I Think You’ll Work Well With Me, Kikori.

“You’re the amazing one, Kuon.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Why? You were completely overwhelming that hobgoblin by yourself.”

If it were Kikori, all he could do was use War Cry and somehow hack it down with his axe.

But Kuon had technique.

Even Kikori could clearly tell how Kuon had battered it by aiming for the gaps in the helmet.

“Mm.”

But Kuon smiled with an uncertain expression.

“I guess we see that differently.”

“Differently?”

“Yeah. I’m not actually that strong. For a beastfolk, I mean.”

There were all kinds of beastfolk.

Lion beastfolk, rhinoceros beastfolk, mouse beastfolk… all sorts, but cat beastfolk were considered pretty middling among them.

“This goes for cat beastfolk in general, but even if we move well, we don’t have enough speed, and we don’t have enough strength. We have no choice but to rely on technique.”

“Didn’t look that way to me.”

“Haha, thanks. Well, because of that, it’s hard to really make it over there, so I came here.”

As he spoke, Kuon rolled the hobgoblin’s mana stone in his hand.

“Over here, too, there aren’t many situations where a shady cat beastman gets his turn.”

“Shady?”

“Well, you know—ordinary human countries mostly worship the High God, right? I worship the Moon God, so we don’t really mesh.”

“Uh…?”

Kikori desperately tried to remember the temple in his hometown. What had they enshrined there again…?

“Sorry, I don’t know that stuff. My bad.”

“Huh, were you the type who didn’t go pray on your days off?”

“I was the type who didn’t have the breathing room for that kind of life…”

“…Sorry.”

Kuon said it like he truly felt bad, but Kikori genuinely didn’t care.

Gods and all that—honestly, he had almost no interest.

If reincarnation existed, then gods probably did too, but… he didn’t feel loved by them.

“But I guess those kinds of problems exist.”

“Of course they do. Even the magic they teach differs depending on the temple.”

“Hm?”

“Hm?”

They looked at each other and tilted their heads.

“Isn’t magic something you study from books?”

“Huh. Ah, right. So you don’t know any of that.”

“Uh… is this one of those things I’m in trouble for not knowing?”

“It’s not ‘trouble,’ really, but… okay. Basically, priests can do slightly different things depending on which god’s temple they trained at.”

He brought his iron staff down on a goblin that had crept up from behind, driving it into the ground. Then, just in case, he jabbed it with several hard thunks to finish it off, and smiled.

“Well, in that sense, I think you’ll work well with me, Kikori. The Moon God temple’s magic tends to be pretty quirky… you know.”