82 - A Former Shrine Maiden’s Perspective (1)

Inside a building in a certain village, a lone woman spoke before the gathered crowd.

There was no way to know whether this choice would turn out to be the right one.

At the very least, she was certain he had intelligence and was an existence with whom communication was possible.

Whether her father and mother had simply been caught up in a madman’s schemes, or whether it had been the sorrowful result of believing in a faint hope—this was surely necessary to decide that.

That was why she said, she was moving now.

Rusheru Forshna continued:

“If you wish to remain afraid of contamination that may or may not even exist, then stay. However, I highly value those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the future. We do not know what kind of monsters we will encounter if we proceed deep into the forest. We might not be able to return to this place. At worst, none of us may come back. Even so, I believe we must go for the sake of the future. If you are one who says ‘I will go,’ then state your name.”

At her words, members of the clan stood up one by one.

When the number reached ten, Rusheru stopped another who was about to stand with a gesture of her hand, ending it there.

These were those confident in their own strength—the brave warriors of Forshna, counted among the Three Great Clans.

There was surely no room for fear among them.

“Well then, I entrust the guidance to you.”

Turning toward me, Rusheru gave an “order” with a smile of “I’m counting on you.”

With dead eyes, I—Ashiru, the former shrine maiden who had just been accepted into the Forshna clan—muttered a small “Yes.”

The group advanced into the dark forest.

At the lead was Princess Rusheru, giving an impossible order to a person like me with no stamina or magic to proceed through the forest. The group walked in the direction specified with strict caution.

Around the point where we crossed the river, one of the warriors on watch discovered a game trail.

It was concluded that its owner was without a doubt Argos, and since it roughly matched the direction of the base I remembered, we followed this trail.

“Most likely, this was made when Argos went to the river. Ashiru, according to your testimony, he catches fish and eats them, right?”

I nodded at the warrior’s words as he returned from scouting the surroundings.

“From the information, he’s basically omnivorous. His sense of taste is said to be close to the human species, and he prefers to use fire to cook his food… quite the bizarre monster.”

The older warrior who constantly kept a watchful eye by Rusheru’s side muttered this, and several others nodded in agreement.

I also agreed with that opinion.

I wanted to pay that lumpy bastard back at least once for tricking and mocking me, but sadly, in my current state, that was an impossible wish.

(What’s with that whole “No mistreatment” thing! Or all the “You should at least be able to do that” and “Why can’t you even do something like this?” talk! Yes, fine, I’m an indoor type! But assuming that means I can handle housework is not okay! People have strengths and weaknesses!)

Gritting my teeth to move my weary legs forward, I cursed in my heart.

Ever since being taken under Forshna clan’s protection, it had been nothing but days of relentless training.

There was none of the ideal daily life I had imagined; with the fatigue accumulating by the day, I had tried to run away several times.

However, that princess said this to poor pitiful me:

“Oh my, are you going outside? Zesato’s people are waiting with baited breath, you know?”

Run, and you die.

Immediately understanding that, I trudged back to the prepared room.

And then more training—thanks to the princess’s gracious words, At the very least, learn to do all household chores, I began days of being drilled by the maids serving Forshna. Now I was being bullied under the guise of “training” all day long.

“Big breasts but useless, huh…”

“Is this like false advertising?”

“How did you even survive to that age?”

On and on, I was insulted until my heart nearly broke.

So I made a direct appeal to Lady Rusheru.

(The princess is obsessed with that monster. Then, as the elf who got closer to him than anyone, I can be useful in that area!)

And this was the result.

This cold treatment, as if saying ‘We can see right through your thoughts.’

I’d suspected as much, but could it be that the princess was only sheltering me for the sake of her dealings with Argos?

The fact that no further news about Zesato ever reached my ears, among other things, made me feel like things weren’t going the way I had hoped.

The same with this “contamination” business.

They spoke about things our bottom-tier clan had never been told as if it were only natural.

Decisions were being made without my knowledge; frankly, I could feel the blatant disregard for me dripping through.

Where had my worth gone?

When we arrived at his dwelling on the second day and everyone was left speechless in surprise, I basked in superiority, only to be urged, “Hurry up and guide us.”

“Your work starts here. Really, do you know how much we were delayed because of you? Work hard enough to make up for it.”

All the men of this clan were cold to me.

Apparently, they were all interested in the princess and didn’t spare me a glance.

As for the women, I could hear their bitter mutters of “useless fatty meat.”

If I dared say something like “The voice of jealousy is music to my ears,” hellish training awaited me.

Just you wait, I told myself, revising my future plans.

“Oh, there’s an underground.”

“It’s starting to look like ruins.”

“There aren’t any traps, right?”

The men in the lead examined the door as they spoke their thoughts, listening to my explanations.

When I explained the place where we had meals, the two women began inspecting the dishes and cooking utensils with great interest.

“As expected, the items around here are from the old Empire.”

“It doesn’t seem like something from around here… did he bring them from somewhere else?”

They whispered in hushed tones, apparently confirming something, but was there really anything worth seeing here?

Sitting on a collapsed wall, I stretched my tired legs to rest, when I was called over.

“Yes, yes, what is it now?”

Swaying unsteadily, I went over to the men examining around the door and was handed an old sheet of paper.

“You can read the Furon Council-State script, right? Read this for us.”

Apparently translation was needed.

Surely now my evaluation would become more accurate—or so I thought, but there were a lot of words I didn’t understand, maybe technical terms, and I couldn’t grasp the content well.

“Uh, this is from Imperial times, so there are a lot of words not used in the modern day and the meaning is…”

In the end, even when asking others who knew the Furon language, we got the same answer, but we did manage to grasp the general idea.

It seemed to be records of exchanges of information called classified data, and what they contained.

It was decided to take them back as valuable materials, but the princess strictly ordered that we bring back as little as possible.

The reason was that taking too much might inspire suspicion, but would he even care about such things?

Now that I thought about it, I seemed to recall there being some materials like that, better kept secret.

While I pondered this and that, we ended up going underground, and I got sandwiched between the two women and fell.

I let out a pathetic cry, but let me note that my landing was perfect.

Well, as expected, Argos wasn’t here.

One examined the bedding, the others examined nearby rooms.

As for me, I had nothing left to say, so I staggered around looking at the area.

But I didn’t go deeper inside.

At that time, I found something I didn’t remember.

A board was hung on the wall with papers pinned to it.

Did something like this exist? I thought idly as I approached and read what was written.

“Coming back? Are you bored?”

This was probably a message for me.

Turning over the paper, there was writing on the back too.

“Flipping it over? Are you stupid?”

Lowering my gaze a little, the second sheet I saw when I flipped it said, “This is why you’re a dame oppai, you know?”—obviously an insult targeted at me.

Silently, I flipped the second sheet.

“There’s nothing more. Sorry to get your hopes up, okay?”

Ignoring the text on the third sheet, I looked on the back of the second, but nothing was written.

“Daaah!”

I screamed and tore the three sheets of paper to shreds.

Those searching looked over at me, wondering what had happened.

“It’s nothing at all!”

I apologized for startling them and took deep breaths to suppress my anger toward that guy.

Lowering my head, my eyes fell on a book; picking it up, I sat on his bedding and decided not to move. When I opened the book, a sheet of paper fell out.

What’s this? I picked up the paper and flipped it over; a long passage was written—it seemed to be a letter.

Instinctively, I checked the book’s title and found it was a novel called “Rock’s Adventure.”

What kind of letter could be stuck in such a novel?

(Could this be secret correspondence left by someone who used to work here? Or maybe some kind of code or an important hidden keyword!?)

My heart filled with hope as I read the letter I’d picked up.

“Hi, if you’re reading this, that means dame oppai has torn the board’s papers just as I intended and has this in hand. Unfortunately, this letter isn’t some kind of historical discovery you hoped for; it’s nothing of particular value, just something I wrote recently. However, if you read this to the end, I’ll grant you one piece of useful information. Put simply, it’s the way to open the hidden door.”

Reading up to here, I thought once again what an irritating lumpy bastard he was, but if that was the case, I’d read to the end, and I praised myself for holding back from tearing it up midway.

“The first thing you must do is admit to yourself that you have no value beyond your breasts. Next, strip to the waist right now and shout three times, ‘I am boobs.’ It’s preferable if there are people around. By doing this, I believe you’ll open the hidden door within yourself and walk a new life. Blessings upon the oppai who read to the end.”

I shredded the letter as I read, then stood and slammed the book I held to the ground.

“You rotten monster!”

I screamed with all my might, only to get smacked on the head by Lady Rusheru and scolded in turns by everyone until the search was over.