God Favors the Faithful!

"God favors the faithful!"

As dusk approached, the young priest gave the middle-aged couple at the doorway a verbal blessing, then turned and left.

"God favors the faithful!" the couple hurriedly echoed. After watching the priest leave, they closed the door and handed the Holy Bread he had distributed to their nephew Adam and their daughter Lina. "I'm going to make dinner. We're having cured meat today."

"That's wonderful, Aunt Maggie." Adam grinned, his joy infectious and enough to lift anyone's spirits.

As his uncle and aunt busied themselves, Adam stuffed the Holy Bread in his hand into his mouth, feeling a burning pain.

"I have to find a way to leave the Holy Sound Kingdom." He forced himself to eat the rest of the Holy Bread despite the pain and began to think it over.

Holy Bread was white bread baked by Holy Sound Church priests using Holy Water and wheat flour. There was nothing special about it, except that the Holy Water had been blessed by the priests and carried a faint trace of Holy Power.

As a result, it could purge evil.

And Adam happened to be among the things it purged as "evil."

Adam hadn't originally been called Adam Boku, nor had he once been called Nather Riggs. His real name had been one that didn't fit in this world at all.

I've been in this world for thirteen years already, without even realizing it. The thought crossed Adam's mind.

He had once been an ordinary person in another world. On his way home from work, he'd driven into a black hole that had appeared out of nowhere and been reborn in this world—a place of divine magic, sorcery, and Otherkind creatures.

Unfortunately, he'd been reborn as a Werewolf, an Otherkind creature shunned by most human factions.

Otherkind creatures weren't all that different from humans. They simply differed from ordinary people in certain ways, and were thus called Otherkind. Werewolves were one such kind.

The greatest difference between Werewolves and humans was that most Werewolves lost control on the night of the full moon. They grew fangs and claws, becoming like giant wolves standing upright. They also usually lost their reason, grew bloodthirsty, and hunted the life around them indiscriminately.

Fortunately, Adam belonged to the small minority who could control their transformations. Even after changing, he could suppress his bloodlust and retain some of his reason.

This had to do with the difference between Werewolves who were born that way and those who became Werewolves later.

Werewolves who were born that way were just like humans, born to Werewolf parents. They were called Pureblood Werewolves. Those who became Werewolves later could be changed through infection, curses, sorcery, and other means.

Adam was a Half-Pureblood Werewolf. His biological father had been a Werewolf, and being only half Pureblood was precisely what had allowed Adam to hide in Roya, a border city in the Holy Sound Kingdom. As long as he didn't transform, he was indistinguishable from a human.

The Holy Sound Kingdom was a theocracy, home to a great many Church priests. For various reasons, every Church was a sworn enemy of the Otherkind. They had special forces tasked with hunting Otherkind creatures. If the Church caught one, it would either be burned alive, hanged, or locked up until it died.

In short, most met the same end—death.

Adam's goal was to cross the Roya Border Wall and reach the Loken Kingdom on the other side. He'd heard that Otherkind creatures had a much easier time surviving there.

Adam had looked into it. The wilderness in this world was teeming with monsters, so traveling between the two kingdoms was even more dangerous than crossing the border wall.

He was currently staying with the Boku Family. In name, he was the nephew of the family's head, Aris Boku, but in truth they weren't related by blood at all.

The real Adam had died at the hands of bandits. He'd been a boy with little sense of caution, traveling to Roya to seek refuge with his uncle after his parents died of illness.

The first time Adam met the real Adam, he'd learned almost everything about him without even having to ask. By the second time they met, the unsuspecting boy had become a corpse in the hands of bandits.

After witnessing all this, Adam realized he needed an identity. So he avenged the real Adam, then killed the bandits to silence them before going to Roya City in Adam's place.

"Adam, big brother." The voice made Adam turn around. A girl of seven or eight came running over and hugged his legs. She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling. "Did you finish your Holy Bread?"

"I finished it. I'll save some for you next time, okay?" Adam smiled and patted her little head, ruffling her hair before tying it back into a braid for her.

He didn't like the bland Holy Bread, which even caused him pain. But he had to seem "normal" to everyone else if he didn't want to expose himself.

Adam watched Lina happily rush into her mother's arms to ask whether her braid looked pretty, then turned and went upstairs. Through the second-floor window, he gazed out at the twilight over the border city.

"I have to leave soon..."

Early the next morning, Adam headed out to sell the Boku Family's homemade Pickle Pies and greet the neighbors.

The neighbors had grown familiar with Adam, and greeted him by name with smiles.

Half a month ago, the Boku Family's nephew had come to seek refuge with his uncle after his parents died of illness. On the way, his face had been stung and swollen by a poisonous wasp. Now that the swelling had gone down, he'd turned out to be quite a handsome young man.

As Adam sold Pickle Pies, he gathered information. His disguise seemed convincing enough. He didn't look much like the real Adam, and although Aris hadn't seen his nephew in many years, he still remembered some things about him. If he'd seen a complete stranger at first glance, he would likely have become suspicious.

So Adam had deliberately swollen his face. Over the past half month, as his face gradually slimmed down, Aris had had enough time to grow accustomed to his appearance. That was why Aris had never suspected a thing.

As he hawked his wares along the street, Adam also scoped out the area. He glanced at a mansion in the distance. That was his target.

The Holy Sound Kingdom and the Loken Kingdom were currently enemies, and the border was closed. Ordinary people could hardly get near it. To cross the Roya Border Wall defenses, Adam would need the help of a noble. Most nobles in border cities were involved in some kind of smuggling.

Usually, a commoner who wanted to get involved in a noble's smuggling business would have almost no chance, even after years or more than a decade of effort. Their servants generally served the family for generations, passing their positions from parent to child. Only after several generations of service could they earn a noble's trust.

No matter how much an outsider tried to prove himself, he couldn't earn their trust.

But now, there was an opportunity.

"Those bandits worked for this Baron Mansla." Adam recalled what he'd learned from the bandits. After memorizing the layout of the man's estate, he hawked his wares for a while longer and then left.

He still had a lot to prepare. Both the nobles and the Church in the city were capable of dealing with an underage Werewolf like him.

When Adam returned to the Boku Family's home, Aris and Maggie still hadn't come back.

The Boku Family wasn't wealthy. They could barely make ends meet, especially since Adam had arrived.

"It's time." Adam rubbed Lina's head as she came running over at the sound. He thought things through. Before, he'd had to avoid suspicion, so he'd said little and done more.

Now that they were gradually getting used to one another, Adam felt he could begin to take measured action. Without exposing himself, he could help the Boku Family become a little better off. At the very least, they couldn't become a burden to him.

"Bringing out knowledge from another world would be too jarring. And the worlds are different; some things are completely different here, so that knowledge might not even be useful."

"Even if it is useful, anything too far ahead of its time might make people think I'm possessed by a demon and send me straight to the stake. Or, if it threatens someone's interests, they might call me a lowly thief who stole a noble's secrets." Adam knew all too well what the Church and some people were like in this era.

Adam's gaze swept over the modest home and landed on a book. There was a picture on its cover.

"Maybe I could try becoming a painter."

Being a painter in this world seemed like a pretty good career path, especially if he worked on religious paintings. As it happened, Adam knew quite a bit about that.