By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 13 - Chapter 12

Chapter 8, Episode 12: Time Spent with Remily, Part 1

After our spontaneous competition, Remily and I had wiped out most of the Undead still surrounding our camp. Then Remily told me her demand—or a favor, as she called it.

Now...I found myself in Remily’s sleeping bag. To be more specific, I was the little spoon. Since I was significantly shorter than her, a pair of pillows rested behind my head.

“How did I get here?” I wondered aloud.

“Because you cheated in our contest,” Remily answered. “I think any boy would love to be in your place.”

“I admit you’re beautiful and youthful, but I’m not in a place to enjoy this right now.”

Maybe most men would envy my situation. Even though I looked like a third grader on the outside, I was a dude in his forties on the inside—one who’d barely held a conversation with a woman who wasn’t his mother or coworker while on Earth. However coveted this situation was supposed to be, it was completely wasted on me... And it wasn’t as though I thought Remily would do anything, but I couldn’t help but fear being convicted of sexual harassment.

Old habits.

“You really aren’t moving an inch, are you...? I doubt you’ll get any sleep if you’re that wound up.” Remily began stroking my hair. “Works for me. I did want to talk to you.”

“Talk to me about what? And what are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, I used to do this to my little brother when he couldn’t sleep.”

“I didn’t know you had any brothers.”

“Just one. I pretty much ran away from the village I grew up in. Haven’t been back in a long time, so I’m not winning Sister of the Year anytime soon... It’s not that cheerful of a story, but I’ll tell it to you. Think of it like a lullaby. Oh, but shy away from asking questions.”

“I live in the city now,” Remily went on, “but I was born in a village of only dark elves. Nothing happened there. Have you ever met someone really old who always starts a story with ‘back in my day’...?”

“I have, and I know what you mean.”

“As obstinate as humans get as they grow old, it’s so much worse for longevous species. Humans are considered fully grown at fifteen or twenty years old, but a dark elf isn’t until they’re fifty at the youngest. And they’re raised by adults who’ve lived for much, much longer, who reject any change to their customs. By the time dark elves are grown up, they don’t even question tradition. I got sick of all that before I was even an adult. So I ran away from that place and became an adventurer.”

“It must have been difficult for you once you left.”

“I’d be lying if I said it was smooth sailing the whole time. Even though I wasn’t considered an adult by dark elf standards, I was already over thirty. It’s not like I was some naive girl who couldn’t see a scam for what it was. I was already strong enough to beat anyone who’d approach me with ill intentions, anyway,” she explained.

“I see...”

“Making it out of the village was the hard part. They pursued me viciously. During the day, I kept hidden under bushes or in caves. I traveled in the dark of night and headed directly for the farthest city I could.”

The adults of her village were probably just searching frantically for who they thought was a child lost in the woods. To hear Remily tell it, though, it was like a stealth mission from some RPG.

“Working as an adventurer was smooth sailing. Exploring new cities, taking in new views, tasting new dishes. It was a lot of fun, until...” Her tone shifted. “Maybe the sailing was too smooth. Using my magical talent, I hunted monster after monster, bandit after bandit. Before I knew it, a lot of people knew my name and envied me.”

“How did you deal with that?” I asked.

“I just kept going. It’s hardly as though I cared about what I could do better than others. Like I said, I took care of anyone who came up to me with ill intentions. I was a bit rough around the edges back then.” The memory seemed to cast a shadow on Remily’s smile. “I began to garner fear in place of envy, until people started calling me Death’s Shadow.”

“My favorite element of magic is Shadow: a combination of Light and Dark,” Remily went on. “It encompasses spells designed for warfare and assassination. Because of its nature, I had specialized in hunting quests. The rumors that followed weren’t so nice: that I left countless bodies in my wake because I enjoyed killing for sport, or that I only took quests so I could legally fulfill my bloodlust. Not that I let those bother me either.”

“Those are...pretty nasty rumors,” I said.

“Were they malicious? Yes. But I’d never done anything wrong. On the contrary, I was going around removing threats to their safety! The more rumors I heard, the more hunting quests I took on,” Remily explained. I wasn’t sure if I should be so naive as to compliment her determination. “But I wasn’t having fun anymore. Hardly anyone wanted to work with me, and every quest giver clearly wanted nothing to do with me beyond the interactions they had to make to hire me.”

“Even though I kept adventuring for a living, I began spending more of my time finding hobbies,” she continued. “Eventually, I guess the people who weren’t too fond of me couldn’t stand it anymore... They trapped me and almost killed me. Hilarious.” Her tone was not matching the content of her story... How could she find nearly being killed hilarious? “The trap was hilarious, I mean. Even I wasn’t jazzed about putting one foot in my grave.”

“I see...? Well, I don’t really understand how a trap could be hilarious either.”

“More of a hilarious situation, I guess. Like I said, I did as many hunts as I wanted, taking down plenty of bandits and underground guilds. That led to the arrest of some nobles, so I was making plenty of enemies too. Hits were put out on me more than a handful of times. Eventually, the people who wanted me dead must have figured out their assassins weren’t getting the job done with their usual methods.”

“One day,” Remily continued, “I was called up to the Adventurer’s Guild out of the blue, where they saddled me with an ‘emergency quest.’ The way they described the quest to me explained why it was so urgent and high paying. When I went to where I was told to go, I was greeted by a spectacular ambush by dozens of attackers...all naked.”

“Naked?” I repeated, sure that I had heard wrong.

“It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? But they had a good reason for showing up buck naked. Shadow magic controls shadows in real life, and can often use them as a starting point.”

The idea struck me. “Like the shadows cast by their clothes.”

“Good boy. What’s the use of armor if a spell can strike under it, right? They decided run-of-the-mill armor would only cast more shadows for me to exploit. There are items and pieces of armor out there that can defend against Shadow magic, but they’re rare. However many they might have gathered, it wasn’t enough for all of them. And I’m sure giving half their men better equipment would have caused a rift in the assassin squad. Even if all of them had that kind of armor on, I could still use the shadows inside their mouths or nostrils, so it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

Shadow magic was starting to sound pretty devastating. Firing a spell directly into someone’s body could cause massive damage with minimal magical energy. No wonder it was considered fit for combat and assassination. Especially with Remily’s parallel casting...

“I made it out of there in one piece, but it wore me out. Even though I knew I should get away from there, I couldn’t move for a while once the fight was over... For the first time, I thought to myself, ‘What am I doing?’”

Remily went on. “No doubt I’d made enemies, but they were all bandits or other criminals. Every human I had hunted down had a good reason for me to. What right did they have to blame me for their deaths? That’s what I kept telling myself, until that night.”

“Imagine grown adults, men and women, stark naked with only their weapons in hand, charging at you, demanding bloody vengeance for whoever you’d killed,” she explained. “All of them were willing to cast away their shame—and their lives—to kill me.”

“There were so many of them that their attack on me became too much,” she said. “I ended up finding out who was pulling the strings and arrested them. After all that, I didn’t feel like being an adventurer anymore.”

Remily had seemed so happy-go-lucky at first—but now it sounded like she had seen more than her fair share of brutality. No wonder she had become burnt out. When she’d said “hilarious,” she must have meant it in a sardonic, almost self-deprecating way.

How am I supposed to respond? I wondered, hesitating to ask any questions for fear of bringing up details of her story she still wanted concealed. A person better versed with delicate conversational skills could have navigated these treacherous waters much better than me. So I couldn’t speak.

Perhaps picking up on my thoughts, Remily let out a quiet laugh. “Don’t worry about me. I told you, I stand by everything I’ve done. Just a moment of doubt, that’s all. At the time, I had been recruited by the kingdom, so going from adventurer to royal sorcerer seemed like a solid career choice.” Stroking my hair, she continued, “Once I became a royal sorcerer, I did all sorts of jobs, like guarding the castle or a specific member of the royal family, or tutoring knights and soldiers. I faced some pushback at first, but compared to adventuring, my new life was much more comfortable and lucrative. After working the job long enough, I started to earn people’s respect.”

“Without those nasty rumors and that bizarre ambush, I doubt I ever would have accepted the offer. Back when I first left my village, I would have expected a royal sorcerer’s job to be too restrictive and monotonous, too full of red tape.” Remily had come to accept her past. All of it. There was nothing for me to say, and it wasn’t my place to say anything. “If you can set your sights on a goal and never stop running towards it, more power to you. But only a small fraction will ever make it. It’s not that easy for the vast majority of us. You’ll trip, fall, stop...look around and wonder what’s behind that other path. It might wind back to the original path, or you might find a new goal. There’s nothing wrong with that. That is life.”

Suddenly, Remily fell silent.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Listen to me, giving you life advice. I feel ancient... Telling you a story from my ‘youth’ made me feel old enough.”

“Um, I thought it was illuminating to hear the story of someone who’s lived through so many experiences.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is, Ryoma. I won’t scold you for it, just because I know you’re trying to make me feel better.”

I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as the words had come out of my mouth. My comment was tantamount to an insult. I’d consider this a yellow card from Remily...especially since her grip around me tightened.

“I told you the story because I wanted to. There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about.”

“All right... Can I ask why you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

“I’d been meaning to. Remember when you told us what happened when you tried to take your rank exam?”

“Yes, we discussed it after sparring with Mister Sever,” I recalled.

“Hearing how you handled the aftermath reminded me of myself. Of how I used to be. Of course, I think you’re the type to worry about other people’s perceptions of you, unlike me. It sounded like you were self-aware of that and were trying to consciously stand your ground.”

“Oh... I think you’re right.” Now that she put it that way... I’d become more forceful after the attack on Gimul. Could that have been my way of subconsciously trying to stop myself from holding back?

“Just to be clear, you don’t need to change that,” Remily said. “I know you thought it through. A lot of times, you won’t even know how things will turn out until you try them. I just can’t tell you if your methods will continue to serve you in the future. If you ever think it’s not your style anymore, don’t force it. You can go back to conforming to others’ expectations, or look for another path altogether... Keep that little nugget in the back of your mind, won’t you?”

“I will... Thank you for your advice.” I assumed that she had given me this advice through her story in case I fell into similar circumstances in the future. She had gone to some length to tell me this story too. Now that I’d heard her through, I was left with nothing but gratitude. “I’ll have to remember this conversation if I find myself in a situation like that again. I’m sure that won’t be my last.”

“Outstanding talent draws outstanding envy. No matter the field, it’s an unavoidable fact of society. Only way to get around it, I suppose, would be to devote your life to appeasing others or forcing every aspect of yourself into a box,” Remily said.

Exhausted by the thought of it all, I let out a sigh that took the tension in my body away with it. “I agree.”

“Of course, that can’t be easy either. Especially for a child of the gods.” Remily’s comment struck me like a sucker punch.