Time slipped by slowly, yet unmistakably, amid a peace so steady that even Leticia found it a little surprising.

Days like these lasted for a little over a year.

By now, Leticia had adapted well to this life and settled into her role.

Daily life was still hard, but at least she no longer had to worry about where her next meal would come from. Things were still awkward between her and the villagers, but at least Leticia sometimes caught them smiling when they thought no one was looking.

That was good enough.

Stano was still the same flighty little brat, but through talking with him, Leticia had crammed in a lot of basic knowledge, along with bits about local customs and culture (mostly from foreign countries, though).

Well, if that kid suddenly changed his ways one day, now that would be weird.

If that ever happened, Leticia would stop talking to him right away. At that point, who knew if the person talking to her would even still be that kid?

She couldn’t cut off this connection, whose source she still didn’t understand, but she could always pretend to be dead.

As long as she didn’t respond, there probably wasn’t much he could do about it~

As for learning to read and write...

Learning to read and write under Pastor Marshall was pretty dull, honestly. Unless you were some kind of knowledge maniac, learning was bound to be a fairly monotonous process of absorbing information. There were no vivid scenes or interesting sounds to dress it up. You could only find a tiny bit of satisfaction and reassurance in gradually getting familiar with it and slowly mastering it.

With nothing else to do, Leticia could only force herself to think, “I love studying. Studying makes me happy. I can’t survive if I don’t study. Studying is the only purpose in my life,” and throw herself into it wholeheartedly.

At first, those things looked like a bunch of wild, incomprehensible scribbles. Then, little by little, they started to look familiar. After that, she slowly became friends with them (hardcore friendship). Leticia was delighted. Knowledge was power, after all!

Even in this relatively peaceful life, Leticia had noticed a few strange things.

For instance, after she learned to read, she sometimes saw Pastor Marshall secretly looking at scraps of paper. The paper was so old-fashioned in texture that there was no way it came from Innsmouth. It clearly came through some outside channel—and judging by the pattern on it, the message was from within The Church.

Pastor Marshall tried to keep this hidden, but he’d clearly underestimated Leticia’s ability to learn.

In his mind, how could a girl who’d never studied writing before master this profound “art” so quickly?

That perfectly reasonable assumption was what made the cautious pastor slip up, giving Leticia a chance to learn more about The Church and some of its secrets.

What surprised her most was that an article sent from “over there” (the pastor’s term for it, meaning the center of religious power in the Kingdom of Intis, a vast church headquarters in the kingdom’s capital) actually contained the words “The Lord is in your heart”...

The wording wasn’t exactly the same as hers, but the overall meaning was.

The first time Leticia saw that line, it shocked her badly.

For a moment, she thought her words had matched those of some Church ancestor of legendary status. If The Church was open-minded, that’d be fine—but if they decided to make trouble...

She’d be done for. Her whole life would be over!

But after forcing herself to swallow her alarm and carefully read the information on the paper, Leticia calmed down. Her expression even turned a little... peculiar.

Because this plain-looking yet luxurious sheet turned out to be a letter of commendation from The Church to Pastor Marshall.

At the very top of the letter was a line of Leticia’s, edged with a faint gold imprint. It looked remarkably holy, as if it were praising something—or expressing the faith upheld by the clergy.

Below it, in slightly smaller print, were words of praise for Marshall from people at The Church’s kingdom headquarters, along with the rewards they’d granted him.

“Pastor, we congratulate you on taking another firm step along the path of faith. As everyone knows, time is what makes fine wine richer. Our faith shines alongside the sun and moon; it is as solid as the earth the Lord bestowed upon us. You have not let old age shackle your spirit, nor allowed the concerns of this world to obscure your path. And now, once again, you have taken another step...”

Only after reading it did Leticia understand. The old man had been passing off her words as his own to enrich and expand the doctrine?

And it had gotten a pretty good response, too?

That really surprised Leticia. In her view, the things she’d said were basically just what any normal person might come up with. There was nothing especially brilliant about them.

Could it be that, by some unlucky coincidence, nobody here was normal?!

If so, she’d just have to accept her bad luck!

Still, after reading the letter, Leticia felt a little more at ease.

She was useful to Pastor Marshall.

It sounded pretty awful, like she’d put herself outside the category of human beings and become a bona fide “tool.”

But look at it another way: the old man valued her “wild ideas,” and those words had gotten a good response within The Church. That meant her importance in the pastor’s eyes had shot up.

In short, she now had a little umbrella of protection. If something happened later, there was a better chance the pastor would take her side.

That was a pretty good outcome, and Leticia was satisfied.

As long as the old man didn’t get restless in all that peace and decide to use her to satisfy his lust, everything would be just fine.

As for Pastor Marshall, the plagiarist, his rewards were rather unusual. Two of them especially caught Leticia’s interest. First, his words would be added to a religious text called The Book of Revelation: Supplement. Second, Pastor Marshall would receive “the Wisdom of the Divine.”

The first one was obviously something like a textbook for prospective clergy, or so Leticia guessed. As for the second...

It was a small bottle of liquid.

She had no idea what it was supposed to do. All she knew was that when she caught a glimpse of it, Pastor Marshall’s expression was so intensely excited it looked almost distorted. His eyes were practically bulging out.

Thanks to her excellent eyesight, Leticia was pretty good at catching things in a fleeting glance. At the very least, she could tell the little bottle was no longer than a finger and quite slender. Even when its cap was removed, not a trace of scent escaped.

He held the little bottle in both hands, his face alight with a pilgrim’s fervor, and prayed frantically amid the play of light and shadow.

That was what Leticia saw.

A chill rose in her from the bottom of her heart.

What was that “Wisdom of the Divine”?

That was only one of Leticia’s biggest questions from the past year. Another, of course, concerned Witch-related knowledge~

Since she studied at the church, and had a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered young master chattering away inside her head, she could easily fish out a few rumors about this stuff—as long as she was careful with her questions.

It made her realize even more just how deranged this world was.

Contrary to what most people believed, Witches were only one part of the group The Church classified as Heretics. If you laid out the full hierarchy, it had three levels.

Demon Maids, Witches, and Sorceresses.

It was a fairly complete chain. While helping tidy up now and then (although Leticia could study writing with the pastor, she spent more time working as a little maid at the church—not only following the old woman around to clean the small chapel, but also helping the priests carry letters and papers), she’d come across words like “shaman” and “warlock,” too.

When she and Stano first met in that connected world, he’d questioned whether she was a Demon Maid. Leticia would swear on her own chastity that she hadn’t even known what the word meant back then. How could she possibly have been one?!

As for the difference between those three terms...

She never managed to get it out of him. When she tried to dig deeper, she found that Stano only had a vague understanding of it himself. And here at the church, the most important knowledge was completely out of reach for a little helper like her.

All she could find out was that these people were hopeless madmen. The holy flames had to purify them, burn away their filth, and scatter their ashes across the land. Only when the ashes had endured the scorching sun and the moon’s baptism, and pure believers walking the earth had trampled them beneath their feet, could the Lord forgive that filth.

So, yeah. She knew about as much as a bird did.

Well, as for why this summary suddenly came up...

It’s because the main story is about to begin!