Amusingly enough, the closer they got to the more populated areas, where the regional seat of power was, the better the local situation tended to be. People were clearly still afraid to misbehave so close to the seat of power, as it was far more likely for their behavior to be reported to the powers that be, who naturally wouldn’t take kindly to such behavior under their watch.

After all, even if the nobles at the top of the local hierarchy of power might dabble in such behavior themselves, it would undermine their authority if it became known far and wide that those under them also acted that way. As such, if only for the sake of appearances, they would stamp down on such behavior where it became known widely.

Of course, if it wasn’t widely known, it wasn’t strange for the people affected to instead be silenced one way or another, be it through bribery or through a dagger across the throat.

From what the volunteer spies explained to her, it was pretty much public opinion that held some nobles back from going overboard. Even if they had absolute power in the local area, if word of their actions reached the ear of those situated even higher up than them, they would be in deep trouble. Appearances needed to be held to keep the people appeased, so it was not rare for such nobles, if discovered, to be thrown under the wagon, at times rather literally.

One of the methods of public execution reserved for nobles in the human kingdom was to stuff them into a sack and then run over the sack repeatedly with a horse-drawn carriage, after all.

Apparently, sometimes it was not even the noble in question that was placed into the sack, but a body double or a lookalike, while the noble themselves were sent to a remote place where they would live for the rest of their lives. In effect that turned a death penalty into mere exile and house arrest, with a particularly unpleasant fate for the body double or lookalike involved.

It was the sort of dirty politicking and corruption that made Esperanza shake her head. Humans turned out to be pretty similar no matter the world, it seemed.

The fourth town Esperanza visited that was ruled by a corrupt noble had the mildest case of them all, as the noble there merely demanded that the locals offer him some of their best products as well as a sum of money as “tributes” every once in a while. It was a way for the noble to enrich themselves behind the crown’s back while maintaining some plausible deniability on the matter, she guessed.

Although the fact that the noble was a new replacement after the previous noble was caught red-handed at abusing his authority and stripped of their position just a generation ago likely played some role in the matter as well.

The state of the people in the human kingdom showed an odd contrast to Esperanza, however. The people seemed to be fine with the idea of reporting or even rebelling against a noble’s authority if things went too far, and had caused the downfall of quite a few in their history, even, at least according to their local sources.

On the other hand, when it came to dealing with the clergy, the people she saw mostly had a reverent, worshipful attitude, even when the members of said clergy thoroughly abused their position to do whatever they wanted. It was as if in the eyes of the people, those who served their gods could do no wrong, and that if they were being punished, then it must be the will of the gods that it happened.

It was an attitude that spoke of many generations of fierce indoctrination, one that had long seeped into the bones of the people involved. It also meant that there were dismal odds that Esperanza might find people willing to turn against their gods in the human kingdom.

At least amongst the peasantry.

In the two larger towns she visited afterwards, she noticed that the more educated members of the populace – which naturally included the nobility themselves as well – were nowhere near as devout to the gods that the clergy and the rest of the populace worshiped so fervently. In fact, many of them were pretty close to secular, in her opinion.

That circumstance likely happened because the crown and the clergy were not seeing eye to eye and competed against each other for power. In fact, Esperanza guessed that if the demons didn’t exist, the crown and the clergy might well have gone for each other’s throats already. As it was, there was an uneasy truce between them while they fought against their common enemy.

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Though that truce likely didn’t mean that the two sides never jabbed at each other in underhanded ways when they thought they could get away with it.

Given that the gods worshiped by the people of the kingdom and their clergy were the new gods that had deposed Oldies’ generation and would likely be very much against Esperanza carrying out what Oldies asked of her, she knew she’d likely have to deal with them in the future. At the moment, the best thing she could do was to try to cause the current war between the humans and the demons to damage both sides, which would make things easier for her side.

She also knew that she would likely have to deal with whichever side won afterwards. Both the humans and the demons had their own internal issues which could be exploited. The demons had plenty of rivalry between different tribes and races, which led to frequent conflicts between them, conflicts that were often paused only during the great wars against the humans.

On the other hand, the divide between crown and clergy would probably be harder to exploit, as the two sides mostly made their battle in politics and underhanded tricks, rather than enter open hostility. Already Esperanza was wondering if things could be pushed in certain ways to make the two sides fall out more publicly though, which might be one way to make them fight if done right.

While on the surface both sides gave the impression that they were on friendly terms and worked with one another, it was noticeable that the nobles at times seemed to scoff at the clergy and hated that they had to share the power with them. They did not make it obvious, but while the subtle signs might be missed by the typical uneducated peasant of their world, someone who came from a different, more advanced world where knowledge was considered a near-mandatory pursuit was capable of grasping such nuances better.

Similarly, at times Esperanza felt as if some of the higher ranked members of the clergy – they ran into them several times in the larger towns, which also served as a test to see how well their modified skills worked – looked at the nobles like they were uneducated barbarians that just happened to be born into power. It was very noticeable that the clergy almost exclusively recruited from the peasantry, and very few of the nobility ever joined their ranks.

If that was something she could notice within weeks of coming in touch with the kingdom’s society, it was probably something the demons also noticed, as she doubted that they did not have any spies in the human kingdom. Then again, the demons might have lacked a frame of reference for what they saw and missed it, since she did not recall anything that suggested a similar struggle amongst them.

At least not ones that involved the clergy.

With how the more educated townspeople tended to be less devoted to the gods than most, that piqued Esperanza’s curiosity on how the academics of Ephemera actually viewed their gods. When it came to those who worshiped Oldies, pretty much everyone that remained – or at least the ones she had met – encompassed all sorts, with the priests generally all being highly educated as well. All of them shared a nearly fanatical faith to their deities, though.

Compared to that, the humans she saw seemed to be split into two extremes in general, namely those who truly believed in their gods and those who likely thought that the temple was merely making use of their “divine authority” to garner more power or riches unto themselves. Given how many corrupt members of the clergy Esperanza had seen in a short few weeks, the latter line of thinking wasn’t a strange one to have either.

This was a case where her local sources – the five volunteers from Zikeal – were of little help either, as to them, the gods that the humans worshiped these days were usurpers and pretenders that had deposed their rightful deities, and as such they would naturally view things very differently. To them, the fact that the clergy of these “gods” often ended up corrupt and abusive of their powers was just further proof of that.

Which did not help Esperanza much when it came to making plans for the future or how to best exploit the divide between the crown and clergy.

For that reason, she spent quite a while after they visited the sixth town and asked the Zikeal natives about the layout of the area. By that point, they had tested their modified skills in the presence of high level priests of the temple and realized that it worked perfectly for hiding their true allegiance, so the group had more confidence to do things they hadn’t dared to do in the past.

Murad pointed out that if Esperanza wished to learn more about the human kingdom’s internal situation, an academic city might be the best place to do that. People in such places tended to be better educated and knowledgeable about the matters of the kingdom. Best of all though, they were prone to gossip and often liked to boast of their knowledge to strangers. All that combined made them easy, if somewhat less reliable, sources of information for someone looking.

As for the nearest such city, Kurt and Leo described the surrounding area to her as best they could. Their own experiences were mostly limited to the places in the vicinity of the mountains, but they had learned quite a bit about the local region from their visits over all the years. As such, they were aware of the general location of the larger cities near the region.

There were three such cities in the relative vicinity, one further north, deep in the human kingdom, another to the east, on the other side of the mountain range, and a third to the south-west.

Esperanza immediately discarded the northern city as an option when she heard that the temple supposedly had their largest base in the region situated there. Their skill camouflaged their allegiance perfectly so far, but they had yet to truly test it against the truly powerful, like fourth-tier priests with rarer classes.

Similarly, she discarded the eastern city as an option as it was the smallest and least populated of the three. Rather than call it an academy, the place was more where local youngsters who had higher aspirations in life gathered and attempted to teach themselves as best they could from the decently-supplied local library.

On the other hand, to their south-west was one the larger academic cities of the kingdom, which even boasted one of their oldest academies. The city was also a more secular one compared to most due to its nature, so Esperanza felt it was the safest direction to head towards.

As such, the group quickly packed up and headed south-west to their next destination. To the academic city of Clearridge. None of them were aware of it at the moment, but their choice of destination was something that might have made some of them believe in the so called concepts of “fate” or “destiny”, given how it would impact things to come.