[Saint Summoning Ritual]
A ritual passed down in the Kingdom of Slantania since ancient times.
Long ago, when the kingdom was shrouded in miasma and overrun with monsters, a maiden appeared from somewhere unknown.
Using her powers, this maiden drove away the evil and brought peace to the kingdom or so it’s said.
People called her the Saint.
Miasma, it seems, is something that occurs rather commonly.
The exact theory behind it isn’t fully understood, but when miasma reaches a certain concentration, it apparently turns into monsters. The denser the miasma, the stronger the monsters it spawns.
Defeating the monsters in an area thins out the surrounding miasma, so continuously eliminating them prevents the miasma from becoming overly concentrated.
However, every few generations, there’s said to have been an era when the miasma thickened at a rate far exceeding the speed at which monsters could be defeated.
In such times, a maiden destined to become the Saint would appear within the kingdom, or so the stories go.
The powers wielded by the Saint are supposedly incredibly potent, capable of annihilating monsters in an instant.
Thanks to this power, the balance between the rate of monster extermination and the thickening of miasma could be maintained.
According to one account, just the presence of a Saint was enough to prevent the miasma around her from growing dense.
Seriously, how crazy is that?
Normally, a Saint would emerge naturally like that, but there was one time, just once, when no Saint appeared, no matter how thick the miasma grew.
It’s said that the sages of that era researched and developed every possible technique, resulting in this ritual to summon a maiden from afar to become the Saint.
What a nuisance, I was dragged here by that very ritual.
This ritual, being something performed only once in ancient times, was apparently a gamble; no one knew if it would actually summon a Saint until they tried it.
But those sages of old were apparently pretty impressive, because it worked. They summoned not just one, but two of us.
Historically, it seems only one Saint appeared per era.
This time, though, for some reason, there are two of us.
Compared to the past, the situation now is supposedly much worse, maybe that’s why the number of summons increased proportionally?
It’s a mystery.
That’s everything I’ve learned about the [Saint Summoning Ritual] over the past month.
And now, I’m living at the Medicinal Plant Research Institute, located next to the herb garden in the royal palace.
Yes, not in the palace itself.
I’m living… at the institute.
After that ritual, the red-haired guy who entered the room was, without a doubt, the First Prince of this kingdom.
That First Prince didn’t even glance at me; he focused entirely on the other girl, Misono Aira, talking to her nonstop before taking her out of the room, leaving me behind.
Well, fair enough.
I’m in my twenties, while Aira-chan is in her late teens.
If we’re talking about who’s closer in age to the prince, it’s obviously Aira-chan.
Plus, with her fluffy brown hair, translucent white skin, rosy cheeks, and slightly droopy eyes that give off a delicate, “please protect me” vibe, she’s the textbook definition of a soft, lovely girl.
Compared to me, a bespectacled woman with messy hair tied back in a haphazard bun out of sheer laziness, unhealthily pale skin, and perpetual dark circles under my eyes, it’s laughable to even think of competing.
I can’t blame him for only having eyes for Aira-chan.
But still, summoning someone without so much as a word and then ignoring their existence? That takes some guts.
The knights and robed figures around us were visibly stunned by the prince’s sheer ability to overlook me, but when they noticed I’d been left behind, they panicked.
They probably had no idea what to do with me after I’d been so spectacularly ignored.
Standing there dumbfounded wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I grabbed one of the robed figures by the collar and interrogated them about the ritual.
Through that, I learned I’d been summoned to another world, and as of now, there’s no known way to return to my original one.
Once I’d gotten the basic info I needed, I must’ve still been pretty pissed, because I decided right then and there to leave this country.
First, I’d leave this room, then the palace it was in, then the capital where the palace stood, and finally head to a neighboring country.
I just didn’t want to be here anymore.
As I let go of the robe’s collar and stormed out of the room, the flustered knights chased after me.
They stopped me, escorted me to some room inside the palace, and I waited there for an hour, sipping tea served by a maid.
Finally, a high-ranking official of this country showed up, and I got more detailed info about the kingdom and my situation.
From what he told me about the outside world, I ended up feeling deeply grateful to the knights who’d stopped me.
Apparently, leaving the capital would’ve landed me in grasslands teeming with monsters. It takes a week by carriage to reach the next country, and bandits roam the roads. For someone like me, who barely understands this world, making it to the neighboring country would’ve been, frankly, an impossible game.
Trying to pull off such an obvious no-win scenario means I must’ve been really furious.
After calming down a bit, I followed the official’s advice to “stay in the palace for a while” and lived there for a time.
About two weeks, to be exact.
The first three days weren’t so bad.
I was tense, thinking I needed to adjust to this world.
But gradually, the boredom became unbearable.
Sure, food, clothing, and shelter were provided, but beyond that, I was completely ignored.
Unable to stand the idleness any longer, I decided to go for a walk and wandered into the palace gardens, where I stumbled upon the herb garden.
Back in Japan, I’d gotten into herbs and aromatherapy to relieve work stress, so the herb garden piqued my interest.
Some of the herbs planted there looked identical to ones I’d grown in Japan, making me wonder if the plant life here was the same as on Earth. As I pondered this, someone called out to me.
Turning around, I saw a friendly-looking young man with striking deep green hair and eyes standing there.
He was a researcher from the Medicinal Plant Research Institute next to the herb garden.
“Do you have business at the institute?”
“No, I’m just taking a walk. I thought it looked interesting, so I was just checking it out.”
Maybe my comment about the herb garden being interesting caught his attention, because the researcher started explaining the herbs around us.
Lavender, rosemary, angelica. Herbs with the same names as in Japan, and their effects were mostly the same too.
During his explanation, he dropped phrases like, “This herb can be used to make an HP potion,” which made me want to quip, “What is this, a game?”
As he talked about the herbs, time flew by, and since it was getting close to evening, I decided to head back to the palace.
“Come back anytime,” he said kindly, and taking him up on that, I started visiting every day until I eventually ended up living at the institute.
It’s not a big deal.
Commuting from the palace to the herb garden just got annoying, so I asked to live at the institute instead.
The palace grounds are massive, as you’d expect from a royal estate.
It’s a thirty-minute walk from the palace to the herb garden.
I’d been spending an hour each day going back and forth, but the stories I heard from the institute’s researchers were so fascinating that I thought, “If I didn’t have to waste that hour commuting, I could hear even more.”
On my fourteenth day in this world, I asked the maid assigned to my room to arrange a meeting with the high official I’d first met. When I told him I wanted to move rooms, he approved it without much fuss.
I later heard that the institute’s director had put in a word for me behind the scenes.
And so, I got a room at the institute and a job as a medicinal plant researcher.
“If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”
As a condition for getting a room at the institute, I had to work there.
Turning a hobby into a job felt a little off, but it seemed better than sitting around in the palace all day, so I accepted the terms.
“Your potions really do have some weird properties, don’t they?”
Muttering this while holding an HP potion I’d made is Jude, the researcher who first spoke to me at the herb garden.
With guidance from my colleagues at the institute, the potions I made apparently outperform the ones circulating in the market.
About fifty percent better, they say.
“I’m just making them the way I was taught, though.”
You put the designated herbs and water in a pot, infuse it with magic while simmering, and out comes a potion.
Potions are ranked low-grade, mid-grade, high-grade, and so on… And the rank seems to depend on the herbs used.
But it’s not as simple as just tossing in the right herbs to make a high-grade potion.
Creating higher-ranked potions requires precise magical control, and the rank you can produce depends on the creator’s production skill level.
The herbs used as ingredients are expensive, and since few people can make them, high-grade potions are sold at prices so steep they’re not something you’d use casually.
Well, actually, high-grade potions are apparently only affordable to royalty and nobles. They don’t even show up in regular pharmacies.
“The color’s definitely that of a low-grade HP potion, so why’s it like this?”
“Maybe I’ve got good technique or something?”
“Hmm, I don’t think that’s it. What’s your pharmacy skill at now?”
“Hold on a sec. ‘Status.’”
When I chant “Status,” a translucent window visible only to the caster appears in front of me, displaying my stats.
It’s one of the everyday magic spells my colleagues taught me when I started working as a researcher.
Potions, magic, it’s getting more and more like a game, but this is undeniably reality.
The fact that I can use magic and make potions that require magic power proves I have it too.
It seems that upon being summoned, my body stopped being that of an Earth human.
I can now feel magic power in my body, something I couldn’t sense back on Earth.
Takanotsume Sei Lv.55 / Saint
HP: 4,867 / 4,867
MP: 6,057 / 6,067
Combat Skills:
- Holy Attribute Magic: Lv.∞
Production Skills:
- Pharmacy: Lv.8
“It’s at level 8 now.”
After checking my status and reporting my pharmacy skill level, Jude tilts his head and lets out an “Hmm.”
“With level 8, you shouldn’t be able to make mid-grade yet.”
“Well, does it matter? It’s not like the effect is weaker or anything.”
“No, no, no, this isn’t something we can brush off as a fluke! Figuring out stuff like this is part of our job as researchers!”
I figure it’s fine since the effect is good, but according to Jude, researching these mysterious phenomena and uncovering their causes is part of a researcher’s duty, and he scolded me for it.
Oh well, I go along with Jude’s theorizing.
We tweak the amount of ingredients, adjust the magic power infused, and make batch after batch of test potions.
And so, my days pass by making potions.