Become a Rebel
Her plan to simply squeeze some patronage out of the count and head straight home had gone thoroughly sideways, so Asty's first real outing of this life was going to last a good deal longer than intended.
No—when she was one wrong step away from becoming a traitor instead of a Saintess, there was no way she could sit around casually tinkering with inventions.
Now that her grand design of holing up in some backwater village and accelerating technological progress had been wrecked by the ambitions of a half-civilized feudal lord, scribbling blueprints in a corner like before would be pure idiocy.
If she didn't want to get tossed around by these medieval lunatics until they finally disposed of her, she had to learn everything she could about this world's history and political landscape—by any means necessary.
And in this era, the only way to get that knowledge was by reading.
The problem was that books were treated as luxury goods around here. Volumes containing that kind of precious information were never going to be common.
The religious order that had once served as the guardian of knowledge in this hopeless medieval world had collapsed decades ago, and the bloodline-obsessed idiot nobles who lived in luxury weren't about to stockpile dozens of expensive books.
Nor were their lordships about to open their private libraries to some commoner's daughter.
Even Count Montpellier, who was in the same boat as her, was competent at administration but no scholar; he owned only a handful of volumes.
And after boldly declaring herself the Saintess, asking him to buy her study materials would just look pathetic.
She had never planned to reveal that she was the Saintess in the first place.
For one thing, the only proof she had was Rebecca's testimony and the lantern—and the lantern wasn't exactly picky about who held it.
How could a holy relic that worked the same in anyone's hands serve as evidence of divinity?
In front of Count Montpellier she had put on a grand show and waved the lantern around to inflate her own value, but if the count himself had waved it instead, the result would have been identical.
Right now the only person who could handle the lantern's power with any skill was Rebecca, who had polished her technique as the Lantern Bearer—and the position of Lantern Bearer wasn't even an officially recognized office of the order.
In the end, she would have to be accepted as Saintess on the word of a single relic-user, without the goddess's certification or the order's recognition. Whether that was even possible was secondary; there was simply no profit in it.
Hello? Their order was ruined. What exactly was a Saintess with no holy knights and no priests supposed to accomplish alone?
No matter how strong Rebecca was, she couldn't go around snapping every knight's neck by herself.
Revealing her identity without any usable personal forces would only get her religious authority sucked dry by feudal lords until she became their puppet.
If she could at least throw Divine Power around freely the story would be different, but as everyone knew, their goddess was a little too silent for comfort.
Honestly, at this point I might as well just treat myself as a rogue ninja.
She goes to the trouble of reincarnating a twenty-first-century modern person and then dumps them without a second thought. Is she a goddess or just a complete idiot?
"Next. What business brings you to the city?"
"Here—a letter of guarantee written by the count himself."
"...Pass."
For all those reasons she had left Vermont Castle and come to the city of Montpellier.
If churches were out and nobles were out, the only option left was the city.
If she accidentally ran into the spinning-mill workers the atmosphere would turn ugly fast, but if she wanted to survive this brutal age she absolutely needed the precious knowledge sleeping in the city's libraries.
Montpellier was the largest city in France, with a population of over fifty thousand.
She wasn't about to let a few textile workers cost her this rare opportunity.
This is supposed to be a major city? Looks more like a slightly oversized country village.
Her first impression of Montpellier was thoroughly disappointing.
What met her eyes looked less like a city and more like an oversized folk village.
The population was the first problem.
A city with a mere fifty thousand people—how could that possibly count as a metropolis?
The population was absurdly low for the city's footprint.
In Korea, fifty thousand people made an eup, not even a full district. Count Montpellier was trying to become king with nothing more than the office of a township mayor as his weapon.
She knew intellectually that fifty thousand was plenty for this era, but to a modern sensibility that associated cities with skyscrapers, she simply couldn't bring herself to call this place a major city.
The second problem was hygiene.
Sadly, in this dreamless, hopeless age, bathing was classified as a hobby.
The claim that medieval Europeans rejected bathing and preferred filth because of twisted hygiene notions was only partly true; the real issue was that the era itself made washing ridiculously difficult, hygiene ideals or not.
What did anyone expect in a world where bandits roamed because people couldn't even get bread to eat?
Sorry, but soap was a luxury item here.
Anything resembling a proper bathroom existed only in noble mansions, and even those didn't have hot water on tap.
If you didn't like it, you could burn firewood and heat water yourself—or go to a public bathhouse.
"Hello. How much do they pay if I work here?"
"Oh my. You're a bit young to work in our bathhouse... but that cute face of yours might make up for it. Want to give it a try and learn about the world while you're at it?"
"What the hell."
Of course there was no guarantee those public bathhouses operated normally.
By the late Middle Ages, bathhouses had turned into brothels, and not washing was praised as a symbol of abstinence.
Thanks to that little market-research trip, big sister Rebecca had nearly snapped someone's neck in the middle of the city.
Apparently the bathhouses had run properly back when the order was still intact; once the order collapsed and no one was left to enforce the rules, every last one of them changed businesses until "bathhouse" became a synonym for entertainment district.
Naturally, places like that did nothing for public hygiene.
What brothel ever contributed to public health? You were lucky if you didn't catch a venereal disease.
So everyone walked around with grime streaming down their faces and a stench rolling off them in waves.
Even the people back in her village had at least dunked themselves in the stream now and then. She couldn't even begin to guess when these humans had last washed.
"Excuse me, do you know where the library is?"
"Hmm! Go down that alley, turn right, pass two buildings, turn left again, pass three more buildings, and you'll see a blacksmith. Keep going straight with your back to the signboard and you'll spot a green roof—use that as your landmark—"
And then the long-awaited third problem.
The city's layout was an absolute disaster.
Buildings and districts looked as if they had been dumped into a blender and mixed at random.
The charming medieval-city scenery people imagined was nowhere to be found; instead something resembling a medieval Kowloon Walled City that could give twenty-first-century shantytowns a run for their money flaunted its grotesque exterior.
Cramming buildings into the limited space inside the walls had clearly produced this mess. The unrestrained, bottomless overdevelopment made a simple trip to the library feel like navigating a maze.
Roads that looked perfectly fine on the map dead-ended against buildings. Planks connected rooftops into makeshift bridges. Random thugs blocked the streets trying to shake people down for protection money.
With the entire city in this state, the shantytown packed tight against the inner walls wasn't even surprising.
So the population wasn't low relative to the city's area—it was high.
Well, of course. This era didn't have apartment buildings. Maybe she would have to build a planned city later.
"Haa... reading a single book is ridiculously hard work."
The city was disappointing in every possible way, but the library she finally located after all that trouble did not let her down.
The scent of old books hit her the moment she stepped through the entrance.
A two-story structure that was neither particularly spacious nor particularly cramped.
No special decorations, yet the solid wooden bookshelves themselves carried an antique elegance, and those shelves were packed tight with thick volumes.
Jackpot.
"Excuse me, may I read some books here?"
"Hmm? Little girl, can you even read?"
"In the library: silence. Damaging a book: two-hundred-florin fine. Purchases: inquire with the librarian. Correct?"
A collection of this size meant at least a thousand volumes.
She immediately demanded a reading pass from the old librarian.
Trapped in the medieval prejudice that children couldn't read, the librarian eyed her literacy with open skepticism—until she recited part of the library rules and casually erased his doubts.
She also bought a monthly pass in a lump sum, proving she had money.
One silver coin a month. About 0.66 florins a day—not that expensive.
Even with cheap fees, literacy rates over ninety percent meant the number of users was pathetic.
Right now she was the only customer.
"Where are the scriptures and history books of the Vesta Order?"
"Those are a bit advanced for a child..."
"I can understand them, so don't worry."
When she asked the apparently idle old librarian to bring her every history book he had, he selected a few thick volumes and stacked them on the desk.
She had clearly said all of them. The old man really was a friend who couldn't take a hint, wasn't he?
If she had brought big sister Rebecca along, the man would have gotten a quick taste of fire, but unfortunately she had left her at the lodgings today.
No choice, then. Time to demonstrate a modern person's literacy properly.
"All right. Understanding Other Races Through Historical Events..."
Might as well start with this one.