“No.”
Did I hear that wrong?
“Wait a moment. I think I heard you say you can’t grant me permission to go out.”
“You heard correctly.”
Would you please not crush my hopes that easily?
“Why? What’s wrong with going out?”
Grandpa Harkan, who was before me, glanced at the outing request I had submitted, then immediately looked away as though he had seen something he should not have.
“Why? What’s wrong with going out?”
“Karix. How long has it been since you woke up in the infirmary?”
“A little over a day.”
“Do you think that will do?”
Mm. As expected, it was impossible.
“At my age, a day is enough for bones to heal and all that.”
[Your bones would swell, more like.]
The outing request I had given Grandpa was split in half on the spot.
“You rascal! Do you think that will do?! Rest in absolute stability first!”
“I don’t think there will be much of a problem......”
“Good grief, you rascal. And why is an apprentice like you so eager to wander around?”
Wasn’t it good to move your body?
[Exactly. Then your blood becomes clean too. How nice is that?]
You shut up.
[......To think my first apostle would be this irreverent. He keeps cursing at his own god.]
You keep making me angry. Why are you my god?!
“Karix! Are you listening?!”
“Ah.”
Right. I was talking to Grandpa, wasn’t I?
“Ahem...... In any case, I knew you would say that, so I prepared something.”
I placed the medical opinion I had received from the physician on top of the outing request on the office desk.
Or what had once been the outing request.
“......”
“This is a document certified by none other than Miss Halla. It says I’m all better and may go outside.”
“Yes. That is certainly clear.”
With this, even Grandpa Harkan could not say much. A high-ranking priest had said so, after all, so what could he—
Riiip—
“Oh dear. Now there is no medical opinion.”
“Uh.”
No, wait a moment.
[Uh......]
Kalla, too, made a strange sound, stunned.
“I suppose you will have to bring another medical opinion.”
“Grandpa? You’re the one who tore......”
“For reference, if you bring another one, I will tear that one too.”
No, then what am I supposed to do......?
“Rest for at least a week.”
“No, I’m healthy......”
I really was healthy. As healthy as could be.
“I know very well that you are healthy.”
“Then why......?”
“What are you planning to do after going out?”
Uh.
“Karix?”
Grandpa Harkan smiled kindly, but the veins on his forehead were bulging.
“What sort of accident are you trying to cause this time?!”
[Pfft! He is not worried about you, is he?]
Ahem. Quiet. He may look like that, but deep down, he was terribly worried about me after I collapsed......
“At least until the last incident you caused is resolved, you cannot leave!”
Harkan slammed the desk and rose from his seat.
“I was being nice and telling you that you could not go out because you were sick, so why do you not understand?!”
“No, what kind of incident did I even cause last time......?”
At my words, Grandpa Harkan, his eyes bloodshot, huffed and pulled out a stack of documents from the bookshelf behind him, which was packed with paperwork, before placing it on the desk.
“This is the list of incidents you caused when you had outside engagements.”
“Oh, come on. There aren’t that many.”
“These are only the incidents you caused when you went out. The incidents you caused when you went out on missions have already been handled.”
Mm......
Even at a rough glance, that stack had about seven hundred pages.
[Karix.]
Why did she keep calling me?
[......Did you really go around causing this many incidents?]
I truly had not done much. There were many incidents I had caused during missions, but not many when I was just out.
“Shall I read them starting from the most recent?”
[Yes. Read them.]
Even if you say that, he can’t hear you.
[Ah.]
“The most recent time you went out, you bought an outside weapon.”
“I did.”
I remembered. That was about a year ago too.
“You infused divine power into that weapon on the spot, and it broke.”
That was true.
“The fragments that flew off caused injuries and property damage.”
“I handled all of it, didn’t I?”
“Yes. That was fortunate, at least.”
Right. No one died. I had healed everyone who was injured, given them extra money, and compensated double for the property damage.
“But why did you not report that?”
“Act first, report later. I was taught that a holy knight can do that.”
“Are you a full knight? Are you? And in the first place, you only acted first and never reported later, you rascal!”
Tsk. Was that so? It had been so long I could not remember.
“Before that, you destroyed two buildings while trying to deal with an evil god worshiper hiding in a village!”
“Both of them were evil god dens!”
“What about the damage caused when the buildings collapsed, you rascal?! You could have just snuck in!”
Damage caused by their collapse?
“No, there weren’t any people inside!”
“Do you know how many fields were ruined because of that?!”
Grandpa Harkan’s eyes were bright red.
“Shall I read more?”
[No, I think that is enough......]
Kalla looked at me as though she were looking at some kind of lunatic.
“So go. At least! Come back after a month. I will permit you to go out around then.”
“Yes, well. I understand.”
“If you understand, leave.”
Grandpa Harkan, who had been fuming, sat back down and waved his hand.
“Yes.”
After I was driven out of the office like that, the evil god looked at me with strange eyes.
[......I wondered why a human had become my apostle, but you are closer to a demon race than a human.]
“Why are you picking a fight as soon as we come out?”
[You can say that after hearing with your own ears all the incidents you have caused?]
If even an evil god reacted like that, then perhaps it was rather excessive. I should reflect a little.
[Well, I suppose it is fortunate you are not something like a gnome or a half-elf.]
“What about them?”
[You can tell just by looking, can you not? They are filthy creatures.]
I had never met one, so I did not know.
“Why are they filthy?”
Did they smell? More than the deathly stench emitted by evil god worshipers?
[Their blood is terribly filthy.]
“Haa.”
It was just the mad rambling of an evil god. I kept forgetting because she spoke normally so often.
[Why are you sighing?!]
“Because I was thinking, ‘To think something like this is my god.’”
[......Would it not be better to leave such things as thoughts?]
“If you only think something, it doesn’t get conveyed.”
That was what I had learned.
[So? How are you going to get outside now?]
“It’s simple.”
Officially, I had failed to receive permission to go out.
“I just need to go for a slightly unofficial, unrecorded walk.”
[Is that allowed?]
“No.”
As if it would be.
“But do you know something?”
However, I just had to make it possible.
“If you don’t get caught, it isn’t a crime.”
[I feel that it is already hopeless from the moment you admitted it was a crime.]
“What I’m about to do technically isn’t a crime?”
Nowhere in the law codes of the Holy Kingdom did it say an apprentice holy knight would be punished for going out without permission.
“When a physically weak person is in front of you, not helping them isn’t a crime, right?”
The example was a little strange. In any case, that was what I meant. A rule made by morality, not law.
[What? Then do you not have to obey it?]
“You don’t even have a conscience......”
Of course she didn’t. If she had, she would not have been an evil god.
“Who are you talking to in front of my office?”
Harkan opened the door, came outside, and spoke to me.
“Uh.”
Ah, right. I was still in front of Grandpa Harkan’s office.
“I will permit you to go out exactly one month from now. Until then, absolutely! Absolutely! Do not cause any trouble.”
“What about giving me a mission since I’m an apprentice, instead of an outing?”
Apprentices sometimes received missions too.
‘I can receive a mission and find a dwarf on the way back.’
At my words, Grandpa Harkan stopped walking, turned around, and looked at me.
“......Why are you doing that?”
Ow!
[Pfft! He must have hated that idea so much he flicked you on the forehead.]
Argh, that damned evil god bastard kept running her mouth.
“If you cause that many accidents simply by going out, how many accidents do you intend to cause if I give you a mission?”
“That’s all prejudice.”
It was not as if I caused an incident every time I went out or went on a mission. There were times I returned normally, about...... once every hundred times?
“You keep saying I’m going to cause an accident, but because you expect that from me, I can’t help but live up to your expectations.”
“Say that after doing something about your dazzling record.”
Grandpa Harkan sighed.
“But you’re going to call me for a mission later anyway because there won’t be enough manpower, aren’t you?”
It was not just once or twice that he said he would not call me, then did.
“Ahem. In any case, I will be going now.”
Harkan did not even answer me and simply turned away.
[What in the world did you do to be unable to receive missions too?]
“I told you, it was nothing much.”
It was true that I had not been given missions ever since Sir Slan allowed me access to the archive about a year ago.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. I just have to go on an unofficial outing.”
[If you are caught, how will you deal with the aftermath?]
“If I can’t find a way to shake you off, I’m dead. What’s so bad about being punished after going out and coming back?”
Taking a few hits was much more comfortable than dying.
[Where are you going now?]
“My room.”
[Oh! My believer, you still have a temple, at least?]
I said my room. What are you talking about?
***
[This is my new temple!]
It was just a room, so why was she making such a fuss?
[Apostle! What is that object?]
Kalla approached the magic tool in one corner of the room.
“A magic tool that keeps things like food cold.”
Perhaps because she was an ancient god, she knew nothing.
[This! What is this, then?!]
Seeing Kalla marvel at the scrolls piled on the desk made it truly sink in.
“You really are an ancient god, aren’t you?”
Just how ancient was the era she had lived in if she found mere scrolls fascinating? Those had been made over a thousand years ago, and in other countries, they were ignored as old technology.
[As expected, is it because humans are pure-blooded? They have made many fascinating things!]
“That sounds like you’re praising humans?”
[Hmm? Of course they are remarkable, are they not? Humans, I mean.]
“Eh?”
Wait a moment. You are an evil god, so are you allowed to say that?
[I do not particularly have any grudge against humans.]
“You know that sounds unconvincing when an evil god says it, right?”
As if anyone would believe that an evil god who had killed tens or hundreds of thousands had no grudge against humans.
[I did not kill them directly, did I? My children were merely caught up in my battles.]
“People died because of that.”
[Is that my fault?]
Insane bastard. This was why she was an evil god.
“I want to cut this contract off as soon as possible......”
[Why does my apostle have so many things he wants to do?]
“Don’t call me apostle. It’s disgusting.”
[I refuse.]
I was so genuinely disgusted I felt like I might vomit.
[By the way, you have rather little luggage.]
On that point, the evil god was right. For a room I had lived in for twelve years, I had almost nothing to call luggage.
“I broke every weapon I got my hands on, and other than that, there wasn’t much for me to own as a holy knight.”
In truth, I had no such thing as a holy knight’s sense of duty. It would be enough as long as I and the people I liked lived well.
“I suppose the biggest reason is that I don’t have much greed.”
Money was good to have. Naturally, the more, the better.
Life would be hard without money, but as long as one had enough to get by, was there really a need to gather more? This was the result of living with that thought.
[Were you not tempted by money when you released me?]
“When dealing with someone, what else are they going to give me besides money?”
[There is collateral too, is there not?]
“Solid money is better than collateral.”
Besides, how would I know what item you would offer as collateral?
[Would a life not be perfect collateral?]
Honestly, what a chilling bastard.