The Corruption Sickness was a condition entirely without remedy for a conventional physician, and it remained entirely without remedy for someone able to use healing magic.
The only means of prevention was to make certain that every single time you fell asleep, you did so within an environment protected by a 【Warding Stone】.
Because no second solution existed, it was easy enough for Seraphia to work out how those 【Merchant Nobles】 controlled ordinary people in this Kiden Federation.
Roughly speaking: the 【city】 welcomes everyone to come and live here, we discriminate against no one, whatever your trade or your origins you may settle in the city and obtain citizenship, but prices in the city run at somewhere around five hundred thousand marks for a loaf of bread.
Since there is no way to live anywhere outside the city, then even at a million marks a loaf, the ordinary people of the Kiden Federation must obediently produce the money and buy it.
Set against that, this feudal religious state controlled by the Church of the Holy Name looked positively 【progressive】.
"The carriage... is so slow."
After she had finished discussing their destination with Shu, and had drifted through a thoroughly bored round of woolgathering, it was the sensation in her backside that dragged her back to reality.
In her previous life she had lived in the modern world, where both the quality of the vehicles and the quality of the roads were vastly better than a carriage on a broken road. And as for her current body, Seraphia, who had not been born into this world very long ago at all, had been able from the moment of her birth to leave the ground on her own wings, unbound by gravity.
Put those two together, and her opinion of this jolting carriage had gone rather past the level of mild complaint.
"Not used to carriages? Just bear with it a little longer. Once we reach the transport hub outside the Holy City, we can transfer to an airship and travel to the Kiden Federation. Since we're taking a route reserved for the Church, it'll cost us essentially nothing out of our funds."
"Oh..."
Transport in this world was rather more developed than she had imagined, though it did not look as though it was meant for ordinary people.
"I'm going to fly outside for a while. I don't much feel like riding any more."
"Um... there's something I need to discuss with you, Miss Seraphia."
As Shu said this, his gaze drifted involuntarily towards Seraphia's chest once again. Objects of great mass will always generate attraction; this too is a form of universal gravitation.
"What is it?"
"The Church of the Holy Name has a great deal of influence throughout the human world, and Seraphia's image is extremely 【authoritative】. We'd draw a lot of attention."
"...I'll ask the Church to prepare me some suitable clothing as a disguise."
The request was reasonable enough. If they were to be active as adventurers later on, drawing too much attention would make it inconvenient to get up to anything shady—
In her previous life, when Seraphia had played games, being an adventurer was only ever her side job. Her main occupation was master thief, the whole point being to empty out the shops.
And beyond that, this so-called 【Holy Wing regalia】 was an out-and-out s*x-shop outfit. On somebody else, this skylight design was something she would have appreciated in earnest; on herself, she would respectfully pass. Unfortunately the church people would not agree to her changing out of it under any circumstances, saying it carried some special significance. Seraphia thought this lot had been eaten into by the providence of a harem game as well. No decent household dresses the public face of its own church like this!
Come to think of it, Seraphia had noticed the fellow's gaze drifting to her chest again while he was raising the matter. Surely he hadn't made the suggestion because he had noticed she was rather stuck with this outfit herself?
Unexpectedly considerate of him.
Spreading her wings and flying out of the carriage, Seraphia glanced out of the corner of her eye at the young man left in the compartment, thinking about something.
【No, wait, I'm getting eaten into by the providence of a harem game myself! That quality, that air about him, is a personality trait unique to the protagonists of these games, mass-produced by the crate! I can't let myself be taken in by this stuff.】
Miss Angel shook her head hard, driving the strange thoughts out of it.
Her body was a girl's body now. She did not know how much the physical structure of an angel-monster differed from an ordinary human woman's, but to avoid any possibility of her thinking being affected by hormones, even at one chance in ten thousand, every dangerous thought had to be cut off promptly.
Come to think of it, in this world it seemed everyone had 【mana】 and a 【soul】 inside them. Under a worldview like that, would a human body really contain a thing like hormones?
Peaceful, settled moments always made it easy for her mind to wander. That was probably a bad habit she would never break, whatever the circumstances.
And when she had flown up above the stretch of forest they were passing through and her field of view opened out all at once, the magnificent Holy City of the Church in the distance came suddenly into her eyes.
"So it really is a world where supernatural power exists."
An enormous and profoundly beautiful cluster of buildings, like a forest of white stone grown up out of the plain.
Seraphia had assumed a so-called Holy City would be a fairly standard medieval religious town: high walls, spires, cathedrals, plazas, plus at most a little extra glowing showmanship on account of magic existing in this world.
But once she truly saw it from high in the air, she realized her guess had been far too conservative.
【The One God created the world with a Name.】
She had heard that line many times from the church people.
She had taken it for religious sloganeering. Now, looking down at that city, Seraphia suddenly realized that the Church of the Holy Name had carried the whole doctrine through to the bone.
The roads had not been laid out at random.
Main thoroughfares ran dead straight from twelve city gates to the central sanctuary, every one of them absurdly wide, as though prepared deliberately for processions, pilgrimages and troop movements. Rows of slender stone columns stood along both sides of the roads, translucent lamps hanging at their tops, crystalline by day and, seen at night, probably very beautiful.
Seraphia's eyesight was excellent, so she could see crowds at prayer around those Warding Stones. Priests in white robes stood before the stone platforms, and children, the elderly, merchants, pilgrims, armoured knights, even ordinary townsfolk pushing handcarts, all stopped where they were when the bells rang, lowering their heads and reciting something.
Control through faith was probably at least a little kinder than controlling people through the pressure of survival alone. At the very least, Miss Angel could see smiles on the overwhelming majority of those faces.
"What a pity."
Seraphia muttered under her breath.
She wanted no part of the Church of the Holy Name's system, the one that managed a person from birth to funeral and had to take even their name and sanctify it, but there was no denying that this city was genuinely beautiful.
A pity, though, that this time they would not be going into the Church's Holy City to see it. Shortly they would be boarding an airship directly from the transport hub outside the Holy City, bound for that country which was the headquarters of otherworld cap*talism.
She hoped nothing too vexing would happen.
Seen from a distance, the transport hub on the outer side of the Holy City was nowhere near as sacred as the Holy City proper.
It was more like a practical district sliced off the edge of the white Holy City.
Several tall mooring towers were ranged along the hills, their lower halves the white stone and arches the Church had always favoured, their upper halves given over instead to a mass of metal framing, rivets, cables and suspended walkways. Enormous airships were berthed beside the towers, the Holy Name insignia in gold on white painted along their hulls, as though someone had forcibly welded a religious mural to a modern airport. Looking more closely still, one could make out railway tracks winding off into the distance, and the whole of it in front of her had a considerable magitech-punk quality.
By the time Seraphia dropped back down near the carriage, the convoy had already driven up to the outer edge of the hub.
The people here were visibly a far more mixed lot than in the direction of the Holy City.
White-robed priests were responsible for checking travel documents, armoured Holy Church knights stood at the entrance to the gangway keeping order, porters ran back and forth beside the tracks pushing wooden crates and luggage carts, and there were some people dressed as merchants, heads tilted back, wearing the classic model of country-bumpkin astonishment at the airships.
Yet however secular it got, the flavour of the Church remained very strong.
Before travellers entered the departure hall, they had to pause for a moment before a stone wall carved all over with names, while a priest quietly recited a brief prayer. The gist of it was to ask the One God to remember these people who were about to leave the shelter of the Holy City, and not to let them be devoured by corruption on their journey.
【So even boarding an airship means passing a faith-based security check.】
Seraphia snarked internally.
But considering that this world genuinely contained supernatural disasters of every kind, this procedure amounted to rather more than mere formalism.
The boarding gangway of the airship was very wide, its surface laid with an anti-slip pattern, a row of faintly glowing inscribed pillars standing along its edges. Wind blew down from above, setting the priests' white robes and the knights' cloaks snapping together.
Shu led her towards the passage reserved for the Church.
There was no queueing with the ordinary travellers there. Seraphia only had to flash her halo and her wings, and they could be sent aboard at once.
【Well, all right. As a member of the privileged class enjoying the benefits, I don't mind putting in a few good words for this church—】
Miss Angel was feeling somewhat optimistic.