Act 1:
The Research Institute of Medicinal Flora
IT HAD BEEN A MONTH since my summoning. The warmth of spring was close at hand, and I was sowing herbs in the royal palace’s garden.
Why was this my responsibility? Because I now worked at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, which was located right next to this garden. In fact, I slept there, too.
Yup, that’s right. I no longer resided in the royal palace. I lived in a research institute.
✦ ✦ ✦
The day I, Sei Takanashi, was summoned to another world by the “Saint Summoning Ritual,” I learned it had been passed down since antiquity here in the Kingdom of Salutania.
I also learned that something called “miasma” was manifesting all across the kingdom. It always appeared relatively close to where people lived and had a detrimental effect on humans. Furthermore, though the reasons were yet unclear, when the miasma reached a certain density, it churned out monsters. The more concentrated the miasma, the stronger the monsters. In turn, defeating monsters dissipated the miasma. As such, it was necessary to hunt and kill the unholy beasts to stop their source from gaining strength.
However, every few generations, the growing density of the miasma far exceeded the speed at which the monsters could be slain. Fortunately, during these eras, a maiden who would become the Saint always appeared in the kingdom.
The Saint’s magic was so powerful, she could annihilate the miasma’s monsters in the blink of an eye. In so doing, her magic instantly balanced the rate at which monsters were slain versus the rate at which the miasma condensed.
According to one theory, once the Saint had appeared, the miasma could no longer condense at all, at least in her divine presence.
Incredible, right?
The Saint was generally supposed to manifest all on her own, but at one point in ages past, despite the rapid growth of miasma, she had failed to appear. The sages of that time desperately experimented with all types of magic until they devised a ritual for summoning the maiden who would become the Saint from a faraway land.
And so, most annoyingly, the sages of the present era summoned me.
The ritual itself had only been performed that one time long ago; the current sages hadn’t known whether it would work until they actually tried it. Luckily for them, those sages of the past were as clever and powerful as they seemed, because the ritual did indeed manage to summon the Saint—two of them, in fact.
Up until now, there had only ever been one Saint at a time. “How did we wind up summoning two of them?” the sages asked. “Maybe it’s because the present state of the miasma is so exceptionally dire, we require another Saint to drive it back?”
The mystery remains…unsolved.
Anyway, that was all anyone had told me in the month since I had been brought by the Saint Summoning Ritual.
As for how I wound up living at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, well…
After the ceremony, that red-haired lordling who swept into the room was unmistakably the crown prince of the kingdom. He didn’t spare even a glance for me; his sole focus was the other girl, Aira Misono. It wasn’t long before he swept out again, this time with Aira.
Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised. I was in my twenties, while dear Aira was in her late teens—she was obviously closer in age to the prince than I was. Not to mention, she had fluffy brown hair, perfect skin, rosy cheeks, doe eyes, and a certain soft sweetness that just made you want to protect her.
Whereas I, who had just come off of multiple rounds of late-night overtime, had my hair up in a messy ponytail, unhealthy skin, thick glasses, and permanent dark circles under my eyes. Compared to Aira, I looked ridiculous.
So, you know, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why the prince only had eyes for Aira. But it was still pretty rude of him to summon someone without their permission and then just completely ignore their entire existence!
On the other hand, the other people in the room were equally taken aback by how the prince blithely dismissed me. They were even more alarmed when they realized I was going to be left behind. They had no idea what to do with me.
Really, I was even more bewildered, but it was pointless to just sit there. So, I smiled at one of the robed guys—then I grabbed him by the collar and began to interrogate him. “I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Wh-what would you like to know?” he croaked.
Since I was taller than him, his wary grimace and panicked look made me feel like I was actually bullying him. Normally, I would have felt bad, but considering the situation, I couldn’t be bothered with shame.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“This is the royal palace of the Kingdom of Salutania.”
“Kingdom of Salutania?” I had never heard of such a place. Given how many countries there are, it could have slipped through the cracks of my education, but a part of me knew that such rationalizations were just attempts to escape my unnerving new reality. “I see. So, why am I here?”
“Well… Um…” The robed guy hesitated, but a stern look from me squeezed a frantic answer out of him. “W-we called you here using the Saint Summoning Ritual!”
“The Saint Summoning what?”
That was when they told me about this Saint Summoning Ritual, which I previously described.
“So…this is actually a different world…from the one I was in before,” I murmured.
“Yes, I believe that’s likely the case…”
Stuff like miasma and monsters simply weren’t a thing in the world I came from. Although, perhaps they actually were in my world, and I just never found out about them? A small part of me hoped that was true. But the robed fellow quickly dispelled those hopes; he talked about these horrors as if they were a common, inescapable fact of reality here in the Kingdom of Salutania.
No matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, I had definitely been summoned to another world.
“Okay.” I breathed in and out. “I get that I was brought here by this Saint Summoning Ritual, but how do I get back to my world?”