Chapter 11 - Priest/False pedophilia charge/Red-light district regular Sem part 3

“You should go to the Labyrinth City and become an adventurer.”

Heard Sem, as he woke up the next morning.

“With healing skills like that you could make good money here, but you would be better somewhere else, you know?”

“Well… Yes.”

Sem learned from Velkia what it was like to be pinned down by a woman.

Sem was a young man, and he enjoyed this situation. In fact, if he didn’t feel enjoyment from something, sooner or later he would’ve collapsed or hung himself.

If Sem was still a priest he would be tormenting himself with feelings of guilt. But now, he was just a wandering former priest,  he felt he could forgive himself for seeking comfort in a human’s bosom.

At that moment, the mouth of the man who just discovered women was like a bottle with a hole, and Sem spilled to Velkia everything that happened to him.

Not just the false charges that befell him, but also how he wanted to clear his name and go back to being an honorable priest but knew it would be very difficult, how he knew he should forgive those that wronged him and reflect on his actions but still hated Mirulu so much for framing him that he wanted to kill her, how he deeply resented the people of Rhodiane, even those that were innocent, how he had no hope for the future…

Sem didn’t realize he was revealing the darkness in his heart, and Velkia felt both relieved and uneasy.

If Velkia did not sleep with Sem, it was likely that he would have fallen into despair and died on a street corner somewhere.

Sem was betrayed and hurt, but his creed of healing other people was deep rooted in him, and he could not let it go. It would be a real shame if such a good person like Sem, who was quick to treat a random innkeeper he never met, were to die.

Her uneasiness came from the fact that it didn’t feel like she had completely saved Sem’s heart.

Velkia didn’t sleep with every man like Sem that came through her inn, but it wasn’t that rare either. She had looked after men that stumbled into her inn a few times before.

But if she let Sem stay and continued to look after him and support him, that would certainly not end well. It’s one thing to spend a night together, but Velkia didn’t have enough confidence in her fidelity to believe that she wouldn’t break his heart eventually.

She also didn’t think that Sem was the kind of man that could spend his days self-indulging in the care of a woman. Basically, Sem was too ‘heavy’ for her.

“Find partners, fall in love, have fun, and see the world. When I was young I had a lot of adventures too, and now is a good time for you to go to the Labyrinth City. I’m sure someone with your healing skills will have no trouble finding work.

That was why Velkia recommended that Sem become an adventurer.

It wasn’t hard to reach that conclusion, someone with a backstory like Sem’s was a perfect candidate to become an adventurer.

“But… I need to repay my debt to you, If it weren’t for you I…”

“You took care of my back pain for free, so we’re even. Now go, a man has to face forward and travel.”

Those were Velkia’s parting words to Sem.

◆

Sem arrived in the Labyrinth City, and it was the most prosperous and liveliest town he had ever seen.

There were merchants, adventurers, sorcerer scholars, circus tents with clowns in weird makeup, priests, vagrants etc. Most were regular people, but beast people and dragon people weren’t rare.

It was a melting pot of races and occupations.

“Let’s take the inn in front of the adventurer guild.”

At that point Sem didn’t have to worry about money. On the way to the Labyrinth city from Velkia’s inn, he made money using his healing magic and knowledge of medicinal herbs.

Sem realized that treating people for free was going to attract groundless suspicion and cause trouble, so he treated people with his magic and medicinal herbs for a little less than the market price and pocketed the money. Still, since he didn’t need to pay the church, he made more money than he needed.

People that fix wounds and fight illnesses were always in high demand.

“Looks like I can look forward to the nightlife too.”

Sem let out a small laugh.

When he left Velkia’s inn he discovered a new pastime, fooling around with women.

He went to places where women poured him drinks, and if he found someone nice he would flirt and spend the night with them.

It was a lifestyle that was unthinkable back when Sem was a priest, but Sem thought that at that point he might as well have some fun.

He had no more qualms about using his healing skills for profit. His chastity was left with Velkia, and he didn’t feel the least bit bad about paying women to pour drinks for him.

He still had enough kindness in him to extend his hand to people in pain, but he was undeniably a sinful priest.

The one thing that didn’t go away was his fear of girls around thirteen years of age.

Just standing in front of one was enough to remind him of the one that ruined his life, Mirulu, and enough to make his hands start trembling.

Sem kept enjoying the city’s nightlife while avoiding little girls, but he was still not used to this life, and was slowly learning while getting burned.

For a while he had fun, and even found places that offered good service at low prices, but he had a rude awakening around the fifth place he visited.

“Twenty thousand dinnar!? That’s too much…!?”

“Bro, this place isn’t like those others that only have farm girls stinking of potatoes, this is the real deal.  This here ‘midnight butterfly’ has the most beautiful girls in this whole city. Don’t go thinking that twenty thousand dinnar is too much for some high quality playtime.

“B-But I was told two thousand in the beginning…”

“Ah!?”

This was the Labyrinth City at night.

Sem sighed at the hostess bar employee threatening him. He was face to face with a swindler.

“A-Alright. I’ll pay alright?”

“Just do that without causing a fuss.”

The muscular employee smiled, but Sem was not just an easy to trick nice guy anymore.

“But you know, that girl that sat at my table… Alicia right?”

“You’re not going to try to cut the price by complaining about our girls are you?”

“By looking at the blood congestion in her eyes, I would say that she’s sick. She laughed it off saying it was just because she drank too much but I don’t think that’s true.”

“…What is that nonsense?”

“I would say it’s probably yellow devil disease. She will start showing symptoms like vomiting within three days, and she will infect everyone she touches. It’s not fatal for adults, but it will put people out of commission for weeks, and old people and physically weak people will probably die.

“…”

Yellow devil disease was a sexually transmitted disease, much maligned in red light districts.

While its symptoms were serious it wasn’t fatal, but it was hard to diagnose early.

Basically, with his diagnostic skills Sem figured he had a 60% chance of getting it right, and it was hard to tell if she really didn’t just have too much to drink.

He just casually told her she should see a healer to have it checked out just in case, and had no intention of bringing it up, but now he had no choice but to use it to intimidate him.

Sem’s words were enough to scare the employee.

If she really was sick, she would be bedridden with a fever and vomiting for a long time, and they couldn’t have her working in case she spread the infection by touching other people.

In this line of work, if girls couldn’t do their job for a month they wouldn’t be able to support themselves, and the businesses that employed them would be dead in the water.

“I think it would be best to treat her as soon as possible. Should I use my herbs and healing magic?”

◆

For better or worse, the girl really did have yellow devil fever, and the medicine worked quickly.

He left the place as soon as he was done treating her. There was a good chance that they would find some excuse not to pay for the treatment and make him pay the twenty thousand dinnar, so Sem waited for them to be distracted to escape. The treatment would only cost around two or three thousand dinnar, so it wouldn’t be nearly enough to cover the twenty thousand, but Sem was getting used to this world and didn’t let that bother him.

But even after escaping this attempt to rip him off, Sem was reaching his limit on how much he could just play around.

“It’s time to start working…”

Sem made his way to the adventurer guild ‘New beads’.

He heard from a girl in a hostess bar that people wanting to be adventurers in the Labyrinth City usually went there. He could make money as a healer, but what really propelled him was the promise he made to Velkia.

“…So you need a party to explore labyrinths.”

“Ahh, is that so…”

“If you can use healing magic I’m sure you will have no trouble finding partners.”

Sem knew nothing about how to be an adventurer, so he talked to other people to try to find partners, but no one in ‘New Beads’ would form a party with him.

He was up until late in a hostess bar the previous night, and only slept four hours in a random cheap inn. He was still drunk and the smell of makeup lingered in his body. Everyone was taken aback by the absurdity of what was clearly someone coming back from a hostess bar, dressed like a priest.

The eyes of the people around him looking at him suspiciously were like a nightmare to him. It reminded him of the way people looked at him when he was thrown out of Rhodiane.

“…Maybe I’m not cut out to be an adventurer. Why did Velkia even tell me this was a good idea?”

Looking for partners while exasperated brought about a vicious cycle, and soon it was closing time for ‘New Beads’.

Everyone, the ones that found a party and the ones that didn’t, went to the tavern next door after the guild closed. Sem hadn’t eaten anything since the previous night and he was hungry so he went along with them.

But the food was even worse than what he had in the church, and the environment around him only aggravated the situation.

The three adventurers sitting with Sem had the same gloomy look on their faces.

This was just as dark as the prison.

In contrast, the other tables were bright and lively.

“I’m a priest and I use Rowell style healing magic, so it’s not very powerful but I can use it many times!”

“You sound very reliable! I’m an ax warrior and I killed about a hundred kobolds in my hometown.”

“From now on we’re a party, no, family!” Cheers!”

Family.

That word made Sem boil with anger.

The people raised in the temple should be his family.

Either he was abandoned by his parents, or they were dead, but the children brought up under the divine protection of god should have been his brothers, and the people controlling the temple should have been his parents. For someone that was betrayed by his family, the idyllic and happy voices of those adventurers were nothing but grating.

Family?

Nonsense.

That childish trust will only lead you to be betrayed sooner or later.

““““Humans can’t be trusted!!!!””””