“This…is…pretty…tough…” I gasped as I swung my pickaxe outside the former cave.
Earlier, I’d left the tent and found Chem.
“Please don’t be absurd! I couldn’t ask the Lord’s disciple to lift a single finger!”
I’d been expected her to say something like that. I was prepared with my counterargument.
“The Lord asked me to help the village, and if I don’t, He will scold me when I go back. Please allow me to help. You will be doing me a service.”
Chem couldn’t argue when I brought her god’s name up. She gave me a summary of jobs that needed doing, and I decided to go for one of the more physically demanding tasks. Between my workouts and cleaning job, I expected it to be no problem, but it was tougher than I anticipated. Swinging a pickaxe used a different set of muscles, and I could feel the strain of every swing in my arms and waist.
I was mining, currently. With the cave collapsed, it might be possible to ring some ore from the old mineshaft, and Dordold had promised to buy any we could find—a new source of income. Even after its total destruction, the cave that had once sheltered my villagers were still aiding them. It was hard to imagine where they would be without it.
Mining was a secondary task. The villagers only focused on it during breaks in their other restoration efforts, and they barely had enough people for those. That was why I volunteered to help. Out here alone I didn’t have to worry about constant observation. I could drop the act and relax a little.
I wiped my sweat away with a towel from my bag, let out a deep sigh, and rubbed my shoulders. Sewatari-san had given my bag to Carol before she followed me through the portal—a very literal godsend. It was full of useful stuff. I checked my phone. It wasn’t even midday yet; I’d been working for about two hours. I’d been charging my phone with a solar-powered charger I’d miraculously thought to pack. I’d won it in a contest a long time ago, but since I never went outside, it spent its whole life at the back of my closet.
With it, Sewatari-san could contact me whenever she needed to, without any worry of my phone running out of juice. And I could perform miracles. I’d tested the app out by changing the weather. It worked exactly as designed. I could rely on the miracles if I needed them.
Taking a break, I sorted through the photos I’d taken since I arrived here. I wanted as many as possible, but if I kept up this pace I’d run out of storage space any time now. I felt like I’d never get tired of just snapping the vistas around the village, and the villagers themselves.
Last night I’d had the chance to speak with my original villagers in the tent. I showed them the pictures I’d taken of Carol in my world.
“That’s what the World of Gods is like?! It’s so bright! And there are so many people!”
“What are these strange tall buildings?”
“Oh, look at Carol’s smile! She looks like she’s having so much fun!”
My villagers were glued to the screen, amazed at what they were seeing.
“This is called a shrine, and we went to a festival! This fluffy food was so yummy!” Carol boasted. Rodice and Lyra couldn’t stop smiling at her.
Gams’s expression didn’t change, he just stared silently at the phone. Chem gasped in astonishment, her jealousy at Carol spending time in the World of Gods evident in her gaze. She was so religious that I couldn’t blame her. No wonder she longed to go herself.
Every time the photo on the screen changed, Kan and Lan would sit ramrod straight and throw their arms in the air. It caught them off guard every time. Murus tried to pretend she wasn’t interested, but I noticed she never took her eyes off the phone. Personally, I figured it was a shame she didn’t come over for a closer look.
I’d only shown them the photos on a whim, but we ended up going through them until my phone died. We’d have to go through the rest sometime.
Speaking of photos, I asked Gams and the others to take me out hunting. I wanted to see a monster up close at least once while I was here. I carried a borrowed spear just in case, but I still had no idea what I was doing and promised to hang back and watch. I thought I could lend them a hand if they needed it. But things didn’t turn out how I expected.
Two black wolves appeared. I was already familiar with them from my time playing the game. Gams, Kan, and Lan dropped into fighting stances, Murus readied her bow, and I…backed away. Real monsters? Were terrifying. Being chased by a big dog was scary enough, these were actually terrifying creatures of legend. I was so scared I could barely think.
They were each as big as a full-grown human, saliva dribbling from between long, pointed fangs, and the ripple of muscles bunching visibly under their jet-black pelts. They let out low, threatening growls. Anyone would be scared when faced with monsters like these. A cold sweat broke out all over my body, and my legs trembled. My throat felt impossibly dry. I had no urge to fight, only to run. I only managed to remain standing by propping myself up with my spear.
I stood back and watched as the villagers defeated the beasts with ease. One of the wolves had its head cut clean off, and another recoiled in a spurt of blood as an arrow penetrated its eye. The scent of the trees around us mingled with rusted iron, making my nose sting. The cloying stink and flying gore made nausea rise in my stomach, and I just managed to hold it back. I couldn’t remember what the villagers said to me afterward, but when we returned to the village, I collapsed to the floor of my tent. I knew then that I wasn’t fit to fight monsters in this world like an isekai protagonist. I was better suited to slow-paced work, so that’s what I would do.
“I’ll put as much effort as possible into mining.” I put my phone away and faced the sediment in front of me again. I wanted to extract every piece of ore I could.
As I dug, I felt someone watching me. I turned and locked eyes with a pair of villagers peering out at me from behind one of the tents. One was a woman around Lyra’s age, and the other was a little girl. I nodded to them, and they responded with deep bows before scampering away.
“It’s always the same thing.”
The villagers were clearly interested in me, but they never approached. I’d tried closing the gap several times, but they responded so formally that it was hard to keep up a conversation. Chem’s behavior stuck out most of all. She always stared at me with such great respect. I was used to it at this point, but I still hadn’t managed to have a proper conversation with her.
“Good morning.” I tried a greeting.
“Y-Yoshio! H-how do you do? Th-thanks be to the Lord for another beautiful day!”
“Well, it’s raining a little. Hopefully it clears up soon.” I was so nervous trying to keep up my formal speech that I barely knew what I was saying.
When I tried talking to Gams, he replied with: “Yes,” “I know,” or “Got it,” no matter what I said, conversation over. Rodice and Lyra constantly apologized for their daughter imposing on me. Kan and Lan barely spoke at the best of times, so my interactions with them weren’t much better than the ones I had with Gams. Whenever I bumped into Murus, she would nod at me before making herself scarce. I hadn’t spoken to her at all yet. It was obvious she was avoiding me.
“What’s wrong, Yoshio? You look sad! You gotta smile!” Carol hopped out in front of me and pushed the corners of my lips up with her fingers. She was still wearing her teddy backpack from Japan, Destiny’s head poking out from the zipper. She’d started wearing her clothes from this world again, but she never took that backpack off.
“You’re a good girl, Carol.”
Carol was the only person in the village who spoke to me without hesitation. She complained that her parents and Chem scolded her for being so familiar with me, but I fervently hoped she wouldn’t stop.
“Are you worrying about something, Yoshio?”
“Yeah. I want to get to know everyone in the village better, but they’re keeping me at arm’s length.”
“Everyone says it’s rude to speak to you because you’re God’s disciple. I don’t think it’s rude, though, because you’re Yoshio!”
See, I didn’t blame them for this behavior, and I didn’t mind it from the new arrivals, but I’d known my original villagers for so long now that their distance kind of hurt. I’d watched them for months through the game, but of course, they didn’t know that. This was a one-sided relationship that I probably should have foreseen.
“If God said they had to be nice to you, then I think they would be nice!”
I chuckled. “Yeah, that…might work.”
I never thought of that!
Chem had the holy book again. There was nothing stopping me from sending a prophecy with my phone.
I decided to give it a try. I was sick of being ignored!