Chapter 28
Megalith City was a frontier holding.
In plainer terms: a small pond.
The city had existed for barely fifty years. It had never produced a prodigy like that.
People across Oakhaven Province had heard of similar cases, but Elise's pace of advancement crushed even those so-called geniuses.
Three months ago, she had been an illiterate commoner.
Now, on the final day of Light Calendar 7794, she was a High Cleric.
"I heard Elise could already cast above her rank as a Prime Cleric."
"She sensed our god's divine power while still only a Cleric. She truly is a child favored by the Light."
"Oakhaven Province may be about to produce its second legend."
"Perhaps Archbishop Norias's arrangements for Elise aren't so unreasonable after all."
The High Clerics and Grand Knights of the Second-tier couldn't help murmuring among themselves.
Suddenly, the Archbishop's approach made sense.
A genius like Elise shouldn't be allowed to gamble with her life. Sending her to the Academy of Light for steady, structured training might genuinely be the right path.
Elise could feel the shock rippling through the Church's senior ranks, and her mood turned splendid.
From this moment on, she knew, she had real say over her own future.
She took in the world with her eyes and her spirit both, and at last she understood some of the questions that had nagged at her for months.
Ever since transmigrating, she had puzzled over Aurelia's sluggish material development.
This was a world whose recorded Church history stretched back nearly eight thousand years, yet even its bread-fermentation methods remained crude.
She had assumed it was because transcendent factors made the world's living species too varied, leaving many technologies difficult to spread.
Now that she stood as a Second-tier Awakened, Elise realized she had been wrong.
At Cleric rank, the world she saw hadn't looked much different from Earth.
At High Cleric rank, her vision had transformed completely.
To Elise's eyes, this was now a new universe—the material world layered beneath two overlapping strata of the spiritual plane.
The material world remained familiar enough: earth, water, fire, wind, and the other elements, all visible in their ordinary forms.
But the entire world was now overlaid with a sheet of light-like spiritual energy, and beneath that, an ocean of mist-like mana.
It was a new world, one that had the feel of a five-dimensional space.
"No wonder Awakened stop fixating on base matter," Elise realized. "The world they see is completely different."
The thought had barely settled before she opened her system interface.
---
[Status]
[Name: Elise]
[Spirit: 9.97] (Second-tier)
[Mana: 31.88] (Second-tier)
[Constitution: 1.26] (Second-tier)
---
What is Second-tier supposed to mean?
System, you just moved the decimal point. Did you think I wouldn't notice?
For a moment, Elise thought she'd misread the panel.
The skill section hadn't changed, but her three basic attributes now carried a [Second-tier] label, and every value had shrunk to a tenth of its former size.
As a Cleric, her spirit had been 91.3.
Now it read 9.97 Second-tier spirit.
Mana had shifted even more dramatically—from 225.4 down to 31.88 Second-tier mana.
If one point of a Second-tier attribute equaled ten points at First-tier, then advancing to High Cleric had granted her 8.4 spirit, 93.4 mana, and 0.9 constitution.
Converted to the Second-tier standard, those gains registered at only a tenth of their original scale.
Do Second-tier Awakened draw on the second layer of the spiritual plane? Is that why the three basic attributes have to be recalculated?
Is the second layer's energy density ten times the first's? Or did Aurelia's transcendent system divide that density gap into ten units, each treated as one standard unit of mana?
Elise leaned toward the last explanation.
Awakened must have sensed the energy-density gap between transcendent tiers long ago.
For convenience, they had likely defined the tenfold gap between First-tier and Second-tier as a single energy unit.
But that wasn't the crucial question.
The crucial question was this:
Now that she was a High Cleric, had her spirit grown more efficient at controlling mana?
How much stronger had her spell skills become?
Elise wanted to test it on the spot, but there were still matters to settle.
She opened her eyes and looked toward Archbishop Norias, seated at the head of the hall.
The frustration and suffocating pressure in her chest had vanished.
All she felt now was vindication.
"Honored Archbishop Norias, thank you for your assistance."
Saying it out loud felt deeply satisfying.
"Congratulations, High Cleric Elise," Norias said.
For a moment, he had no idea what else to add.
Once the congratulations left his mouth, his gaze slid toward Almus and Doran—the two true "culprits".
From the very beginning, this whole affair had been staged by the Megalith parish.
Almus and Doran had asked Archbishop Norias to "pressure" Elise.
The harsher his pressure, the more intense Elise's emotions would run.
The more her emotions ran, the more firmly the Megalith parish's senior members could "support" her.
The more they "supported" her, the more her feelings would swing.
Through that cycle, they had meant to manufacture the emotional conditions she needed to advance to High Cleric.
What neither Almus nor Doran had expected was for Elise to complete the advancement the instant the confrontation began.
Which made things rather interesting.
At present, only Norias, Almus, and Doran knew of the plan.
Everyone else genuinely believed Archbishop Norias was a stubborn old mule.
Which was precisely why Norias now itched to teach Almus and Doran a proper lesson.
When you came asking for my help, you never mentioned Elise's talent had reached this level.
You told me to say a few harsh words, let the Megalith parish carry on the performance, and I'd withdraw with my hands clean.
Once Elise advanced to High Cleric, you'd restore my good name naturally.
And now?
I'd barely finished speaking before she advanced on the spot.
So what exactly am I supposed to do?
"Elise, Archbishop Norias was only teasing you earlier," Almus said at once.
"Yes," Doran added quickly. "The honored Archbishop meant to spur you onward."
The Church Awakened in the hall froze at that.
Then they began nodding along.
"I see Archbishop Norias's intention now."
"Light above! The Archbishop's method is truly worth studying."
"I've seen similar examples in the historical records."
"Of course Archbishop Norias would never interfere over the allocation of a mere Second-tier staff."
...