If You Leave Home? Well You Suffer Like A Dog (1)

On a May day, two years after the “Battlefield of the Gods” opened.

The epidemic that began in the Holy Realm Alliance swept across the continent.

This disease was of a kind never seen before, and many people died.

The epidemic spared neither commoners nor nobles, and on the Battlefield of the Gods only one group, representatives, were unaffected.

The epidemic, untreatable by any means used, enveloped the Battlefield of the Gods, and a situation spread in which children and parents could not even trust one another.

Those in power realized the disease avoided representatives, and some even plotted to kidnap representatives at the risk of their lives out of desperation, but none carried it out.

Because not long after the epidemic spread, the reason representatives were safe was revealed.

The training period.

Everyone from commoners to kings had to feel deflated upon learning the representatives were safe simply because they were protected by the Creator.

When everyone had resigned themselves, he appeared.

His touch not only healed the epidemic but also purified the land contaminated by it.

A representative with a merciful healing touch.

— From “A Commentary on the Compassionate Star among the Seven Stars,” by Academy historian Maekookno.

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Around Benialis, who had fled hurriedly from the Amor temple, there were only two representatives.

Not a single continent-dweller followed behind Benialis.

If anything, it was miserable: not a single priest or Paladin of Amor, the Heavenly God, followed Amor’s representative.

On top of that, the three representatives were dust-covered enough to be called beggar brothers.

In that state they were fleeing as defeated men, not triumphant generals.

From afar, faint as if in a dream, the sounds of buildings breaking and collapsing and subsequent explosions came one after another.

Benialis’s expression contorted as far as it could.

“Damn it! Daamn it!!”

He cursed but did not stop fleeing. In fact, he was now walking almost as if running.

At that moment, one of the representatives who was hurriedly walking behind Benialis asked him.

“Benialis, sir, why are we running away?”

“What?”

Startled by the unexpected question, Benialis stopped his hurried steps.

When Benialis stopped, the two representatives behind him also halted. But they were not the Heitz and Raus he had seen before. They were two new male representatives.

“We’re representatives — is there any need to run? They can’t harm us anyway.”

At the thin man’s words, frustration showed on Benialis’s face. He struck his chest twice with a fist, let out a long sigh, and spoke.

“Haven’t you heard what happened to those who used to help me?”

“…Yes?”

“One of the helpers became castrated, and another, a mage, had his tongue cut out. Just because a representative doesn’t die doesn’t mean you can’t be crippled. Especially the one whose tongue was cut has gone completely mad. He developed mania. In other words, being inside those collapsing buildings or throwing yourself at those monsters doesn’t mean you won’t feel pain or be hurt! You could be left disabled as an aftereffect! Got it? Do you want to be castrated too?”

At the word “castrated,” the two representatives flinched, waved their hands and heads, and denied it vehemently.

At their reaction, Benialis clicked his tongue in contempt, turned his body, and began moving again.

But did Benialis know?

That if he had intervened and stopped Violentia and Arun, even if he had felt the agony of fainting or had a bone broken, he would not have suffered the humiliation of the Amor temple of Exorsus, expanded and rebuilt for thousands of years, being half-ruined.

Benialis, who thought his actions rational, could not yet imagine what repercussions would return to him.

Hurriedly. With that word in their bones, the three representatives headed for a peasant house on the east wall of Exorsus.

A house slightly larger than the surrounding cottages, but still shabby since it belonged to commoners.

Benialis approached the door and knocked as if to break it. After knocking for a while, movement came from inside and the door opened.

“Oh? Sir Benialis?”

“Come in.”

“Yes, please come in.”

The three representatives strode in as if it were their own home and sat on the sofa. Of course Benialis took the place of honor.

“Things are going badly.”

“What? What do you mean all of a sudden?”

The middle-aged man, bringing out tea, was so startled he nearly threw the tray onto the table as he asked.

It was inevitable: Benialis had not executed any of the plans he’d devised correctly so far.

And because of Benialis’s sudden orders to hurry things along, a large number of the man’s subordinates had died.

And now things are going badly? Bad premonitions were never wrong.

“Right now the Amor temple is being attacked.”

“…What?! How could the temple? What about the wards and defensive magic?”

“…There’s a reason for that. In any case, we must speed up the plan.”

The middle-aged man, still unable to follow the story, could not readily agree.

He could not understand a single thing that Amor’s representative had said upon entering his house.

What kind of place was the Amor temple! Even if it were attacked, it didn’t warrant these men fleeing in rags.

Yet they barged in like beggars and now insisted the plan be executed faster. How much faster could they go from here?

The virus had already been released everywhere; in the rush some regions had high concentrations while others didn’t meet the threshold.

Already overwhelmed trying to clean up the mess, being told to hurry again made him feel like he would crack.

“Ugh… What else are we supposed to hurry from here?”

“We need to release the antidote. We must muddy the waters so that the Amor temple incident doesn’t spread. Execute it immediately. In my name.”

The man glared at Benialis, who said it so casually as if choosing a dinner menu, and then lowered his head.

He had no idea how to proceed, and his breathing grew rough with frustration.

He had to clench his teeth to restrain the urge to smash Benialis’s head with the teacup in front of him.

“And I need a place to stay until things are underway. A top-class inn will do.”

And then that utterly ridiculous, idiotic request.

“…Hmm. Because you ordered the work sped up previously, the antidote was released hastily and many agents died because it didn’t work. In other words, there are likely many regions where the antidote is completely ineffective. What will you do in that case?”

“There is no medicine that cures 100% anyway. That’s unavoidable.”

Benialis’s tone was completely nonchalant. Is that how one would react to hearing the neighbor’s dog died?

“Finding lodging will take time. As I said, many agents have frequently died of the plague, creating many vacancies. If we also have to release the antidote, we’re short-staffed. I’ll have to go out myself. You should either stay here or find a private place to stay. Ah! Well, this place is too shabby for you, Benialis, so you should look personally.”

“Is that so? True, this place is a bit shabby.”

Benialis nodded while looking around, then gazed at the man as if hoping for something.

“Yes. Well then, goodbye. I’m busy, so I’ll be off.”

But at the man’s unexpected words and his eagerness to leave, Benialis did not boldly step outside.

He didn’t even stand up. He only fidgeted and cleared his throat repeatedly.

“…Do you need something?”

The man asked suspiciously.

But the man knew why Benialis wouldn’t get up. He had no money.

Judging by his appearance, he had barely managed to escape and had no time to gather money.

Suppressing a mocking smile between his teeth, he stared at Benialis as if still clueless.

“…Well.”

“That?”

“…So.”

“So?”

“Ahem… funds…”

“Ah! Since you ordered the work suddenly, are you going to fund it? It’s fine. I happen to have just enough petty cash for the operation. It’s a bit short, but if you scarce it, it’ll do. Thank you.”

In the end, hearing the man’s evasive claim that he had no money and the organization had none, Benialis bit his lip.

Reluctantly leaving the house, Benialis blamed his mouth. He should have said he would stay at the man’s now-empty house.

But as always, regret is too late no matter how soon it comes.

They wandered aimlessly and took a shabby inn where their money would last a few days. The three men had to share one room.

If only they could leave Exorsus, they’d have moved to the Holy Realm Alliance, but the training period made that impossible.

They could go to other temples and ask for money, but however they framed it, it was still asking for a loan, which amounted to Amor’s representative begging for money, a shameful notion.

With the Exorsus temple already in ruins, doing such things might invite unknown retribution from Amor.

Amor, unlike his title as Heavenly God, was frightening, almost devilish.

Sleeping cramped in the narrow room, Benialis recalled a proverb passed down orally.

If you leave home you’ll suffer like a dog.

“I’ll explain about luck. For ordinary people living on the Battlefield of the Gods, neither especially lucky nor unlucky, we set average luck at 50. Twenty is the threshold commonly considered unlucky, and eighty is the threshold judged lucky. In other words, representatives or continent-dwellers with luck above 80 receive inadvertent assistance from environment and chance.”

“You can quantify that? Make that general?”

Genesis asked in surprise, and Ludicer’s answer was full of confidence.

“In my judgment, luck is probability, and probability ultimately equals statistics.”

“Assume that’s true, so?”

“Statistics are also one of the powers given to me. And I possess a large amount of information for statistics. For luck stats above 100, there is a reference being, the life of Felici, who was once the goddess of luck.”

Felici. The one who was the goddess of luck and the one who created Witch of Doom. The luck fairy, the accessory Genesis gave Kim Han.

“That Felici? Demoted in rank?”

Mors’s voice rose higher than ever, perhaps greatly surprised.

“Indeed. A being who lived a tumultuous life: human to god, then demoted to a fairy. I based it on his life. Thus 199 is the luck he had right before gaining divinity, a time when both the environment and divine power were favorably disposed toward Felici.”

“…Really?”

“The time when he ascended and earthquake magic misfired?”

“So if luck hits 199, do spells just miss?”

“So high luck makes you a god?”

Like girls listening to a first-love story, they flocked at Ludicer and bombarded him with questions.

“Y-yes. But I’ve heard the path to godhood by luck alone is blocked, because of Felici. Instead, if luck rises, the probabilities of complete evasion and total immunity to magic increase exponentially.”

“Interesting.”

“Indeed?”

“Should I tell my representative to cast a spell at Kim Han once?”

“Quiet. But how could one subdue Witch rather than destroy it? Even Genesis, who made it by the Creator’s command, couldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know either. But the moment it was subdued, Kim Han’s luck dropped from 155 to 10.”

The four goddesses, shocked by Ludicer’s words, fell into their own thoughts.

“…Really? So does that mean he must give up all luck? Certainly… Taming is baiting with food. If you unbelievably fatten the Witch’s primary power, food-luck, then… maybe? Could that be possible?”

Aetas and the other three goddesses muttered to themselves and pondered, while Ludicer waited for a clear answer.

The Battlefield of the Gods, by layering ‘Settings’ (magical protection) upon settings, had become a place that produced coincidences even the Creator couldn’t foresee.

That’s also why beings who achieved the exalted rank of god rejoiced in this place.

Even they, gods, felt shock and excitement seeing “coincidence meet coincidence” and things unfold in unexpected directions.

In the end, legends began in situations even the patron gods could not have guessed.