The Hero's Party
Almost no one was fond of Alevian.
Most people gave all sorts of reasons for why she put them off, but in truth, the reason—whatever they called it—always came down to the same thing.
Alevian's eyes.
That peculiar gaze that somehow gave off a deeply unsettling feeling.
A gaze so bizarre it was hard to believe it belonged to anyone remotely sane.
Because of those eyes, Alevian stood out as singularly strange even in Evian, a city teeming with every manner of character.
And that very woman, right now—
“…A-Alevian?”
“Yes, yes… it's me, Yona. I've come. I came looking for you.”
A strange smile, the corners of her mouth twisting upward.
Yona instinctively took a step back.
For every step Yona retreated, Alevian advanced one.
Alevian, who had been standing at the door, now stepped fully into the room.
The inn door swung shut behind her, slowly, and Yona stared at Alevian with a face frozen stiff.
“R-right. I was actually planning to go find you anyway.”
“Oh, how delightful. You were coming to see me? You could have simply waited there like a good girl, but this is even better.”
Alevian swept past Yona and plopped herself down on Yona's bed.
“Coming to you like this is so much better. I get to smell you, too.”
As if to prove the words were no joke, Alevian drew in a long, slow breath through her nose.
Yona's expression turned distinctly sour at the sight.
“W-wouldn't you like a glass of water?”
Alevian smiled at her.
Not that eerie upturned-corner smile, but a smile that actually looked—genuinely—bright and open.
Yona poured water from the pitcher at the head of the bed and handed it over.
“…Well, thanks for coming. Saves me the trouble.”
Even so, she couldn't exactly treat Alevian rudely, knowing the elf had gone out of her way on her behalf, so Yona poured herself a cup as well and sat down at the table.
“Oh, don't mention it. For you, Yona, I'd do anything. Even things far more difficult than this… as many as you like.”
No, please don't go that far.
Yona couldn't quite bring herself to say it aloud and just swallowed awkwardly.
“So did you find anything out?”
“No, nothing.”
“…What kind of answer is that?”
You claim you'd do anything, and then you found out nothing—what's the point?
And did she really have to say it so shamelessly?
“Saying that would make our pretty Yona sad, wouldn't it?”
Alevian watched Yona's face contort and savored a peculiar pleasure in it.
She couldn't hold back the smile that spilled out on its own.
Yona's reactions had a way of making teasing her feel deeply rewarding.
Despite that haughty, stunning beauty, she was so utterly honest in her responses—it was endlessly entertaining.
“What is wrong with you?”
“It's just a letter.”
“…I know that much.”
“Right. And it's a letter no longer used anywhere on this continent.”
“What?”
Yona glared at her, brow furrowed.
A letter no longer used anywhere on the continent—what on earth was that supposed to mean?
“At the very least, several hundred years ago—and at the longest, a thousand—that's when it was used. A script from the age before the Heavenly God.”
“…The age before the Heavenly God?”
“Yes. What they call the Era of No Echo.”
She'd heard about it during her training as a novice.
The god of that era—the one they called the False Heavenly God, or the Deceived Heavenly God.
The age when people worshipped that god as the Heavenly God.
Not the true Heavenly God, and so the prayers of all those countless souls went unanswered—the era without echo, precisely.
“A script from back then…? This?”
Yona unwound the holy shroud from her arm, coil by coil.
Each loop she peeled back revealed more of the pitch-black letters.
For the letters to have changed after hundreds of years—no matter how you looked at it, that made no sense.
Letters so obscure that no one could recognize them—and even Sister Aize had been unable to read these.
As far as Yona knew, the most learned person after Bishop Pobi was Aize.
That even she couldn't decipher them simply didn't add up.
And hadn't Alevian herself failed to read them at first?
“Isn't it strange? Even if a few hundred years is a long time, for writing to be completely forgotten… something about this feels wrong…”
In Yona's world, even letters thousands of years old were still passed down.
Granted, that was because they remained in continuous use.
At Yona's words, Alevian reached out and stroked Yona's right arm.
“Hear me out to the end, Yona. It wasn't a script in general use. It was used only by a very few.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It's the script the Heavenly Church used when offering liturgical prayers in that age. A letter reserved for a few—a very select few purposes. So wouldn't it be only natural that it was forgotten?”
…Huh. Maybe?
On the surface, it sounded plausible to Yona.
If it had been used within the Church itself for only a handful of purposes, that would explain it.
“But, Alevian.”
“Mm?”
“How did you know about this, anyway?”
She had a point.
How had Alevian learned what these letters were?
How could she know a script that was never made known to the world and had been forgotten?
“…My lifespan is very, very long. I have lived a very long time, Yona. I know a great deal more than you could imagine. That's all it is.”
Alevian smiled.
She'd said the price was a single kiss, but she'd billed it on credit, and Yona had sent her away.
“But this is… why did it grow after I killed the Dullahan? That was my question.”
Yona had only unwound the shroud as far as her elbow for Alevian to see.
So the question born from that remained unanswered.
Why, after slaying the Dullahan, had these letters—this tattoo-like thing—spread all the way to cover her palm?
Why it had happened, she simply could not understand.
“…One thing after another I just can't figure out.”
Yona sprang up from the bed.
This was no time to sit around.
Her plan had always been to see Alevian and then head for the Wizard Community; it had simply moved up a little, so it hardly mattered.
She pulled the box she'd shoved deep under the wardrobe and opened it.
A towering heap of copper and silver coins.
The coins she had stacked and counted with meticulous care, Yona now poured in a clattering rush into a leather pouch stitched from several layers.
There were a great many of them, and the sound of coins pouring out—jingle-jangle-jingle—went on for quite a while.
Time itself was dissolved in the sound of falling coins.
The two and a half years Yona had spent adventuring, hoarding money with obsessive greed.
Those hours poured into the pouch with a bright ring of metal.
All that effort piled up, layer upon layer, inside the pouch.
“All right… this should be… enough, right? To go to the Community, and then on to Infula… hmm.”
Her list of destinations had grown by one.
Best case, she'd go to the Community, return to being a man, and from there make it back to her original world.
But things would hardly resolve that neatly, and it would probably come down to one or the other—either way, becoming a man came first.
“I refuse to live with this strapped to me…”
Yona cinched the mouth of the pouch tight and looked down at her own chest.
Honestly, she knew all too well how much this drew men's eyes.
Of course it did.
What man on earth dislikes large breasts?
Some man might claim to, but that would almost certainly be a lie.
A man who truly meant it was the more dangerous kind of man.
Yona had liked large breasts too.
But she'd never wished for these to be hanging on her own body.
Standing and looking down, she couldn't see her stomach.
And it wasn't just her stomach—she couldn't see her feet either.
Her waist and stomach were so slim and nipped-in that even a smaller chest probably wouldn't have been visible, but still.
“Anyway—back to being a man… then to the Infula Holy See, and first things first, find out what this tattoo is. Even better if it can be removed there.”
When life truly goes wrong, it goes wrong like this.
Being flung into this godforsaken world was already life falling properly off the rails, and then being turned into a woman was one disaster piled on another—and now she'd been branded with this grotesque tattoo on top of it all.
“Goddamn life.”
Yona hefted the leather pouch.
It had a decent weight to it.
Now all she had to do was grab this, pack her things, and go fetch Alec.
That bastard had better not tell her now that he wasn't going.
Come to think of it, if Alec refused, she could always just post a quest at the adventurer's guild.
She was in the middle of that thought when—
—Knock knock.
“…Who is it?”
At the sudden knock, Yona hastily shoved the leather pouch into the wardrobe.
—It's me.
The innkeeper.
She'd paid her rent, and there was no reason for that old woman to come looking for her.
“What is it?”
—Someone's here for you. Come on down.
Something was off.
If someone had come looking for her, all she had to do was tell them which room Yona was staying in.
But if she insisted Yona come down instead, Yona could think of only one explanation.
Someone important had come looking for her.
Someone of higher standing than Yona—high enough that instead of them climbing up to her, it was only natural for Yona to be summoned down.
“Well, well. So this is where you've been staying. What an unfitting place for you.”
Looking at that brown-haired hero, Yona scowled.
She was already more than displeased as it was—and beside him sat another lump, one that grated on Yona's nerves like nothing else.
“Why are you looking at me with such eyes? I feel exactly the same way about you, so kindly lower that gaze of yours.”
“What was that, you say, from the woman who was trembling and blubbering about how scared she was of demons?”
“…Shall I shut that mouth of yours for good?”
“Try it, you bitch. I'll knock every one of your front teeth down your throat.”
The Cathedral priestess who did nothing but growl the moment she laid eyes on Yona—or rather, the newly made Saint, Vigrind.
“Now, now. Let's not fight.”
The hero, Lud, slipped smoothly between the two women with his signature easygoing smile.
Remarkably, at Lud's intervention, Vigrind shut her mouth, let out a small hmph through her nose, and turned her head away.
The place where they were now sitting was Yona's room.
You make me come all the way down, and if you're just going to come up anyway, why didn't you come up in the first place— she wanted to say, but that wretched Vigrind would sooner drop dead than do such a thing.
“What do you want?”
“Mind your tone. Such manners, from a mongrel with no sense of place.”
“She's not even saying anything to you—why are you losing your mind?”
“Excuse me? What did you just—”
“What? What? What did I just what? Seriously, what the hell, have you lost your damn mind or what?”
Twin flames blazing in her eyes, Yona shot to her feet with every intention of seizing Vigrind by the hair.
And looking up at her, Lud said:
“Ah, ah—but you'll soon be party members. Is brawling like this any way to start? Have a seat, Yona, and let's keep things civil.”
“Party mem—what?”
As if doused with cold water, Yona stared down at Lud, the color drained from her face.