Level Up Saintess

Thankfully, after morning prayer came breakfast time. Chella wordlessly brought me to the kitchen and started grabbing up a loaf of bread and a bowl of some kind of stew, and then handed it to me before getting her own. I’ve got to respect the fact that she clearly doesn’t like having to take care of me but does it anyway, even if she expressly tries not to talk to me. At some point while we were eating our terribly bland food, the other priests even came over to say hi to me, and yet she still went out of her way to only speak to them and never talk to me. It’s amazing to watch, really. It’s no skin off my nose though, so long as she doesn’t try to bully me or anything.

I won’t lie, the other priests told me their names and I totally didn’t keep them in my head. If anything, I gave them nicknames to remember them by instead. The woman is ‘the lady priest’, the first guy who spoke is ‘the balding priest’, and the second guy is ‘the quiet priest’. Don’t get me wrong, the last priest was really nice, he just didn’t seem like he had a lot to say compared to the other two. In fact, it really seemed like all three of them were going out of their way to be nice to me, and maybe they were even kind of eyeing me up a bit too much. Seems like the head priest might have said something to them about how I claimed to be a Saintess. Maybe they’re just curious, or maybe they’re trying to keep an eye on me and see if I’m lying or not. Can’t say I blame them either way.

After the awkward meet and greet session that I really wasn’t very prepared for, it was finally time for chores. Apparently it was up to Chella and I, the apprentices, to clean the steps and the altar in the chapel. I was amazed when I was told that that’s all we had to clean today. I was completely prepared for them to say something insane like cleaning all the floors in the entire church or something, but when I said that out loud, the passing priests laughed and said that we were studying how to be priests, not how to be cleaners. Seems we’re only supposed to clean the holy things, and everything else is outsourced to the local talents; The church is large enough and there are few enough people here that it would be hard to do anything but cleaning all day if that weren’t the case.

I feel very lucky that that’s true.

Luckily, washing off the steps and cleaning and shining the altar was actually quite the light work; It barely took an hour and a half to complete everything. In a rare display, Chella actually talked to me once we were done and said that I had free time until sunset now, and then left me. I really liked how her voice sounded; It’s a shame that she doesn’t like to talk to me. It’s also a shame that she booked it away so fast that I couldn’t ask her anything, but I suppose she wouldn’t have wanted to answer any of it anyway. Instead, I spotted the Head Priest sitting on one of the cushions in the floor they used as pews, quietly moving the beads on one of his many jewelry pieces. Was it like a rosary or prayer beads or something? I wonder if I was supposed to have one of those on too. Like, maybe it would amplify my holy power or something? Idunno, maybe I’m just thinking stupid thoughts.

“...Can I help you?”

Oh no, I guess I was staring for too long. It’s fine though, I wanted his attention anyway, and I didn’t want to interrupt him if he was like, praying or something. I’m sure that’s considered very rude. We're in a church, after all.

“Yes, actually, um… Is there something like a library here?”

I figure I should probably learn a little about how society works here before I go outside and just act crazy in front of everyone. Maybe I’m a Saintess, but until everyone knows that, I don’t need to do anything that’ll get me burned as a witch or the like. Knowledge is power, and at the very least I need to learn the proper words to that damn prayer that we did earlier.

Instead of replying, the Head Priest got up and led me to a room in the opposite direction of where my room was located. It seems they were indeed hiding a nice library in this place, one the size of at least two classrooms.

“Heinrik can help you. I must return to the front.”

And with that, the Head Priest left.

As he said, the balding priest had been sitting there reading when we’d first arrived, but he sprung up to help me nice and quickly. Seems he was usually the one who took care of this library, so he knew what was in it really well. I asked him in what I can only assume was the most clumsy and sketchy way what books they had about Saintesses and the church, and he only looked at me a teensy bit weirdly before he set off gathering all the applicable material. He handed me 4 books, all varying in size and thickness. My selection of reading choices were:

‘Saintesses, a history’,

‘The Goddess and her Saintesses’,

‘The history of the church of the light’, and

‘Proper church etiquette: A beginner priest’s guide’.

A quick skim of the shortest book, ‘The Goddess, and her Saintesses’, made it easy to tell that it was basically a small story book for children. I can’t possibly understand why such a thing was in the church’s library, but like, who knows? Maybe they read stories to children sometimes, or maybe they just like collecting any book that has something to do with their religion in it. The only bit of information that I gleaned from my very brief flip through of it was that people believed that the Saintesses were the Goddess’s chosen daughters, and that every few hundred years they arrived to fight against the sudden rise of evil monsters and protect the innocent. Honestly, it made it sound like I’d become some kind of magical girl, which immediately made me not take it very seriously.

Even though I desperately want to know what kind of mess I’ve gotten myself into, that little story book is making me not look forward to reading more about the other Saintesses just yet. Let’s try reading the other two first. At least the beginner’s guide looks like it’s more on the short side. Both of the history books look intimidatingly thick, and I’m honestly a little afraid of opening them, so I’m happy I have this one here to kind of ease myself in.

~~~

It’s been almost the whole day it seems. A part of me feels like I’ve wasted my second day here, but so long as I keep reminding myself that I learned a lot, I feel a bit better about it. And I did, in fact, learn a good bit of important stuff. It’s not just something I’ve been saying to myself just to make me feel better, I promise.

The etiquette book seemed like it was made for young kids to help them adjust to the new lifestyle, which, hey, I wasn’t too different than, honestly. It was weirdly enough laid out like a diary from a young boy who’d recently joined the church, and listed out his daily duties and everyday life in a pretty non-boring way. It even had the morning prayer listed out in it, which I read like 5 times in the hopes that I could vaguely remember it for tomorrow. I also learned that the priests, including the Head Priest, took turns waiting in the chapel so that if anyone wandered in seeking healing or curing, someone was always available. This didn’t come for free, of course, so people really only rushed over if it was something on the urgent side, so it was really important that the priests were always ready. It also provided some nice revenue outside of the typical donations.

Learning that fact really helped to explain why the seemingly book-loving balding priest had to leave the library for a few hours and then came back. It must have been his shift.

Weirdly enough, besides cleaning the holier bits of the church and a few other odd jobs, practicing and learning new holy spells, keeping the knowledge, and holding sermons during the midday and at night, there wasn’t really too much listed as things that the priests had to do. Just like how I had this big pocket of time right now, it seemed that the other priests were also left to their own devices for the most part. In fact, apprentices like Chella and I had even more time available, supposedly for the purpose of learning and practicing the beginner holy rites and healing spells. Seems you could only become a full fledged priest after either 9 years of serving the Goddess, or after proving yourself to have a high enough proficiency in both holy magic and prayer.

Reading that book, as well as skimming through the terribly boring book on the history of the church, it all left me with one very important realization: The church here is not obligated to do any charity work. They can

Do you know who the only holy person who’s expected to perform charity is? The Saintess. It’s written that only the Saintess would be so charitable and noble. It’s apparently some kind of cosmic rule that Saintesses would always offer up their help and services for free. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’ve suddenly become everyone’s errand girl or something, it’s not like they can just order me around. In fact, being the Goddess’s chosen daughter, it means I’m actually ranked higher up than any king or pope or anything, so no one can tell me what to do; It’s just that Saintesses are supposedly compelled to help the needy and weak. Which, you know, that makes sense if they’re all in the same position as me, getting experience from helping people. Maybe they were also all threatened with death if they don’t level up. I’m sure I’d jump at any juicy bit of experience that came my way too if it meant that I’d get to not suffer in hell forever. Who wouldn’t?

It’s thrilling to know that no one’s allowed to screw with me if they don’t want to anger the Goddess, but until I prove that I’m a Saintess, it’s looking like I’m going to be stuck being a suspicious girl at the bottom of the totem pole for a while.

Honestly there’s still a whole lot of things that I don’t really understand about this place, but there is at least one more riddle that I solved while I was busy wiling the day away in this library. It seems that this place doesn’t run on a 24 hour time span? Actually, the days here are only 20 hours long, and after having to embarrassingly ask the balding priest, he told me that there were 410 days in the year. I guess that means the months are each longer? Who knows if it’s even 12 months to a year here still. Crazy.

Oh, yeah, and I also read a bit of the Saintess history book, although I didn’t really make it very far. For the most part it was just very repetitive. Like, oh wow, did they all do charitable acts and rescue people from monsters? Oh, and they were able to perform incredible miracles? Actually I shouldn’t make fun of the miracles bit, some of the Saintesses actually really pulled off some crazy magical stuff. For instance, one of them created a fountain in the capital that never ever runs out of pure, clean water, and there was another one that created a holy sword that would immediately purify any evil thing that touched its blade. There was even one who made a healing relic that could cure any illness of the person who touched it, although I think it said that that one's been lost. Seems like there’s a good handful of those kinds of special Saintess-made relics floating around the place. Wonder if that means I’ll ever get the chance to make one. I’m not sure what it is that I’d even want to make, you know?

There were also a few other small facts I picked up as I skimmed through the book, like, for instance, the youngest Saintess died at the age of 18, whereas the oldest lived to be about 58. There were all kinds of varied death ages for the Saintesses, the most common ones seeming to be in their late 20s. I make it sound like there were hundreds of Saintesses that I pulled this data from, but it seems that there’s actually only been around a little under 30 of us. This world is supposedly only 6400 or so years old, so I guess that loosely lines up with how often the Saintesses are said to have appeared. It’s amazing that they were able to keep track of each of the Saintesses so well even from the beginning; I mean, each of the listed Saintesses had a picture of them at the start of their chapters. Okay, I say ‘picture’ but I really mean a drawing. Still, pretty amazing.

Oh, and, I guess most of the Saintesses looked really pretty? Like, maybe it’s just the way that the artist drew them, but they were all pretty damn eye-catching, at least from my perspective. Even the not overly pretty ones were at least still attractive or unique in their own special ways. Maybe some of them started off looking as plain as me, but… I doubt that all of them did. Anyways, it’s not like I’m here to be a model, so it’s not like it matters, but… I think if I stood out as much as them, people might take me a little more seriously when I said I’m a Saintess.

Oh well, it is what it is.