Surviving in the City
When the goddess, disappointed by the corruption of her clergy, abandoned the mortal world, the Vesta Order—stripped of every proof of her grace—collapsed in a single stroke.
The mountains of treasure heaped in the Order’s warehouses, the holy knight order that had once been the largest in human history, and the administrative web stretched across the entire continent: everything they had raised by borrowing the goddess’s power turned hollow and was swallowed by the years.
Yet the people remained.
Scattered and diminished, they still could not simply disappear.
“This worthless sinner greets the goddess’s representative.”
And so, after forty years, a steward of the Order knelt at the Saintess’s feet.
The buried, forgotten ember began to burn once more.
“So how should I address you, Grandfather? If you still have a title from your days as a priest, or some nickname that stuck, I could use that—”
“How could a sinner who disappointed the goddess dare hope for any grand form of address? Simply calling me by my name is more than enough.”
“All right. Then I’ll just call you Grandpa Pates.”
“Oh my… for the Saintess herself to know my name…! Could it be that the goddess spoke the name of this sinful old body?”
“No. I just read what’s written here.”
The bizarre, outlandish confession of faith from Pates the bookstore old man stretched on for a full two hours. He poured out his entire life from the Order’s fall to the founding of the library, embroidering every complaint about how agonizing that long wait had been with endless trivial asides. I could no longer tell whether I had come to the library to read books or to volunteer at a nursing home.
When I finally managed to steer the conversation toward forms of address, he plunged into some wild fantasy of his own and began streaming tears.
I’m going crazy. Is this old coot senile?
“I understand you’re moved to tears at receiving the Saintess, but time is precious. Would you kindly close your mouth? The Saintess is uncomfortable as well.”
I turned to Rebecca with that sentiment fully loaded, only for her to pour more fuel on the fire instead of putting it out. Even more ridiculous was that the old man, far from taking offense at her rude remark, simply nodded and begged my forgiveness.
“What are you doing right now?”
I stared at Rebecca with a blank face. It was not an accusation so much as pure curiosity. What possible meaning could there be in picking on this grandfather here? Honestly, I had found him tiresome myself, but what good would come of sniping at someone who had been nothing but kind to us the entire time? At least I was seeing his face for the second time today; this sister was a complete stranger to him.
What is this? Medieval etiquette? Does our Order have elder-bashing as a passive skill?
“He is a sinner who helped disappoint the goddess through excessive greed. If he has any conscience left, he would not expect respect.”
So it was not that. Rebecca simply harbored hostility toward the personnel of the old Order. I understood. High clergy of the former Order had been the rotten humans who disgusted the goddess enough to make her leave. Whether this grandfather had been one of them I could not say, but for Rebecca—who had spent her whole life waiting only for the goddess’s return—showing courtesy was simply impossible.
But that was her problem. What was I supposed to do about this awkward atmosphere? It was driving me insane.
“Both of you, please sit down for now. There’s something we absolutely need to discuss.”
It would have been wonderful if I could smooth everything over with dazzling rhetoric and soothe Rebecca’s heart, but unfortunately I am a person with no talent for persuading others or mediating disputes. It has been that way since my previous life. All I know how to do is change the subject and keep anyone from focusing on a single thing—a useless skill I picked up while looking after a senior who never listened to a word I said.
“I am not a person of this era.”
I paused just long enough to draw their attention, then dropped the bomb the moment their guard slipped. Of course I only detonated it because my calculations showed the blast would not reach me.
“I was summoned here from a parallel world seven hundred years in the future—one that resembles this place yet is completely different.”
There is one important truth I learned after wrecking my life once: I have no talent for acting. Mimicking speech or mannerisms I can manage, poorly; fabricating an entirely nonexistent story and fooling everyone flawlessly is beyond me.
‘Junior, I heard the chef certification exam was yesterday, not today… Did you trick me?’
‘What I mentioned was the pufferfish cooking technician exam. Isn’t it your fault for jumping to conclusions on your own, Senior?’
So I only ever became skilled at half-assed tricks—naturally changing subjects, cleverly inducing misunderstandings. I really had to do something to wreck our mischievous senior’s life plans.
‘Fine. It’s my fault for trusting you. But since you got the pufferfish cooking cert, I’ll let it slide.’
‘?’
…Well, in the end that human forced himself to match the target specs, crawled into an African civil-war zone, and died. The memories of those days remain vivid, and they are a great help as I navigate this harsh world.
“So I cannot use Divine Power. What the goddess wants from me is not simple relief work.”
I build the story on facts, disguise the most disadvantageous parts as insignificant introductions, and lightly brush them aside. Then I drag in questions I myself do not know the answers to, interpret them in the most advantageous way possible, and speak as if they were truth, inducing misunderstanding. This is my strongest weapon: I did not lie.
“What the goddess wants from me is to overhaul the world using the knowledge I accumulated in that parallel world.”
What if it turns out I am wrong? What then? It is a guess; it can be a little off. And it is not baseless speculation either. If future knowledge were not the goal, there would be no need to go through the trouble of reincarnating a modern person as Saintess. I have no idea what she is thinking by completely refusing communication and granting no Divine Power, but it is certain that Vesta wanted the twenty-first-century knowledge inside my head.
“So I know little about the Order’s corruption or the old myths. Therefore I hope both of you will focus solely on realizing concepts from the future.”
Of course, even if I say this, these two are not from the twenty-first century, so they cannot focus on realizing future concepts. You have to know something first before you can put in effort. Therefore, if they are to follow the goddess’s will, they must listen carefully to my words—not ruin the atmosphere and waste time with talk only they understand, the way they just did.
“You’ll do that, right?”
As the newly appointed CEO of a completely ruined Order, I demanded answers from my employees. The two fanatics nodded with dejected expressions.
Good. It was a little quieter now.
“Rebecca, please bring me every scripture of the Order and every book that theologically analyzes those scriptures. To revive the faith of this land I first need accurate knowledge.”
Somehow my underlings had increased, but nothing changed. I set a serious atmosphere and asked Rebecca to study theology. Intellectuals of this era are mostly clergy, so to begin activities in earnest I will eventually have to reveal my identity. If I do not want to be branded a fraud and ruined then, I need to practice playing the Saintess in advance so that my claims feel credible. I do not even know our Order’s doctrines yet. What kind of Saintess cannot recite a single prayer?
“Grandpa Pates, please organize and tell me everything you remember about the Order’s system in its final days and the treasures that were scattered. If I try to raise a church with bare hands, my life will end before I can fulfill the goddess’s will.”
When my status as Saintess is acknowledged, what comes into my hands is not merely religious authority. Professional personnel scattered across the continent, land deeds that found new owners, and the various profit-making enterprises once run by every parish—I can claim ownership of all the wealth the Order forgot or lost when it collapsed, by forcibly ignoring worldly principles with the claim that it originally belonged to the goddess. Greedy lords and merchants will not obediently spit out their possessions just because the Order throws around a few excommunications, but simply having a pretext to haggle the price is enough. Fortunately Grandpa Pates is someone who knows, however roughly, how much our Order once possessed.
Of course someone might say: Isn’t it too dangerous to entrust money matters to a man who may have contributed to the corruption of the Order’s final days? But I think differently. Now that I have spilled every important secret and every weakness to him, he can never test me. The choices left to him are only two: devote his loyalty until his remaining short lifespan ends, or cleanly stab me in the back and become my mortal enemy. And considering Rebecca’s combat power, beating one old man who cannot even use Divine Power to death is not particularly difficult.
“This old body will write down everything it remembers.”
Fortunately Grandpa Pates was an honest and upright priest. Or he was simply quick-witted. Either way, it was good for him.