Extra Story:
Gangi Mari’s State of Mind
THE FIRST THING I learned when I arrived in this world was how to use potions.
You load a potion capsule into an applicator and press it against someone. When you do it right, it activates a magic circle carved inside the injector and releases the contents of the capsule. An applicator is one of the simpler magical artifacts. One of the selling points is that even people who aren’t skilled at magic can use it pretty easily.
But when I use one, it has a special effect: If someone gets hurt by a curse, I can make the injury fully heal.
Funny, that—in my old world, I was an ordinary schoolgirl, and in this world, I could do something like that out of nowhere. It was a shock, but it made me feel…special.
“What else would you expect from a holy maiden?” they’d say.
Or: “So the Goddess really did perform those miracles!”
Praise and praise and praise, until I started getting caught up in the hype myself.
The next thing I learned was how to fight. Healing cursed wounds is fine, I suppose, but this new world was not a kind one.
Monsters could appear anywhere, even inside the cathedral at Bulka. If you set one foot outside the town, you run straight into bandits and outlaws. If you don’t know how to protect yourself, you might just be biding your time before they kill you.
I decided to undergo the military training of holy warriors. I wanted to become an apprentice Templar of the Order, but I didn’t expect the training to be so hellish. It was worse than I could’ve imagined. To think, the only point of comparison I could draw on at the time was P.E. in junior high and high school. It was ten times more grueling and dangerous. No one actually died, but we were animals to the instructors. Several of my fellow initiates just ran off.
“The lot of you are a pack of apemen! You’re no better than the infidels, undeserving of the Goddess’s favor!”
The captain was a Templar. I’d thought she was a kind woman, but when training started, the mask dropped. She showed us no mercy. She didn’t care if the initiates were children of the nobility or related to great merchant households. How egalitarian.
Even I, recognized by the Order of Templars as a holy maiden, was another piece of meat to hammer into steel. She drove me just as hard as the rest, until I felt like I was going to puke up my own guts.
“What kind of divine protector are you, girl?! Or are you just a naked harlot someone dumped in the cathedral?!”
I thought I remembered watching a movie where a new army recruit got hazed like this, drilling day in and day out. “This is my rifle, there are many like it…”
But this was real life, and a harder world. They forced me to use my divine healing magic on the other initiates and then pushed us even harder.
It took a while, but this regular high school student shed that label. She acquired the physique and skills to fight as a Templar.
Next, I learned the art of magic.
Templars in the Order drill to train in divine healing magic. Once that was out of the way, I had the opportunity to study beginner-level magic.
I didn’t have the first clue about magic when I started. As far as I know, we don’t have anything like that in our world. I lagged behind the others in my class. But in the end, when Yoi came to the Order to study magic, she was kind enough to give me special education in the magical arts. Somehow, I managed to learn a small set of spells.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone learn magic and do it right the very first time!” Yoi said.
This world was pretty inconvenient—no electricity, no plumbing—but now magic would make things like boiling water and drying the laundry easier. Between that and my divine healing magic, I ended up better than anyone else in my class. I could heal any injury, any disease.
I learned a lot more than that, but the most troublesome subjects were probably reading and writing. After all, it’s impossible to really study if you can’t read. But I was determined to escape this cruel world, so I avidly studied all of it. Maybe then I’d learn something, anything useful from old texts. A way out.
Later on, when I came to terms with spending the rest of my life here, I had to learn the customs of this world. The behavior of a gentleman. The particular flavor of “Proper Lady” imposed in this culture. These people were even more stratified than mine—in addition to average citizens, we had royalty, nobility, and slaves, and each social class cultivated their own subclasses and particular etiquette. I sought out every one of those rules. The holy maiden could not embarrass herself.
A Tired Nobody to the Holy Maiden: “You saved my son’s life, your holiness! Truly, I cannot thank you enough!”
The Glorious Maiden to her Overworked Follower: “You should save your thanks for the Goddess, not me. The Goddess does not abandon those with faith in their hearts.”
“Thank you,” he et cetera et cetera’d. “You are the Goddess reborn in the flesh!”
If I acted pompous when people thanked me, it would only disillusion the Goddess’s followers. Every time I used my healing magic, I told people that they had been saved by the Goddess’s compassion.
That was the idea, anyway…
“What you’re doing, Mari, is what they call ‘sending mixed signals.’”
“Wh-what do you mean? I’m not trying to be that way,” I would insist.
Or I might say something like: “Nothing’s forcing them to thank me! I’m just doing my duty as a saint of the Goddess!”
Today, it was: “Are you making fun of me?”
“Huh? Far from it! We’re comrades, aren’t we? United against violence!” A naked man with a sly grin stood before me, dust cloth in hand. He had a teasing manner.
“Shut up. A slave teasing someone like me is a crime!”
I threw the bundle of papers in my hand and was gratified to see them hit the naked man square in the face. I suppose I had learned how to use thrown weapons in my military training. Seeing the look on his punchable little face made it allll worth it.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I simpered. “Do you want me to call an ambulance for those deadly sheets of paper?”
“It was a papercut to the heart. My own comrade, betraying me…!”
“Why are you like this?!”
We were in the mansion I shared with Yoi within the walled town of Bulka. We had a large drawing room, bedroom, library, and workshop. There was also a spacious dining room and a parlor, both of which I kept ready for any high-ranking guests I needed to schmooze. But it was probably a little big for just me and Yoi.
“Is it my lot to suffer in life, now that I’m your slave?” he moped.
I answered the question he was actually asking. “When I bought this mansion, we were still adventurers going out on jobs. We managed to afford this place by pooling our money, but never had enough to hire a servant.”
“So how did you keep the place clean before I got here?”
“At first, Yoi and I took care of it. Later on, some friends helped out.”
“Friends? Do you mean people from the Order of Templars?” he asked as he handed my papers back to me.
This was Shooter, the Buck-Naked Dweeb. My partner, Yoi, bought him for eighteen gold pieces. He asked me all kinds of questions as he polished the floor of the workshop Yoi and I shared. He was like me: some stranger from another world. I guess that’s why he was so interested in learning what I went through when I first came to this one.