Riya slowly walked up the stairs, she sorta expected someone to greet them, and be all ‘welcome, Oh weary traveller.’ or something, maybe even a loli or a tsundere Nun coming to greet her and show her around.

Unfortunately, she didn’t isekai into one of those types of worlds, a White Sister who was probably in her mid 30s in Earth years (so… in her early 20s in New Roman years?) was at the reception desk doing paperwork and when she noticed her she quickly got up and crossed her arms in apologies.

“Forgive me, Your Holiness, I did not greet you when you first arrived at this Holy sanctuary.” She said, frozen stiff in fear.

Oh no… “Do not be afraid.” She said, “I am more impressed with you putting your mind and soul into the temple upkeep than I would have ever been if you had set aside your work and came to the gate to give a measly five seconds greeting.”

That seemed to lighten her up, “Thank you, Your Holiness, may I show you the way to the room containing citizenship papers?”

Riya nodded regally, “Yes, You may.”

The White Sister started to show her the way to the citizenship room or whatever, her retainers all followed after her, her scholars were taking notes of the castle and anything else that might be useful for whatever reason while her knights were on the lookout to make sure no one jumped her or anything.

While passing through the Temple, she noticed a few of the rooms were full of kids, sitting on the floor holding a piece of chalk in one hand and a slate in the other while a White Sister or a White Brother was teaching them things, sometimes it was basic maths, other times it was a bit of theology, other times it learning to read and write in German.

The kids looked to be about five years old or below (in New Roman years, that would be about three years or below, maybe), which was weird because she didn’t remember anything like this in Merchant of Antonia. People were too poor most of the time to afford tutors and most of the time only the very wealthy merchants or nobles could afford tutors (who only taught one-on-one). Maybe this was expanded upon in the other two books? She doubted the Nobles in the Temples allowed the White Brothers and Sisters to (from what she saw) teach a bunch of not-wealthy kids to read and write from the ‘goodness of their hearts’ or whatever. “Oh wow.” She said, “That’s a lot of children, I never knew the Temple doubled as a school, Vestia said that the Temple was only used for worship?” She ended with a question/run-off sentence. Hoping the White Sister would follow up with an explanation.

“Yes.” The White Sister said, “It is all thanks to Her Grace.”

Her Grace? Riya was a bit puzzled, who was she talking about? “Her Grace?”

“Lady Sally.” Amelia supplied to her, “I heard she came to the Temple to observe how the administration within the Temple was being dealt with whilst there was a shortage of workers.”

Oh ya… She did remember a few people did go around and doing that…

“Her Ladyship is correct, Your Grace.” The White Sister said, “Her Divine Grace, Sally, and His Divine Grace, Jayden, had visited our humble Temple to test our will and dedication to serve the Gods. The war had been hard on us, due to the exit of many Nobles, the temple had lacked it’s usual funding to keep everyone clothed and fed, thanks to Her Divine Grace Sally and His Divine Grace Jayden, we remain clothed and fed.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Riya just wanted to know how the whole school-thing had started… “Was the school system here from before?”

The White Sister shook her head, “It was all thanks to Their Graces’.”

Huh… Riya filled that info away for later, they had arrived at the citizenship room. “Thank you.” She said to the White Sister, We shall call you if we need anything.

The White Sister simply bowed and left.

Right… Riya turned around to look at the stacks and stacks of papers.

This was going to be a long, and painful day…

OOO

It was extremely painful…

For starters, nothing was organised properly, they were all organised by dates. Sounds nice and all so Riya! Why the fuck are you complaining?!

That’s because it wasn’t organised by location.

Usually, to find any pattern or reach any conclusions using the scientific method, a sample population is used, preferably from the same area to keep all the variables the same.

But organising all the papers was taking enough time as it was… How could she possibly find the time to reach any conclusions about the pre-war and post-war populations in each part of the Prefecture like this?!

Even her Retainers were getting annoyed, “My Lady,” Shivan said as he sorted through which papers belonged to citizens in the city and which papers belonged to small hamlets on the edges of the prefecture, “Is this really necessary?”

“Positive.” Riya sighed, “We need to know just how many people are in the Prefecture right now.” Well, part of the Prefecture anyways, there were three more Temples they needed to visit with their own citizenship papers and what not… Sigh.

“Forgive me, My Lady… But I still do not understand…”

Riya tried to think of a way to explain it properly and in a way a Noble who doesn’t care about commoners much would understand, “It’s like… Think of it as a tea party, you want to make sure everyone has a good time at your tea party right? To do that you need to know how many people are coming to the tea party in the first place and what their taste and preferences are. So you could make more connections and increase your social standing among the nobles, right?”

Shivan nodded.

“Same principles apply here.” Riya said, “We need to know how many people are in our Prefecture, what part of the Prefecture they’re from, occupation, age, etc. Using those we develop modules to make [socio-economic] plans that could help elevate the standard of living in the Prefecture and bring new industries and [stuff], once the other Prefectures see how [futuristic] we are, they’ll want to keep a good connection with us and we’ll rise the ranks.” Riya nodded, yep, the metaphor was easy to understand and lined up with each other.

Her retainers were confused by what she just said, “But, the Prefecture rankings are not determined by Prefecture development nor trade nor such.”

Hahaha… excuse her?! “Then what are they determined by?”

“The marks students at Sapientiae”