Chapter 43: 46. What Other Life? Part 1

The previous morning.

Angelidis is walking down the street towards the apartment building where her family lives. It’s quite early in the morning, just after sunrise. She likes to visit her family at least every other morning and evening for family meals.

The building where her family lives is eight floors tall. It is located in a relatively safe area within the working class neighborhood of Pulloy. Ever since her father died, Angelidis has been providing for her family. Her mother is unable to work after she developed a fine motor control disability at her old workplace.

Ugh, fuck… Why did I drink so much? Dzan gets too into drinking, I get sucked in.

Angelidis has a headache right now. She also has sunglasses on to block the intrusive morning light. She’s wearing a light pink blouse and a navy blue skirt that goes down to her ankles. She has black, medium-heel wedges on, black gloves that hide her claws, and a light yellow scarf covering her feathery hair.

She walks into the building and goes upstairs to the fourth floor apartment where her family lives. She enters and sees her brothers, Varin and Rand, sitting at their circular dining table. Her mother is there as well. They seem to have just started their meal.

A window is overlooking the dining table. A flash of sunlight hits her and causes her to shield her eyes.

“...Sis, are you alright?” Rand asks Angelidis as she laughs with slight embarrassment.

“Just a little hangover, don’t worry about it.” She lowers her sunglasses to get a good look at her family.

Today, it looks like they’re eating a breakfast of bread, greaves and lagia juice. Angelidis walks to the kitchen in order to prepare her own plate. First, she looks through their refrigerator for the greaves. These are patties made of vegetables that when combined produce a taste exactly like shelled Orda meat.

It is a popular and cheap meat substitute that cooks exactly as ground Orda meat patties would. Greaves are actually a product that was created three thousand years ago as a gourmet item. However, manufacturing costs went down greatly over the millennia. Right now, it is a staple for all commoners.

To toast her bread, Angelidis places the slices on a plate and picks up a magic item, called a hot hand. This tool looks much like a security scanning wand on Earth. With just a little mana, she can toast her bread to the right crispness within seconds.

She then broils her greaves with the hot hand for a few minutes. Once they become juicy enough, Angelidis joins her family at the table. She sits on the chair with its back to the window. Varin was originally sitting there, but he moved to the other side in consideration of her hangover. 

She sits beside Rand on her left, her mother on her right and Varin now opposite her facing the window. Everyone except her is eating already.

She pours a cup of lagia juice for herself from the jug on the table. Lagia is a fruit that tastes somewhat like a mix of mango, papaya and lemon. None of those Earth fruits exist on Omicron. The juice, about the consistency of heavy cream, goes well with her meal.

Varin looks up from his own meal, a bit exasperated at her insobriety. Rand sees her scarfing down her breakfast like a wild beast, and smiles a little. Her mother is just a bit displeased. She really should stop drinking so often. Of course, her mother, a human, could never ask her to cut back. 

She knows what Angelidis, her beloved daughter, has to do for their family’s money. These are desperate times, especially for demihumans. Angelidis deals with this harsh life in her own way.

She slows down the pace of her eating, a little bit of her hunger gone. She looks up at Varin and Rand and then looks back down to her food. She asks them:

“How was school yesterday?”

“Hm? Oh, it was alright. No complaints.” Rand replies.

“Yeah, same for me.” Vand confirms.

“Anything interesting happen?

“Hung out with friends in class, not much else. There was a cool alchemy presentation in the afternoon.”

Rand mentions an alchemy presentation. On Omicron, alchemy is a mixture of magic and chemistry. He had seen a green fire that stayed burning in midair for three minutes continuously. Nobody was using a spell or anything to keep the fire floating or burning. It was kind of interesting for him. Varin talks about his day yesterday.

“Class was slow. Nothing really happened for me.”

He wasn’t in the same afternoon class as Rand, so he didn’t see that presentation. He wasn’t in class with many people he knew either.

Their mother looks over at them. Angelidis notices her staring at the two of them. What does she want to say? Angelidis looks back at Varin who has also noticed his mom’s look.

He sighs.

“...There was actually an assembly yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the principal talked a bit, and then introduced a few holy knights.”

Angelidis remembers their school principal. He’s a human, absolutely useless as the school’s head administrator. He does the bare minimum to pretend he’s not prejudiced against demihumans. But, he still lets the racist teachers do whatever they want without repercussions.

Holy knights…

Those are the elite forces that defend the church and hold its military power. The church owns a lot of land across the federation that the holy knights guard and protect. They’re a force mostly made up of commoners. However, the higher ranking holy knights are all heroic nobles.

If holy knights are giving a presentation in front of the school, it can only be about…

“They're basically starting another recruitment drive for commoners, rather than just waiting for people to enlist on their own.” Varin confirms Angelidis’ hunch.

“I see… What combat rank were they?”

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”One priest class, and the rest were deacon classes, I think. They were wearing their full body armor, you couldn’t even see their faces.”

The holy knights have a hierarchy. Within the city of Tritol, there are a number of deacon, priest and bishop class warriors. They should not be confused for actual deacons, priests and bishops however. For each rank in the church hierarchy, the holy knights of the same combat rank name serve them.

Bishops have authority over Bishop class holy knights. Archbishops have authority over Archbishop class holy knights. Cardinals have authority over Cardinal class holy knights. The pope has authority over the Divine Generals.

Of course, the combat ranking concerns only pure combat power. Within the chain of military command, there is a separate officer class. These officers, mainly military administrators and strategists, have ranks such as commander, colonel, and general.

These individuals need not be strong combatants, but the higher ups are still mostly heroic nobles. After all, heroic nobles receive the best education within the Federation and nepotism still applies to the officer class.

“So? Why were they there? Everybody in your school knows about the war announcement already, right?” Angelidis is curious what the holy knights were doing there. Varin continues.

“They were just giving speeches about the upcoming war.”

Varin remembers the speeches. The knights spoke formally and patriotically. Every human kid in the audience cheered loudly.

“The humans were so annoying with their cheering. It felt like a pep rally.”

Angelidis scoffs.

“Well, yeah, of course they’d cheer.” Holy knights are an entirely human military force. The church does not allow demihumans to become holy knights. Demihumans aren’t even allowed to form local militias or organizations with any relation to combat.

Demihuman children would feel no need to cheer for the knights. Human children could become them. There were a lot of kids there who were 17 or 18 like Varin and Rand. There were a number of them who were planning to enroll in holy knight training right after graduation.

Angelidis feels a tinge of resentment, but lets it pass.

“So, what’d they say about the war?”

“They just said that… What was it? Oh yeah, they basically just said this war wasn’t just to wipe out the Empire once and for all. It was also necessary so that the families from the South wouldn’t wreck the country and economy by moving into the rest of the Federation and everything. The knights were pretty clear about that part. Well, they didn’t say it like that exactly, but I think that’s what they wanted to convey.”

“The south again.” Angelidis thinks seriously about the South for a moment. How many of those southerners are poor people or demihumans? This city would have no interest in taking them in. Unemployment is already so high for the demihumans living here. Varin continues.

“They said that if we become soldiers and help the war effort, the Southerners could be resettled on the Empire’s land really quickly… Instead of the already crowded cities in the Federation, you know?”

“They think we’re idiots? The church still has loads of empty land… They could build new cities there, instead of using this to push harder for the war… Whatever. I guess it’s not like they’d want to spend the time and money to build anything new, when there’s a continent full of shit to take. Especially for people who’ve lost everything to their names.”

“One of my human classmates joked that the Church’d murder all of the Southerners first before letting two whole billion move into the rest of the Federation’s cities.”

Rand brings up what one of his classmates said. But, Angelidis doesn’t doubt that the Federation would really do that. Whatever needs to be done to maintain the stability of the theocracy. Varin looks out the window as he thinks about those holy knights.

“You know, they were really happy more than anything else to tell us that the Federation can finally wipe the Empire out. Securing a future for the Federation by wiping out the demons.”

Of course the holy knights would celebrate that. The demons and Semjaza have been the enemies of the Federation for ten thousand years. Since the beginning of their civilization basically. Angelidis doesn’t think too much about them in all this. It’s not like she can do anything for them even if she wanted to.

She does think about the human students and their reaction to the speech. They must have been pretty enthusiastic about this.

“Let me guess, the human kids started signing up as quickly as possible after the assembly?”

“I don’t know, Jelli, I wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing. It just seems stupid to me, their vain ‘loyalty’, you know? But anyways, it wasn’t a recruitment drive to join the holy knight forces. It was just about becoming a soldier in the Federation’s army. I doubt they’d be running to join that.”

“It’s the same thing in the end. The humans will go off, train and fight, like good little patriots. Fuck them.”

“Angelidis…”

“...You know what I mean, mom. Oh yeah, what was the principal’s reaction to the holy knights and the war?”

“Well, he seemed pretty happy about the whole thing. He said something about how this could be a good opportunity to serve your country. He also said… it was a good opportunity for the students from poor families as well as the delinquents…”

“I bet he looked at every single demihuman face when he did that. *Sigh*.”

Angelidis really doesn’t like that prick. She can tell that he’s the kind of person who would think that demihumans are worthless. They join his school just to grow up and become punks and bandits. He’d probably think that they’d be worth something if they joined the war effort as good little pack animals.

Angelidis now wants to ask about what Varin and Rand actually think about all this. They were talking with their mother about joining the army even before the war announcement. What about now? Angelidis really can’t make sense of this war or the need for it. It still seems so distant to her and her family.

How will her brothers react?

What would they be ordered to do? Where would they be stationed? How would they be treated? She can hardly tell. Maybe they’d know more. Either way, she’d have to know:

“So… Are you guys going to enlist?”

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