Chapter 1

There was a village known to a few as Taylan.

It is one of the countless human settlements that were within the Terra Empire, which was quite unique in that it was very isolated compared to the rest, as it was located within one of the largest mountain ranges in the Northern Duchy, within the depths of a great forest named Argos in honor of their ancestors — the first settlers who would form Taylan — who decided to venture there in desperation to secure a future for themselves and their descendants.

Here, in these unexplored mountains that reached to the clouds below Zeus, which seemed lifeless to those uninterested in their secrets, these settlers found a place unexpectedly full of fertile soil and forests, with a surprisingly humid and warm environment; a temperature nonexistent in the entire north, normally cold and arid.

There they settled and built a village under the acceptance of the nature spirits extremely common in the area, who appeared from their desperate situation in which they had to flee their former homes due to magical beasts and dungeons.

As the years passed, Taylan Village's original population of 200 increased to a few thousand, becoming Taylan Town, and gradually grew to be almost comparable to a small city in size.

With large fields of crops after cutting down every tree possible without offending the spirits and plenty of open land to live on, the inhabitants of Taylan enjoyed certain luxuries during the first decades of their existence, such as a large supply of food, which no other northern villager would ever see in their entire life due to the harsh environment in which they lived.

The land beneath their feet was simply miraculous, as if it were a gift prepared by the Titan Gods themselves for the Taylanesians. 

No matter how many times you cultivate it, it will not become barren over time; as if there were a greater blessing from Gaia upon it than on any other part of the world.

And furthermore, the sky was mostly clear within the center of the mountain range; as if Zeus and Apollo had joined forces to ensure that the light of life would emanate from this one place forever, ensuring the prosperity of the organisms that inhabited it.

With its invaluable blessings, it naturally became a sacred territory for the villagers.

That is why all the inhabitants of Taylan Village, fearing to lose their home at the hands of greedy nobles, decided to keep secret the unique qualities of the Cesna Mountain Range, which are mostly only found in the southern lands of the Empire.

All they did was report the formation of their village to the nearest local lord, which fortunately and unsurprisingly was accepted without further investigation, given the nobility's indifference to all the villages that have been born and disappeared over the centuries since the founding of the nation.

Everyone prayed with gratitude to the gods and danced for the spirits for this fact, while they were simply content with nothing more than selling some crops or other things to satisfy everyone's needs.

However, there was a problem; one that the early settlers could not have foreseen due to ignorance or blind trust in the land blessed by the gods and spirits.

And to understand it better, we will have to explain what happened just a few years ago.

♦♦♦♦

About 6 years ago, the city of Taylan had become a miserable place despite the blessed land beneath its feet.

How did that happen?

It was primarily due to the lack of a prophetess for nearly a century compared to other villages that not only did they end up being ridiculed for being a settlement that no longer had Angelina's "protection" when people found out, but many of their own inhabitants were reluctant to take big risks when it came to buying and selling goods abroad; fearful of unforeseen consequences that could threaten their way of life due to an accidental revelation of their secrets.

The main reason for these irrational fears is that throughout the empire there was a strong belief that human settlements could only prosper with the existence of prophetesses, who could not only foresee disasters, but also help them avoid making all kinds of decisions that would potentially harm the town or city.

They were more valuable than an advisor, as they could anticipate the consequences of a decision made by the leader of their community before its execution (such as those that seem good at first but turn out to be unexpectedly catastrophic) and avoid them.

Of course, there were limits to what a prophetess could see, not only because of her professional rank, but also because how long can a fragment of her consciousness remain within the timestream before it begins to negatively affect her?

However, the role that prophetesses played in the prosperity of many cities and towns was so significant that for a long time a strong dependence on their existence was created, very difficult to overcome for the people who grew up believing in their importance and enjoyed the benefits of one.

So much so that it was decreed in all lands that the towns and villages in which they were born legally belonged to the prophetess in question.

Although this was only really possible because there were no nobles who cared about the villages and small towns anyway, and the prophetesses of a village onwards would receive a piece of land at most from them, nothing particularly significant.

In any case, because the Taylans were too cautious in making decisions related to trade to avoid revealing their secrets, they ended up becoming a people doomed to ruin.

Because?

Because when their population began to grow even more than acceptable over the past 57 years, they realized that the amount of food they produced couldn't sustain them all.

And since for a long time people refused to sell their surplus produce because of these unfounded fears, they didn't have enough money to buy large quantities of food in other cities. 

The worst part was that by relying on primitive methods to preserve their food, over time they had even less useful food to eat, and the speed of farming and livestock raising could not meet the population's demand despite the power their professions conferred.

This led them to the desperate measure of indiscriminately hunting a large number of animals within the Argos Forest to feed its growing population, which not only reduced the forest's animal population, but ended up earning them the displeasure of the Spirit Master of Argos, who permanently banned them from entering the forest.

When they realized that they had done nothing more than commit heresy against the sacred home of a nature spirit and that they would no longer have access to the blessings of the forest, they all despaired.

At one point, the village chief, Baur Frain, wanted to send a group of young orphans to the town run by Mayor Arissu to sell them for food as apprentice servants for his company, which specialized in training servants to serve the nobles.

Although he was as much or more to blame for the situation than anyone else due to his fears, Chief Frain believed he was doing the right thing by reducing the number of mouths to feed and getting more food in return.

He also wasn't worried about the orphans revealing Taylan's secret, as magical contracts to silence them had become so easy to make these days that they could be bought for hundreds at any market.

However, the small town church firmly rejected this act of treating humans as products against their will. 

Especially the followers of the Goddess Aphrodite, Alica and Selena, who were the most skilled caregivers of children, whom they loved as if they were their own children.

Tension between Frain and the church over this matter would only grow over time, and at one point some of the influential elders who sympathized with the chief's ideas helped him pressure the church to allow the sale of a certain number of orphans.

While doing this to the followers of the gods might be considered an affront to the divine, some of Taylan's elders, who had already allowed heresy against the sacred groves and earned the wrath of the spirits, no longer cared.

No one wanted to leave the village if they could survive so easily. Not only because it is a blessed land, extremely fertile and warm, but because the current generations were so adapted to its warm environment that if they were forced to leave together, they would have to face the cold outside, possibly dying the weakest along the way.

And more than that, they would also have to deal with possible bandit attacks along the way, which would be especially lethal with such a large group of ordinary people.

Frankly, there was some consideration in the past of expelling rather than selling a certain number of their orphans to ensure the continuation of this great village, or even something much more sinister... However, leaving aside the obvious problems this could cause, only the wrath of the local Church was enough to make the elders dismiss such thoughts.

Offending them a little wasn't the same as incurring divine punishment after all; they decided to insist on selling the children.

.... But everyone, in the end, knew that at the rate they were going, even if they sold all the orphans so they wouldn't have to feed them and earn some money, sooner or later, they would have to go live somewhere else.

They were simply delaying the inevitable. After all, how much food or money can they really muster to help their people avoid dispersing?

However, in that desperate situation... Unexpectedly, one of the orphans they wanted to sell as a maid apprentice was reborn as a prophetess.

This was obviously Arisella, who would later be given the surname 'Bluen' by the chief.

Shocked, but above all filled with joy, the people of Taylan tearfully celebrated the possibility that their people would finally be saved now that a prophetess had been "born" among them as their mistress.

But, of course, they weren't out of the woods yet.

Even with a prophetess who could potentially help them make good trade decisions with other cities and towns to obtain food... what would they sell?

They barely had enough in the village to feed themselves for now, so they could not sell their crops and the meat from their few livestock without permanently ruining the village's future agricultural activity.

After all, in this blessed land, crops would grow again without problems, but what would happen to the livestock?

Selling cattle to acquire livestock seemed completely absurd, since livestock throughout the North were nearly identical, and these weren't even considered exclusively for food; they were raised solely for making leather or cloth garments. Their unpalatable meat was only consumed in truly desperate situations because it can cause serious health problems.

The meat consumed in the north came exclusively from well-managed hunting, something that was prohibited for them, so it was not viable.

And selling some wild animals and keeping the rest wouldn't help either, since they're so common that they wouldn't be able to get much food by selling them. At most, it would only increase the time they could survive before having to migrate to the colder lands of the north.

Regarding these matters, no one knew what to do. Even the village chief, who considered himself a "cultured" person among the commoners, had no good ideas for salvaging the situation beyond what he had already proposed, but insisting on it would only generate even more conflict with the local church, which he personally wanted to prevent from continuing.

In the end, it seemed that having a prophetess would not change their dilemma, at least from the point of view of Taylan's "wiser" elders.

It was then that Arisella Bluen, then a 16-year-old girl, asked them for something shocking for a teenager: to continue with the boss's plan to "sell" the orphans, not only for food, but also to earn money.

To Taylan's astonished 'wise men,' to the village chief confused by her sudden support, and of course to the horrified Alica and Selena, Arisella Bluen calmly explained her logic with a smile.

"Everyone knows that we orphans, unless we're as lucky as I am, don't have much of a chance of making it in the empire, right? Because they're looked down on for not having a family background... I wish they could get a relatively low-paying job."

Everyone nodded, Alica and Selena's faces were particularly bitter at this social reality.

The family register.

It was the way in which a continuous and complete record could be kept of the births, deaths and status of each of the families of the Terran Empire through a common surname, information that was stored in a magical artifact connected to the Arcane Network of the Terran Empire.

In this way, noble houses would not only have an idea of ​​the population size and the number of commoner families living on their lands in order to better collect taxes, but they would also have access to basic information about each of these families, such as how many members are part of them, what they do, how many crimes some of their members may have committed in the past or present and about their personalities and other general information that, however, can be used to see who has the potential to be a useful professional, among other uses, such as medical care.

However, as a result of this, little by little but relentlessly, discrimination arose against orphaned children who were abandoned at birth and those who lost their family registration due to being unable to pay taxes after losing their relatives for one reason or another.

Those called "No Surnames" are considered worse individuals than a homeless person who has only a name to identify them. The reason for the talk of selling them was so good, since they didn't have the same rights as everyone else in the eyes of society.

Life for those without surnames wasn't easy, as without a family background, it's difficult to find a well-paid job once you reach adulthood. It was as if not having a family was a sin... possibly also influenced by the belief that every family has its own personal paradise for its members in the Elysium.

And while you can be adopted into a family beforehand or even create a new family record with your own unique surname for them, the former is a very rare event that sometimes only happens through the "work and grace" of the nobility, and the latter is nearly impossible due to the amount of gold it takes to create a new family record in the system.

A truly difficult sum to obtain for a normal family, much less for homeless orphans, whose only jobs without discrimination for lacking a clear track record that lends credibility are those of miners or servants to the nobility; the latter being the best option since, as serfs, they can receive, to a certain extent, free medical care for their illnesses, something they would normally be denied.

“With this in mind, it's no wonder many of my classmates from the orphanage wish to become servants without having to be 'sold'. It's the fastest way to acquire money to create a family registry, and in the end, it's better than becoming miners waiting to die.”

However, not all orphans can afford to travel to a city to join organizations that train servants, and in the end, they are trapped for the rest of their lives in towns and villages trying to survive when they reach a certain age, working any job that gives them at least a miserable wage.

For example, how old Arisella was at that time.

Why couldn't they travel? Well, money was obviously an issue, but the main cause was bandits and the occasional magical beast the knights hadn't exterminated.

For them, traveling to the city was simply too dangerous. Especially for women as attractive as Arisella, going alone would be like blithely asking to be kidnapped or even raped on the spot.

Therefore, it would be ideal if they were willing to transport them to the city to begin their training as servants.

“For an orphan, being a servant is the ideal job in the early stages of adulthood. I myself thought it might be a good idea to be part of it. After all, not only would you get a stable job, but security is guaranteed by noble law. Furthermore, you could enjoy certain privileges as future servants of the aristocracy, such as better education for your training as servants and proper medical care that nobles have no choice but to provide under the master-servant contract.”

Arisella shrugged as she continued smiling, "Since they themselves want to be servants to have a better life, why don't we take advantage of that to earn good money and food by helping them?"

"...I think you're right, but why the money, Arisella?" asked Selena, who of Arisella's two guardians seemed the calmest, at least compared to her when her 'daughter' seemed to 'betray' the orphanage she grew up in.

"To buy produce, of course. Specifically, to buy livestock and seeds from the West, and even from the South if possible."

"What?" asked Alica, who didn't understand the logic of her argument at all. However, the village chief's eyes lit up, as if he already had a good idea of ​​what the girl was getting at with all this.

And just as I expected, Arisella Bluen smiled mischievously and said, "Isn't our home the warmest and most fertile habitable land in the north?"

After that, the girl clasped her hands with that unchanging smile and said nothing more. However, none of those gathered in the city chief's hall were stupid; they all understood the implications behind her words and were astonished.

He was literally telling them to "sell" humans to gain enough economic capital to buy what they needed to not only save the city, but also potentially make it one of the richest in the north.

How can he be so smart? they wondered.

While Alica and Selena were still not entirely comfortable with the idea of ​​“selling” their children, those who wanted to be servants in order to have a more stable and healthy life in the future immediately stepped forward when asked, with excited eyes.

As was their will, they both gave in in the end.

In this way, at least 100 orphans were "sold" to Mayor Arissu in exchange for food and money. With this, Taylan's food situation was temporarily resolved while the chief himself, with the help of a friendly caravan, traveled abroad with the money earned to export seeds and livestock from other duchies to his village.

Shortly after his return, he brought back a variety of exotic crop seeds and livestock via that same caravan. He spent almost all the money he earned in the process, but in the end, Arisella's idea proved to be highly worthy.

Because the city began to grow rapidly in wealth and abundance never before seen in just two years. The export of Doran chickens in particular was what helped them become "known" among the "nearby" villages as the mysterious farm of the Northern Duchy.

Everyone became wealthy, and their lifestyle improved to resemble that of a real city. The spiritual master was even eventually convinced to allow hunting again by exporting new species of animals that would be well-suited to the Argos forest—another contribution from Arisella that everyone appreciated.

At least this made the ungrateful chief so rich that he became increasingly greedy for gold... and so similar to a fat, ugly leprechaun that Arisella didn't want to see him even 10 meters away from her.

And all this thanks not to a magical prediction from a prophetess, but to the clever proposals of an extremely intelligent young woman who took advantage of her new status to make herself heard by the town's important figures.

And it was also what led Arisella Bluen to win the love and sincere loyalty of countless inhabitants of Taylan, contrary to what she believes, since she assures that anyone could have thought the same thing quite easily.

And despite her refusal to take the village as her property, everyone in Taylan sees her as their mistress for her contributions to the point that the village chief himself would seem merely a figurehead... a very ugly and mean figurehead.

…So when everyone heard that Arisella had suddenly fallen into a coma due to a mysterious illness, disbelief filled them all to the point where some almost shouted “Impossible.”

That Arisella Bluen? Their lady, their people's only prophetess and their savior, who also happens to be the woman... no, the luckiest human being they've ever known?

This must be a joke.

Arisella Bluen was famous among all the villagers not only for her act of saving the village, her status as a prophetess or her unparalleled beauty, but also because she was born with incredible luck.

She never had to fear illnesses that couldn't be cured with holy energy or mana, nor did she need the local alchemist's potions to stay healthy; somehow, she's perfectly fine despite the emergence of some diseases that caused a lot of trouble for the town in the past.

Every time she ended up involved in some particularly dangerous accident or incident; like a house collapsing, for some reason it ended unscathed without Arisella herself knowing how, and once she was even kidnapped by a mysterious group... but when everyone went to look for her, a pair of children found her sleeping peacefully at the entrance to Argos Forest.

The kidnappers?

When they located them, they found them dead; their remains torn to pieces near the hollow of a large tree….

Although the mystery of what happened and the cruel massacre frightened them, many began to believe that Arisella was loved and protected by the spirits of nature themselves, as the incident took place near the forest ruled by a spiritual master. After that, people began to admire and respect Arisella more and even devotedly improved her mansion.

Incidentally, this incident was what led his current lover to finally confess to Arisella, to the delight of many and the chagrin of a few. It was an event that began as a horror story but ended as a clumsy but tender love story.

Now, how was it possible that a woman with that kind of history, who could even be said to have received protection from the gods, suddenly fell ill?

It didn't make sense to any of them!

Curious and full of doubts, but above all concerned for their mistress, many visited the Alchemist's small clinic to try to verify the rumors; only to be mercilessly expelled by the angry and worried woman, since Arisella needed to rest, and the noise they made wasn't helping.

Although they were expelled, they had fulfilled their purpose; the words of the beautiful blonde alchemist confirmed that Arisella was indeed suffering from an illness of some kind, and an overwhelming anxiety swept through the entire village.

Has Arisella lost the spirits' love? Perhaps she... will she die?

Such were the gloomy thoughts of the people, who sincerely prayed to the gods that nothing more would happen to their Lady and that she would recover her health.

They had that desire, praying sincerely.