Algos looked at his statistics with apprehension. He didn"t really know how he was going to handle the situation, but when faced with a n.o.ble, especially angry at you for some reasons, the best thing is not to do too much.The young man sighed, his eyelids closed before he came out of the toilet, he had already stayed there far too long, if there was one more second left inside, Elizabeth would have come to believe that he was sick. He apologized to a young woman who was waiting at the entrance and headed for the lobby. There were a little more people than when he arrived and Elizabeth was talking to a rich woman of her age who, like her, wore half-religious, half-modern clothes, which gave the impression that she was from the same family, but she wasn"t, that was quite obvious. Algos could tell by the difference in their size and the traits of their faces. The woman was redheaded with freckles and had black almond-shaped eyes that differed completely from Elizabeth.
When Algos arrived, she invited him to join her; the couple in front of him was far too tall, or it was Algos who was far too small… the man who was accompanying Elizabeth"s friend was far taller than him, has black hair and green eyes. Algos looked at this couple with annoyance and introduced himself.
"Nice to meet you, Algos. I guess you"re both Elizabeth"s friends."
"Good thinking." replied the man with a warm smile. "I"m Samuel Koridge and next to me is Line Azel. Nice to meet you." he said as Algos looked at the young woman"s neck.
"A Koridge… huh… I guess you have a nice life."
"Huh?" Samuel replied, unexpectedly.
"Ah... Sorry, I was just thinking out loud..."
"No, no, go ahead, I"m not going to get so upset about that."
"OK... Usually the n.o.bles have more facilities, and then you could afford to enslave the girl you love to stay with her...so..." Al said with a sharp tone after Elizabeth had put a hand on his shoulder.
"I see…" replied the n.o.bleman, scratching his head. "Your annoyance has his reasons. I can"t say I understand you, but I"m not going to blame you for that. However, if you had my privileges, you probably would have done the same thing… In any case, I congratulate you for having managed to survive so far without having had any privileges. That truly amazing."
"No, no…" Algos continued, looking away. "I"m sorry, I didn"t pay attention to the use of my words. Sorry for my... harshness, I"m a little confused at the time." he apologized, trying not to attract too much attention from the other n.o.bles who had begun to stare at him.
"Don"t worry about it, I"m not holding it against you." Samuel said with a conciliatory smile. "If I don"t say anything stupid, you"re the son of the Blower Melonide, Philia Melonide, right? You must feel a lot of Bahala"s will, how does that feel?"
The two young women reacted to this: Melonide was a controversial name, it was considered to be among the third line of Bahala. So among the closest to the G.o.ddess, but they are also among the first families to rebel against the G.o.ds during the Purifying Revolution. That was why there was so much resentment, admiration, and jealousy towards them. People in this family were rarely approached. Over time, this caused the children of this family to experience daily injustices, which is what forced Algos to stop school and have to learn at home, cutting him off from all kinds of external communication for several years.
Algos vaguely went over the subject, he didn"t like talking about him too much, people always ended up apologizing, so he preferred not to say too much, even though the 3 people around him seemed to be very interested in his story.
It was after ten minutes of discussion that a Cardinal took his place on the stairs of the hall, forcing everyone to go on the ground floor, including the n.o.bles. The clergy dominated the aristocracy and the high leaders, for the example there was a king, King Sonomon but the one who held all the rights was the Salvatrix, the king could only control the armed forces and the outside parts of the city, such as the cities of the kingdom, the surrounding villages, or the hamlets where the outcasts lived.
The Cardinal expressed his grat.i.tude to the young people for having followed the ancestral traditions that keep the world alive and healthy, thereafter he made a brief prayer to help the young adults succeed in their lives, but he also spoke about the next life, mainly the future of men, Algos didn"t feel particularly targeted by his words, he spoke to the n.o.bles, the rich, the merchants, not to a member of the populace.
Be great, be strong, revive the economy, support the women and the children of this country, protect the kingdom, these were the main missions given to the men. This kind of speech sounded like dissonant music to Algos"s ears, he found it almost funny; some women who dared to talk about religion said that they were like "s.e.xual objects" in the eyes of the G.o.ds and traditions, and also, to the eyes of men, while men had all the rights. In reality, this wasn"t true, men were and are still "tools": "You will learn, you will work, you will make money, you will wage war, it"s for the good of this world". A n.o.ble and justified cause, it seems. Algos answered "yes" and "no" to this problem, depending on which side he chose to fight, but he didn"t really agree with the different political groups that animated this world, not everything revolves around money, territories, and religion having established a so-called cardboard peace that crumbles every time settlers discover a new land to colonize.
The Cardinal also spoke of the 96 young girls who had not found a man with whom to spend the ceremony, among them, there is also another group of women and men, those who refused to have s.e.x, they are also ejected from the city without delay and more than 65% of them become sterile, the clergy say that malediction is given by the G.o.d Paucrate, G.o.d of hope.
The Cardinal"s speech ended, everyone began to leave the hall while some parents waited outside with carts to take their child home. Algos decided to go and get his cousin, she was close to the n.o.bleman who had spat on him; he put one hand on his cousin"s shoulder hoping not to have any trouble with the rich man"s son who was next to him, because if Al remembered who he was, he was very well protected. Before going to talk to his cousin, he decided to go and open the statistics of the n.o.bleman, but when he did, he suddenly felt extremely tired. He immediately understood what Tom was getting at when he told him: "you"d end up collapsing to exhaustion on the floor like a ragdoll.". But he could see the statistics of the young n.o.bleman:
╔════════════════════╗
╠► Physical:
╠═► Attack: [9 — 999]
╠═► Defense: [23 — 999]
╠═► Speed : [54 — 999]
╠═► Stamina : [6 — 999]
╠═► Magic : [12 — ∞]
╠═► Charisma : [5 — 999]
╠═► Charm : [5 — 999]
╠► Mental:
╠═► Covetousness : 1 [••••••••] 10
╠═► Pride : 1 [•••••••••] 10
╠═► Anger : 1 [••••••••] 10
╠═► l.u.s.t : 1 [••••••••] 10
╠═► Gluttony : 1 [•••••••••] 10
╠═► Despair : 1 [••••••••] 10
╠═► Acedia : 1 [•••••••••] 10
╚════════════════════╝
"Hey, Felicia, we should go, Mag will start worrying if we don"t come back soon."
"Oh? Y-Yes…" she replied as if she had just come out of a dream. "Excuse me, my head was in the clouds... Umm... I need to go with Rayan to his house..." she said without looking at the rich.
"...Are you sure about this...?" asked Algos, raising an eyebrow
"Yeah... we... we didn"t do it."
"Huh ?!" Algos exclaimed, shaking his cousin back and forth. "Do you have any idea what this means, you idiot?! If I come back and tell that to Mom and Mag, they"re gonna have a heart attack on the spot!"
"No!" Interrupted Rayan, the n.o.bleman who had spat on Algos. "No... I"m the one who said no, she"s not the one who"s going to be an outcast. Not her."
"What...?" muttered Al. "For a n.o.bleman to refuse... Is Felicia really that ugly?"
"Hey!" grunted his cousin just before hit the back of his head.
"That not that..." replied the n.o.ble. "We must hurry, Felicia. And, Algos, I"m Rayan Obinski..." the young man looked away and sighed as if to spit out his pride. "Sorry about yesterday."
"Don"t worry about this- Hey, Felicia, you"re sure about this ?" asked Al.
"Aaah... Al..." she sighed. "If you so worried about me, just come catch me in one hour. We can go get something to eat near the town square."
"Well... Okay... See ya."
Elizabeth approached the young man without making a sound, so that Algos was a little surprised. However, he was more embarra.s.sed by the fact that she told him that he seemed to be very close to his cousin.
He didn"t know what to answer, so he simply decided to ignore his interlocutor and walked towards the exit, bearing the gaze of the many parents who were standing over him. For one thing, he was a surviving man from the rabble, so he was a rare case, moreover, he had been put in a "couple" with the daughter of the Salvatrix. In other words, he was even more special now, there was no doubt that he was going to attract good and bad things with this beginning of notoriety. Some of the women who were waiting alone for their children, looked at Algos with a languorous look, whether they were Elves, humans, dwarves, etc., and they were all very happy to see him. It only made him feel more uneasy, drops of sweat beaded down his forehead as he walked down the palace steps.
"Are you all right?" Elizabeth asked, leaning towards Algos to put her hand on his forehead to see if if he were feverish.
"No, I"m not all right. Everyone looks at me as if I were the latest fashionable, bourgeois object."
"Come on! You"ll get used to it soon enough, I"m sure. With all that had to be reported in news it"s going to be even worse, eheh." she chuckles, already imagining how the life of the man who took her virginity will turn out.
"Huh?"
"Well, I mean, yesterday we were one of the last chosen, so people could see us very well, they know our names, they saw us laughing together, eating together, and most importantly, they saw us following the Lumio inside the cathedral! Ahaha, that will soon become a rumour."
"They?" Algos coughed.
"The reporters."
"The... Sorry?"
"The reporters are always there for the ceremonies, even more so for this ceremony, and as they knew I had to attend, they were even more numerous, so they certainly didn"t miss a single thing we did."
"So... All this was written during the night, and it appeared in this morning"s newspaper...?
"Yep."
"Err....I don"t feel so good."
"Ahahah!" She stopped for a moment before turning to her other friend, Lise, and then returned to Al. "Algos, would you like to join us? We"re gonna grab a bite to eat downtown with Lise and Samuel."
"Ah... No, sorry, not right away, I"ll go get my cousin right after, we"ll come and join you."
"Oh, we"ll be at the creperie." replied the young religious woman before walking towards Algos to put a tender kiss on his lips for a few seconds. Then it was with an amused smile that she left to join her two friends who had already started walking.