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I tucked my new Adventurer Card into the safe confines of my storage bag, then left town.
Just as Arisa had told me, I was let through the south gate without having to pay a fee when I showed my card to the guards. This card really was handy. The guild hadn’t charged me anything when I registered with them, so how were they making a profit?
At any rate, I flooded my legs with magecraft energies and sprinted through the forest as I mulled over my experience at the adventurer’s guild. I should’ve at least checked what sort of jobs there were before leaving instead of getting all embarrassed, or stuck around inside the guild hall to see if I could catch more rumors about that illness I’d heard about. There were a lot of things that piqued my curiosity there.
Especially the rumors. Claus had mentioned that a lot of people were falling ill lately, and it’d been especially bad in a residential quarter on the east side of town. The cause was currently unknown, but he’d wryly joked that the church’s healers must have been making a killing.
“Please don’t tell me it’s a plague or something,” I muttered to myself.
“Hm? What was that about a plague, Huey?” Fouré, sharp-eared as ever, had picked up on my mumbling. Right, I could just ask her!
“I heard that a lot of people were getting sick just before I arrived in town. I was just wondering if there was some sort of bug going around or something.”
“Hmmm... Considering the symptoms of the afflicted, it’s not exactly a simple cold.”
“Do you know something about it, Fouré?”
“Of course I do! I’m the fairy who birthed godcraft into this world, after all. Judging by what’s on the wind and in the air, I can tell something’s happening.”
“Do you mind telling me what’s causing it?”
“Sure, I could tell you...but I think you’re still too inexperienced to deal with it.” She shook her head.
“What do you mean?”
“The problem you’re asking about is caused by a curse.”
“A curse...” I mused. While training me in spellcraft, Cult had told me that curses were spellcraft at their core—they directly affected another person’s physical body, basically afflicting them with debuffs.
But why was a curse running rampant in the middle of town? Did someone own some kind of corrupted artifact or something? Or was there a bad actor jinxing the town on purpose?
“You’re dying to look into it, huh, Huey?”
“Well, yeah. I can’t just ignore hearing that there’s a curse hanging over my home.”
“I thought you’d say that. Let me think...” hummed Fouré. “How about learning the Cursebreaker ability? You’ve got enough godcraft energy built up by now, so you’d be perfectly capable of learning it, I’d say. But personally, I think you shouldn’t have to rush things. That’s why I said what I said.”
“I’ll do it. I want to know in case Armeria or Cosmos get cursed, anyway.”
“Okay. I’ll help you find the source. Until we locate that, someone else can deal with it. There are plenty of healers in town who can use godcraft, after all,” Aruna remarked, joining the conversation.
“Yeah. I’ll just do what I can and try not to rush things too much.”
“Excellent response, Hisui. I was concerned you might want to drop everything to go hunt down the cause of the curse.” Arms crossed over her chest, Aruna laughed quietly, looking rather pleased.
“I couldn’t do that. I still need to finish building the house, and I need to take jobs from the guild. If the illness isn’t something that I need to handle personally, I’m better off just keeping an eye on the situation—assuming that someone else can take care of it.”
“Hee hee. You’re so very rational, dear one.” Cult joined in on our conversation, which had now turned to the topic of the house. Still... Deep down, the curse still weighed on my mind. I was getting a real bad feeling about it.
After we finished chatting, the four of us immediately got back to working together on the house.
“Cult, could you attach it to that wall there?” I asked.
Aruna and Fouré handled the raw lumber and, with me pitching in as a third pair of hands, we transferred the wood to the location of our future house and began fitting it all together. Cult used her spellcraft to bind the wood together—or, more precisely, she was fusing the separate logs into one. The reason for this was simply because fusing them made it significantly more durable than joining together individual parts. The house itself was starting to become a single mass of shaped wood.
“Hey, I just need to put the wood together like this over here, right?” Fouré asked.
I looked at her, appraising the lumber she was carrying. “Oh, the piece you’re holding? Put it over on the other side. If we put them all together in one spot, it won’t look very nice.”
She didn’t seem to like that. “Aw, why not? It’s all going to end up in the wall anyway, so what’s the difference?”
“We need to keep the walls uniform in case we end up making a mistake somewhere. Besides, the piece you have there isn’t meant for the walls, but the ceiling. Look, it’s larger than the others.”
“What?!”
“Let’s try not to make any obvious mistakes like that,” I gently chided her.
Fouré laughed awkwardly to disguise her embarrassment. “I’ve never built a house before! I’m basically clueless.”
“You haven’t ever made a house for yourselves?” I asked. Aruna and Fouré jumped on my innocuous question as we watched Cult put the lumber together.
Aruna shook her head. “Never. Being fairies, we have no need of a dwelling, remember?”
“If we built something somewhere, people would be so confused the moment they found it. They can’t see us, after all,” Fouré followed.
“Oh, right.” That fact had slipped my mind.
“You can chat with us and think nothing of it, but the average person doesn’t have that ability.”
“Then, does that mean...you guys are just doing this for me? I’m sorry for making you go through the trouble.” Now that I thought about it, I was the one who’d originally suggested building a house. When Fouré had said she wanted to live together, maybe she’d just been just going along with the idea to support me.
As I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment, the three goddesses all jumped to deny my conjecture. They each shook their heads as they explained.
“Of course we aren’t just doing it for you. We want to live with you—that’s why we’re helping.”
“Well, I guess I didn’t care about living in a house or whatever, but I do want to try it if you’re going to be there too, Huey!”
Cult giggled. “Please don’t diminish yourself so, dear one. You needn’t think so poorly about the situation. We deeply treasure your thoughts and feelings, so there was no question whether we’d help or not if it meant making your dream come true. We don’t do anything we don’t want to—and rest assured that if we don’t, you will hear of it.”
“So the fact that you didn’t object means...”
“That we’re having fun building the house with you,” Fouré chirped.
“Ah ha ha... Guess I made you guys worry about me for nothing. Sorry.”
“Not at all. Your modesty and kindness is a virtue, dear one. But now that you know exactly how we feel about this, there’s only one thing to do.” With that, Cult reached out to my face without skipping a beat and softly stroked my cheek. While the others looked on in exasperation, there was an undercurrent of gentle kindness in their gazes.
From my point of view, the three goddesses were always kinder toward me than they were even to one another. They truly were my goddesses. As I offered them my prayers deep in my heart, I got back to working on the house.
“Thank you, Aruna, Fouré, Cult. I...am going to go put this lumber over there, okay?”
“Please do. Thank you,” replied Aruna.
Though only a few hours had passed since we began work today, the house we were pouring our hopes and desires into was slowly but surely nearing completion. At this rate, we’d be done by dusk.