Epic Of The Demonic Sage

This thin balance of power that was mostly tilted towards the Royal family's favor was actually maintained by a third party… The churches.

They were the one wild card that could not be controlled by either the military nor the nobles. Their doctrines were followed by millions, including those in the nobility and the military, along with the commoners of course, who were the majority.

The church was free from most of the influence of the kingdoms, and they even had to pay a tithe to the churches. While this made it seem like the Church held the supreme power, they were still limited by the tithes given by the commoners and the kingdom.

If the kingdom and its nobles collectively decided to stop paying tithe to the church, they may not be able to keep all their clergy working for long. Even with Faith, there was little a person could do. 

after all the biggest faith in the world was not god, but rather food. If the commoners could starve, the clergy could do so too. After all, if they had no source of income, would they resort to other jobs? Or would they become thieves?

Going through any of these routes would ensure that they would no longer be part of the clergy. After all if one wanted to be part of the clergy, they had to have faith in the God of that church and also follow their doctrines.

In the case of the Grantz kingdom, the main church was the Church of Alana. Alana was the goddess of Light and healing. Their clergy needed to be devoted to her and needed to follow the doctrines of Mercy, devotion, and kindness.

If they resorted to other jobs, they would not be following the doctrine of devotion and if they resorted to becoming thievery, they would not be following the doctrine of kindness. And if they became bandits or worse murderers, they would be violating the doctrine of Mercy.

This locked the clergy into a specific state which they could not come out of easily. Even their gift that was called the divine gift was given by the goddess Alana and if they violated her doctrines, they would lose their gifts.

If one wanted to join the clergy, they didn't really need to have gifts per see but having a gift allowed them to have greater power. Whenever a gifted person became the part of the clergy, the divine grace of Alana would take away their gift and in return give them the Divine gift that had power respective to their previous gift's rank.

So, for example, they had a Rare ranked gift before they became part of the clergy they would lose it and instead get a divine gift that would be at the Rare rank. But even among the church of Alana, they had different Divine gifts.

The priests would have divine gifts that specialized in healing, while the paladins would have gifts that were specialized in battle. While either types of tier gifts could be used for battle and healing, their efficiency would vary.

And thus came the problem of losing that divine gift. As a clergy that lost the grace of Alana would not only lose the divine gift, he would also not get his original gift back. Their original gift would be forever lost after they joined the church.

Of course, this situation was particular to the Church of Alana, but since they were the main faith of the Grantz kingdom and were often the arbitrators, this mattered the most. 

While there were also the Church of Etara and the Church of Duran, their situation was quite different. The Church of Etara was mostly filled with scholars and researchers, while the Church of Duran was filled with Knights and Warriors of Justice.

Etara was the goddess of Knowledge and while Duran was the God of Justice. Their doctrines didn't interfere with that of Goddess Alana and thus they were allowed to exist freely. People were even allowed to freely follow all three faiths

These two churches didn't hold as much power as that of the Church of Alana and didn't really hold the same power over the military and nobles.

  This was also the reason why Viscount Drew could leave the Land Of Etara on his own, despite the fact that it could be considered to be an insult to the faith of Etara. The church of Etara would not get involved in the matters of nobles for things such as this.

But if this was the Church of Alana instead of Etara, Viscount Drew would have never dared to do this. Before he would even put forth the idea of separation, the Paladins of Alana would have chopped his head off for blasphemy.

In the end, everything came down to power and it didn't matter which side you belonged to. Whether it be the nobles, the commoners, the military, the royal family, or the churches themselves. All of them wanted power.

The only difference was the level that they could grasp and whether they could continue to hold onto that power.

Lucius had still been analyzing this all and was a bit intrigued by this system. From what he remembered of his past world's history, the nobles often held absolute power for a period of time and then it would shift to the churches.

As for the dictatorships, the power would be in the hands of military. It was much more complex than his past world, while also being a bit primitive at the same time, according to Lucius.

Lucius had always wanted to be the most powerful in the world and that was his aim in the past world as well. It was his misfortune and miscalculation that he ended up here, but in exchange for that, he had gained the knowledge about many worlds that perhaps no one in his world ever knew.

"The future is vast and darkness mixes with light. There is no right path and no wrong path. The only thing that lies at the end is power." Lucius recited one of his favorite philosopher's quote.