"Can you handle it, my lady?" The other noble looked at her pale face and the beads of sweat on her forehead with concern as he approached her.

Rowena didn't answer, her body on fire. It wasn't about "handling it", for her, it was about not feeling like she had to handle it. Every fiber in her body screamed for her to jump the fence and sprint into action.

'You can't do anything in your current state,' Pan reminded her of her shortcomings.

'I know that myself.' She would end up getting in the way.

She turned around to see if there was a spot high up where she could at least see what was going on. Not knowing and only hearing the noises made her uncomfortable.

They had brought the salt with them, but that guaranteed nothing. She hadn't even spoken to her brother before he went in.

Of course, she believed that they weren't weak either, but there was never absolute certainty in anything regarding humanity's war with the Visitors.

"Hey," Lucan van Belheim started talking again, and it was beginning to get on her nerves, "when you sneaked that glance at the treaty with the Church, what were you thinking when you said those words?"

He wouldn't repeat them, but it was obvious what he was playing at. She blinked, furrowing her brow, feeling thrown off.

"Isn't it obvious? It was fraudulent." What was the parchment that had indirectly brought them here?

For better or worse, there was a time, a few hundred years ago, when many things changed on the North-Western Continent. One of them was that the Church claimed rights to all the texts that documented the art of obtaining and working with Mana. In exchange, they made a vow to an entity that was apparently hardly documented.

A Numbered, as it would seem by the nature of the ability displayed, made them vow on the value of their lives that they would keep their door open to all. Well, at least those they deemed worthy of God's gift.

Since the wording was off, they could decide who they considered worthy or not. Sure, it wasn't that easy to weed someone out, but it was possible by finding reasons to call them pagans. And there was the problem that Lodden had fallen out with the Aurora Empire about two hundred years ago, though she was not exactly aware of what had happened, but they clearly did not like the Lodden Imperial family.

When Lucan didn't say anything, just kept looking at her with a complicated expression, she rolled her eyes and turned to him.

"They really didn't like your Emperor. He was labeled a pagan, though not yet a heretic. In exchange for the rights of the Imperial family and their already sworn knights to enter the Vatican and study," she said, sounding irate, "they would build churches in Lodden. The rights to fifty percent of the attributed profits of a silver mine and an iron ore mine would be theirs for as long as their contract lasted."

Four churches in the whole Empire. Did that sound enough?

'It's like playing Cities: Skylines. If the city is burning, you want a firefighter. If you want a firefighter, you build a fire department. Then the firefighters will just spawn by themselves.' In other words, what it meant to "build churches" was to bring in priests.

A church was complete with at least ten clerics of ordinary rank and one High Priest. When she thought about it, Arlen had at least five High Priests and a fluctuating number of ordinary clergymen in churches in smaller cities, and the main temple in Avarinth regularly had the Pope in person, though mostly because of the Saintess.

In Lodden, she could imagine, there was not a single man above the minimum required to be in charge of those churches. And she was right in her assumption.

'They were pigs,' Lucan thought, 'they only did the minimum required to fulfill their contracts, despite receiving all that money, and the animosity is evident.'

Even people marked as pagans from other nations had the right to learn, yet they didn't. They could only work with what they had gathered and passed on by word of mouth.

Without being taught, it was difficult. The first and second generations had to stop teaching their knowledge in order to abide by the act of handing everything over to the hands of the Church.

So the best they had was lost, and everything else had to be accumulated anew.

Their ancestors were stupid enough to agree to this all over the world, just because one person with a special ability held them to their word. One person had to say yes, but the entire populace was under the spell. He couldn't quite fathom how powerful the being responsible had to be.

But the records were pretty quiet about such information, because Numbered weren't exactly common even now, but two hundred years ago, when the world was calmer, people would have been suspicious of what was essentially an enemy. The first Saintess was different, if only because of the image she had created.

"You would have been better off if you hadn't gotten their help and had secured medical assistance from doctors instead." Hundreds of doctors would cost them at least 1 Gold a month to work. Plus 1 Gold each for supplies and pleasantries.

Lucan knew that a middle-class family of three could live well for an entire year on about 85 to 90 Silver, including taxes. They usually calculated 1 Gold for good measure, which meant 100 Silver.

If they took about two hundred doctors and distributed them throughout the Empire, it would cost them about 400 Gold in a month. A ridiculous amount. 4,800 Gold per year - or 4 Platinum coins and 800 Gold, if one wanted to argue about the big numbers - that wasn't easy.

That's what he might say. But the reality was that they were losing about 1 Platinum every other month in the mines that they had partially given up the rights to, as well as the cost of more labor from the Vatican.

And even after they paid, they wouldn't work for the Imperial family, but mostly worked outside, supposedly helping the people who were "innocent sheep".

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According to this calculation, they wouldn't make a loss at all, especially since he freely calculated with a safety margin.

Besides, if everyone could be treated for free for most diseases and ailments, which the priests were supposed to provide but came unequipped to do, then the tax rate could safely go up a bit while the people's standard of living went up as well as their productivity.

If it was just that, yes, they could live well even with the costs presented. The problem was that a doctor couldn't help with the Visitors, so even crunching those numbers was a wasted effort.

"I know what you're thinking, but you don't need the priests of the Church." As they stood there witnessing something life-changing, he knew what she meant.

She might not have had the figures for the approximate cost of living in Lodden, but there was no need to go over them. They weren't going to keep losing money, they needed to get new forces through Arlen anyway, and it would give them a more prosperous middle and lower class.

It was something to mull over. Frankly, he hadn't expected to be challenged like that when he'd asked her the question. It was a means to distract her, though he hadn't expected there to be much behind it.

'I wouldn't say it's the most out of the box thinking I've ever heard, in fact it was an idea I've had in my head before,' the nineteen year old said, "but it begs the question if it's something to be awed by or to fret about?

It was a fact that no one else had raised the option yet, but a pampered young lady with a bad reputation from an Empire massively supported by the Church had arrived at the thought within a day of her arrival, if her comment at the table was anything to go by. The Emperor was still clinging to the old agreement, too afraid to let go of the Church even now.

"They don't help us," he had said before, "they're parasites. Just like the nobles who cling to them."

While he was lost in thought, Rowena drew her own conclusions. 'Now that I think about it, it makes more sense now why the smallest nation on the entire planet was the one to call out Arlen for their co-operation with Lodden, even as it had failed.' She remembered how Kanaria, seemingly with the Kingdom of Edengard behind it, had challenged the Saintess in her quest to aid everyone and demanded compensation. 'I wonder if the Church was behind that as well. I mean, saying it now makes it all sound so obvious, right?'

'Are you talking to me?'

'No, I'm talking to myself.'

'I see.'

She wanted to slap her hand across her face, but Lucan was still standing next to her, even if his mind seemed empty at the moment. 'Yes, Pan. I asked for your opinion.'

'Oh. I see,' he repeated himself, 'I can't say for sure.'

'Arlen is trying to keep the political climate balanced, which is true. They communicate that, even within their walls. Within their walls, where the church rats are absolutely everywhere.'

'Are you saying that they, more than the other kingdoms, are afraid that the Church will retaliate if they go out of their way to help the Lodden Empire?'

'Bingo.'

'Hm,' she heard, 'it seems plausible, indeed.'

However, if an important member of their Empire was part of Lodden, even the Church couldn't lift a finger. But was the attempt enough for them to provoke another kingdom to condemn the action?

She just realized that most of her misunderstandings in this world were due to lack of information. That was why she hated being left out of the loop so much.

'How much does the Church of Aurora hate the Lodden Empire, and why anyway?' Her eyes wandered naturally over to her right. 'He seemed awfully sure of himself.'

She thought he must actually be a diligent scholar, unlike herself, who had completely different reasons for being there. Perhaps he would know?

"Say," she started, getting his attention, then a loud crash suddenly made them look at the fence in front of them simultaneously.

The iron bulged slightly, clearly denting the thick material, as the entire barricade shook violently, striking fear into the hearts of most bystanders.

Rowena swallowed, forgetting the words she wanted to say. "Didn't you say something about soldiers standing by?"

They both looked around, but there were only the remaining officials. "You must go back to the town," he ordered them, voice loud and clear, his back straight with a bit of tension, "get the guard. Make them hurry with the priest."

"What priest?" the lavender-haired lady asked on cue.

"There should have been one here. The guards from the area were supposed to get him so he could cure the soil in the mine by blessing it after it was cleared."

"Wouldn't that be the same guy who screwed up the blessing in the first place?" She didn't need to ask how the mine ended up like that, even with a priest on site.

They probably only blessed superficially, which opened up a hole once the shaft was deepened. A priest, or anyone with a sense for Mana, was able to know if a space held high residue or not.

So they could tell where blessings were needed and where they weren't. Unfortunately, if they didn't do their job properly, this method wouldn't be successful.

'Tale as old as time.' But what about the men who went in? "You must go with them, they seem too scared to follow through."

It was at that moment they heard a man scream, it was a voice Rowena had never heard before, yet it shook her to the marrow. It was coming from down in the cave, so something had escaped. The blessing in front of the cave must have evaporated by now.

"Maybe you are right." He looked around and started to leave, but turned back to her. "But what about you?"

"My brother is in there, and so are my guards. I cannot leave."

"It's not safe, the fence might collapse. We don't know what's going on inside."

"It's fine. I will run if need be." She seemed so determined that her hands had stopped shaking.

For a second, he looked at her, then back at the iron wall, and back at her. Eventually, he put a hand on her shoulder in acknowledgement, nodded at her, and then ran. Sometimes he had to make a choice.

Of course, as soon as he was gone and the field seemed empty, she ran. On the way, she picked up a dried branch from a tree that grew in a small fertile area nearby.

As she climbed up the granite rock formation into which the mine had been dug, she reached under her skirt to grab a few things. At the top, she balanced herself on the iron fence, quickly stepped off a thick pillar that connected the slightly thinner walls, and found her final destination across from the entrance to the mine itself.

There was one thing she had done before coming here: When the servant came to fasten her dress, she bought some silverware from her. That, and some thin rope that the servant used to fix lumber or linen in their small storage room.

It looked terrible, but a butter knife tied to a branch was the best she could do for now. She had used another knife to carve a nock into the other end of the branch to secure it to the string. So she tapped her bow with a spark of Mana, causing it to unfold in her hand.

She had to strengthen the muscles in her back, especially around her shoulder blade, to pull around two hundred pounds. The string bit painfully into her skin, even with the cheap finger savers on it, since she didn't have a glove or a tab.

With the makeshift arrow resting on the length of her thumb, she let her Mana flow into the back of the knife as it touched her skin.

There was something near the entrance to the mineshaft that was watching her, who was far above it. It looked like a plaque taking shape. A puddle of black goo, moving lethargically, like a slime with an incurable disease.

She concentrated, sweat accumulating on her skin from the effort she put into drawing and holding her bow steady as she spread her Mana and then reabsorbed it.

It was hard to do with her current ability. "Here goes nothing."

A hissing sound was heard as her branch cut through the air, hammering the silver knife loaded with her Mana into the granite behind the flabby Grade 1 Visitor.

It screamed as it turned to ash. Its Core had been shattered.

"Hah, fucker." A smile crept up her face, only to fall as a voice called out from behind her.

"Lady Rowena?" Confused words, paired with an even more confused face.

He had come back alone after making sure that the surrounding towns and villages would be alerted and the priest would be brought in without fail. It didn't feel right to leave only a young woman at the scene when he might have been able to help.

As a sudden jolt nearly knocked her over, the dented part of the fence suddenly fell down as she saw something crash into it and vanish like a lie.

This couldn't get any worse. "A Grade 3?" She hadn't even noticed its existence.