WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Alyo

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◈ Surviving as a Warrior in a TRPG World ◈

Chapter 2: Priest and Adventurer (1)

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'Gerik. Sixteen years old. The third son of Baron, a poor farmer.'

Those were the basic details he had learned about himself over the past two days. Gerik had done his best to understand his surroundings without acting too strangely.

Fortunately, Gerik had apparently always been considered a somewhat slow child in the village, so no one found his recent clumsy behavior particularly odd.

'Someone with low intelligence and poor social skills...'

Normally, that would have been a fatal flaw, but Ujin, reincarnated in Gerik's body, found it a great relief.

'At least I can avoid being suspected because of it.'

While quietly digging drainage ditches, Gerik began asking his brothers little questions here and there during their breaks.

"What's gotten into you? Why are you talking so much?"

"Leave him alone. He's hit puberty. He's probably just growing up. It's not a bad thing."

When Dof, his second-oldest brother, asked about Gerik's sudden change with a puzzled look, Boris scolded him. Dof quietly nodded.

"You want to know about this place? Well... this is... the eastern part of the kingdom? Eesty Gray?"

"East Gray, idiot."

His oldest brother snorted as he corrected him. Boris seemed to know a little more than Dof, so Gerik approached him and began asking all sorts of questions.

"Uh... well... I don't know..."

Boris was also just the son of a country farmer, and Gerik's pointed questions soon left him flustered.

"Hey! Instead of asking useless questions, why don't you work harder?!"

Unable to answer, Boris began getting angry. Gerik, quick on the uptake, obediently shut his mouth and returned to work. Mistaking his silence for discouragement, Boris soon came over and spoke again.

"If you're that curious, go to the monastery and ask the priest."

"...The priest?"

"Yeah. The priest."

Boris explained about the monastery on the outskirts of the village. It was not much of a place, but an old priest lived there, someone the villagers respected greatly.

"Harvest season's got everyone busy right now, but once winter comes in about half a month, go help out and introduce yourself. He'll probably tell you that much. Father will let you slack off that much in winter, too."

'A monastery...'

After nodding and thanking his brother, Gerik quietly helped with the harvest by gathering wheat grains.

* * *

'It's cold.'

Half a month later, Gerik stepped outside and felt winter's arrival in the chilled air.

"I'll tell Father you're out gathering firewood, so be careful."

"Thanks, Brother."

Gerik bowed in thanks at his oldest brother's blunt but caring words, then followed the path Boris had shown him toward the edge of the village.

'Judging by the outside, this must be the place.'

A shabby building appeared at the end of a narrow path. Gerik stood before the old brick structure, far too humble to call a monastery, looked it over for a moment, then knocked on the door.

"Is anyone there?"

"...Who is it?"

Before long, the door opened and an elderly man with white hair appeared. His eyesight seemed poor, and he squinted as he examined his visitor.

"Hm? Baron's third boy?"

The priest had lived near the village long enough to recognize him at once, and Gerik's visit puzzled him. Especially since Gerik's family were not followers of Num.

"Well, the thing is..."

Gerik began reciting the excuse he had spent days preparing. He said that as he got older, he had grown curious about the geography and history of the place where he lived, and that though he knew it was rude, he had come seeking knowledge.

"Could you teach me about the world?"

"Hoho... What an odd boy."

Though the son of a country farmer had come to him with such an absurd request out of nowhere, Osrik, priest of Num, did not think badly of him.

Osrik had been an enterprising priest who had come all the way to these distant outskirts in accordance with Num's will, which regarded ascetic hardship as a virtue. Gerik's similar behavior left him with a favorable impression.

"A short lesson... Very well."

He considered Gerik's very act of coming to this gloomy, secluded place a kind of ascetic trial, so he regarded the boy's questions as its reward and answered without demanding anything in return.

'The Baskaar Kingdom on the Aldrun Continent...'

From Osrik's teachings, Gerik learned that he had been reincarnated in a kingdom in the southeastern part of the continent, with its northern border defined by a mountain range.

It was a kingdom with a respectable history and reasonably strong national power, but the harsh mountains to the north and the great desert to the west had made territorial expansion difficult. It was now developing the east instead.

'Unlike the civilized west and south, the east is still an untamed, unexplored frontier overrun with monsters.'

Dense forests and swamps untouched by human hands, along with the violent demi-humans and monsters within them, constantly plagued humanity. Still, they could not break humanity's greed for expansion.

That greed had finally erupted a hundred years ago, when the kingdom's power reached its peak, and bloody campaigns to settle the east had been repeated ever since.

"Have you finished asking what you wanted to know?"

Osrik asked as he lifted the waterskin at his waist and quenched his thirst.

Seeing that he looked tired, Gerik bowed in thanks and tried to rise. Then some strangely shaped writing caught his eye.

"Priest, what's that?"

"Hm? That? That's the Common Tongue, of course."

Osrik answered as he looked at the squiggly markings Gerik pointed to. As someone from the modern world who understood the importance of literacy all too well, Gerik asked whether Osrik could teach him to read and write.

"Hoho... If you devoted yourself to Num and offered your talents for the rest of your life, perhaps, but..."

Osrik did not dislike Gerik's initiative. Still, he thought it made no sense to devote all the precious time that should be offered to Num to teaching the son of a country farmer, so he gently refused.

"Then I'll help you through the winter. Could you teach me in exchange for my labor?"

"Hm...?"

If Gerik had simply whined, Osrik would have ignored him. But when Gerik offered a practical proposal, the priest's expression turned intrigued.

'Normally, I would refuse, but...'

Osrik had only recently completed an ascetic trial Num had given him. By chance, it meant he had more free time than he had in years.

'Perhaps this is another aspect of the hardship Num has bestowed upon me.'

The timing felt strangely like a revelation, and Osrik finally nodded.

"Then let us do this."

In exchange for teaching him to read and write, Osrik asked Gerik to do chores each day, such as sweeping the front yard at dawn and drawing water from the well.

Desperate for local knowledge, Gerik immediately accepted and bowed in thanks.

"Helping with work at the monastery? You little...!!"

Baron was furious when he heard that his third son, who had only just come of age and finally begun doing a full share of the household work, intended to start wasting time on nonsense.

Still, knowing the greatness and terror of the gods, Baron kept Osrik entirely out of it and only hurled abuse at Gerik.

"Once I've finished helping the priest, I'll gather firewood in the forest."

"Hmph..."

At the mention of gathering firewood instead of slacking off, Baron's expression gradually softened. His wife cautiously approached and soothed him as well, and once his anger subsided, Baron replied with a snort.

"You'd better keep your word. Otherwise, I'll smash your legs to pieces!"

Though he spoke harshly, the sight of his dim-witted third son taking the initiative to do something touched Baron in a strange way.

'I was worried he'd never even get married, but if he keeps this up, he'll be able to earn his own keep and live independently.'

Gerik watched Baron's shifting expression closely and became certain that, at least until spring came, Baron would not interfere with what he was doing.

From the next day onward, Gerik visited the shabby monastery where Osrik lived every day, doing all manner of odd jobs while learning to read and write.

"Priest, is this how I write it?"

"...That's right."

Only a few days after Gerik began learning, he had not only memorized the basic letters and words at an astonishing pace but was even writing simple sentences. Osrik was amazed.

'Wasn't he... a little slow...?'

Priest Osrik spent most of his time training at the monastery or patrolling the outskirts of Mudholm to eliminate minor monsters, so he was not especially close to the villagers.

Even so, as the priest living near the village, he tried to maintain at least minimal ties with the people there. As a result, he knew the basic circumstances of Baron's family, who had been born and raised in the village.

In Osrik's memory, Baron's third son Gerik had been a somewhat slow and always quiet child. Yet the boy's behavior over the past few days as he learned to read and write had been the very picture of intelligence.

'Perhaps it is divine grace.'

Sometimes, when a god pitied a particular follower and bestowed a blessing, small miracles happened. People who were somewhat slow or physically unwell, like Gerik, would occasionally become ordinary. Osrik quickly rationalized it that way.

'I need to review hard when I get home.'

Paper and pens were precious in this world, unlike the modern one, so Gerik fought desperately not to forget the valuable knowledge the priest taught him each day.

Every day before going home, he took one of the branches he had gathered as a cover and wrote letters in the dirt to review, trying to retain what he had learned that day. Perhaps thanks to that grueling effort, he completed his basic grammar lessons in only a month.

"Hoho... To learn to read and write so quickly... You worked hard."

"No. It's because you taught me so well, Priest."

Gerik knew all too well how precious the priest's teachings were in a rural village where hardly anyone had received a proper education. Even after completing his basic literacy lessons, he continued bowing his head in thanks.

His humility seemed immensely satisfying to Osrik as a priest. A smile appeared on the face of a man who rarely showed emotion due to his harsh training.

Just as he was about to mention Num, the god he served, and offer Gerik a brief blessing, an older voice rang through the shabby monastery.

"Priest! Priest, are you there?"

"Hm...?"

Osrik was puzzled to hear the village chief's voice at the old monastery, which rarely received visitors.

Wanting to focus on his training and minimize his ties to worldly affairs, Osrik had met with the village chief when he first settled there and asked him to refrain from visiting unless the matter was especially urgent or important.

Now that the village chief's voice had reached him again after so long, Osrik feared something might have happened in the village. He hurriedly rose and went to greet him.

"This is the priest of our village, gentlemen."

"Thank you for leading us here."

Gerik followed Osrik outside to meet the village chief. He had naturally expected the village chief to be alone, but there was unexpectedly another group with him.

'Adventurers...!'

They looked exactly like the adventurers one would expect to see in a Tabletop Role-Playing Game world.

Each wore a robe over leather armor. The robes were worn in places, likely from sleeping outdoors at night, and though their weapons differed in type, every one of them carried something threatening at their side.

It also seemed they had recently been through a fierce battle. Their equipment was in poor condition, and makeshift bandages covered large and small wounds across their bodies.

"...What brings adventurers such as yourselves to this humble monastery?"

Even to the seasoned priest Osrik, who had seen all manner of things, the adventuring party before him did not look like an ordinary rabble.

Having wandered the world for a long time and accumulated all sorts of experience in pursuit of ascetic hardship, he knew how violent adventurers as a group could be. Instinctively, he remained wary of them.

"I offer my respects to great Num, who chose a thorny path for the sake of order, and to Num's servant."

"Oh..."

Perhaps he had noticed Osrik's caution. A weathered middle-aged man who appeared to be their leader quickly stepped forward and greeted him with praise for Num.

When Osrik relaxed his guard slightly, the man gestured for the man standing at the very back to come forward and introduced him.

"Priest, this man's name is Lugos."

Footnotes:

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