now, it's that I used to be one—!"
"Yes, yes, I know, I know. Well, here's the thing—still no parties looking for a healer."
"Damn it, what the hell are these adventurers doing, sitting around with no work to go out and do?"
"I know, right? But then, you're not exactly the type to tag along with just any random party, are you, Miss Yona?"
Yona's face twisted at that. True—she couldn't just wedge herself into any old group. She had standards, after all.
"Healers are scarce these days. Scarce as hen's teeth. Just sit tight a little longer. Besides, something's come up."
"Something…? Oh. Got it."
Yona fell quiet and turned back to her. If Mary, the receptionist herself, was putting it that way, then it was probably something she couldn't say outright across the counter.
"Hey, Alec. Healers dying off again? A few faces I used to see around here are gone."
"Heard one bought it yesterday. Word is he went down in one hit along with the vanguard covering him."
Bald Alec. The man had connections in every corner somehow, and news always found its way to him. Even things Mary couldn't say as a guild receptionist, Yona could hear through Alec.
"Killed doing what?"
Information was everything. Killed how, killed by what—she needed to know at least that much if she was going to watch her own back.
Alec cleared his throat with an exaggerated ahem and scratched his neck. Yona's face twisted again at the sight.
"Fine, fine, you bastard. Playing hardball, are we? Mary! A beer for this man!"
"You're drinking this early?"
"Not me—this bastard asked for it! Something about yeast being good for the brain, apparently!"
The guild office erupted in laughter once more. Mary herself cracked a smile at Yona's antics, and a moment later a mug of beer landed in front of Alec—foam bubbling right up over the rim.
Watching it, Yona couldn't help but crave an ice-cold mug herself, but she quickly shook the thought away. What kind of healer goes around drinking on the job? If a dungeon run came up, was beer-foam supposed to heal people? In her dreams.
And so Yona resigned herself to watching Alec drain his mug with gross satisfaction.
"All right, now spill it."
Alec set down the half-empty mug and wiped his mouth with a satisfied ahh. A long line of white foam traced across his upper lip.
"That, uh—there's that underground dungeon, yeah? Out that way, west."
"There's more than one dungeon out that way."
"The Catacombs, I'm talking about. The Catacombs."
The Catacombs. The underground dungeon to the west. It had already been picked clean to a decent extent—there shouldn't have been much left worth taking.
"What were they hoping to loot down there? Wasn't that place already stripped?"
"Wow, you really are—"
"Call me 'miss' again and die."
Yona bared her eyes at the word, but honestly, she was a miss by any measure. In fact, the moment she shut her mouth, she was a peerless beauty. Alec privately figured that if Yona would just keep her mouth closed, she could walk straight into the grand cathedral across town.
"…Anyway, did you seriously come from another world or what? How are you this far behind on the news, of all people—an adventurer?"
"Other world or not, I'm a long-term resident at the Moon & Star Inn these days, so just get to the point."
"Fine. Word is they found a passage down to the third basement floor. The survey team went in, and the only one who came back was babbling about a demon—then keeled over dead two days ago."
"Ah…"
Only then did Yona grasp the whole picture. The Catacombs had been cleared through the second basement floor. Then a passage to the third floor had been discovered—so some party had gone down hoping to get the jump on the fresh loot, and this was what came of it.
"Huh. Hm."
But if that were the whole story, there should be plenty of parties itching to head down there right now. Yet for some reason, far too many of them were camped out here at this hour.
Yona craned her neck and looked around. Adventurers packed tight at every table, and a good number of them were faces she knew well. Plenty had long since shed their rookie stink—veterans, you might even call them now.
"So why is everyone just sitting around here?"
Alec didn't answer. He just tipped the mug back and finished the rest of his beer. Yona watched his throat bob with every swallow, eyes full of envy.
Ah. Maybe just one. Just one mug couldn't hurt.
Just as she was sinking deeper into that dangerous temptation, Alec spoke.
"That's what I've been telling you—a demon. A demon showed up down there."
"A demon, huh…"
Well, if a demon was involved, that did change the math. A healer attached to a party was, in the end, just a healer—and against demons, what you needed was a priest.
"So everyone's stuck here because there are no priests to go around?"
"Pretty much. Once the lord sends out a subjugation force, we might get to tag along with it. Or something like that."
"Subjugation force pay would be pretty sweet, wouldn't it?"
Made sense, really. Those lead-bottomed priest bitches wouldn't so much as twitch for anything less. Priests—fellow wielders of holy power who looked down on healers as lowborn mongrels. The Holy Shroud was something only healers could handle, yet all the priests ever touched were their idols and their rosaries, and somehow they still acted like they were made of something better.
"As for pay, well… point is, everyone's on standby until the subjugation force forms up."
"I see."
Now it all made sense. A subjugation force organized under the lord's direct orders would come with proper compensation. Poking around for pocket change on your own and missing your chance to join the force would be the real loss.
"Hm. Well then. Maybe I'll sit tight too."
Time to see about collecting some of that easy money, thought Yona.