How I Accidentally Built a Kingdom

I’d have to say, Catharina actually made a pretty good teacher.

Her way of explaining things was easy to understand, and then there was the best thing about her explanations...

She just got to the point.

I was sitting in front of her with my legs crossed.

You know, the lotus position I believe it’s called.

I felt like a kid on his first day of school, but at least I got a very attractive teacher.

Off to the side I could hear Julia training our mercenaries, while I was listening to Cat’s explanations.

I still made some time to offer up prayers for their safety and well-being though.

That was until I felt a sudden, and pretty painful, hit to the head.

"You’re not listening." Cat said, bringing her scabbarded sword back to her side.

"Sorry," I said, once again feeling like a school kid.

"What exactly did Julia tell you about the faith system?" Cat asked.

"She just said that it’s the only way to get more magic power." I answered honestly, I pretty much thought that that was the only effect it had.

"She really is a terrible teacher." Cat mumbled. "That is only one of the minor effects of faith."

"Minor?"

She actually saw something that allowed a person to have access to more magic power, simply by being well known, as a minor effect.

"Compared to some of the other effects, increasing your magic power is minor, yes." She nodded. "One of the other effects is literally increasing your strength."

My mind immediately went to the man I kicked through a door.

At that time I had found that slightly suspicious.

"Then there is the fact that depending on the kind of faith you have accumulated, it would naturally influence the impressions people have of you upon meeting."

"What?" I asked, that didn’t seem completely right to me.

"Let’s say that most of the people that know you are afraid of you, that would mean that any new person you meet, might naturally also be afraid of you." Cat explained.

Honestly that one kind of scared me shitless.

The thought that the impressions of some people would shape how most people viewed you was quietly terrifying.

It meant that if you screwed up somewhere, and a lot of people hated you, almost everyone that met you afterward would hate you.

"That doesn’t sound like such a good thing." I said.

"Why’s that?" Cat asked.

Which is when I explained my bad first impressions ruining the rest of your first impressions theory.

"Understandable," Cat nodded. "But it could also cut the other way."

"Anyway, then there is the fact that the more faith you gather, the longer your lifespan." She said, almost as an afterthought.

To me that sounded like it should have been a bit more than an afterthought though.

"What?!"

"That’s pretty much the reaction I expected."

"How much longer?"

"How’s it calculated?"

"Is there something like an average lifespan?"

I fired off a barrage of questions.

"It can’t be calculated, and it can be anything from a couple hundred years, to thousands of years, or just something like a hundred years." Cat answered, which didn’t make it any better.

"How am I supposed to plan my finances around that?" I asked, I mean seriously don’t tell me no person on Earth has ever done that calculation.

You know, if I retire at sixty-five, I’ll live approximately twenty-five more years, and that means I would need x amount of money to be able to live comfortably.

"Plan your finances?" Cat asked. "I just told you that theoretically you could live for thousands of years, and you’re worried about planning your finances?"

"Of course," I answered. "If I don’t know how long I could possibly live, I don’t know how much money I would need to be able to retire, or if my businesses would be a sustainable source of income for the entire duration of my life."

Cat stood there looking at me as if I was some sort of idiot.

It seemed that none of them understood the importance of financial planning.

"You really are a very weird person, you know that?"

"I am not weird," I said. "I just like planning for the future."

"Riiight, not weird at all." She said, obviously being extremely sarcastic about it all.

I decided to ignore the obvious sarcasm, and just view it as the compliment it sounded like.

"Is that all of it?" I finally asked.

"Yes it is," Cat answered. "And now that you know more about the faith system, the boring part of your training is complete."

"Let’s get to the good part." She said as she gestured for me to follow her.

Obviously I knew that the good part would be sparring.

Which I was not as excited about as she clearly was.

I followed her, until we had created some more distance between us and Julia’s group.

It seemed like the mercenaries were having a grand old time over there.

Some of them were laying in the ground breathing hard, while some were standing swinging their swords in the same pattern over, and over, and then there was the last group, they had the worst of it.

Because they were getting their asses handed to them in a sparring match against Julia.

"Don’t worry about them," Cat said when she finally stopped walking and turned back to me. "I’d be a lot more worried about myself if I were you."

For some reason I completely believed that statement of hers.

I knew that in the beginning Julia went easy on me.

She held back when I gave her clear opportunities to counter.

She’d pull her punches at the last moment if it looked like they would injure me.

She’d never target sensitive areas.

But in Cat’s case, I didn’t think I would be given the same courtesy.

On the contrary, I figured that sparring session was going to hurt like hell.

"One thing you need to know about our sparring sessions," Cat said, holding up a finger. "Just like in battles, everything goes here."

And there it was, the one thing I didn’t need to happen.

Because what that meant was that she could, and probably would, use absolutely every trick in the book.

Whether that be clean or dirty.

A wicked smile started to form on that pretty face of hers.

"Let’s begin."