I'll Just Be a Saint
I'll Just Be a Saint
The early hours of the morning.
I was lying in my private room inside the Magic Tower temple, tossing and turning.
High Priest Yodel had made a fuss about finally being able to create a space for the saint and had prepared this place for me.
The bed was spacious, high-quality, and pleasantly soft, but I couldn't sleep properly.
I was afraid.
I had no idea when the goddess might strike me down with a bolt of lightning.
What was I supposed to do?
All sorts of thoughts ran through my head.
I wondered if I should just issue a strict command not to look for me and then disappear.
High Priest Yodel was a yes-man, wasn't he? If I gave an order, wouldn't he just obey?
No.
No matter how much I thought about it, that was impossible.
If I vanished, the slum dwellers would probably throw a tantrum like children, begging for someone to find me.
On top of that, the members of the Lilia Order would also say they needed me.
Even if Yodel was a yes-man, the picture was painfully clear: he wouldn't be able to ignore the torrent of demands from the entire Lilia Order and all the slum dwellers. He'd get swept up in the mood and eventually come looking for me.
Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
Seriously, what was I supposed to do?
How could I survive?
How did a faithless bastard like me even end up in a position like this!
The same went for the Karma Company that was thriving spectacularly these days.
And this magnificent Magic Tower temple, too.
Everything I touched was succeeding beyond all reason.
At this rate, I really was going to end up living as the Goddess Lilia's saint, with no way out.
Living my whole life terrified of when divine punishment might finally fall.
Was that really the life I was headed for?
Sleep wouldn't come.
Tonight, it was especially elusive.
Would a walk help?
I left my room.
Planning to carefully take a morning stroll around the slums, I headed out, and the transformed state of the district caught my eye.
The mud-caked roads that had once been full of filth and garbage were being neatly torn up and repaved with handsome bricks.
There were no longer any people sleeping out on the streets.
I'd heard that as more jobs were created, everyone had reached a point where they could at least afford a room at an inn.
I'd heard they were thrilled at the prospect of having their homes demolished for cash, only to move into the new houses that would be built in their place.
The air no longer carried a stale, rotten stench.
A refined and refreshing early-morning breeze tickled my nose.
As I stood vacantly on the road for a moment, looking around, a question suddenly struck me.
Was it possible that the goddess still hadn't punished a faithless bastard like me, who'd been posing as a saint for well over half a year, because I was simply doing my job too well?
Common sense dictated that I'd dug up an abandoned factory basement and an Elixir Spring that no one had ever known about had burst forth. I'd purified the slums. I'd made people happy.
Thanks to that, the overwhelming majority of the slum's residents had now become followers of Lilia, too.
At this point, I honestly wondered if the goddess knew everything perfectly well and was just letting it slide.
Even if I was a guy with zero faith or anything else, maybe she was just willing to look the other way because I was performing this well?
No.
I wasn't joking.
Wasn't this the correct way to think? Really?
Why hadn't I realized this sooner?
Fuck, my idiot blockhead of a brain.
Had I been pointlessly scared all this time?
It was a moment when all my previous struggles to escape the order suddenly felt like a string of completely moronic acts.
"You couldn't sleep, I take it?"
Just as I was letting out an incredulous laugh at the absurdity of it all, a familiar voice came from behind me.
Erpa was approaching, waving her four arms, as much a part of her as her signature.
Why was she still awake when it was nearly three in the morning?
"I was just trying to take a walk...... but the streets have changed so much, I stopped to look around for a moment."
At my words, Erpa smiled and stepped closer.
"It is all thanks to you, Saint. If not for you, this place would still be a filthy and wretched slum."
"I did nothing. To be honest, I'm only baffled by how things spiraled into something this enormous..."
I truly had no idea.
Did it make any sense that a nobody like me had climbed this high using erotic-game abilities, which were nothing less than the most vulgar skills imaginable?
At my words, the witch carefully drew closer to my side.
A scent reached me.
Maybe she'd put on perfume.
Or maybe that fragrance naturally emanated from her body.
A pleasant, fresh scent stimulated my nose.
"Will you permit me to hold your hand?"
I nodded.
The witch carefully took my hand.
And then, she quietly kissed the back of it.
"You have the power to move people's hearts. People don't call you a saint simply because you cure incurable diseases and care for the poor."
Moving people's hearts, she said.
Ha.
If they only knew what I was really like, everyone would just snort in derision, wouldn't they?
Moving people's hearts. What a joke.
No one knew better than me just how selfish, and moreover...... how utterly foolish I was.
"I'm not such a great person."
"I, you see. I was trying to destroy the world."
I flinched.
I stole a glance at her.
To be honest, she was still a nuclear bomb.
She had only changed her mind. The power to annihilate the world still resided within her.
I had merely snuffed out a fuse that was burning down toward a nuclear bomb in real time.
That meant the core elements that could drive an explosion were still present inside her.
I searched her face with a sense of unease, but Erpa's expression was utterly tranquil.
"I hated the world that wouldn't accept me...... and I hated myself. Why was I born with such a revolting appearance? When people hurled filth at me, I was ready to simply burn up along with the entire empire. With my research and the mana inside my body, it was perfectly possible."
I knew.
She would have recreated exactly the scene I had witnessed in that dream.
"When you, Saint, kissed my hideous left cheek, smeared with filth as it was. That was when everything changed. All the resentment and hatred inside me just... vanished. How could I despise myself, when a man like you loves me? That may have been the first moment in my life that I truly loved myself."
Erpa smiled.
Her smile was so incredibly radiant and fresh.
"It's funny, isn't it? After that, everything fell into place exactly as I wanted. The position of next Tower Master. The acknowledgment of my peers. Even the downfall of the witch who loathed and despised me. It all happened so naturally, as if it were only a matter of course. Things I could never possess when I longed for them and wished for them so desperately simply fell into my hands with ease."
"I'm glad, Erpa."
"I could probably have fixed my face on my own. The Three Primary Colors Research was for that purpose, after all. To handle more powerful magic and repair my face. If I'd had just one or two more months, I probably would have succeeded in healing myself. But even if I had healed it that way...... when I think about whether things would have turned out like this, the answer I reach is that it would have been impossible."
Erpa placed her hand over her heart.
"My heart. You changed my heart. That's something even magic cannot do, Saint. It was something only you could make happen. You say you're a nobody, but that is absolutely not true. You are a great person."
I realized in that moment, as if for the first time, that I had never once had such a deep conversation with the nuclear bomb witch.
As we talked, bit by bit.
I felt the fear and anxiety I'd held toward her inside me grow diluted and begin to fade.
Now that I thought about it, wasn't it more ridiculous of me to worry that a woman who blushed this openly while looking at me would suddenly twist and go berserk again?
Just moments ago, I'd felt like an idiot for living in fear of a divine punishment that would probably never come. Now, I felt like an idiot for having been afraid, thinking a woman who liked me this much would go berserk again.
I really...
Why was I such a fool?
"I am most certainly not a great person. I know myself very well. Still......"
I looked at Erpa and smiled.
"I'm glad that because of me, many people can be happy."
It wasn't a lie.
The streets of the slums had been transformed and cleaned.
The little children who once sold matches in the back alleys with their faces disfigured by burns were now wearing decent clothes and going to school.
The nuclear bomb witch had been recognized as the next Tower Master and stood beside me with a happy, smiling face.
Jonathan Karma's family was also smiling happily, and everyone, including High Priest Yodel, was drawing new vitality for life because of me.
Of course, all of this was a lie born from misunderstandings and misguided assumptions.
But what did it matter if it was a lie?
Wasn't the more important thing that I had made them happy?
No.
Not as a joke. I meant it seriously.
Wasn't the goddess just aware of everything and choosing to look the other way?
At this point?
Then I didn't need to run away, living in fear of divine punishment.
I might lack faith, but as for faith, I could just start believing in the goddess right now, and that would settle it.
Then I'd have nothing more to worry about, no need to harbor any concern or anxiety whatsoever.
If everyone called me a saint, couldn't I just change my own thinking and become one for them? Wouldn't that be enough?
Such thoughts came to me.
"The night is cold. We should head back in..."
"Saint."
Erpa held my hand and wouldn't let go.
"Just one thing...... I want to ask you. Please answer me honestly."
"Yes. Go ahead. Whatever I can answer, I will tell you without hiding anything."
"When you saved me, you told me I was beautiful."
Yeah.
I did.
I ripped that off from a famous line in a well-known anime by old man Miyazaki, actually.
"In that word 'beautiful'...... did it include, even just a little bit, only a tiny bit is fine...... the meaning that I am beautiful as a woman?"
The witch's face was flushed.
I had always looked at her through the lens of anxiety and fear, but once those feelings vanished, I finally saw her beautiful face, the kind that seemed to have an inherent passive charm spell equipped.
I had been a heavy user of Pixiv, the tears site, and Toptoon, but...
Today, I was learning anew that no matter how amazing internet art was, it could never beat a real, living woman.
Her scent.
The feel of her touch.
Her appearance.
Everything about her was truly perfect.
"It was included. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but even now, having you this close makes me feel shy. I've never been this close to someone so beautiful before."
A face with a built-in passive charm spell!
Incredible!
My mouth had spouted those lines before I even knew it.
But, honestly, I had to think about it.
The sensation of a woman's skin against my hand.
Her heady, personal scent wafting over.
And a woman with a beautiful face was blushing right at point-blank range!
Could anyone resist this?
Could anyone really resist this?
Before Erpa, the one time I'd been this close to a woman was a single instance.
Back in college.
I confessed to a junior I liked, but she shot me down, saying, 'You're too kind for someone like me.'
Later, when I was working a part-time job at a convenience store, I saw her coming out of a motel with some tall, handsome guy.
Oh, goddammit!
Why did that shitty memory have to...
A memory...
Uh...
Erpa's two upper arms wrapped around the back of my head.
I saw her feet lift up on tiptoe.
The face with the built-in passive charm spell closed the distance in an instant.
And then, a soft and moist sensation touched my lips.
I felt her lower hands, which were still holding mine, trembling slightly from tension and fear.
Even to a forever-alone virgin bastard like me, it was clearly her first time. It was an act that was so clumsy it was closer to a peck than a kiss.
She carefully pulled away from me.
"I, I hope it wasn't unpleasant?"
If this was unpleasant, I'd be gay.
How could it possibly be unpleasant?
"Since it's my first t-time ki-kissing, I think I must have been really clumsy......"
I stared at her blankly.
I knew she had feelings for me.
But I never imagined she would just lay it all out there so boldly.
"It was my first time, too."
Across both Korea and the Arkal Empire, it was genuinely my very first.
At my words, Erpa smiled.
"I'm so happy!"
She kissed me once more.
Accepting that kiss.
Feeling her fresh scent tickle the tip of my nose, I thought to myself.
I'd just live as the saint. Me.
The goddess seemed to be tacitly permitting it.
I decided I would just live as the saint.
I even had a woman who liked me now.
Now, maybe I could just......
Enjoy a happy life in this otherworld for a change.
After hesitating, I wrapped my arm around Erpa's waist.
I carefully pulled her toward me.
The scent I perceived through my nose was utterly intoxicating.
Around three in the morning.
On a completely empty street.
Just like that, the two of us stood there, our lips meeting for a long, long time.