By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 36

Chapter 4 Episode 36: Back Down the Mountain

The morning after I found Pedro.

“Thanks for cooperating with us so late last night.”

“No problem. Thanks for letting me stay over.”

“It’s fine. Here’s your reward money for the five bandits you turned in.”

“Thank you.”

I received a small bag from the female guard, then left the guard station in Keleban. It was still early in the morning, and few people were outside. The wind blew softly against my cheeks and cooled my body.

I was kind of exhausted. I ended up going on quite a wild goose chase the previous night, but I managed to track down Pedro. I let the guards at the station take care of him after I got to Keleban, but his injuries weren’t as serious as I thought. By this morning, it looked like he’d pull through. I had heard that beastkin could take a lot of punishment, but maybe they were even harder to kill than I imagined. What he needed right now was rest, and it seemed like it could be a while before his back pain was gone, but as long as he stayed alive, he could manage. I was glad that the worst-case scenario had been avoided. It wouldn’t be easy for him, but he did have an acquaintance who cared enough to put out a search request for him, so I had no doubt he would be fine in the end.

I tripped and almost dropped my bag. I heard the silver coins clatter inside. For every bandit captured alive, whether a bounty was on their head or not, you could be rewarded with two thousand sute. It was a surprisingly high reward, meant to encourage adventurers to voluntarily take bandit-hunting jobs despite the danger.

Incidentally, the bandits I captured were doing time in prison with penal labor. The reward money was paid for with the labor of the captured bandits. This meant that the five bandits I handed over were going to be taken somewhere, and that would be their life after that. When they learned that Pedro was still alive but couldn’t move, they seemed to feel some remorse, and they were shockingly obedient in the end. I prayed that they could get through their sentence without any issues and make a return to society.

I wandered around a bit until I came across a building that looked like a church. It was about the size of the church in Gimul, but the gate was beautifully constructed and there were banners and such decorating the outside. An old monk and five young monks were cleaning the grounds, so this was most probably a church.

On that note, when I first came to this town, the guards told me that there were churches for two different religions here. One was Creationism, and the other was Divinity; they both worshiped the same gods. I didn’t think about it too much, but the church I went to in Gimul was dedicated to Creationism.

“Are you lost?” the old man asked and approached me as I was staring at the building.

“No, sorry. This is a church, right?”

“Yes, a Divinity church.”

“It is? I’ve never seen such a beautiful church before, so I was surprised.”

“I see, I see. Are churches like this rare? Would you like to see the chapel?”

“The chapel? I don’t know, I’m a follower of Creationism.”

“We worship the same gods; the differences in our religions are trivial, and the gods love us all equally. You’re free to pray here if you have the time.”

“I’d be happy to, then.”

I was in no particular rush and didn’t want to reject his offer, so I decided to go with the man. We climbed a grand staircase made of stone and entered the building, setting foot on the crimson carpet. The monks we passed by welcomed me with smiles.

“This is the chapel,” the man said. “Come in.”

Beyond the door, there were lines of candle stands made of polished brass, and a path to an altar with statues of the gods. There were benches in muted colors to each side of the path for followers to sit and pray. Nobody seemed to be here yet.

“No need to be reserved. Approach the altar,” the monk said. I did as told and prayed as close to the statues as I could.

The same phenomenon happened as in the other church. The monk was apparently right that the difference in religion was irrelevant. The instant I began to pray, I felt light surround me. I was so used to this by now that it actually felt relieving.

■ ■ ■

“Welcome!”

“Whoa!”

Soon after I came to the divine realm, I was greeted by Lulutia in an oddly excited manner. Honestly, I couldn’t keep up with her energy.

“We have a special guest, you two!” she said.

“Is someone else here?”

I turned to see who Lulutia was talking to. There were two goddesses I didn’t recognize. One was a kindly middle-aged woman who looked refined, like a noble. The other was a warrior, both beautiful and wild. The two contrasting goddesses were sitting at a table and drinking tea.

“Oh my, a new guest? Welcome. We’ll need more tea and snacks,” said the refined woman.

“Neat! I’ve heard about you, but I didn’t believe you’d actually come when summoned,” said the warrior.

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Ryoma Takebayashi.”

“I know,” the refined woman said. “You’re the boy who came from Earth, aren’t you? I’m Wilieris, the goddess of land and harvests. Thank you so much for coming to our world and protecting the lives of people and monsters. Make yourself at home. You feel comfortable around Lulutia, don’t you? I hope you can feel the same around me.”

“Well, I suppose.” Out of all the gods I’d met to this point, she was definitely the most cordial.

“And I’m Kiriluel, the goddess of war and judgment. It’s a pleasure.”

“Likewise, thanks for having me.” I knew she was a god of combat. She could probably do me some favors.

“Why so stiff? Come on, Ryoma, loosen up a bit!”

“I may be used to coming here, but meeting two new goddesses in one day is kind of a new thing for me. Just let me get used to it. So, did something happen, Lulutia?”

“Just having a little chat between us girls. I hear that’s a thing on Earth. But we totally ran out of things to talk about.”

“Oh, I think the other gods mentioned something about this.” I suppose this meant that it had been going on for two days, though. “I suppose there’s only so much to discuss if you keep things going that long.”

“Then she dragged me into it to try and liven up the conversation. I tried to get something going, but it didn’t work out so great,” Kiriluel said while narrowing her eyes at Lulutia.

“Your topics of conversation are just too extreme. Disputed territories? What kind of girl would want to chat about that?!”

“You’re the one who wanted to talk about current events, Lulutia!”

“Sorry about them, I was hoping they’d give a proper explanation instead of bickering between themselves,” said Wilieris. “Have some tea and cakes.”

“Thank you,” I said, accepting what Wilieris offered.

“What brought you to the church, by the way? Did you have some business with someone?”

“Not in particular. I just happened to pass by, and a monk invited me inside. Did Lulutia do something?”

“One moment,” she said and shut her eyes. The other gods often did the same when they were looking into something. “Looks like she didn’t do anything. The decision to invite you into the church was that man’s alone. It seems like he wanted to sway you toward his religion.”

“Was that his intention?”

“That’s what it looks like. He’s not a bad person, though. You look like a child, so it doesn’t seem like he plans on asking you for donations. He simply wants to proselytize. Divinity as a religion is proactive about converting others and collecting charity, but that gives them a lot of spending power, so they do a lot of work for orphans and those in poverty. Many of their followers care deeply about helping others, so I hope you don’t get the wrong idea about them.”

Wilieris was as mild-mannered as her appearance suggested. I found religions kind of sketchy, so she backed them up. Their main goal may have been to convert people, but maybe it was rude of me to question their value. Or it was rude to question the motives of that monk, at the very least.

“Got it, thank you,” I said.

“No problem. To tell the truth, the kind of clergy members you’re worried about do exist. Caution is important, especially in your case. You were blessed not only by Lulutia, but by Gain and Kufo as well, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and Tekun too.”

“I see. There have been others in the past with multiple blessings, but it’s extremely rare. If people learn that you have four whole blessings, you’re sure to hear from a lot of churches. The Church of Divinity in particular refers to blessed people as saints and worships them in much the same way they do the gods, so if they find out about you, there’s a good chance that you’ll be given a burden you don’t want to have. I wouldn’t want that for you either, so be careful.”

“Thank you so much for telling me.”

“Can we quit talking about this already?” Kiriluel said to Lulutia.

“It’ll never end otherwise,” Lulutia replied. It sounded like they had just finished arguing. “Oh, what were you two talking about?”

“About the person who invited me into the chapel,” I said.

“Oh, him.”

“He happened to show up at an awfully convenient time, so he thought that may have been your doing, Lulutia,” Wilieris explained.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far!”

“I confirmed that myself, I know.”

Lulutia was acting a bit troublesome today. Maybe she was trying to set the mood for this whole meetup she was holding.

“By the way, Ryoma, has anything happened with you lately?” she asked.

“Wow, awkward segue much? I was running around the mountains on a job to find a missing person up until a few hours ago.” I explained everything that had gone on up to the previous night.

“That sounds like it was rough,” Lulutia said.

“My familiars did a lot of the work this time around. I feel like the slimes and limour birds did almost everything, actually.” In fact, I was starting to think that was pretty normal for me. Not like I was trying to be lazy, though.

“But you were the one who extracted information from the bandits, weren’t you?”

“Couldn’t you just say that you all worked together?”

“Just remember to reward them when you get back. They deserve it,” Kiriluel said.

“Of course.”

The limour birds in particular had to fly for hours during their search, and it was them who found the bandits. I wanted to treat them after we got back to Gimul.

When I told that to Kiriluel, she gave me a carefree smile. I had heard from someone that the war god hated people from other worlds, but she didn’t give me that impression. She actually seemed nice and friendly.

“Hm? What? Something on my face?” she asked. I almost told her that it was nothing, but there was no use in lying to the gods. Instead, I told her what was on my mind. “No human has ever called me friendly before. I hate people from other worlds? Who told you that? Fernobelia’s the one who hates people from other worlds.” The goddess herself didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

“I don’t remember who mentioned it, but it was one of the gods.”

“Maybe it has something to do with compatibility,” Wilieris suggested. She seemed to know something. “You know how people from Earth see things differently than we do.”

“True, a lot of their personalities don’t really mesh with mine.” I couldn’t say it was impossible, but from my perspective, she seemed easy to communicate with.

“Try and remember,” Wilieris said. “This is the first time you’ve been able to talk to someone from another world like this.”

“None of the others did much more than stare at me.”

“I see. If you couldn’t talk to them for long, you couldn’t have befriended them,” I said.

“Kiriluel’s role and the standards by which we select humans to bring over may have been a problem too,” said Wilieris.

I asked if she could explain in more detail. According to her, whenever they summoned people from Earth, the Earth god prepared a few candidates. Of those candidates, the gods here selected me. Sometimes there were candidates that clearly couldn’t adapt to this world, who had dangerous views, or who had overly violent personalities, and they were never chosen.

“That’s why we have a tendency to select people with no history of fighting. And Kiriluel is a war goddess, you know. She hates those who abuse the weak or cause needless bloodshed, but approves of hunting or fighting to protect others, even if it means war. Right?” Wilieris asked Kiriluel.

“I don’t object to anyone who does all they can to survive, whether bugs, animals, monsters, or humans. If that means taking up a weapon and fighting, I can’t disapprove. To use a phrase from your home world, it’s survival of the fittest. If you can solve problems by talking things out, that’s fine, but sometimes you have to fight. There are a fair number of people who don’t accept that, and they think I’m just needlessly promoting war and view me as an evil god. I don’t get along with those people so much.”

It sounded like there was some resentment there, but I understood where she was coming from. If I were treated that way, I would probably think the same thing. She also couldn’t intervene and clear up those misunderstandings, so that made matters worse.

“Ryoma, you were comfortable with fighting from the start, weren’t you?” Lulutia asked.

“I did have to survive in the forest for three years, after all.”

“You have no issues with hunting or killing bandits too,” Kiriluel said. “I’ve got no reason to hate you. Seems like you were pretty strong to begin with too.”

“Thank you.”

Kiriluel had a high opinion of me. Hearing praise for my strength from the war goddess was honestly delightful.

“I’ve got an idea!” she said. “How about we have a fight? You and me.”

“Uh, excuse me?”

She made an abrupt and very strange request of me.