Chapter 395
Chapter 395: Judging by the flow on the story, the biggest issue here seems to be the question of just when Royal Girl showed up?
Day 92 – Evening, Girls-Only Gathering
One More Set. That’s the most important principle of fiery maidens, challenging their limits, surpassing their peak, burning their souls and excessive flesh. Certainly, since I passed level 100, Angelica-san, who could handle me playfully, started dodging and moving while fighting, and Nephertiri-san also engaged while dodging and moving. In other words, it’s a real fight now, but the outcome hasn’t changed. We still get beaten up and stacked in a pile… Even though I can feel myself growing stronger in dungeons every day, the difference in pure technique is too big, and I can’t fully exploit my physical strength in combat, and end up beaten up..
「Aww, that was a new move. And they just seen through it.」
「Skills, are useless, if seen through. You have to….make sure it lands.」
Angelica-san and Nephertiri-san both had their armor upgraded, so they’re in a great mood and are much stricter than usual. It’s like they’re testing the gear, its effects, its performance, the affectionate desire to protect that went into it. But it’s not much of a test if we can’t even land a single hit. It would seem they would not allow us to leave even a scratch on the armor Haruka-kun upgraded for them.
「Armor that completely nullifies level 100 magic is too OP! Well, since I can’t hit with it, I guess it doesn’t make that much of a difference though.」
「With magic
You can not allow the enemy to anticipate.
Use it so it can not be dodged.」
They are fully making use of that equipment. On the other hand. us, at the end of the day, are still just being protected by it. We haven’t mastered it. Our level and our equipment weren’t something we earned or built up ourselves; it was all given to us by Haruka-kun’s extreme overprotectiveness.
「「「Thank you very much!」」」
(Jiggle～Jiggle～)
I peek in on the orphanage and invite Arianna-san, who’s playing with the kids, to take a bath. The kids have already gotten attached to her and are playing happily. They can tell she’s a good person and feel safe depending on her. Yeah, she’s definitely a good person, and a kind one too. She came all the way out here, to what she probably thought was a hell at the edge of the world.
But she came to atone for the Church’s sins, putting her life on the line, trying to save people here on the Frontier by throwing her own life away… That’s why Haruka-kun got mad at her.
If you die, you can’t save anyone, so don’t gamble your life, if you’re going to gamble, then win and squeeze everything out of it? That idea of winning life-risking bets and somehow ending up with more lives than you started with is something only Haruka-kun could pull off, he’s a scammer who went into hopeless gambles where nothing but death awaits and somehow managed to cheat his way to victory, bringing Angelica-san, Nephertiri-san, and Slime-san, home with him, so when he says it, it carries weight.
It was a scolding from a gambler that tosses his own life around like it’s nothing, but is strict when it comes to others. He’s lazy and half-assed with himself, but he never gives up on winning, coercing a victory to emerge by any means possible.
Although it doesn’t happen that often, Haruka-kun is pretty scary when he actually gets angry.
We gently wash dejected Arianna-san while trying to cheer her up. Shariceres-san, covered in bubbles, hugs her, thoroughly washing every part of her body, leaving Arianna-san both embarrassed and overwhelmed as the princess of the Kingdom scrubs her down.
She has the face of a quiet, refined lady, but she is a 28-year-old big sister, and her body is very much that of an adult, a mature womanly figure!
But she is deeply troubled, clearly still thinking over Haruka-kun’s words.
「Cheer up~ it’s not like he was mad, he was just bullying you?」
「「「That’s not helping! That was basically a theological debate… in form, but actually bullying?」」」
「Well, I mean, it kind of was bullying, but I think he wasn’t mad and just wanted her to think carefully before invoking the name of God… maybe?」
Everyone is trying to comfort Arianna-san who seems to be going through a crisis of faith, but this is something we can’t really help with. Pushing everything onto God is just unfair. I mean, we actually met God in that white room, spoke with Him, even if only briefly. He wasn’t someone who would ever do the kind of arrogant or malicious things the Church does. He was a gentle old man, full of dignity and compassion.
The very same person that once had God sit in seiza and scolded Him so harshly He cried, was giving a sermon on invoking God’s name. Which honestly makes him seem even more arrogant and wicked than the Church that claims to speak for God. But we can’t tell Arianna-san about any of that, since the whole other world thing is a secret.
「I thought speaking of God’s responsibility was a blasphemous idea… I believed that God doesn’t make mistakes, that there must be a reason for everything… I don’t know what’s true or right anymore.」
「Haruka-kun was saying~ that you should think that through for yourself~ because if it’s something you’re doing on your own~ and you don’t think about it at all~ then you’re just placing the blame on God~ that’s what he meant, you know?」
…Wait, was it that deep? But whether it’s a doctrine or anything else, obeying or rejecting it needs to be based on your own thought and will. If God Himself did something, then yeah, that’s on God. But if someone says God said something, and you believed that and acted on it, then the responsibility lies with you. In other words, think for yourself, excuses like blind faith won’t fly, is perhaps what he wanted to say. But let’s be real, Haruka-kun always blamed everything on 『that damn Old Fart』 when it came to stuff in this world, didn’t he? Total blasphemer!
I did consider scolding Haruka-kun for being too harsh, and I did feel bad for Arianna-san who didn’t do anything wrong. But even if she reaches out to the Frontier in God’s name, or apologizes in God’s name, that’s not an apology, it’s just faith. And faith is directed only at God, it can’t reach anyone else. Arianna-san apologized to us, and to the people of the Frontier, I don’t want that to be just faith. I want to face Arianna-san as herself, without God in the picture.
Well, the lecture came from a blasphemer who’d probably launch an invasion or something if he ever was asked to face God, but still, he’s the kind of deliberate offender who’ll selfishly reach out to whoever he pleases, not for anyone else, but because he wants to, even if he has to beat them up and drag them screaming, he’ll do that if that’s what it takes to save them, regardless of objections.
「Take your time thinking it over. It’s not something that necessarily has an answer, but I think it’s one of those religious-philosophical things you’re supposed to wrestle with anyway?」
「I mean, it’s not like 『God said so』 justifies killing people, right? If God is not going to take responsibility, then the people who act on it need to, no?」
「Wait, was there anyone left alive to take responsibility in the first place? I mean, from the Church’s side that attacked the Frontier?」
「Aaah, he was talking big, but when push came to shove he just went, 『Off to a White Room with ya! Go back to the Old Fart!』 and blamed everything on God without a second thought!」
「「「Totally did that. Or rather, he just killed them all!」」」
The bond between the Church and the Theocracy is unshakable. In a nation where church and the state are one and the same, it’s inevitable that politics have large influence, but the Church has twisted its doctrines for the sake of the Theocracy’s interests and turned them into tools to manipulate the people. But that’s exactly why each and every citizen of the Theocracy must think for themselves, otherwise, just one line of 『God said so』 is enough to send the nation into unrestrained madness. If religion and state can’t be separated, the whole nation becomes the enemy. That’s what it means to be a fanatic, a puppet that gave up on thinking and questioning, moving exactly as the Church commands.
「I wasn’t thinking at all. I thought that I did, that I was thinking things through, but in the end, I was blindly believing information I hadn’t seen, investigated, or thought through myself. But… even so… wait, Princess, I can wash myself now, n-not there… ah!」
Arianna-san, covered in foam, sank into the bubbles. She’s arching backward… is she okay?
「But the King is doing his best to protect us, they say. Even Omui-sama is on it… though I wonder, is he is protecting Haruka-kun, or protecting them from Haruka-kun?」
「Verbal sparring is a negotiation. Even if it devolves into insults, it’s still a form of dialogue and maneuvering. As long as the talks are ongoing, there’s meaning in that. But if you handed over Haruka-kun, the negotiations would end instantly and be replaced with a one-sided discussion called 『brute force』 completely ignoring the other party’s will. Playking made the right call.」
「「「Yeah, handing him over would be the real problem.」」」
Handing him over would be the biggest attack of all. Letting someone take him and bring him back with them would be the same as handing them a final weapon primed to explode. Asking for that a walking disaster, is basically suicidal, and yet there are tons of people lining up, desperate to get their hands on him.
「Um… may I ask, why do you all fight without faith or reward? You live every day facing pain and suffering, risking your lives in deadly battles, so how can you all keep smiling like that?」
Having finally escaped the foam-washing chaos, Arianna-san fled into the bath.
「Eh, we’re just laughing because it’s fun?」 「Yeah, we’re after a happy life, that’s all, living happily is basic stuff, you know?」 「Food, clothing, and shelter, those matter?」 「Though maybe we went a bit overboard, and so One More Set?」 「I mean, we don’t so much fight as… collect magic stones from monsters to get yummy food and cute clothes.」 「Because we’re alive? Yeah. It hurts, and it’s scary, but we can only feel that because we’re still alive. And to keep living, it’s necessary?」 「We want to fight. Not because we want to be protected, but because we want to protect.」 「Leaving all the pain, hardship, and suffering to others, that actually hurts more. If we can’t carry our own pain, we don’t deserve to eat delicious food.」 「Right! And it’s always the person who says, 『You don’t have to push yourself』 who’s the most wrecked, and how could we just sit around doing nothing?」 「Yeah, we can’t complain about things being hard or painful from this much, since… we already know.」 「Yeah. We decided, that we’d be strong enough to protect. All of us, together.」 「「「Right.」」」
「We do have faith, you know. We believe in this foolish someone who keeps smiling, trying to make everyone else smile too, even while their entire body is being broken, suffering and struggling through painful, deadly battles while still being weak. We’re fanatics.」
So in the end, all the people around Haruka-kun who talked so high-and-mightily about faith and whatnot are actually his fanatics. We’d rather be enemies of God than doubt Haruka-kun. If the world is the enemy, then we’ll protect him from the world. Even if we die, we’ll dedicate our last breath to Haruka-kun, fanatics to the end. We doubt everything Haruka-kun says and does, and we constantly assume he’s the culprit before anything even happens, but still, we believe in him. Even if it’s a lie, if it’s something Haruka-kun does, we’ll believe it. As for the nonsense he says… no comment, but we still believe?
But it’s the answer we arrived at after thinking and thinking about it. This is our responsibility, our will, we are fanatics by our own choice! When it’s someone who’d otherwise go off and quietly die alone if you left them be, fanaticism is just fine for them. He can’t complain about martyrdom or fanaticism if he’d just go off and die on his own if let to his own devices. It’s his own fault, totally deserved. But as for Taming… Well, speaking from a maiden’s point of view… yeah, that’s a little…? You know?
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