Chapter: 638

The saintess division was another crafty name made by the political class; a most basic example of weaponized language which coincidentally fooled most people.

The division, while named the saintess division, was filled with women who were anything but saints. It was simply another flashy, honorable-sounding name used to trick the peasants.

Sure, they wore shining white armour and said all the right things in public, but during variant, witch, and mage hunts, they were the furthest thing from a saint.

Nothing was off the table for them, and nothing was immoral: seduction, poison, torture, soul-burning, manipulation, human replacement – and this was what they did to innocent peasants as they searched for clues to carry out their mission.

The saintesses who were each like demons when visiting towns, and they even mage hunters would seem like valiant noble knights. Most variants were often more preferable.

Conversations about the saintess’s ranged from “Oh, they are so beautiful. They’re like angels here to protect us…” to “If a saintess comes to your town, just leave. Abandon everything.”

In another time, in another part of the kingdom, a villager had said, “Oh, all the mage hunters did was break down your door and break your nose? How very kind. A saintess came to my house in the middle of the night while we were asleep. She stole my child and replaced them with a humanoid golem. I only found out a few weeks later after the spell ended when the mana ran out… My child – at least I thought it was my child – turned to a pile of fucking stones while we were eating breakfast. All because I gave a variant directions one time… The worst part is, if I tell anyone, I’m made to look like a complete fucking lunatic.”

And no one would have listened to such a far-fetched story.

Suppressing the truth about these white armour-clad women, delivering lofty speeches, and using names like ‘saints’, were all part of the useful propaganda. In the human kingdom of Astrata, even simple speech was made into a powerful weapon, as powerful as any spell.


~The Third Academy, Mirror Reality Thirty-Four~

Matheson was sitting in a different room to the dark prison he first found himself in. Functionally it was the exact same: no windows, doors or anything of the sort. The only difference was that this room was square instead of round, and came with a stone table, some wooden chairs, as well as a luminous orb embedded into the ceiling.

A small upgrade as now he could see better – however he couldn’t move.

His body was encased in a black cocoon of some strange silk he had never seen before, and it seemed to be sticking itself to the wooden chair he was currently sitting on.

“Probably the work of more variants.” he thought, as he strained his muscles against the black silk, each time it dug into his skin and threatened to lacerate it.

After some time to think in the darkness, he had realized that he had been kidnapped by variants as he connected the dots – though to call it a kidnapping was inaccurate as he had willingly jumped right into their clutches when he entered the portal.

Still, he had no clue what was going on, only that something grand was happening all around him and it didn’t involve him; it was like he was in the eye of a storm.

A small part of him still believed there was a powerful treasure to be won, which is why both the variants and the mage hunters were at Losla in the first place, but as for their success in finding the treasure, he wasn’t sure.

Either way, he was caught. There was no way he was getting it. Right now, his life was all that mattered.

For all he knew, that woman with the gravity magic could still be fighting off mage hunters outside the portal as she waited for something.

For now though that didn’t matter; he was sitting quietly in the room, silently waiting for wherever would happen next.

Once again, his fate was in the hands on others.

–

Little did Matheson know that he was being watched from another location.

Norgrim scratched his chin, wondering what he would do as he gazed at a floating projection of Matheson, “So, Anya said he’s an exiled noble… he can’t be worth much then… Did you check his class?”