Translator: La0o9
The Academic City’s current segregation of class was largely inevitable.
The scholars of numerous institutions in this place held knowledge and technology in their hands, which incentivized the upper class to send their children here to be educated, as their benefits and gains were guaranteed by the House of Mages.
At the same time, as a free religion zone, all of the seven Churches focused their missionary work here, essentially a small warzone between the churches. While the Churches constantly clashed with one another, they also maintained a level of discretion, which afforded non-believers, heathens, and even evil cultists some breathing room.
Simply put, as long as those with status maintained a level of awe, kept themselves out of the religious warzone, and generally stayed out of trouble, this was heaven for scholars, with unlimited knowledge and unimaginable treasures waiting to be discovered.
Non-believers, heathens, and even evil cultists wouldn’t also just find breathing room, but also had the chance to advance one step further, like from one of the numerous Grimoires of the Grand Library, so they wouldn’t try to ruin this balance. Of course, there were also some lunatics among these people, but compared to other places, they were able to maintain a relatively impressive level of self-restraint and abstinence.
Under such circumstances, a group of people called Sediments came into existence. They were the losers of their struggles, unable to stay any longer in their original home towns and forced to migrate to the Academic City for their survival. But as their migration also meant giving up their original identities to survive, they didn’t have the money to study in any institutions, nor any supernatural means to support themselves. These kinds of people and their descendants were collectively called Sediments.
The Academic City had many establishments of various natures, many of which were originally meant to satisfy the needs of the upper-class sons and daughters who came here to study. Their needs ranged from casinos, brothels, to mundane things like shoe shining, roadside stalls, and even garbage collection.
Sediments could only do these dirty jobs that the upper-class people, who they called Uppers, did not want to touch. They formed gangs to manage the dirty benefits that the Uppers didn’t want to handle, then handed over the bulk of their gains to seek protection from the same Uppers.
They were the derivative products of the struggles between the seven Churches and evil cultists, but in reality, they were usually the bulk of casualties during such struggles.
The cycle of deprivation continued deeper and deeper, with each layer depriving more from the one below them. To be frank, those who took the most from the Sediments were other Sediments, as all of them hoped to escape their identity as Sediments, once again returning to upper society.
The young man that Negary had possessed was also one such loser. He had an affair with the wife of a Half Life Church’s priest from a certain region, which unexpectedly resulted in a new life. As the Half Life Church worshipped the Life Bearer, there was a part of their bible that absolutely forbade the obstruction of the birth of a new life in any way, shape, or form.
For this reason, despite knowing that the child in his wife’s belly was a bastard, that priest still had no choice but to mindfully take care of his wife during her pregnancy. In fact, he couldn’t even chase her out of the house, having to wait until the new life graced this world to make the woman who put a green hat on his head face what she deserved.
Naturally, the young man in the affair wouldn’t receive leniency, the God that the Half Life Church worshipped was the Life Bearer, not the Green Hat Bearer.
1
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one saw it, the young man managed to escape with his life by giving up all of his possessions, including the aid from several of his lovers, as well as what could only amount to luck. Furthermore, he managed to avoid his soul and mind from being consumed by any of the numerous wicked creatures he could have faced on his trip, finally arriving at the Academic City as a Sediment.
Regretfully, this was the extent of his luck.
The Academic City had their own branch of the Half Life Church, and while they didn’t do anything directly to the young man due to how loudly they endorsed the respect of life, they were still capable of a lot of other things.
The young man was physically capable in every meaning of the word, but there wasn’t a single establishment in the city that hired him, including the male brothels; coupled with the fact that work in the Academic City was sparse to the begin with, the young man was helpless to earn any livelihood, resorting to eating algae and waiting for his death.
With numerous thoughts flashing through his mind, the young man – or rather, he should now be called ‘Negary’ 1– accepted a suggestion from the concept of Negary through his soul, through which his aspect of Negary began to take over.
With every passing second, his soul was being modified, during the process of which he accepted and digested various principles, ending up with Negary fully possessing him.
Negary did not look down upon the past, as everyone’s past was limited by their backgrounds, the environments by which they mature, their education, their understanding, their physical conditions, their resources… so on and so forth, which also limited their thought process.
Did the young man want to become a male prostitute who lived to satisfy some oversized middle-aged women, relying on their wealth to earn his meal? No, but due to various factors of his life, he became such a person anyways.
After becoming Negary, what he needed to do became exceedingly simple. To rid himself of his past troubles, continuously improve himself, doing everything he could to become a better self—– regardless of the means.
‘Negary’ sat with his two new friends, Jimmy and Pilo, in front of a small old metal pot, they had propped the pot over a small fire and filled it to the brim with dirt-infused algae that they had collected.
As the unclean water boiled off from the dirt-infused algae, a foul stench could be smelled from inside the pot.
Paying attention to the cooking process, ‘Negary’ sprinkled a bit of black horn powder into the pot, which was a very common stone powder.
As the powder was added, the lingering foul stench from before subsided considerably. ‘Negary’ took the pot off the fire and placed it aside, waiting for it to cool down before he fished out the layer of algae on top, which now appeared almost translucent and no longer had the intense stench from before.
“Try it”
Handing the cooked dirt-infused algae to Jimmy and Pilo, ‘Negary’ checked what remained at the bottom of the pot, which was a layer of what looked like black jelly. He swiftly scraped it off and gathered it into a ball in his hand.
On the other side, Jimmy and Pilo held the cooked dirt-infused algae in their hands for a bit to gather the courage to take a bite. Meanwhile, ‘Negary’ smelled the sticky black substance in his hand, which didn’t smell like anything at all. However, ‘Negary’ knew that if a normal person were to swallow a fingernail’s worth of this substance, they would instantly drop dead due to poisoning.
The black horn powder had undergone a type of chemical reaction with the various toxins within the dirt-infused algae to form this black jelly, with it, ‘Negary’ would be able to cast over 20 different types of spells.
〖 However, the hard part will be to not let that old fox find out 〗
‘Negary’ thought to himself.
While his existence had been guided out of the young man’s body, he didn’t actually receive any of Negary’s power. He didn’t even receive certain pieces of unique knowledge purely for the sake of secrecy.
Naturally, the name ‘Negary’ was used here as a means of security. Negary had modified his true name for it to contain magic: those who referred to themselves as ‘Negary’ would receive protection from Negary’s true name, becoming a part of Negary himself. At the same time, while others called out Negary’s name, those who were not of sufficient level wouldn’t be able to comprehend the name, causing it to automatically degrade in their minds.
In other words, unless Negary purposely professed his name, or entities of his level or a bit lower were to hear the name from him, others of insufficient level would only hear a mundane name like any other, which made it even safer compared to not using it.