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“Nice to meet you! You’re Blank, right?” Asked Elisabeth. “Lord Ellergest told me about you, you’re the one saint everybody is talking about in town, isn’t it?”
“Yeah… I suppose that’s me. I don’t do it for fame though, so I don’t really care about their praises.” I said.
Elisabeth seemed quite sociable despite coming from an orphanage. I suppose she was well raised even in such a place where she wasn’t given the love of parents. Or well, that’s simply me amusing based on appearances. Who knows what sort of other thoughts she might have, or if she was raised by Ellergest for a long time. Nonetheless, when I answered her question, she seemed to grow excited, her eyes shone so brightly that they were like stars.
“Woow! You’re so humble!” She said. “I admire your work, Blank, I really do! I hope we can work together from now on.” Elisabeth smiled back at me innocently. Her aura slowly began to lower in power until it almost completely disappeared. Was she on alert with me present here? How odd. I really shouldn’t be any sort of threat for her… Unless she can see my true aura? Hm… I better not jump into conclusions for now.
“Isn’t she the best girl?” Said Ellergest. “She’s incredibly talented at holy magic, but she’s still learning. I am trying to teach her but she always has her mind elsewhere…” Sighed the old man.
“I-I am trying harder too! But Runes and Magic Circle creation is so complex…” Sighed the girl. “My head hurts when I try to remember the entire formula to make a magic circle…”
“Well, you’re only seven years old, it is natural to not be able to learn spells right away.” Said Seth. “It took me a long while to learn the very basic spells, and that’s when I was already a young adult.”
“I only know two Spells…” Sighed Jack.
Hm, it seems that everybody here is more incompetent than my friends? Eric, Chris, and Erika all learned a couple of spells already in less than a year of being taught by me. Perhaps there is something that I do that lets them learn faster? Maybe I am just a better teacher overall, I don’t know what kind of strategies they use to teach another person how to use spells.
“I see… Since when has she been with you, Ellergest?” I wondered.
“For around three years by now. I adopted her when she was merely four, I saw great potential within her so I quickly brought her here and began to teach her, although she was too young and barely learned anything regarding magic, but her spirit is very helpful, and she learned most of the discipline of a priestess by now… She’s brimming with talent.” Said Ellergest.
Now it makes me wonder what sorts of spirits everybody here has. I only know that Jack has those chains… but what about everyone else? I would assume that they got things related with light and life elements if that’s a prerequisite to be a priest. Although the spirit of Jack doesn’t seem to be related with healing. It is holy and that’s enough for them to recruit somebody as a priest, although it seems fairly stupid. What they mostly seek is people with talent at healing… I feel like the church is merely trying to monopolize all commoners with healing abilities into their private organization that asks for money.
In exchange for shelter, food, and education, they use their healing magic to make them money, all while the commoners that need the most help are ignored. What sort of church is this? In the many planets I have visited churches are always organizations that are there to help the poor and needy (aside from mindlessly praying to a god). But this church is more of a private company by itself, that somewhat represents figures of such high authority as holy spirits… Perhaps they might even be just made up so people obey them.
“Are priests only allowed to become priests if they have healing magic affinity or holy light affinity spirits?” I wondered.
Ellergest quickly decided to answer my question. “Of course not, Blank. If that were the case where would we have so many priests with us?” He asked. “However, our specialized division must be composed of them. We are the healers for a reason, and we are employed for that purpose. Although I am also the head priest of this church, I have many other responsibilities. Most of the priests you see here having lunch have different elements than the ones we have, these people are given other tasks. Mostly helping in the farms, raising cattle, and more. We are not just people that go healing and asking for money, we also do other activities without asking money in exchange other than food and materials from the people we aid.”
“Oh… I see.”
It seemed that the priests were all mixed bunch, they did more things than what I truly expected of them, but they also didn’t do all that much either. It was a convoluted mess of the most part, but this mess was also quite interesting in some areas, I would say they did some volunteer work, or well, not so volunteer if they’re getting a part of the work they do. But for some reason the church has privatized the healing to make the most money out of it, while making the commoners more miserable. Healers that are not part of the church are apparently rarer. I wonder what’s the point of doing this aside from money, how come the commoners just don’t outright hate the church? Well, ignorance is a big factor.
After we finished eating, we quickly moved forward, we had no time to rest as Ellergest said that there was a mildly urgent request from a noble living in this town. There are a handful of nobles in this town that got the most money, and they have completely privatized healing services for themselves and perhaps merchants.
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