Even though Seraphine had seemed to outwardly accept Nancy, in truth, it was far from it.
Seraphine was a person who rarely trusted, and when she did, and that trust was broken, it usually stayed that way, no matter what the other person tried.
The decision to use Nancy sat easier with her after a night's sleep. Pragmatism had won over lingering resentment; she had a tool, and tools were meant to be used.
But even though she was dying to know about Ashen's condition and whereabouts, she didn't give his name but targeted the recruiter that he usually ranted about in their conversations when they were in the tutorial phase.
At the same time, by sending her on this 'test', she would be able to gain time for herself to integrate and make her own connections here without Nancy constantly breathing down her neck.
She couldn't really trust her just because she spouted some nonsense about some 'binding contract'.
Seraphine knew what a death contract was—she was bound to Seravelle by one, after all. But that didn't mean she understood the full landscape of binding agreements in this world.
Were there other types? Loopholes? Ways to fake compliance while plotting betrayal? She was no native, and the last thing she needed was to be scammed twice by the same person.
Ultimately, Seraphine considered Nancy only a mild annoyance, since she could always report her and get rid of her cleanly.
⛧
The next day, after she attended the initiation, Seraphine realized that the nuns' peculiar ways of embodying their sin weren't the only shocking news.
It was the resources they were allocated.
AP that she would only dream of obtaining during the tutorial phase were suddenly filling up her slimslate, while teachers who'd already walked the Lust pathway were eager to answer any of her questions and guide her.
The sheer generosity of it baffled her at first. Back in Esperra, organizations squeezed every drop of value from their people before offering scraps in return.
But here, the Church invested heavily in every new recruit, as if cultivating strength among the faithful was a sacred duty in itself. Perhaps, in a world teetering on the edge of extinction, it was.
And this was only the basics. Seraphine was later introduced to the church's unique resources: pills made from enerleaf plants.
While they didn't give attributes to mana, they used the energy stored and compressed in the pill to gradually temper and nourish the body, as well as increase a person's total mana capacity faster.
The first time she took one, the sensation startled her.
The pill dissolved on her tongue with a faint minty coolness, then spread warmth through her chest. It didn't only bring warmth, of course.
It nourished, seeping into her muscles and bones with a gentle insistence that left her feeling fuller, sturdier, and more comfortable in her own skin. The effect lingered for hours like a pleasant hum beneath her awareness.
After using those pills and seeing the insane rate of her gains compared to before, Seraphine started pitying her former self, who'd had to get tortured under the coach's training.
Lastly, and the most interesting for Seraphine so far, was the humongous library that was available for the nuns to access as they liked.
The library seemed to hold every book, no matter what she needed—she found it. From Seravelle's history to the culture of every faction and territory of the human race, and even the empire.
All she had to do was comb through the countless smut novels and lovemaking guides, and she'd find almost anything.
Seraphine remembered how Ashen was always curious about the Reign of Terror period of history. But that was one of the few things that she actually could not find, no matter how much she looked.
Not only that, but anything that dated back more than a thousand years was vague, and for the Reign of Terror period that occurred more than two thousand years ago, it was completely blank.
⛧
The next thing Seraphine investigated was the religion that she supposedly was part of.
She was prepared for the worst since she already had a bad experience with religion back in Esperra, where most of them were a scam, but she'd been pleasantly surprised yet again.
The religion of the Everlasting Covenant wasn't exclusive to some select few, but was instead the principal faith of all humanity in Seravelle.
From the slum-born to the transcendent, all knelt before the same unseen throne, whispering the same prayers to the One they called the Eternal Sovereign.
At first glance, it seemed austere—unbending in doctrine and duty—but there was a warmth beneath its surface.
Its believers were bound not by fear of punishment, but by a shared conviction: that faith was both a shield and a responsibility. The Eternal demanded no mindless devotion, but moral action.
The core commandments, as Seraphine learned, were simple yet uncompromising.
To harm the innocent was to stain one's very soul; to witness injustice and turn away was to become its accomplice. The faithful were to treat one another as kin, brothers and sisters under divine witness, standing united against any outer darkness, even when divided in belief or temperament.
Strength was sacred in this faith. The Eternal loved those who did not break when life pressed its cruelty upon them, and despised the weakness of surrender.
To give up on oneself was to turn one's back on God; prayers from such lips would fall upon deaf heavens. Effort was a form of worship, despair a silent betrayal.
And betrayal itself, the deliberate breaking of trust, was unforgivable. Those who committed it were stripped of their place among the faithful, their names erased from the Covenant's record.
Above all stood the first and final truth: there was only one God. No pantheon, no idols, no other claim to divinity could stand beside the Eternal Sovereign.
Of course, these were but the most well-known tenets, the ones every novice learned before dawn prayers. The deeper laws, the ones taught by higher clergy and carved in scripture, remained unseen to her.
⛧
As Seraphine kept learning about the faith, she eventually went from a fake nun to a real one.
She was an atheist before this, but unlike some of her atheist business partners, who arrogantly proclaimed that they would never kneel to anyone or anything and that they'd only believe in themselves, Seraphine was quite different.
She wasn't delusional enough not to know that a human, as long as they had a single emotion, no matter what it was, would have to bow down to someone or something as they lived long enough.
Her business partners bowed to money while they pretended to be above it all. The new generation of teenagers that disliked the mere concept of God and religion not only bowed, but were practically enslaved to electronics and virtual worlds.
Some bow to authority, others are persuaded by sincerity, but they still bow all the same. The worst of them all bow to their own basest desires and become beasts with no boundaries.
The most damning of all is that they always proclaim that they bow to no one; only their 'will' is their guide. They never realize that their will had long turned so rotten, so crooked that it forgot how to stand straight.
Seraphine had never deceived herself, but she had never found something that genuinely resonated with her... that was until now.
After studying the Everlasting Covenant faith's commandments, she felt that as long as she strictly abided by them, she would eventually reduce the things she had to bow to only one. The Eternal.
It happened on an ordinary morning.
She'd woken before dawn, drawn by the sound of prayer echoing through the chapel's stone halls.
When she entered, she found herself among dozens of nuns, their voices rising in unified devotion. The words were familiar now, carved into her memory through repetition, but this time something shifted.
"To Thee alone we kneel, Thy aid we seek in whispered plea…"
As she spoke, Seraphine realized her lips were moving not from habit, but from conviction.
The commandments she'd studied weren't just rules to follow after all. They were principles she'd already lived by without knowing it.
Protecting the innocent. Refusing to surrender. Despising betrayal. These weren't foreign demands; they were reflections of who she'd chosen to become.
When the prayer ended, she remained kneeling a moment longer, something settling into place within her chest.
She wasn't pretending anymore.
⛧
Aside from the resonance she felt with the religion, Seraphine had another, more practical reason for embracing the faith this eagerly.
She simply felt that pretending to be faithful, constantly putting on a mask for everyone to see, and faking piousness would wear her down and ultimately exhaust her.
So she thought, might as well—it wasn't like there was any harm in it.
Altogether, Seraphine was satisfied with her stay in the Everlasting Covenant church, but if there were one—no, two—things she had to mention that bothered her, it would be…
"Ahn~"
"Mm~!"
"Good~ touch me more ♡"
...It was the shamelessness of her so-called 'sisters'—!