Episode 3 - Charm 180
Hans turned his head.
There, the brats Hans usually led around were staring this way with eyes wide as saucers.
Hans felt as though his mind had gone completely blank.
From the children’s mouths, gaping in shock, poured attacks disguised as questions.
“....What’s wrong with you? Did you catch something?”
In the children’s world, contact with that crazy beggar hag known as “Em-em” was the greatest of taboos.
Yesterday’s alley boss was no more.
The children shrieked with delight at having found a new plaything.
“Wow! He caught something from Em-em!”
“Ah, no...!”
“He caught something! Hans caught something!”
“I said no! I’m serious!”
Hans’s shouts rang hollow. He had now become the brat who caught a disease and confessed to the crazy beggar hag.
Sirin snickered and turned away.
Yes, this is what Charm 180 meant.
Sirin no longer had any reason to hurl curses driven by infantile desires. Was this not the way of a civilized being who preserved dignity? Sirin was proud of himself.
Having so cruelly trampled a child’s first pure love, Sirin hummed a tune and walked into the village.
#
The village was far busier than usual preparing for the festival.
Temporary stalls lined the square, and colorful cloth scraps and dried flower branches poorly managed to create a festive atmosphere.
Children ran around playing tag, while adults exchanged greetings with neighbors or haggled.
From afar, the faint sound of instruments could be heard, and the appetizing smell of grilling food mingled with the sour aroma of cheap fruit wine fermenting, drifting through the air.
But even amid the joyous festival, there was a certain unease.
There was a reason the village atmosphere had grown ominous.
It was because the mercenary band hired by the Empire for the nearby monster subjugation had settled in and were running amok.
The other world Sirin had fallen into was a rootless place where antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period were chaotically jumbled together.
There was an Empire with Roman motifs, city-states, gods, and so on.
In short, it was a mess.
Sirin had thought it was all just a filthy medieval fantasy land, but in truth, there were clean and tidy cities that neared the early modern era.
It was simply that Sirin was wretchedly unlucky, having fallen into a nameless frontier settlement at the edge of the Empire.
At the Empire’s fringes, magical beasts constantly swarmed, and the Empire, always short of soldiers, frequently hired mercenary bands.
The problem was that these so-called mercenary bands were mostly gathering places of trash who relied solely on strength and ran wild.
The mercenary band that had come this time was no exception.
Even though the monster subjugation had ended, these bastards didn’t leave the village, picking fights with residents, stealing goods, and engaging in all sorts of trashy behavior.
Sirin saw a quarrel breaking out at a fruit stall on one side of the square.
A thuggish-looking mercenary bastard was shouting at an old woman running the stall.
“Hey, hag! Why does this taste like shit? You selling rotten goods?”
“Ah, no, good sir! Freshly picked this morning...!”
“What? I said it tastes bad. Does it make sense to sell rotten apples that taste bad for money? I already ate it. I think I’ll get sick—how are you going to compensate me?”
“Oh please, good sir...!”
“Hey, Heres! The fruit here tastes awful! This old lady gave me fresh trash!”
At those words, Sirin saw a certain man.
The muscular man called Heres cackled and kicked the stall’s fruit basket.
Well-ripened apples and nameless fruits rolled grotesquely across the dirt floor—things Sirin could never have obtained even when starving and famished.
“Tsk tsk, hag. You need to read the room if you want to do business.”
Heres crushed a dirt-covered fruit underfoot without a care as he spoke.
The sweet-sour scent rising from the crushed flesh. Sirin, whose senses were keen, felt his stomach churn.
“You know who we are, right? We’re heroes risking our lives for the Empire. But we’re broke. We subjugated monsters, but the subjugation reward money hasn’t come out. So shouldn’t someone lend us some money?”
Heres smiled, openly eyeing the old woman’s coin purse. The other mercenaries around him joined in, snickering.
“Today’s a very auspicious festival—does it make sense that heroes don’t even have money to buy apples? What do you think, hag? Huh?”
This was roughly the way the mercenaries threw their weight around.
The Imperial security force dispatched in name only watched plainly and did nothing but stand by.
Sirin gazed blankly at the fruits crushed into the dirt, then sensed something moving hurriedly in a corner of his vision.
Merieda from Wilson’s tavern.
At a glance, Merieda’s face seemed to bear faint bruise marks.
Sirin watched that retreating figure for a moment, then turned his gaze away.
Perhaps because of the festival, more mercenaries than usual were coming and going in the village.
Unlike Heres’s rowdy crowd, another group of mercenaries had settled in a shady spot near the tavern.
They showed no interest whatsoever in the commotion here, quietly tipping their drinks among themselves or conversing in low voices.
Birds of a feather, after all—that must be exactly what that looked like.
Sirin watched them for a moment, then resumed walking.
Sirin headed toward the church where Peter was.
Still, the old man was the first person who ought to be told that he had found his tongue.
#
“Old man!”
Sirin shouted joyfully upon seeing Peter. Peter, who had been cleaning something in a corner, raised his head and spoke.
“...So you’ve awakened to another word. But of all things, the word you learned had to be ‘old man.’”
Peter nodded solemnly.
“It’s a happy occasion that your vocabulary has grown, but it’ll take quite some time before you understand what it means. So why don’t you just curse as usual? I’m saying this because I’m not an old man.”
“You crazy old man...”
At Sirin’s words, Peter’s wrinkled eyes widened.
“....What did you just say?”
“Old man, I thought your hearing was going, but now you’re completely deaf. It’s a pity you can’t understand words spoken right in front of you. Do you have anyone to take care of you?”
At Sirin’s malicious remark, Peter’s mouth fell open. The eyes of the usually composed old man went wide.
Peter looked at Sirin like that for a moment, then burst into hearty laughter.
“Well, well! I had a feeling this would happen!”
“Kuhk!”
Peter smacked Sirin’s back repeatedly. The old man’s strength was something else—Sirin nearly tumbled forward.
*Ding!*
[ Powerful Strike! ]
[ You have partially met the activation requirements for the Embodiment Basic System! ]
Even the system was spouting nonsense at Peter’s strike. Sirin wheezed as he spoke.
‘Damn it, this crazy old man is going to kill me!’
“Like it too much, the cane of love!”
Goddamn it. Sirin had once again used the wrong language circuit.
Peter’s strong physical blow had caused interference in his brain-tongue coordination.
Sirin flew into a sudden rage.
“You insane old geezer, stop it!”
Only then did Peter stop smacking Sirin’s back.
But he was still smiling from ear to ear, looking pleased. Seeing that face, Sirin stopped his outburst as well, smiling back beneath his mask.
“Is it true? Can you really speak now? How is this possible?”
Peter looked Sirin up and down as if he still couldn’t believe it.
In Sirin’s mind, the past six months flashed by like lightning.
The twisted face reflected in the stream water, the tongue and lips that wouldn’t move as he wished, the fragments of twisted curses repeated tens of thousands of times...
He nearly fell into sentimentality, but Sirin summarized it simply.
“Effort and perseverance.”
“....Truly, it is nothing short of a miracle. Did you perhaps have a god you believed in?”
Sirin answered with a nonchalant smile.
“Nothing like that, old man. I did it all myself, through persistence.”
“That may be so.”
Peter smiled back at Sirin’s laughter.
“Anyway, this is truly something to celebrate. We cannot let such a day pass plainly. For a person to awaken to speech is the same as being born anew.”
Peter rose from his seat.
“What are you doing?”
“I have wine saved for such occasions.”
“Old man, you had liquor? Isn’t this a church? Is it okay for a priest to drink?”
“Where is there a person who doesn’t drink? If you see such a person, be careful. They’re either not human or a swindler.”
Sirin had felt it before, but Peter was quite unbecoming of a priest. He had even suggested prostitution.
Peter stood up, then paused to look around and sighed.
“I wish I could bring it out right now, but I still have work to do. Go to the village festival and come back in the evening. We’ll talk in detail then.”
“Aren’t you going to the festival, old man?”
“I have my beliefs, so I do not participate in the Festival of Ten Thousand Gods. You go and enjoy yourself. No, wait a moment.”
Peter said so and looked at Sirin.
“If you’re going to the festival, you should at least spruce up your appearance. Even for a beggar, this is a bit much.”
Peter’s gaze was fixed on Sirin’s rags.
In fact, what Sirin was currently wearing was also clothes Peter had given him. They had simply become rags because Sirin rolled around in them so much.
“I thought you had the same tastes as a stray dog, bathing in mud puddles at every chance, seeing as you were always rolling around. But seeing you all washed up now, I suppose that wasn’t the case. Wait a moment.”
Peter came out with an old but clean and sturdy-looking set of clothes and a small leather pouch.
“Here, put these on at least. And this... use it to buy some snacks at the festival.”
Inside the leather pouch were a few coins.
Peter grinned at Sirin, whose face had become strange.
“Congratulations on your rebirth. Go and enjoy yourself.”
Sirin really didn’t want to, but he felt a slight sting in his eyes.
“....Damn it, I can’t stand being in debt. I’ll pay you back in gold later.”
“By the time you earn gold, I’ll already be dead and gone.”
Sirin spoke, overcome with emotion.
“Then I’ll at least gild your tombstone.”
“Seeing you speak nonsense, I suppose you haven’t fully recovered.”
Peter cackled and smacked Sirin’s back.
*Ding!*
[ Powerful Strike! ]
[ You have partially met the activation requirements for the Embodiment Basic System! ]
“Aack! Damn old geezer! Stop hitting me!”
Sirin screamed and dashed out of the church.
“That damned old man.”
Sirin grumbled, but he wasn’t in such a bad mood.
The liberating feeling of being able to speak properly now.
He needed to hurry and change clothes, then go greet Marta.
Well, he didn’t plan on being too hard on Marta, but he had prepared some choice words for that brat Vera or whatever her name was.
Sirin snickered as he walked.
“.....”
As he neared the village, he heard someone making a ruckus.
It seemed Sirin’s “debt repayment” would have its opportunity sooner than expected.