The Village at the Foot of the Mountain (5)
Unlike priests and priestesses—hailed as the complete sons and daughters of the Heavenly God—a Healer was only half a clergyman.
Healing required laying hands fully upon the wounded flesh, and purification was no different. One had to thrust an arm directly into the corrupted site and pour divinity into it by hand, which was why hardly anyone ever asked a Healer to perform purification.
It wasn't that they couldn't do it. It was simply far too dangerous. That was what purification meant for a Healer.
Yona pushed her divinity in for a long while. They had called it a Sacred Tree, and perhaps the name was deserved, for the miasma churning and brimming within it had a truly formidable presence.
Black smoke rose. As the miasma was burned away by her divinity and destroyed, it spat out one last, dying plume of black smoke that billowed high into the sky.
...Huh?
She had been burning away the miasma like that for some time. By the time the sap pool of what had once been the Sacred Tree was nearly drained to the bottom, something touched the tip of Yona's finger.
A remarkably smooth surface. A rounded surface that offered nothing at all to her fingertip as it brushed across it.
Yona picked the thing up. It was rounded, as if something had shattered, yet at the same time it felt sharp, like a shard of broken glass.
When the last wisp of smoke drifted upward, the sap pit revealed its bare bottom.
"I must say, I haven't the faintest idea what to make of this."
While Alec poured water from his canteen over Yona's arm to wash away the sap, she stared blankly at James.
"Excuse me, James."
"Mm?"
James, who had been peering into the now-empty sap pit, turned at the sound of her voice. Yona faced him as Alec bent her arm so she could wind the Holy Shroud around it more easily.
"Did you ever send word to the cathedral?"
"We did."
James wore an inwardly hollow expression. It wasn't only the adventurers—they had sent word to the cathedral as well. Anyone could see that an enormous black bear radiating a blood-red glare was no ordinary mountain beast. And the fact that the bear had slaughtered half of the village watch? That alone should have raised every alarm.
They had filed a request with the Adventurer's Guild and, at the same time, sent word to the cathedral asking for investigation and aid. The response, of course, had ended with: We will dispatch someone shortly.
No one had ever come.
"Nobody showed up at all?"
By the time Alec finished wrapping Yona's arm and clipped the shroud in place at her shoulder—she ruffled his hair in thanks—she let out a long sigh.
Well. It was obvious enough. What business was it of the cathedral whether some backwater village at the edge of nowhere fell to ruin or not?
"So, is everything more or less wrapped up now?" Alec asked James.
They had killed the bear that had thrown the village into chaos, and Yona had dealt with the reason the bear had become what it was. But why the Sacred Tree itself had turned into a pit of miasma—that, they still couldn't say.
"...I suppose so. Probably."
By the time the four of them made it back to the village, the sun was already setting. In a village that still showed no trace of its former liveliness, James led the three of them to the chief's house.
The chief was a white-haired old man, but his frame was hardened and robust from a lifetime of hunting. After hearing James's explanation, he looked the three of them over with an odd expression on his face.
"You're telling me the Sacred Tree was truly corrupted by miasma?"
"Yes, it was. And the miasma itself was dealt with by this young lady here, Yona."
At the words young lady, Yona flinched, but given the circumstances, she let it slide and kept her mouth shut.
"A priestess, then?"
The old man's sharp eyes settled on Yona. On the nun's habit she wore, and on the Holy Shroud wound in coils around its right sleeve.
"Ah—a Healer."
"...Yes. Is that a problem?"
"How could it be? The priests, if anything, wouldn't even answer our request. I take it as a sign that the Heavenly God still watches over us after all."
At the old man's words, Yona fell silent. Once again, she found herself contemplating just what the cathedral was supposed to be for.
"...The cathedral is always busy. There are never enough priests to go around. I'm sure it wasn't that they didn't care—it's that they couldn't."
The old man gazed steadily at her as she said it. Yona, finding his gaze—glinting like it might spit out a will-o'-the-wisp at any moment—rather unbearable, turned her eyes away.
"Well, in any case, it seems the matter is resolved for now. Would it be all right if we took our leave? We only stopped by on our way somewhere else, so we really can't afford to delay any longer."
Alec stepped in to break the strange tension. And he had a point—this journey had always been about reaching Yona's community in the first place. They'd already been held up for three days, and the third day was bleeding into dusk as it was. Four days lost meant they needed to get moving.
"Go ahead. Our village will see that you're properly compensated when you depart tomorrow."
"Much obliged."
Kayak didn't say much. He merely nodded a few times and rose from his seat, and as if following his lead, Alec and Yona got up as well.
"Sorry about that. The chief's nerves have been worn razor-thin these past weeks."
"Eh, I understand—it's fine. Though shouldn't you be apologizing to Yona instead of me? She's the one who actually solved the problem."
James bowed his head toward Yona as well. Kayak was right—it was Kayak who had created the opening to kill the bear, but it was Yona who had dealt with the pit of miasma. If they had only killed the bear, and that sap had remained, some other beast would surely have come to be corrupted in its place.
"No, it's fine. I wasn't expecting any thanks anyway."
Yona filled a cup full of water and slid it across to Alec. In the meantime, Alec had cut the smoked meat into small pieces sized for her mouth and arranged them on a plate.
"Here—bread."
Alec handed the bread over as Yona hunted for the rye loaf. It was already split deep in the middle, so all she had to do was scoop the meat in.
"Is your noona really that amazing?"
Yona had been about to take her first bite of the sandwich-like bread when James's eldest son's question made her turn only her eyes.
"Of course she is. Your noona is one hell of a person."
While Alec answered for her, Yona bit into the bread. The sour tang peculiar to unevenly textured rye bread was veiled by the smoky aroma of the meat—not bad at all, really.
"You kids have no idea just how amazing she is."
Yona accepted the cup of milk Alec passed her, took a sip, and let out a hihi—a wry little laugh.
"I am pretty amazing, aren't I?"
At her words, the children's eyes went round. They looked as if they'd heard something utterly baffling, but Yona, paying them no mind, sat there looking quite pleased with herself.
"Hyung? Not noona?"
James's eldest boy, Ederon, asked. No matter how he looked at her, she was clearly a woman—so why on earth did she call herself hyung? He couldn't wrap his head around it.
Her hair was long, her face slender, and even to Ederon—an orc—she was a truly striking beauty. With looks like that, she'd put even Sister Jessie, called the greatest beauty in the village, entirely in the shade. And her chest was... overwhelming enough in its sheer volume to set the heart of a boy just entering puberty pounding. And yet she was a hyung? It made no sense to Ederon at all.
"Ah, well, I was originally a ma—"
"Ah, aaaah! Noona made a little mistake! It's because noona's an adventurer, you know? Kind of, yeah. It's one of those things!"
Alec cut her off mid-sentence, sharp and clean. Yona scowled and made to smack his bald head, then stopped herself, mindful of everyone watching.
"Hey. What was that for?"
"Says the one trying toobliterate these kids' innocence without a second thought?"
Their whispered exchange never reached the children's ears.
"Unless you want to get labeled 'that crazy noona' here too, sort out what they call you."
"What was that, you shiny-headed bastard?"
Yona pushed out her lips in a pout, but said nothing more. It wasn't as though Alec was wrong, so she decided to concede the point, more or less.
They would leave the village the following morning.
Yona sat propped against the headboard of the bed in a small room on the second floor of James's house—a solitary room—peering at something in her hands.
"What on earth is this thing..."
It was the shard she'd found after purifying the miasma of the Sacred Tree. Not a complete orb, but a fragment, as if a bead had shattered and this alone remained. Sharply edged and a sinister, sooty black in color, it was anything but reassuring.
"Feels like something bad. Definitely something bad."
What was stranger still was that the sensation differed depending on which hand she touched it with. In her left hand, it felt like holding something deeply unpleasant. In her right hand—nothing at all. That somehow made it all the more unsettling.
"Seriously, this thing gives me the creeps..."
But no matter how hard she dug through her memories of her training at the cathedral, she had never once heard of anything like this. She'd certainly never been told that purification left this behind. If this was a first—if she thought of it that way—then the question of whether heading to the community and then on to Infula was really the right move began to gnaw at her too.
"Ah, whatever."
Deep thinking had never suited her constitution. Yona tucked the shard into her sling bag and burrowed into the bed. If they were leaving early tomorrow morning, this was about the right time to sleep. Her soles had fully healed, after all—now was the moment to get her condition back in order.
Just as she was about to drift off, a knock sounded at the door.
"Yona. You asleep?"
It was Kayak's voice.