Their shock was understandable, since my suggestion would steer us dramatically off course from our initial plans.
“The whole idea of me only having minor blessings of the Goddess just doesn’t work,” I explained. “If the Goddess—Celes, that is—has blessed me in any way, shape, or form, that’s no longer considered ‘minor.’ The Temple would love to call me a great saint and use me for publicity. A girl who’s beloved by the Goddess would be very useful for aristocrats too, even if my miracles are less effective than what a physician or apothecary could accomplish. And they might assume that when Celes protects me from danger, she’ll also protect whoever is nearby.”
That was the only possible explanation for the strange behavior of the lord and townspeople. If that was the standard mode of thought for the people of this world, a “girl who has minor blessings from the Goddess” had a far greater impact than I’d imagined. If I stuck with that backstory, I’d be taken straight to the royal palace or temple as soon as I stepped foot in the capital.
“But aren’t you the one who came up with your background information? You said you spent years in this world and have a good grasp of how things are here,” Kyoko said.
“Hmph, it’s hard to admit mistakes made in my youth,” I said.
“Oh, shut it!” they yelled in unison.
“Anyway, aren’t things only gonna get worse if you power up your blessing?” Kyoko asked.
“No, because publicly, we’re gonna stick with the story that my blessings are pretty weak. We’ll only tell a select few people about the upgrade. The general public should still see me as a pitiful priestess or saint, but to certain influential people, I’ll be considered highly dangerous. That way, the higher-ups who know about my ‘powered-up’ self should step in to stop anyone who tries to mess with me and provide other kinds of support when needed. When it comes down to it, I could make a sad face and say something like, ‘I suppose another continent is gonna end up destroyed...’” I explained.
“Do you have no heart?!” they shouted.
Anyway, we’d decided on a change of course. I was originally supposed to go from a stray priestess to a saint, then a great saint, but now, I was gonna play a useless priestess for the most part, but would at times be a saint favored by the Goddess to retain influence in the royal capital—no, this entire country.
“It would’ve been a shame to let the renown I’d gained as Edith the stray priestess go to waste, so we’ll maintain that public image for the commoners. Also, Edith, Can, and Salette are strangers. Our original plan was for us to move forward as if we didn’t know each other even in the royal capital, and we were supposed to interact for the first time at some sort of event early into our stay there, then become friends and eventually rent out a place to live together.”
Indeed, we hadn’t intended to go there as friends who already knew each other, but as strangers who recently met in the royal capital. It would’ve been far too suspicious if we were already close from the get-go. I mean, any idiot would think there was a link between us if three girls around the same age, each with special abilities or rare items, appeared in the same country at the same time. That was why we needed to construct a scenario where the three of us met by chance—no one would question us being together from then on. Without that step, we wouldn’t be able to make contact with each other during our entire stay in the royal capital.
“Well, I don’t have any other ideas, so do whatever you want,” Reiko said. “Worst-case scenario, we could start all over again in another country or on another continent. We could bring the kids with us, no questions asked, if we get Kyoko’s mini cruiser out and tell them it’s a new type of ship without a sail or something.”
Wait...what is she saying?
“Um... Reiko? You do realize the kids know about Kyoko’s dinghy, right? We all rode it back to Little Silver after we met up with Kyoko, remember?” I pointed out.
“Oh...”
Even Reiko slipped up sometimes despite being the smartest of us three. But by combining our wits, power, and courage, there was nothing we couldn’t handle!
We’d arrived in the royal capital—or, technically, just outside of it. The capital was a fortified city shielded by walls, and we were in a long line at the gates to get in. It wasn’t as if they kept records of every citizen who came and left, and we could’ve just snuck in with Reiko’s magic or by using Kyoko’s mini vessel at night, but I didn’t want to trouble them over something so minor. Plus, it was better for us to actually walk through the gates, because doing so might be important for us in the future.
After our meeting, we’d returned to Little Silver and given some attention to the kids, who were moments from exploding, thereby managing to pacify them. We had to spend time with them regularly or the bomb icon gradually grew bigger— Wait, what was this, a dating sim from back in the day?
Anyway, I spent about a week showering the children with attention, then came to the royal capital alone, leaving Reiko behind. Meanwhile, Kyoko had gone back to her shop because she didn’t want to be away for too long when she wasn’t even needed yet. I hoped her employees would be able to run things on their own soon. She’d told me that she ideally wanted the manager she’d hired to stock normal products through normal routes and cut back her supply of special products to a minimum. That way, they’d learn to run the business without using Kyoko’s support and cheat items. She’d been thinking about the future in her own way too.
Now, there was one thing I had to do at the royal capital first and foremost: it was time to go where orphans who weren’t in orphanages hung out. It was my job as a stray priestess to help orphans! But apparently, things weren’t so simple.
“Name, status, and your purpose for coming here?” a bored-looking gatekeeper said when my turn came up. I mean, he had to ask the same thing hundreds—or even thousands of times. I couldn’t blame him for being curt.
In a world without photographs, it was pretty much impossible to tell if someone was a wanted criminal unless they had some standout characteristics. It wasn’t as if spies from other countries had cheat sheets with secret codes on them, communication devices, portable pen-shaped guns, or anything. There was no way to catch them even if questioned. There weren’t any passports or travel permits, and a gatekeeper couldn’t determine if a handwritten document was forged or not. So, there was a gatekeeper because they couldn’t just let people freely go in and out of the royal capital unchecked, but people were generally let through unless they were overtly suspicious. They just didn’t have time to carefully check every single one of such a large number of people trying to go through the gate.
The “status” that the gatekeeper had asked about wasn’t referring to social classes like nobility or royalty; instead, he was asking whether I was a merchant, hunter, farmer, or something like that—which made sense, since nobles and royalty wouldn’t be lining up with the rest of the commoners.
“I am Edith, a free priestess,” I answered. “I am in the middle of a missionary and service trip, and have come here to rest and to raise funds.”
The Temple’s influence reached far and wide in the royal capital, so I wasn’t planning on doing my work as a free priestess too publicly. Still, it would be completely normal for someone like me to visit the royal capital to gather information, rest, and meet up with sponsors and patrons.
As an aside, the title of “stray priestess” was something I called myself in a self-deprecating sort of way, and the term was only used by others when they meant it as an insult. Technically, priestesses who weren’t affiliated with the Temple were known as free priestesses, though it was pretty rare for anyone to use that phrase unless it was in an official setting.
“Oh, you’re a stray—I mean, a free priestess. Welcome. Take your time in the royal capital, uh...Edith? Ah! Well, I’ve been told to interview free priestesses and traveling merchants about what’s going on in other regions and report on my findings. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to ask a few questions in the station, please...”
Huh.
Priestesses were generally respected despite being commoners, so I was being treated normally at first, but he seemed to have panicked and then became even more polite. Maybe he was a devout believer, he’d felt guilty for taking up my time, or he was being nice because he didn’t want to deal with me being uncooperative.
Anyway, I understood where they were coming from. Traveling merchants and free priestesses had professions that required visiting various villages and interacting with the local people. It was much easier for us to get candid responses from villagers who may have refused to respond to investigations by officials and soldiers. If a politician wanted to hear the true thoughts of the locals, this wasn’t a bad method and it was quite respectable considering many aristocrats and royal families had no interest in the lowly masses...unless the administration was so bad that they were only looking to get intel out of fear of uprisings and rebellions, that is. But that didn’t seem to be the case from what I’d seen so far, so there was probably no need to worry about that.
“Hey, what are you doing? Hurry up and follow up on that report!” the person who was escorting me said to someone who was presumably a low-ranking official.
“Huh? O-Oh, yes, sir! Right away!” the man replied and ran off in a hurry.
It sucked being at the bottom of the totem pole no matter what world you lived in.
Afterward, the leader of the gatekeepers—that is, the highest-ranking supervisor of the few people manning this gate—asked me a bunch of questions. He wanted to know which route I’d taken here, whether I’d noticed anything funny in the villages along the way, and if any unusual events and things that seemed out of the ordinary had occurred. He also asked about my personal information, like my age, place of birth, my family, favorite food, marital status, etc.
What is this, a formal marriage interview?! Or maybe he’s interested in me... Hmm.
Anyway, the wait time was getting ridiculous. I didn’t know how many free priestesses came through here, but they surely had a ton of traveling merchants visiting all the time. Had they been spending this long interviewing each one? And did they ask some middle-aged dude about his favorite food and whether they were married or not? What was going on?!