Apprentice Shrine Maiden Volume 2 (Premium)

by Miya Kazuki

  “Stop it, Shikza! We’re supposed to be protecting her! Her status doesn’t change the job we’ve been given!” yelled Damuel, standing in front of me protectively. But that just poured oil on the flames of Shikza’s anger.

  “Shut it, Damuel! Know your place! Don’t try to order me around ever again!”

  Damuel gritted his teeth and stepped to the side. Now that I could see in front of me, I saw Shikza walking this way. The sight of an armorclad man clanking his way towards me with eyes full of hate was nothing short of terrifying.

  ...I’m scared. My legs shook and my teeth chattered. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t move my legs. Seeing how scared I was, Shikza cackled and rose a clenched, armored fist.

  “Sister Myne!”

  “Out of the way!” Fran leapt between us to protect me, but Shikza pushed him so hard he was sent flying.

  “Fran!” I instinctively raced towards Fran, but Shikza grabbed the back of my hair and stopped me. I could feel several strands ripping out of the back of my head as he pulled me back.

  “Ow!”

  “Sister Myne!”

  “Fran!” yelled Arno as Fran speedily got up and tried to rescue me. “You must not move! Your master is being punished for you acting out of place. You must not make things even worse.”

  Hearing that, Fran bit his lip and froze, which made Shikza grin even harder in amusement as he violently pulled on my hair.

  “Listen up, commoner. At times like these you’re supposed to apologize for your attendant’s rudeness.”

  Fran was biting his lip to hold his anger back, and I had to learn from his example. I had been told countless times not to argue with nobles. My safest bet would be to just apologize.

  “...I apologize for my attendant offending you.” But it seemed that my apology just ticked Shikza off more. He planted a boot on my chest and kicked, sending me flying to the ground. My butt hurt and I could barely breathe, but at least he wasn’t holding my hair anymore.

  “What’s with those smug eyes?! Want me to gouge them out?!” barked Shikza furiously before pressing a hand against the gemstone in his left hand and drawing a faintly glowing baton from it. He spun it around and murmured “messer,” which turned the thin baton into a small knife. Its pointed tip gleamed in the light.

  I swallowed hard at the sight of a knife being thrust in my direction. Cold sweat ran down my back and I could feel my heart beating unnaturally fast. My legs were so shaky I couldn’t even stand up. All I could do was stare at the gleaming blade.

  “Shikza, don’t! We’re supposed to be protecting her! She’s the apprentice shrine maiden we need for the ritual!” Damuel panicked at the sight of the blade and reached out, but Shikza knocked both his warning and hand aside before lifting up the knife.

  “Shut it! She doesn’t need eyes to perform the ritual!” he said with the knife in the air. I curled up like a turtle with my hands on my head to protect myself from it. “That’s right! Commoners like you just need to ball up and show us nobles respect!”

  I shut my eyes tight, and soon heard the sound of flapping wings behind Shikza as he shouted. I looked up into the sky and saw a blue cape fluttering high in the sky behind the upheld knife.

  “High Priest!” Knowing that he could protect me from Shikza, I immediately stood up to cry for help. But I stood up just as Shikza was hurriedly lowering his hand after hearing the words “High Priest,” and it sliced the back of my left hand since I was covering my head with it.

  “Ow!”

  “Why would you stand up, idiot?!”

  I lowered my hand and saw at a glance that the blade had cut fairly deep, aided by gravity. It would take a long time for the bleeding to stop. But I knew complaining to a noble would get me nowhere, so I just hurriedly pulled back my sleeve so my ceremonial robes wouldn’t get dirty. I held my left arm straight forward and held its sleeve up with my right hand.

  “Sister Myne, allow me.” Fran immediately knelt beside me and stuck his hand into his waist pouch. It seemed that he had prepared something in case I got hurt. My attendants really were top of their class.

  “Thank you, Fran.”

  Blood gushed from my gaping wound down to my wrist before dripping to the ground. And the second my blood soaked into the ground, it began to rumble loudly. My blood continued to drip as I looked down, confused. With each drop the ground rumbled harder, and in the blink of an eye trombe sprouts burst out of the ground right beneath me.

  “Bwuh?!” The trombe grew faster than any I had seen before, and its branches were wrapped around my feet before I knew what was happening.

  “Ah! No!” I desperately tried to kick them off my feet, but branch after branch wrapped itself around me. By the time I pulled one branch off several more would replace it, wrapping themselves so tightly around my ankles I couldn’t take a single step. And the whole time my dripping blood was invigorating the trombe further, making it sprout in all directions as it raced up my body.

  “Th-This isn’t my fault! You shouldn’t have stood up like that!” Shikza sliced away at the trombe in a panic with his knife as he stepped back to get away from me.

  “Sister Myne!” Fran, lacking a blade, tried to pull the trombe off me with his bare hands, but the branches had grown large enough that it was nigh impossible to break them with hands alone.

  The trombe reached my knees, then stretched up my thighs. Its green sprouts stretched out and bloomed into white stems, while its stretching trunk browned like the color of a tree. The stems wrapping around me grew thicker bit by bit as they wrapped around me, tightening enough to hurt while new sprouts reached out to me.

  “Apprentice!” Damuel took out a glowing baton from his left gauntlet and turned it into a knife. But even as he did so, the trombe’s branches wrapped around me ten, twenty times. “Hold on, I have to grant myself the God of Darkness’s divine protection. I’ll save you as soon as I can.”

  Damuel began chanting a prayer. It strongly resembled the same prayer I would be giving during the ritual, one that praised the gods and prayed for their divine protection. Or in other words, it was long enough that I had to work hard to memorize it all, and just thinking about how much the trombe would grow while he prayed sent a shudder down my spine.

  ...I’m scared! My teeth chattered. Thoughts of the tree falling into the giant trombe’s crater and having the life sucked out of it flashed through my mind.

  So scared! I’m so scared! Tears brimmed in my eyes in terror of being consumed by the trombe. I waved my arms around to knock off the branches, but that just sent blood flying everywhere that made more sprouts pop out of the ground.

  The stalks wrapped around my thighs stretched out to my hips and stomach. I couldn’t even move, and I was so terrified that I screamed as loud as I could for help.

  “Lutz! Lutz! Help me, Lutz!”

  Rescue and Reprimand

  It all happened right after I cried for help as loud as I could with my hands in the air to try to stop the bleeding. A beam of blue light shot high into the sky, and then immediately black somethings rained down around me as I heard the sound of flapping wings.

  The ground shook as the things slammed into the ground. I strained to look and saw multiple black arrows piercing the ground by my feet. The trombe wrapped around me calmed, as if its strength had been drained.

  “High Priest!” The familiar arrows encouraged me to look up. I could see a lion with its wings spread wide racing towards me. With his arrows, I should be fine.

  But my relief only lasted a few seconds. The blood dripping from my hand revitalized the trombe in seconds. It resumed moving, stretching from my stomach to my chest. New sprout after new sprout appeared, wrapping around me further and tightening the grip on my feet.

  “Hurry, High Priest...!” The white lion swooped down, and the High Priest jumped from it so quickly it was hard to believe he was wearing a full suit of plate armor. In his hand was a black arrow, blessed by the God of Darkness. He used it t
o stab and slice at the trombe while rushing this way.

  “Myne, what in the world is going on?!” he shouted.

  “Apprentice, I’m done!” Damuel, having finally gotten the God of Darkness’s divine protection, began swinging his knife and fighting hard to free me. But Damuel’s knife didn’t hold a candle to the High Priest’s black arrows. No matter how much he sliced, the trombe didn’t slow down at all. “The protection isn’t working?!”

  “The protection is working! It’s just that the trombe is recovering immediately, somehow!”

  The trombe would stop moving after being pierced by arrows, but within moments it would regain its power and begin moving again. It was slower than before, but it wasn’t rotting or falling apart at all. The High Priest clicked his tongue as he continued slicing with an arrow.

  “High Priest, my blood... It’s my blood, getting on the trombe...!”

  “Your blood?! No! Of all things!” The High Priest’s voice grew harsher after I told him why the trombe was rejuvenating. Despite his helm blocking most of his face, I could see that his eyebrows had shot up with fury.

  “For what purpose do you think I separated you from the battle and went out of my way to assign guards to you?! What purpose did those guards serve?! Incompetent fools, both of them!” He spat curses at the two knights who had been left behind to guard me.

  Damuel was fighting hard with his black knife, and Shikza was in the middle of trying to get the God of Darkness’s blessing. Given that Shikza had ignored his superior’s order and hurt the one he was meant to protect with a knife, resulting in the current situation, they definitely were incompetent at their jobs.

  And incidentally, judging by the curses the High Priest continued to spit out while fending off the trombe with his arrow, I had excessively high amounts of mana. He murmured that even if half of the entire Knight’s Order attacked the trombe at once, Damuel included, nothing would come from it.

  “No amount of fighting will matter while your wound remains open. Myne, where were you cut?!”

  “Right here.” I reached my left hand as far out as I could.

  The High Priest clicked his tongue at the sight of the gaping wound and murmured “entwaffnung.” His black bow turned into a glowing baton. He then murmured “rott” and swung the baton, leading to a red pillar of light shooting into the sky. That must have been some kind of signal, as the other knights began flying this way.

  “This will hurt, but contain your tears. They are infused with mana just as your blood is,” warned the High Priest before gently tracing his glowing baton against my wound. The moment the light radiating from his baton touched my skin, my entire body jerked.

  “Hyah!” The pain and unsettling feeling of something foreign forcing its way inside of my body hit me so hard that goosebumps formed across my body. Instinctual tears welled in my eyes, so I looked up and took deep breaths so they wouldn’t fall.

  My wound heated up and I could feel the mana inside of me all racing towards my wound to block the entry of the foreign substance. My mana hit the mana the High Priest was pouring into me, and my wound shone with a faint yellow light. When it faded, my wound had completely closed up.

  “The cut...”

  “That was a temporary measure that did nothing more than seal the wound. The mana has sealed it, but not cured it. Using mana right on top of a trombe is tantamount to suicide, but we had no choice,” spoke the High Priest, sounding exhausted. My wound had sealed, but the trombe was even more energized than before.

  “High Priest...”

  “I had to sever my divine protection to heal your wound. I no longer have a weapon capable of combating a trombe. Help should be arriving soon, but...” The High Priest trailed off and glared at the sky, then shouted “Hurry!” at the descending knights. He was normally so calm and rarely showed any emotions outside of the hidden room, so hearing him shout angrily made me jerk within my branch prison.

  “Lord Ferdinand, why did you signal for a— What in the world?!” The knights descended one by one, each widening their eyes with shock upon seeing me imprisoned within a second trombe.

  “Karstedt, the guards you selected are incompetent and brought about this mess. Save Myne immediately. I had to sever my protection and thus will be of no use. The branches are approaching her neck. Hurry.”

  “Sir!”

  The High Priest, lacking any weapons to fight the trombe with, stepped back and let another armored knight charge forward, swinging his black halberd down. It slammed into the ground with a loud crash, sending a dirt cloud and trombe chunks flying. I gagged and coughed on the cloud.

  “Karstedt, do not put a scratch on Myne! That will only feed it further!”

  After instructing Karstedt to swing his blade such that he cut away the branches without harming me, the High Priest walked towards Shikza and the attendants. I could see the wrath radiating off him clear as day and honestly, it was terrifying.

  If worse comes to worst, given our difference in status, it was possible that he would take all of Shikza’s complaints to heart and unleash all his fury onto me. It was even a possibility that I would be charged with some crime or another since it was my blood that had given the trombe life. I just couldn’t deny the possibility.

  As I began to wallow in despair over what the future held for me, a large number of knights crowded around me. They thrust their halberds into the mess of branches and chopped the trombe’s roots apart without pausing for a moment. Meanwhile, Damuel used his black knife to cut the stalks that had started to wrap around my neck bit by bit.

  “...The divine protection’s doing its work,” said Damuel with relief. Since the cut on the back of my hand had been sealed, there was no dripping blood to revitalize the trombe. It stopped growing.

  Just as they had with the giant trombe, weapons with the God of Darkness’s blessing turned the branches black wherever they touched. I let out a sigh of relief once I was free from the fear of being choked by the branches.

  “Ngh, this is hard!”

  “You’re the only one here with a knife. Be careful, Damuel.” It seemed that they couldn’t change the shape of their weapons after they received the blessing. The knights had to use their large weapons meant for cutting down the giant trombe carefully, slicing away the branches bit by bit.

  “Damuel, and you... Myne, I believe? How did this happen? I have never seen Lord Ferdinand that angry before.” Karstedt lowered his voice and asked that as soon as he could while chopping away the branches at my feet with his halberd.

  “Well...” Damuel looked in Shikza’s direction, his armor clanking. But he trailed off, lacking the will to speak up. His weak attitude was both frustrating, and a grim reminder of how harsh this status-based society really was.

  Now that the branches around my throat had been cut down to my chest, it would be pretty simple for me to just state the truth. But I didn’t know if Karstedt would believe me, and I could imagine that it would all come down to status. I had no idea if anyone would listen to or trust a commoner apprentice shrine maiden like me. Karstedt was a noble too, after all. What should I do...?”

  “I want as much information as possible. Say what you know.” Karstedt urged Damuel and me on with clear, teeth-gritting frustration in his voice. Which reminded me that the High Priest had yelled in anger at Karstedt as well, saying that he had selected incompetent fools as guards. Given that Karstedt wanted to know why the High Priest was so mad, he might listen to what I had to say just to protect himself.

  “Lord Karstedt, will you guarantee my safety if I speak what I know?” I asked Karstedt, in part trying to confirm if Shikza’s behavior was normal for a noble. Now was a rare safe opportunity for me to speak, since they probably wouldn’t kill me before I had performed the ritual. “If I tell the truth, will you be so angered that you pull me by the hair and attempt to gouge out my eyes with a knife if you don’t like what I say?”

  “What in the world...? Damuel, did you do that to
an apprentice shrine maiden?!” Karstedt removed his helmet with a loud clank. His face was filled with blatant fury and his narrowed eyes cut right through Damuel, who began sputtering in surprise to try and defend himself.

  “It wasn’t me! Shikza took out the knife to threaten the apprentice. I tried to help her, but he told me to know my pla—”

  “You fool! Of course Lord Ferdinand is furious!” Karstedt ripped part of the black, brittle trombe off me using sheer force. The branches creaked as they burst apart in his hands.

  It seemed that Karstedt was just as mad at the guards as the High Priest was. I concluded that I could probably tell the truth without worrying about him going slicing away at me in rage.

  Karstedt directed his rage-filled, light-blue eyes towards me. “Myne, tell me everything. Swear an oath to the gods and speak with honesty.”

  “Understood. Lord Karstedt, I swear to the gods I will not lie to you.”

  “Hold on,” said Damuel as he raised a hand, but Karstedt swatted it away. He intended to hear me out, and I was willing to tell.

  And so I did, telling him everything the two guards had done in detail, while emphasizing that the attendants could serve as reliable witnesses to back me up.

  The trombe was so tightly woven around me in so many layers that it would take some time to untangle me safely. So much time that it wasn’t even done by the time I finished telling Karstedt everything.

  “Are you alright?”

  “...No. Please call my attendant.”

  To be frank, I was a complete mess. My new ceremonial robes were ripped everywhere, and there were holes wherever blood had fallen, as if the trombe had eaten the bloody cloth itself. My body hurt everywhere, and due to fighting back so hard against the trombe I felt so exhausted I could barely move.

  “Where is the apprentice shrine maiden’s attendant?!” Karstedt hefted up my exhausted body. It seemed my droopy self would just get in the way of them chopping the roots up. His metal armor dug into me all over and it hurt, but I didn’t have the strength to complain.