It was another sunny day. The birds were chirping and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. I looked up from where I sat at the empty blue sky, letting myself get lost in it. I can’t say that I particularly like sunny days, in fact I prefer dreary and rainy days, but there’s just something about letting your gaze wander through all that… blue.

I was currently sat in a courtyard, on one of the benches at the side. The middle of the courtyard was empty and peaceful, the only signs of life being the grass and a single tree at its very centre. The courtyard was square in shape, surrounded by walk ways separated by pillars. The colour scheme was quite boring to be honest; everything was white. The bench was white, the pillars were white, the buildings were white… even the bloody tree bark was white.

Of course this can only be expected of an area in the church of Sol. Yesterday had been my 18th birthday… I’ve been in this place for more than eleven years now. I’m sick of it.

After first arriving at this church, I was happily greeted and welcomed by all the other children who lived their lives at the orphanage. Of course I smiled and greeted them back, quickly making friends. Or at least that’s what it was like on the surface. My heart still hadn’t healed, I mean, how could you expect it to? I was a child, only 6 years old, and I had lost my mother only a few days prior to my arrival.

While I interacted with the other children, I couldn’t help but think to why all this had happened. I kept thinking underneath my façade of happiness and content. My father was a good man, so why did it turn out like this? My mother gave her all for others, so why did it turn out like this?

Weeks went by, then months, and eventually years. I had come to a conclusion on my 9th birthday: it turned out this way because my father was good and because my mother was selfless. I did not want a similar fate. I decided I wouldn’t be a good man, and that I’d only live for myself.

My father did his job out of passion, not simply to make ends meet. Therefore my motivation would only be monetary reward. My mother became selfless because she loved others, so I would be selfish, loving only myself. I made a decision that day.

I would always put myself before others and I would never do anything unless the reward was great enough. I would use others to the benefit of myself and only care about physical things of value, instead of concepts such as trust and love.

But I eventually reached a slight bump in thought process. How can I use people? How can I covet things of value? The answer was simple. The answer was money and power. It was what made the world go round after all; the criminal gangs targeted my father because he was making them lose this precious thing, and is colleagues targeted him because his efforts were earning him greater monetary reward.

Eventually my 10th birthday came along, and I had wholeheartedly adopted my new way of life. All the children of the orphanage gained a weekly allowance of two copper coins, and I used every trick in the book to get my hands on those few copper coins. It amuses me now at how desperately I hoarded all the pocket money of the orphaned children. I had stolen, cheated, and gambled all the other children of their money each and every week. Of course, no one suspected the pleasant smiling child of stealing, and the sisters that looked after us would never reprimand me after tricking others to hand other their coins to me in rigged bets and games after I pulled out the puppy dog eyes, with just the slightest hint of tears.

A few days after my tenth birthday, all those of us who had recently turned 10 were taken to one of the inner halls of the church. They said they were going to test our soul purity. I had heard of this prior to the event from some gossiping sisters; apparently it would hold a large part in determining our futures.

We all line up against the wall at the side of the hall and went up one by one to a large transparent pillar at the centre of the room. A strange object that seemed like simple glass but also shone with what I could only describe as divine radiance.

As the children put their hands on the pillar, darkness seemed to seep out of them, turning a portion of the pillar opaque. When it was my turn, I held out my hands and a significantly smaller amount of darkness seeped out into the pillar, leaving about 80% transparent. The priest overseeing the process seemed to almost radiate happiness at the event, and the sisters standing by the side began to whisper to one another in excited yet hushed tones.

The previous children had provided results of between 20% and 40% transparency. I later learned that this meant I had soul purity of the 8th tier. Soul purity is directly linked with one’s ability to manipulate magic and my results indicated that I had the potential to learn tier 8 magic. At the time I had no idea how lucky I was, but to put things into perspective, in the continent where I lived, Huras, approximately 30,000,000 other people also lived. Currently, those capable of using tier 10 magic or have the capacity to learn in the future is 5 (well 5 known), those able to use tier 9 magic is in the tens (somewhere between 30 and 50 individuals), and those able to use tier 8 magic lay somewhere between 200 and 300 individuals.

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The majority of the population only had the capacity to learn tier 3 magic and below. So it was no wonder the priest was so excited at the time.

From then on, I graduated from the basic education provided by the orphanage and was inducted into the church’s main school. After 2 years of education, those of us who held sufficient soul purity (4th tier and above) were allowed to choose our paths for the future. We could train to become a priest, a holy knight, or an inspector of god.

I’ll tell you a little about all three paths:

First we have the priest, the very essence of kindness, forgiveness, love, and all of that nonsense. They specialise completely in purification and healing magic, almost never leaving the church.

Then we have the holy knights, righteous do-gooders who protect those in need. In contrast to the priests, they specialise almost completely on close combat attack magic, with only a little support and minor healing magic. They tend to only participate in wars, or guard the priests on the rare expedition.

And finally we have the path I chose, the inspectors of god. These fellows are the least well received by the public, acting as the watchdogs of the church. If a heretic pops up, the inspectors hunt him down and then return him to their god, Sol, for judgement. Sol, the god of the church I am currently sitting in, is widely known as the god of fire and light, old legends telling of his palace being on the sun where he watches over us. A bunch of hogwash if you ask me, but still we inspectors go and ‘send’ heretics to Sol. By that I mean we burn them alive. An inspector is essentially the jack of all trades; they learn all types of magic to a moderate degree: attack, support, healing, and control.

Very few people choose the path of the inspector due to requirements to go on patrols to nearby villages and towns in addition to the whole burning people alive thing. My reason was simple. The pay is good. An inspector gets paid nearly twice as much as a knight or priest. Sure the job is harder, but you can also take bribes to supplement your income!

I could go into detail about the following years of gruelling training but I’ll give you a brief overview instead. I learned sword play, magic of various types, torture methods (y’know… for when the heretic doesn’t admit he’s a heretic), and of course all about Sol. To be honest I slept through most of the lessons on religion. I mean come on, who really cares? At that stage I just wanted to learn more about being a badass.

I still remember the day I graduated… Actually now that I think about it, that was only a week ago. People graduate when they’re deemed ready by their instructors, and turns out not studying religion and instead focussing on all the other classes paid off. I just cheated off someone else to get by on the written exam on the religion of Sol. My instructor was even crying at the end, sobbing about how proud he was of me. I’d successfully graduated at the young age of 18, 3 years earlier than average. I was competent in swordplay, using the rapier as my main weapon, I was also able to use magic up to 5th tier, which is pretty impressive if I do say so myself, considering the learning facilities were only equipped to teach up to 4th tier. Most of the additional 5th tier magic I had learned came from my instructor. Apparently he was moved by my torture techniques and had promised me he would do everything in his power to support me on my journey to becoming an unrivalled inspector. Great guy.

And well… here I am getting lost in the sky. I have my first expedition tomorrow to one of the villages on the outskirts of the kingdom to the south. The city I was currently living in is the capital of the kingdom of Sol and located centrally. And yes… these religious fanatics named their country after their god. Can you guess what the capital city is called? It’s called Sol city… yep.

The expedition tomorrow is nothing serious, but it is quite unusual that both a priest and a knight will also be coming along. Just a team of three, usually it should be three inspectors, one senior and two juniors, but I guess the church want the priests and knights to get a bit more fieldwork. From what I’ve heard, all three of us are newly qualified and the geniuses of our respective professions, so a senior wasn’t deemed necessary.

I groaned out loud at the prospect of having to tolerate both a super righteous knight and naïve and kind priest, or priestess. I’ve not yet met them in person but rumours do go around and I hear that both are the very embodiments of what their professions stand for. I’ve also overheard rumours about myself. The genius inspector, a friendly man who’s always smiling, whilst holding both a comforting atmosphere and a relaxed demeanour. In other words a great guy, and not really holding a personality one would expect of an inspector; they’re usually all grouches or wrong in the head somehow.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

I let out a sigh, and stretched myself out across the bench letting my head fall back to continue viewing the sky. This expedition’s going to be long.