Surviving in the City
The Vesta Order had once filled the role of the Catholic Church across the Europa Continent.
But saying it filled Catholicism’s role did not simply mean it held the status of a state religion.
It meant the Order was a powerful interest group that possessed its own administrative network, massive commercial enterprises, military force, and even territories of its own.
Moreover, this was a world where magic and other races truly existed, and holy knights served as humanity’s shield. Its prestige had inevitably been far greater than the Catholicism of my old neighborhood, which had gotten by on faith alone.
"...Hey, why is the Order’s land larger than the royal demesne? Did you miscalculate something?"
"Heh heh. It seems the Saintess is still young and does not quite understand. By rights, no mere worldly monarch should possess more than the merciful Flame of Heaven."
"No, this doesn’t seem like that kind of issue..."
And so what they owned was truly enormous. Enough, if gathered together, to found a country and then some.
Does this even make sense? Twenty percent of France’s territory belonged to the Order?
If Grandfather Pates’s testimony was true, the Vesta Order had been the de facto ruler of France. What else do you call a group that maintains independent military power and economic foundations while handling administrative services across the entire nation, if not a ruler?
Of course, a significant portion of the land the Order owned had been donated by local lords to parish churches to cover operating costs—but that only made it more absurd.
The core of feudalism is the autonomy held by the lords. More precisely, the land deeds they hold, and the tenant rents they extract from the serfs who farm that land. Thus land is the most critical core asset of all, the very foundation that allows the peculiar structure of feudalism to exist.
Yet the Vesta Order itself was a group fundamentally incompatible with feudalism. They possessed independent armed forces represented by the Holy Knight Orders, so they had no need to rely on lords for protection; they were tightly bound by faith and shared interests; and by monopolizing the abnormal quality of medical services that was Divine Power, they wielded overwhelming influence.
In short, they were far too strong an organization to simply dump administrative duties on unilaterally. So the lords, far from freely shaking down the churches that sprang up in their territories, had to carve off real estate and beg for help. Though it was still a profitable deal for them, of course.
And now all of it has become ownerless land.
Then the Order collapsed, and the situation grew very strange. With the local churches that had received the land donations and the Order headquarters that had been the control tower collapsing all at once, the ownership of the real estate was left floating in the air.
And these ownerless lands are not, in principle, ownerless. The Vesta Order had merely lost the Goddess’s grace and could no longer maintain its former prosperity; it had never been officially dissolved or declared disbanded. It only looks as if there is no owner because the Order is in no condition to manage the land; the ownership still rests with the local churches.
Of course, if those local churches sold the land, it would no longer belong to the Order—but then, how exactly did the Vesta Order end up collapsing?
"If a corrupt cleric concluded a contract without the diocese’s permission, what happens?"
"It depends on that cleric’s rank. A contract concluded by someone without authority is naturally void."
This is where things truly get complicated.
Even if the Order’s real estate scattered across France is, in principle, the Church’s, forty years have passed since the Order fell. There’s no way the titles remain intact. The feudal lords alone would have rushed in with eyes blazing to reclaim that precious land, and if you factor in what church officials sold off or what neighbors simply swallowed up, what’s left is probably less than a tenth.
But strictly speaking, every last one of them is a criminal. The nobles and local power brokers who gobbled up land after watching the Order collapse, as well as those who traded with church clergy and took the land—every single one. Because the ownership of that land belonged not to the local churches but to the central Order.
The Vesta Order boasted a level of centralization that put even Catholicism to shame. The land on which churches were built, the priests who worked there, the right to collect tithes—all of it came from the central diocese. Thus feudal lords donated land not to local churches but directly to the central diocese, which then leased the land back to the local churches as a means of securing funds.
So no matter what terms the lords struck with the churches, if the central diocese hadn’t stamped the deal, it had no effect. And even if the central diocese had approved it, if you asked how people who had lost the Goddess’s favor could still represent the Order, there would be no answer.
This is a world where divine beings truly exist and can exercise direct or indirect influence on the mortal realm. The moment I reveal that I am the Saintess and declare the Order’s reconstruction, theoretically it wouldn’t be impossible to nullify every transaction of the past forty years and forcibly reclaim all the property the Order once owned.
The problem is that in reality it’s absolutely impossible.
"...Hey, Grandfather Pates. What happens if I declare here that I’m reclaiming this land?"
"If the Saintess so commands, this sinner will accomplish it even at the cost of his life."
No, I’m asking how the feudal lords would react, not you. And this old man seems to be overestimating himself. How is a geezer who can’t even use Divine Power supposed to recover this much property all by himself?
This isn’t some neighborhood back hill—it’s twenty percent of the nation’s real estate on the line. Of course, if you include the undeveloped land and silver veins scattered everywhere, the proportion of Order private holdings drops below ten percent rather than twenty, but it’s still an enormous scale that can’t be denied.
Even if every lord in this place were a law-abiding sucker who spit the land back out without a word, rebuilding the local administrative network alone would take years. And an old man with not much life left says what? He’ll achieve it even at the cost of his life? Wouldn’t it be faster for him to just die of natural causes and take off for the heavens?
"Tsk. Let’s just give up."
Of course, I’m not the kind of lunatic who blurts out such rude thoughts, so I quietly sighed and shook my head.
This won’t work. Absolutely, no matter what, this is a bomb that must not be touched. Justification or whatever, it’s simply physically impossible. How on earth am I supposed to reclaim real estate scattered across all of France and stuff it into the Order’s warehouses?
To get all of this back, you don’t need lawyers—you need an army. Tens of thousands of heavily armed Elite Soldiers, at that. It would be far faster and more realistic to start a civil war in the name of God and build a theocratic state. At least that way you could get support from ambitious types dreaming of becoming founding heroes.
"If we start fighting over land ownership now, how wretched would the lives of the common folk become? The Order already fell for unsavory reasons; if we come back and immediately show ourselves greedily chasing private gain, many of the faithful will surely turn their backs."
So forget these damned scraps of land deeds. Except for the demesnes the central diocese managed separately, the idea of reclaiming every little farm plot scattered across France is not only far too unrealistic—it’s dangerous. In medieval Europe, what good would it do to make enemies of the king and every lord?
Here, the right answer is to forget this problem in exchange for appropriate concessions.
"And it would be better to leave the work the churches used to do to the secular lords. Stirring up needless trouble will only get us cursed—who would thank us for it?"
The question of the Church’s role is the same. Medieval lords outsourced administrative work to the Church simply because it was convenient and cost-effective. Forty years after the Order’s collapse, the lords who have already spent huge sums building administrative systems are vanishingly unlikely to welcome the Church’s reconstruction. I have no interest in such petty businesses anyway.
"Wealth can be obtained at any time."
The blueprints for the spinning machines and looms I handed over to Count Montpellier are children’s toys by comparison. If we train talent who can handle mechanical engineering professionally and inject them with forbidden knowledge from the future, economically dominating this impoverished medieval society isn’t impossible either.
Therefore what we should aim for is not monetary profit. We need to accumulate intangible assets that are hard to see on the surface and difficult to measure—things like a positive image or connections with high-ranking people.
"So for now, let’s diligently hand out bribes."
And usually those intangible assets are built up by warmly exchanging gifts. It’s dirty work, but it can’t be helped. I truly wanted to maintain the purity of a Saintess of the Order, but the times refuse to cooperate—what can I do?
This is an indispensable sacrifice if we are to advance humanity’s prosperity.
So line up the gift boxes.