-x-x-x- Made by Arude_Chan on Webnovel! Please give me attention if you're reading elsewhere! (>--<) -x-x-x-
It was then that Michael entered the room through a pair of wide, red, blue, and silver doors in front of Charice.
His colleague had long since left, leaving him and Charice alone as the
door shut behind him.
Charice could be seen closing another large document before breathing a pink mist over it, a pink glow appearing over the papers before condensing into a strange, fingerprint-esque pattern at the edges.
"And with that, we should have enough funding to rebuild the courts..." Charice mumbled.
In the aftermath of becoming real, Charice was swiftly informed that the infrastructure their government had was either non-existent or sorely lacking. Sure, the city had a fancy courthouse and plenty of guards, but one courthouse was nowhere near enough for a city housing hundreds of thousands.
Another issue was food. In the game, they imported food from other cities and nations. Those cities and nations were nowhere to be found, and even if they were making some food from fishing and fungus farms and had enough food saved up to last a couple of months in the case of a siege, they would starve soon enough.
The most apt way to describe their city was like a pyramid with only the top and bottom, and barely anything in between. They would have to create infrastructure while they were still in charge.
"Consort," Michael said as he knelt, "I hope I'm not interrupting?"
Charice didn't bother looking at him; instead, he opened the constitution and double-checked everything while sighing.
"I told you not to be so formal around me, dummy. And to not kneel like that. It's weird."
Michael stood up, arms clasped behind his back, "W-Well..." How else was he supposed to greet his superior? He couldn't just walk up to him and pat him on the head, right?
'Well, knowing him, he'd probably like it...' Michael sighed.
"Anyways, sit, sit. I need you right now. Oh! I just had an idea." As Charice spoke, his eyes glazed with a pink hue, the blue and red liquids within their shrines swirling like cyclones as a crimson and navy blue mist flowed from them.
He shivered slightly after flinching away like a scared bunny. He mumbled, "M-Make him a comfy chair, uhm... Please," under his breath.
The mist shifted, moving to create a simple wooden chair for Michael on the other side of the table. It groaned as Charice lowered his hand with a relieved sigh.
"Sorry... I would make something more comfy, but..." Charice looked away with a guilty look, 'But I'm not good enough.'
"I understand," Michael said with a polite smile, seating himself.
From his perspective, creating even a simple chair was a feat that showed immense adoration from both Pantheons and great skill.
He and the other Paragons, as beings who followed Order exclusively, could expend much of their power without consequence, though they lacked many advantages Chaos followers enjoyed; it was safer and more efficient, not to mention having a single source of power made it more intuitive and easier to use on a greater scale.
For the Consort, one who walked the line between both Chaos and Order as a priest no less, expending too much of one would result in an imbalance, one that could end with disaster, especially given how powerful the Consort is.
Charice, as his eyes returned to their blue color, nodded and smiled.
"Do you have a family, Michael?" Charice asked, flipping through dozens of pages. The smell of dry ink fluttered in the air, combined with the smell of new papers.
"I... Excuse me?"
"Gah, that was inappropriate, sorry..." Charice, stopping at a certain page, "I-I asked cause I was wondering what kind of benefits you and the other Paragons would like... I was thinking family vacations? My mom took me to Happy Land once, and I liked it so..."
Michael leaned forward, an unreadable expression striking his face, "Well, I don't know what this Happy Land is, but I think would be a good idea... But there's just one issue, Consort. We aren't allowed to have families. We swore against it."
"E-Eh?" Charice gasped, "Wha?? You did?"
"Yes. We did. And it's frankly a bit insulting that you don't remember the vow we made specifically to you."
"O-Oh..." It was the first time Charice had seen Michael displeased, and he couldn't help but gulp, though Michael was doing the same.
For Michael, it was the first time he had shown open displeasure to the Consort, and he was feeling the pressure weighing heavily on his mind.
Especially given their location. Confronting the highest rank of priest of both Chaos and Order was outrageous, to begin with, but doing so in a prayer room deep within the blessed grounds of The Ark? That feat was monumental in both bravery and stupidity.
Yet, before anything could happen, Charice spoke up.
"...My bad... Sorry... Could you remind me what they were?"
Michael took a deep breath and exhaled. Charice stiffened with an apologetic anxiousness, but Michael was doing it to ease himself more than anything.
"Of course. To put it briefly, we swore to own no lands, harm no one without reason, shield your honor and life as if it were our own, and take no wife nor start any family. If we had children before we became Paragons, we left them behind."
"...O-Oh..." That was all Charice could squeak out as sweat poured down his forehead.
Michael closed his hand into a fist, breathing in deeply to calm himself, the memory of a lost family filling him with a festering grief.
'T-That's not good! That is so fucked up. How many families were splintered? No, wait, what kind of people would leave their kids behind to serve the government? I thought you guys were just hot, buff dudes!'
The weight of expectation was growing faster than Charice could handle, so he changed the topic to the first thing he could think of, and the reason he had invited Michael in the first place.
"A-Anyways. Um, I think we're good to publish the constitution now, right? We, uh, should try to get this out there before other countries try to talk to us, I think..."
"Yes." Michael nodded, "I agree. Have you done the ritual yet?"
Judging by the look of subtle dread and reddening cheeks upon the Consort's face, Michael concluded that he had not.
"I-I um..." Charice stumbled over his words, "I have not... Done that yet..."
The ritual, better known as the Validation Rite, required a document containing rules and laws that affected a controlled territory and a method for communing with the Gods.
One would then make an offering and recite incantations related to the document and the Gods, choosing between the Order or Chaos Gods to validate the document. Both could be convinced to validate it together, but that was a feat very few could achieve, and only after the most herculean of efforts.
"Do we have to... You know..." Charice said with a pleading look, but Michael was not moved.
"Consort." He said sternly. "If the Constitution is seen as a divine relic, the people of this world will be far more likely to see it as legitimate. Not to mention, divine relics grant plenty of boons to those who wield them and the nations they legitimize. And uh... Forgive me for being blunt, but aren't you a priest?"
"Ugh..." Charice groaned, as if Michael had mortally wounded him. "I... Yeah... I am..." Tears welled within his eyes as he took a deep, shaky breath to steady himself. Stress eating away at his heart like a tumor.
'Why did I make my character a priest...? It was okay to pray to the Gods, it made for such fun roleplay...! But... I'm supposed to talk to actual Gods now? How...?!'
A strange, empty sensation overcame him at the thought of meeting them; there was fear and anxiety, sure, but they paled in comparison to this strange wound. It dug into his heart and nested there, a lonely, betrayed feeling.
Like a lover who had been cheated, he took a deep breath and steadied himself.
Michael, unsure what to do and frankly worried that he would be fired for his impudence, handed Charice a white handkerchief.
Charice took it with a bittersweet smile and wiped his tears away.
"I... Haven't talked to..." He motioned to the shrines, "S-Since we came here."
Michael raised an eyebrow, 'Why? I understand certain things seem to have changed, but we're still in the same universe we were in before... Am I missing something? Did he and the Gods disagree on something?
Still, considering the Consort's reaction, it might be better not to ask.
"I understand..."
An awkward silence filled the room until - Suddenly, Jeremy came barging through the doors.
"Apologies for interrupting, but a carriage is making its way through the Dragon Peaks. It has a crest and an armed convoy, we think it must be noble! They'll be here in ten hours!"
-x-x-x- Made by Arude_Chan on Webnovel! Please give me attention if you're reading elsewhere! (>--<) -x-x-x-