“Uh, thanks.”
“There’s no need to thank me; this is merely part of my duties.”
He tilted his head and gave me a small smile. He hadn’t caught on; it looked like he wasn’t too familiar with orisons.
I bowed politely and stepped out of the room, keeping a smile plastered on my face. After I’d closed the door, walked to the end of the hall, and made it to the stairway, I finally let myself take a breath.
“Smells like death in there, seriously...” I muttered, sighing deeply.
The words of prayer I’d used were among the more troublesome ones in my repertoire. Calling it a curse of surveillance was maybe a bit overblown, but I’d stuck a sort of pin onto him. Now I’d be able to keep track of his general location. It hadn’t felt like he was planning to get rid of me, at least, but I definitely wasn’t all that welcome. If he did try to run off, I wanted to be able to follow him. From what I’d heard, since killing the Demon Lord, he’d been going around from place to place chasing rumors of demon attacks. The fact that I’d been able to catch up to him here was nothing short of a godsend. If he’d given me the slip, I would’ve been stuck spending months trying to track him all across the country.
Screw that. That sounds exhausting. I wanna go home already.
But as long as I knew exactly where he was, it’d be easy to keep up with him. Sorry, Hero, but I’ve got “the Gods” on my side.
A different thought forced its way to the front of my mind. “I’m hungry...”
I might’ve been able to fool the Hero, but I couldn’t fool my own body. I was exhausted from the long trip, and although I could heal some amount of physical fatigue with orisons, keeping up my act in front of my assassination target was mentally exhausting too. I wanted to wrap up this job quickly, then go relax in a nice hot bath. Just my slothful nature, I suppose.
“Oh...? Are you already closed?” I asked as I walked down the stairs.
The bar was completely deserted. All the customers had vanished, leaving nothing but half-empty glasses and leftover snacks. Maybe the innkeeper was secretly a demon, and he’d eaten them all—or more likely, they’d just left. It hadn’t been that long since I’d gone up to the second floor, though. The sun hadn’t even set yet, so why...?
“Gee, I wonder whose fault that could be?” the innkeeper replied. “Gettin’ the shit beat out of ’em by a sweet and innocent bride made ’em feel like wusses, so they’re all out huntin’ now. They were sayin’ they’d wipe out the last of the demons that got away from the Hero, or whatever. Just convenient excuses, basically.”
“Oh dear... I’m terribly sorry about this.”
He didn’t sound angry, but all the same, disrupting people’s business wasn’t a great look for a servant of the Gods. I tried to offer a few coins as an apology, but he still wouldn’t take my money.
“Their fault for fuckin’ around. Don’t worry ’bout it, missy. Grab a bite to eat, why don’tcha?”
“Very well. I’ll have whatever you recommend, then.”
No point in pushing if he’d just keep turning me down.
With a friendly smile, he quickly started cooking behind the bar. Most inns had separate kitchens, but this one seemed to have everything right out here. I also couldn’t see any other staff. Either he was incredibly efficient, or...
“Is that a skill you’re using?”
“Mm? Ah, yeah.” He kept on working while he spoke. This went way beyond efficiency—in fact, I couldn’t really tell what he was doing at all. I pretty much never cooked, so I didn’t know much about how it was done in the first place, but it looked as though he was dividing the cooking process into small tasks and doing all of them in parallel somehow.
“Oh...?”
As I watched, fascinated, the scattered ingredients were assembled onto plate after plate, transforming into cooked dishes. It was a different feeling from just watching a skilled chef at work. He was taking in the entirety of the space around him, constantly keeping track of all the changing elements and maintaining control of them. Most likely—
“You developed that on the battlefield, I take it?” My thoughts naturally slipped out of my mouth.
The innkeeper faltered for a brief moment, but he quickly got back into his rhythm.
“Not like I was tryin’ to hide it, but damn. That easy to tell?”
“I’m sorry, just force of habit...” I apologized, but my curiosity was piqued.
At their core, skills were personal abilities developed through accumulated experience and practice. They weren’t something you could pick up in a day; they took time and effort to cultivate. They also couldn’t be taught, or expressed in words at all—they could only be performed physically. If you tried to imitate someone else’s skill, even if you eventually managed to do something similar, it’d still end up being a fundamentally different ability. Only the individual who’d acquired a skill could truly reproduce it. While magical spells could be replicated by following a precise series of steps, skills were a completely different sort of power.
By the way, orisons—words of prayer and acts of faith interwoven with deverbalized spells—had probably originated as a byproduct of research into the fundamental nature of skills. At least, that was my personal theory.
“You wouldn’t happen to be the Hero’s teacher by any chance, would you?” I didn’t have any basis for thinking so, but I decided to take a swing and see if I got lucky.
The innkeeper just gave a small awkward smile as he casually shook a frying pan. “Not me, an old war buddy of mine. He left the kid here, so now I’ve sorta taken over lookin’ after him.”
“Ah, I see.”
The Church dossier hadn’t said a single word about that. If the investigators had done their research and exhausted all their leads, I wouldn’t have been able to fault them for it. But they hadn’t even gotten basic details I’d learned just by asking? Now I was pissed. When I got home, I’d seriously round up Glasses and the rest of them for inquisition.
“How ’bout you? You’re no ordinary nun, are you? I mean, if every bride of the Gods is like you, then I guess this country’s future might be pretty bright after all,” he chuckled.
“Please, rest assured. We of the Church all dedicate ourselves to our training and our worship, day in and day out, for the sake of every soul dwelling in this land. The Gods visit their blessings equally upon all who walk the earth. I hope that serves to assuage your fears.”
“Sounds like I’ll get to take it easy in my old age, then.”
Even if I’d avoided that incident earlier, he probably would’ve figured me out sooner or later. This guy was much more perceptive than I’d thought.
“We don’t gotta talk about it if you don’t wanna. I just don’t want you hurtin’ that kid, is all. I’ve known him since he was little, see... You get me, right?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean, but let me assure you, the Hero is the pride of our entire nation.”
“Long as he’s still useful, right?”
What on earth?
“C’mon, don’t get so stressed. Must be tired after the trip out here.” He smiled and started setting out plates of food on the bar.
There was a creamy vegetable soup, a sautéed meat dish, a side of fresh-baked bread with a golden crust and plenty of butter... Compared to the portable rations I’d been living off, it wasn’t even a contest.