Lord: Starting with Biological Modification

It was much warmer inside the church.

The damp, cold air, tinged with the smell of lime, filled Mia’s nostrils.

She walked barefoot on the icy stone tiles, the grime on her soles leaving a trail of small footprints.

An elderly Priest tossed a wooden bucket and a piece of burlap in front of her.

"Lina, is it?"

Mia nodded vigorously.

"Scrub the floor of this hallway. Start from beneath the statue of the Holy Emblem and go all the way to the prayer room door. Don’t leave a single smudge."

The Priest left as soon as he finished speaking, leaving Mia with the bucket.

She struggled to drag the bucket to the well, fill it with water, and haul it back.

Icy water sloshed out, soaking her already tattered robe.

At the end of the hallway, a life-sized statue of the Holy Emblem, a sun cross, stood in an alcove.

A man in a gray deacon’s robe was holding a soft deerskin cloth, wiping the base of the Holy Emblem over and over.

Mia recognized him: Deacon Philip.

His cleaning movements were strange.

Three wipes from left to right.

Then three wipes from right to left.

Then he would switch to a clean cloth and repeat the process.

His lips moved silently, as if he was counting.

Mia started scrubbing the floor.

She knelt, dipping the burlap in cold water and scrubbing hard at the muddy spots on the stone tiles.

A gust of wind blew in from outside, kicking up a few motes of dust that landed gently on the base of the Holy Emblem.

Philip stopped.

He stared at the few specks of dust, his body frozen stiff.

Next, he took out a fresh cloth, dipped it in some kind of fragrant oil, and began to frantically scrub the spot with even greater force.

Mia stopped what she was doing and watched him.

’This man is sick.’

It was the first thought that popped into her head.

After finishing the hallway, she was assigned to organize the bookshelves in the prayer room.

A few tallow candles lit the prayer room, casting a dim light.

A cleric with a monocle and thinning hair was on his tiptoes, taking heavy prayer books off a shelf and putting them back.

He was Cleric Elmsworth.

Mia’s task was to put a newly arrived batch of books onto the bookshelf.

She picked one up, saw its cover was light yellow, and tried to stuff it into a gap next to a book with a similarly light yellow cover.

"No!" Cleric Elmsworth suddenly shouted, startling Mia.

He rushed over and snatched the booklet from Mia’s hand.

"Can’t you see? Can’t you see the beauty of this order?"

He pointed at the bookshelf.

"These here have ivory-white covers. Those over there have milk-white covers. The one in your hand is flaxen-yellow! It belongs on the third row, in the seventh spot!"

He carefully slid the small booklet into its specific place on the shelf, then let out a long sigh of relief.

Mia looked at him, then at the books with their subtle differences in color.

’This one is even worse.’

At noon, she received a ration of food.

The standard here seemed a bit higher. Although it wasn’t soft white bread, it was "premium black bread" with less bran and sawdust. The vegetable soup also had a few slices of smoked meat and vegetables floating in it, much better than what ordinary people ate.

She hid behind a woodpile in the church’s backyard, taking small bites.

The taste was acceptable, but ultimately a bit bland.

She couldn’t help but think of the fried potato slices from the Lord’s Mansion, and that bottle of bubbly "happy water."

’Now *that* was a real delicacy.’

The Holy Knight, Connor, stood before her like a wall.

Mia tensed up instantly. She hunched her shoulders, clutched her food tray, and did her best to look like a frightened little bird.

"Child, are you cold?"

Connor’s voice was unexpectedly gentle, a complete mismatch for his cold, hard face.

Mia was stunned for a moment, then answered in a small voice, "N-no... not cold."

"No child should be left cold in the Lord’s temple."

Connor squatted down, forced a stiff smile onto his face, and reached out to place a hand on Mia’s thin shoulder.

"Let me offer you a blessing. The Lord’s radiance will warm your body."

As soon as the words fell, an almost imperceptible glimmer of faint gold flashed in the depths of his eyes and vanished.

A warm current instantly surged from his palm, quickly spreading throughout Mia’s entire body.

Mia felt nothing.

’Here it comes.’

This wasn’t a blessing. It was the most rudimentary wide-area detection Divine Art.

She could feel that power examining her bones, her blood, every corner of her soul, searching for traces of evil and lies.

But she wasn’t the least bit panicked. She even felt a little like laughing.

’That’s it?’

’I’ve been through more inspections than this guy has said prayers.’

As a succubus with a diluted bloodline, any of her abyssal traits had long since faded to nothing.

She had never killed anyone with her own hands, and on top of that, the lazy life of eating and sleeping at the Lord’s Mansion these past few months had "purified" the last bit of gray from her soul.

Now she was as clean as a sun-dried sheet of white paper.

The probing warmth circulated within her, bumping around aimlessly like a headless fly. It eventually got lost in a pure, white "fog," found nothing, and had no choice but to retreat.

Connor nodded in satisfaction and withdrew his hand.

"Work hard."

After tossing out this sentence, he touched the hilt of his sword at his waist and turned to leave.

Mia continued to gnaw on her bread with her head down, but she was sneering inwardly.

After lunch, the work had to continue.

Mia spent the entire afternoon doing various chores.

Cleaning candlesticks, carrying firewood, delivering water to the clerics’ rooms.

She discovered a pattern.

The people who could use Divine Art, to one degree or another, all had strange quirks.

For example, Deacon Philip. He could bless the faithful, making their bread less likely to mold in the winter.

For example, Cleric Elmsworth. The Requiem he chanted was said to allow the dying to pass on more peacefully.

And there was a fat Priest in charge of logistics who was obsessed with sorting beans by size, and the well water he blessed could relieve stomach aches.

The stronger the ability, the stranger the quirk.

This thought took shape in Mia’s mind.

It was simple logic.

As simple as one plus one equals two.

So, what about Father Fabian?

He was the strongest Divine Art user here.

What was his quirk?

Mia began to subtly observe Fabian.

She watched Fabian gently greet every penitent who came for confession.

She saw Fabian heal a worker who had cut his arm at the construction site.

His hands emitted a soft light, and the wound quickly stopped bleeding. Throughout the process, his expression was compassionate and focused.

She saw Fabian in the afternoon, sitting alone within the unfinished frame of the church, praying for a long time before the sun cross.

No strange movements at all.

He was polite to everyone.

He ate the same food as the ordinary Priests.

His schedule was regular.

Everything about him was impeccable.

This perfection struck Mia as strange.

According to her logic, since Father Fabian possessed the strongest power, he should have the strangest, most terrifying quirk of all.

But he didn’t.

Or rather, he hid it too well.

’This isn’t normal.’

’This is anything but normal.’

「Night fell.」

Mia was given a small room next to the stables to sleep in, a space originally used for storing hay.

After making sure no one was around, she pulled the booklet Velin had given her and a small charcoal stick from her clothes.

By the moonlight seeping through the crack in the door, she opened the booklet.

She began to write in the secret code Velin had taught her: use Arabic numerals to represent the position of letters in the alphabet, separated by commas, to spell any word.

To the people of this world, this completely unfamiliar system of writing was simply impossible to crack.

After doing all this, she carefully hid the booklet.

At midnight, the church fell completely silent.

Like a cat, she slipped out of the small room without a sound.

Behind the church construction site, a dead oak tree stretched its gnarled branches in the moonlight.

An owl was perched on a branch, its yellow eyes swiveling, searching for field mice in the grass.

In its field of vision, a short, thin shadow darted out from the darkness.

The owl tilted its head, uninterested in this inedible prey.

It saw the small figure skillfully feel around the trunk of the dead tree, find an inconspicuous hollow, and stuff a small booklet inside.

Then, the shadow quickly disappeared into the darkness, just as it had come.

The owl retracted its gaze and continued its more important hunt.

Some time later, it glanced casually back at the dead tree.

The little booklet had vanished as if it had never been there.

At that moment, it detected a slight movement in the grass, flapped its wings, and dove silently.

As for those human secrets, what did they have to do with it?