By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 2 - Chapter 25

Chapter 2 Episode 25: Store Setup 4

Day 11.

In the morning, I ran around purchasing a large amount of ingredients and used my time to prepare what dishes I could today.

The menu for tomorrow was spaghetti with meat sauce, steak, and salad. And an apple pie for dessert.

I had pondered over what to serve, but pasta and steak existed in this world too. It should be a safe option to go with. Though it wasn’t very party-like. The first party food that came to my mind was pizza, but I was yet to see it in this world so I decided against it.

For drinks, there was water, booze, and two types of fruit juice.

Since it was a celebration, I splurged a little on the alcohol and purchased the shop assistant’s recommendation for 30 peoples’ worth at a budget of 3 small gold, and the fruit juice was homemade.

For the cooking, my alchemy came in unexpectedly handy. For example, after making the spaghetti noodles, I could use alchemy to separate the moisture from it and instantly create dehydrated noodles. That meant all I had to do tomorrow was boil it. For the fruit juice, I could separate the fruit pulp from the liquid to make 100% fruit juice.

Was it really okay to use alchemy in this way?

Finally... when I made meat sauce in my past life, I would always use premade sauces sold on the shelves, but that wasn’t available here. So I decided to make a vegetable and poultry soup today. Then, if I mince the meat I bought today and fry it with tomatoes tomorrow, I can add it to the soup to make a similar tasting sauce.

The completed dishes were placed in a wooden box coated with the sticky slime’s hardening solution, then within a barrier that was originally meant for keeping the cold out, but reversed so that it would keep the cold in.

For the record, when I appraised this contraption it showed up as a single item called a cooler box, along with information about the specific contents and how close to going bad they were. It was extremely impressive, but rather than calling it an effect of the cooler box, it was more like one of the clever functions of appraisal magic.

Once I finished cooking, it was just before evening.

It was a bit too late to go to the guild now, so maybe I should go home...?

I wandered the town like that, until I spotted the church.

Oh yeah, I haven’t prayed in a while. I should go and make a prayer.

I turned my feet towards the church on a whim and was greeted by a girl in her teens.

“Welcome to the church. What are you here for today?”

“I had some free time, so I’d like to offer a prayer to the gods.”

“In that case, please come this way.”

I was led to a room with many chairs lined before an altar. Apparently I was free to pray all I wanted here. The girl told me to take my time before leaving the room.

There wasn’t much else I could do... I thought, sitting in a nearby seat before clasping my hands together and closing my eyes.

Several seconds later.

I felt like something was slipping out of my body, but it wasn’t a bad sensation.

When I opened my eyes... I was in the pure white scenery I had witnessed twice before.

“Did I come here again...?”

“Yup, you’re here again.”

I turned around at the sound of that voice to see Kufo.

“Nice to see you again, Kufo.”

“Long time no see! But not that long, it’s only been a month since last time.”

“Are Gain and Lulutia not here?”

“Yup. They’ve stepped out for a bit.”

“Huh, gods can step out?”

“It’s not that uncommon of an event.”

“Wow. Where did they go?”

At my question, Kufo made a face of sudden regret.

“Ah... Umm... Actually, they went to your old world.”

“To Earth?! But why? To bring someone over?”

“No no! It’s not like that, not this time...”

Kufo struggled for words.

“This time? If you can’t say it then I won’t ask anymore, but...”

“Mm... I guess it’s okay if it’s you? They went sightseeing.”

“Excuse me?”

Sightseeing?

“Lulutia is going on a sweets tour of your world, while Gain is currently into one of Japan’s idol groups.”

“What kind of reason is that?! Though it’s fine by me... but are they allowed to cross worlds so freely?”

“Generally speaking, gods can’t interfere with each other’s worlds. But we’ve been interacting by taking people and magic energy from Earth for a long time now... and there aren’t many forms of entertainment in this world, you see. Even Lulutia’s tour is because of the lack of dessert variety in this world, not to mention how they all taste bad in comparison to your world’s.”

“Well, I guess that’s true.”

“I went around the Earth’s secluded regions recently, too. As a god of life, I had a look at all the living beings living in harsh environments. Like in the Amazon, the Sahara Desert, Atlantis, and the deep sea.”

“Hey, there’s something strange mixed in there?!”

“Keep this a secret from the other humans, okay? Our dignity as gods is on the line.”

“Don’t just ignore me. And no one would believe me anyway...”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Kufo cackled with childish laughter.

If the scale of his words hadn’t been so tremendous, I would’ve forgotten he was a god.

“But Gain aside, wouldn’t it be fine if you spread more of the sweets Lulutia likes in this world? There are lots of otherworlders here, no?”

“While you have a point, it’s difficult for cooking recipes to spread here. There’s nothing convenient like the Earth’s internet in this world, and sugar and spices can’t be obtained easily either. You know how foods with many spices are considered high-class items, right?”

“Oh, that’s true.”

“There are several things that have been handed down as luxuries of royalty and nobility, but commoners don’t have access to the ingredients for them. That’s why otherworlders who come here don’t have the ingredients to recreate the tastes of their home, and those that do have trouble passing those recipes on to future generations. For example... you recently met a person named Pioro Saionji, right?”

“I did. I thought Saionji sounded like a family name; was he a descendant of an otherworlder after all?”

“Yup. The otherworlder was the son of an okonomiyaki store-owner, a student that was enrolled in a specialty school for cooking. He tried to make okonomiyaki in this world, but he couldn’t make the sauce and didn’t have the seafood needed, so he traveled the world gathering ingredients. He funded his travels and ingredient fees by opening stalls on his journey and making a killing. As a result, he managed to make okonomiyaki to a satisfactory degree, but it didn’t spread. Then, he used the personal connections and culinary knowledge he gained on his path to making okonomiyaki to form a guild that focused on dealing in foodstuffs. That’s the origin story of the current Saionji Trading Company. To put it another way, ingredients were so difficult to source in the time period he lived in, he could only recreate okonomiyaki after traveling the world and forming a guild. Nowadays there’s the Saionji Company and those that imitated it, so foodstuffs have become a little easier to obtain.”

So that was what happened...

“This kind of story doesn’t only apply to food, but other things too. Techniques, knowledge, anything. Not all otherworlders had passion like him — some had the motivation but no ability or knowledge, and many were just unlucky. There are some arts that were lost due to war or interference from other otherworlders too.”

“When you put it that way, it makes sense. But what do you mean by interference from other otherworlders? Did they bring in a better technique?”

“...I can only call it bad luck. A long time ago, there was a medical student who came to this world and spread the knowledge of medicine and disease. But there’s nothing like that around anymore, right?”

“Yeah, the guildmaster didn’t know anything about epidemics either.”

“Actually, the person who came before the last person before you... said she wanted to be a saint.”

“A saint? A holy figure worshiped in churches?”

“Yup, that’s the one. One with a mysterious power that can heal others, yeah. She wanted to do things like that and have people fawn over her. But she wasn’t a bad person. She wanted to be the center of attention, but she also wanted to help other people. That’s why Lulutia, Gain, and I gave her our protection. She couldn’t resurrect the dead but she could heal any injury or disease, was immune to poison and drugs, and had protection preventing sickness, harm, and being restrained. She intended on living her life as a saint that way, but...”

“But?”

What could have happened?

“She could heal any disease, but because everyone else could only use regular healing magic, they couldn’t heal diseases. At the time, there were diseases that couldn’t be treated with the medical science of this world, so those people would die unless they were treated by her. When she saw that, she realized those types of deaths would increase after she was gone... As a result, at the end of her life she gave up everything to use the divine power of the gods. To erase all disease from this world.”

“Erase all disease from the world?! How can that be possible?”

“It isn’t possible. Not normally, at least. But, because she was an otherworlder that had directly received our power, and the fact she had gathered so many believers with her achievements until then, the prayers of all those people amplified her power and gave it a boost. To put it simply, she cheated the system. And she really did give up everything for it. After she used the power, she passed away and her soul was extinguished. Normally one would be reincarnated, but she even used up that power and disappeared.”

“She’s... kind of amazing...”

“She wanted to be a saint out of admiration and had some trouble at the start, but her sense of duty and everything led her to become a real saint in every meaning of the word in the end.

Changing the energy of prayers into power is something natural for us, but... As a result of her actions, people lived practically disease-free for nearly 400 years in this world. Injuries still happened so healing magic remained, but knowledge about disease and medicines to heal them were lost over time, leading to the current state of things. The effects of her actions are gone now, but the lost knowledge won’t return.”

“I see...”

Still, it was hard to believe that one person could do such a thing. It really was like a cheat...

“Ah, as long as you’re willing to give up your soul, you could probably do something similar. Just not to the same extent.”

“Seriously?!”

“When you combine a human soul with a god’s power, you can create a pretty powerful force. That’s what allows us to use your soul to bring magic energy into this world from another world. Although, if you tried to do the same thing as her, you would only be able to erase all disease for a few years at most. In her case, she was surrounded by believers and specialized in healing so it held out for 400 years, but you have no worshipers and your abilities are all balanced. As a result, you have practically no limits to your growth and the speed of your growth is also fast, so with time you have the potential to become stronger than anyone. And the best part is — it’s fun for us to watch too!”

“That’s your conclusion?”

“But there’s nothing else to do in the divine realm!”

Just as Kufo said that, light started glowing around us. That sure looked familiar.

“Looks like our time’s up.”

“Huh, already? ...Oh, I see! Gain and Lulutia aren’t here, so the time you can remain here on my power alone is shortened... Ryoma!”

“What? There’s no rush...”

“I had something to tell you when I called you here! I’ve wasted all our time chatting, so let me get to the point! We forgot to tell you this, but your mind is being influenced by your younger body and experiencing a slight infantile regression! The same happened to other otherworlders too! You may have lived for over 30 years on Earth before dying as Takebayashi Ryoma, but you’re 11-year-old Ryoma Takebayashi here! That’s why you can’t always control yourself or maintain a poker face! You can try to train yourself over again, but don’t push yourself too hard!”

After Kufo said that in a panic, light filled my vision and returned me to the previous room I was in.

What did he mean? My mind was being influenced by my body? I didn’t get it, but... it sounded kind of important?

I could kind of understand the infantile regression... When I worked at the company in my previous life, I was often told no one could see through my poker face. But now I’m often told my thoughts are written all over my face. That was something I was told often as a kid, too... Well, that didn’t change what I was doing, but since Kufo went out of his way to tell me that, I’ll keep it in mind.

I thanked Kufo in my heart, gave a small donation and left the church.

It was starting to get dark, so I returned to the inn for today.

Everyone was coming to the store tomorrow. I should rest early and work hard!