It was the night of the first day of the special class in their special assignment. The powers that be made sure to let the kids keep their normal schedule somewhat. No all nighters will be done unless there are emergencies.
Everyone, minus Mia and Onyx, were in a medium-sized house in the middle of the city where everyone had to walk more or less the same distance to go back to their posts.
“No word of Mia yet?” Shishen asked.
“She is fighting something inside the dungeon. The dungeon is still there but it's not growing like before. Well, at least it is what the reports are saying, I can’t personally confirm as I had to hold the reins of our dear group of four idiots.” Narissa explained as she pointed to Mathias, Moon, Kaki and Luminus.
“We already said we are sorry but…” Mathias tried to say something but was cut off.
“NO BUTS! You fucked up and sorry isn’t going to cut it.” Narissa said, strangely angrily.
“What did they do?” Katia asked.
“They went against my orders and had to fight their way out of a group of almost a thousand bandits.”
“If you had told us…” Luminus tried to say something.
“If I had told you what was happening, the bandits that were eavesdropping on our communication at the time would also have found out what we were planning.”
“But…” Moon tried to say something.
“I said no buts! I gave you an order to stand by and you didn’t follow it. We almost lost a lot of men because of your stupidity as they tried to save all of you and we also lost the enemy leader because you idiots fell for the illusion meant for him.”
“What exactly was going on?” Klaws asked.
“We had a mage create an illusion of some people trying to flee the city with some important valuables. Things that the bandit leader is known to personally go after. When the illusion was ‘caught’ by the group of bandits led by the one in charge of all this mess on their side, these four took upon themselves to save the poor people, even before the leader made himself known. We made sure to put the illusion somewhere far enough from the actual fighting to give time for the leader to appear but someone had to drop everything and save the pretty girl, didn’t they?” Narrisa explained and asked as she looked at Kaki.
“…” Kaki thought about saying something but as the one that actually began the whole mess he didn’t.
“And the rest of you, what did you do?” Narissa asked, clearly trying to not think about what happened during the day.
“Budget and Person allocations. Also, document sorting.” Katia said as she drank her tea.
“Sounds boring.” Klaws said.
“Oh, it’s really boring but my kind of boring. The safe kind.” Katia wasn’t exactly helpless in a fight but the way she said what she said all but confirmed that she wasn’t too keen on fighting.
“As for myself, I made money. By the way, thanks for the help Katia. Couldn’t have done it better without you.” Cassandra said.
“Just doing my job. Sometimes I forget that corruption is the way things normally work. And you Klaws? I haven’t heard anything about you all day, which was strange taking into account what you were supposed to be doing.”
“Don’t get me started. Barely an hour into the job it changed from helping people to fighting fishes with legs.”
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“Fishes with legs!?” Everyone asked, really confused.
“Monsters from the ocean. The first ones were basically that and they appeared from time to time while I was dealing with the other monsters. Anyway, If I could just kill them it would be all right but I can’t because doing so would attract bigger monsters. So I spent the entire day running around and tossing things back into the ocean while the people who were doing the rescuing before continued their jobs”
“That explains why you rushed to the baths.” Shishen said.
“And you saintess? What did you do?” Narissa asked, clearly joking about her new title.
“Argh! Stop with the saintess stuff. I know how a saint lives and I have no plans on becoming one. I also can’t use ‘Divine healing' so if people keep calling me that, someone might come after all of you for saying stuff you shouldn’t.” She said, really seriously.
“What do you mean?” Everyone asked in some form.
“Saints are people who can use ‘Divine Energy’ to use some really powerful but restricted spells. Saints can only do one thing with their ‘Divine Energy’ and that is how they get their titles like the Sword Saint, The Healing Saint, The Fire Saint, etc… If that was all it would be well and good but to be a saint you have to follow a god or something really fanatically and the church you follow won’t let you do what you want anymore, you are pretty much theirs for use.”
“Why?” Everyone, again, asked in some way.
“’Divine Energy’ grows with faith. The more people believe in the god or whatever the saint believes, the stronger he gets. That’s why you lose all your freedom when you are a Saint. You can’t do anything that might go against your faith, even for a moment.”
“That kind of life sounds really restricted.” Moon said.
“More than you can imagine. I actually know a Saint. The Wood Saint. He has to spend all day, everyday planting and taking care of trees.” Shishen explains.
“Can’t he just leave?” Klaws asked.
“His temple wouldn’t allow it, not without another Saint to take his place. I’m not saying this because I think less of you Klaws but you are too poor to know about religion like we do.” Everyone at the table nods in agreement.
“Not going to fight you on that, but can you explain?” Klaws asked.
“Let me do that.” Katia said. “To give you a really basic resume of the situation with religions. The powers that be, be they Kingdoms, Emperors, etc… to their best to suppress any kind of religion that actually believes in something or someone that might not be beneficial to them specifically. As for the why? It is that religion is the easiest path to power but the one with the direst consequences should you ever lose said power.”
“What do you mean?” Klaws asked, really confused.
“Faith is something really easy to destroy. It’s like building a castle on top of sand. Sure, if you have enough it might serve as a base but pretty much anything can just whiter it away and a good blow might just finish any chance of saving whatever is on top of that sand. I bet Mia can make even the Fire Saint question her beliefs.”
“Why is that and who is this fire saint?”
“She was a princess a good time ago, around 200 years ago, and she believes in the cleansing fire or whatever, that will burn clean all impurities of the world. Her life mission is to marry into a Royal Family of some sort and convert a whole populace to her faith. Her powers allow her to burn anything so she burns her old age away and stays young. If not for the fact that Saints can’t use mana, she would be one of the most powerful people in the world, as she is basically immortal.”
“And what does that have to do with Mia?”
“She can create and control fire to such a great extent that I don’t think there is anyone in the world who can shape as easily as fire as Mia can. And since fire - in its pure form - is not something most people find attractive or wondrous, she can’t really put on a show like most other Saints to get a crowd.”
“And the reason I don’t know anything about all of this is because I am poor?” Klaws asked.
“More or less. When you mingle in the high circles you tend to hear about the various saints and religions around trying to worm their ways into somewhere to get more power. That is the reason personal power is pushed so much, almost everywhere. If you can believe in something for power might as well believe in yourself to be able to get as strong as you need..”
“Ok. I am done eating, I am going to sleep. Didn’t expect a history lesson here, not that I mind it.” Klaws said as he got up and went to his room.
The others just said goodnight and allowed Klaws to go. They would soon go to sleep too. What Klaws said stayed in their minds for a while, in a good way. Some normalcy was a good thing in this place. Teaching Klaws and Mia some of the stuff that was pretty much taken for granted for them that it had become the norm on their everyday. They could just start teaching about those topics without really thinking about it.
After everyone finished, a few maids of the house took care of the dishes. Everyone went to sleep as they were all tired, both mentally and physically. Well, except Mia, she had her own problems.