The open courtyard of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Marina was now full of stalls of food and people chatting about.

Suddenly, an older than usual priest with golden circles sewn on the hems of his robes got onto the carefully built one time use platform near the fountain at the centre of the courtyard.

"Greetings! Today I awoke with a heavy headache and staggered to get up. Obviously a sign of ... ."

Well, that was rather long.

To sum up the long winded and void of any meaning beside appearing well studied-metaphor ridden speech, he was the new head priest that was going to substitute the previous one.

A group of church nobles had ugly looks on their faces while another one appeared awfully gleeful.

The scene seemed awfully funny with all these high ranking people forced to wear long robes as uniforms by their own high and mighty positions even in this heavy summer heat.

In the latter group there was also a figure Raphael recognized, even if barely remembering it.

It was the noble child that puzzlingly boarded the same run down carriage as them peasants on the way to the church's admission a year before.

It was now clear why he had needed to do all that even with his high position.

Only in this environment Raphael could clearly understand that even high ranking figures were but mortals subjected to worries and joys just like everyone else.

That's right, even after becoming a proper church member he still didn't get a full education and training, only getting the basics to not embarrass the church outside.

In the words of his old mentor, a missionary didn't need all that to do their work, even if it would make it much easier.

If the church had the spare resources to educate them, they could better the education of negotiators and economists as well.

In a way, the perfect deceiver was one that didn't even need to talk about what he wanted to get it, and so the missionary was the perfect figure to get a hold onto gold and political power.

The problem was that, for how brainwashed the rest of the world was by the church's words, those still in power were the remaining ones with a functioning brain on their shoulders and would be on full guard against this low level scamming technique that required the emotional support from the subject themselves to work.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Unless subjected to control magic, that is.

But that's for other circles of power much higher than here.

After a year, Raphael had a better grasp of how the Church worked, even if a lot of information was still missing.

This period was spent doing basically one thing only, that is, honing his skills with the only way he could, hands on practice.

In the process, he had picked up a couple of thugs and recycled them into a squad with at least a little bit of value for himself.

Even if the scene of a squad of full grown man subserviently following behind an eleven year old was extremely funny, the robes wore by the child were enough to dissuade every commoner from mocking them.

But today, they weren't with him.

Raphael didn't have a great enough authority to let people outside the Church inside the Cathedral, especially rough looking thugs.

But honestly, he preferred it that way, especially today when his endeavor required the best image he could put on.

His plan was simple, and its execution too.

Well, mostly.

He wanted to talk to the new head priest exactly about this perfect deceiver position!

He had already seen what the peak of this career would be in the form of his old missionary mentor, freely massaging a submitted woman to show off his measley authority, but, hadn't Raphael already obtained that!?

In other worlds, he was already at his peak?!

Did that mean that the best he could do was maintaining the status quo?!

Absolutely not!

Now, his best arguments to give credit to his capabilities as a perfect deceiver would be how he had managed to form his 'gang' and the perfectly controlled Judas if the need to expose her arose.

But honestly, he had more hope that the head priest wouldn't care about a symbolic position that required just a bit more resources in comparison to the enormous wealth the old codger would surely ammass by cutting corners everywhere he could.

A simple plan really.

The simple part of the execution would be that only luck could decide the outcome of it all, so it didn't need any confusing plans.

The difficult part was how to approach the head priest on good terms and without appearing like a poor orphan desperately begging for a piece of bread.

And the young noble was the perfect tool for this!

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It didn't work.

The young noble's name was Noah.

He was clearly trained in the ways of the nobles as the flowery words by Raphael didn't have any effect, exactly how the perfect deceiver would fare in a real situation.

But after Raphael appealed to his emotions, Noah complied in honor of their fateful reunion.

The head priest at first heard him like a compassionate father that was going to do everything in his power to help his beloved son, and then, with that same compassionate look on his face, bluntly told him no.

A flat no, devoid of all the language frills he so loved to use around his peers, clearly devoid of any basic respect between human beings.

After a bit of urging by Raphael, he finally gave the curt explanation that the boy didn't have enough experience in the Church in an irritated manner.

After this, he immediately turned away to continue chatting with his peers.

Yes.

That was it.

Surely, after three years, Raphael will have enough experience in the Church, right?!