[2.46] Family Style (Part 4/5)

Immediately after purchasing the Skill, Angelica blinked in bewilderment as her mother’s face lit up like a heatmap. It took her a moment to realize what falsehoods were being detected: Corticia’s makeup. She honestly wasn’t wearing anything too heavy, just enough to lighten the aforementioned wrinkles she complained about while highlighting the rest of her face. But the Skill exposed it all as if she was presenting her face as a complete farce.

Uhh, can we filter out regular makeup please? She sighed in relief when the request was adhered to and her mother’s face went back to normal, worried for a second since Detect Falsehoods was a Passive Skill that she wouldn’t be able to turn off. A life of staring at peoples faces colored like topography was not something she was looking forward too.

Well, that proved the Skill worked at least. Sadly, she hadn’t gotten any Legacy Bonus for either new purchase, but that wasn’t surprising, and was probably a rarer thing than not. She’d clearly not been doing a good job seeing the unseen or detecting lies in the past. And she’d never really thought much about the origins and ingredients of what she was eating, having never had any aspirations to be a chef, outside of basic survival cooking, though she was intrigued more now because of Poison Chef. And if she ate any poisoned foods, it should hopefully let her identify how it was tainted.

To just test how it worked, she took a bite of her food, unable to think about much else. Now that it was right in front of her, she was starving. And since she apparently had about three meals of food to get through, it was best to get started. The bite she took of braised beef immediately filled her mind with information. She was presented with a full ingredient list, and rough preparation instructions.

It felt like it’d be more detailed with Skill levels, and if she focused harder and trained it more, she’d likely be able to even tell the origins of each and every ingredient—hell, maybe even the name of the cow she was eating, but that’d just be kind of depressing, so it was likely a Skill she wouldn’t use often. Well, no, her mindset immediately changed, since that conflicted with her lifeplan.

It was an Active Skill, so she had to choose to use it, but there really was never a situation where she shouldn’t. The MP drain was minimal, especially if she only triggered it for the first bite of something new. While she didn’t have a specific use for Discerning Palate, eating was an act she always had to do, so it was wasted potential otherwise. If not for the Skill levels, then the Worth and Gnostic Attunement increases. Having it at a high level may come in handy someday in a way she didn’t know yet, and if nothing else, passively learning recipes and techniques could improve her own cooking.

She’d add it officially as a training technique to her lifeplan later, force it as a habit with the recurring Order. For now, she continued its usage with each bite of new food, doing her best to get used to the information dumps. Right now, it was hard to hold a conversation, but fortunately her mother had gone quiet for a few bites herself.

[Discerning Palate Lv.2]

[Lucidity increased]

[Gnostic Attunement increased]

Angelica needed to figure something out to test Detect Falsehoods on. She kind of wanted to steer the conversation back to the subject of her father, but unfortunately that window had probably passed. And honestly, at this stage of her life, she didn’t care that much. Her mother was ultimately right, in that meeting the man wouldn’t really change anything, and the only reason she’d want to push the matter was because it would get under the woman’s skin.

So what else could she ask about? Her work? No, that would probably raise flags or, again, make her seem way more interested in working at city hall then she should be. Corticia’s personal life? What personal life? That conversation would be dead before it began. Hmm, maybe something the woman was actually rather passionate about outside of her job?

“Hey mom, could you tell me about the crusades?”

That made the woman’s fork suddenly drop out of her hand, clinking to her plate. Her eyes bulged, lighting up brightly, the most enthused she’d seen her mother in years. “Angelica, are you thinking about going to church again?!”

Crap, maybe she’d opened the floodgates. Despite her busy personal life, Corticia Hallow was a literally religious church goer. Even if sick, even if on deadlines, she had never missed a week. And if she was out of town on business or the very rare holiday, she would find a local church to attend. Of course, at least all the way through grade school, Angelica was her faithful companion, attending against her will in her church best.

Well, at that time in her life, she didn’t really protest, even though she had waning interest, or was more resigned to her fate that it was just something she did as tradition. When she started going to college, though, and had her first taste of freedom, it was one of the first things she’d dropped. Largely because, damn, who wanted to get up that scuffing early on the weekend? And the local church at her college was just… so freaking boring. Even the pastor sounded like she didn’t want to be there.

Of course, even then there wasn’t a full escape, forced to attend religious studies courses by her mother for a few semesters. They went through the crusades thoroughly, but as soon as the tests were done, all that information was dumped out of Angelica’s brain, then filled back up to the brim with actuarial lessons, art, the girl she had a huge crush on, and a few other select smaller crushes.

Only when she moved into her current apartment did she finally break the cycle. Her mother still invited her regularly, of course, which she’d still attended on occasion, like major holidays, to be nice. But for week-to-week service, no, she finally had an excuse, and Corticia had actually been the one to finally give up before they’d finally gone into full disconnect, probably because she was feeling her daughter slipping away and didn’t want to push her even further.

“Uhh, no, no thank you.” Angelica shot it down immediately. She could continue playing it off as not being interested, but given her new situation, she actually kind of was. But the bigger issue was being a Demon. What would happen if she entered a church? Burned alive, dissolved to dust, smote with holy light, all of the above? Either way, she definitely didn’t want to test it until she had complete confirmation otherwise. The truth she did know was that Holy was bad for Demons, something she hadn’t yet faced and hopefully never would.

“But for artistic inspiration, I just think it’s an interesting period of time.” Yes, that was a new convenient catchall excuse she could use for everything. It may be a harder sell for boring clerical work, but for something grand and epic like the crusades were described as, yes, that could genuinely be a major inspiration. As for why she went with this topic, there were two reasons. First, because there was something about the history of the crusades her mother could possibly let slip with her perspective as a Summoner.

And second, Demons and Vissiem were connected somehow. Angelica wasn’t sure how, but it felt undeniable at this point, since Gawk had been able to say the god’s name, and had mentioned it was tied to the cause. Maybe they were enemies, or maybe they were partners in the same cycle of life and death. One thing she was certain of, though, was that the crusades were the first time that Vissiem was mentioned in recorded history.

“Well, what would you like to know?” The rejection hadn’t dampened her mother’s enthusiasm.

“Uhh, I guess just a general overview for now. Y’know: when, where, why. I vaguely remember from college, but I definitely have a lot of gaps.”

“Well the why is the simplest!” Corticia preached. “It’s because our world used to be quite different, Angelica. The average person used to have far fewer freedoms. Everything, every country, the entire world was ruled under a single tyrannical religious order. To get out from under that, rebellions formed all over, small teams that broke apart their rule bit by bit until it was crushed entirely. That was the crusades.”

“Then when that order was abolished, the array of governments we have today were established, each as their own entities, with their own customs, policies, and ideals. But the one universal truth they all agreed upon was freedom of religion, so that such a theocracy could never be established again. Of course, the teachings of Vissiem started and remained as the dominant religion, and is the only one still persisting from that era, I believe.”

Uhh, that didn’t sound simple at all, but maybe for her mother, the idea of destroying religious oppression was entirely ingrained into her. So far, no lies had been detected. At the very least, then, she was sticking to the well-established beliefs, assuming her Skill just wasn’t busted or didn’t work on a High Summoner. While it had worked for make-up, perhaps Corticia was just so good at lying as she breathed that even Demon magic couldn’t detect the difference.

“Where,” the woman continued, “was everywhere of course. Not an inch of Casniem was unaffected. Though I have heard that the Middle-West had it the worst. They saw a lot more along the lines of full-scale battles compared to the targeted strikes that most other regions endured. That’s not surprising. It’s still hands-down the most contested area to this day. Hard to say why. There’s not much of value there, honestly.”

Ding-aling-ding. It was as if a chime jingled in Angelica’s ears, and she understood the implication immediately. She was being lied to.

[Detect Falsehoods Lv.2]

[Lucidity increased]

[Gnostic Attunement increased]

The question was, what exactly was she being lied to about? Sadly, there wasn’t much info given on specifics. Maybe that came with higher levels. It had to be the last part, right? So her mother must know of something of value in that region. A big Runestone mine, perhaps?

Or it could be something unrelated to Summoners entirely. Maybe a lucrative business partner or a fancy resort that raked in the money. The lie was so vague that it could be many things, and honestly wasn’t that helpful. But it was good to have a baseline for the Skill process, and now she knew what it’d be like when others caught her lying. Definitely pretty obvious.

“When… that’s the most contested part. It’s hard to say for certain. Almost all recorded history was destroyed during the crusades. This was intentional, so that the previous religion would be snuffed out entirely, with no roots that could regrow. At some point, they started counting again, starting over at Year 1. But some time after that, historians dug through the oldest pieces they could find and estimated that there must have been humans alive as early as three thousand years before that point.

“So they restarted counting again at that point, but with a flat three thousand in front of it. Hence our current year: 3329. It was estimated the crusades happened about one or two hundred years before then, so roughly, four to five hundred years ago, maybe six hundred if they’re seriously off.”

“Hmm, alright,” Angelica pondered on that for a moment. They definitely did have general history before then, mostly related to the advancement of technology and what the quality of life must have been. Right around the crusades was when concepts like blacksmithing were starting to boom, and probably what gave them the edge in fights. It was often roughly that era which was depicted in fantasy fiction. Really, their world had advanced incomparably in the past roughly half a millenia, and she honestly wasn’t sure that was a coincidence.

So she posed another question. “It definitely makes me wonder how they did it. If that oppressive empire was so powerful as we’re supposed to believe, then how did the rebels stand a chance? It almost sounds like they must have had help.”

“Oh they did,” Corticia boldly declared. “Vissiem! It was under the banner of our god that they persevered. Vissiem granted them the strength and knowledge they needed to usurp their oppressors and claim the freedoms that were rightfully theirs.”

Well, that sure came off like a sermon, one her mother had probably heard countless times, and Angelica had too if she really rooted around in her memories. She just hadn’t expected the idea to be so literal in practice as a part of history. And strangely, Detect Falsehoods didn’t trigger, meaning there were three options. Either it was the truth, Corticia firmly believed that it was the truth, or she was so convincing that the Skill itself believed her.

Despite that, Angelica had her own conspiracy. What if… it wasn’t Vissiem that had helped humanity rebel back then. Maybe it was the opposite. Perhaps roughly half a millennium ago is when Demons first appeared in their world. That didn’t sound like an answer she could get from her mother, so it was best to move on. Maybe now that they were decently into their meal, they could get to the reason that this whole meetup had been originally orchestrated in the first place.

“Thanks for the info, mom.” She made sure to hammer that point first. “Hopefully it will help me make some good pieces. Speaking of, do you think you’d be ready to take a look at that contract now?”