Only the Party Members Returned, Not the Hero

48. Commoner’s Achievement (2)

48.

It is night.

After talking with Elish and taking a good rest during the day, my muscle pain lessened and my body seemed to improve.

I stretched in the yard of the temporary lodging.

“Ughhh…. Oh my, oh my.”

Duduk, ttuk.

As I lengthened the stiff muscles, the old man’s voice came out.

“Whoa.”

A deep breath.

Strangely, after Elish left, the other two are silent.

I was waiting for another woman to enter the room right away, but she waited for a long time and no one came in, so I just spread out and slept.

Recently, people are more anxious when they are quiet.

Tup.

“Hmm?”

Someone put a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to it.

Mallang.

The outstretched index finger pressed my cheek.

“… Stop?”

The cheeks and lips pushed by the index finger produce a muffled pronunciation.

EL, a saintess with blonde hair and blue eyes, was looking at me with her mischievous expression.

“How are you?”

I took a step to her side and moved her fingers away.

“… Hello.”

“Ah, no fun.”

EL stretched out in the air and bit her hand that was holding my cheek.

“What are you doing? Childishly.”

“Please be innocent, not childish.”

“What are you doing? Pure.”

“Because I love you.”

“I don’t love you.”

“I’ll do it myself, love.”

“… Ha, true.”

What can I say?

The most difficult person to deal with was EL.

To push me away, I try to be nice to me, but to be nice to me, I feel like I’m going to open my room at dawn one day.

“I am not someone worthy of being loved by a saintess.”

“Why not?”

“Yeah, you know. When I was in school, I would have to go to hell if I gathered up all the blasphemy I said while debating with you?”

“At that time, um…. It was an academic discussion, so let’s move on. Originally, all legitimate criticism is necessary.”

It seems that there were a lot of primary criticisms as well as legitimate criticism.

It used to be like that, it used to be.

“Oh, that’s right. May I ask you just one question?”

“You can do two.”

“No? Are you going to do just one?”

“You really don’t listen.”

“Listen. I’ve been thinking about it, but I haven’t heard of the saintess talking behind her back. Why did you do that?”

Even if the saintess was swearing behind me, there was nothing wrong with her.

Still, looking back on the past, I have never heard of a saintess talking about me behind her back, even if no one else knows.

“Oh, is that it?”

As if it was nothing, EL came and stood next to me.

“Originally priests don’t talk well with others. There is a duty of confidentiality. Whatever it was, whatever it was, the words of some heinous man. With the only exception….”

“If there is?”

“I can speak to priests of the same level or higher than myself.”

“Is there a priest of a higher rank than the Holy Lady?”

“I can’t do it because I don’t have it. At least, the Pope is in the same class as me in principle.”

I pointed at EL.

“That’s what you told the Pope about me behind my back. So I didn’t know How do I know you went to the Pope and started talking behind your back? She’s such a nasty woman yes. She is really mean.”

ELLE looked at me with her mouth open in her bewildered expression.

“Why, why do you make a prediction again? Do you think the Pope will listen when I say something behind my back?”

What.

That’s not true.

Pope Febro was a pope who seemed to have been put in and out of the mold even though I hadn’t seen him a few times.

A truly literal pope who has all the ideal aspects of a priest.

If young EL was going to gossip about her, she would have come out with two humps on her head.

“I’m sorry if not.”

When I cast the Hero’s Skill or Not, EL glared at me with a look of resentment.

I see. She gained new knowledge.

Clergy cannot carry around other people’s words.

“…… ?”

I felt uncomfortable.

Even if a clergyman can’t move around other people’s words, recently EL has tended to transfer other people’s words to me well.

El also told me about Tania’s ban, and about Raihand, and also about the essence of the moon.

So I looked at EL again, and she also looked at me.

“Isn’t that strange?”

“What is it?”

“Didn’t you tell me a lot of things?”

“Me?”

“That’s right.”

“When?”

“… ….”

When Ellen’s expression crumpled at the ignorant reply, ELEN narrowed her beautiful eyebrows as if to confront her, and while making faces together, he laughed alone.

Even when her resigned Ellen turned her head to look at her forest again, ELEN stared blankly at Ellen’s profile.

I remembered the old days.

When she went on a pilgrimage and apologized to Ellen.

The place where Ellen was was also on a trail in the forest.

A 15-year-old saint goes on a pilgrimage for the first time.

She hated the fact that she was a saint sometimes, but even more so when she was a child.

She couldn’t make any friends in front of her status as a saint. No one dared to approach her saintess casually and pretend to be her friend.

Thanks to her status, which is sacred and deserves special treatment.

She was a saint who had not yet learned social skills, and she could not even make a single friend to share a meal with, let alone grandiose things such as exchanges of her mind or sympathy.

Even if you get lucky.

After learning that she was a saint, everyone left.

It was natural.

The inevitable conflict between friends, and the irritation and discord that everyone has to go through.

If the other person is a saint, her own life may be in danger.

No matter what her saintess’ intentions were, her assistants wouldn’t let her see other people being rude to her saintess.

It was natural for her that no one would dare to risk the safety of herself and her family to become friends with a young saintess.

So EL was glad to see her on her pilgrimage.

The 15-day pilgrimage is treated as an ordinary follower, even if the participant is the king.

All details about who each other is and where they came from are strictly hidden. On the pilgrimage, such mundane things had no effect.

Thanks to that, EL was able to make friends with her for the first time.

Befriended a girl with her hair in two pigtails.

I can’t even remember his name now.

I wanted to forget because we couldn’t part amicably.

A girl and EL.

In that short period of time, we argued,

I open my heart,

We had a lot of trivial conversations.

We picked up pretty stones that had no value and only glittered and shared them with each other, suggesting that we should keep them.

Thanks to her, EL was able to laugh a lot.

But the end always comes.

The last day of the pilgrimage was no exception.

The memory of that day was as vivid as yesterday.

The glittering Knights of Erantel and the elders who came to pick him up.

Silver armor embroidered with gold patterns, sharp swords and armaments that could cut you if touched.

It was not Elder Raihandro, and it was before Darhan became the leader of the knights.

EL told the elder about the things she enjoyed.

Fun things with her friends, little fights, meals together.

The elder smiled benevolently and told the knight commander to find the child.

The girl was dragged by the knights.

She didn’t even look at Maiel and fell flat on her floor, trembling.

“Please, please, forget the nothing, nothing, rudeness until now….”

What do you mean by rude?

El couldn’t understand.

She was happy because ELLE had her friends.

It was nice to see the heaviness of the pretty shiny stones in the pocket.

Not doctrine, not prayer.

I was really happy that I had a friend with whom I could have a trivial and childish conversation.

But the father of her girl scrambled up to her, smacked her daughter in the head, and begged her to forgive her just once, if by any chance this little girl had committed her disrespect, she would I’d rather be punished instead of myself.

Her trembling hands and shoulders stretched her head down in front of EL’s feet.

EL said it was okay, but she put her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

The girl just bent her body down even more as she raised the game.

El, who was short, looked up at the knights and elders in dismay.

The elder who had come to assist her saintess looked down at her father and daughter who were bowing their heads with a cold expression.

There’s no way the seasoned elder didn’t know what the situation was.

Because the elder thought that friendship between a commoner and a saint was absurd anyway.

On the contrary, he was just looking down at the two of them with a colder expression than usual. There were too many things the saintess had to do in the future to have affection for such a commoner.

To give love to everyone.

Ironically, I wasn’t supposed to bond with just one person.

“Please, please….”

The child’s father prayed.

Please kill me instead of my daughter.

El couldn’t understand.

Who should I kill and why?

“Raise your head.”

A girl hit her arm to find a prettier stone?

Forgave everyone. In the end, they gifted each other the prettiest stones.

“Raise your head.”

Because the girl took a few more pieces of my meat because the meal was tasteless?

She said she was full anyway and couldn’t have eaten any more.

“Raise your head-!”

Incomprehensible, EL’s voice rose.

“The saintess told me to raise my head.”

The voice of the Knight Commander of Erantel, cold as a blade, is heard like an abstraction.

The child raised his head only when EL’s words became a command.

The child’s eyes were no longer her friend EL, but only the image of the saintess EL.

A surprise.

Fear.

Away.

Horror.

Facing those eyes mixed with various emotions that you could never have if you were a friend.

Lee El reminded me of Ellen.

The eyes of the classmates looking at Ellen came to mind.

It was only then that I found out.

There are things in the world that you shouldn’t reveal.

Just saying things out of your mouth can hurt others.

How his foolish good intentions worked on him.

Feeling her utter loneliness, she realized for the first time.

EL put the pretty stone she said she wanted to keep in the hands of her child who was terrified.

Sorry, forget me. With the word

.

After returning from her pilgrimage, she went straight to Ellen.

She wanted to apologize to him for her own mistake.

She

She apologized, but she wasn’t sure if he accepted her apology.

Ellen got it, she said we’d talk next time she walked away alone.

Still, she seems to have had many conversations with Ellen after that.

Particularly Ellen, she lashes out like a goddess who must deny her goodness.

At the time, I couldn’t understand why he said that.

Her saintess had a deep emotional rift with him in her young heart.

Ellen seemed so lonely when she wasn’t talking to herself, and she even more doggedly talked to Ellen as she knew it was her own fault.

The conversation goes wrong,

Let’s talk again,

It goes wrong again,

Hearing blasphemous words,

Speaking disrespectfully,

I can’t hear you.

Speaking the wrong things.

She was like an idiot, and her emotions didn’t work out. Even after she joined the expedition, she couldn’t get along with him that well.

Abandoned by the goddess,

I only felt it right before her regression.

Her Ellen guarded her her.

Risking her life for EL.

After EL went through the painful process of risking his life for Ellen again.

Only then did EL realize what her Ellen was to her.

Although it only shows the profile,

Although she rarely smiled at herself.

I was free by Ellen’s side, not by the goddess.

“…Ellen.”

“Why are you setting the mood again? What are you going to say?”

A religious person can only transfer words to someone of the same or higher level.

He asked me.

Why do you move all these things to me?

I already kept the answer to his words deep in my heart.

You are my faith.

I believed that the day would come when I would say it one day.

Even if not today.

EL said with a smile in her blue eyes.

“I love you.”

“Oh, yes. It keeps happening Because I don’t love you.”

“What did you just say hello to?”

“Then just say hello for the rest of your life.”

“That’s a bit….”

It doesn’t matter which Ellen.

Whether it is Ellen before the return or after the return, whether it is Ellen who is not a hero, Ellen who is cursed, or Ellen who has become an apostate.

And, just in case.

Even if it was Ellen who became a demon.

He is the faith of EL.

***

The tower of the hemp tower.

Sitting in a large black chair, Nia stared into space with a bored expression on her face.

She was waiting for the commander of the magic priests she called.

After a few seconds, a magic circle appeared in front of Nia, and a priest who covered her black robe and couldn’t see her face walked out of it.

“Why are you so late?”

In terms of time, it was the same as coming right away as soon as he was called, but the priest bowed his head without making any excuses.

“Sorry, there was something I needed to address.”

“Yes, you can.”

“What did you call me for?”

“Find someone.”

“A person?”

Nia said nonchalantly, resting her chin on one of her hands.

“Dead or alive, if dead, where and how he died, if alive, where and how he lives…” . I want to be able to find out as much information as possible.”

“I will. Who do you want to find?”

In the serious voice that came from the inside of the robe, Nia had determination and loyalty to the extent that she would bring out the dead if she wanted to.

Nia gave a small smile.

It’s not because I’m satisfied with the appearance of the priest.

In the process of remembering the name to command her priest, Ellen’s thought came to mind.

“Siretti.”

Her words became letters in the air and flew in front of the priest.

The name written in Erantera, Continental, and Common languages lingers in the priest’s eyes.

“Find that person.”

And Nia added a word.

“Probably not dead.”