Myth: The Ruler of Spirituality

Chapter 574 - 175 Heroes, History, Peace... War

Three days later.

In the eastern district of Turingen, opposite diagonally from the Church of Knowledge’s Temple.

The Pan-Athena Knowledge Hall.

A woman with brown hair, dressed in a plain robe, moved gracefully among the shelves filled with books and leather scrolls, followed by a handsome young man.

The symbol of a half olive branch stitched onto her chest indicated her identity—a preparatory priestess from the Church of Knowledge.

A preparatory priestess is not a formal godhood practitioner, and although there’s no difference between them and the official priests in terms of knowledge and training received, the actual difference lay in whether they received a calling from the Goddess or not.

To put it realistically, they were still purely mortal lacking the power of divine arts; to put it idealistically, since their faith hadn’t yet earned the Goddess’s recognition, they might as well be responsible for running the church’s institutions first.

"Sir, these are the sections in the Museum of Knowledge related to history, heraldry, and lineages... There may not be much content here, but I’m sorry, Turingen is not Athens after all," she said with a smile.

Although the preparatory priestess was apologizing, Laine could still see the pride in her eyes. After all, in this era, literate individuals were a tiny minority, let alone collectors of books.

However, prolonged conversations were prohibited within the Museum of Knowledge; if one wished to exchange ideas, they should move to the designated reading rooms to avoid disturbing others... Thus, upon realizing, with regret, that Laine had no intention of inviting her to sit, the priestess returned to her own duties.

"Heh, an aristocrat? I don’t have any deity’s bloodline... No, as a mortal ’created’ by ’myself’, I guess I could also be considered ’of noble lineage’, couldn’t I?" Laine mused with a chuckle as he watched the preparatory priestess depart.

Though he had spent the past three days sorting out his residence and identity, today was his first visit to the hall for reading, and he already had a deeper understanding of the social structure of this era.

Leaving aside distant nations and focusing within the most advanced and developed area under Athens’s influence in the modern world, it was a political system with a dual track of classical republicanism and feudal aristocracy.

Composed of male citizens, craftsmen, merchants, and professionals residing in the cities, forming the ’citizen’ class, and those of divine lineage—separated by birth, exalted and orderly, they represented the upper echelons of this age.

Both classes stood in opposition yet intermingled with each other... As to why this model had formed, one had to look back to the objective factors that began with the Great Migration and continued to the present day.

You see, as a transcendent world, the wilderness of the Mortal World in Chaos teemed with beasts and demonic monsters. After the catastrophe of Typhon and the Blood Sun, this situation worsened unimaginably.

The idea that ’rulers must be strong’ and ’only the strong can protect the citizens’ easily took root among humans. Thus, the initial monarchs of the Mortal World were often legendary figures who could carve out habitable territories in the treacherous wilderness.

However, as the Great Migration ended, the first cities were built, and populations grew, outward expansion became inevitable... But there was only one King, and other strong individuals were needed to protect citizens elsewhere, with inconvenient wilderness travel making a centralized official system unworkable. Therefore, the concept of feudalism gradually became a logical direction.