episode_0031

It was just a story that came out by chance.

“Instructor-nim, where do you think the fundamental cause of this war lies?”

During the final hour of the morning tutoring session, the Saintess asked me.

Why are people fighting like this?

To which I simply replied.

The cause is always the same.

“Isn’t it the history that humanity has built up?”

“History…? You mean the problem stemmed from past events?”

“That’s right. No matter what reasons each side puts forward, in the end, the essence is to take revenge for the past.”

The Helvetian Republic resolved to go to war because of the resentment of its people being torn apart and occupied by foreign powers.

The Elaine Kingdom helped the Republic because it had lost a considerable amount of territory to the Krahn Empire and had a history of being beaten up.

The Navarr Kingdom, having been backstabbed by Elaine in the past, declared war, saying they wouldn’t be fooled twice.

Either way, they are using their history as a justification to instigate their citizens and wage war.

“The major participating countries, as well as the Artiom Empire, are no exception. Rather, they are the ones most obsessed with the past.”

Those bears from the East decided to participate even though they were not involved in the war.

Because their land has been swept up in countless wars by enemies coming from the West.

Because they have been gradually losing and plundered of the land they call their ancient territory.

Now, they are trying to prevent it in advance, even straining themselves to mobilize a large army to lead the war to their advantage.

‘If you look into it in detail, the situation is more complicated.’

Of course, if you look closely at the reasons they each put forward, there were plenty of elements to point out.

Artiom used to plunder the West frequently in the old days,

Krahn suffered under Elaine when they were a weak country,

Helvetia was full of elitism during the Empire era…

Anyway, to sum it up, they’ve done and suffered quite a bit of wrong to each other.

They’ve lived that way for hundreds and thousands of years, so their resentment and bitterness have finally exploded.

In the form of a great war encompassing the entire continent.

“I learned that the books published by a writer named Ishmael were the cause.”

“That’s just the trigger. The spark was already dormant in everyone.”

I, Ishmael, only threw a match into a pile of firewood soaked in gasoline.

The guys in this world are the ones who piled up the firewood and prepared the oil, it’s not my responsibility.

When I explained it that way, the Saintess nodded obediently.

But, as if she still had questions, she tilted her head and asked me again.

“Still, it’s puzzling. How could he do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ishmael, I mean. Honestly, I don’t understand that guy. How could he, living under the Goddess’s grace, even think of going against Her will?”

“…Huh?”

What on earth is this woman babbling about?

“Honestly, isn’t it obvious? Spreading dangerous impure ideas in this world ruled by the Goddess. That’s like abandoning the Goddess and ruining Her hard work.

Isn’t it all thanks to the Goddess that we enjoy such a happy life? I can’t understand how anyone could dare to defy Her.”

I was momentarily speechless.

Because it was so absurd.

What do you know.

You don’t even know what I’ve been through.

Do you even know how much I lost coming to this world?

You don’t know how much trouble Kang Chun-soo went through to become the ideological offender Ishmael.

And yet you dare to bring up grace and gratitude to me?

“A, a fresh perspective, I suppose. But you never know what can happen in this world.”

Still, I gritted my teeth and maintained my composure.

Getting angry here will only make me look strange.

“Ishmael might have his own reasons. Whether we can understand them is another matter.”

“That’s ridiculous. Reverence for the Goddess is something everyone does, isn’t it? Even those infidels and heretics in the East know of the Goddess’s greatness.”

If she had just cursed Ishmael as evil.

If she had criticized him as a malicious intellectual who spread terrible knowledge and didn’t take responsibility for it himself.

I would have gladly laughed it off. Because it’s true.

I am aware that I am doing something terrible to the world, and I have no regrets about it.

So I was willing to admit it if anyone criticized me.

But the Saintess’s remarks were different.

A fragment of thought emerging from a way of thinking completely steeped in faith and worship.

An attitude that doesn’t even consider understanding the values of those who don’t, because she believes that serving the Goddess is natural in the first place.

A stubbornness where the scriptures have become the standard of judgment, as she has lived as a religious person for almost her entire life.

That arrogance and dogmatism finally touched my nerve.

“I wish I could take away everything that person has enjoyed so far. To think that he’s doing this when he wouldn’t even have been born if it weren’t for the Goddess.”

What has that bitch ever done for me?

What help did she give me to become a professor at the young age of 28?

Graduating from university at sixteen and getting a doctorate at twenty-one was all my effort.

I achieved those results with my own pure strength, without ever asking my parents for help.

Thanks to that, I even got a professorship at a young age.

Why is that thanks to the Goddess?

I lost my status, my family, my friends, and my future because of some strange, unfamiliar god.

My 28 years of life and 72 years of remaining life have been mortgaged entirely.

Why should I be grateful?

Why should I bow my head to a bitch who arbitrarily steals everything in my life and threatens me? Huh?

If you were kidnapped, would you swear to be a good hostage, thanking the kidnapper?

“…Well, I don’t know if the expression ‘enjoyed’ can really be established.”

After hearing such a rant.

Knowing that it wouldn’t work, the sarcastic words that came out of my mouth were, in a way, an irresistible force.

“Our world is beautiful, but it’s not a good place for everyone, not even as a polite remark, is it? There are plenty of people in the world who live regretting the very fact that they were born.”

“To receive life from the Goddess and then say such outrageous things–”

“Does the Saintess know how the lower classes of this country live? What they do, where they sleep, what they eat?”

I cut off her words of rebuttal.

I placed my hand on her desk and lowered my gaze from above towards the foolish student.

“Born into a poor family. Thinned out from a large farming family. Abandoned because they couldn’t prevent pregnancy. There are plenty of cases where people are thrown out onto the streets from the very beginning of their lives for such reasons. How do those people live?

It’s simple. A day-to-day existence. They barely manage to stay alive with manual labor, crime, or begging. And if they’re unlucky, they die in an accident. Even if they don’t, they starve to death because they don’t have money when it becomes difficult to work.”

In this city alone, there were 20,000 people living like that. Maybe it’s decreased since the war broke out and prices skyrocketed.

“It has nothing to do with talent or personality. They live a life no different from hell just because they were born into the wrong family.”

“B, but! If you work hard, you can change your situation however much you want–”

“You’re saying such a comfortable thing. Did you say effort? Even getting the chance to make that effort is luck!!

It’s common to be drafted into the army while walking down the street, or to be dragged into a human trafficking ring. There are plenty of people who don’t even have the freedom to develop their own future, so do you really think they would be grateful for the life they’ve been given?”

Each day, they ‘survive’.

Not live, but survive.

The lives of the lower classes before the modern era were always a continuous struggle.

It is physically impossible to achieve self-made success when you are born into a bad environment.

Unless you have the kind of cartoonish luck of suddenly having a benefactor or a sponsor, you have to live in pain your whole life.

Of course, even in such cases, it was common to live your whole life being used as a puppet by your sponsor.

“So let me ask you, Saintess. Do you really think someone born like that would be grateful to the Goddess for giving them life?

Even though they are destined to spend their whole lives in pain. Do you think it’s natural for them to accept their given fate without any resentment?

Do you really think there isn’t anyone in the world who would resent the fact that they were given such a life and wish they had been sent to hell instead?”

The Goddess has defined roles and responsibilities for each social class.

Therefore, isn’t it natural that there are people born as lower class?

You could argue in this way. Because it is still a class-based society.

But accepting your birth is a separate issue from being happy about it.

There’s no way there’s a crazy person in this world who likes such a shitty life.

“Don’t be mistaken, Saintess. The world is a more terrible and dirty place than you know. Just because you’ve lived in a good house and lived well your whole life, don’t assume that everyone else has.”

I thought that if I lashed out this much, she would be embarrassed and become quiet.

Unfortunately, the Saintess was much more stubborn than I thought.

“…Still, spreading ideas full of hatred and malice is clearly wrong, isn’t it? No matter what the circumstances, it’s ultimately ruining the world that the Goddess created and cherished.”

With tearful eyes, she glared at me and shouted.

“I understand that there are people who can’t be grateful for their lives. But that’s no reason to ruin the world.”

“That’s right. But there’s an error there. Cherished? Since when has the Goddess properly taken care of the world?”

Well, it didn’t work at all.

“Last year, there was a massive flood in Hispania. Tens of thousands of people died and the number of flood victims exceeded one hundred thousand, a major disaster.”

“I remember hearing about that too.”

“If God loves humans and is omnipotent, why couldn’t he prevent the disaster? Why didn’t he even tell the people?”

If the Goddess really cared about humans.

Couldn’t she have given them a warning?

She would have had plenty of time living in the sky.

“The ones who survived the flood were mostly prostitutes and criminals. Mainly because they lived in shantytowns in high-altitude areas. Good people died while bad people survived. Is this really what God wants?”

To survive a flood that paralyzed the city’s sewage system, you had to be in a high place.

The top of multi-story houses, the hillside slums, etc.

Either way, it’s a residential area mainly used by poor and delinquent people.

“Perhaps she doesn’t have the ability to foresee disasters? Or does she have the ability but not the will? If so, why should we worship the Goddess?”

My argument was a twisted version of the logic known as Epicurus’s paradox.

It’s quite classical, but in this world, where God is real, it’s an argument that would never come up. Therefore, it’s a paradox that’s difficult to counter.

“Th, that is…”

No answer came back.

But I didn’t expect one in the first place.

How could a mere child in her early twenties create a counter-argument on the spot?

“Come to think of it, the Bible doesn’t mention anything about the Goddess’s process of creating the world. Maybe she didn’t create this land–”

–Slap!

My mocking, heretical hypothesis was not fully expressed.

Because I was strongly slapped in the middle.

“Stop it. No matter how much of an Instructor-nim you are, I cannot allow you to say any more than that.”

“…I apologize. I got too excited.”

That’s how the tutoring session ended that day.

Along with our short mentor-student relationship.