It was just something that slipped out by chance.
“Instructor, where do you think the fundamental cause of this war lies?”
At the end of our morning private lesson, the Saintess asked me.
She wanted to know why people were fighting like this.
I answered simply.
The cause is always the same.
“Human history.”
“History… Are you saying that this conflict erupted because of past events?”
“Exactly. No matter what justification each side claims, at the core, it’s all about settling past grievances.”
The Helvetian Republic declared war because their people had been torn apart, occupied, and oppressed by foreign powers.
The Allein Kingdom joined the Republic’s cause because the Kram Empire had taken a significant portion of their territory in the past.
The Navre Kingdom had once been betrayed by Allein and wasn’t about to let that happen again, so they declared war in return.
Every nation is using its history as justification to rally its people and wage war.
“The major belligerents are no exception, and neither is the Artium Empire. In fact, they are the most obsessed with the past.”
Those bears from the East had no direct involvement in this war, yet they chose to join.
They had suffered countless invasions from the West, seen their lands pillaged and taken piece by piece,so now, before it could happen again, they mobilized their massive army to preemptively tilt the war in their favor.
‘Of course, the reality is more complicated than that.’
Every side had reasons, but if you examined them closely, you’d find plenty to criticize.
Artium had once raided the West just as often.
Kram had suffered under Allein when it was still weak.
Helvetia, in its imperial days, had been full of supremacist arrogance.
In short, everyone had committed and suffered their fair share of sins.
Centuries—millennia—of accumulated resentment and grudges had finally erupted into a continent-wide war.
“I was taught that the cause of the war was the books published by a writer named Ishmael.”
“That was merely the spark. The embers were already smoldering within everyone.”
Ishmael had merely tossed a match onto a pile of logs soaked in gasoline.
The people of this world were the ones who had gathered the wood and poured the oil—not me.
Hearing this, the Saintess nodded without argument.
Yet, she still seemed to have lingering doubts.
Tilting her head slightly, she asked,”But even so, I still find it strange. How could he do such a thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Ishmael person. Honestly, I just can’t understand him. How could he receive the Goddess’s blessings and yet choose to defy her will?”
“…Excuse me?”
What the hell is this woman talking about?
“Think about it,” she continued.
“Spreading such dangerous and impure ideologies in a world ruled by the Goddess.
That’s outright rejecting her grace and ruining all she has done for us.
We owe our happy lives entirely to her.
I simply can’t comprehend why anyone would choose to go against her.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
It was just too absurd.
You.
What the hell do you know?
Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?
Do you know what I lost when I came to this world?
Do you understand the pain and hardship that turned Kang Cheonsu into the heretic Ishmael?
And yet, you dare speak to me about gratitude?
“A… fresh perspective, I suppose. But the world is unpredictable, isn’t it?”
Still, I clenched my teeth and kept my composure.
Losing my temper here would only make me look crazy.
“Perhaps Ishmael had his own reasons. Whether we can understand them or not is a separate issue.”
“That’s nonsense. Everyone respects the Goddess, don’t they? Even the unbelievers in the East recognize her greatness.”
If she had simply called Ishmael evil,if she had condemned him as a vile intellectual spreading dangerous ideas without taking responsibility,I would have laughed it off.
Because it’s true.
I know full well that I’m a bastard ruining the world.
And I have no regrets.
So if someone wanted to curse me for it, I would have accepted it without complaint.
But her words were different.
They weren’t mere insults or rational arguments.
They were the unshakable convictions of someone raised in absolute faith.
She had been a devout believer her entire life, viewing the world through the lens of her scriptures.
She couldn’t even fathom a worldview that didn’t revolve around the Goddess.
And that arrogance—that sheer self-righteousness—had just stepped on my last nerve.
“I’d like nothing more than to strip that person of everything they’ve ever had,” she muttered, her voice filled with quiet resentment.
“For someone who wouldn’t even exist without the Goddess to spread such heresies… Unforgivable.”
What the hell has she ever given me?
I worked my ass off for 28 years to earn my place as a professor.
I graduated university at 16.
Earned my PhD at 21.
I never once relied on my parents.
I built my entire career with my own hands.
And because of that, I secured my position as a young professor.
So tell me, why the hell should I credit some random Goddess for that?
That same deity stole everything from me.
She ripped me from my world.
Took my family.
Took my friends.
Took my future.
Took my entire life.
28 years of effort, gone.
72 years of my future, stolen.
And yet, I’m supposed to be grateful?
Would you thank your kidnapper for giving you a basement to live in?
“…I wonder if the word ‘blessing’ is really appropriate here.”
Hearing that bullshit, I couldn’t help myself.
Sarcasm slipped from my lips, even though I knew it was a bad idea.
“Our world is beautiful, but it is far from kind. There are plenty of people who resent the very fact that they were born.”
“That’s blasphemy! Receiving life from the Goddess and saying such things—”
“Tell me, Saintess. Do you even know how the lower classes of this country live? Do you know what jobs they do? Where they sleep? What they eat?”
I cut her off mid-sentence.
Placing my hand on her desk, I leaned down to look at her from above, like a teacher scolding a foolish student.
“Some are born into poor families.
Some are abandoned because their parents had too many children.
Some are thrown away because their parents couldn’t afford to raise them.
From the very moment of birth, many are cast out into the streets.
And how do they survive?”
“It’s simple. They don’t.”
“They scrape by on day labor, crime, or begging. If they’re unlucky, they die in an accident.
Even if they survive, they eventually grow too weak to work and starve to death.
This isn’t about talent or personality.
It’s just bad luck.
Born into the wrong circumstances, they live miserable lives through no fault of their own.”
“But—but if they just work hard, surely—”
“Oh, what a comfortable thing to say. Hard work? You need an opportunity to work hard in the first place!
People get conscripted into war or kidnapped into slavery every day.
Do you really think they have the luxury of choosing their own future?”
Life is not about living.
For them, life is about surviving.
“So let me ask you, Saintess. Do you think those people should feel grateful to the Goddess?
Should they rejoice in the fate they were given?
Do you really believe that no one in this world resents her for the life they’ve been forced to live?”
“Don’t be mistaken, Saintess.
This world is far crueler and filthier than you realize.
Just because you’ve lived in luxury your entire life, don’t assume that others have as well.”
Well, it didn’t get through to her at all.
“Last year, there was a massive flood in Hispania. Tens of thousands died, and the number of disaster victims exceeded a hundred thousand—a catastrophe.”
“I remember hearing about that.”
“If the goddess truly loves humanity and is omnipotent, why was she unable to prevent the disaster? At the very least, why didn’t she warn people about it?”
If that damn goddess truly cared about humans, she could’ve at least given a warning. She had plenty of time, sitting up there in the heavens.
“The ones who survived the flood were mostly prostitutes and criminals. They lived in slums on higher ground. Meanwhile, good and decent people drowned. Is this really the will of God?”
To survive a flood of that scale, you had to be somewhere elevated—on the upper floors of a tenement building, in the shantytowns clinging to the mountainside.
And those places?
They were where the poor and the outcasts lived.
“Does she lack the ability to foresee disasters? Or does she have the ability but lack the will? If that’s the case, why should we worship her at all?”
My argument was essentially a variation of the Epicurean paradox.
A classic line of reasoning, but one that had never been posed in this world—because here, a god was known to be real.
That was precisely why counterarguments to it were weak.
“T-That’s…”
No answer came.
Not that I expected one.
How could a mere girl in her early twenties conjure up a rebuttal to this on the spot?
“Come to think of it, the scriptures never actually describe the goddess creating the world. Perhaps she isn’t even—”
Smack!
My mocking, heretical speculation was cut short by a sharp slap across my face.
“Enough. No matter how much I respect you as my instructor, I cannot allow you to speak any further.”
“…My apologies. I got too carried away.”
And so, the lesson ended.
As did our brief relationship as teacher and student.